Discussion on plastic has turned

Discussion on plastic has turned towards the end of free content. One ramification I’d never thought of is all the personal weblogs or sites like slashdot, plastic, or metafilter that just link to news sites will lose the free links. Would this kill the public discussions? Would weblogs react by creating more original content or doing their own reporting? Or would news or magazine sites respond by creating special free versions to service this audience?