The Times Erects a Paywall, Plays Double Or Quits 344
DCFC writes "News International, owners of The Times and The Sunday Times announced today that from June readers will be required to pay £1 per day or £2 per week to access content. Rupert Murdoch is delivering on his threat to make readers pay, and is trying out this experiment with the most important titles in his portfolio. No one knows if this will work — there is no consensus on whether it is a good or bad thing for the industry, but be very clear that if it succeeds every one of his competitors will follow. Murdoch has the luxury of a deep and wide business, so he can push this harder than any company that has to rely upon one or two titles for revenue."
£1 per day to access online news? (Score:2)
Methinks this will end in tears.
8 pounds a month (Score:5, Insightful)
8 pounds a month, a lot less isn't it? But I think it is the 1 pound per day that people will indeed choke on.
I don't really read news sites myself, I read stories that I found links to. But I don't really go to a newspaper site and just read all the stories. So it would be NOT 1 pound per day, but 1 pound per article. So I just wouldn't.
And because I follow links to several sites, it is also not 1 buck per day, but maybe 20 bucks for all the different sites. And that does hurt, even if you take a monthly subscription.
That is the biggest reason I think this will fail.
People use the net different then a newspaper. When you take a newspaper subscription, you read it like a book. But when you browse the net, you go here you go there. Take in a page here, an article there. The problem isn't paying 1 subscription fee, it is paying dozens.
Lets see, 1 euro for slashdot, 1 for tweakers, 1 for comics.com, 1 for penny-arcade, 1 for the bbc, 1 for the times, 1 for the new york times, etc etc. That is going to hurt pretty fast.
True micro-payments would help, but the amounts would have to be truly tiny. As in a tenth of a cent for an article and that is never going to work.
And anyway, I don't have a credit card and the only Americans who have ever heard of Global Collect are Sony (SOE is the only MMO company in the world to support iDeal (dutch banks) and other countries payment systems (this might have changed in recent years)). So how am I going to pay even if I wanted to. (Oh and for irony, supporting iDeal is cheaper per transaction then credit card payments).
Re:8 pounds a month (Score:4, Informative)
I don't have a credit card
At least where I live (Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA), banks and credit unions offer VISA or MasterCard debit cards to their checking account customers at no additional charge.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
at no additional charge.
unless you use them
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You still can't use them for more than you have in your account, hence *debit*
Certainly you can. They love it when you do. It generates all kinds of tasty fees for them. NOM NOM NOM
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Not anymore (as of August of this year). Unless you allow them to do it, anyway. It's the only good thing to seem to come out of Congress last year, which makes me wonder what's wrong with it.
Re:8 pounds a month (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't so much the amount involved, which is the same as buying the dead tree version, it is the fact that it is quicker to find another newspaper on the internet than it is to find your credit card and type all the details in, whereas in a newsagent, it is pretty easy to find a pound coin in your pocket and hand it over.
Re:8 pounds a month (Score:5, Informative)
Here's one newspaper who tried it.
http://www.observer.com/2010/media/after-three-months-only-35-subscriptions-newsdays-web-site [observer.com]
It cost them $4m dollars to set up the paywall. They got 35 subscribers at $5 per week, so it would take 440 years just to recover the cost of setting up the paywall, assuming no transaction charges.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It cost them $4m dollars to set up the paywall.
It cost them $4 million dollars to set up a paywall? I think their problems run deeper than a lack of subscribers.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
We can sit around and carp about government corruption, and wait for the government to oversee itself better, but the real cure is sunlight - somebody indepdent looking over their shoulder, namely the press. We need to find a way to pay them to do more of that.
Re:8 pounds a month (Score:5, Interesting)
Donate to WikiLeaks? Quality investigative reporting (in the realm of government) is amost a myth. Some journalists have the balls to repeat the claims of an anonymous source while keeping the source anonymous, and in the pre-internet days that was important, but its rapidly becoming less so.
I do see quality investigative reporting in the realm of consumer advocacy, but in politics the press has devolved to repeating any claim that damages the party they don't like, without even spending 5 minutes of Google to see if it passes the laugh test.
The National Inquirer is up for a Pulitzer [nytimes.com] this year, believe it or not, for running a tawdry sex scandal story about a politician. If that's not a sign of how far political journlism has fallen, I don't know what is.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If you are looking for quality investigative reporting, I'm not sure The Times is the best place to find it. It comes from the same people that bring you Fox News. It isn't as bad as Fox News, but there are better papers out there.
