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Re: Will You Pay For News Online? Rupert Murdoch Says You Will

Chris Wilkins — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 06:19:15 -0000

The problem with free content is eventually there will be no news. A journalist who is starving because he got fired from his local paper is not going to keep blogging for altruistic reasons. He will go off and do something else.

And online advertising is just not cutting it. If it was, all the thousands of fired journalists would get a blog, put adsense on, and away they go. But they aren't. So advertising can't be the cure for this.

What about the idea of micropayments and getting some fair exchange going? Is it really totally unfair to pay a journalist a cent or two to read an article they spent the better part of a day writing?

Re: Will You Pay For News Online? Rupert Murdoch Says You Will

jefbrown — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 18:34:01 -0000

It may indeed happen, but not at the behest of Rupert Murdoch. If the legitimate press collapses from lack of revenue, what the world will be left with is nothing but crap journalism, inuendo and unverifiable false alarms (you can already see a rise in this). But likely only after this jounalism cull will a market emerge that will pay for verifiable, reliable "Walter Cronkite" news.

Re: Will You Pay For News Online? Rupert Murdoch Says You Will

doktormcnasty — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 09:38:03 -0000

you need to tone it down with the pirate-slagging, mate.

Re: Will You Pay For News Online? Rupert Murdoch Says You Will

Robert — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:37:06 -0000

He's gonna buy Twitter and charge you to tweet and to read tweets!

Re: Will You Pay For News Online? Rupert Murdoch Says You Will

Castemelijn — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 04:22:46 -0000

Paying for news content is my opinion one of the worst things you can do as a newspaper. If you're running a news agency, one of the key values you need is openness. If you can provide your content to the world in a fast an easy way, your news will be evaluated next to other news agencies. This empowers the objectivity of your article (which is a basic rule among good journalism), and makes your company strive for more originality and more profoundness in the article. Competition in the news world makes news better, more reliable and profounder. And paying for news does exactly the opposite, cause no one will pay two subscriptions, just to lay 2 articles side by side and check if they hit the same points.
It is the task of a news agency to find a way to earn money while staying open and reliable to the world. And this is not hard: look at how the Guardian has opened up their API. This makes their content easy to share, yet they include advertisements in the content as well, which let them earn money.
And apart from that, the internet has always been free, and will stay free. Making you pay for a news website will not stop people from sharing the content, or copy-pasting it into their own blog or website.
Murdoch should open up and see what great advantages the next generation of the internet has to offer to news agencies. Only then he will see openness, individuality, originality and interaction are the only values that really matter.

Re: Will You Pay For News Online? Rupert Murdoch Says You Will

peter — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 07:56:08 -0000

Well I would say - too little, too late. What does he expect? News corporation do not have monopoly for news. News spread even faster via the Twitter then via "news websites". As for the wsj - this is an exemption - it is thematic journal address to business people and is needed for people do their job, so most likely they will pay for it. But all the rest - "leisure news" - I don't think he could get any money from. Just like tobacco industry is slowly disappearing, the news industry had its peak already...
I think similar will happen with copyrights... Internet changed it all - copyrights in their current form are obsolete ... I am willing to pay for a song or for a movie, but I will not allow to be robed by the phonographic industry as they were doing it uptillnow. They wanted to milk the money and keep the status quo as long as possible selling obsolete CDs ... people found a way around it - so now they are trying to put the toothpaste back into the tube... Good luck. And if they found an adequate business model to sell reasonably content it might have worked.
Globalisation works both ways gentlemen ... and now it is the time for the masses to gain from globalisation, not only the rich few should profit from it.
In my humble opinion it is too late ... you were too greedy to adapt to changes so now you lost it all.

Re: Will You Pay For News Online? Rupert Murdoch Says You Will

peter — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 07:55:39 -0000

Re: Will You Pay For News Online? Rupert Murdoch Says You Will

F. R. Plank — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 04:52:24 -0000

The post office is next to charge for all services,i.e. ebill, epay, etc.

Re: Will You Pay For News Online? Rupert Murdoch Says You Will

ahrcanum — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 23:18:58 -0000

By all means take the Internet landscape from free to paid content, and allow them to see that they are not really a necessity at all.

The digital conversion took America by ransom on behalf of the cable industry -- why wouldn't the previously dominated newspaper industry try to do the same.

cherry picking the news in print, radio, internet, cable....

