Murdoch's UK Paywall a Miserable Failure 428
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."
Duh... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting what kinds of people are receptive to efforts of maintaining crashing business models?
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Insightful)
The obvious reason why WSJ and FT succeeded is because they provide stock information which is a heavily regulated market that costs a *lot* to get into and to provide. Therefore there aren't any free alternatives (*) -- everyone who offers stock information charges for it, and the audience is used to this fact and accepts it.
The brand recognition and virtual monopoly position enjoyed by these two papers would also have helped.
(*) Yes, I know there are free stock listing all over the place, but you'll notice that all of them have a time delay of at least several hours. Real-time stock data is only available to those willing to pay for it.
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Duh... (Score:4, Funny)
No, The FT (subsidiary of Pearson PLC) owns 50% of the Economist, not a controlling interest.
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Interesting)
For the Economist, I (as a subscriber) can tell you why it worked for their subscribers: they offer fantastic value. I sing the praise for the Economist whenever I can, because I think that they are one of the few companies that get it. With my paper subscription I get:
1. Full access to the website including ALL past issues!
2. The current issue as an audio podcast (800MB!).
3. I can cancel my subscription whenever I want AND GET THE REMAINING MONEY BACK! (This is a big YES THEY GOT HOW TO TREAT THEIR CUSTOMERS.)
4. If there are problems with deliveries (e.g. a UK postal strike), they switched to hand deliveries to make sure the subscribers got their issues.
These are all added-value services that ensure I will subscribe to their magazine even though I manage to read it only occasional due to the volume of articles. Obviously, I also believe their articles are top-notch (they even get technology reasonably well).
I am not affiliated with the Economist in any way. Just a very happy customer.
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow, yeah. That's a great example of customer service adding value to a product.
It also helps that the Economist tends to have quality and unique content. It's something you can find from 5000 other sources at the same time, as opposed to your average newspaper.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree. My home newspaper, the StarTribune in Minneapolis, started printing AP feeds directly years ago. I assume most papers today also print stories from "the wire" without any editing whatsoever. As Tridus implies, why would I pay fr something I can find somewhere else, probably for free.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They get technology reasonably well. They occasionally call out the occasional walking piece of corruption that other are resigned to (read: Silvio Berlusconi). But editorial-wise, they are very far right. They supported the iraq war, they believed in WMD, and they denied global warming for a very long time (until 2007?).
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Insightful)
They get technology reasonably well. They occasionally call out the occasional walking piece of corruption that other are resigned to (read: Silvio Berlusconi). But editorial-wise, they are very far right. They supported the iraq war, they believed in WMD, and they denied global warming for a very long time (until 2007?).
Far right? Too simplistic. You may not like all their editorial stances, but that does not make them right (sic!). They were and remain skeptical of proposed measures against global warming: would they be effective? would they be efficient? which aren't bad questions to raise for a magazine with that name. Being skeptical is not necessarily 'denying', especially if you prove willing to change your stance with further evidence. They also want to abolish the British monarchy (for starters): not exactly the position one traditionally associates with the conservative right. On Iraqi WMD they were duped and admitted it frankly: so were plenty of other publications and institutions few would call 'right-wing'. They also fell heads-over-heel for Obama.
Me? I'm just a sucker for beatiful and efficient prose, with an occasional dash of dry humour. Would that I could achieve it.
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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.
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Insightful)
They strongly supported John McCain until it became obvious that Palin was sinking his ship.
McCain's ship was already sinking by the time he chose Palin out of desperation. It actually worked for awhile, too, if you remember, until the media tore her apart.
Uh, the media did not tear her apart. She self-destructed by whiffing on the softball questions tossed to by Katie Couric, after which her access to the media was limited to Fox News. It soon became clear that she was an airhead (or worse). McCain's choice of such a woefully inadequate running mate showed that his judgement was indeed poor, and as such the so-called "Independent voters" broke for Obama.
So, what you call "the media tear[ing] her apart" is really an all-too-rare example of the media doing their job.
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Ug, so this is the new
Re:No, the economist IS far right (Score:4, Insightful)
Where on earth do you get that from? Daily Kos? The only people consistently against the wars and excessive military spending were the libertarians. Look at Ron Paul's voting record. Democrats generally supported the war and still pursue it. The only people against the bailouts for the big corporations were libertarians as well. Democrats supported them. Libertarians want the government to be one stop shop for corporate profits?! I don't think you can be any further from being right if you tried.
