
Rupert to Internet: It's War - kevinheisler
http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2009/11/michael-wolff-200911?printable=true
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JCThoughtscream
Murdoch's strategy isn't to profit off online news at all - it's to cultivate
an industry-wide strategy that makes online news completely unprofitable. If
people are forced to pay for online news, they're more likely to switch back
to print.

The problem with this strategy is, of course, that while News Corporation can
certainly strongarm lesser corps into following their actions lock-step, it's
notoriously harder to convince a ragtag band of hacker journalists with a wifi
card, laptop and camcorder as their biggest overheads to follow suite -
they've less to lose, and less for Murdoch to threaten. And even if you do,
there's a few thousand others you have to coerce as well.

Murdoch's playing a rigged game of whac-a-mole.

~~~
timr
_"The problem with this strategy is, of course, that while News Corporation
can certainly strongarm lesser corps into following their actions lock-step,
it's notoriously harder to convince a ragtag band of hacker journalists with a
wifi card, laptop and camcorder as their biggest overheads to follow suite -
they've less to lose, and less for Murdoch to threaten."_

The _"rag-tag band of hacker journalists"_ is a silly bit of romanticized
fiction. Even if a few "rag-tag" journalists exist, and even if they manage to
produce hard news in some semi-legitimate form, they've got to feed their
families, too. Real reporters have full-time jobs. They can't do it for free.

One of my biggest pet peeves with the technology industry is that highly paid
programmers -- intellectual property professionals! -- act as though content
is just some sort of data stream that springs fully formed from the earth's
core. They seem to believe that they're entitled free access to this content,
and that the "dinosaur" industry of "old media" is doomed to failure because
of the overwhelming success of their brilliant new business insights (namely:
people like getting stuff for free). In order to believe this myth, however,
you need to completely disregard the fact that the rotting corpse of the "old
media" is the fuel that keeps the new media going.

Someday soon we're going to reach the end-game: ad-blocking will become
ubiquitous in browsers, and this long, strange nightmare of "free" content and
"zero marginal costs" will have to yield to the simple reality that content
costs money to produce. We've got to stop investing in the childish notion
that we can all become bazillionaires by aggregating other people's hard work
with a comment thread.

~~~
pyre
> _We've got to stop investing in the childish notion that we can all become
> bazillionaires by aggregating other people's hard work with a comment
> thread._

I can't count the number of times that mainstream media has done this same
thing. There are plenty of examples of Wikipedia circular references (i.e.
Journalist reads unsubstantiated comment on a Wikipedia page, Published
comment as truth (without citing Wikipedia, though sometimes _with_ citation),
Wikipedia cites the new article as proof of the original comment). What about
those articles that are basically a reprinting of some corporate press
release, which are passed off as journalism?

~~~
timr
Do these things happen? Yes, of course.

Do these things happen so frequently that you can use them to argue that
journalism is merely an aggregator of content? I think you've got an uphill
battle.

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n-named
"""It is not, what’s more, merely that Murdoch objects to people reading his
news for free online; it’s that he objects to—or seems truly puzzled by—what
newspapers have become online. You get a dreadful harrumph when you talk to
Murdoch about user-created content, or even simple linking to other sites. He
doesn’t get it. He doesn’t buy it. He doesn’t want it.

Every conversation I’ve had with him about the new news, about the fundamental
change in how people get their news—that users go through Google to find their
news rather than to a specific paper—earned me a walleyed stare."""

Is this some sort of joke?

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mixmax
The newspaper industry has gotten itself into an interesting predicament.

The reason nobody wants to pay for news online is that they are used to it
being free, and that it is so easy to go to a competing newssite if one starts
charging. But history shows that people are willing to pay for news - millions
have done so for many years via subscriptions and newsstand sales. If all
online newssources cost money I'm certain millions would start paying, I know
I would. But if only a few started charging I would simply switch to a
competing free source. If NY times started charging money I would switch to NY
Post.

It's classical game theory - if everyone agrees to charge the industry will be
much better off, but if there are a few defectors they will get all the
eyeballs and marketshare.

I wrote about it some time ago [http://www.maximise.dk/blog/2009/03/online-
news-and-prisoner...](http://www.maximise.dk/blog/2009/03/online-news-and-
prisoners-dilemma.html)

~~~
pyre
If Murdoch wants to charge for the content, then they better remove barriers
to consuming their content once I have paid:

    
    
      1. PDF version of the newspaper (maybe?)
      2. *FULL* article text in RSS feed body
      3. Little to no advertising.
    

