Rupert Murdoch: The Age of Free Web News is Over

Newspapers hurting? Big yeah. But rather than relying on the Kindle DX, which some hope will be the savior of the newspaper and magazine industry, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch said on Wednesday night that the age of free internet news is over.

Apparently subscription revenue is rising at the Wall Street Journal, which led Murdoch to state that he expects to start charging for access to all of News Corp.'s newspaper websites within a year. He said the current business model for web news is "malfunctioning."

This isn't going to be limited to News Corp.'s U.S. properties, either, according to Murdoch.

Here's my take on it: I might be willing to pay for the Wall Street Journal, because it's specialized and offers info and content I can't find anywhere else. But would I be willing to pay for a generalized news source when there are plenty of places to find the exact same content elsewhere? Probably not.

And, I hate to say it, probably not on the Kindle DX, either.

So what can be done? If Murdoch does start charging for all the newspapers that are owned by News Corp., that's a ton of them, to be sure. But can we find that same news online else (excluding, perhaps, the WSJ)? Yeah, probably. So would I pay? No.

Good luck, Rupert Murdoch. You'll probably just see traffic at your sites drop, and not much else, unless there's a unified effort to change the way web news is monetized.