CEO Rupert Murdoch plans to introduce fees within 12 months

Aug 6, 2009 15:51 GMT  ·  By

News Corp isn't doing very well lately, posting a $3.4 billion loss in the final fiscal quarter of 2009. After a $5.5 billion net income in 2008 it's easy to see why CEO Rupert Murdoch is upset and, apparently, isn't having it any more, as the media mogul has announced that all of News Corp's online news properties will be going for a subscription model by the end of this fiscal year, the middle of 2010.

"Quality journalism is not cheap," Murdoch, said. "The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels but it has not made content free. We intend to charge for all our news websites."

He isn't saying how exactly the company plans to do this – either by going for full subscriptions, pay per article or other available options – but he has made it clear that all of the sites will charge and that the “free ride” is over. While users have gotten used to free content, traditional news outlets are getting increasingly reluctant to ad-based revenue streams especially as ad spending has tanked in the news papers but also online.

“We intend to charge for our news websites. The Wall Street Journal‘s WSJ.com is the world’s most successful paid news site and we will be using our profitable experience there and the resulting unique skills throughout News Corp. to increase our revenues from all our content,” he added.

The Wall Street Journal has actually been very successful with its hybrid model, which could be adopted by other News Corp sites. The WSJ offers much of its content for free on a per-article basis, meaning that readers coming in from search engines or news aggregators can see the articles but the site itself, with all of the navigation links, is only available to subscribers. This allows the WSJ to make money from the subscriptions but also from the ads served against the articles.