The Death of the newspaper

Dear Rupert Murdoch
I am writing this letter on behalf of your claim that the business model of newspapers is ‘malfunctioning’ you asked is it too late to fix it? I believe no it is not too late to fix the death of the newspaper as consumers are viewing news online I agree that the newspaper trade is fragile however the are reasonable ways to fix it.
Firstly charging online for newspapers may push away consumers as they can access other news content for free however there are plenty of alternatives to your plan as some have proposed the micropayment systems, inspired by mobile phones and iTunes that charges readers a few pence to access articles. Although others point out that recent years have seen a blossoming of alternative ways to gather and report written news. These range from web only newspapers such as successful us site The Huffington Post and the Christian Science Monitor, which has been scrapped its print edition to focus on an online presence.
However online charging can help by becoming a major news source of revenue. Between them the websites of The Times and The Sunday Times have 1.2 million unique users per day, twice the size of The Times print run. Assuming just 5% are willing to pay for access. But my point is will it work? The only newspapers to have profit charged for online access so far are The Wall street journal also owned by your news cooperation, which earns $100m a year form its website, and the financial times. But both are business papers, with rich subscribers and niche articles written by experts. Attempts by general interest newspapers to charge for content have been far less successful. In 2007 The New York Times whose website is considered one of the best in the world, abandoned a two year effort to persuade readers to pay for premium content when numbers stalled at 227,000.In the uk, the argument that online readers should pay for general news is further complicated by the existence of the BBC’s publicly funded free news websites, which is better staffed than any of its privately owned rivals.
Overall I believe that charging for online news will not work effectively as print newspapers will as consumers can access news for free on other online contents such as social networking and blogs, however charging for business papers targeting rich consumers can and will work effectively.