News International announced on Friday that it is going to charge the readers of The Times and The Sunday Times of London for reading the online editions of the two papers from June.

The British arm of News Corp. said that it is going to launch separate websites for both these publication in May 2010, removing their combined website which has been running successfully so far.

The new sites will be www. thetimes. co. uk and www. thesundaytimes. co. uk. These websites would charge £1, or $1.48, for per day access or £2 for a weekly subscription. However, the new sites will be accessible for free for a short trial period.

The recent move has been made in view of the losses suffered in the print circulation and the fall in the advertising revenue for the publications.

The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and Newsday have already been charging for access.

Last year, News Corp.'s Chairman and Chief Executive, Rupert Murdoch, had indicated to take away his publications' from Google's search engine in an attempt to boost paid online access.

Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International, said that this is a much needed step for the economic boosting of journalism.

"The Times and The Sunday Times are the first of our four titles in the U. K. to move to this new approach", she said.