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."
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:And it won't even work if everyone does it (Score:3, Informative)
Seems perfect for Flattr [flattr.com].
Re:Duh... (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?).
He's in it for the very long term... (Score:2, Informative)
Murdoch's in it for the very long term. He did the same thing with TV, lost stupid amounts of money over a decade, but eventually his proprietary broadcasting networks became the status quo. He's got a virtual monopoly on TV sports coverage in many countries, so there's very little option other than to pay over the odds for his TV coverage.
The troubling thing is he indirectly owns one of the bigger ISPs in the UK, and I suggest it will be part of some long term strategy to make his part of the web more locked down.
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Informative)
It's called The Times! (Score:1, Informative)
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.
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.
WSJ (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's not the paywall that's failed (Score:3, Informative)
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]:
Re:You Can't Cite Wolff on Anything Murdoch!! (Score:1, Informative)
But in this version,, Murdock plays the part of the Sheriff of Nottingham..
Re:I've seen the other side...! (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Duh... (Score:3, Informative)
"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.
Re:Duh... (Score:3, Informative)
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:2, Informative)
I see by your comment about Cheney that you are a fan of Bill Maher who said that someone should kill Dick Cheney..
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:3, Informative)
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 the allegations didn't seem to make sense. They complained about all the problems they had to do their inspections because Iraq was very uncooperative, but at the same time, they still seemed very confident that there was no active WMD program, and that the programs that did exist had stopped after the first Gulf war and couldn't possibly have seriously restarted.
Re:No, the economist IS far right (Score:3, Informative)
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) -- most have been against various US lead wars. More so against Iraq, bit less so against others. And for good reasons, not all wars had equally sound or unsound justifications.
Re:Duh... (Score:1, Informative)
>>I don't know whose tits YOU've been looking at but most normal people have 2, not 1 or 3...
Google "Page 3" and figure it out for yourself.
Re:Duh... (Score:3, Informative)
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:It's not the paywall that's failed (Score:3, Informative)