The Day Free News Died

In your counterfeit Friday media column: Rupert Murdoch launches the first volley in the new paywall wars, ABC News employees face a buyout deadline, Forbes loses a key editor, and Variety throws a hissyfit.

• After months of grumbling, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation has announced a new paywall in its corporate constellation: Readers will have to pay $153 a year—or $1.43 a day—to read The Sunday Times and Times of London online. Good luck with that.
• Today is the deadline for ABC News employees to accept or decline the buyouts offered as part of the company's plan to trim 300 or so jobs. You should take one. TV Newser says the remaining layoffs will be concluded by the end of April.
• Forbes' global wealth editor Matthew Miller, the brains behind the magazine's panoply of lists—including the Forbes 400—is leaving to launch his own research firm, according to Business Insider.
• The Cleveland Plain Dealer outed one of its anonymous commenters, which is wrong! Unless the commenter is a judge who has been commenting on her own cases.
• Variety will disappear a critical review of your movie for $400,000, but it won't print your casting news if you give it to Nikki Finke first.
• BONUS UPDATED MEDIA CRACK: Former Foxnews.com columnist Roger Friedman, who was famously fired from that job after reviewing a leaked copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, has now gotten the boot from the Hollywood Reporter.