An anonymous reader writes
"Dow Jones is getting set to launch a new aggregator, akin to Google News, which will charge Web users for access to high-quality journalism. 'The Journal is one of the many newspapers you might buy in one place and with one payment [...] Watch for it,' said Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton. However, rather than posing a threat to Google News, Andrew Keen, author and entrepreneur, says the aggregator will use Google as a critical partner. The only people who should be worried about this new model, says Keen, 'are all those lucky consumers who, over the last 15 years, have been getting their news for free.'"
Quick! (Score:2, Funny)
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They said high quality. That completely eliminates Fox, and throws grave doubts on the other two.
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Sounds friendly... (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, all you people getting value for free, you'd better watch out! You have to pay us now... for what you already get for free! Take that!
This guy must have been top of his class in Business School. I will follow his career with much interest.
Re:Sounds friendly... (Score:5, Interesting)
I find this extremely ironic because today a columnist from _Reuters_ broke the big news story about the Goldman Sachs arrest. And Reuters has a very informative web site. While NY and Chicago papers (who should have broken the story because it happened in their cities) were snoozing.
Controlling the aggregator won't making papers profitable. Delivering a service people _want to pay for_ (like Flickr, or WSJ, or the Economist) will make them profitable. And so far, local papers (even in bigger cities like Boston) are just not doing that.
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I find this extremely ironic because today a columnist from _Reuters_ broke the big news story about the Goldman Sachs arrest. And Reuters has a very informative web site. While NY and Chicago papers (who should have broken the story because it happened in their cities) were snoozing.
Controlling the aggregator won't making papers profitable. Delivering a service people _want to pay for_ (like Flickr, or WSJ, or the Economist) will make them profitable. And so far, local papers (even in bigger cities like Boston) are just not doing that.
.... Reuters has several thousand journalists. Why would they not break major stories?
Re:Sounds friendly... (Score:5, Informative)
This book [amazon.co.uk] is well worth a read on how news is collected, and becomes news. It's quite depressing reading.
Parent
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To be fair to the WSJ (Score:4, Interesting)
They not only started charging for their content, but stuck with it long after other companies had moved to horifically low paying internet ads. The result is that people who subscribe to the WSJ online expect to pay for content, whereas people who use other news sites expect to get their news for free.
Re:To be fair to the WSJ (Score:4, Insightful)
Meanwhile for general news, NY Times tried the walled garden and it failed.
Parent
Re:To be fair to the WSJ (Score:5, Informative)
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are you married too ?
logic? (Score:2)
So lets see here.
Out of a ton of news aggregators, one is going to charge money for it? Clearly slashdot must feel threatened too.
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Wait I didn't realize slashdot was primarily news, the articles are just fluff. The comments are always a better read if you want to read a story.
Pay attention, it's at the top of each page: Slashdot. News for Herds. Comments that Matter. Or something. Can't be bothered to scroll up to read it.
Why should I pay when there are alternatives? (Score:2)
Re:Why should I pay when there are alternatives? (Score:4, Informative)
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Having subscribed to WSJ for a year or so, it was definitely worth having. Their forums are also very, very informative.
ok then (Score:2)
The only people who should be worried about this new model, says Keen, 'are all those lucky consumers who, over the last 15 years, have been getting their news for free.
I guess I will have to go back and get my news from the television for free. Oh well.
Welcome to the 21st century. (Score:2, Funny)
Good pitch (Score:5, Insightful)
I have an idea (Score:5, Funny)
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That's not fair! They print on very nice paper.
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No one do anything newsworthy for a week.
We tried that. It backfired when the networks re branded it as reality programming.
Dont we already have free,high quality journalism? (Score:2)
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NPR is not free - it's paid for by donations. I suggest you make some less you want to lose it. [npr.org]
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NPR is not free - it's paid for by donations.
I listen to NPR often, and I ain't paid nothing for it. So, it's free.
Responding to trolls, a good pass-time (Score:2)
This is how Obama got elected. People who have absolutely no clue how the economy works voting.
This would obviously have to be true for every American president in recent history then, right? What did either Bush do for our economy? Clinton managed to turn a deficit into a surplus, but it can be argued that his antagonism against blue collar American workers helped our current problems. Then we add the fact that there is much more to life than mere economics, and the fact that no one really understands h
high-quality journalism (Score:4, Funny)
Does high-quality journalism even exist anymore?
So let me get this straight... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hinton is saying that the only people who shouldn't be happy with his new business plan are the very people he needs to voluntarily pay for his service? Somebody didn't think this through.
He's going to pay Google right? (Score:2)
So if I understand this correctly, after railing about how Google was leeching off of others without paying a dime, Hinton is now going to use Google for his own profit without paying Google a dime...
Really... (Score:5, Insightful)
...which will charge Web users for access to high-quality journalism.
So... they'll do quality fact checking back to prime sources, not Wikipedia?
