Media world watches Murdock move

It's getting to be fish or cut bait time for the newspaper industry, and it is paying a lot of attention to plans due to be announced in the next couple of days by the Murdock empire to erect a pay wall at the venerable Times of London. The Times is planning to announce prices and procedures for forcing online viewers to pay for content.

New media folks, of course, all say it will be an abysmal failure. Most newspaper publishers are hoping that it works since they'd like to get more income from their online product. It involves a balancing act: Will enough viewers pay to offset possible declines from advertising revenues. The bottom line, of course, is that online advertising revenues aren't high enough to pay for quality journalism.