Slashdot Mirror
Murdoch Says, "We'll Charge For All Our Sites"
Oracle Goddess writes "In what appears to be a carefully planned suicide, Rupert Murdoch announced that his media giant News Corporation Ltd intends to charge for all its news websites in a bid to lift revenues, as the transition towards online media permanently changes the advertising landscape. 'The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive methods of distribution, but it has not made content free. Accordingly we intend to charge for all our news websites,' Murdoch said."
N/T
That's one way to ensure nobody reads his stuff.
Anything that reduces the number of sheep reading right wing echo chambers can only help America.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Then instead of people not reading their print editions, then they will ignore the web edition as well. Sounds like a solid business plan to me.
...nothing of value was lost.
Circumcision is child abuse.
As if I needed one . . .
Fox News and the other Rupert Murdoch properties charging for access is the best thing the Dems and Obama could ask for. It will limit the reach of the biased news content put out by his properties and limit the public exposure. Also as a publisher of a small Online Community Newspaper, I hope that Gannett and the other big news publishing companies follow suit. It's win win for me.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
Oh, Rupert! Internet Fail!
What a lovely coincidence. I deleted my MySpace account this afternoon. See you in hell, Tila Tequila.
At least Fox News will still be free.
"Quality journalism is not cheap..."
Yeah, and no amount of money is going to change the quality of any rag run by Murdoch.
I think it's really quite sad that Rupert Murdoch thinks this will work, given the number of quality, professional news sources online that are free.
I think Rupert's eying the success of the Wall Street Journal as an online subscription site a little too much. What works for the WSJ won't work for other papers, IMO.
reads BBC news anyway, so it won't do much here.
So, when I watch the news or read the paper, the only good stuff to read is international news anyway.
Will they be offering a cheaper or more expensive option to ignore all of the BS stories that they ram down our throats? (swine flu? little girl saves cat from tree?)
I have become so bored by general news that I literally only pay attention to international news and major US politics stories (being a US resident.)
I hope some of News Corp.'s competitors have a more forward thinking attitude about the matter, because Murdoch won't be getting one penny from me for the crap that I usually see portrayed as something I should care about.
Good luck with that.
Left wingers are lemmings through and through.
This is my sig.
Consider the ~30% of the population who honestly thinks George W. Bush was a great president. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine that some of them might be willing to pay a monthly fee to get access to foxnews.com, if the alternatives are left-leaning sites like msnbc.com or blogs they've never heard of.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
but you can't get the "real" news from anywhere else. *snicker*
Time to read :
http://maxkeiser.com/
http://cryptogon.com/
http://cryptome.org/
http://exiledonline.com/
http://www.truthnews.us/
Get a few days or weeks or months heads up on what the tame mainstream press with 'discover' if and when they are allowed to.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
His obvious genius should be amply rewarded.
I'm going to predict that this will work.
Who cares about how many hits you have, when the real key is profitability. The WSJ is pretty good online and its worth the subscription.
Obviously Fox News's site is a different animal but if you just had a Fox media site with reporting that was real, it could work.
But for that to happen, you have to give people content they are willing to pay for, and that means that Murdoch has to invest in journalism if he wants people to pay for it.
Technologically, what the media needs is a micro-payments system setup so that you can have a single billing identity that lets you get all the stories... it would cover Fox, CBS, etc, and a bunch of news sites.
This is my sig.
NY Times, WSJ, Myspace, Foxsports, Hulu (45%), askmen, rottentomatoes, photobucket, IGN, gamespy... Seriously, these sites all have tons of advertising all over the place. What will a pay-for model get them other than a major loss of market share?
So if Rupert sends me a bill for something that I've never ordered, do I have to pay him?
If not, how does he expect to make any money?
If so, I think I'll send him a rather large bill for a bridge that I just sold him.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
good luck with that rupert. but i bet there are a good row of suckers that will pay in time that he tries this, before it goes away.
What he is most likely hoping for is that the eight other giant publishing companies follow his lead and as act together as an oligopoly.
In this case the big publishing companies held a meeting with antitrust lawyers watching every step to map out a strategy to do just this.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
"In what appears to be a carefully planned suicide..." Is it possible to mod a story submission as flamebait?
95% news is organized lies to steer the herds of cow a certain direction. However, now these cows must poop on the grass they eat to make it grow faster to supply their new eating habits.
Since the beginning of the Web, things have largely been free. Free cannot last forever. Ads will not continue to pay for bandwidth, servers, people, etc.
Newspapers are not free, books are not free, movies are not free. All these mediums have people behind them. People like you that like to eat. To buy clothes. To ensure their kids have a great Christmas.
It's about time that things were not free. I disagree with free webmail. The amount of spam would go way down if people had to pay.
Nothing in this world is free. People have to get paid.
Let's just be quiet and encouraging everyone. This could be the best thing since sliced bread. Imagine, disinformation suddenly declines 30% on its own accord. Hold off on the jeering until it is a done deal because you might tip them off!
Stupidity is its own reward.
I would pay never to see his shit again. Pay to read Murdoch's pathetic excuse for news? What a hoot. Please, please, make fox's site pay only. Save the rest of us from their nonsense.
Murdoch, owner of Fox "News", the NY Post and other hysterical tabloids, should know better than anyone else that his news is popular because it's easy to distribute, not because it's any good, or at all accurate.
Making his content hard to redistribute, even by linking, will make it entirely worthless.
Hooray and good riddance to bad rubbish.
--
make install -not war
Its worth nothing to me, and that's what I'll continue to pay. I don't pay for advertising and fluff. If I'm given it for free maybe I'll look.
Good luck to him. He's going to need it. Suicide is only a slight overstatement.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Are you implying Rupert Murdoch cares what Jesus says? Rupert was probably one of the guys that got chased from the temple.
television. The FOX News crowd tends to be an older one (not to forget those of you younger people that watch it, but the demographic is older) and often not very technically inclined. I'd also say that, on average, it is an affluent group compared to the demographic of most other news sources. So I think they're not really going to lose many viewers over this.
I agree with those who say that they are biased and skew their news toward that bias - they hardly hide it. However, we can't deny an overall bias from corporate news sources. I think the majority of journalists prefer to at least attempt an unbiased reporting of the news, but simple business interests often dictate not only how the news is presented, but what news is presented in the first place. And then there's independent media (which at least usually has the decency to make no bones about their bias). I myself listen to Democracy Now and can be fairly assured that I can trust the honesty of Amy Goodman, but I also know that I need to verify things at least to see if I agree with her take on it, with which I don't always agree.
Omnes tuae crepidines sunt nobis sunt. Ascendo tuum!
Murdoch bought MySpace in 2005 for $580 million. Not such a hot property these days. I wouldn't put any money into Murdoch's internet instincts.
I am reminded of Deep thoughts response when told he could cause a philosophers strike.
"And whom will that inconveience"
There's way too many free news sights for people to pay for spelling/gramatical errors and right wing propaganda.
My internetting is no good.
It looks like he'll be dead soon anyway, then we can finally have a little less background noise. Unless you provide a service that people can't get anywhere else easily, give it to them free and make what you can from advertising. Maybe make a paid perks system, like an ad-free version of the site, or extra commentary, or SOMETHING unique and marketable. But to think that people won't go to another news site that they can access for free is just silly. Sure, you have idiots that can't use google, and you have diehard fans of his sites that will pay the money, but he's just limiting his audience here.
If nothing else, I think we can all agree that it costs money to create this content.
Of dispute is how to make money off of this investment. Murdoch seems to think his content is worth more than he's able to acquire from ad funds. As history has shown, this will likely backfire on him.
But maybe not. Maybe he can squeeze his customers enough to make this plan work. All the luck for him, but I don't think this will work.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
For our slashdot comments.
Oops, you read some of my comment, now you owe me $5.
What? You'll read someone else's free comments instead?
Don't worry, we're a big news organization, we'll buy out any high-quality commenters who try to give them away for free.
Our readers who never paid a dime for our **** will suddenly start wanting to pay as soon as they hear about how hip our new site design is, and how all our other big and popular commenters will start charging too.
It seems that, despite (or rather, because of) Murdoch's strangehold on your media, most people really don't understand the megabadness of Murdoch.
I know, I know, soooo 20th Century... so I'll boil it down for you geeks: You know the Jedi Emperor? Murdoch doesn't just look like that guy - in the cast of malignities afflicting the planet, he *is* that guy.
Google for more. You'll be surprised what you didn't know about old Rupe.
you had me at #!
WOOOO YEAH BOY never happy and proud of it!1 "Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING." Wow, gee, that's totally not want I wanted to convey.
A typical Fox "news" person, happily swallowing the swill the elites pump out, can't afford to pay, as his life is limited and defined by the world those elites suggest. The folks most protesting "obamacare" would most benefit. Charge a lot !
