The editor of the Financial Times editor, Lionel Barber, is the latest senior figure to predict that media organisations are going be charging for online news.

In a speech at a Media Standards Trust event in London, Barber said:

How these online payment models work and how much revenue they can generate is still up in the air. But I confidently predict that within the next 12 months, almost all news organisations will be charging for content.

The question of charging for news online is hotly debated but the recession has given added impetus to the search to monetise content given away from free online.

In May, Rupert Murdoch raised the prospect that News Corporation newspaper websites would start charging for access within a year, while the New York Times is also making similar noises.

Saying we are going to charge for online news is one thing. But what these figures fail to address is who is going to pay.

Missing in this debate is a focus on audiences who might be willing to pay up for news access.  There is clearly a market for business and financial news, with a identifiable and well-defined audience.

But who is the (paying) audience for general news?