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Aspen, Colorado. Top technology and news media executives wrapped up a three-day conference on Sunday during which they grappled with — and left unresolved — the question of whether readers will pay for news online.

Firmly in the paid camp in the “paid versus free” debate was Jon Miller, News Corporation’s head of digital operations. Miller said charging online readers was a notion that had been “accepted at a variety of levels. It’s more about how it gets done.”

With newspapers and magazines facing competition from free content on the Web and declining circulation and print advertising revenue, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. has been leading the charge to get newspaper readers to pay online.

The Wall Street Journal is currently the only major newspaper in the United States to charge readers for full access to its Web site and one of the few to buck the trend of eroding circulation.

Another News Corp. paper, Britain’s The Times, erected a pay wall around its Web site at the beginning of July and Murdoch has said that he will eventually do the same at all of the newspapers in his empire’s vast stable.

Others disagreed, however, including Jimmy Pitaro, Yahoo’s vice president for media.

“We firmly believe that free is the future,” said Pitaro, whose Yahoo News is one of the most popular news destinations on the Web.

“The feeling is that when other people are charging they’re kind of driving people to free alternatives,” he said.

Miller also said tablet computers such as Apple’s iPad offered great opportunities for the news industry to develop paid applications. The existence of the iPad and other tablet computers offers “very media-rich experiences that I think do allow a reset, perhaps a do-over for the media industry, a chance to get it right,” Miller said.


Associated Press