Actually, I think this is brilliant. Think about it, Fox News does not compete with CNN or the other "real" news sources. People who go to Fox are specifically looking for Right Wing pandering blowhards like Bill O'Rielly. Since these people cant stand the "liberal media" they will happily pay money to Rupert in order to get the same slanted stories and cheap tricks that they want. People who use services like Google News tend to ignore outlets with an obvious bias, so they were not going to use Rupert's services anyhow.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Let us know how that works for you. We, obviously, won't be paying attention.
the national faces of the right now appear to be somewhere between rush limbaugh, dick cheney, and sarah palin, all 3 with obvious problems appealing to anyone besides screeching rightards
then we have the birthers and their paranoid schizophrenic thinly veiled racism. dividing, discouraging and polarizing the right wing base, so wacky they make 9/11 truthers look levelheaded
and now the principle propaganda wing of the right is committing fiscal suicide because the boss is so old and venal and out of touch with the reality of modern media
seriously, can it get any better?
i am really quite amazed at how fast the right wing has imploded after the presidential election
buffoons and absurdities, all that seems to be on the landscape on the right right now. hilarious and wonderful. i'm actually looking forward to the next act of seppuku on the right
oh look, here it is!:
huzzah!
keep it up, angry, ineffectual low iq losers on the right
all the news is cheer nowadays
enjoy your march into the sunset
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Murdoch went on to mention that other site changes came at the request of his dog, Billy, who said that they were not sufficiently canine-accessible. The new design, apparently, will feature images of small rubber toys as the links - these will squeak when clicked upon. Also, in addition to password authentication, the site will support olfactory authentication via a newly-developed USB peripheral.
Some of those in Murdoch's immediate vicinity responded negatively to these claims: one man complained that Murdoch in fact did not even have a dog. Referring to Murdoch as a "crazy fool", he went on to say that Murdoch's presence was not necessary, as there was no present need for his unique skills.
Bow-ties are cool.
What a glorious future.
I could work provided there are any sites of theirs that I like enough to pay for. So, are there? I mean, there are things online that I pay for all the time. I paid a dollar just yesterday to play Bookworm on my iPhone. I pay for songs. If there's a Murdoch site that has content I value enough, I'd pay for it, sure.
I'd probably pay a dollar a month for access to all the Gawker blogs, for example. I dunno if I'd pay more than that, since their competitors are all pretty close to them in content and quality. But still.
I'd probably pay a dollar a month to use Google Reader.
I'm just sayin', just because somebody says "we're going to start charging" doesn't automatically mean they're going to fail, just because Slashdot has some kind of problem with any other kind of payment than advertising.
*shrug*
I see what you did there. Very clever. You've clearly improved on the statement.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Silly Americans with their "right wing" vs "left wing" so-called political opinions...
Nothing in real life is black or white, it's always shades of grey.
Assume there is a median political position. To the left and right of this are various stances. "Left" politics include civil libertarianism, entitlements for minorities and the working class, and regulation of business; "right" politics generally imply the opposite. Between far left and far right, there are still "shades of grey" as you call them: left, center left, center right, and right.
It's possible to be left on some issues and right on others. For instance, the Libertarian Party is left on civil libertarianism but right on entitlements and business regulation. But U.S. political parties whose platforms mix "left" and "right" planks virtually never win more than 2% of the popular vote. Perhaps a better analogy isn't "shades of grey" as much as color vs. grayscale.
Someone reads his stuff and writes something similar in their blog. How can they stop them if it isn't a direct case of plagiarism?
God spoke to me.
...and most people on the internet share everything with everyone, whether tangible (like movies and pictures) or information (such as news). so for every person they get money from, there's going to be hundreds or thousands who get the exact same report for free because someone copied and pasted it, or just told their friends and co-workers the gist of it. charging for news on the internet is like charging for news in a conversation amongst co-workers. Summary: good fucking luck
This is the best idea he's ever had and the timing couldn't be better. After watching his philosophy bring this nation to the brink of ruin, watching the party he was backing financially get crushed in the last election, now he shrewdly targets his weapon on his financial foot and cocks the hammer.
You're a sly one, Rupert. Have to say I never saw that move coming. For some strange reason I assumed his lack of judgment would be limited to arenas outside business.
Happy to admit I was wrong. Shooter on the line! Fire when ready!
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
My irony-o-meter just exploded at the "SITE" of your post complaining about spelling and grammar.
Ya gotta laugh at some of the posts on this "sight" eh?
Sight- What your eyes give you.
Site- A location, either physical or virtual.
Now just brighten up and "tow" the line, OK looser!
(-:
People are going to have to pay to hear reporters say "Maybe we shouldn't spend any money on getting these types of people out of North Korea. If they make a mistake and cross the border, they deserve to pay the price."
Fair and Balanced? dumbasses..
I have no problem keeping moronic "reporting" behind a "Please pay $3 to see this ""story""
Disclaimer: I know nothing about anything - EVER.
Doubt this will go over well with their viewers, if someone tells them it's a tax
It's fashionable to despise Murdoch, but he's richer and more powerful than all your parent's basements put together. You GNU-assholes, who expect everything to be given you for free, will be pariahs. And justifiably so. (The spelling, it is similar to "parasite," yes?)
There is no way I would pay for that right wing, nut job, propaganda they call NEWS....
Its bad enough that news in general is pathetic... but Murdoch is out of his fucking mind if he thinks anyone finds his "news" outlets are worth paying for.
Then again, Fox News viewers are the same nut jobs that pay every sunday to worship a fucking fairytale. I guess "How real" the content is, doesnt matter in either situation.
March on Nazis.... March on.
bye bye Murdoch
Used to subscribe to WSJ because I thought the quality was hard to beat. Canceled after far too many articles that were far too self-serving to Murdoch. Then there is Fox News... and...
Far too out of touch. News Corp is completely lost.
The only thing on foxnews.com that I read is Pop Tarts. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,537022,00.html
Oh well, from now on I guess I will have to get all my news from TMZ.com.
is you don't actually read any of my posts
you kind of sorta figure out the gist of where i am going, and then you shoehorn me into certain stereotypical ways of thinking
you then deduce the most ridiculous implication of the most absurd corner of thoughts from what i am saying
and then you react to that, as if i had said that, or stood for it, or even was remotely talking about that
you need to actually read and listen to people
you don't do that. you shoehorn people into stereotypical bogeymen that only exist in your head
i probably believe about 2% of what you think i believe
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
'The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive methods of distribution, but it has not made content free.
Yes, it has.
Accordingly we intend to charge for all our news websites,' Murdoch said."
..but will anyone pay for it? That would truly be news.
Online news has been stuck in a prisoner's dilemma situation (from their POV). If everyone charged for news, then they'd be OK. When only some people charge for news, those that charge lose their audience. That drives the system to the equilibrium of noone charging for news. From the consumer's POV this is a good thing.
Because Murdoch owns so much of the news, he might be able to break out of the current poor (for newspaper publishers) equilibrium. Of course, if he can do so then he's pretty much demonstrated that he has enough of a monopoly that market power isn't working. There would be evidence for an anti-trust case against him.
The other problem with all this is that it assumes that the problem newspapers are having with revenue is caused by the cannibalisation of the print editions by the online editions. I understand, although I cannot provide evidence, that the real problem is that the classified market has gone away. The newspapers lunch got eaten by eBay and Craigslist, not cannibalised by their own online offerings. And if this is true, then raising prices for consumers might increase revenue, but it wont return it to where it was.
You folks are silly. Cheap access for news aggregation services that Murdoch likes, expensive access for those he doesn't. Differing rates for different news "ages" Companies friendly to Murdoch's empire and beliefs will suddenly have more available content. Those not friendly will lose some. Another front on the info war of media giants.
Funny though, if anyone can access the content anywhere publicly and this type of behavior increases, we'll see an increase in web scraping local aggregators.
Or imagine a freenet style network where your web scraper pulls stories from the content you subscribe to and broadcast it to others who do likewise with their web scrapers.
Murdoch has no clue what he is doing on the internet. Look forward to see less of his yellow journalism.
I liked the original Mario Brothers as played by O'Reilly and his cameraman.
"WE'LL DO IT LIVE! PUCK IT!"
Where is the "andnothingofvaluewaslost" tag?
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
This is how the rest of the world works. They operate in that giant grey area and evaluate each topic/choice on its own merit rather then instantly defaulting to the partys left/right alignment for decisions.
I think my point may have missed you: The United States is the country with a "grey area". Politics lies on a line from left to right, just as "grey areas" lie on a line from black to white. Did you mean "colored area", or perhaps "coloured area"?
I love it when people I already dislike pretty much guarantee their destruction.
The world will be a happier place without Murdoch and his "content".
