CBS, the home of the most storied news division in broadcasting, has been in discussions with Time Warner about a deal to outsource some of its newsgathering operations to CNN, two executives briefed on the matter said Monday. Over the last decade, CNN has held on-again, off-again talks with both ABC News and CBS News about various joint ventures but during the last several months, talks with CBS have been revived and lately intensified, according to the executives who were granted anonymity because of the confidential nature of the negotiations.

Broadly speaking, the executives described conversations about reducing CBS's newsgathering capacity while keeping its frontline personalities, like Katie Couric, the CBS Evening News anchor, and paying a fee to CNN to buy the cable network's news feeds. Another possibility, these people said, would be that CBS would keep its correspondents in a certain region but pair them with CNN crews. But, these people cautioned, no deal was imminent. Through a spokesman, CBS declined to comment. A CNN spokeswoman said, "we don't comment on speculative business matters."

For CNN, a deal with a broadcast network would mean a new revenue stream without having to add much in additional costs. For CBS, an arrangement with a cable channel would allow it to cut costs while maintaining the CBS News brand, although in a much pared down fashion. CBS is mired in last place amid the continuing struggles of Ms. Couric, who was given a $15-million a year contract, to attract new viewers.

The move is an acknowledgment by The Times that making Web site visitors pay for content would not bring in as much money as making it available for free and supporting it with advertising. "We now believe by opening up all our content and unleashing what will be millions and millions of new documents, combined with phenomenal growth, that that will create a revenue stream that will more than exceed the subscription revenue," Schiller said.

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TimesSelect generated about $10 million in revenue a year. Schiller declined to project how much higher the online growth rate would be without charging visitors. The company expects to record a "substantially increased number of unique users referred to and accessing the site" once TimesSelect disappears, it said in a statement.

TimesSelect includes online access to 23 news and opinion columnists as well as several tools to customize the Web site. It also offers access to the Times archives back to 1851. Starting on Wednesday, access to the archives will be available for free back to 1987, and as well as stories before 1923, which are in the public domain, Schiller said. Users can buy articles between 1923 and 1986 on their own or in 10-article packages, the company said. Some stories, such as film reviews, will be free, she said.

For instance, Ben Sargent of the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman and Universal Press Syndicate showed Ivins' tombstone engraved with the word "Farewell!" A kid at the site says: "Molly Ivins can't say that, can she?" -- a reference to the title of one of the late columnist's books.

Signe Wilkinson of The Philadelphia Daily News and the Washington Post Writers Group drew a man in a cowboy hat walking past Ivins' grave. He says: "But if everyone thought like her, we'd NEVER start misbegotten wars we can't get out of." Mike Keefe of The Denver Post and the Cagle Cartoons (CC) syndicate showed President Bush with smoking feet no longer held to the fire because they were freed from a feet-holding device with the late Ivins' name on it.

Pat Bagley of The Salt Lake Tribune and CC drew two people looking at a statue of Ivins. The statue's inscription has Ivins saying: "The President does not have the sense God gave a duck -- so it's up to you and me." But the "and me" is crossed out. And Mike Lane of CC showed a whip with Ivins' name on it descending from the clouds and snapping at Bush's heels. "We are the deciders!" is written in the sky as an alarmed Bush asks: "Is that you, God?"

[T]he extensive use of Times material from so many writers has drawn at least some grumblings among staffers. In addition to not being paid for their work to be re-used, some are miffed that they are not even being told what material from their past is included. Although each item, from single-paragraphs to lengthy article reprints, is fully credited, none of the items are indexed by author. "Due to the sheer number of entries, we cannot write each one of you and tell you exactly what yours is," Ward wrote contributors in an e-mail last month. "Secondly, with very few exceptions, there is no payment. (A handful of writers whose entries formed a significant part of a particular section will be notified separately and receive an honorarium.)"

Anthony Napoli, a representative of the Newspaper Guild of New York, which represents Times staffers, said the paper is not legally obligated to pay for the use of material that has already appeared in print. "If they are doing it as a regular employee, it belongs to the New York Times," he said about such material. "The content belongs to them."

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"I prefer being paid to not being paid," said Eric Asimov, a wine writer whose views on vino fill several pages of the new book. "I don't think anyone would argue with that." Columnist Nicholas Kristof, whose opinions on hybrid cars from a previous column span several pages in the guide, said the book is the latest in a growing move to make more money from the paper's work. "There is certainly more of an effort to use the brand and find ways of taking control and making money off of it more systematically," said Kristof. "It is nice if they can include some benefit to the writers."

David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize winner who had at least one small item in the guide, said he was not troubled by the lack of payment or information on which materials were used, but knew why other writers were. "I understand why some people are and I can see why," he told E&P. "Some people probably feel they should be paid for it."

Bill Gates says that in technology, things that are supposed to happen in less than five years usually take longer than expected, while things that are supposed to happen in more than 10 years usually come sooner than expected. Ten years ago, when I went to work for Microsoft, the newspaper industry was in a panic over something called Sidewalk -- a now-forgotten Microsoft project to create Web site entertainment guides for a couple dozen big cities. Newspapers were convinced that Microsoft could and would put them out of business by stealing their ad base. It didn't happen. The collapse of the Internet bubble did happen. And, until very recently, the newspapers got complacent. Some developed good Web sites and some didn't, but most stopped thinking of the Web as an imminent danger.

Ten years later, newspapers are starting to panic again. But merely slobbering after bloggers may not be enough. In 1996 the oldest Americans who grew up with computers and don't even understand my tiresome anecdotes about how people used to resist them ("What's a typewriter, Mike?") were just entering adulthood. Now they are most of the working population, or close to it.

The trouble even an established customer will take to obtain a newspaper continues to shrink, as well. Once, I would drive across town if necessary. Today, I open the front door and if the paper isn't within about 10 feet I retreat to my computer and read it online. Only six months ago, that figure was 20 feet. Extrapolating, they will have to bring it to me in bed by the end of the year and read it to me out loud by the second quarter of 2007.

No one knows how all this will play out. But it is hard to believe that there will be room in the economy for delivering news by the Rube Goldberg process described above. That doesn't mean newspapers are toast. After all, they've got the brand names. You gotta trust something called the "Post-Intelligencer" more than something called "Yahoo" or "Google," don't you? No, seriously, don't you? Okay, how old did you say you are?

Many papers have been losing circulation at alarming rates across all age groups. Newspaper profits and the stock prices of the companies that own them were also down during the first half of 2005. The biggest newspapers are cutting staffs, closing foreign bureaus and taking other steps to meet their owners' profit goals.

Most of these dire trends are nothing new. Deep thinkers have prophesied for years that newspapers are on a glide path to irrelevance or extinction. Since the advent of the Internet, a common version of the doom forecasts has the ink-on-paper news being supplanted by something not-quite-yet-describable on the Web.