Re: (Score:2)
the only Americans who have ever heard of Global Collect are Sony
FYI Sony [wikipedia.org] is Japanese.
Re:8 pounds a month (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't really read news sites myself, I read stories that I found links to. But I don't really go to a newspaper site and just read all the stories. So it would be NOT 1 pound per day, but 1 pound per article. So I just wouldn't.
That's the problem with paywalls these days... Most folks don't just go to a single site for their news.
Personally, I gather my information from a variety of aggregators like Slashdot, Reddit, Google News, and an assortment of blogs. I don't just go to a single news site and read everything they have to offer.
So I'd have to pay to access a half-dozen sites a day, if not more.
I suppose that maybe this is the intent... Make it too expensive to shop around for your information. Make it cheaper to go to a single source. So you don't read just a single article from The Times, you read pretty much everything there. And I assume there'll still be advertising all over the site.
From 'anchor of civilization' to wacko webpage (Score:5, Insightful)
Charging a pound a day to read news is ill-advised. It will transform this man's newspaper from being the anchor media of the community to being just another website for the rich and their wack-job worshipers.
Newspapers a hundred-years ago were the voice and rallying point of the many diverse communities in the USA and the voice of the middle class in Europe. There were many and each had strong and opposing editorial positions. After World War II the newspapers consolidated into a few major corporations and greatly softened their strident editorial positions. They started to become focused on local advertising, legal announcements, and providing a printed 'voice of record' for centralized government and corporate positions and viewpoints.
In the 1980s multiple papers and editions in cities disappeared. Most major cities had only one daily and one 'alternative' weekly for young adults. At the millennium, the function of providing news and advertisements started being done by the web and newspapers began to be perceived as irrelevant. A large number of people born after WWII hated their local established daily because the ultra-conservative editorial board would always take the wrong position on every single issue, year after year. Other middle-of-the-road young people found little in the daily that was useful to their lives. One by one, they stopped buying the local paper as the years went by. Editions of major city papers, NY Times, Washington Post, started being published in minor cities.
The wealthy loved the daily paper. They were deluded into believing that the conservative editorial positions were a manifestation of the political views of the people and not a paid reflection of their own perspectives. They poured millions into the dailys, year after year.
Then a few years ago, a tipping point happened. The amount of money coming in didn't pay the costs of the dailys. The papers went 'thin', losing 50-70% of their daily newsprint and concentrated on food ads, kittens-stuck-in-trees human-interest stories, obituaries, and comics. The young get the functions of a daily paper from the web and cable TV. The old feel just lost and the middle class/aged just don't care as long as the SUV still runs.
The global newspaper kings should make their news outlets and web sites free. The sources that they use to get the information are more interested in getting their positions out to the international public than they are interested in selling stories to newspapers. They will use focused web sites. Centralized 'journalism' will wither and just become a forgotten cultural characteristic of the 20th century. Murdock appears to be too old, too isolated, and too rich to understand this.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:£1 per day to access online news? (Score:4, Interesting)
That's the same as the cover price for the physical printed edition. Which is ridiculous- who in their right mind could justify paying the same for online data as they pay for printed/shipped/delivered media?
Surely the costs being lower should mean the price is lower, right?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I guess his advisors worked for the music industry before they got fired for giving bad advice. But hey, they were cheap!
It'll work GREAT! (Score:3, Insightful)
The market pays what a service is worth. (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, the "Wall Street Journal" (WSJ) has excellent reporting and analysis. The WSJ is worth the price that its owners charge, so I willingly pay for a 1-year subscription to the WSJ.
Is "The Times" worth 1 pound per day? Only the market can say for sure.
An interesting but indirect conclusion of my observation is that if a newspaper is so rotten that only free content will a
Re:The market pays what a service is worth. (Score:5, Informative)
Market fundamentalism is funny.
The worth of something is not handed down from on high by your god, the 'Invisible Hand'. The worth of things cannot always be quantified in monetary terms.
Furthermore, the notion that your mythical 'market' can correctly assign prices seems to have been blown out of the water by the recent failure of that market to correctly price financial derivatives. Which is why mainstream economics doesn't actually take your kind of market-worship seriously anymore.
