By Joan Magee

In 1961, science fiction writer Robert Heinlein wrote “Stranger in a Strange Land,” the story of humans raised on Mars confronted with a media-obsessed United States of America. People could plug into personalized news feeds, something not imagined by the news industry of the time.

Science fiction writers could only dream of our modern age of media

That was in the heyday of printing presses and delivery trucks — and here is the media in 2009, still looking for a way for personalized news feeds to work. The question resonating throughout the news industry, amid job cuts and magazine foldings, is how to get people to pay for information they’ve gotten accustomed to getting for free.

Something very similar happened during television’s evolution.

When television first came out, it was free, as the Internet was, said William Armstrong, a media analyst at C.L. King Associates. Then cable came along, people could no longer use rabbit ears to get the channels they wanted, and they were then ostensibly forced to pay for the quality of service they wanted.

The same can be said for paying for quality news online. If you’re only able to get scrambled channels instead of your favorite TV show, you’ll pay. If you’re only able to get gossipy Web sites when you want news, you’ll pay.

The advances in technology and the e-readers coming out are as important as the content these gadgets carry, Armstrong added.

Amazon’s Kindle is probably the best known reader so far, and recent iterations of the reader are becoming more and more profitable. But one of the most contentious points in the Kindle’s evolution is Amazon’s relationship with the content providers. Amazon has said it would like 70% of revenue from the newspapers and magazines it will carry eventually.

There’s of course a big push back against that. But if no one is reading the material, or reading the material for free on the web, then perhaps 30%, or even 40-50% might be a step up from the current way magazines and newspapers get revenue from readers.

That is, unless news organizations cook up an in-house e-reader.

“The Kindle might be the forerunner right now, but once certain media companies hit upon e-readers that resonate with readers, it will be a different ball game,” said Richard Greenfield, a News Corp. analyst at Pali Research.

And accordingly, many journalism giants have been preparing for this shift in consumer psychology.

Hearst Publications, Time, Inc., and Dow Jones have all dabbled in looking at electronic news readers. In February 2009, Hearst executive Kenneth Bronfin says that e-readers “will be a big part of our future,” he told Fortune. The company put out press releases describing a wireless electronic reader with the same advertising requirements of newspapers and magazines — something that remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, outside of the U.S., in Denmark, Issuu offers online versions of magazines on the web. It’s won a Webby award, was one of Time Magazine’s Top 50 Websites and was a South by Southwest Finalist. Issuu provides an almost tangible version of a reader’s favorite newspaper, magazine, or catalog.

Since its inception, Issuu has raised $6.25 million in venture capital, and now has offices in New York, Copenhagen, Mumbai and London. Still, the company is expanding, and finding its way in a world of media outfits trying to monetize information and content. Each month they have over 500 million unique page views, and that number is expanding every year.

“It’s all a matter of time,” said Greenfield. “[They] all want to capture that market share and not have to give up diminishing revenue to another company.”

Giving up revenue to another company simply to get your material read? Now that’s something even a science fiction writer could make up.

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