London Times plans online charges from next spring

In a speech to an editors' conference this week, James Harding said newspapers had to "re-establish the public expectation that they pay for what is a valuable - sometimes invaluable - part of their daily lives."

"We are going to take on the culture of free. We have seen it all but destroy the music business. We cannot afford, as a business or a society, for that to happen to news," he said, according to the speech given on Tuesday.

"So from the spring of next year, we are going to start charging for the digital editions of The Times," he told a meeting of the Society of Editors in Stansted, northeast of London, according to the text released by the paper.

And he added: "We are still working on the exact pricing model, but I expect we will end up with a price to buy the day's paper - ie a 24-hour price for The Times online - and a subscription price too."

Speaking earlier this month, News Corp chairman and chief executive Murdoch said that a plan to begin charging readers of his newspapers online may be delayed.

Murdoch had previously outlined plans to erect pay walls around his vast newspaper empire by the end of News Corp's current fiscal year in June, but he indicated that was now unlikely.

"We are working all very, very hard at this but I wouldn't promise that we're going to meet that date," he told reporters in a conference call after releasing News Corp's first-quarter results on November 4.

The Times editor, addressing a conference on what the newspaper industry will look like in 2020, said: "We have to put the news business on an economically sustainable footing.

"We will have to work together to re-establish the public expectation that they pay for what is a valuable - sometimes invaluable - part of their daily lives and the society we live in.

"For a democratic society requires a real Fourth Estate, a genuinely independent check on power and a real capacity to investigate the powerful. We are in the fight of our lives."

He added: "And we are fighting to protect what we really believe in, namely what is at the heart of our journalism reporting."

Subscribe to The China Post and save 25%. Click here

SharePrintEmail

Write a Comment

Terms

Enter your comments - 3000 characters max

Type in image code

Submit

 Receive China Post promos
 Respond to this email