It’s almost becoming a weekly event. Rupert Murdoch says something about the future of media, paywalls and electronic newspapers, and the Guardian has a go. Today, it’s the turn of Jemima Kiss, who in an article entitled Murdoch: Tablets are the future for News Corp reports that “Rupert Murdoch was cosying up to Apple again today as he spoke at a media debate,” (of course, the Guardian wouldn’t be seen dead releasing an iPad article approximately once every three seconds) and argues that “in the long term, the thing that will be harder to calculate is the cost of losing much of [the Times’s] voice in the international, online news market. That’s the bottom line we’d really like to see.”

It’s far better, presumably, to obliterate the cash reserves the Guardian has built up over decades by relying too much on ‘free’; the Guardian may have a bigger voice now in international news, but that will only last as long as its pile of cash does.

I’m no fan of Rupert Murdoch. I think his attitude towards the likes of the BBC is abhorrent, and with the exception of a few talented columnists, the Times isn’t a publication I’m interested in reading. However, my gut tells me that Murdoch’s gamble might well work; he’s taking a risk in saying to people that news and related content is worth paying for if the format is good enough. This will add value to his brand rather than diminish it. And when in the future rivals realise he was right, they’ll be fighting to enter a market Murdoch’s already leading in.