The latest drop in the ceaseless downpour of scandalous NSA stories was the revelation that the agency spied on the U.N. That's a grave breach of trust by any standard, a serious scandal. But some vain media cynics will not stop championing the NSA no matter what it does.

For a solid week now, media types have been discussing the ethical and economic quandaries of asking writers to write for free. For—oh, about a decade and a half now, at least—media types have been discussing how the internet might affect the longstanding economic model of journalism as an industry. Now, one of most highly credentialed media thinkers in America weighs in with a proposal: Hey, someone should do something about that.