Tech & Biz

News Corp will charge for newspaper websites, says Rupert Murdoch

by Barbara McPherson | May 6, 2009 at 06:26 pm

120 views | 26 Recommendations | 4 comments

Events move fast in Etherland. Many news agencies have made online versions of their newspapers free to the public. Now media mogul, Rupert Murdoch has opined that the free online versions are turning in lower than expected revenues. Fees to read online news from the News Corporation newspaper websites may be in the offing.

Rupert Murdoch expects to start charging for access to News Corporation's newspaper websites within a year as he strives to fix a "malfunctioning" business model.

Encouraged by booming online subscription revenues at the Wall Street Journal, the billionaire media mogul last night said that papers were going through an "epochal" debate over whether to charge. "That it is possible to charge for content on the web is obvious from the Wall Street Journal's experience," he said.

Asked whether he envisaged fees at his British papers such as the Times, the Sunday Times, the Sun and the News of the World, he replied: "We're absolutely looking at that."

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Russell-W (not verified)

at 19:09 on May 6th, 2009

No need to worry, we can get all our copy & paste news on NP

Amy Judd

at 19:24 on May 6th, 2009

To be honest, I think it's only a matter of time..

Parastar

at 00:27 on May 7th, 2009

They might have that Initial Profit,But not the traffic that the crave.

djermano

at 03:05 on May 7th, 2009

Rupert doesn't get it does he? The people are sick and tired of Main Stream Media and their lies. So they don't want to read their lies anymore. After 911 an inside job on fellow New Yorkers...and the financial hub of the world....the people have wised up. We aim to not buy or read their lies.

Rev. Jermano