Chris Anderson: Newspapers need to find the 'pet for their penguin'.

(From Guardian Unlimited)

Wired editor and author Chris Anderson told the Guardian that they need to find a "pet for their penguin" -- things that they can charge for to support journalism.

When he talks about pets for penguins, he is referring to the Disney's online game Club Penguin . This is free to play, but they have premium memberships that provide players with additional features . Based on the ideas of his new book Free , he says that newspapers must decide what they provide for free and what premium content and services that they can develop to make money.

'Can't put genie back in the bottle'

As the newspaper industry has collapsed, especially in the US, publishers have begun to believe that they made a mistake 10 years ago by not charging for their content when they launched their websites.

But the industry can't put the genie back in the bottle, Anderson said. The idea that the news content should be free wasn't "a matter of Californian, hippie philosophy", but rather a matter of simple economics.

The huge profits that media companies made in the 20th century, he …