Think of all the entertainment-related things you pay for on a daily basis; television via a cable provider, newspapers, magazines, movies, music. It used to be that you had physical proof of these things – with the exception of cable, you could hold them in your hand or you went out and experienced them. Yet, nowadays, most of these things are available via the Internet – some are free, some, like music, must be paid for.

There has been a theory that information on the Internet must be free – that the whole darned thing is supposed to be about the free exchange of ideas. And it is, to a point. But not all ideas are good ideas, and not all information is accurate, and not everything that is available, free or not, is of quality. A point is coming, where, even online, we’re going to have to be willing to pay for quality.

All of this puts me in the odd position of agreeing with Globe and Mail columnist Leah McLaren. I’m not a fan of McLaren, and critics would definitely say that she’s biased in her opinion about how we have to acclimate ourselves to a pay system for accessing news on the Internet (she works for a major newspaper, after all). But she’s right.

Last week, the New York Times announced that they would initiate a “pay wall” in early 2011 – basically a system where people could access a preset number of articles for free and then would have to pay if they went beyond that. Subscribers to the paper version would be given a code to allow them unlimited access online. With ad revenue way down in all forms of print media, all publications are looking for ways to monetize their online presence. Papers like the NYT and the Globe have tried various pay schemes before (predominantly one where readers would get a portion of a story but would then have to buy a paid subscription to see the rest), but it was never really accepted. This system just might.

Naysayers claim that this plan won’t work, but I’m not so sure. If all major papers follow the NYT model, eventually all media will follow suit. They’ll have to. The year-long deadline is, in essence, the NYT’s way of giving everyone else time to catch up.

Critics of McLaren’s column have commented on her piece, indicating that they would simply turn to “citizen media”, (such as blogs) to get their news. This works in theory, except that independent media outlets are also waiting to see how the NYT model will go over. Unlike major papers and magazines, small websites, such as TasteTO, the food and drink website I run, have almost no paid advertisers. We run our sites out of love, but we’d also dearly love to get a fair rate – or any rate – for our work. If the paid model becomes widely accepted by larger media outlets, we can expect to see smaller websites doing the same thing. At TasteTO, we’re already encouraging readers to make a donation to help support independent publishers, because people really can’t continue to rely on us to be willing to work for free.

What this means for everyone is stepping up their game. What will make people be willing to pay for information and entertainment? Quality. To use a clichéé, this is where we’ll separate the wheat from the chaff. Because while the idea of getting news and information from “citizen media” is a good one, the difference between bloggers and real writers/journalists is quality. Yes, there are absolutely some fantastic bloggers out there who write to high standards, fact check their work and are professional in how they run their sites, just as there are journalists – and major publications who hire them – who do a sloppy, crap job. But for the most part, there are more bad blogs than stellar ones, and there is more professionalism and quality at major media outlets (where there is a budget that can attract quality writers) than not.

For all of us who write online and hope to make a living at it, this means stepping up our games. Working hard, getting better, honing our skills, checking every fact, fixing every typo. We are on the precipice of a time when it might be a reasonable dream to get paid well for what we do. But we’ve got to convince people that what we do is worth paying for; that what we can give them is better than what they’ll get from “citizen media”.

And as readers of media and users of the Internet, we’ve got to get our heads around accepting that nothing is free. Writers, just like people in other lines of work, have bills to pay. We wouldn’t expect to go to the movies for free. We don’t walk into a grocery store and expect to walk out with a cart full of stuff without paying for it. We’ve accepted that we have to pay for music downloads online… so why not stories and articles? Why do we have this belief that while everyone else should be paid fairly for their work, that writers should give theirs away for free?