Rupert Murdoch reiterated his call for newspapers to charge for online content, saying that his company’s experience with The Wall Street Journal has proven that it can be done successfully.

2009年5月11日，英国卫报刊登评论，大骂默多克收费提议的荒唐，让人印象深刻的有三句话——

1.For journalists, after all, news is important, and more access by more people to more news could only be better for everyone, right?

2.The technology guru Clay Shirky writes that “It’s not a revolution if nobody loses,” and the first losers in this particular revolution were broadcast media outlets (TV, newspapers, magazines) and cultural elites whose social status relied on the ability to control who had access to the news, what stories they had access to, and what they did with that information.

3.From now on, we’ll decide what matters, thank you very much, and if newspapers know what’s good for them, they’ll do what they can to not get in the way.

传统媒体网站究竟是走在线广告盈利、还是广告+付费阅读盈利模式？默多克其实是摇摆过的。

2009年5月6日，芝加哥，鲁伯特·默多克说——

“We’re now in the midst of a debate over the value of content, and it’s clear that at many newspapers the current model is malfunctioning.” He also vowed that News Corp. would not feed its content rights to Amazon’s Kindle. “We will control the prices for our content and we will control the relationship with our customers.”

2008年 1月24日，瑞士，达沃斯论坛——

“We are going to greatly expand and improve the free part of the Wall Street Journal online, but there will still be a strong offering” for subscribers, Mr. Murdoch said. “The really special things will still be a subscription service, and, sorry to tell you, probably more expensive.”

2007年 11月 3日 ，阿德莱德（Adelaide）——

Murdoch said that instead of boasting 1 million subscribers, a free version of the online newspaper could draw “10 million to 15 million” readers from “every corner of the earth.”

“We are studying it and we expect to make [the site wsj.com] free,” he said.

在此不得不交代的一个小背景是，2009年5月6日，新闻集团发布的最新财报显示，截止3月31日的2009年前三个月内，该集团净收益27亿美元，与去年同期基本持平；运营利润为7.55亿美元，去年同期的这个数字为14亿，其中报纸和资讯服务的利润从去年同期的2.16亿美元飞流直下到700万美元，电视从去年的4.19亿美元下降到了400万美元，好在有线电视节目和电影表现不错，给扳回了局面。

如果新闻信息是人们所必须的，自由和免费当然是大快人心的好事情，但它不会生来就像空气和阳光一样不偏不倚且无须成本地降临，也没可能一下子转身成为一项公益或慈善事业，无论默多克还是卫报的这位专栏作者Jenna McWilliams，都还没找到让信息提供者获得适当收益的好办法。

全世界很多人都正在找。