The sore point for me was mostly that the article takes it for granted that Reader had this huge positive externality, because a lot of people are complaining. It's theoretically interesting to say that such a service might be worth publicly subsidizing. It's just annoying that he happened to use Reader as an example, because there has been a glut of news about Reader lately, and I think it's overblown.
Basically it says following:
* some people I know are upset
* we know from economics, but often forget, that some products can be not viable even if people are willing to pay for them
* historical solution is to make them public service which also to Krugman seems hard to envison
Nowhere does he say anything about importance of Reader.
