As Boston's two major dailies head towards a seeming financial death spiral, it's time once again to ask whether they should be charging for access to online content.

When the computer age dawned, a "hacker ethic" emerged, holding that information should be free and accessible to all. (Steven Levy's fascinating book, Hackers, is especially recommended.) That ethic has permeated the Web, which in less than a decade has become an incredible free library of human knowledge and a great source of informed and diverse commentary.

The Herald reports on the Starbucks bandit, says he is wanted for "a string of downtown robberies" on streets such as Newbury, Longwood and Brookline.

Remember the judge who won a libel suit against the Herald and then rubbed it in by using his official stationery to threaten Herald publisher Pat Purcell? The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today he was nothing more than a bully. Oh, sure, they didn't put it in quite those words, but the net effect is the same:

In sending the letters at issue, Judge Murphy did not meet the high standards required of judges.

The Herald's Dave Wedge goes through Deval Patrick's 32-page wish list of infrastructure projects he hopes to have his pal Obama stimulate and finds several "potential pork projects," including:

$6 million to replace 20,000 trees damaged by "beetle infestation."

Nice use of quotation marks there, Dave. Never heard of the Asian Longhorned Beetle and how the feds are trying to prevent it from spreading from Worcester to, oh, every single maple and oak tree in New England? Perhaps, as Worcester cuts down all those trees (well, the ones that didn't fall down last week), some enterprising arborists will save all the beetles they find and mail them to Wedge. After they've been killed, of course.

Or did she just feel like taking it easy and tossing out a column on nudie teen pix that adds absolutely nothing to the discussion? She should leave the cranky-old-person stuff to Alex Beam - he's much better at it (although I do like the related poll that includes this option: "Nobody ever sends me sexy photos"). Maybe she's still getting over the journalistic disappointment of not being groped on the Red Line the other day or something.

David Wedge picks himself up off the floor from the shock of learning that people who get out of jail aren't simply shot in the head and then dumped into the ocean and so sometimes actually manage to get jobs doing what they did before their convictions - such as working as truck drivers in the local movie business.

In any case, Adam Reilly wonders why Wedge didn't note that the tax breaks that began bringing moviemakers here en masse were first signed into law by Mitt Romney, not Deval Patrick. And no doubt Wedge was very anxious to tell his readers how vociferously the Herald supported those tax breaks - if only the Herald hadn't shrunk its pages a few weeks back:

In short: if you're incensed that ex-con Teamsters are making big bucks on "taxpayer-subsidized movie sets" (to use Wedge's phrase), there's plenty of blame to go around.

Sure, sure, that's pure speculation based on the news today that Herald publisher Pat Purcell is becoming executive chairman of the Ottaway Newspapers, which Murdoch got as a side dish when he bought the Wall Street Journal. The chain includes the Cape Cod Times, the New Bedford Standard-Times and the Portsmouth Herald.

"There is a great team in place at Ottaway. I think it's heading in the right direction," said Purcell, who added that he'll still be based at the Herald.

But he did say there are possibilities the Ottaway papers, especially those based in Massachusetts, could work more closely with the Herald in the future. ...

Purcell, of course, has worked with Murdoch before - and he bought the Herald from him during all that unpleasantness involving Channel 25 and Teddy Kennedy.

Herald photographer Mark Garfinkel reports that a couple of readers contacted him about a photo he took at a five-alarm fire on Prince Street in Cambridge last week: One thought the flames looked like Mother Teresa, the other thought they looked like the devil. Judge for yourself.

Tprussman was on the scene this afternoon as a Boston hazmat crew removed that "anthrax" package from the Herald.

Anthrax scare prompts Boston Herald evacuation; employees return to work after police crews determine white powder inside an envelope marked "Anthrax" was not anthrax.

Same thing happening at other newspapers.