The News & Observer is offering test drives of the beta version of its new Web site. My quick critique: It’s clean, easy to navigate and considerably less fussy/busy than the existing site. My immediate question: Will the new site live behind a pay wall?

Newspapers have long had trouble getting comfortable with their Web sites. In the beginning, newspapers treated their online editions as annoyances at best, and as tip sheets for competitors at worst. When the industry finally gave in to the inevitability of the Internet, its reaction was to make readers jump through cumbersome registration and log-in hoops for access. Eventually sensing the error of that approach (which helped cause the N&O to lose its online lead to WRAL.com, for instance), newspapers overcompensated in the other direction, making it all too easy for readers to cancel their print subscriptions and get their news exclusively online.

Now the pendulum is swinging back the other way. My former boss, Steve Brill, earlier this year founded a company that seeks to help newspapers collect revenue from online readers, and numerous companies reportedly have signed on — no surprise, considering that newspaper revenues are fading faster than the public’s respect for Congress. Brill’s company hasn’t identified its clients, but I have to believe McClatchy — the N&O’s owner, and one of the more heavily indebted (and thus financially precarious) journalism companies — is either among them or is considering its own pay plan.

I asked N&O editor John Drescher, via email, whether readers will be asked to pay for access to the new Web site. Drescher is normally reliable in his responses (even if only to say he’s got little to say), but this time he didn’t reply. That silence may be telling.

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Update: After this was posted, Drescher sent me the following note:

We’re exploring several scenarios but no decision has been made.

What matters in that sentence is everything before the “but.” Even accounting for the recent (but slight) improvement in McClatchy’s fortunes, the company has little to lose by putting its Web sites behind a pay wall. Look for it to happen.

I’m a fan both of interesting nicknames and of the various euphemisms employed by obituary writers to avoid using the word “died.” A recent death notice in the News & Observer offered two such highlights in the same sentence:

William McKinley “June Rabbit” Hartsfield, Jr., hit a Heavenly Home Run on September 9, 2009 and is now running the bases, swinging his bat, and tipping his cap with the angels, saints, and doves in God’s Glorious Kingdom above.

It turns out Hartsfield played minor league baseball, so that explains the euphemism. His nickname, however, remains a mystery.

June Rabbit, I hope you get to play two up there.

There is, apparently, a double standard in place at the News & Observer’s online edition. There are the things the N&O’s staff writers can say, and then there are the things its readers can say — or more precisely, the things they can’t say.

The N&O on Monday published an article on the upcoming visit to Raleigh by writer Celia Rivenbark, who is the author of five books of humor including “Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank.” The N&O not only made note of that title, but also started its article this way:

Author Celia Rivenbark describes MySpace as the “slightly skankier cousin” to Facebook.

The problem? The newspaper seems to have a prohibition against the word “skank,” but only when used by others. In a comment following the story on Rivenbark, a reader explained that he’d once used that word in a previous comment, and had his comment deleted.

The N&O specifically indicated to me via an online message that the word s-ank was objectionable and offensive when they removed my comment. Now this lady can use it in a title for her book and the N&O prints it.

In fact, after trying to post a comment in response to the Rivenbark article, the reader got snagged again:

… Amazingly enough, when I tried to submit this, I received the message that I must “edit or remove the following word(s): s-kank.”

Well, that’s what happens when a newspaper cuts its staff in half. Computer programs do the copy editing.