
Rupert Murdoch: Let's Charge for Online Content Again - Hagelin
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/rupert_murdoch_lets_charge_for_online_content_again.php
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dan_the_welder
Good luck with that. His version of the news has become largely irrelevant.

For the last decade people have been testing their voices and discovering how
good it feels to write and report and participate in the media.

We don't need what we had, we just need net neutrality so we can have
something better.

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stevenjames
I think it will be important for journalists (and their companies) to really
think about who their audiences are.

I think it will be important to simplify. And once that's done, I think the
majority of people will eventually (I don't know when) pay for content because
it will be of higher quality and relevance. (Some do this moderately well
now.)

Frankly, I think all parties (i.e. Journalism as a whole) will probably
benefit in the long-run. You may see smaller organizations, but that should
enable them to adapt more efficiently as things evolve.

The key here, in my opinion, is to not get caught up in fast and excessive
growth. You may even extend that to "pull-back/slow down" if you're growing
too fast.

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zwieback
Since there are a lot of people on this site thinking about this issue and I'm
just a lowly FW programmer I'd like to ask: does anyone think we're
benefitting from NYT, AP, Reuters, etc. providing their content on line while
their revenue stream is rapidly drying up? There's plenty of good community
produced free content available but I for one would be willing to pay for the
equivalent of old-style journalism at some point. I think Murdoch might just
be looking ahead to that day, he's not stupid.

There's an excellent magazine called "Cook's Illustrated". It's printed in two
colors, no advertisements, no celebrities and it's pretty thin but people are
willing to pay for it. I'd love to see a Cook's Illustrated model emerge as a
small subset of the web. It won't need much bandwidth and it'll have lower
latency because it won't have dancing teeth whiteners all over the place.

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ilitirit
I'd prefer this model to a tiered internet. Not that either are desirable for
the average consumer.

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muerdeme
Really? I've always had the impression that tiered internet is desirable for
the "average consumer," but not for me. And how is tiered internet related to
the cost of the content you receive over the internet?

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ilitirit
I'm of the opinion that the average consumer prefers free content.

I'm also looking at it from my perspective - I'd have to pay for certain
content in each case, and I'm referring to the idea in general, not just as it
relates to journalism. In Murdoch's model the money would go to the content
producer rather than the ISP.

