Cheaper by the PDF

Recently I talked with several editors of a Greensboro newspaper.  The first told me that the paper would soon begin charging for content. She seemed a little skeptical of this development, but referred me to the Editor-In-Chief.

He explained that the site would being using a service to post PDFs of their paper online. As a news designer, I was overjoyed.

He told me that they were doing so to make their "Newspapers in Education" program more affordable. Classrooms can flip through the papers electronically, saving the newspaper a neat sum in printing costs.

But the paper plans to charge a subscription rate for this service. 

Will people pay to get their news online if it still looks like a newspaper? Or will they defer to the traditional Web content?

I'm eager to hear how this project turns out. My hope is that people will subscribe to the electronic editions of print media, but I fear this is unlikely.