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."
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha! Hahahaha! Hahahahaha! LOL!
This experiment has been tried over the last few decades (ever since the papers discovered the commercial Internet) and has failed miserably every time. Some magazines/papers even closed their doors after they tried it because they invested too much money in something that had 0 return on investment and alienated their existing audience that was actually paying their bills.
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This is being presented as a fact, but its merely a oppinion based on insider information. No where it states any real numbers. Dont get me wrong, I dont agree with Murdoch's ways but that doesnt warrant factless bashing.
Who would have thought people would object to paying for information (or the closest Murdoch equivalent thereof; this guy owns Fox News) that is also provided for free?
It's doing exactly what it was designed to (although making it hard for legitimate subscribers to access the content sounds like it needs tweaking). The crashing failure is the business model. What Murdoch seems to have not understood is that while he can put up the price of the paper product and only lose a small proportion of his customers, sothe difference between a price of 50p and 51p is small, but on the internet the difference between 0p and 1p is huge.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
In other news - water is (usually) wet, deserts are (usually) dry, and The TaxMan Cometh!
The world is FULL of idiots.
Even rich ones.
Lemme give the man a (free, even) clue: On the one side, he wants to *get paid* for all the Free News his "papers" are putting onto "the web". On the other hand he completely ignores all the FREE EYEBALLS that search engines like Google bring to his website.
While incessantly whining about people who 'want something for nothing', what he actually does is treat "free eyeball traffic" as being "worth nothing". Small Wonder His Website No Longer Gets Eyeballs.
Murdock: HEY GOOGLE, STOP SENDING EYEBALLS TO MY WEBSITE without paying me for my content
Google: You had me at "stop sending eyeballs to my website" - all you had to do was ask.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
...that they probably only need a fraction of their former readers to subscribe to make the same money they were making on advertising. I doubt literally 'nobody' has subscribed and I think it's going to take a bit longer to see if they've hit the magic number where they match/surpass their previous earnings.
Lower prices would help, but that doesn't explain why the subscribers that get free access weren't going in their either. It's easy to say the price is too high, but when the people that have free access aren't using it either, you have to think that it's something else that's going on.
So I'm expecting the usual reaction from the Slashdot audience cheering the gloriously free nature of information on the net and our ability to stick it to the man. And don't get me wrong, I'm a (free) news junkie myself. But how sustainable is the current paradigm? . I'm asking a sincere question, as the journalists really do have to get paid eventually. Advertisers? Probably not with the click rates the way they are nowadays. I don't see any any alternative to Murdoch's vision - other than some of the micropayment schemes that have been proposed. As the media outlets adjust to the new world and figure out ways to regulate, it's hard to see how this vision is anything but inevitable.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
Remember Murdoch constantly advocating that other publications go for a paywall. This is why: if he puts things behind a paywall, then he'll be creamed in the marketplace, but if everyone does it then everyone will be forced to pay somebody, thus creating a market for Internet news.
Of course, he's being an idiot, because there's this little organization called the BBC which provides very good coverage and is publicly controlled.
I am officially gone from
David Mitchell badly misunderstands the news business which is scary as they seem to let him write for major news organizations.
The news has always been free.
The subscription cost (often barely) covered the printing and distribution costs. The Internet is the printer and distributor now, so this is essentially free. That is to say, we don't pay the paper any longer, we pay the ISP. The ads paid for news in the paper era, and Google's income and market cap lead me to believe that there is some potential for ad revenue on the internet.
I question Mr. Mitchel's intellectual honesty in this matter. He suggests that if the pay-walls don't work we'll be left with amateur bloggers writing 'shit'. That is one massive false dichotomy and reveals his true paper-age view of the world. More of my time is spent on blogs than at traditional media outlets [ /. !! ]. /. , this post included :) ] . There will just be less papers reprinting the exact same article (sure there's pure mooches, but who really goes there? really?).
