Finally...

Despite reporters ability to spot social, business and political trends, newspaper managers and owners historically make terrible decisions.

From the Daily Mail's support of the Nazi party before the second World War to far more mundane decisions (like paying €50 million euro for a crappy property website) newspaper owners and managers are typically bufoons who know their product about as well as the Pope knows how to diffuse a child sex abuse scandal.

Over the past decade publishers and managing editors of newspapers have fallen over themselves to give away what for centuries they worked hard to prove was worthwhile.

Despite the lessons that should have been learned from dotcom bubble in 2000, there are many in the news industry that still believe that there is a business model in giving things away for free.

"Not quite sure how we'll make money from it, but the internet is the future, going forward, synergy, paradigm shift blah, blah,blah..."

Nice one, let me know how that works out for you. By the way, I've got an amazing blog that I think you should spend a few million on if you're interested, cheap at twice the price...

So it's refreshing to see that someone, somewhere has finally called time on the bullshit that is free newspapers online.

It's a pity it was a cut-throat bastard like Murdoch, but he's done everyone in news a favour, whether you're a Guardian snob or a Daily Mail slob.

Free papers simply don't work because no-one, whether it's advertisers or readers, place value on something you give them for free.

There's an analogy there somewhere about sex, but I'm far too highbrow to make it (Guardian snob.)

Don't believe me? Name me one newspaper who has made a profit out of their online section and who hasn't cannibalized their own business.

Aside from free online content, the collapse of the free-sheet market in Dublin (with both Metro and Herald AM making losses of approximately €11 million in losses a year) shows that there is no advertising model to support free content.

Advertisers will pay less for an ad in a free paper, no matter how popular. Advertisers will pay a hell of a lot less for online ads than they will for print.

Not to mention the small point that if papers continue to give content away for free, who will pay journalists? Who will be left to bring those in power to account?

Murdoch may be a bastard (just ask anyone who's ever worked for him) but just for once I think everyone in the media owes him a big thank you. Murdoch the saviour? We live in interesting times...