Common sense would seem to dictate that when you start charging online readers for access to your content, you’ll see a major decrease in traffic. Obviously, not every reader is going to take out his wallet when you start putting previously free articles behind a pay wall.

Yet, Newsday, which recently started charging $5 a week for Newsday.com to non-subscribers, is looking for any other answer besides the obvious one.

November saw a 34 percent drop in traffic from the month before for the site once it put up a pay wall, and a 35 percent decrease from last November. But Newsday is claiming that last November was a fluke, just an unusually high month of online traffic caused by the 2008 presidential race and murder of a local teacher.

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From Newsday to The New York Times to The Wall Street Journal, newspapers across the country are trying out new types of pay walls and paid content models. But the big question remains, can they save papers?

Our colleagues at BayNewser have launched a new poll today asking that all important question, and we’re trying to crowd-source the answer from across the mediabistro.com community.

Update: Cast your vote on this issue below, and pass it along to your friends and colleagues, too.

Do You Think Paywalls Will Save Newspapers?(trends)

Related: FBNY Poll: What Content Would You Be Willing To Pay For Online?

(Photo via Flickr)