Re:The market pays what a service is worth. (Score:5, Insightful)
The late unpleasantness was caused by the market correctly pricing financial derivatives. The market always works. It can take its own sweet time to correct itself, but you sure don't want to be standing in the way when it does.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I didn't "work," it imploded. Without government intervention, the banks would have gone out of business, and everybody would have lost their life's savings. Markets are not efficient nor even sustainable when their is either too much or too little regulation.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It didn't "work" because of those bailouts. Without them, a few large banks would have gone out of business and nobody would have lost their life savings, except investors in those banks! The surviving banks would have learned a harsh lesson about gambling.
My bank needed no federal handout to survive. Neither did my car company. The free market only works if idiots are allowed to fail. Otherwise, idiocy is simply propagated forever, which seems to be the current system.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, both of them needed bailouts to survive, even if they didn't receive any directly. When a bank goes bust, everyone there loses their savings, therefore can't buy any cars. The banks who were owed money by that bank also go bust, and more companies go bust. Millions lose their jobs and default on their mortgages, the mortgages owned by your bank which also goes bust.
The problem with libertarianism is that its proponents have n
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The market always works.
Now we just need a definition of "works".
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The market always works, it just doesn't always work the way free market fundamentalists think it does.
You are indeed right, most of the time it will eventually find the optimal situation, though like most optimizing routines it has the occasional issue with local maximums.
The issue comes in your definition of optimal. It is perhaps true that in a truly 100% free market, optimal would really be optimal, but a truly 100% free market has not and cannot ever exist. In the absence of such perfection, you need t
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Furthermore, the notion that your mythical 'market' can correctly assign prices seems to have been blown out of the water by the recent failure of that market to correctly price financial derivatives.
Why do you think that? I think the meltdown in derivative pricing was precisely the invisible hand correcting the over-valuing of those derivatives. If anything, its been the government's interference in that market correction that has slowed down the process. If Bush and then Obama had just stayed out of it instead of trying to prop it up, those prices would be in tune with reality by now.
Opensource the news ? (Score:2)
Since news are going proprietory why don't we start an open-source alternative?
Re:Opensource the news ? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Use the BBC (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect you are missing the point - this is an attack on the BBC. Firstly introduce payment for the Times etc. online. Get that established, then the next step will be to complain to Parliament and the press that the BBC is unfairly competing with his online offering, as it is giving away news that he has to charge for, and therefore the BBC News websites should be shut down. This has been his tactic to date (google for Murdoch, BBC and unfair if you want citations on this). Murdoch cannot stand genuine competition.
Re:Use the BBC (Score:5, Insightful)
If I had mod points....
This is completely true in my view. Murdoch hates the BBC. OK, fine. But he will use political presure to complain about unfair competition in, I reckon, 5 years.
It won't be Rupert Murdoch himself of course. It will be his rottweiller of a son who will get whichever government of the day to reduce the budget and scope of the BBC News website. It's not the beginning of the end but it is the beginning of the beginning of the end if you get my drift.
Re:Use the BBC (Score:5, Insightful)
He's already complained loudly about the BBC and Australia's ABC/SBS "unfair advantage" but nobody is paying any attention to him since fucking with those institutions has always ended badly for politicians that have tried it in the past. It simply won't wash with the public in AU/UK, state sponsered media generally enjoys a much better reputation than the commercial offerings and has been around for well over 50yrs. Given that history it doesn't take a genius to work out that "unfair competition" from the BBC/ABC hasn't stopped him from becoming mega rich in the past.
Sure he's got friends in high places and is a strong influence on government policy in the western world but there are some things even Rupert can't change.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The BBC are having to slim down at the moment, losing websiteas and radio stations. And that's a Labour government who Murdoch doesn't like anymore.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Now can't he? look what Berlusconi did. Don't feel secure when you ain't.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not saying the BBC/ABC are untouchable but their history and the vigalance of the public does make them highly resil
Advertising (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Advertising (Score:5, Insightful)
No
You see, here's the big problem that Murdoch and friends have with "free-news". The newspapers and magazines, can't get any kind of useful stats on it's users if they just give it away. They use this data in a bunch of ways, one is to supply it to their advertisers.
These guys just don't sell the news, they sell this data as well. It's probably more important to them than selling the news. If you use a credit card to purchase something, this has your full name, address, purchase history through lookup on other shared db's and so much more.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No
You see, here's the big problem that Murdoch and friends have with "free-news". The newspapers and magazines, can't get any kind of useful stats on it's users if they just give it away. They use this data in a bunch of ways, one is to supply it to their advertisers.
