Jonathan Miller, chief digital officer of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, said that News Corp will remove its web properties from Google listings within "months or quarters." The company is trying to steer the media away from the traffic-driven model that blogs have excelled at but that traditional media outlets have struggled with.

"We believe that the value of high quality content is not recognized online so something needs to happen," he said.

Bloggers and new media enthusiasts are unsurprisingly calling this suicide, arguing that the traffic Google provides is essential to success, that consumers of media primarily find their information via search engines, and that (to borrow a clichéd but time-tested idiom) information wants to be free.

They might be right, but as Miller says, the next two years will tell. For the sake of discussion, here's another legitimate point that doesn't get said as much on blogs: news outlets that don't live and die by the fickle whims of the social media hive mind, the demands of advertisers, and the arcane art of search engine optimization might in some cases have a leg up in giving reasoned and non-sensationalist reporting.

Or it could be suicide. Stay tuned. We promise not to put up a pay wall, so you can keep coming here to see updates on how it pans out—fair enough?

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