So says News Corp. honcho Rupert Murdoch. And much as I hate to agree with Murdoch about anything, he’s probably right.
What this means in practical terms is that News Corp.– after a nearly 50 percent drop in quarterly profits– is preparing to charge for access to at least some content on its web sites besides The Wall Street Journal.
Murdoch’s international newspaper empire includes the New York Post, the News International stable of UK titles including the Sun and the Times, and a cluster of Australian papers including the Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun.
His comments come with the U.S. newspaper industry in a state of crisis amid plunging advertising revenues and falling circulations with several historic titles already going out of business.
If News Corp. starts charging for access to all of its websites, it might provide the necessary cover for other for-profit media organizations to do the same with their web content.
How this will affect blogs like ours– which depend on free access to a variety of media sites– remains to be seen. More links to the BBC, I suppose.