These guys just don't sell the news, they sell this data as well. It's probably more important to them than selling the news. If you use a credit card to purchase something, this has your full name, address, purchase history through lookup on other shared db's and so much more.
Can't they get around this by striking a deal to share cookies / LSOs with sites like Facebook and Hulu (which already have collaborated in this manner). Most users don't block these, especially LSOs, and all the news site has to do it match it's visitors against a profile on a site like Facebook who then happily provides full demographic information on the user and all their friends (as part of the arrangement), and Hulu can even match that with television viewing habits for the lot.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Use the BBC (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you tried to live without a TV in the UK? I did for 6 years. The TV Licensing people refused to believe that I didn't have one and kept pestering me to get a license. One year I had to sign two copies of the "I promise I don't have a TV set" form within a fortnight, speak to them on the phone and to deal with a TV License Inspector who turned up on my doorstep at 6pm one day.
The funny thing is, I became a great BBC Radio 4 [bbc.co.uk] fan during that time. It's paid for by the TV License fee, but you don't need such a license to listen to the radio...
It's a funny old world.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Have you tried to live without a TV in the UK?
Yes.
The TV Licensing people refused to believe that I didn't have one and kept pestering me to get a license. One year I had to sign two copies of the "I promise I don't have a TV set" form within a fortnight, speak to them on the phone and to deal with a TV License Inspector who turned up on my doorstep at 6pm one day.
Whilst the TVLA are threatening and downright obnoxious, they can also be ignored. You don't have to inform them that you don't have a TV, or sign anything and if an inspector turns up then you simply tell him to go away and refuse to let him in. The inspectors have no right to enter your property without your permission unless they have a search warrant, and they can't get a search warrant without some reasonably good evidence that you have a TV. I.e. ignore them and there's nothing they can do but
I predict... (Score:5, Insightful)
"And nothing of value was lost..." (Score:5, Insightful)
This is good. Two of Murdoch's outlets have deliberately isolated themselves from the wider discussion. I only wish he'd adopt this strategy more widely.
Re: (Score:2)
Personally I hope this plan fails and I'd wish his whole empire comes crumbling down like a deck of cards, along with all his friends, competitors, and everyone else in the "media" bussiness.. Yes, a bit far fetched, but I can dream
The Dream and The Reality (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of very vocal voices on the Internet hate Murdoch, and that's fine. But the reality is, his newspapers and cable channels are wildly popular -- WILDLY popular, at least in the US. They typically trounce their competition by silly-wide margins. And my gut is that there is a large percentage of Murdoch's readership who can't stomach his competition any more than you can imagine yourself watching Foxnews, and that this percentage of folks will pay. He doesn't need everyone who's reading him now to pay, just -- what's the percentage being kicked around? -- 5% or such? He gets that, he makes money, and more importantly, he trumpets that "The Paywall is a resounding success!" (Using the largest megaphone in the land, I might add.) This all but forces his competition to follow suit (let's call them the Hipster Papers...), and you know that the hipsters aren't going to pay, because, well, you're one of them, you've got your reasons. The Death Spiral of The Hipster Papers accelerates.
Murdoch may be one Nehru Jacket shy of being a Bond Villain, but he has thought this out. It is entirely possible that in the pending media apocalypse that is online news distribution, he's the last man standing.
Re:The Dream and The Reality (Score:4, Insightful)
A lot of very vocal voices on the Internet hate Murdoch, and that's fine. But the reality is, his newspapers and cable channels are wildly popular -- WILDLY popular, at least in the US. They typically trounce their competition by silly-wide margins.
That's true in the UK newspaper business [guardian.co.uk], too. But his outlet that's doing that is The Sun (circ. ~2.9 million), not The Times (circ. ~600 thousand). You will note that he's not messing with his best-selling daily title, he's messing with his worst-selling daily title.
Re:The Dream and The Reality (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The Dream and The Reality (Score:5, Informative)
His news stuff isn't /meant/ to be news. It's meant as entertaining (to draw them in) propaganda (to get them angry at the "right" things).
Unfortunately his target audience is not generally intelligent enough to tell that it's not news.
Good luck with that (Score:3, Interesting)
This is a good thing... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No decent micro-payment system. (Score:3, Interesting)
For these business models to work there needs to be a decent micro-payment system. I don't want to get out my credit card for every single website, especially for small amounts, and don't want to pay a subscription for a service I don't know if I will regularly use. Paypal is currently the only real player, and in my opinion they are a bunch of crooks who are playing legal games to avoid having banking regulations applied to them and subsequently having their dirty laundry aired.