Re: Will You Pay For News Online? Rupert Murdoch Says You Will

Kelly — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 16:03:19 -0000

Visit www.silobreaker.com for free news from all around the world. No charge.

Re: Will You Pay For News Online? Rupert Murdoch Says You Will

Vernon Sanchez — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:38:30 -0000

wow, this is bad news for all the people tweeting right now!!

Re: Will You Pay For News Online? Rupert Murdoch Says You Will

kmb42vt — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:40:58 -0000

Well hell, guess I'm in trouble then not to mention the million or so other bloggers out there who quote excerpts from the AP and other news sources in our posts (complete with links back to the original article). I don't remember seeing any disclaimer stating that I have to pay them for using bits of text from their news articles. There were no anti-context (right-click) menu protection built into the site that carried these articles that would prevent me from copying the text I wished to quote. Sure there's the Copyright notice at the bottom of each article, I have the same thing on my site but it hardly keeps anyone from using my home spun content if they want to.

Re: Will You Pay For News Online? Rupert Murdoch Says You Will

Matt Wilson — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:16:06 -0000

What a terrible idea. People will just get their free news somewhere else

Re: Will You Pay For News Online? Rupert Murdoch Says You Will

tony — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:03:48 -0000

Think about it...We don't pay to watch TV news (yes, we pay the cable company, for access to television, but we also already pay an ISP for internet access). We all already have enough bills to pay. We won't pay for online news, and only an idiot would pay for the drivel FOX puts out, anyway. Okay, sure, some people pay for magazine ... Read Moresubscriptions, but, I think even that is deteriorating.
There are plenty of community run, grassroots news sites, blogs, etc. where we can find news content that interests us, and people share information so fast on the internet (twitter, FB, etc.), that it just isn't a feasible business model. Why would anyone pay for news from some nauseating, highly biased, corporate news outlet? They are going down...

Re: Will You Pay For News Online? Rupert Murdoch Says You Will

Chris R — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 13:36:28 -0000

Wow Rupert! You really don't get the Internet do you?

Why would I pay for something I can get for free? Even if you have something that I can't get from sowhere else; why would I bother? There is just too much information out there.

Re: Will You Pay For News Online? Rupert Murdoch Says You Will

Al Delgado — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:16:28 -0000

Murdoch should get the GOP to pay for Fox News. They might as well make more money for schilling for them.

Re: Will You Pay For News Online? Rupert Murdoch Says You Will

Hoff — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:15:22 -0000

Extra! Extra! Old man has outdated idea!

Re: Will You Pay For News Online? Rupert Murdoch Says You Will

Northwest Guy — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:11:36 -0000

For those of you supporting Murdoch's idea of charging for all the news, let me ask you: Do you really want people like Rupert Murdoch controlling what you can read? Just because you paid for it, would you really trust him to give you accurate and unbiased news? Without checks and balances, people like Murdoch would have us all become ultra conservative drones. Do you really think that Murdoch and his kind have your best interests at heart?

Re: Will You Pay For News Online? Rupert Murdoch Says You Will

Seba — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:05:36 -0000

Why pay for news when other media are free? May be for WSJ business critical information but for public non exclusive news.

Re: Will You Pay For News Online? Rupert Murdoch Says You Will

Seba — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:04:27 -0000

Why pay for news when other media are free? May be for WSJ business critical information but for public non exclusive news.

Re: Will You Pay For News Online? Rupert Murdoch Says You Will

Northwest Guy — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 10:56:51 -0000

Rupert Murdoch is a menace. He is an example of someone who has gone power mad. His disregard (and contempt) for the rest of... humanity, is disgusting.

Re: Will You Pay For News Online? Rupert Murdoch Says You Will

britard — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 10:39:07 -0000

maybe old people would pay for this, but then again many old people dont even know that there is a task bar at the bottom of the screen. old man just doesn't 'Get' the internet.

Re: Will You Pay For News Online? Rupert Murdoch Says You Will

britard — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 10:35:09 -0000

haahaha

Re: Will You Pay For News Online? Rupert Murdoch Says You Will

Yeti — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 10:30:17 -0000

"QUALITY news coverage" ... just because you pay for it doesn't mean you get quality. So much of the news is twisted one way or another. Is there such a thing as quality news coverage ?

Pay for news ? not me.

Re: Will You Pay For News Online? Rupert Murdoch Says You Will

Michael — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 10:19:47 -0000

No...the game has changed...Resistance is futile!