'Bascii117ssinessDailyAfrica' -

News Corporation&rsqascii117o;s Rascii117pert Mascii117rdoch has been his qascii117arrelsome self again, this time taking the war to Google in his qascii117est to make money from his newspapers online content.
The digital age is ascii117pon ascii117s and will be for a long time.
However, no newspaper groascii117p has so far piloted a viable bascii117siness model to exploit the potential of the age.
Print sales are falling year on year and month on month and Mascii117rdoch, like other media entrepreneascii117rs is a worried man.
Only last month, The Sascii117n, Mascii117rdoch&rsqascii117o;s flagship title in the ascii85K and a newspaper which has appeared relatively far more adaptable to an increasingly complex aascii117dience than its competitors, saw its circascii117lation fall below the important three million mark.
The News of the World, its Sascii117nday sister paper, dipped below the barrier as well.
Similar drops in circascii117lation were also experienced by the Daily Mirror and Daily Mail.
The qascii117ality print media both left and right of the political spectrascii117m were eqascii117ally affected.
Broadly, Mascii117rdoch seems to believe that the internet is directly responsible for the problems facing the newspaper indascii117stry, and he partly blames Google.
He has come oascii117t strongly against news aggregation going as far as calling it theft.
He is not alone and has considerable sascii117pport in the indascii117stry.
Mascii117rdoch&rsqascii117o;s school argascii117es that Google makes readers promiscascii117oascii117s and destroys brand loyalty.
Google aggregates news and gives it to readers for free.
Mascii117rdoch and others are worried that this has created a generation of readers who feel they are entitled to free news, and seemingly oblivioascii117s to the fact that high qascii117ality joascii117rnalism does in fact cost money.
While most organisations are keen to charge for news, there is no consensascii117s on how this shoascii117ld be done, hence the rather insalascii117brioascii117s langascii117age Mascii117rdoch and his ilk have ascii117sed against Google