Tablets and paid subs are newspapers' future, says Murdoch; otherwise, they're doomed

About every week, the aging media tycoon Rupert Murdoch makes another pronouncement about the newspaper business. This time, in an interview on his own Fox network (reported in TechCrunch), he proclaimed that electronic tablets will be the salvation of newspapers and, without them, newspapers are doomed.

He was speaking about a plan to use Kindle (or similar) tablets and charging readers $15 to $19 a month for a subscription.

"We test marketed it and people I think understand it's perfectly fair that they are going to pay for it. If it doesn't, the newspapers will go out of business. All newspapers. There is just not enough advertising to go around for all the sites on the internet. The number of sites and availability of advertising on the internet, the availability doubles and triples every year but the amount of real money goes up 10% or 15% a year. The price of it keeps coming down."