Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

The billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch suffered the indignity of seeing his global empire make a huge financial loss yesterday and promptly pledged to shake up the newspaper industry by introducing charges for access to all his news websites, including the Times, the Sun and the News of the World, by next summer.

Stung by a collapse in advertising revenue as the recession shredded Fleet Street’s traditional business model, Murdoch declared that the era of a free-for-all in online news was over.

“Quality journalism is not cheap,” said Murdoch. “The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels but it has not made content free. We intend to charge for all our news websites.”

What does “quality journalism” have to do with Murdoch’s tabloids?

The Australian-born press and television baron was speaking as his News Corporation holding company slumped to a $3.4 billion net loss for the financial year to June, hit by huge writedowns in the value of its assets, restructuring charges and a dive in commercial revenue…

At present, only the Wall Street Journal charges a fee for online access and until recently, received wisdom in the publishing industry was that readers would not pay to read newspapers on the internet…

He accepted that there could be a need for furious litigation to prevent stories and photographs being copied elsewhere: “We’ll be asserting our copyright at every point…”

The group’s television division, including its Fox stations in the US and Star networks in Asia, saw profits fall from $1.12bn to $174m.

Should be an interesting couple of years. The few pundits in the world of tech that I consider worth reading on this topic – pretty much agree Murdoch’s plan stinks on ice.

His plan to sue everyone should deliver about as much of a return as it did for the RIAA.