I'm sure his plan will work just as well as Netscape's charging for a browser when you could get them for free. ;)
I hope that news organizations start turning a profit on their web sites rather than giving the content away for free and depending on paultry ad revenue rates. I for one will subscribe to at least one on-line paper if this becomes the norm. I'm a big consumer of real news (beyond which celeb is bang who) and the horrible cash flow has lead to some major compromises in coverage. I'm willing to invest in journalism with their consumer dollar. I'm sure others will satisfy their news bug with TMZ or TSG, but you're not going to get the hard-hitting stuff elsewhere. Now, I do frequent their sites, but I'm tired of every legit news source thinking they have to cover Britney Spears to churn a buck.
So, maybe ad revenue will be down. But, I bet it'll be more than made up by online subscriptions. And, they can continue to make public all the AP boilerplate articles to bait readers into their custom content.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Remember when CNN charged for access to its web site? They have high quality content that is worth paying for - with the possible exception of Michael Jackson spam - but you will notice that CNN is now free in both print and video. There's a reason for that: even if access is only ten cents a week, it requires folks to pull out their credit card, and the vast majority hate doing that when they consider something should be free. Most of us hate paying for parking in cities because it's free in most other places just as much as because of what it costs. Rupert, your competition is free, your competition has generally better content, and we are laughing.
It says "My Computer" 'cause Bill thinks putting MS software on it makes it his.
Obviously. Later post-Bill versions of Windows changed it to just, "Computer"...
I presume that all politics are based on a circular system, where you have left and right on each side, moderates in between on one "side" of the center, and the crazy at the other side.
Another circular system would put libertarian "crazies" on one side and authoritarian "crazies" on another. If you put US Democrats on the left, US Republicans on the right, libertarianism on the top, and authoritarianism on the bottom, you end up with the World's Smallest Political Quiz in polar coordinates.
Dan Rather: "Fake but accurate."
A pithy summary for a document that no one for a moment disputed was false based on its contents.
You're just another shill who has a bent, nothing more and nothing less. Take off the rose colored glasses, and stop pretending that only one part of the media manipulates.
The mainstream broadcast media has their problems, and certainly biases, but nobody else in broadcast media working on an out-and-out agenda at the scale that Fox works.
Tweet, tweet.
I used to read them along with my other news sites (CNN and other smaller, independent sites), and I just stopped... they f-ed up the formatting and simply made it impossible to read. The few times I've gone back to foxnews it's been like the cover of the sun, it's mandatory there's some skank on the front page.
BTW, I don't think foxnews was any more biased than anyone else... it's funny, IMO, I have a very neutral position, I read a nice variety, and sometimes I see bias, and sometimes I don't; Fox got too tabloid-y, but they weren't any more biased than anyone else. Biased? Yes. More than anyone else? No.
Stupid, sexy Flanders.
The best choice is to ignore party and always vote (as a group, us here, and anyone we know) against all incumbents. Period. Even if the incumbent is your cousin, or best friend's friend w/ benefits... It's time to impose our own term limits..
Maybe then, we can get some real reform that would limit the control special interest groups hold over our country.
If you're serious about changing the status quo, ignore party and boot all the crooks out. There's no such thing as a good career politician. One term, then go get a real job.
I cant read it... theres no words there
I don't know what that means "to sell the news" FUCK IT
FUCK IT, I'll read it LIVE
FUCKIN THING SUCKS.
I'LL READ IT LIVE!
Not really a knee-jerk when all previous attempts at this sort of thing have either been aborted (New York Times, for example) or gone down in flames.
I get all my news from /.
There someone had to say it!
Kharma whoring, or what?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/world/americas/03iht-journalists.1.19890938.html
Perhaps you could explain the point here.
Is there evidence that the journalists referenced in the article in any way distorted facts during the election?
If not, and they were simply pro-Obama, is their evidence or even a good argument that their support was based in zombie-like fervor rather than studied consideration?
Similarly, is there evidence that their decision to enter public service after the election wasn't
Finally, what evidence exists that these journalists represent a critical mass of journalists as a whole?
Tweet, tweet.
Unless they are driving. Or have different opinions then me.
Quack, quack.
Fox News is to News what Professional Wrestling is to Sports so good luck with that Rupert. Hopefully the next owner of foxnews will have a nice site dealing with news about Foxes.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
Are you implying Rupert Murdoch cares what Jesus says? Rupert was probably one of the guys that got chased from the temple.
I tend to doubt it since Murdoch was only 8 years old at the time, then again...
Pharisee all the way.
Not that any of the stories in the bible are real though.
I have read and heard here and there that Rupert was naturalized by an act of Congress. If true, can anyone cite the act?
--
Tangential discussions tend to go offtopic. So what.
You failed to get my point that US politics is so polarised that one side cannot even contemplate the views of the other. In British parliament systems an act known as "crossing the floor" used to be commonplace. Crossing the floor was to change allegiance to the other party by literally crossing across the parliament chambers to the other parties bench.
./.
Churchill did this twice in his career, "to rat and then to re-rat" in his words. I cant see Hillary Clinton or Mike Huckabee switching sides once, let alone twice. US Politicians don't seem capable of changing their perceptions, even when confronted with overwhelming evidence and this is often reflected in many "voters" here on
In Australia we have two main political parties, Liberal and Labour. Neither of these parties can be described as "left" or "right" as both have a small segment from both the extreme left and extreme right thus the parties as a whole exists across the entire left/right spectrum. This results in one party making right decisions on one topic (business) and left decisions on a different topic (education).
Also Politics it two dimensional, Socialist (left), Capitalist (right) Authoritarian (up) and Liberal (down). All political entities have an X and a Y coordinate on the political compass.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Crimeny.
Back when I had cable (4+ years ago) my impression was that Fox basically runs various talk/opinion shows (O'Reilly, Hannity, etc) most of the time, but at the top of every hour (and maybe the half hour?) cuts over to a 'news anchor', which at the time meant either some heavily made up girl, or an even more heavily made up guy (it was weird, the Fox news anchor always looked gay, not sure if he is).
The sad thing was that the format wasn't significantly different than any of the other cable 'news' channels, except for a generally more obvious distinction between 'news' and 'opinion' (even when the opinion claims to be 'fair and balanced'). The talk/opinion shows were all blatantly right wing, with the exception of the personified straw man Hannity kept around but generally didn't let talk.
As for viewership, since the presidential election my understanding is that Fox has crushed every other cable news channel, and last I heard had more than the rest put together. Of course I think that has to do with a combination of factors, mainly that CNN and the rest do nothing but sit around licking Obama's asshole (which frankly doesn't make for very interesting news), and their traditional viewers either going online or looking for more drama on Fox.
What is utterly mind boggling about this announcement is that it is being applied uniformly across a huge spectrum of publications with wildly different readerships and usage patterns. I understand the desire and need to find the ways to monetize news investigation, reporting, analysis and gossip, and concede that they way things are being done now may not be the best. But does Murdoch really believe that what works for Wall Street Journal the will work for The Sun?
Seriously. The "blogosphere" may not create much usefull content in and of itself but it is an increadable tool for redirecting visitors to content and for providing discussion on that content. If you setup a paywall, you block yourself out of that market and the ad revenue it generates. For some publications it probably won't matter. For those that thrive on discussion and gossip it will matter dearly. If Murdoch can't understand the difference then he needs to retire.
I promise these are all my real hand typed ha has and not just cut and pasted. ahh hahaa hhaaa hahahaha. ha ha ha. HA HA HA. HAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA,
Breath.
HAHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHAAAAAA HHHAA HHHAAA HA AHA HA HA ha ha ha. Ok, caps. Sorry.
Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. The proper grammar, spelling and punctuation ha.
"Ha." The scare quote ha.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, huh, ha ha. Realli?
hahhhaahahah ahaha ahhhaahahah ahhahahahah ahaha ha ha ha ha haaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!! ha !
Jesus, whew. Really, no. Seriously. He didn't. Really? HA! HAAAA. I wish there were bigger caps-ha.
Oh my god. Its the interupted sentan-HA!
Wtf?
All I can say is. Ha.
You failed to get my point that US politics is so polarised that one side cannot even contemplate the views of the other.
Now I understand: the paint program analogy is "threshold" or "posterize, 2 levels".
In British parliament systems an act known as "crossing the floor" used to be commonplace. Crossing the floor was to change allegiance to the other party by literally crossing across the parliament chambers to the other parties bench.
In U.S. legislatures, there's crossing the aisle, and then there's Specter the Defector.
Also Politics it two dimensional, Socialist (left), Capitalist (right) Authoritarian (up) and Liberal (down).
I've seen the compass with authoritarian on the bottom, but I get your point.
All political entities have an X and a Y coordinate on the political compass.
Two dimensions would be better represented by a U-V color plane than by "black", "white", and "gray".
