Slashdot Mirror
Murdoch's UK Paywall a Miserable Failure
David Gerard writes "As part of his war against free, Rupert Murdoch put the Times and Sunday Times of London behind a paywall. Michael Wolff of Newser asks how that's working out for him. You can guess: miserable failure: 'Not only is nobody subscribing to the website, but subscribers to the paper itself — who have free access to the site — are not going beyond the registration page. It's an empty world.' Not that this wasn't entirely predictable." Update: 07/17 01:41 GMT by T : Frequent contributor Peter Wayner writes skeptically that the Newsday numbers should be looked at with a grain of salt: "I believe they were charging $30/month for the electronic edition and $25/month for the dead tree edition which also offered free access to the electronic edition. In essence, you had to pay an extra $5 to avoid getting your lawn littered with paper. The dead tree edition gets much better ad rates and so it is worth pushing. It's a mistake to see the raw numbers and assume that the paywall failed."
Oh, maaaan, Slashdot, this is so, so, wrong. Lookit:
Michael Wolff was paid a huge sum to write a bio of Murdoch a few years back, "The Man Who Owns the News." It ended up becoming the "Heaven's Gate" of publishing: Wolff was paid a million dollars in advance, and it sold horribly. As a result, Wolff became a pariah amongst publishers, and he has had a jones against Murdoch ever since. He started "Newser" -- an online news aggregation site, sort of a Drudge Report, but with pictures and short summaries written by semi-literate snarky hipster interns -- specifically as a response to the "old-fashioned" way that Murdoch did business. Wolff writes a column there daily; like, every third or fourth one is some screed, equal parts vitriolic and smug, predicting failure for everything Murdoch is involved with. If Murdoch issued a statement saying that "Gravity is a Good Thing," Wolff would find some way to either argue against it or poke fun at it.
Of course, it doesn't make matters any better that Wolff had an affair with one of those aforementioned interns a few years back that was made public -- and kept public, arguably far longer than an extra-marital affair involving a "C"-level journalist should have been -- by the Murdoch-owned NY Post. Wolff's wife (a divorce lawyer!! (he's obviously not the sharpest pen in the inkwell)) left him and took him to the cleaners.
Nobody who knows anything about Murdoch or NYC journalism takes anything Wolff has to say seriously when he's in "Murdoch mode." Kind of like asking the Sheriff of Nottingham to give a measured opinion about that guy "Robin Hood."
If you want free real-time access to stock pricing information, just throw a little money into a ScotTrade account. You don't even have to actually buy anything and they pay you interest on the money as well.
-Unresolved symbol? Byte me!
Agreed. The "Wall Street Journal" has morphed into "Wall Street People Magazine" and useful to line my cat litter box and stuff packages containing fragile items but not much more. FT is still tolerable if you want information about the economy, but don't want to have ultraconservative delusional thinking shoved down your throat as "Investor's Business Daily" does.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
They also fell heads-over-heel for Obama.
That's not quite accurate. They strongly supported John McCain until it became obvious that Palin was sinking his ship. Their support for Obama has always been critical and muted.
Except for the testimony of the UN weapons inspectors
You should try reading the report right before the invasion. There wasn't a smoking gun, and the inspectors wanted more time, but they also noted that Saddam had to be dragged kicking and screaming the whole way to let the inspectors do their work. Saddam didn't do himself any favors by acting like he had something to hide.
Saddam, being a strongman, was trying to avoid looking weak to his subjects and to the larger Arab world. He had too much invested in the appearance of having a WMD program to just up and go, "Hah! Just kidding!"
Yes, the weapons inspectors wanted more time, because when it comes to prosecuting a war of choice -- and that's what it was -- they wanted to be certain. Bush of course just wanted to "Get Saddam" and couldn't stand waiting for diplomacy and inspections.