Murdoch: I'll Charge for News Sites Within Year

If you think you can get your newspaper online for free, you can just think again, says News Corp honcho Rupert Murdoch, who plans to charge for access to his papers' websites "within the next 12 months" in an attempt to fix a "malfunctioning" business model. Murdoch is encouraged by the performance of the Wall Street Journal's website and wants to see it extended to other News Corp properties, which include the New York Post and the London Times. "The current days of the Internet will soon be over," he said.

News Corp's profits slumped this quarter on plummeting ad revenues, the Guardian reports, and its newspaper division barely broke even—year-over-year quarterly revenue went into freefall from $216 million to $7 million. But Murdoch said that the media industry was on an upswing: "I'm not an economist and we all know economists were created to make weather forecasters look good. But it is increasingly clear the worst is over." (More Rupert Murdoch stories.)