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And yes, from within actual US liberals -- including those democrats that can be considered ones judging by their overall positions, not just based on their stance wrt war(s) -
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sure, but if you are left/centrist, this is why you should read them. (re: right wing political views)
I always make sure to read articles / magazines that make me angry. Otherwise, I will insulate myself, and risk becoming religious about my position. I'm more centrist, and tend to read articles from both ends of the political spectrum.
I've read The Economist for a while, and find that yes -- they do indeed tend to lean right. However, they have many articles that do not, and I've found that they do tend
Re:Duh... (Score:4, Insightful)
But editorial-wise, they are very far right. They supported the iraq war, they believed in WMD, and they denied global warming for a very long time (until 2007?).
How is that "very far right"? At the time it began, the Iraq war had widespread favor across the political spectrum, with most of the Senate Democrats voting in favor of it, including the oh-so-very-far-right Hilary Clinton. Belief in WMD was similarly pervasive, since the intelligence community was saying they were there, and no evidence had come out yet to suggest this analysis was incorrect.
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Except for the testimony of the UN weapons inspectors, and Hussein Kamel, and Joe Wilson (the diplomat, not the "You lie!" jagoff). And those who noted that the first national security meeting of the Bush administration covered the possibility of invading Iraq, which might be coloring their kitchen-sink approach to justifying an invasion ("He tried to kill mah daddy!"). Oh, and the fact that the chief CIA witness had the codename "Curveball" ferchrissakes. But beisdes all of that, yes, no one doubted the word of the administration.
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Duh... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not sure what part of the country you live in, but as I recall it, belief in WMD was anything but pervasive. I, along with numerous friends, acquaintances, family members, coworkers, etc, was absolutely appalled that we were actually going to invade Iraq based on such flimsy pretenses.
Mind you, I'm not exactly a liberal pacifist who was concerned about unjustly attacking poor ol' Saddam - my concerns about the WMD evidence mostly stemmed from the fact that invading Iraq was bound to be a decade-long (or longer) quagmire, which would cost the lives of thousands of American soldiers, not to mention countless billions of taxpayer dollars. I just wanted to be assured that there was a damn good reason for going through with all of that.
I kept asking the question, "Where's the hard evidence?". There never was any. All I ever saw was smoke and mirrors, lots of dog-and-pony shows with paper-thin wisps of "evidence", and "intelligence" reports that absolutely reeked of political spin and creative interpretation. Honestly, I probably would have found it more convincing if they'd just said that they'd consulted a witch-doctor who had divined the presence of WMDs in Iraq while in a peyote-induced trance.
And mind you, I'm not someone you would generally consider a liberal, so it's not as if my experience was due to my own political leanings, nor those of my peers. I live in the Los Angeles area, and my friends, family, and coworkers are roughly an equal mix of liberals, conservatives, and apolitical types. Even among my conservative friends, there seemed to be some palpable concern that the WMD evidence was a bit flimsy. I'd hardly call that a pervasive belief. Then again, that was just my own experience. YMMV.
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At the time it began, the Iraq war had widespread favor across the political spectrum, [...] . Belief in WMD was similarly pervasive
It may be useful to point out that this was only in the US, as far as I know. Of course, the US perception is what's the most relevant and important, since they started the war, but it's still interesting to be aware that it was limited to the US and very few other countries.
In continental Europe, the Iraq war had "widespread opposition across the political spectrum". And belief in WMD was definitely not "pervasive".
On the radio, I heard people like the boss of the UN inspectors, and others, explaining that
Re:Duh... (Score:4, Interesting)
As been stated many times before, the US politically is pretty right leaning. This includes Hillary Clinton who, along with Joe Lieberman, was pushing for enforcing ESRB ratings as law [wikipedia.org] (in response to the Hot Coffee mod [wikipedia.org]). In comparison, a more liberal place like France seems more unwilling to rate anything R-rated (look at some popular 12 and over titles [imdb.com]).
