Pay day approaches

It's inevitable that we will be soon asked to pay for certain content on news websites that have hitherto been free. The Australian reports this morning that Rupert and James Murdoch and senior News Corp executives (including News Ltd managers) attended a meeting last month to discuss plans to charge for online content. The paper reports:

News Limited (publisher of The Australian) has undertaken a research study into the types of content for which Australians are likely to pay, although it's understood the company has no plans to release details.

And, of course, that's the key. What will people pay for? I'm assuming that the News bosses realise much of what is already on its websites is not worth paying for -- not because it's not informative, but because the same stories are mostly accessible elsewhere for free. This puzzles me, because I would have thought that if you were going to start, apparently imminently, to charge for a product, you'd be doing your best to make the free version so outstanding that many people would have no hesitation in paying when asked to do so. This leads me to the thought that it's not the exisitng news websites that News intends to charge for, but new, targetted sites or subsites yet to be unveiled.