How can a newspaper mogul not understand about ad supported content? Most of the cost of a newspaper is ads. You really think fifty cents a copy pays for content, printing and distribution?
Similarly how can he not understand about supply and demand? His competitors are not other newspapers who try to adopt the same business model. His competitors are the free, ad-supported news services. On a level playing field, they'll eat him alive.
I can't believe he's this stupid, so he must think he has an ace up his sleeve. And the only ace I can think of in this case is government intervention.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Well, it was a nice thread while it lasted.
you're making me hungry for mutton chops
It seems a lot of people here think Rupert Murdoch is an idiot. He isn't.
News Corp has deep pockets and a wealth of profit-making websites.
He understands it would be suicide for his readership of his newspapers if he charged for access, but rivals didn't.
It would be a slightly slower suicide if he charged nothing at all.
So perhaps his plan is this:
1. Charge for access to all his news sites.
2. Encourage rivals to charge also (it has been already flagged that newspapers are willing to work as a bloc on this issue).
3. Watch while readership plunges at all newspaper websites following the introduction of pay-per-view.
4. Hold out until his major rivals are all broke.
5. Maintain a cost for viewing online publications
6. Close down newspaper print editions as readers migrate to paying for content online
7. Scoop up profits and increase influence
If the pattern goes 9am, 10am, 11am, why isn't noon 12am?
I've never met a single person who would be willing to pay even $2 a month for access to a news site.
Yes, news that is sufficiently disposable and generic will struggle to be anything other than ad-supported. This is despite that fact that news really is worth paying for, because it cumulatively helps you understand how the world works, making you a better person. A micropayment system that reflected the a la carte nature of the Web would however be better than the subscription models that reflect the interests of the big media conglomerates.
But other sorts of information and opinion are more valuable, particularly those that relate to helping people choose the most suitable product to buy. The Wall Street Journal is of this type, but so are review sites.
Where users require regular ongoing advice, such a for shares, subscriptions can work, but not when the need is ad-hoc, such as for electronic equipment. Because advertising is unpopular (and hence low-paying), such sites are turning more and more to affiliate sales. But pairing advice and sales does create a conflict of interest for review sites, just as it does for full-service retailers.
It all depends on how much you trust the source. Amazon affiliate income gives Slashdot an incentive to publish positive book reviews, but we all trust Unkie Slash.
... lets face facts. Almost all of the "news" reported on and linked to is not of great value.
Even if people did pay for news this wouldn't ensure anything but rightwing propaganda, almost all news outlets in canada have a rightwing slant to them whenever theirs talks about strikes or unions for instance almost universally are workers painted in a negative light.
News promotes the agenda of the news clients biggest spenders, which is NOT the public at large sorry to say it.
Murdoch, if I want somebody to fuck me, lie to me and demand payment for it, I'll hire a hooker.
You're nothing but a sleazebag neo-con propoganda pusher. Feel free to drop dead, Mr. Hitler says your seat in hell is all warmed up.
Anything that kills news corp faster is a good thing.
"Freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns one." A. J. Liebling
I guess we know now that Rupert is only interested in the money...
Haha yes, good comparison. If Jesus lived today Fox news probably constantly would make up stories how bad he is and this evil communist must be brought down by the CIA etc...
And after the cruzification they probably would make a special report day how the world got better once after the death of this communist hippie.
Anyway given the current state of society Jesus probably would have ended in a similar fate. Probably brought down by exactly the same type of people.
It sounds almost as good as paying $2,000 for a root canal. I hope they charge 10 cents per word, just like the good old days. And I hope they hire George W. Bush as their news editor and the Taliabanana (not what you think) news team.
Epic phail X2
Funny, I thought Rupert was in the Influence Business first, then the Media Biz. He can't be buying right-leaning media outlets only just for profit.
Last time I checked a copy of the N.Y. Post was 25 cents. Well 25c is technically charging for a newspaper but that is below the cost of distribution and printing of the paper, not to mention content. In fact, the only purpose for those 25 cents is to ensure the papers are not used for insulation by homeless people, it is nowhere near paying for the running costs of the NY Post paper. The NY Post has hemorrhaged money for as long as Murdoch has owned it.
So Murdoch cannot even charge for content even when selling actual dead tree newspapers. How he thinks he can do it online where everyone is used to getting the news for free I do not know.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_News_Corporation
Satan belongs to the "damned fallen angel" ethnic group which has been traditionally execrated by our society. It is only just that we now give him a break when considering his application for employment.
it's bad enough you see it everywhere, but be expected to pay for it as well!?
"The increase we have seen in our Wall Street Journal subscription proves to me that the market is willing to pay for that quality."
WSJ might as well be the trade journal for stock market investments. There's a lot of content there, a lot of high quality journalism. Yes, this combination of niche and quality means that a subscription service will work.
Good luck with the rest of the stable of newspapers, I do not think any others are 'best in breed' like WSJ. I could be wrong though...
TANSTAAFL GIGO Acronyms to live by!
Ironically, that statement represents what's wrong with race relations in this country. Instead of being the President of the United States, Obama is a black man first?
I understand you were probably joking, but seriously, can we please put some effort into making a good example for the future and not bring up the color of someone's skin. It shouldn't matter if we agree or disagree or whether he ran on a platform of being the first black president.
He who has no
Over the last few years the big media companies and politicians have increasingly been complaining that people have been turning away from the mianstream media and have been getting their news from blogs and private news sites. They have been slating this trend saying that it allows false stories to seem credible because of the amount of coverage that it can get in a very short period of time by people who either can't or don't fact check. We all know that the big media are really complaining because they are loosing money, and that politicians are complaining because they cannot control independent media sites like blogs.
If Murdock starts charging for site access I can only see the above increasing. For better or for worse people turn away from the traditional media and will flock ever more to privately run websites. I see the likes of the Onion and industry insider blogs profiting from Murdock's fees more than Murdock does. It's one thing for him to try to compete with other sites based on his media empire's resources, and it's another thing for it to try to compete on price. Free wins most times. Especially since a recent survey in Europe, one of Murdock's prime markets demonstrated that about 1/3 people wouldn't pay for web content at all, even if they valued it, which means significantly more people would not be prepared to pay for trivial stuff like tabloid news.
This has already been demonstrated with porn of all things. People making home made porn using and giving it away on the web has significantly impacted on the adult entertainment scene. People are downloading low quality home made smut for free rather than paying for professionally made adult videos, and it's not even as if most of Murdock's stuff is all that good in the first place, so I can't see it being competitive against free content that's of the same quality or better tha it.
Yes, some of them do. For some, it's because Fox tells them what they want to hear. Others, just because they watch the baseball games and tune in for the news right afterward or something like that.
I personally don't watch any TV news any more, I just use news.google.com and sample what everyone is saying. It's usually a lot easier to read several different versions of the same story, gather up all the facts, and figure out which publications were completely full of crap.
Anyhow, while Fox's opinion shows are horribly biased, the news is a bit more subtle, so you might not know that you've been fed a load of crap unless you read up on the story later.
Your all forgetting the big thing here. Hulu is about 35% News Corp. last I checked. How the hell are we going to watch the Daly Show and Colbert Report if they can get NBC to go with the change.
goodbye Ruppert (c'mon wave!)
So he wants us to pay for propaganda? If Murdoch starts charging for content, its a good thing. Most readers will start reading alternate "news" and get a more balanced view of whats going on.
The day Fox start reporting actual NEWS is the day Satan goes to work in a snowplow.
According to Dante's Inferno, Satan is frozen in the ice-bound ninth circle of hell. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(Dante)#Ninth_Circle
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Trying to get payed for a internet site is like selling sand in the Sahara desert. Robert Murdoch would love a internet that works the same way as television, where he can buy large parts of the entire business and control the kind of news that makes it to the public. Unfortunately for him, the internet is not controlled by a few large corporations. The best content comes from small, brilliant sites that become popular because they give people what they want. People dont really want Fox News, and Murdock will find this out the hard way once he starts wanting money for it.
I wouldn't mind paying for News if it were well reported. The problem with news nowadays is it's very shallowly investigated, because it costs money for any actual reporting. Murdoch doesn't seem to be the kind of guy who can turn this around though, because it's easier to sell tits for $1
When you buy the Sun (Scottish Edition) for your 10 to 30pence (depends on their promotion at the time) you get for your money a paper of almost utter hilarity and sarcastic bile that included one of the longest headlines ever (supercaleygoballisticcelticareatrocious) and Deirde's Problem Page. The international news was contained in a single column on the 2nd page. It was the kind of newspaper you read on the bus, train or during your coffee break. It was uncompromising infotainment then (when I was resident in the UK) and I should imagine it still is.
I can see from the Sun's website that their interweb model is not the same - just a lot of chavtastic tv crap.
The problem for the Murdoch empire is that they forgot where newspapers came from.
