The British quality daily "The Times" and the partner "Sunday Times" will begin to charge online consumers for access to their news content from spring 2010.

The paper is part of the giant News Corporation, owned by tycoon Rupert Murdoch. He first aired his belief that readers would eventually pay for content that they now receive free, some six months ago.

James Harding, editor of "The Times", while addressing the Society of Editors conference in London on Tuesday, announced that the newspaper will introduce a full online subscription service, and charge infrequent readers for 24-hour access.

"I think we are in the fight of our lives and we have got to be very clear what we are fighting for is reporting. We have to make sure that we put independent reporting, investigating the powerful, on an economically sustainable footing," Harding said.

"We are going to take on the culture of free. We have seen what the culture of free has done to the music business and we believe that we cannot as a business or as a society allow that to happen to news," he added.

"The Times" and "Sunday Times" will be the first titles owned by News Corporation to start charging for digital content.

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