Two things. One, the intelligence community was saying that nuclear WMDs would take 5 to 10 years to develop, minimal even if Saddam had gotten uranium (look at Iran's difficulties in refining large quantities of uranium; consider that to go from natural Uranium (0.7% U-235) to nuclear fuel (3% U-235) requires a lot of work and a hell of a lot more work to get to nuclear weapon grade (97% U-235)). Two, the evidence was incredibly flimsy that Saddam had made or had components for chemical weapons (the last time Saddam had chemical weapons, the US and Europe sold him a good bit of the base components). Three, Hans Blix [cnn.com], one of the United Nations' top two weapons experts (and an inspector) said the evidence was shaky, at best. According to Scott Ritter [wikipedia.org] who was UN weapons inspector during most of the 90s, even though only perhaps 90-95% of all factories/weapons/etc, Iraq wasn't a significant threat with what remained. As much as it was consistently clear to Blix and others that Saddam wanted WMDs and repeatedly tried to test the UN to see if he could wiggle in a way to import components and construct WMDs, it was also clear that Saddam kept backing down because he realized that the reprisal for actually pushing the UN that far wouldn't actually work.
In short, the very people who'd actually been in Iraq for years on the ground and who had personally dealt with the oversight of such things--ie, the people one probably should really be listening to if one cared about the facts and the truth--were specifically stating before the Iraq War that the war was not justified based on WMDs. Meanwhile, the CIA was well on its way towards overthrowing Saddam; and incidentally, the CIA is precisely where all this questionable intelligence was coming from.
Btw, because I was actually listening to Hans Blix before the Iraq War, I was against it before it started. I was also quite aware, with the progressive drum beating as the war start date approached that the people in charge had little interest in actually reviewing the facts since they'd settled on a train of thought and a course of action (consider the Bush years and Global Warming and how long it took for even the smallest acknowledgment that "the evidence is still unclear" was some rather clear bullshit). As for the Senate Democrats who are moderate or even left, most acted like pitiful, fearful politicians. It was better to vote for a war blindly than to look "weak" on terrorism (remember the whole push for the Iraq-Al Quaeda connnection; that's why). Btw, perhaps that's the reason so many people voted for Obama, since he never voted for the war and that made him, once the war was unpopular, look steadfast and strong (and politically lucky, since he wasn't in the Senate until 2005); but, I digress.
In double short, the only people who believed in the WMDs were (a) those in power (which I'd argue were rather far righ
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Given that The Economist is a British publication and most people in Britain opposed the Iraq war I think does make it very right wing.
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Insightful)
They get technology reasonably well. They occasionally call out the occasional walking piece of corruption that other are resigned to (read: Silvio Berlusconi). But editorial-wise, they are very far right. They supported the iraq war, they believed in WMD, and they denied global warming for a very long time (until 2007?).
I wouldn't call the economist far right... they are in favor of legalization of drugs, for instance, and are generally against all forms of prohibitionism. I think they are quite left-wing on many social issues (in favor of civil liberties, etc), and a bit right wing on economy (as in strongly free market oriented).
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe he should have tried this experiment with The Sun. With your paper subscription you get:
1. Tits
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Funny)
Correction - that should be:
3. Tits.
Re:Duh... (Score:4, Funny)
Unfortunately, all the other pages contain bollocks. It's kind of a tradeoff, like when you accidentally surf gay porn.
Re:Duh... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm a subscriber to the Economist too, but the reason I think it works is their content is not just warmed-over daily news. It's a collection of well-researched, unique and interesting weekly essays. Murdoch is never going to be able to do the same thing with the Times.
Rich.
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Niche markets (Score:5, Insightful)
Consumer Reports [consumerreports.org] 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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Independent, but not unbiased. They have at least one advertiser - themselves. After the publicity from Suzuki, they purposefully made the next one tip, violating every stated testing standard they had and even inventing new ones in order to make cars tip. And, of course, when they succeed, they issue press releases and paste it on the cover and such. Try reading one of their articles on, say, cereal (I read only because it
WSJ (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm interested to see how the FCC plan to impose this on the London Times, the Independent, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Die Welt, Le Monde...
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Insightful)
ever since the papers discovered the commercial Internet
Commercial internet... Commercial internet... Commercial internet... Jees I'm getting old. I miss the nineties and early zeros when the closest thing to a "commercial internet" was a web page with a single ad banner, which everyone bitched and moaned about to no avail. None of the sites I ran back then had any advertising at all; like most other folks' sites then, it was a labor of love.
The damned greedheads seem to ruin everything. Thank god people aren't falling for Murdoch's nonsense (yet).
Murdoch's terrible Faux News was on the TV in the bar last night and gees, if anyone would have talked about Bush when he was in office the way Murdoch's "news" station talks about Obama, Faux News and the neocons would have called them "traitors" and screamed bloody murder.
