

News Corp to charge for all news websites - winanga
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/News-Corp-to-charge-for-all-news-websites-pd20090806-UMS5P?OpenDocument

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mrshoe
I'm not going to suggest that pay walls are the best option for the
newspapers. They probably aren't.

However, I do hope that, over time, people get more used to paying for things
online. I think that a culture of paying for goods and services will promote a
higher level of quality on the web.

TV is a great example. The ad-supported networks tend to milk TV shows for
money long past their prime, while stations like HBO can insist on higher
quality programming because that's what their customers pay for. I would bet
that if there were a news network that didn't rely on advertising, it wouldn't
be nearly as sensationalistic as the ad-supported ones and you wouldn't hear
lines like, "a common household substance that can kill you on contact... tune
in at 11."

Pay walls may turn out to be bad for the ailing newspapers, but I think it
would be good for the web, in the long term.

~~~
extension
It's become a cliche, but I sincerely believe that the lack of a decent
micropayment system sabotaged any chance of that for-pay culture existing on
the internet and prevented it from becoming the economic engine we once
envisioned.

However, such phenomenal social progress has been made, and could only have
been made, in that commercial vacuum, and there is more to come. It's not
worth giving that up for the quick fix of a consumerized internet.

~~~
omouse
_It's become a cliche, but I sincerely believe that the lack of a decent
micropayment system sabotaged any chance of that for-pay culture existing on
the internet and prevented it from becoming the economic engine we once
envisioned_

You mean micropayment for the Web. The Internet is fine and making a _lot_ of
cash for everyone involved. It's quite the economic engine.

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seldo
This is so dumb I double-checked to make sure this article wasn't a hoax.

Here's the situation: news-gathering companies have looked at the economics of
the situation and realized that either people need to start paying for news,
or 95% of news-gathering companies will die.

They've taken this to mean "and so people will inevitably start paying for
content", but the actual conclusion should be "inevitably 95% of news
gathering companies will die".

Radically wider distribution via the Internet has rendered the hugely
redundant newspaper business (one newspaper for every town? Really?) obsolete.
Even video producers are not immune (how many live news feeds do I need,
exactly? 20? 10?).

Murdoch and co. are just dinosaurs refusing to acknowledge that the light in
the sky is a comet.

~~~
run4yourlives
The real silly thing is that there is a market for in-depth news _analysis_.
The problem is that they've chosen not to serve this market, and as they race
to the bottom they only now realize that they can't compete with 6 billion
potential eyewitness reporters working for free.

They gambled and lost.

Of course, just like the car companies I somehow get the feeling that somehow
I'll have to pay for their strategic mistakes.

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ajg1977
"Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content,
is simply cannibalising its ability to produce good reporting," Mr Murdoch
said.

I quite agree - but what does that have to do with News Corp?

Boom boom!

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alexgartrell
Does anyone else foresee a move towards news where news is provided (via
blogs, commentary, and (I'm sad to say) even tweets) by domain specialists?
Programmers talking about the new Windows, investors talking about new
mergers, etc.?

Does that not sound like an improvement?

I say let the news dinosaurs do whatever they want, I stopped paying attention
to them for my news a long time ago anyway. People always have been and always
will be excited to talk about what's important to them, even for free.

(I'll call it now, News 2.0 will be a buzzword soon, and that'll suck)

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ajg1977
In my dreamworld the changing economics of the news industry, and newspapers
in particular, would cause media outlets to spend less space covering
extremely low-bar "entertainment" stories, less time regurgitating stories
without adding anything of value, and basically stop the unquestioning
reporting of what some spokesperson, official or otherwise, wishes to appear
in print.

The outlets that will survive, and probably even thrive, are those that
provide indepth, insightful and investigative coverage into the events of the
world. (As a bonus - these are the types of articles that ARE copyrightable!).

I mean why would I pay to read about celebrity reactions to Paula leaving
American Idol* when I can go to one of a zillion other sites and read
basically the same story for free?

(* This is currently on the front page of washingtonpost.com, I kid you not)

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TallGuyShort
They claim that the freely-available news sources are cannibalizing their
ability to provide good journalism, but I find the free sources to be better
than the sources considering charging online traffic. News aggregators, blogs,
etc... I use them all the time. New York Times? Maybe once in a while, but
they're often biased and overdramatic.

~~~
Maascamp
So where do you think the news aggregators are aggregating their news from?

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TallGuyShort
I realize that somewhere somebody has to be doing the initial reporting, and
that person needs to be paid, but with the amount of blogs and social
networking that spreads news, I think it'll take a long time before a news
aggregator can't supply a steady stream of decent news.

All I'm saying is that if that ever does become unreliable, then I would
gladly pay for a service. But right now, the services that are considering
charging aren't offering anything unique (with the exception of say, Wall
Street Journal, that kind of thing (niche markets, a need for super
reliability, etc...)

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dtf
Everything? I can't see them charging for The Sun and the News of the World in
the UK.

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tybris
and people stopped reading their lies and the world became a better place.

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LargeWu
This just in...NewsCorp reports massive decreases in web traffic. Film at 11.

~~~
omouse
Eyeballs and traffic != money. They're going for more revenue at the expense
of "shipping" less "units".

~~~
mynameishere
And if they pull it off every other site is going to follow suit.

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jrockway
So this is what, FoxNews.com? Nobody that knows how to read or use a computer
cares what Fox thinks, so this is not really a major loss.