Will there continue to be a shake-up in the news business? Absolutely. More papers will die off, more editors, copy-guys etc will lose their jobs. That doesn't mean all we will be left with is amateur bloggers writing shit [there's enough of that here on
The Internet is a disruptive force (I believe mostly for the better) that allows for more efficient dissemination of information. In other words, the news should get cheaper as it costs less to obtain it. Since the news was already free I can actually foresee a day when readers get paid to read a site - as in news will be cheaper than free. My justification for this? Commercial over-the-air radio pays it's listeners via contests, prizes and give-aways. Google now pays companies to use it's maps. Etc. etc. eTc.
Free isn't a business model, but it has always been and will always be part of many effective and profitable business models. Stop getting hung up on the 'free' part and see the whole.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
Because having to fill in forms--any forms--just to look at something on a website is something people just will not do. I think what is really important is not how much they charge (although it does seem a little steep), but is the hassle factor, having to go an find your coupon or whatever is just a pain in the neck. Totally not worth the hassle for most people.
Until there is a micro-payment system that's as easy as no payment at all (like say, the iTunes Store compared to your choice of P2P), there isn't going to be any headway in getting people to pay for this stuff.
Dramatically fewer people reading Murdoch's crap, and he's still not making any money.
Looks like success from where I'm sitting.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
No, the economist IS far right. Libertarian and far-right have been merged, both because they *espouse* "small government" but merely as an opposition to "small corporation". They both want government to be replaced by corporations and want them AS BIG AS POSSIBLE. Hence, the Mil-Ind complex gets big spending: though "big government", this benefits companies not government, making the government the one-stop-shop for company profiles.
They aren't skeptical of the proposed MEASURES because they only asked RHETORICAL "would they be effective?" just so that NOTHING WOULD BE DONE. Because that would be interference by government in company business. A very far right thing to do.
"Being skeptical is not necessarily 'denying'" Indeed they aren't. The IPCC scientists are skeptical of the papers supporting AGW. But to deny the evidence is not skepticism. And despite all the evidence, the Economist still doesn't think there's enough proof. This is DENIAL.
Consumer Reports is another periodical website that uses the subscription model (though in that case it is because they don't accept advertising so their reviews can be truly independent). What they have in common with WSJ, Economist and various scientific/medical journals is that they offer highly specialized data to a niche market that is willing to pay a premium for it. General interest newspapers and magazines do not fall into that category which is why the advertising-based model works much better for them.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
On non-economic topics, why would you expect them to be any better than your local newspaper?
The thing is, there are huge and far-reaching implications economic depending on how much humanity needs to adjust carbon output. So a magazine like the economist would, naturally, seek to fully vette theories that are going to drive major policy changes.
There are very few topics at this point in time that are not at the core economic issues, because everything impacts government policy and regulation these days.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Rupert and Son have been travelling the world making a lot of noise about copyright and "unfair competition" for the last couple of years and amoung other things those that listened seriously cut back BBC news online in response. This latest paywall effort is about making more noise and he doesn't really care much if his newspapers bleed a little more money while he rakes in the TV, movie and even ISP cash. All this noise is about making life difficult for competitors for the advertising dollar - he really wants to influence enough people to pass laws that will kick google in the teeth.
He's an old bastard but not a stupid one or even out of touch. He's always operated with a collection of experts on any topic that will get him commercial advantage, and on the internet side he bought an ISP in 1993. I hate the guy since he bought a controlling share and gutted a software company I worked for in 2000, but he's no idiot and he's playing a game to influence governments to tightly control the internet to raise the condition of entry to where eventually only very large companies can compete.
He's playing the game to damage google and stop anything like it from emerging from a small start ever again
If the site was smartly built the paper subscribers shouldn't have to go through a registration process at all.
Type in your choice of unique identifier - subscriber number off the label, home phone number, OR credit card number.
"We found a matching subscription - is this you? Yes/No"
Slap a cookie on the browser - done. No password required.
Yes, someone could fake their way in using just this info, but compared to people not using the site AT ALL it's a minimal concern. If there's a feature on the site that involve some one-off charges THEN you hit the user up for harder verification. Otherwise, keep it simple.