National and international banking systems need to get together and figure out a proper micro-payment system (with amount limits so dodgy websites can't drain your account) before this sort of business model will take off. I might be tempted to pay 10 cents to read an article, but not if I have to pull out my credit card on the spot or sign up for a subscription first. Instead what will happen is regular users will sign up and everyone else will go to the free sites. The results being the regulars pay more to cover the running costs and possibly the failure of the website to sustain itself due to loss of ad revenue.
Re: (Score:2)
figure out a proper micro-payment system
Isn't that what itunes is?
Re: (Score:2)
iTunes isn't the web. And I would also rather avoid giving Apple a slice of the money I am trying to give to someone else, just as I avoid giving a large slice to PayPal.
Re: (Score:2)
OMG (Score:2)
Not that anyone will necessarily listen to me, though obviously they must be listening to Rupert.
I have not bought a newspaper, watched Sky (for anything other than football) for the best part of seven years. Why the hell do they think that I might get my credit card out in order to listen what they have to say, they should pay me for the benefit of listening to them.
Failblog.org (Score:4, Funny)
This might have worked... (Score:4, Interesting)
...before Murdoch destroyed one of the greatest newspapers in the world. I'd gladly pay to read the NYT or the Washington Post online, just as I've paid for the WSJ online for a decade, but pay to read Murdoch's crap? Heck, I'd gladly pay money to keep it from showing up in my search results.
Re:This might have worked... (Score:5, Informative)
...before Murdoch destroyed one of the greatest newspapers in the world. I'd gladly pay to read the NYT or the Washington Post online, just as I've paid for the WSJ online for a decade, but pay to read Murdoch's crap? Heck, I'd gladly pay money to keep it from showing up in my search results.
Murdoch's crap now includes the WSJ. Just sayin....
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, good point, but he hasn't yet destroyed the WSJ.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Have you checked what comes up from the WSJ on Google News since the takeover? Biased right-wing crap.
Compare to cloaking on Google Scholar (Score:2)
Murdoch's outlets won't show up in the search results
That is, unless Murdoch does an "approved cloaking" deal with Google like Springer, Elsevier, and Wiley have done.
Murdoch (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in the day, when Murdoch started in Australia, his commercial rival was Kerry Packer. Both of them lobbied hard to have media cross ownership laws broken down so they eventually ended up owning most of the Australian media outlets (newspapers and such like). Murdoch left Australia, where his base company Publishing and Broadcast Limited was formed after establishing a strong commercial base with Fox in the US. Murdoch is grooming his son to take over, and he seems even scarier than dad.
Meanwhile, back in Au, Packer died and his son took over who ended up selling off his Broadcast and Publishing businesses to get into Casinos.
The void left behind is utterly bland, and the media cross ownership laws left behind have just allowed companies interested in asset stripping to come in and, well, do what they do.
The only interesting media is Publicly owned, and I hope the BBC will reverse their decision to back away from internet media. It's that kind of thinking that is the future. It's probably time for these old commercial medias to die off anyway having seen what they look like when they die. The irony in all this was to watch the public broadcasters point out that some PBL papers were plagiarising peoples weblogs at the very time Murdoch was talking of paywalls. If they can't develop original content, people will see it's crap, Faux looses advertising revenue and Murdoch just put another nail in commercial media's coffin.
It will be interesting to watch this comedy play out.
The Guardian (Score:5, Insightful)
Thankfully, the Guardian [guardian.co.uk], which has far superior journalism and doesn't seek to ram politics down everyone's throats in "news" stories like News International's papers do (people often talk of the paper being liberal, which on its comments pages is largely true, but they do a good job of keeping it out of their news reporting), remains free for everyone with an extensive back archive. And of course the BBC exists too... thank God.
I can only echo the poster above who said he hopes Murdoch puts up more paywalls. Murdoch's shitty reporting and deliberately biased and bigoted publications have ruined political discourse in this country.
Re:The Guardian (Score:4, Interesting)
The Guardian is indeed an excellent source of free news, but with pre-tax losses of nearly $134m [pressgazette.co.uk] last year, it's anyone's guess how long that will last.