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"it was a labor of love.
Yes, I'm sure the act there was no good advertising method had nothing to do with that~
I also remember it was :
A) NO ads, or;
B) screaming op up adds, and plenty of them. Often opening windows i pt in size or outside the screen area of a computer.
Before that, well it wasn't much to look at.
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Lets break it down:
"1. Bush planned 9/11"
false, That was statement by a few conspiracy whackaloons
"2. Bush lied about WMDs"
True.
"3. Bush is sending citizens to Gitmo"
true
"4. Bush banned fetal stem cell research"
federal dollars, however for practical reason that just about killed it.
"5. Bush is turning the USA into a theocracy"
Bring more religion into the government is one of his stated goals
"6. Bush went AWOL"
True.
"7. Bush is an idiot"
True
"8. Bush is an evil genius"
no one ever said that.
"9. Bush got
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"2. Bush lied about WMDs" True.
To lie about something, you have to know that it is not true at the time you say it. At the time, all the indications were that Saddam did have WMDs.
However, I think that either Saddam really wanted everyone to think he had WMDs when he didn't, or more likely, he thought he did, and all Saddam's people were lying to him to cover up that they didn't have anything after all, whether due to fraud (spending the money on something else) or because they really couldn't get them. And because Saddam thought he had
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Funny)
No true leftist would have called for Bush's assassination until after Cheney's funeral. Preferably after Cheney's body had been exhumed, his head cut off, his mouth stuffed with garlic, a wooden stake driven through his heart, and the results sealed in a steel coffin with a non-denominational religious symbol on it and buried at a crossroads at midnight. Get real.
I've seen the other side...! (Score:5, Interesting)
I am a subscriber to the Times Literary Supplement. This year, I paid the supplementary 20$ to get Internet access, since I live in Canada and get the TLS with a substantial delay, and also because I was just curious given the scale of Murdoch's experiment, not talking about the scale of his pretensions.
So I am one of the very few who got past the registration page. The other side of this pay-wall allows us a peek on the dystopian nightmare that would have been the Internet if developed by corporations, and it is on a par with the current state of academic journals online. In order to undo what the Internet is meant to do, that is to hyperlink, Murdoch has spent a fortune developing a shiny interface that let us navigate through an exact reproduction of the paper thing. It is DRM by design: there is no way to copy and paste, to store, therefore to link, to annotate or to use in any meaningful sense of the word beyond a reading experience that is, as a result, as uncomfortable as it gets. The technical constraints that all this restraining impose make navigating and reading impractical and painful.
Despite the attractiveness of reading the TLS in a timely manner, I went to the site once and never repeated the experience.
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So I am one of the very few who got past the registration page.
Were there ads? If so, static or animated?
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Yep. Good thing the Internet was not built by corporations like Google, Amazon, Slashdot, CNN, etc....
Sir –
The Internet was not built by those companies. Those companies were built on the Internet.
Of those companies, the History of the Internet [wikipedia.org] on Wikipedia mentions only Google, and that only in the narrow context of search engines.
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Seems perfect for Flattr [flattr.com].
Oppinions (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Oppinions (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, factless bashing should never occur in proximity to a Murdoch media outlet...
I am utterly surprised. (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Re:I am utterly surprised. (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think that's the only problem: internet news tends to be very flaky to push out "interesting" articles and it allows "on the fly editting" compared to a paper for example: unnecessary sensationalists "breaking news!" banners, reedits and a general lower quality of written content.
So, people don't want to pay for sensationalist articles but would if the content would be, as you say, unique, solid and giving a decent added value: If I take the train and read the free Metro paper, log online and keep an eye on the newsfeeds from different RSS-feeds or different newspapers there's very cleary just some channels distributing the same "news" but depending on the papers "target crowd", reworded, restyled and reprioritized.
The "online news" seems often just like a gossip magazine.
Re:I am utterly surprised. (Score:4, Insightful)
No wait, on second thoughts, make that "Old Fart out of touch with reality" first, then Capitalism and Conservatism...
still early days (Score:5, Interesting)
An interesting piece [guardian.co.uk] by David Mitchell at the Guardian as to why he would like to see this succeed is worth a read.
Re:still early days (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:still early days (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:still early days (Score:5, Interesting)
I actually took a "free trial" of the web site (hey, I like Jeremy Clarkson's columns), and there's a lot more to it than the paywall. They also did a complete site redesign, and it's hideous - I couldn't find a damned thing on the new site, and actually reading stories involved some bizarre CSS windowing. The entire site is basically a CSS version of "Flashturbation" (CSSturbation?) - a bunch of developers showing off how technically clever they are in the process of making a crap product.
