Maybe he shouldn’t have spent so much trying to gobble up our media then:

Murdoch, who bought The Wall Street Journal and its parent company Dow Jones & Co in 2007, said online advertising, which most U.S. publishers hope will offset ad revenue declines at their print divisions, will not cover their costs.

“People reading news for free on the Web, that’s got to change,” said Murdoch speaking at The Cable Show, an annual cable television industry event, in Washington, D.C.

Murdoch pointed to the Journal’s main rival in the United States, The New York Times, as an example. The Times has one of the most popular U.S. newspaper websites, but still cannot cover its costs with online ads, he said.

Could these newspapers charge a fee that would entice people to subscribe, then still be flooded with online ads? I highly doubt it. Instead you would see the intricate world of interlinking grow by leaps in bounds. That means blog X does subscribe, so they quote out a major part of the article. Then everyone links to that blog, or to another blog that eventually links back up. The same thing already happens with pay sites like Roll Call. We all know what is reported in there, since everyone shares the info.

What Murdoch’s advice sounds like is another nail in the coffin of the dying mainstream media.