Murdoch to charge to read all online papers

Of course, the Wall Street Journal already charges for some content, but this is news indeed, and good news.

My only question is, does he mean just staff-generated news, or is he going to try to charge for wires, too?

To me, this has been one of the biggest failures of Dean Singleton as head of the Associated Press — the failure to push for a paywall, perhaps as a mandatory requirement under the new AP package, then doubling or tripling charges to Yahoo, Google, et al. And, playing hardball with AFP and Reuters if they don’t want to play along.

That said, in the early days of free, marketing-based passwords, people spread around passwords like candy. Murdoch will have to have a tough line on reserving the right to cancel online-only subscriptions at any time, on suspicions of password sharing.