Time editor Mark Halperin appeared on Morning Joe today to unveil the cover story, written by Walter Isaacson.  The essence of the advice is apparently nothing very new: papers have to stop giving away their content and find a way to “monetize” it.  Isaacson proposes a simplified iTunes system for doing so. Along the way, Halperin and Joe Scarborough took the obligatory shots at us Cheeto-stained wretches of the blogosphere . . .

MARK HALPERIN: If your son wants great journalism: not just bloggers, Cheetos, pajamas, basements, but great journalism from organizations like NBC and the New York Times that are known and respected with a world-wide reach, we have to have young people want that.  If they don’t, there is going to be no future.  They’ve got to pay for it.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: If we don’t have investigative reporters at the Wall Street Journal, at the New York Times, at the Washington Post, that is a threat to democracy. And if we’re giving it away free on the web–there are a lot of idiots on the web that can turn a phrase–that can’t investigate what the Pentagon is doing when we aren’t looking.

Hmm: “idiots on the web that can turn a phrase.”  You mean, like “the pot calling the kettle broke”?  I’d give Joe a piece of my mind, but the nozzle on my Cheez -It just got stuck open.