Paper (No Make That Electronic) Tiger

Rupert Murdoch’s company, News Corporation, is planning to charge a fee for access to their newspaper websites.

This means that you will have to pay to read the dailies such as the Times and the Sun and Sunday newspapers, the News of the World and the Sunday Times online.

This is prompted by soaring online subscription revenues at the Wall Street Journal and the fact that News Corp’s quarterly operating profits crashed by 47% to a meagre $755,000,000.
Ah bless, you can’t even get a decent meal for that nowadays, can you?

Has he contemplated the fact that there is a recession, and one of the first things to go is forking out for a newspaper every day?

Does Mr Murdoch and his team think that electronic newspapers share brand loyalty with the printed version?

Wake up Rupert, mate. This is the 21st century. If you start charging, readers will simply click on to the Daily Telegraph or the Daily Star and then, bang goes the advertising revenue from your websites!

Don’t forget, nearly every television company in the world have sites with news pages, some, even, with videos of the stories, and they don't charge to view them.

Remember what the Duke of Wellington said, “Publish and be damned”!