The BBC isn't in the same boat, of course, since it's funded by British licence fee payers, but should the Conservatives win the next general election, its operation also looks set [newstatesman.com] to be scaled back considerably.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What people tend to forget is that any newsoutlet needs to pay for the content they deliver, either through paying journalists or through paying press agencies. Because newspapers do not get enough money from advertising, they currently need to let journalists go. Press agencies need to lower prices as well, because newspapers expect more for less. The current business model is not maintainable, everyone is losing. Most of all the readers, who are more and more getting the exact same news from any paper, wi
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Historically all we (consumers) paid for was the paper, ink and delivery. The content was paid for by advertising revenue - this hasn't changed: we pay the ISP for the delivery and it's electric ink and paper.
There is no reason why we can't continue to get all our news in this model. Indefinitely.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
IIRC the Grauniad is losing money hand over fist. Believe me, if this works they'll be next on the bandwagon.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I read The Guardian and consider myself pretty left-wing on most issues, but their bias sometimes makes me cringe. They do provide some interesting coverage, but they're nowhere near as objective as the BBC, for example, and even further away from a hypothetical unbiased news source.
I used to read The Times, because it's easier to filter out bias when it's bias that you disagree with, but I stopped when it went beyond bias and into just talking drivel.
Re:The Guardian (Score:5, Interesting)
Thankfully, the Guardian, which has far superior journalism and doesn't seek to ram politics down everyone's throats in "news" stories like News International's papers do (people often talk of the paper being liberal, which on its comments pages is largely true, but they do a good job of keeping it out of their news reporting)
That generally just means their political bent matches yours, so you don't notice it as much as in the papers you disagree with. In 1992, the Scott Trust (The Guardian's owner) explicitly declared "remaining faithful to liberal tradition" as part of its central objective for The Guardian. So it's not just "largely true"; it's part of the mission.
While US newspapers make a big palaver about their news reporting being politically neutral and objective, UK newspapers do not -- in the UK there is much greater recognition that the choice of what news to report is itself affected by the editor's political beliefs (what they consider important), so there can be no such thing as a politically neutral paper even if the articles are written in dry matter-of-fact language. Rather than trying to pretend to be above all that, the UK papers are instead fairly open about their editorial biases, and it's well known which ones lean towards which readerships -- for example the famous Yes Minister [wikipedia.org] quote. Similarly, where I used to work we often found ourselves commenting in the tea room "The Independent is leading with a story on global warming. It must be Thursday." In short, the UK papers care about editorial independence but not neutrality.
The exception, of course, is the BBC, which has a legislative requirement to portray a "balanced" view on any political matter.
If only... (Score:5, Funny)
this is a good idea... (Score:2)
...and other media outlets will follow it. The fact that Murdoch has an agenda doesn't mean that he doesn't understand his business.
If you want to see what happens to the effort put into journalism in newspapers paid for by advertising alone, you have centuries of precedent. You have to ask yourself: who is your customer? The person who reads your paper, or the person who buys advertising space? To produce a newspaper/web site designed to increase the number of views/clicks of adverts is a very different sk
Re: (Score:2)
Do you have evidence for this? Perhaps you'll want to qualify "all" first.
Then consider why, even if 60% of revenue comes from advertisers, your exercise is entirely different from the usual web model where 100% of revenue comes therefrom.
I'm still looking forward to in-depth investigative reports in the style of the highbrow dead tree media (and their online subscriber-only equivalents) from /just one/ online site which relies entirely on advertising revenue. I miss spending Sunday mornings reading a 10-pa
5%... possible? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's hinted in the article -- and I've seen it elsewhere -- that if they retain 5% of their current online readership, that counts as a win.
That's a small enough number that my instinct ("Nobody'll pay for it") doesn't feel all that reliable.
Is it just about possible that 5% will pay? I think it's unlikely, but not completely impossible. It'll be interesting to see, that's for sure.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Deja vu all over again? (Score:4, Interesting)
They should value my attention (Score:3, Insightful)
What Murdoch and the rest of the 'Content Kings' don't get is that content is no longer king.
These guys should be happy that they are getting my attention - that I'm literally paying them attention. You want me to pay money on top of me paying attention? Forget it. The whole world has a press now and there are millions of people out there - with interesting or intelligent or entertaining or titillating or whatever content - that would be just happy for me to paying them attention.
Murdoch seems to be attempting to hypnotise the public into thinking we need his stuff so badly we'll be prepared to pay for it. We don't.
This is great!!! (Score:4, Informative)
This is me, catching breath (Score:2)
Let me get this straight: You want me to pay a buck a day to cram your propaganda down my throat?