Newspaper originated from the owners of printing presses who started to print lists of vessels arriving at ports with details of their cargoes. This was indeed news for anyone who wanted to make money from arbritage. Soon traders paid for ads in these papers and then letters (correspondence) from various parts of the world were printed to inform the readers of events that might affect trade. Those newspapers companies were vertically integrated, they owned the printing presses and the newspapers, soon they owned or had command of the logistics systems to deliver them from door to door staff to trucks boats and planes. This created the era of the Press Baron.
While the Murdoch Empire was busy focussing on satellite television they missed the opportunity to accumulate possesions in the web, they failed to buy communications companies or felt it was too low a return for the investment. Yet they knew that print media was in a terminal decline and has been for the past fifty years where newspapers have folded or combined and magazines (especially news magazines) have seen readership dwindle.
One can only guess that these executives are so removed from the physical transaction of buying a newspaper and the somewhat more intangible concept of connecting to the interweb. Ownership of the means of delivery and ad return from cost free added value must have given them sleepless nights, or more likely they decided to ignore what they did not understand.
Now when the paradigm shift is about to render them extinct, they thrash around grasping at straws. What News International are about to create here if they go ahead with this idea, is the Great Murdoch Firewall.
Now if we could only manage to get Associated Newspapers to do the same...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Mail
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
There is peace and serenity in the Light. Everybody will pay for all of your content in the Light. Cross over Rupert. All are welcome. All welcome. Royalties and subscriptions are in the Light.
Rupert Murdoch has news sites? I thought he did right wing propaganda, self-serving lies and the occasional bare titty.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
He didn't learn anything from Jesus, just the Gospel writers. Where do you think he got the idea to just publish false information after the fact?
he wants to talk to you about that last sentence.
Lets see, nowadays most "news" are nothing but regurgitated press releases from the government or private companies pursuing an agenda.
Newspapers have not explored the possibility to charge people and organizations that want exposure under the guise of informed debate.
The readers are not going to pay, it is that simple.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
and are you going to pay the people through which you collect the videos & news in iReport ?
your understanding is, take free, but dont give away free eh ?
lets see what will happen to your budding uncensored, unfiltered news innovation ireport after you start to charge for 'your' content. getting news through local citizens from the places impossible for westerners to go in was enjoyable on your side. but when you SCREW UP with this attitude, you will again be reliant on your handful of reporters, instead of millions of citizens.
dinosaur. either keep up with the times, or die already.
Read radical news here
When I buy a proper paper like the Telegraph, not much of the money is going to reporters. A telegraph subscription currently costs £5.90 a week - including the Sunday paper with it's masses of sections and magazines. Out of that, they've got to print copies every day of the week, and deliver them to my house 7 days a week. By the time you take out the cost of paper, ink, upkeep of the presses and delivery costs, there isn't exactly a lot left to support an army of journalists.
The journalism is ad-supported, I'm only paying the cost to get the physical media to my door. With the internet, that cost is zero.
The trouble with the 'get everybody else to charge' model is that there is the BBC. Which is a publicly (very well) funded body.
The BBC will ALWAYS put news content on-line for free. They see it as a service to countries without access to 'good' news sources. The BBC does not have to make money on-line.
I pay £120 a year in TV license to the BBC so you b@stards can get free news and great documentaries and period drama for free!
Think before hitting that "submit" button if you used a "paste" command. You might just end up ruining your life like all those 80+ year old music pirates did by daring to use a P2P file sharing service they've never heard of.
8==8 Bones 8==8
Any blowhard can have an opinion on any fact...
Some blowhards with opinions earn their money for being exactly that. They don't need no "research". They're popular not because their opinions are well informed (they aren't, particularly) but because they're good at spouting their opinions with a certain degree of eloquence and passion, and their listeners/viewers (who almost invariably share the blowhard's opinions) get a certain degree of validation out of this. The blowhards aren't selling information, they're selling validation: people can listen to the blowhard and hear their own opinion preached at them like it's perfect and indisputable common sense.
Murdoch's plan sounds idiotic.
However, I frequently see important stories covered on Fox News that I don't see on any other network. Bias is as much what you don't cover as what you do. I believe that our Founders would be glad that at least a few journalists are holding this constitution violating, spend-crazy administration's feet to the fire.
But the employees do.
The concept of everything for free on the web does not bode well for the future of the web. If value is produced, and that value is consumed, there needs to be cost associated with it so the value can be maintained. Apple tapped into a revenue model for Music, no reason why other digital products can't do the same.
The income generated drives consumption of other goods and services beyond the digital realm.
Hope is the currency of fools
...that this brings the demise of the dirty digger.
He is, after all, the proprietor of a rag that convinced a not-very-bright woman to try having eight babies at once in exchange for a million pounds. Every doctor in the world said don't do it, just have one or two or you'll lose all of them....but they (and the Sun) went ahead - even printing scans on the front page with headlines saying 'DOING FINE', as if the doctors were all idiots. And what about Piers Moron - so popular over here, he had to go to the U.S. (where no one knew him) to get any interviews - after all, there are only so many blackmail-based 'favours' you can pull in the U.K....
Well, guess what happened to the eight babies - she lost them all. So that's at least one child killed so that Murdoch could sell more newspapers. And that's just ONE story - there are many, many more (Private Eye - the ONLY news mag you need in the UK, is full of this stuff) - most recently, Amy Winehouses' junkie ex-husband - the Sun wanted him strung up for years....until last weeks' exclusive multi-day interview.
But let's ignore the fact that the Sun is staffed and edited by the utter scum-of-the-earth (or 'journalists' as they like to pretend) - the point of all this is that, even sinking to these depths, the circulation of the Sun, Times, et al has been going down for *decades* (hence they get more and more desperate in trying to scare you into buying tomorrows edition) - however, there's so much FREE information that buying a newspaper to read what happened 24 hours ago is laughable.
So I *dearly* hope that Murdope starts charging, I really really do - anything that hastens the death of News International (or anything Murdoch-owned, really) can't come fast enough.
I have NEVER seen an accurate newspaper article on a subject I was conversant in. Not once. Which leads me to believe they're equally worthless on subjects I'm not conversant in as well.
Michael Crichton says something similar (though you have shown yourself to be an exception) in his speech Why Speculate ?.
"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
"In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
"That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all.
"But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn't. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia."
Squirrel!
No, this is a great idea. *makes crazy sign with hand* Yeah, those free loaders have leached off of you too long Rich. You don't mind if I call you Rich right? You need to charge what the market will bear. Those nutters will pay anything to keep listening to your propaganda. So don't worry about losing any revenue to all the other thousands of news sites that are still free.
I think that the poor guy has been misquoted. What he really must have meant was:
This has a much closer fit with reality.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
you know, while it's always fun to question the intelligence of some of these types of news bits, murdoch didn't become as powerful and influential as he did by completely misunderstanding new avenues of monetization. if we were talking about some middle manager, or a senior manager in an unexceptional place, i could see that.
but seriously suggesting that murdoch, who's made his fortune in making news profitable and is the biggest media mogul on the planet, doesn't understand how to monetize news successfully after ahow many years of news sites experiences is to me goofy in the extreme. you might as well suggest that redmond doesn't understand how to market a profitable OS.
ed
I realise that I'm commenter number 480+ so it's likely no one will read this. Anyway I've been thinking about this; I'd be quite happy to pay for access to a number of sites if we were talking cents (or pennies) or fractions thereof. Problem is I can't be bothered starting a new subscription agreement, a new password, a new account for every site with which I'd like to interact. The earlier initiatives of one log in for multiple sites would be a great solution if it weren't for our inherent distrust of storing confidential information with one company. But if I could have one log in shared across all fee-charging sites and then selectively allow sites to charge me (like I selectively allow sites to execute javascript on my firefox client) then that is something I'd seriously consider. There's a big difference between charging $1.00 or 70p for a newspaper in cash and requiring a subscription agreement or getting someone to enter their 16 digit credit card number, address, and 3 digit security code every time they wanted to check the latest sports news. So solve the convenience issue. In a way we can feel relatively secure.
BBC.
This is beyond Fox News. He controlls many other news outlets. Such as New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Times (UK) which have a good a reputation. I do not mind paying to read news if they are reputable and well written/researched. I hope the revenue will go into improving the content.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_News_Corporation
There is no such thing as "negative" or "positive" liberty. You are mistaking liberty and autonomy, which are related but distinct. Entitlements may increase autonomy, but they don't universally increase liberty
The philosophers I cited used "positive liberty" to refer to autonomy. If you can find reliable sources stating that Fromm and Berlin were wrong in calling autonomy "positive liberty", I'd like to hear about them.
Don't worry! democracynow.org is always free.
If he is charging MONEY for this service, is the contract going to say in black-and-white that the content may be "wrong".
