No more free news

MayoForSam

Murdoch and co. are planning to starting charging for news content across all of their web-sites: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8186701.stm

I suppose it had to happen - online advertising has not taken off sufficiently to cover the costs of journalism and in these recessionary times, alternative revenue streams have to be developed. Where News International treads others will follow.

What's peoples opinions on this? Will you be prepared to pay a fee to access your favorite newspaper sites? Pay-per-view might actually work if the fee was minimal. Still handier than having to buy the paper every day. The BBC will remain free to access and they carry all of the major news stories in any case.

For me, it might actually boost my productivity around lunchtime when it will no longer be possible to browse through all of the free content out there. Then again, its not like we will be starved of web content even if this goes ahead.

IRE60

First and foremost, something has to be done, news gathering organisations can't continue to give away the goodies and plunge further into debt/loss.

But for me its the methodology that will be the killer.

To quote the article they want to charge "just 5p or 10p to access an article" ! The Sun (for example) sells at 35p in the UK = 7 articles, better off getting the dead tree in that case. The sun may not be the best example and would possibly not migrate to the paid for model.

Secondly - the billing. Accessing pay pal every day when you want a quick read would be a killer. Need some other micro account application.

The FT have been doing it for months on its premium content - but there would be a market for that stuff.

snollup

I can understand why they would. However some papers were charging before and have since gone back to the free format.

WinstonSmith

seen this on BBC alright and have to say am against it. It won't make much of a difference to me since I generally use the BBC, but I hope the indo and guardian don't follow suit as I like them. Makes you wonder what the licencing fees and ISP fees are for if individual content is to be paid for. this is also part of a larger debate centring around Virgin attempting to charge its customers for every website they visit... can't find a link at the moment but with the recession all around us, it may be sooner rather than later that the internet becomes lost to the poor and the 21st century renaissance of the mind is aborted...

lostexpectation

it won't work, they can put a paywall round their opinion columnist if they want i don't read em anyway.

Gijoe

This can't work and won't work. With so many alternative news sources on the web, news websites aren't essential like newspapers were in the past.
There are so many sources of news now e.g. Twitter - Michael Jackson's death probably the best recent example & Iran protests.

And if one person actually does have a subscription, there's not a whole lot stopping em publishing it somewhere else. It's Wrong but it's what would happen.
Charging online won't work and I would guess that online newspapers readership figures would actually decrease. Maybe a premium service type thing might work but charging for articles ain't the way to go imo.

IRE60

funny in some ways. Murdoch and co whining about news being free - and giving away 500,000 copies of the londonpaper every evening!

lostexpectation

yeah and his tabloids were also only 10-30p...

J.S. Pill

WinstonSmith wrote: »

...part of a larger debate centring around Virgin attempting to charge its customers for every website they visit... can't find a link at the moment but with the recession all around us...

Speaking of, could be a bit of a pain in the arse for boards users. People might have to form cogent arguments instead of firing up links.

Seriously though. If a widely used microcharging system takes off, what's to stop providers of other resources following the newspaper's lead?? I have in mind specifically the likes of music notation sites, job sites, and em..porn.

Yakuza

Porn on the internet? Whatever next?...Naah, it'll never take off

I was a paying subscriber to Ireland.com before it went to Irishtimes.com, and I'd happily go back to paying for it if they brought back the format they had back then.

It was a little over €1.50 a week (€79 per year) and I thought it was great value.

SLUSK

These days ordinary citizens can work as investigative journalists during their free time and some do. These people spread news for free on their blogs, youtube and so on. So why would someone pay for news when they don't have to? This model is doomed to failure.

Pen1987

SLUSK wrote: »

These days ordinary citizens can work as investigative journalists during their free time and some do. These people spread news for free on their blogs, youtube and so on. So why would someone pay for news when they don't have to? This model is doomed to failure.

hmmm... dunno about that. Irish examples?

This will never work, which will be good for the news business.

Red Sleeping Beauty

Murdoch junior has hit out at the BBC (again) - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8227915.stm / http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/aug/28/james-murdoch-bbc-mactaggart-edinburgh-tv-festival

Is anyone really prepared to pay for the agenda driven biased schlock that Sky news has to offer ?

It might be worthy of mention that The Village magazine are launching a website that'll have a subscriber's fee and some fancy extras for them - http://www.village.ie/

Treora

It's great. No one will buy their spin and a little normality will return to the media. The mean time the remaining players will get more of the market and charge more for their advertising.

Red Sleeping Beauty

The Guardian have a pretty good site I think.
Of the Irish sites, The Sunday Business post is ok and easy enough to navigate. Irish Times and Indo , the ads are a bit in your face. Their search engine is pretty similar.

Sleipnir

More from Murdoch today complaining that the BBC shouldn't give out free news on their website because it'll make it impossible for him to charge on his own sites. He a greedy, greedy man.

The chairman of the media group News Corporation has criticised broadcast policy in Britain, saying it allows the BBC to be dominant.

Speaking at the Edinburgh Television Festival, James Murdoch described the scale of the BBC's operations as a threat to independent journalism in the UK.

Mr Murdoch, whose News Corporation owns Sky, the New York Post and Wall Street Journal, said free news on the web provided by the BBC made it 'incredibly difficult' for private news organisations to ask people to pay for their news.

Mr Murdoch said he is concerned about the scope of the corporation's activities and ambitions.

He was particularly critical of the BBC's radio operations in the UK.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0829/murdochj.html

Maglight

People will pay for unique content that they deem necessary and not available freely elsewhere. The Financial Times is a good example of this. It is required daily reading for thousands of people working in finance and financial services. For this reason the online version can command a subscription. On the other hand, there is no shortage of free, general news sites. That's why Murdoch's plan to charge for his online sites won't work.

The fact is that newspapers missed the boat. They spent so much time trying to preserve their print advertising revenue from core products like cars, property, jobs and classified, that they failed to grasp the opportunities online and so gave away the advantage to dedicated sites like daft.ie, myhome.ie, carzone.ie, monster.ie, donedeal.ie etc to steal the march on them.