I'm actually goofing on the loopy argument conservative media haters have been making for years, which is that consumers are reading fewer newspaper (and advertisers are buying fewer ad pages) because the product is so liberal; because newspapers turned their back on mainstream readers.

The holes in that argument are self-evident. (I'm pretty sure this thing called the Internet has a lot to do with newspapers' woes.) But it also doesn't hold water because guess what? Conservative publishers like Murdoch are also losing their shirts.

From the LA Times' report on Murdoch's News Corp. and its gruesome earnings report:

News Corp. had a brutal quarter ending June 30, as the company swung from $1.1 billion in net income a year ago to a net loss of $203 million...Print media wasn't too pretty either, however. News Corp.'s newspapers division reported a 63% drop in adjusted operating income to $96 million. That reflected significantly lower advertising revenue in the U.K., Australia, and from the U.S.-based Dow Jones group, which includes the Wall Street Journal.

Here's the punchline: Murdoch is now saying he's going to start charging a fee for online content to all his news sites. Because I guess he thinks people will pay to read the New York Post online.

Good luck with that.