*collapses in a twitching, giggling heap on the floor again*
If you can sell that, get a few fences to paint, you could make a killing!
Why it won't work (Score:3, Insightful)
Due to the fact that "The Times" has quite a reputation, in the initial stage the scheme will be a relative success. As time goes by however, the paywall will show its ugly teeth. No more external links driving traffic and no more SERPs in Google.
Paywalls fail not because they make people pay, they fail because they effectively isolate the website from the rest of the web.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Uh, you're not much of a mathematician, are you?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
He couldn't have made it clear that he is an adult film producer. Also, mathematics and accounting are widely and wildly different, and it would take a state school system to confuse the two. Mathematics is the formal analysis of patterns; accounting is adding numbers up. While a mathematician would be able to improve the art of accountancy, he might never be a good accountant, just as the guy who builds the jet might make a poor pilot.
Your rule of thumb: if you have an operation which would be made easier
Re:so, that's like $350/year (USD) ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Lets iterate this hypothesis a bit.
It's 350$ a year if you wish to pay avery day anew, but it's 104$ if you pay every week.
The next step I would implement, will be 50$ if you pay once per month, followed up with 35$ if you pay once per year.
So if you subscribe for a year you get a rebate of 90%. Suddenly this scheme does not look so bad at all.
Re:so, that's like $350/year (USD) ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong argument.
First of all you are not part of the target audience. You won't pay, the sheep will.
Information must originate from somewhere and somebody has to pay for it.
Murdochs media imperium is big enough that it will not fall in 5 years. He can suffer from 2-3 years of lower income, his treasure chest holds enough cash. He will get ROI on this scheme and other media outlets will follow suit. ACTA and DMCA will of course help with this.
You may not be happy with this course of events, but unless you are
Re: (Score:2)
First of all you are not part of the target audience. You won't pay, the sheep will.
Fair enough; I agree. However, the only people I see paying are people who exclusively read these papers online already and have no other source for news, which seems like a pretty small demographic.
Re: (Score:2)
"Lower income"? It's free now, so whatever income he gets is an increase. Maybe a decrease in income from web ads, but that is much less than what he might earn from subscribers.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, probably not. The "sheep" as you put it will probably just move to a non-paywalled news outlet. Or go back to buying dead tree versions. It's a path-of-least-resistance thing.
Some people will pay, certainly. Some always do. But how many people have a pressing need to see what the Times has to say on a minute by minute basis? What does the Times offer that they can't get elsewhere, for free? People are going to
People who want to RTFA before they comment (Score:2)
But how many people have a pressing need to see what the Times has to say on a minute by minute basis?
People who follow a link from a news aggregator and want to make informed comments about the article on the aggregator's comment system.
There's no value in having a newspaper that no one reads.
Then explain the major journals published by Wiley, Elsevier, and Springer, which cloak their results on Google and charge an order of magnitude more than this for even a day's access.
Re: (Score:2)
Option one
Get out your credit card, type in your card number, ccv number, billing address and 3d secure password. Set up a username and password. Remember them.
Option two
Visit one of the following sites for your news requirements
news.bbc.co.uk
www.guardian.co.uk
www.telegraph.co.uk
www.independent.co.uk
news.sky.com (at least until he puts that one behind the paywall as well)
Which do you think most people will go for?
BBC, Guardian and Telegraph already have more readers than the Times.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
The whole point of the 1$/day price is to make people that try to "game" the paper and only buy it on the good news days and not the slow ones pay more, while the weekly subscription makes you buy the whole week whether something interesting happens in the folllowing 6 days or not. The risk/value proposition is completely different and so your extrapolation is nonsense too. 104$/year is probably what they expect to make on a regular reader, maybe you can push it down to 80-90$ by paying for all year but the
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
uhm..
So I didn't RTFA, but the summary says pounds, not dollars. That'd be $544 and $152 respectively using current exchange rates.
Re: (Score:2)
$2.98 per week at current exchange rates, but if you want to pay in US$, you will be charged $4, so it may be cheaper to pay in £ and swallow your banks transaction fees.
Re: (Score:2)
Nope, micropayments never work. First off, most people read very few articles. Secondly, people hate being nickle and dimed. I might pay a subscription (for a non-Murdoch paper), but I'd never pay per page. I'd go anywhere else instead.
But if you're going subscription, I better not see any AP articles- you better be doing your own research. No way in hell would I pay for AP that's free everywhere.