Charging for content: The Death of News Corporation
Australian news outlets were slow to adopt online broadcasting. I remember the early days of news.com.au being not much more then a link farm to overseas news sites.
These days nothing much has changed. Sure they fluff out the articles a bit more and actually publish them instead of just linking to them with a summary but the premise is the same. Headline content is mostly syndicated from mostly Associated Press or other international sources.
On the back of such lacklustre local reporting and content, a few days ago News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch announced that the era of free online news was over.
Not surprisingly the public backlash has been fiercely negative.
News corp has always been behind the eight ball when it comes to their adventures on the internet.
Their biggest blunder to date was the acquisition of Myspace for a staggering US$580 million back in 2005. The idea was that Myspace was to become an advertising cash cow for News Corp. You know, because tech-savvy teenagers are such an easily targetable market.
Needless to say Myspace faded into obscurity and by 2008 was overtaken by Facebook. These days Myspace is an old relic populated with millions of horrendously hard to navigate ugly pages that look like something from the Geocities era.
Over the last three months Myspace hemorrhaged $680 million over the last three months. Given Myspaces lack of popularity, leadership and relevance in the social media marketplace, I don’t see this improving any time soon.
On the back of such huge losses and a $3.4 billion dollar loss due to advertising sales declining over the last financial year across the board, Murdoch announced enough is enough. Australian’s are going to have to pay for their online news.
“Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalising its ability to produce good reporting,” he said.
“The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels but it has not made content free. We intend to charge for all our news websites.”
By the evening news.com.au had backtracked on approved published comments and edited out over half of them. At around 10pm comments had been visibly removed altogether and withdrawn entirely from publication.
Due to a weakness in news.com.au’s content management system the published comments can still be seen here.
Hahaha…this is the funniest thing i’ve heard in ages…does he actually think everyone will pay?? We can get news from any number of websites. Good luck Rupert you’ll need it!
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Using Youtube for references = quality journalism?! ROFL
The New York Times tried charging for premium content and that didn’t work out. If a quality paper like the NYTimes cannot make the pay- for- content model work, there is no chance people will pay for news.com.au
- Star couple in mid-air scare – Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore are on a plane that makes an emergency landing in Las Vegas, they then post on Twitter about it.
- Burglars take urn with burial ashes – Thieves make off with some ashes… national news!
- Bored Lotto Winner wants Maccas Job – Some rich guy complaining about how boring his life is.
- All Things Giant – featuring AP photos and Youtube still from clips.
- Gerrard Gosens, Jessica Raffa to ignore Dancing With The Stars judges – Some blind guy on a dancing show vowes to ignore judges criticism – LIFE CHANGING!
- PM unsure wife can stomach his speeches – Kevin Rudd’s wife goes to hospital with stomach bug, then he posts about it on Twitter.
Yes I can see Australian’s lining up in droves to pay for access such quality, original content.
Murdoch sites the Wall Street Journal as a subscription success story and seems to lean on the idea that once News Corp is charging for online news in Australia, everyone will be doing it.
The Wall Street Journal serves a financial niche, for many finance industry workers it is must read news as analysis of the content can potentially lead to loss or earnings.
To compare the current state of tabloid trash news we get in Australia to a financial industry institution is a bit much don’t you think Rupert?
The New York Times, the most popular newspaper site on the internet, tried a subscription model for their column service TimesSelect. Introduced in in 2005, after two years it was pulled.
If the most popular Newspaper site in the world cannot make a pay-to-read model work in the large US media market, what hope do Australian news services have?
If the comments to the breaking story are anything to go by, the bottom line is Australian’s aren’t going to pay for online news content. Just because you compile YouTube video collections, scour Twitter for daily stories on celebrities or report on the latest social media trends along with your syndicated AP stories does not mean all of a sudden you have unique quality journalism.
I personally source a lot of ideas from news.com.au as I find it a convenient collection of news stories, despite having to sort through the increasing Twitter/Youtube/Tabloid garbage they report on. Damned if I’m paying for it though, there’s alternatives to be found in Fairfax and the ABC.
Absolute worst case scenario and everyone starts charging for online news access well hell, there’s always free to air tv bulletins and overseas media.
Murdoch wants to get the pay-for-news model off the ground sometime within the next twelve months, should it go ahead I predict News Corp and it’s online publications will simply follow Myspace’s fall into obscurity and irrelevance.
I don’t really see this idea catching on and everyone following suit. RIP News Corp.
August 8th, 2009 at 5:59 pm Chris(Quote)
I think one of the problems with news resource costs is the underlying Associate Press.
Here’s a couple humorous links (I hope you dont’ mind)
http://daggle.com/ap-1750-quote-1261
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/08/02/associated-press-wil-1.html
August 8th, 2009 at 6:03 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
If News Corporation were giving us quality journalism instead of rehashed AP content, then it wouldn’t really matter what AP were charging them would it?
Instead the greedy bastards have over time devolved into buying cheapest possible content producing model and now want to charge us a premium for it.
August 8th, 2009 at 6:17 pm Chris(Quote)
You’re right. Whatever happened to the days off cutting-edge local journalism and investigations? Is the rubbish we get on ACA/TT the best they can do?
These days every news bulletin reports the same headlines, and every paper has the same stories. I feel for the people who studied Journalism at uni for 3 years, only to be thrust in to the boring job of re-writing AP content.
August 8th, 2009 at 7:16 pm V(Quote)
News.com.au is typo central. The proofreaders need to be sacked. I see so many mistakes slip through on ‘news’ posts it isn’t funny and I’m not even talking about punctuation etc but basic spelling errors. A news headline the this week had the word “Inernet” instead of Internet. Sheesh.
I expect journalists to at the very minimum to produce news without spelling mistakes that would have been easily picked up if someone had proofread prior to posting.
August 8th, 2009 at 7:23 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
Did you guys read about news.com.au’s mouse found living in an ATM story today?
I heard ACA are offering to pay $200,000 for the mouse’s story and Woolworths are looking at signing the mouse on for celebrity grocery endorsements in reponse to Coles’ latest effort.
August 10th, 2009 at 6:57 pm peter wickens(Quote)
Some years ago I saw an interview on TV with the writer Dennis Potter,who was dying of cancer.
He was a journalist whoes paper was taken over by Rupert Murdoch.
His view of Murdoch was quite straight forward,he said,quote”I would kill him given the opportunity”.
At the time I was shocked by this statement,at so much hatred generated by one person.
Now I understand,almost singlehandedly the wiley Rupert has reduced his own stable of publications to gutter press status and regrettably left others playing catchup.
News Corp. appeals to and also fuels the worst traits in the human animal.
Consolidation of so many print organs into so few hands is a dangerous condition for any population,truth being the casualty.