Like when they 'fail' to get the party affiliation correct for whatever senator or representative that is currently
under a cloud. Or is the click through agreement going to state that the content is for propag^h^h^h^h^h^h entertainment
purposes only.
It seems like money would make it more of a product that he is selling...can he be held to a higher standard by
his paying customers who just happen to be bloodthirsty lawyers?
This is great news for The Associated Press. Now they don't have to dive off of suicide hill all alone. Splat... splat.
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
Until the news sites learn about minimalist web design, I won't go to their free sites. That means no flash, just a few images, and getting to the point. After that happens, if it is paid ---- forget it. My local news websites for TV, radio and newspaper all lose on this argument alone. If I hear "visit our website for more" again. Well, that's bad.
See, as long as there are reputable and free alternatives like the BBC, there's no need for paid sites. The TV networks lost me 15 years ago when they started "making up the news." I miss the days of someone providing "just the facts" and letting me think for myself.
I hope the BOD sees this idiot and throws him out.
BTW, I live in the USA.
But you know nothing about the psychology of this. I'll tell you a story that started just like this:
There was a time, when every German SMS service on the net was free. They only added 20 characters of advertisement.
We (when I say "we", I mean, that I was a developer who was assigned as a backup for that web service) were very "successful" in that business, because our SMS provider, handy.de, got payed in advertisements on our site! (Or in other words: they payed to be able to pay!)
But then, handy.de got into trouble, and so got our competition. So everyone started offering less SMS per day, with less characters, only if you register, and so on.
Which of course did not help at all.
So pay-only services started to pop up. Often with parallel ad-based, but very restricted, services.
handy.de continued to offer those free SMS. And was the first to declare bankruptcy. Then all the other ad-based services died, were canceled, or offered unreasonable things, like 1000 free SMS a day, in *total*.
Soon there were *only* pay-only services. And they survived. Because the users simply had no other choice than to use them. There were no usable free services left.
The morale of the story: When one person starts it, soon all the others will follow. Maybe the first one or two will die. But in the end, everyone will do it, and nobody offering it for free will be left. Because they have to, and also *because they think that now they can*!
So soon, you may not be left with any free choice. And then you will pay. Or nobody will care.
Because frankly, work *really* is not free!
But I agree that Murdoch, with his low-quality stuff will not survive, if he chooses an unacceptable price. Which right now still is everything above free, for services that you can get for free.
But soon it will be a real money value.
I guess they will go with something totally unrealistic, like $1 per article, when they could still make good money, and have actual paying people, when offering an article for something like $0.001, or even less. (Shhh, don't tell Verizon. It will only confuse them. ;)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
...People have never payed for the news. People have, in the past payed for newspapers, they are paying for someone to cut down a tree, transport the tree to a mill, grind the tree into pulp, flatten it out and dry it to make paper, ship the paper to a printer, print out thousands of copies, and then deliver that copy to their front door. That is what a newspaper subscription covers. Barely. The rest (the actual news part of it) is covered by the advertisement. Radio and television news have always been free. The Internet is much more akin to radio or television in distribution costs than print, so there is no reason to charge you for the distribution of the news. Rupert Murdoch is trying to change the game here, a couple hundred years after the invention of news, so that we actually have to pay for news. This has never been done before, and he is a fool for thinking that it will all of a sudden magically work.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
To all outward appearances, this would indeed seem to be suicide. But... what if he knows something we don't? The 'Powers That Be' clearly desire a locked-down Internet and are aggressively working towards making it happen. Remember, just because Murdoch's a member of an evil cabal doesn't mean he's stupid.
Fewer blogs linking to Fox News can only be good for the Internet.
Everyone clamoring for Free.. that's just not the way the world works.
And yet, somehow television stations were able to miraculously stay in business just giving away their content! Quality programming that took millions of dollars to produce, all those employees that had to be paid, all those corporate offices with their leases... and yet, they just beamed all their hard work into the aether. Absurdity!
I wonder how those guys managed to make a buck.
Long day...
you had me at #!
And then, after infecting Australia with the tabloid poison, he went on to destroy journalism in the UK, and the rest of the world. What a hero.
you had me at #!
Is it just me, or is all of this acrimony actually fear of this working? With ownership in major news organizations like the The Times, Wall Street Journal and Fox News, among others, millions already access his sites religiously. Murdoch is a billionaire for a reason, so you know he and his people have done considerable analysis before coming to this decision. I think, deep down, most of you secretly acknowledge that this could actually work, and that fear is driving all of the dismissive comments more than an actual belief that this will fail.
But then I realized the cable was blue, so I only gave it one star. I hate blue.
Ah yes, its okay to be liberally biased, but once there is a news outlet that is conservatively/republican biased, they ought to be shut down.
Hooray for double standards, hooray for beer.
As long as I don't get charged for drudgereport I'm okay.
People are paying to the tune of $100/month for TV+Internet packages. That's a lot of newspaper subscriptions. What everyone is clamoring for is predictable costs, quality assurance and predictable value. Let's say I want to learn more about release of journalists from North Korea. Do you really expect me to limit myself to your newspapers website? Say I use a search engine of my choice and see 20 promising links. Some go to newspapers, some go to blogs. If one link costs $4.95 and the other is free, do you really expect me to pay? Do you really expect me to pay $100 for 20 different newspapers just to follow up on one subject?
What newspaper publishers need to do is get off their butt and come up with a truly interoperable and convenient model of revenue sharing that addresses EVERYTHING - free access for casual browsers vs heavy regular readers, protection of users from extraordinary monthly charges, access for minors and citizens of countries without credit cards or convertible currency, fair use forwarding of and blogging about individual articles, no-questions-asked refunds for unintentional access or disappointing content. For-pay newspapers that are not in the system must be as rare as stores that don't accept Visa.
If this is too hard, well nobody is entitled to run a business except by releasing a product appealing to potential customers.
Considering his morals, Murdoch might as well be Satan.
The world will be a better place the day Murdoch finds himself penniless. I for one wouldn't pay him a dime, no matter what he passes off as "news". It used to be you could read the Wall Street Journal and actually get non-biased economic reports. Now they are so filtered and planted with all sorts of Pro-News Corporation slants that you simply can't trust the factual content of even their stock quotes.
"Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalising its ability to produce good reporting," he said.
so fox news will still be free, since it clearly MUST be cheap, and they long ago cannibalized their ability to produce good reporting.
the united states is a nation of laws; badly written and randomly enforced -- frank zappa
This should be the business model newspapers move to:
1) You are going to need less fluff [pieces in the printed paper. Fluff piece are every where, on every media type. You are no longer going to catch a lot of eyes with them. Unless the point of your business is fluff pieces.
2) You need to be aware of any biases creeping into your companies culture. With the internet, they get exposed fast, so be on top of it.
3) The printed paper is the beginning of stories. Put a more detail story on the internet. The paper grabs them and gives them an overall sense of a story, the internet ads details and facts. Now you are using both forms of media in what they are best for.
4) Follow up on stories. Lets say you ahve a strie on a product recall. A month later have the reporter write a follow-up. It doesn't ahve to be in depth, just the details of the fall out. The bonus of this is that if another story is developing out of it, the reporter is more likely to find it.
5) I should be able to read a story, and there should be links to related stories. You don't need links to everyplace from every page, stop it. It's too busy and distracting.
6) Put the comics on line as well as in the paper. Seriously, the internet gives comic artists a large canvas. Comics are instrumental to getting new readers. My kids love reading the comics every Sunday.
7) Get used to the fact that your revenw will change. If done correctly, it will go up. If you saturated your web comic with half done stories like most news papers have, you will fail.
8) stop raising your print rates to try and compensate for the loss of customers, this is only driving more customers away.
Both these media types can co exists.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Can you hear his toilet flusing?
you should read from several source and support government regulation limiting the number of news agencys that can be owned by an entity.
Ironic that you have a Fox News link in your sig.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Yes, this will relegate Newscorp to the (relatively!!!) obscure backwaters of the net. I think their popularity and traffic will plummet. But you can make money in the obscure backwaters of the net. Maybe he's thinking it's better to make money as a smalltime operator, than lose money as a bigtime operator. I don't really know exactly who his potential customers would be, but I do think such people really do actually exist.
After all, the net is full of free porn, but somehow porn is still a big business. Somebody's whipping out those credit cards. Enough of them? Beats me. I'm not a marketing guy. Rupert is one. Maybe he's wrong this time, but he's not stupid or none of us would have ever heard of him.
BTW, I think it's hilarious that people are complaining about how crappy Fox News is and how it doesn't measure up to real news. This is so irrelevant that it's not even funny. Fox News supplies something that some types of people eat up. Turn on your TV at "prime time" any night of the week, and you will see crap -- crap that apparently a lot of people watch so that the networks are able to charge their advertisers something for it. Somebody's actually watching the vote-someone-off-this-week game shows, and if you think nobody watches it, then you're as dumb as the people who watch it. If you judge Newscorp/Murdoch as someone in the news business, of course nothing he says makes sense. He's in the selling ads business. And he's thinking of getting into the subscriptions business. If the type of content he hires people to create isn't "news," don't worry about it.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Maybe they should do some research into ads that don't make me want to kick puppies.