And... they'll report conflicts of interest not only among their subjects but with their corporate overlord?
And... they'll report which moneyed interests stand to gain, every time?
And... they'll never ever ever accept paid publicity or promotional materials and report them as news?
And... they'll stop reporting what Britney Spears is doing?
And... they'll never invent another word like Brangelina again?
And... they'll carefully write political copy using neutral, non-loaded words and phrases, without bias?
Color me skeptical...
I would laugh, but it's too farkin' pathetic. "High-quality". Right...
Re:Really... (Score:4, Interesting)
Your knee-jerk cynicism changes nothing. As bad as the press is, a world without them would be even worse. Instead of celebrity-driven news like CNN, you'd have Stan the Basement Blogger picking apart a press release from Apple ad nauseum. And there is no guarantee of bloggers' neutrality, either. Good journalism costs money-yet doing good journalism doesn't often make money, and often can hinder an organization's ability to make money. The US needs a BBC.
Parent
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It wasn't knee-jerk cynicism. It was carefully considered, well-informed, long-nurtured cynicism.
Other than that, you're right.
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The US needs a BBC.
It would never work. No one would understand the foreign accents.
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But Dr Evil, that has already happened.
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Targeting finance consumers? (Score:3, Funny)
I don't think Dow Jones is targeting the average consumer, but are targeting higher-end financial consumers, investors, financial advisers, etc. Maybe they are mostly "old" people ;)
In the financial world, there are still plenty of vendors who charge for their content-- Barron's, financial newsletters, Bloomberg's "Professional" news products, etc.
Overall, these vendors generally (But not always) provide good-quality, in-depth articles and opinions. People will read their copy of Barron's like a student reads a book, complete with bookmarks and highlighters.
While the free sites are cheap, many of the news sites are filled with noise, the forums are filled with scams (The comments at finance.google.com are entertaining to read).
The Missing Link (Score:4, Insightful)
Dow Jones is getting set to launch a new aggregator, akin to Google News, which will charge Web users for access to high-quality journalism.
Great idea.
The only problem is a complete lack of high quality journalism today.
Since they plan to aggregate instead of provide something new, the idea is dead before it began.
great idea ~ (Score:2)
Google news is beta/noncommercial (no ads) (Score:2)
One of the things that's helped Google get away with aggregating other people's contents on their news service is the fact that Google News is non-commercial, doesn't run ads, and doesn't represent a revenue stream for Google. And they still got sued several times. If Dow Jones wants to do something similar, but charge for it, they may find themselves facing a whole stream of lawsuits, and may find that their defense is a lot less effective.
Sorry, there's no going back now (Score:3, Funny)
News will now remain free. If the major providers put their shit behind pay-walls, one of two things will happen:
1) There's already a thriving eco-system of ad-financed blogs and other sites that basically do nothing but sift through, reword and extensively "quote" the stuff behind the login-prompts. These sites will just get bigger and stronger, eventually hiring more of their own staff. Since that's 90% of what traditional newspapers have been doing since the dawn of time, there is more than enough precedent for this business model.
2) If the going get's really tough, Wikinews or some other major non-profit payer will become as hugely popular as Wikipedia is now. If Britannica or Brockhaus had made all their content available for free under a reasonably license for personal use, Wikipedia would probably not be where it is now.
Factiva (Score:2)
Sounds liike it's just a bigger walled garden (Score:3, Funny)
I've tended to roll my eyes at the newspapers whining about Google "stealing" their content. Changing their robots.txt is all it takes to keep Google's filthy little mits off their precious news sites. Of course, that also kills all of the free traffic the Google drives to their site--and pay wall or no, no readers means no ad views, clicks, and subscriptions.
Now . . . what exactly is this new model being proposed? Letting Google aggregate all the little news snippets and blurbs, but funneling all that traffic to a bigger walled garden containing multiple publications for a single fee is what this sounds like. If they get enough people on board, it might work. Or it might go the way of most non-porn paysites on the Internet and fail miserably. (My money's still on the "fail miserably" end result. I'm not seeing what's so terribly innovative about this.)
Newsgathering costs money, sure. And there should be ways of making that money. But it's going to take a bit more cleverness on the newspaper's parts than simply publishing online behind a pay wall. If they can't figure that out, then they deserve to fail and be replaced with something that does figure it out.
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You mean the Rupert Murdoch owned Dow Jones?? (Score:2)
Yeah, well they give away their papers for free. (Score:2)
I've had at least one newspaper delivered to my house every day for the last few years, and I have not paid for a single one. My current free papers are the Wall Street Journal, and Financial Times.
It never fails - one way or another, I get free paper offers that usually last 6 months to a year. Usually they come in the mail (both home and work), or from an offer through my credit card company. The two local papers in my area occasionally drop their papers on my doorstep for a few months hoping to "hook"
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He's not racist, he's not homophobic, he's not a woman hater.
He just plays one on the radio. : - )