The Internet has been a daunting market for many industries to adapt to, and this week, the newspaper industry took a big step toward making money on the Internet.

On Monday, The New York Times started charging frequent website visitors (more than 20 articles per month) to view its content, and people seem to be pretty upset.

Now, I’m sure that the staff put in charge of monetizing the paper’s content online talked to tons of business and Internet experts, but I’m not entirely sure that they chose the most qualified people in the area. It’s young people who have the solution.

At age 17, DeAndre Cortez Way’s “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song gained popularity after Way posted a low-budget music video for the song on websites like YouTube, SoundClick, MySpace and his own personal website. The video is now approaching 97 million views on YouTube, and Soulja Boy continues to make money from album and ringtone sales online.

Way has since released two financially successful but critically panned albums and continues to make music.

This month, another teen star has landed on the Billboard charts. Thirteen-year-old songstress Rebecca Black’s song “Friday” is taking the Internet by storm.

The song and its now-infamous video were recorded last year and have become a massive viral hit. The video has accumulated more than 62 million hits. Black has also dominated Twitter’s trending topics and has made several television appearances.

The thing about Soulja Boy and Rebecca Black is that, well, they aren’t traditionally what you’d call talented musicians.

Neither have received formal music training and both rely heavily on gimmicks like obnoxious dance beats and auto-tune. In addition, both have risen to fame with the help of very low-quality music videos.

What makes the two impressive and, more importantly, what makes them valuable to The New York Times is their ability to get an insane amount of people to watch them on the Internet. But they are doing more than that. They’re also doing something that was once believed to be impossible on the Internet: making money.

The New York Times is one of the oldest newspapers in the world and has a daily circulation of around 876,000. So why are they struggling to survive online?

The New York Times is a pillar in the world of journalism, and if they can’t find a way to survive online, then the future of newspapers is in danger.

I don’t have a good solution, and based on the public’s response, the staff at The New York Times Company doesn’t have a very good idea either.

The closest I’ve come to making money online was selling video games on Craigslist, and, as for The New York Times, you can buy T-shirts and 40-inch replica models of the Titanic on their online store. No joke.

At the end of the day, the problem is bigger than just The New York Times charging for content. The problem is that we as a society are more willing to spend a few dollars on obnoxious ringtones than we are to give a couple of dollars to the people working to keep this nation informed. That’s a problem that not even Soulja Boy or Rebecca Black can solve.