Tech & Biz

Rupert Murdoch: News Corp to Charge Viewers for News Site Access

by Jordan Yerman | August 6, 2009 at 12:11 pm

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Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corporation, has announced that News Corp. sites will charge viewers for access by the end of the year. News Corporation properties include The Telegraph, The News of the World, and news.com.au.

Bad idea, Mr. Murdoch. News Corporation's content is not unique, and therefore is not scarce. If they put up a paywall, then viewers will go elsewhere, as they've done in the past. I can't imagine this actually coming to pass, unless Rupert Murdoch wants to euthanize his news websites. If, say, Fox News put up a paywall, it would be the best thing that ever happened to CBS, NBC, ABC, and CNN.

Murdoch is making a common mistake: focusing on a viewer's destination while not paying any attention to how the viewer gets there. It's not the content, but the platform itself that matters.

"Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalising its ability to produce good reporting," he said.

"The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels but it has not made content free. We intend to charge for all our news websites."

I understand that Murdoch, along with other CEOs in the mainstream media biz, haven't quite gotten their heads around how to make this whole Internet thing work for them, but they could at least pay attention to previous high-profile failures:

It's not the first time that news organisations have flirted with charging for online content. The New York Times hoisted a pay wall around its columnists, only to find that everyone stopped reading them.

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J2B (not verified)

at 17:20 on August 6th, 2009

charging for online news works for a site like the FT but general news sites won't make money or readers by charging.

Rupert Murdoch's global media empire, News Corporation, slumped to a $3.4bn net loss for the 12 months to June as a combination of plunging advertising revenue, impairment charges and online losses contributed to the company's worst year in recent memory.

So I guess he needs some fast answers!