Recently, many newspapers have either gone out of business, or are on their way to bankruptcy, largely due to the poor economy, lack of subscriptions, and high advertising costs. Many argue that the numbers of newspapers that will be forced to stop printing will increase within the year, and one can even go on newspaperdeathwatch.com to read the daily reports of newspapers that have gone under.Rupert Murdoch's News Corp (which owns Fox news, 20th Century Fox, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, National Geographic, Harper Collins Publishing company, hulu.com, and myspace.com to name a few), has announced that it will start charging viewers for online services to avoid further financial losses, due to a $3.4 billion loss since January.
According to an interview Murdoch had with BBC, "He believes that a micro-charging structure, where readers pay just 5p or 10p to access an article, might work. This is less than the price of an SMS [text message],' he argued." However, if NewsCorp began charging for articles and other online videos, we might miss out on fabulous gems like this one, or joyous pieces with Ann Coulter. What a sad world that would be.
The Wall Street Journal already charges its readers to access many articles, and I imagine that Murdoch is probably right that news organizations will have to start charging their online readers if they want to stay afloat.
Photo courtesy of Just.Luc on Flickr
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