Murdoch: 'We'd Rather Have Fewer People Coming to Our Websites, But Paying'

When News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch speaks, his words tend to take on an oracular quality, as if the man's wisdom is as old as the world itself. (That's just one of the perks of being worth $4 billion. It might also be because at 78, he's nearly as old as the world itself.)

So when Murdoch speaks about the Internet, people listen. Take the interview he did with David Speers of Australia's SkyNews this weekend. (Speers opens the interview by conceding that News Corp. owns part of the network.)

The 37-minute conversation has been written about by everyone from paidContent ("Murdoch Making News Invisible to Search Engines? Not So Fast") to Gawker, which went with "Old People Talking About the Internet: Rupert Murdoch Edition."

To Gawker's headline's point, Murdoch did come off as a bit out of touch with the medium he's recently taken such a deep interest in. (And the irony of Murdoch complaining about YouTube taking content from Fox shows like The Simpsons and Family Guy on an interview posted on YouTube is, well, amusing.) He may not have called the Internet "a series of tubes" like Senator Ted Stevens in 2006, but he didn't sound too informed when he said, "There are no news websites or blog websites anywhere in the world that are making serious money." There's at least one guy in New York—he's probably at Balthazar right now—who might beg to differ. But then again, to Murdoch, "serious money" is quite a bit more than even Gawker Media makes with its "blog websites."

"We'd rather have fewer people coming to our websites, but paying," Murdoch told Speers, in one of those quotes that are destined to come back to haunt him when the pay model he's been hinting at for months doesn't work. If it does work, Murdoch will again be flattered by observers as being ahead of the curve, as he was in 1999 when he created News Digital Media as the online home for Fox News, Fox, and Fox Sports.

But even a visionary can reverse himself. In 2001, he abruptly shut down much of his Web division, laying off 200 employees (this reporter included). Four years later, he turned around and bought MySpace for $580 million, reinvesting heavily in the online space. Then, in August of this year, News Corp. cut hundreds of jobs at MySpace amid the advertising decline.

To listen to the oracle proclaim it, Murdoch is resolved that his pay wall will fend off the "parasites or tech tapeworms in the intestines of the Internet," to echo his longtime lieutenant, Wall Street Journal editor Robert Thomson's colorful phrase.

Well, that is until he decides to change his mind.