It’s desperate stuff. It won’t work, and if newspaper executives on both sides of the Atlantic follow Mr Murdoch’s apparent lead, I predict we will witness the collective suicide of scores of news organisations in the US and elsewhere.

The problem, he says, is that newspapers don’t have content that people want to pay for. Most of what you see on major news sites is available elsewhere — and for free. “Many newspapers that introduce online fees without reforming what they do could end up looking little more than high-priced aggregators, a kind of Huffington Post that isn’t free,” he writes.

The lesson: give readers a reason to want what you produce and they might consider paying for it. Charge a fee before you’ve got the high-quality content and you’ll lose them.

Image from World Economic Forum

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