• International Herald Tribune, Monday, May 18, 2009 12:16 PM

Will 2009 be remembered as the last days for free content on the Internet? Perhaps, says the International Herald Tribune's Eric Pfanner, if Rupert Murdoch and his media mogul contemporaries have their way. Murdoch last week declared that he would personally end the "malfunctioning" of the newspaper business by charging for News Corp. content. Other media companies, like The New York Times Co., have said they are also looking at ways of charging readers for news content.

Will the plan work? Unlikely, says Pfanner. He notes that even The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal, two of the best examples of paid-for digital news, only generate a small fraction of their revenue from their online businesses.

Does he have a better idea? Of course! If there's one thing the print industry should learn from the music industry, it's that pay walls aren't enough. Pfanner suggests that ISPs sit down with content providers and start coming up with package bundles they can sell to consumers as part of their Internet service subscriptions. That way, users could be charged for getting packages of content that they may (or may not) be interested in. Hmm ... sounds a bit too much like ... cable TV subscription packages.

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