

Rupert Murdoch makes the case for paying to read the news - anigbrowl
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107104574570191223415268.html

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jsz0
"From the beginning, newspapers have prospered for one reason: the trust that
comes from representing their readers' interests and giving them the news
that's important to them"

I'm not sure that's how it works anymore. Who trusts the media these days?
According to Sacred Heart University's polling in 2007 19% of Americans
implicitly trusted the mainstream media. Down 8% since 2003. More alarming is
that 87% felt the mainstream media was trying to manipulate them. Polls and
statistics may not actually prove anything but again let me ask: Who trusts
the media these days? Do you know _anyone_ who feels that way? Maybe the
extreme ideologues who are simply looking for some rah-rah cheer leading
action and don't actually care about truth or facts.

The point of delivering news that's important to readers is much more valid
but still very flawed. You get much better results aggregating together
content from different sources or, better yet, discovering content from people
you have a personal relationship with. Friends, family, co-workers. That all
becomes very difficult behind a pay-wall. In this era there are less
mainstream sensibilities about news. Everyone has a different weird mix of
news they want to see. If you're going for a personalized delivery system you
absolutely need social networks, crowd sourcing, and free access so people can
discover new topics of interest.

As for quality... He's assuming people can appreciate quality when compared to
stories about music stars kissing each other or golf players crashing into
tree's with their luxury SUVs. I don't believe for a second that quality
matters to the vast majority of the mainstream news audience. The average news
paper is written to be consumed by people who struggled through junior high
school English class.

~~~
forensic
You can aggregate without it being free.

Imagine a website that does news aggregation. To access the website, you have
to pay $10 per month. For this $10 per month, you have the right to read all
of the news posted on the website.

The website allows individual freelance writers to put their articles on it.

Now here's the catch - the $10/month that each user pays actually gets
distributed _by that user_ to writers whose articles he appreciates. So
everytime he reads an exceptionally good article, he gets to assign some of
his $10 to that article, as much as he wants.

At the end of the month, whether he assigns the money or not, he loses the 10
bucks. If he assigned all $10 to writers, that's fine. If he left some over,
that goes to the website and is used to pay for editors, servers, hackers,
etc.

This creates a situation where people are paying for aggregated content (you'd
have a plethora of social networking, commenting, and rating systems tailored
in whatever way is determined to be optimal) and the writers who are most
appreciated by the readers are getting paid.

At the same time, the readers get to try out as much writing as they want for
free, so stuff is NOT hidden behind a paywall. They can read the article first
and if they find it useful to them can award their dollars. If not, they
don't. This encourages quality and also encourages a wide readership.

Anyway I would totally pay $10/month for a system like this. I think you would
actually see the case that many people would voluntarily choose to pay more
than $10/month just so they can contribute more to their favourite authors.
The whole "Radiohead Rainbows" effect.

Feel free to steal my idea and make it a Y-Combinator startup.

~~~
Psyonic
No way to vote for things you like more than others. Will degrade into a least
common denominator system quickly.

~~~
forensic
_WhatWhatWhat?!_

I thought I made it clear you could assign as much money as you want to
particular articles. And the amount of money assigned would obviously be used
in some algorithm as a kind of sliding scale vote?

~~~
Psyonic
Even if that was the case, people want things as cheap as they can get them,
so even if they CAN vote with their dollars, they won't do it at an
unnecessary cost to themselves.

~~~
forensic
I think that is true for the great mass of men, but I think there is a
minority of people willing to pay good money for high quality, ad-free
content.

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symesc
You know what, Rupert?

Go for it.

Don't bother writing about it and talking about it.

Do it.

Put up your pay wall and see who pays.

Until then. . . .

~~~
scj
He kind of mentioned that when he criticized fair use. He puts up a pay wall,
one person buys a subscription, blogs about it, and there isn't much he can
do. He can't copyright the news after all, only his journalists' expression of
it.

~~~
forensic
That applies to news but not necessarily to in-depth reporting.

Murdoch is right that people will pay for quality.

But there are almost zero commercial writing institutions that produce
quality.

~~~
MikeCapone
> But there are almost zero commercial writing institutions that produce
> quality.

I only subscribe to the Economist.

~~~
forensic
Yep that's why I said "almost"

I had The Economist in mind :P

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RyanMcGreal
Bollocks. People haven't paid for the news in a century (though we have
traditionally paid for its distribution). We're not about to start now that
the cost of distribution has utterly collapsed.

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surfmike
Fortunately, this is visible without a pay wall--otherwise I wouldn't have
read it!

~~~
Sthorpe
So, your working on a startup and yet....you do want to charge your users
something?

Maybe your just implying that there isn't really any need to read an article
from Murdoch unless its free?

~~~
joe_the_user
I think he is!

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Asa-Nisse
Exec summary: whine whine, bitch bitch.

I wont pay editorial content online. Period. I dont even use google news
either. They are not the problem.

I pay for subscriptions on dead trees to arrive at my house because that is
the only way I can read it in peace. Now if Murdoch has a idea that his
failing businesses are failing because of the internet, good riddance. Have
fun selling used cars instead, atleast they cant be digitally copied.

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steve19
Rupert also made a good case for buying MySpace.

He may be good at what he does, but he does not do the internet. Somebody need
to have the balls to tell it to his face.

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yannis
'The prospect of the U.S. government becoming directly involved in commercial
journalism ought to be chilling for anyone who cares about freedom of speech.'

Well said!

~~~
rayval
Murdoch puts up another fake bogeyman.

Since when is anyone suggesting that US government get involved in commercial
journalism?

Just like the fake bogeyman of Google misappropriating his content when all
News Corp has to do is take 20 seconds to edit the robots.txt file.

Murdoch's statements are a textbook example of disinformation. And he wants
the consumer to pay for this yellow journalism?