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
That means:
1. NO ADVERTISING. If you advertise, particularly the annoying, video and sound (with those extra annoying pop-up - or worse pop-out crap), your customers are the advertisers and my attention is what you are selling. Why should I have to pay you so that you can IRRITATE and ANNOY me by selling MY attention? NO. Adverising is a great, perfectly fine way to pay for FREE content. It is NOT an acceptable way to make some extra money on top of what you charge me.
2. NO TRACKING ME. Again, if I am paying you for a service, that means I don't want you to invade myprivacy. You don't track what I read or when. No record keeping of anything I do. You are allowed to count how many people click on a story, but not whether the same person clicks on story X as also clicks on story Y.
3. Video and sound should all be accompanied by printed summaries. Deaf people (and blind people using text-to speech converter programs) are important customers too and some of us don't like the video - it takes too much time, is lazy, and if I wanted that I would turn on the TV.
4. Better, in depth writing that does not accept stupid statements. Don't just accept statements, VERIFY them. (i.e. treat each of the people you quote the way Politifact.org does and when they give numbers make sure they are telling the truth.) When someone says something really stupid like "this snow storm in the heart of winter disproves global warming", call them on it YOURSELF, don't simply get an opposing point of view.
The Internet did not kill newspaper, a combination of poor writing and advertisers did (the advertisers would rather spend 5 cents to talk sell diapers to pregnant women than 10 cents to sell diapers to everyone). Those same forces rule the internet news market - as long as you let them. If you want to recreate the pay-news market, you need to avoid the problems that killed the newspaper.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Previously all the papers used the AP/Reuters because the AP covered issues the local paper couldn't. No one cared that everyone used the AP because people didn't read out of state newspapers.
Now the model has shifted. Everyone can read anyone's newspapers, but everyone is annoyed that all you get from any "local" newspaper is the same AP feed (some who charge for it and some who do not). I can see that small papers dropping the AP feed because it isn't useful to them any more. The bandwidth cost to carry information that everyone else has isn't worth it. Then the paper becomes a "local paper" or a "niche paper" again that can justify charging for its content. It will be able to charge because it is covering things that are locally important that you can't get anywhere else.
The AP on the other hand is going to have a problem: With all the small papers dropping them as a source of revenue, they will have to find another way to support themselves. I don't know what that is but they will have to scramble to get it done.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
Because there are less people reading the Times, fewer publicists are directing people to be interviewed at the Times. If you know people are reading the Guardian and not the Times and you want to get your message out, you go to the Guardian because more eyes are going to see your message. That is going to set up a feedback loop where people say "hey, the guardian has more content than the Times does, why am I reading the times." Then fewer people produce content for the Times, fewer people read the Times, etc etc etc.
It is hard to develop a user base when you seem to be actively driving away readers and by extension the people who develop your content.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
SO... when Fox News is redressed for the inaccuracy of their 'reporting', they run and hide by claiming that their shows are 'opinion', and that there should be no expectation of accuracy
I do not see any other News program using that same excuse, so NO I am not a partisan shill and yes the other NEWS networks are many scintillas better
Maybe you missed this story yesterday:
http://idle.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/07/14/1235220
It seems the people get so accustomed to the lies that Fox spreads, that they are unable to accept the truth when they are exposed to it. If that is not damaging America, then I do not know what would
Wherever You Go, There You Are
The other point is that many governments like to fund their own state news outlets. There are many of these with perhaps the BBC being the most famous. Even if all the private news outlets disappear, people will just fall back onto the BBC, Russia Today etc. When it comes to certain news stories they like to peddle their own propaganda of course, but that is the case with most of the media anyway.
Ok right at the top of this 'journalists' article:
Will his paywall work is the biggest story in the media business, and it would be quite a journalistic coup to document the progress, or lack thereof, that's being made in trying to convince a skeptical world to shell out 2£ ($3) a week for what's heretofore been free.
If this is the kind of crap that 'free' journalism produces I'd gladly pay for something written by someone who can actually construct readable sentences...
This guy is a blogger who likes to think he is a journalist. Ehm... like most of them I guess...
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.