Until recently, there were two types of newspaper website: those that made you pay to read many of the articles (The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times) and those that didn’t.

That is changing. The New York Times recently announced that almost all its online material would now be free. FT.com has just moved to a system of free access for occasional visitors. And Rupert Murdoch has strongly hinted that the Journal might do something similar. The theory is that advertising revenue will outstrip subscription revenue.