Quotes of the Week

Rupert Murdoch: "Quality journalism is not cheap. The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels but it has not made content free. We intend to charge for all our news websites."

Jeff Jarvis in the Guardian on Murdoch's plan: "If you can charge for your content - if you are the FT or the Wall Street Journal, the only brands that do it successfully - and your readers can make money on your content, and pass the cost of it onto their employers I have nothing against it. But for most, pinning hopes for the survival of news on charging for it is not only futile but possibly suicidal."

Newsweek on its jailed Tehran correspondent Maziar Bahari and his wife Paola: "In the end, the ordeal of Maziar, Paola, and all who love them will be one that requires enormous patience and bravery. Law and diplomacy are irrelevant in a time of show trials. Like the matrons on the streets of Tehran, one can only hope—without really expecting it—that those wielding the clubs that give them power in the courts as well as in the streets will come to their senses, or simply wear themselves out, and that then, somehow, the nightmare will end."

Denis MacShane MP in the Guardian on laws proposed by Hugo Chávez which could see journalists jailed: "It is hard to see how the NUJ, Ken Livingstone or Labour MPs can support a new law that silences journalism. I look forward to joining them in front of the Venezuelan embassy in London to defend free journalism in Latin America."

Liz Jones in the Independent on ageism in journalism: "I worked at the Sunday Times for 11 years, and there were lots of really experienced women working there. Meriel McCooey, the fashion editor, was hugely inspirational and hilarious. The puzzles editor, Barbara Hall, did everything on a manual typewriter. And of course Dilys Powell, the film critic. These women were incredibly nurturing of the younger ones, like me. Today, young people in newspaper offices are just treated like glorified skivvies, while the older ones desperately try to hang on to their jobs."