You could make plenty of money on ads at one time, but those days are done. Ad rates are much more competitive now, and the field is stretched much farther on the Internet. "Everything should be free" isn't a way to make money. It was an illusion during the dot com bubble, and it's an illusion now. Even Google, who built their empire on ads, is trying to get away from the overreliance on advertising. They know as well that they can't continue to survive that way. Sooner or later, they'll have paid services as well.
Look at another of Murdoch's properties... the Wall Street Journal. Access to many articles online is available for paid subscribers only (full disclosure: I subscribe to the WSJ). Looking at profit and circulation for national papers, the WSJ has been one of only two newspapers whose circulation is actually increasing, while others are dropping every year, some as much as double digits per year. The Journal has made money every year except one during this decade, again, while other powerhouses like the NY Times have had to resort to things like leasing part of their new building to stay afloat. Murdoch views the websites as part of the paper business model, not separate from them, and he's the one that's been making money. All of his media properties make money, especially Fox. I'd say he's doing something right. In fact, I think much of the industry will follow his model. You'll have less traffic for the paid sites, but more profitability. If people think the content is worth it, they'll pay for it.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Suggesting that because Murdoch has been successful in the printed news buisness, he will automatically be successful in the online news business (if business there is) is just a fallacy. There is nothing that proves the guy has any understanding of the difference between the Internet and paper news. He just looks utterly lost and trailing behind, trying to keep his empire from falling apart under its own inertia.
What Murdoch probably does not see is that even if ALL the news sites became paid-for, people could still get a lot of their information for free. Who needs regurgitated press releases? You might as well read them yourself. Any "fluff" article usually lacks any sort of depth in old newspapers; blogs, which are mostly built for free as a hobby or which are part of a company's marketing strategy, will give far more insight than any article written by a clueless journalist. What exactly is missing to fill? Critics are a dime a dozen and I'm sure if the large news networks decided to ask for money, some other critics would fill their shoes for free. Oh, I know! You won't have your crosswords and "find the differences" games... Oh, that's sad isn't it?
The largest problem is that, since the very beginning, we have been monetizing information, something which cannot be monetized. Before the advent of the Internet, this was very possible through monetizing the medium that carries the information. However, the Internet changes this. Since anyone with 10 minutes on their hands can now produce any piece of information they want (no more do we need hundreds of hours to copy a book or huge presses to print the papers), information goes back to its free state. It's inevitable.
murdoch didn't become as powerful and influential as he did by completely misunderstanding new avenues of monetization.
Yeah, I mean, this is the guy who bought MySpace. And look what he's done with it! He is a force to be reckoned with! :)
They don't precisely give a rats ass about the average news seeker. They sell to a base, which is largely logging in through Juno (ifyanowadimeen) and willing to buy anything that spews out of Glen Beck's mouth. And they will. Their traffic numbers might drop, but I predict their revenue will hold even, if not increase, giving a few months lee for adoption of the new model by an EXTREMELY loyal customer base. The bullshit in those chain e-mails has gotta come from somewhere, after all. Now, trying to charge for their non-news media...that'd be teh crazy.
"So what you seem to be advocating is a move to a world with even less freedom of information than we had two decades ago."
They're not in the "freedom of information" business. They're a for-profit business. They sell. They're not a charity. What' you're essentially arguing for is a kind of socialism of information. That's not what they do. They're here to make money. They're not interested in your revolution. Contrary to the revolutionary slogans, "information wants to be free" is utopian claptrap. More information will be free, but the glorious paradise where we have to pay for nothing is never coming. As I mentioned earlier, ads alone won't get it anymore. Even the Internet advertising powerhouses... Google, etc... are moving away from the ads-only model to more paid services. You can say "information wants to be free" all you like, but people want to be paid.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Actually, he jumped into an already established avenues of revenue generation. Yes, he made a lot of money, and gamed it but it wasn't a new way of doing things.
There is no evidence he has every made a penny on new forms of revenue generation.
His statements in the last few years certianly imply he is clueless about the internet and how people use it.
He might be saying this to keep stocks high for a while as he tries to get out. I cans ee that, and it would be the second smartest thing.
If he was good at exploring new revue opportunities, then he would use the physical and internet media together. I listed some more details in a previous post.
Bear in mind, one of Murdoch's goals is to push his agenda through controlled media outlets. I suspect it's the wide competition to actual facts that keeps him up at night.. plus I suspect sleeping on a pile money isn't really the comfortable~
I would argue the MS doesn't know how to market a profitable OS in a market it doesn't have dominance in.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The mainstream broadcast media has their problems, and certainly biases, but nobody else in broadcast media working on an out-and-out agenda at the scale that Fox works.
It's too bad. We'd all be better off if they were all out-front with their agendas.
I used to worry about picayune shades of meaning in how a story was analyzed, until I realized that the real agenda is to be had in what is reported and not reported.
As an example, a few years ago I was driving between jobs at noon with the talk station on, and CNN Radio News was reporting that Sandy Berger had been apprehended coming out of the National Archives for unauthorized removal of materials. Next story.
My thought was, "c'mon, give the guy a break, he probably left a paper in his briefcase, an innocent mistake."
Rush Limbaugh came on right after the news and lead off with "Sandy Berger has been caught with classified documents stuffed down his pants and in his socks." Having heard the 'real' story, I thought, "there goes Rush again with his hyperbole."
Until I got back to the office a few hours later and read Google News, and realized that it was actually CNN that was derelict in its duty to report the facts. Checking back on the CNN website, their story at the time still did not reflect the nature of the crime. Only much later, when it was on all the other news channels, did they update.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Didn't know they had any "news" sites. This sounds like a great plan though. Fox News aficionados are not exactly known for their strong minds. I'm sure they'll be more than happy to pay for their "news".
And the rest of us won't have to be bothered with links to their content anymore. Win-win all round.
... if you're stupid enough to get your news from Murdoch's websites, you're stupid enough to pay for them.
That is all.
This news item is oddly refreshing. It's because of my fellow netizens that, for once, I am not at all worried about what this might portend for the future. Seriously, if people don't want to pay for music, what makes anyone think that news media will be any different? In news, there is even less of an inherent monopoly regarding the content's source, and it's even easier to transmit on a whim, for free (gratis). Sure, Murdoch will end up making some money, but I expect this is a flawed business model, and it is certainly Yet Another desperate attempt at recovering the information/entertainment-distribution status quo.
I actually like Fox news, but this is an idiotic move.
they probably would make a special report day how the world got better once after the death of this communist hippie.
"Today's crime news: a gang of three thieves was executed, including their communist ringleader. Pontus Pilate could not be reached for comment, although Pharisees on the scene commented that thievery was a serious problem and these crucifixions would prove to be a benefit to the local community. And back to you, Bathsheba!"
"Thanks for that story.. why can't people behave... tsk tsk..."
I sense some cognitive dissonance here. You say, "[H]aving newspapers that are controlled by a wealthy megacorp oligarchy is the exact opposite of [an informed citizenry]. And your sig says, "This video reveals Obama's Real Agenda in his own words" with a link to... foxnews.
It looks like you're trying to inform the citizenry by sending them to news controlled by a wealthy megacorp oligarchy. Maybe I'm missing something. It's early.
but seriously suggesting that murdoch, who's made his fortune in making news profitable and is the biggest media mogul on the planet, doesn't understand how to monetize news successfully after ahow many years of news sites experiences is to me goofy in the extreme. you might as well suggest that redmond doesn't understand how to market a profitable OS.
Actually, you might as well suggest that redmond doesn't understand how to market non-OS non-office software outside their traditional markets. And MS has a very spotty record in that regard. A few shining successes but many, many failures.
So, yeah. Murdoch makes fat bank in print and television news -- that's his Windows and Office. He apparently is finding it very hard to continue to make money in print -- akin to Microsoft no longer finding Windows profitable and struggling to find a new revenue source of equal magnitude to replace it. Would you assume they can do that, when they've been trying and failing for decades?
So Murdoch is now attempting to expand out of his traditional markets. Is it going to work? Why assume it is? When his brilliant idea is "take the same shit, put up a pay wall and pray people don't just go to free online news sources instead!" I don't think it's unfair or goofy to question his judgment. Goofy is thinking people will click the Fox News link on Google News, see a pay wall, sign up and shell over the cash, in order to read the exact same fucking AP feed article the person could have gotten for free by clicking the next link down.
The enemies of Democracy are
I wonder how many of the people commenting here run multi-billion dollar media machines...
