News Corp.’s head of digital operations Jon Miller argued that charging online readers is a notion that has been “accepted at a variety of levels.”

“It’s more about how it gets done,” Mr. Miller told participants in the Fortune Brainstorm Tech event which ended on Saturday in this Colorado ski resort.

With newspapers and magazines facing competition from free content on the Web and declining circulation and print advertising revenue, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. has been leading the charge to get newspaper readers to pay online.

The Wall Street Journal, a News Corp. title, is currently the only major US newspaper to charge readers for full access to its Web site and one of the few to buck the trend of eroding circulation.

Another News Corp. paper, UK’s The Times, built a pay wall around its Web site at the beginning of July and Mr. Murdoch has said he will eventually do the same at all of the newspapers.

Mr. Miller said charging readers is “an idea whose time has come,” but others disagreed including Jimmy Pitaro, Yahoo!’s vice-president for media.

“We firmly believe that free is the future,” said Mr. Pitaro, whose Yahoo! News is one of the most popular news destinations on the Web.

“The feeling is that when other people are charging they’re kind of driving people to free alternatives,” the Yahoo! executive said.

Brian Sugar, founder and chief executive of Sugar, Inc., which operates a series of sites geared towards women said he has no plans to charge and invited his rivals to do so.

“We love paid… for our competitors,” he said.

“We believe Conde Nast, Time, People, In Style, Glamour — all of them should charge because we’re going to maintain our content as free,” he said. “We look at our content as a marketing vehicle to grow our audience.” - AFP