That being said, £1 a week would be much too high, even if the site didn't suck sweaty rhino ass.... £1 pound a day is flat-out insane.
Re:still early days (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:still early days (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not the paywall that's failed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's not the paywall that's failed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's not the paywall that's failed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Bah, by British brother in law soldered shut the antenna plug on his TV a while back, to save some license money when he wasn't using it.
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He was lucky to get away with it - if that went to court, he'd probably lose.
Not true - You only need TV Licence if you watch or record TV as it's being broadcast; if you only use it to play XBOX\Wii or just to watch DVDs, then you don't need a licence. TV licensing FAQ [tvlicensing.co.uk]:
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Bingo. I'd possibly pay for Radio 4, in order to keep it ad free, but the rest of the bunch of Stalinist luvvies can swing on my knob.
The thing that's really boiling my piss at the moment is that much of the (non disposable) programming is now timed to fit on commercial channels. Since there's no commercial breaks in the middle of each program (as opposed to the 15 seconds of DVR skipping that I have to do on other channels), that means there can be upwards of 10 minute of filler in between one program
History repeating (Score:5, Interesting)
The Times / Sunday Times used to have a paid archive on CD-ROM circa 1992. On the internet, there were no articles over about a week old IIRC, the articles went into those CD-ROM archives. There was no great demand for that either, so the whole concept of charging got ditched and they got advertisers to relaunch a free expanded website.
I wonder that now that it's a paid for website, how the advertisers feel about the massive drop in people being able to view their ads (assuming you're not crunching the ads with plug-ins for the likes of Firefox).
Totally Unexpected Of The Day (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Totally Unexpected Of The Day (Score:5, Funny)
HOLY SHIT DUDE! Most people use one or two methods of emphasis, but you use *three*! You, sir, are a legend!
Re:Totally Unexpected Of The Day (Score:5, Funny)
I count four: *asterisks*, bold, Title Case, and ALL CAPITALS. Five if you count permutations of more than one (Bold Title Case).
Haven't you noticed his travelling show? (Score:3, Insightful)
You Can't Cite Wolff on Anything Murdoch!! (Score:5, Informative)
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."
Re:You Can't Cite Wolff on Anything Murdoch!! (Score:5, Funny)
You compared Rupert Murdoch to Robin Hood?
Wow.
Remember though... (Score:2, Insightful)
Lower prices (Score:2)
Inevitable Future (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
But how sustainable is the current paradigm?
As sustainable as it's always been. The Illinois Times [illinoistimes.com] survives, makes a profit, and pays its staff on advertising alone. Even its paper version is free, and its yearly "Best of" poll winners all proudly have their IT "Best Of" awards displayed on their walls, even higher class joints like Saputo's and D'Arcy's.
Free sells, but only if it's quality. If your content sucks or your ads are intrusive, your newspaper will die.
Re:Inevitable Future (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm also wondering what people would consider something they'd pay for.
Off the top of my head:
This explains a lot (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Why journalism online is not worthy of cash (Score:5, Interesting)
If its one thing I've learned in a few years of being involved in the journalistic trade...it's that so many people in it are pigheaded to the point of doing themselves a lot of damage to their potential success and reputation. This is true from editors, to rank and file columnists...and new graduates convert alarmingly to this mentality with a dissapointing number of exceptions.
Murdoch aside, the overriding truth of modern journalist both here in the UK and in the US is that quantity rules over quality. That's why every Saturday and Sunday we Britons cannot buy a 'quality broadsheet' without having to acquire a book's worth of text in supplements along with the actual newspaper itself. That one has to shell over £1.20 or so for a compendium of tripe that you mostly won't get around to reading is why journalism is failing.
Simply put there are too many people employed who may have begun with some talent, but have lapsed into a state of passive drudgery writing filler columns about inane topics most readers could not care less about. You can actually tell with a lot of them that the author wasn't really thinking as he or she typed it out. In short the 'news' of newspaper is absent in a woefully high proportion; yes there's room for editorials and quirky opinion pieces...but the proportions are way off right now.