Read the article here: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/21 and maybe you will understand how Rupert manages to sleep at night losing all that money...
Americans don't say "grey". We fought a war.
Find the quote marks.
Perhaps a better analogy isn't "shades of grey" as much as color vs. grayscale.
And why is it any more sensible to assume that political opinions can only come in Black, White or (sic) Grey? What's wrong with Magenta? Or Orange? Or Midnight Blue?
Exactly my point. But how would one map the colors such that "red" points to the US Republican platform and "blue" to the US Democratic platform?
Other newspapers may be persuaded by this move to start charging for their content, too, but honestly - who is going to pay for news content when the world's greatest media institution the BBC is giving it away for free? Not only is their news content unbiased and impartial (something which is bound by law and overseen by an independent body), but their content is often richer than that provided by the newspapers. Video and audio clips are available for a lot of their articles.
The only thing the BBC lacks is an opinions/editorials section, but honestly I'd rather form my own opinion than be told what to think by someone else.
it cumulatively helps you understand how the world works, making you a better person
If you define 'better person' as one who is happy, well adjusted and is nice to and trusting of others, then I doubt it. I'm pretty sure the more news you consume, the 'worse' you become.
If you define 'better person' as one who does critical analysis before casting a vote to improve society, then you may be right. However, I contend few people define 'better' in this way.
I mean, who would YOU rather hang out with?
FoxNews for Britney is like email from friends or family for you or me. FoxNews is still mostly about Britney. Maybe little bit at the end about American Idol.
Murdoch bought MySpace in 2005 for $580 million...I wouldn't put any money into Murdoch's internet instincts.
You, my friend, need to separate money from buzz.
I'd be happy if my web site made what myspace makes today, and I'd bet you'd be happy if your web site made what myspace makes today too.
And the fact is, since Murdoch bought myspace in 2005 for about 600 million, he's gotten nearly a billion from Google for advertising, plus even this year he's still picking up about 500M in revenue. Myspace may not be as "hip" as facebook, but its still making a good chunk of change.
This is my sig.
Anonymous Coward says "We'll not care and go somewhere else instead"
Behold, the death of another business, due to inflexibility ,ignorance ,greed and refusal to evolve.
I swear, the attitude that you can beat the world into submission rather than the attitude " be like water and take the shape of the glass" is the undoing of all these erstwhile "citizen Kanes". One would think that someone with so much to lose would be smarter than that.
Oh well, another industry almost as dead as the music industry. We have only to gain from what follows.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
I'm actually glad to see Murdoch doing this.
I want to read insightful, investigative reporting, and I am willing to pay for it. That kind of reporting is very important in an democracy. It can help keep big power players honest. See, for example, the Watergate scandal. Unfortunately, good investigative reporting is expensive. And web news does not seem to generate enough revenue to pay for it. Motivated online volunteers can fill some of this gap, especially for national issues. Local issues, however, are another matter.
For example, my hometown has a small, community newspaper. It follows things like school board elections and city council scandals. I would be a fool to trust it for national news. However, it is better than any other print or online source at keeping the local government on its toes. If that newspaper disappeared, I doubt any online replacement would appear. If that happened, my home town would be weaker for it, not in any abstract philosophical sense, but in the very real sense that the local government would be less effective and more corrupt, because there would be fewer checks on official misconduct.
I know that not all news organizations are pure-hearted or good. I I do not really care for Fox News in particular, and I do not care whether Murdoch personally succeeds or fails. But I do know that the current news business models cannot support good investigative journalism, and I suspect that the answer will have to be some sort of subscription model. My hope is that now that a big player like Murdoch is giving it a try, others will also experiment. Hopefully, something effective will come out of this.
This guy knows what he's talking about. They will not charge for everything, but certainly for 'premium' content. Whatever that is.
So are they charging for MySpace now too? Doesn't really matter since no one uses it anymore and those who do are young kids and white trash.
Even if the Old Media died off, people would still want their infotainment snippets, celebrity gossip, etc.
The Old Media is giving people exactly what they want. Insight is bias, analysis is boring, research is for nerds and the public doesn't care about that nerdy stuff. Ask any Average Joe if they see a problem with the news, few will (and most who do will say "because it has a lib'rul bias!"), most love it and are absolutely riveted.
"Ooh a small plane crashed somewhere! Explosions! Russians subs on the same side of the planet as the US, will there be war!?!? ZOMG HAX, Twitter is down, is nothing sacred to these awful scary hackers!?!? Dead celebrity! What was in his bloodstream, TELL ME, I'LL GLUE MY FUCKING FACE TO THE SCREEN UNTIL I GET EVERY DETAIL!!!"
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
When I read that, I didn't think of Nazis, I thought of what Hansel and Gretel did to that poor witch!
The enemies of Democracy are
good luck with that Rupert - I'm not sure you've twigged that the most successful sites get their money (or no money at all!) from other ways/methods. the commercial aspect of even web 3.0 has still not been decided...and there will always be tools to ensure information on the web is available freely on the web to all other web people. thats the idea of the web.
newspapers are important because democratic dialogue is important. but democratic dialogue is not a one-way broadcast from well-funded corporations to a passive citizenry with no venue to discuss or refute what is being broadcast. democracy is participatory; corporate-run news media are not. so to everyone who is waving an american flag to arouse public sympathy for these information monopolies - nigga please.
But will it be enough to keep them out of bankruptcy as they piss off the other 98% of the world?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Rupert Murdoch is well aware that people who watch FOX news will buy anything.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
The primary purpose of Fox News is to manipulate the electorate to the greatest extent possible. You can't do that behind a paywall. Murdoch's other properties will subsidize it so you'll always have your O'Reilly.
Your honour. He did wilfully pass on the information owned and sold by my client in a verbal exchange between colleagues at his place of work. We see no difference between this illegal distribution of our copyrighted content and that of digital media online and would therefore appeal to this court for a similar sum of compensation as set by precedent of these cases totalling $2,000,000 per news story discussed.
First they came for the ... but I did not speak out because I was not a ...
Haha, people don't even want to register for free to view articles on the new york times... I really don't think this'll fly.
I know he is a huge jerk and his reaction is at best short sighted.
People, IMO, will stay away from any site that charges for everything. A good example is WSJ. I never go near the site after a couple of years ago they want $$ for a 1 paragraph story that showed up in the journal. I had already paid for the paper. What I ended up doing was scanning the 1 paragraph "story" into text and sent it to my friends (who already get the journal) but had not seen it.
I will also do the same for any site that charges. I know he is a money grubbing a** but now he has tipped the boat to far.
Manufacturers of Buggy whips, electric typewriters, elevator operators, and Kodachrome film (the last one I will miss). They all had outstanding products. They are all gone. Times changed. News Corporation is hoping for 'pay for content'. He is trying to own the tide as it comes in on the beach. Just open your arms real wide, and keep others from the water. Real wide. Hey, you! Over there, that tide is mine! Seriously, Rupert is maybe just a bit out of touch with this one.
Not so. In rural communities, the tax burden of a paid fire department would be unaffordable. The volunteer fire brigade is a vital and respected part of the community.
Slashdot entertains. Windows pays the mortgage.
NFW do I watch fox news and their biased baloney. I certainly won't pay for it! Bye bye, Rupert!!
News is free on TV? Why can't it be free on the Internet. If they ask for money they will lose over 50% of their current readers. There are many, many other sources that are free, and frankly its not that important. My life goes on the same whether I know whats going on in the world or not.
actually: you are artificially--and incorrectly--limiting the scope of news corp's holdings to print journalism, when that's far true. ever heard of a small media outlet known as fox"news"? which, incidentally, has its own website? :>
So what he is saying is that they will charge people who are brainless for articles available elsewhere? But what he doesn't say is how they will be charged. And very likely if you have a newspaper account you will get access to that paper for free.
He's saying News run a hopeless online classified business. He's saying 'we are a greedy bunch of corporate take-over merchants who have no place in the modern world'. He's saying News is only for those that can afford it.
We are talking about a lot of sites here. News is a major magazine publisher. They would not be making such an announcement if there wasn't research and a 'great' plan behind it. They rely on those sites for consumer feedback.
The question is "do News underestimate the internet or do we underestimate News?"
...he's a program! Sorry, had to join in the fun.
The old argument "Oh yeah? Well, the rest of the media is just as biased and incorrect in the opposite direction" only works if you ignore the total lack of journalistic credibility by FOX News. They recently went into a court case and argued that it was their constitutional right to fire journalists for refusing to lie. It never ceases to amaze me that there are still people in this world who take FOX News seriously.
Hell, FOX "News" pioneered the main tactics for producing a news show without having to hire all those pesky expensive journalists. Sadly, many of these tactics have been adopted by the other two major "news" cable channels, which is just one more reason to never use cable news of any sort as your primary source for information.