Emphasis on the second point. Obviously I would have to authenticate to gain
access, but the whole point of the 'teaser' text in RSS feeds is to drive you
back to the side for ad impressions. If I'm already a paying customer, then I
shouldn't need to be 'driven' back to the site if I don't want to.

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natrius
It's easy to charge for high-quality national news. In America, there are
basically three sources of this: The New York Times, The Washington Post, and
the Wall Street Journal. If all three start charging for news that can only be
found in those publications, they'll be fine. Cable news websites don't
currently offer the same quality of news as those three do, and function more
as of a competitor to USA Today.

Local news is where things get more complicated. Local newspapers have plenty
of competition from TV station websites that suck, but probably don't suck
enough to make people want to pay for news. Most papers have already stripped
themselves so thin that they don't offer much more than aggregated bloggers
and press releases could. In-depth journalism has been relegated to the alt-
weeklies. I think there are several ways local newspapers could make more
money online, but they seem more interested in laying off people to cut costs
than figuring out how they're going to survive.

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ErrantX
Murdoch has always taken the reverse approach to how people like us do things;
instead of innovate hammer them till you win.

There might be logic in that approach; he's certainly done ok with it so
far...

It will be interesting to see what happens.

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djehuty
The elephant in the room is that the quality of 99% of journalism is so low
that no one in their right mind would pay for it. Murdoch is a major purveyor
of this rubbish.

Will I pay for warmed over wire service I can get in the original elsewhere?
No. Would I pay for well researched investigative reporting? Maybe. But
Murdoch would be changing his whole approach if he actually engaged in that.

Do some real reporting, and make us care.

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dagw
The death of the daily newspaper doesn't have to mean the death of the printed
newspaper. I quit the subscription to all my daily newspapers a while back,
not because I thought they where bad, but because I simply didn't have time to
read them every day and all that I really got out of it was huge piles of
paper I had to carry to the recycling bin every week. I do however still
subscribe to several weekly and monthly magazines and regularly buy the
weekend edition of my favourite newspapers since on the weekend I have time to
read. For day to day news I use the newspaper web sites, but when I have time
to read long well researched articles I want to do it on paper and sitting in
my favourite chair.

So that is the direction I think the newspapers should be taking. Stop trying
to put out a paper every day, settle for one to three times a week. Keep your
website updated with day to day happenings and time sensitive news and use
your print media to write longer, more researched articles.

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idm
I've been suspicious of Murdoch's motivations in the past (vis a vis the
particular bias of Fox News) but this for-pay initiative seems like a testable
proposition.

If Murdoch can decide, one day, to charge for "news," and if this sentiment is
echoed all over, and if it turns into implementation, then it will serve as
yet another example of consolidated, command-and-control media. It's one thing
to enable an "echo chamber" where dozens of media voices repeat what the
others are saying, but changing the business structure of the medium itself
will be another thing entirely.

Like some other commenters here, I would like to believe that the sheer
numbers involved in the amateur news-generating population would cause
Murdoch's strategy to be impossible... and yet, I've witnessed other
"impossible" things seemingly happen according to Murdoch's will.

~~~
joe_the_user
I think this article ultimately give devastating critique of that kind of
thinking: _... the news business, supported for a hundred years by
advertising, whose core skill has been selling advertising, believes it must
right away, this second, re-create itself with a new business model where
advertising is just the cream on top and where it’s the consumer who pays the
true cost of newsgathering._

~~~
idm
I definitely agree - and really, I want my statement to be falsified, since it
will be so much worse for it to be confirmed.

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Scott_MacGregor
Print newspapers are the buggy whip industry of the 21st century. Look at the
Seattle Post Intelligencer.

“Rupert Murdoch is going to battle against the Internet, bent on making
readers actually pay for online newspaper journalism…” People were not willing
to pay for their product printed on paper when it came loaded with tons of
money saving coupons, I doubt very many people will take out a credit card and
pay for it online on a regular basis.

I think the news industry has more than a content delivery mechanism problem
here. I certainly won’t be buying any shares of their stock based on this new
business model proposed by Mr. Murdoch, lol.

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Adam503
Hmmm... should I read NPR, BBC, the Guardian for free or should I pay Rupert
for the NY Post and Glenn Beck? Gee, that's a toughie....

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nopinsight
>> It seems that Murdoch has, in a fit of pique, made certain pronouncements
which may have to be _humored_ by the people who work for him

I think 'humored' above should be 'honored'. What do you guys think?

~~~
joe_the_user
No, the usage above is correct

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chinmi
My money's still on internet

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newsdog
Lovely - it'll be nice to see this dick get clobbered.

