Free vs. Paid, Murdoch vs. Rusbridger

DATELINE — Welcome to the liveliest fight on Fleet Street. In the blue corner, we have Rupert Murdoch, chief executive of News Corp. In the red corner, Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian. Each wants to knock out the other’s vision of the future of journalism.

On paper, it’s no contest. Mr. Murdoch is the heavyweight champion of the media world; an old-fashioned brawler whose prizes include newspapers like The Sun, The Times of London, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post. Mr. Rusbridger is a relative flyweight, a Harry Potter lookalike who runs a single, modest-size publication.

But paper is passé. This battle is over cyberspace, which has a way of leveling the odds. And when Mr. Murdoch or his newspapers are involved, Mr. Rusbridger doesn’t pull his punches.

He drew the first blood in the current round, which centers on whether newspaper Web sites should charge their readers; Mr. Murdoch says yes, Mr. Rusbridger, no.

Having “ruthlessly cut the price of his papers to below cost in order to win audiences or drive out competition,” Mr. Rusbridger said in a recent speech, “this same Rupert Murdoch is being very vocal in asserting that the reader must pay a proper sum for content — whether in print or digitally.”

Mr. Rusbridger said so-called pay walls would be a bad idea for The Guardian’s journalism, which has benefited from the free exchange of ideas on the Web, and for its business, which hopes to translate growth in readership into increased advertising revenue.

Newspapers that defy these trends, he said, risk “sleepwalking into oblivion.”

Until recently, with online advertising growing at double-digit rates and print revenue in decline, Mr. Rusbridger’s position reflected the conventional wisdom of the news industry. But Internet ad growth stalled during the recession, prompting many publishers to rethink their business models.

Mr. Murdoch says he plans to start erecting pay walls for all of News Corp.’s newspaper Web sites this year. One of them, The Wall Street Journal, already charges online readers.

News Corp. is not alone. The New York Times, which owns the International Herald Tribune, says it intends to start charging some Web readers in 2011 under a metered system that will offer users a limited number of free articles. Publishers like Axel Springer of Germany say they are also moving ahead with plans for paid digital content.

But Mr. Murdoch has been the most outspoken proponent of pay walls, and he responded to Mr. Rusbridger’s jabs with an uppercut.

When asked, during a conference call last week on News Corp.’s earnings, for his opinion on Mr. Rusbridger’s view, Mr. Murdoch responded with an expletive.

If Mr. Murdoch and Mr. Rusbridger are on opposite sides of an ideological divide, it is in part because of profound differences in the enterprises they oversee. The Guardian is owned by a nonprofit trust, and Mr. Rusbridger acknowledged in his speech that it lost money. News Corp. looks out for its shareholders, even if some of its newspapers, like The Times, remain unprofitable.

The divide is about more than business models. Mr. Murdoch clearly has no time for the brand of liberalism represented by Mr. Rusbridger and The Guardian. Michael Wolff, an American journalist, writes in a recent biography that Mr. Murdoch described Mr. Rusbridger as “kooky” in an interview. Mr. Rusbridger’s newspaper, meanwhile, wastes no chance to take a swing at Mr. Murdoch. Last summer, it published a series of front-page stories alleging that a News Corp. tabloid, The News of the World, had engaged in widespread telephone surveillance of British celebrities and public figures. News Corp. says The Guardian was simply dredging up an old story in which it had already admitted to hacking into some mobile phones.

Despite all the current bluster, Mr. Rusbridger and Mr. Murdoch may not be as far apart as they would like to think on the issue of paid vs. free. The Guardian already charges for an iPhone application. It seems unlikely, meanwhile, that Mr. Murdoch will erect ironclad walls around his newspaper sites. More likely some of the content will remain free, with the paid services perhaps including offerings from other News Corp. Web sites or partners. But the sparring between Mr. Murdoch and Mr. Rusbridger should continue to entertain.