Politicker MA, a website that covered state politics at a time when Beacon Hill coverage is steadily being reduced in both the broadcast and print media, apparently expired this weekend. (The website has stories from as late as Friday.) CommonWealth contributing writer Dan Kennedy blogs on the failed experiment over at Media Nation:

I’m not sure what happened. It could be that Politicker’s business model — getting advocacy groups (i.e., lobbyists) to buy ads in order to reach the intended audience of inside players — was not realistic. It could be that the model was brilliant but the timing was bad. In any case, the cycle of destruction and creation continues.

But Kennedy is not impressed by an alternative model for web-based news-gathering — namely New York Times columnist David Carr’s suggestion that an “iTunes for news” could convince the millions of interested readers who get their news every day free on newspapers sites that it’s time to pay up. Kennedy notes:

The one thing that won’t work — and I think Carr would acknowledge this if it were put to him directly — is the notion that newspapers as we have come to know them will somehow be able to charge for their everyday content. That horse left the barn 10 years ago, and it’s not coming back.

I think Kennedy is right when it comes to breaking news, though I would be willing to pay 99 cents for the longer and more analytical stories (essentially, magazine pieces) that used to be more common in major newspapers. (I’ve got more money to spend now that I’ve let so many magazine subscriptions lapse.) The Metro-type news could be a loss leader for a newspaper site, kind of like the Cheez-Its near the front door at a supermarket, with the more satisfying (and pricier) stuff in the back.