Can The Times make it paid online?

So can Murdock really make it pay. In June it will cost £1 a day or £2 a week to get access to the Times and Sunday Times new websites, News Corp said in a statement.

Subscribers to the print versions will get free access to the websites. The Times newspaper costs £1 on weekdays and £1.50 on Saturdays, and The Sunday Times costs £2.

James Harding, editor of The Times, told the BBC that the move was a "big risk, but less of a risk than throwing our journalism away, while Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of News Corp, believes people will pay for good journalism.

It is a massive risk. While there is so much free news out there will people really pay to subscribe. They will have to make it radically improved in terms of web presentation so I wait with baited breath to see what the new sites look like.

Someone had to take the risk and perhaps Murdoch is the one most equipped to give it a try.

News Corp's Wall Street Journal already charges for online content but it is in a niche market. If The Telegraph online remains free will people pay for Times? Difficult but Murdoch is not daft - he is trialing the service with titles that have been propped up financially for years so there is less to lose than say with The Sun which has the best visitor figures for News International.

The latest ABC traffic figures for Times Online - which includes the Times and Sunday Times - saw daily user figures rise 6% to 1.22m, while monthly browsers fell to 20.42m.

Assuming that only 5% of daily users convert to the paywall system - a standard metric for paywalls - that would bring in £1.83m if they each buy a £1 daily pass. At a 10% conversion, it would net £3.66m per month for the two papers. If more chose the weekly pass, the revenues would be lower.

The move follows Murdoch's statement in August last year that that he would introduce charges for all his newspapers, saying that News Corp wanted to prevent readers moving to free sites by making its content better and differentiated from other publishers.

Well the race is underway - who will follow and will it be a success. Who knows but the future of print journalism is at stake. Will the man most journalists once reviled turn out to be the saviour of their sector!!

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