For the past few years, subscription-based print media has been unable to compete with the awesome power of the Internet at making stuff free.  In January of this year, the Atlantic's Michael Hirschorn suggested in his article "End Times" (about financial troubles at the New York Times) that then typical projections for a gentle, gradual shift to electronic editions of major newspaper brands might be naive:

Regardless of what happens over the next few months, The (New York) Times is destined for significant and traumatic change. At some point soon—sooner than most of us think—the print edition, and with it The Times as we know it, will no longer exist. And it will likely have plenty of company. In December, the Fitch Ratings service, which monitors the health of media companies, predicted a widespread newspaper die-off: “Fitch believes more newspapers and news­paper groups will default, be shut down and be liquidated in 2009 and several cities could go without a daily print newspaper by 2010.”

As the war between traditional, oligopolistic print journalism and the perfectly-competitive Internet news of tomorrow heats up, News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch seems to be rallying the old guard for a final battle.  As Vanity Fair's Michael Wolff reports in this month's edition: 

Part of (Murdoch's) premise now is to invite and scare other publishers and content creators into a self-created monopoly. If everybody charges, consumers will have no choice but to pay. If all publishers have the opportunity to get paid, why wouldn’t they take the money? 

In the Murdoch view, media only really works as a good business if it achieves significant control of the market—through pricing, through exclusive sports arrangements, through controlling distribution (he has spent 20 years trying to monopolize satellite distribution around the world).

And, indeed, by announcing his all-paid-content intentions, he has, almost single-handedly, not just made the paid model the main topic of digital strategy in other traditional publishing companies but imbued it with nearly the force of a fait accompli.

“It’s a done deal,” says a journalist I know who’s suffered in the downturn, arguing that Murdoch, for so long journalism’s great debaser, is now its last protector.

Murdoch's recent decision to switch to pay-for-content for News Corp sites, starting with the Sunday Times, has been largely met with ridicule—as the product of a mind that made an extremely overvalued purchase of the Wall Street Journal because it doesn't understand the way younger people get their news. 

However, there is a good chance Murdoch's strategy will work.  The plan presents a considerable organizational challenge.  But desperate times call for desperate measures, and, as print media gets closer and closer to its day of reckoning, and as the value of Internet advertising revenues decreases with consumer spending, more and more print media conglomerates will take refuge under Murdoch's wing.

Traditionally, charging for content means that Internet users will just go to another site, but if every major player charges, due to the oligopolistic nature of big media and the role that branding plays, there could be no other sites of worth to go to.  The key question to pay attention to remains: which is more valuable to news-seekers: the fact that a particular article is free, or the brand name it carries?