This is true of all Murdoch rags, most starkly The Times which was a pioneer of supplements in the 1990s. Once, decades ago (pre-Murdoch), the Times led some of the most intriguing investigative departments in journalistic history - they spent months to break a story that would spread across what? Four pages or so of print? This level of work for that amount of journalism is unheard of today - that's because today it's all about cheap, easy stories that can be summed up mostly as: 'Churnalism' (a term coined by Guardian journo Nick Davies) . It began in earnest in the 1980s with Andrew Neil's Times, and the trend away from reportage which took effort, talent, dedication and downright brilliance to pull off is almost entirely absent in The Times of 2010.
There is hope for the profession, as wracked by disease as it is; online journalism has some good offerings where journalists actually leave the office and do some old school reporting. That Murdoch and a few others see their awful, soulless content as worthy of paying for online rather than just going for what's worked since the beginning (advertisements) is telling of their wrongheaded approach which led so many publications to become so degraded in quality.
its a changing of the guard (Score:4, Interesting)
in charge of the movie, music, television, book, and print media industries, you have these guys who clawed their way to the top in an era of typewriters and cassette tapes and celluloid and NTSC and stopping the presses. the golden age of media
which the internet has killed
but these guys have invested decades of their lives in a status quo which went **POOF**, just when they get the point where they are at the helm
naturally, they are bitter. they've been screwed by history. they call it disruptive technology for a reason
so the rest of us will have to suffer awhile while these media dinosaurs hem and haw and throw chairs and grow purple faced and otherwise rage against the dying if the light. and then they're dead, and then those working in the media trenches now with a firm grasp of what the internet actually means will finally move into power, and maybe we can put all of this clashing of the eras behind us, and all these absolutely moronic laws and policies we keep making fun of here on slashdot, for good reason
one can hope, anyways
Is failure a success? (Score:5, Interesting)
Murdoch's not stupid, even if he does want to fight the tide. The question is, does he genuinely want to get money from this venture or does he want a "failure" to demonstrate the need for the government (who are indebted to him for supporting them in the election and stabbing the previous governing party in the back) to lend him a hand. I think it's quite reasonable to assume that he was advised that this would be a commercial failure and decided, eyes open, that that was exactly what he wanted to advance his lobbying position.
Miserable failure ?!? (Score:3, Funny)
Was George W. Bush [bbc.co.uk] involved into the project ?!?
I changed newspaper (Score:3, Interesting)
=======
I do not often visit The Times web site, I prefer the paper version. I do mainly if I want to share an article with a friend or few, some item of common interest. Something that has the side effect of introducing non Times readers to The Times.
I notice that I can no longer do that, it will cost me & my friends to be able to share such things. As a result, after 35 years, I will change newspaper; I will no longer buy your paper copy - probably going for the Guardian or Independent.
This paywall is a bad idea, the only way that I can adapt to it is to change which newspaper I read. Your foolish action will cost you. I give you permission to email me (once) when you reverse this policy; however I expect that, by then, I will be happy with my new newspaper.
Regards
=======
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Schadenfreude (Score:4, Interesting)
Edison tried 3,000 times before he got it down, my guess is that Murdoch and his team are no less determined. One good thing to remember is that the more money he earns, the more money you could potentially earn.
i get my news the traditional way (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Problem is the business model (Score:5, Interesting)
News has a model of the world in which you buy and read one paper, as you did back in the days when there were only paper editions. The reason you only bought one paper is that as papers rose in price, it got too expensive to buy all of them. So back then, unless you were a business person who really needed them all, you would buy one and read it. However when papers went online, all of a sudden people started reading the Guardian, Telegraph, Independent and Times, all of them.
Total newspaper readership therefore rose dramatically. The model had changed. We were now in a world of non-exclusive newspaper readership, where people find it natural to glance through all the broadsheets.
Rupert would now like to turn back the clock, and have all papers go behind the paywall. However, he fails to realize that if that world were to come about, total readership would fall. He would then only have those people who were prepared to restrict themselves to the Times.
It is not that people particularly want to get their content free. They will pay for it, if its distinctive and of value to them, as the FT, Economist, and WSJ show. What they do not want however is a model in which they subscribe to a paper as in the old days. So what happened when the Times went behind the paywall is that everyone deleted that bookmark but carried on as before reading Telegraph, Guardian and Independent. They don't really need the Times, as long as the market is using the model of non-exclusive readership.
