Baggage Carr

NYTimesman and former heroin addict David Carr (right) turns on, tunes in, and drops out on Rupert Murdoch's threat last week to charge for Internet news:  "... it’s difficult to tell how serious Mr. Murdoch is, given his history of grand statements that were only that. Perhaps he was making an unsubtle effort to change the subject during a bleak earnings call for News Corporation: fourth-quarter operating income, adjusted for certain items, dropped more than 30 percent and after taking $680 million in charges, mainly from the unit that houses MySpace, the company reported a net loss of $203 million.

In the fourth quarter, the company’s newspaper division reported that operating income decreased $167 million from the same period last year. Hence the pivot toward consumers: “We’re hopeful we can build significant revenues from the sale of the digital delivery of newspapers’ news content,” he said.

Finding Mr. Murdoch shouting from the top of a pay wall is a bit of a head scratcher, given that after he bought The Wall Street Journal less than two years ago, his first order of business seemed to be changing that newspaper’s paid Web model to free.

Put the gun down, David.  Just put the gun down...