This is the critical point that Rupert is failing to get. He is trying to operate a model of the past, in a world in which non-exclusive readership has become the norm. The effect of this is going to be to take the Times out of the running. It is no longer part of the broadsheets that you glance through online. People are not going to subscribe to just one, and in a world in which only one charges, they are going to carry on scanning through the others, without particularly missing the Times, which has nothing very distinctive to offer.
Historically, News has always had a problem thinking the content issue through. Consider the case of LineOne, many years ago. The argument then was, we have all this distinctive content that we will use to force people to subscribe to our Internet Access service because that is the only way we will allow access to it. They will pay a premium for the access in order to get the content. In those days the contrary argument was made: if the content is so valuable, just sell it to anyone, regardless of who they get their access from. At which those in charge of the content rightly flinched, and admitted that it was unsaleable.
OK, then, what made them think it was saleable at a premium when bundled with access? And as it turned out, it was not, and the access business was sold off to Tiscali and the Times went online free.
They have been obsessed with the model of Sky, where they got exclusive rights, used those to sell dishes and subscriptions. But it depends on having 'must have' content. What Rupert is refusing to accept right now is that, except in the case of the WSJ, he has no 'must have' content. None. Columnists? Who cares?
As the article says, the Times has simply vanished from online. No-one links to it, no-one quotes it, as far as can be seen no-one subscribes to it. It has vanished. Give it another few months, and the effect will be the same as if it had no online presence.
Now ask yourself: if someone had gone to Rupert six months ago, and proposed closing down their web presence, would he have agreed? It would probably have been a short meeting, and a very blunt one. But that is what, probably without in the least intending to, he has now done.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Get the order right - pillage before you burn. Newspapers and magazines have "de-contented" over the years to save money. That reduced the real and perceived value of their products. They went on-line with this "de-contented" version and we got used to it. Then they erected the paywall. Now, I would have paid for their product if I thought it was the same product it was before all the cost cutting, but I don't really value what
Looks like success to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Dramatically fewer people reading Murdoch's crap, and he's still not making any money.
Looks like success from where I'm sitting.
Times shakes off parasites (Score:5, Funny)
The Times has put into place its new paywall system, to keep readers, search engines and other criminals from using it to download cars, to the sound of champagne corks popping at the Guardian, Telegraph and BBC.
The newspaper will now require payment of £1 a day for its unique and high-quality editorial viewpoints, as taken from the Sun and rewritten in big words. The site also blocks anyone under 18 from registering, in order to keep the paper's quality demographic aging nicely.
"I firmly support this move," said everyday citizen on the street and certainly not Guardian editor at all Alan Rusbridger. "In fact, it should be ten pounds a day. Ten pounds a story. Then people will really see it as high-quality merchandise and not rewritten press releases and news feeds with Mr Murdoch dictating the editorial page."
"It's ours," said James Murdoch, frothing slightly. "You thieving bastards steal our copyright every time you save a copy into your heads! Well, we'll fix your little wagon. It's a pound a day plus a pound a copy behind your eyes plus a pound a copy you talk about with anyone else plus a pound a copy just fucking because. It's for me and Dad and you can just fuck off. And when we buy the BBC we won't let you watch that either. Arseholes."
"OK, the champagne is Thunderbird Sparkling," said Mr Rusbridger. "Times are tough, you know. But I have complete faith we're on the right path and the Times is doomed. I told ’em, I told ’em. Spare fiddy pee for a Polly Toynbee column? God bless you, sir!"
"I am one hundred percent behind paying for quality journalism," said free culture activist Hiram Nerdboy, 17. "That's why I just gave fifty quid to Wikileaks."
Illustration: Rupert Murdoch with the precioussssssssss. [newstechnica.com]
Check out the market share graphs (Score:3, Informative)
HitWise have graphs [hitwise.com] that show the decline in market share following the paywall implementation. It shows that The Telegraph [telegraph.co.uk] (also a slightly right of centre broadsheet) picked up traffic as the Times declined.
What is interesting is that a week after the paywall, there were still users navigating to the website to be confronted with the paywall page - probably because they were being linked to the site from other sites or were using book marks. As they realise that The Times is paywalled, they are not going back.
Why do the paper subscribers have to register? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
.
I'm perfectly willing to pay ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
I think the end game will play out like this (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
I tried reading TFA and heres what I got (Score:3, Insightful)
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...
Re:LOL! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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 [slashdot.org]
It seems the people get so accustomed to the lies that Fox spreads, that they are
The issue is this: (Score:5, Insightful)
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.