Commentary
Murdoch Rages Against The Machine, Calls Search Giants 'Kleptos'
- by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, November 9, 2009
Murdoch says the plan could include implementing a model similar to the Wall Street Journal's, where readers typically get the first paragraph from stories for free, but a subscription provides access to the remainder. And while Google's argument has been that search engines direct traffic to the publisher's content, Murdoch opines "there is not enough advertising in the world to make all the Web sites profitable. We would rather have fewer people coming to the Web sites, but paying."
When asked why people should pay for Internet content they can get for free from other sources like the BBC and the ABC, Murdoch makes the case that taxpayers should pay for the content. He says the news agencies steal a lot of content from newspapers, and "we'll be suing them for copyright [infringement]." Most of the time Internet sites are willing to take down the content, no questions asked.
Theft and piracy through search engines and posts on Web sites have become a heightened focus for News Corp. During the interview, Murdoch points to France as initiating a policy that could become a standard worldwide. The three-strike policy aims to protect digital music against piracy, according to Murdoch. Web sites caught violating a music copyright law for the third time must close the site and "can't come back," he says.
Ironically, Sky News made the interview, with political editor David Speers questioning Murdoch, available on YouTube, Google's video site that Murdoch points to as one of the piracy culprits.
But Murdoch's plan to charge readers appears to have hit a snafu. The Guardian reports that Murdoch's subscription model has been delayed and may miss its June 2010 target.
Laurie Sullivan is a writer and editor for MediaPost. You can reach Laurie at lauriesullivan@gmail.com.
I am a big fan of Rupert Murdoch the businessman and he is 100% right about charging for content. We never had a problem pre-internet of paying for content. We either bought a newspaper or since it was pre-TiVo we watched commercials (or left the room for a minute). So now everyone expects all the same quality of content for free? I am willing to pay a subscription if the rate is reasonable. And with 20% of browsers Firefox that allows Ad blocking (yes even Google Ads from Search get blocked), what is the answer?
The problem is too many news sources. Back in the day you had networks news, radio and your local paper. Now you have cable, TV, News Websites from around the world, radio, print etc etc. Too much content for too few consumers.
He is absolutely right. The newspaper industry made a major mistake when they sent their news stories out free to search engines after paying all the costs to produce them (salaries, etc.) They are PRODUCT and now the public thinks it no longer has to pay for local news, they can just search and get it for free so they are cancelling "needless" newspaper subscriptions. Why pay for news when it's free?
News Corp is doing something that will add value to it's papers and should be followed by all newspaper companies. Sure, there are other sources of national and world news, but only your local newspaper covers your local news from your own city. It doesn't get written and reported for nothing. Let a few newspapers in smaller cities and towns shyt down leaving citizens no local new sources and see them scream! That is what happens when you don't support your local newspaper in mass and there are bills to pay, it dies.
Newspapers haven't really charged for content for years. They are in the business of selling advertising, not news content. They've charged subscription fees to cover the cost of fullfilling those subscriptions. Printing presses, ink, paper, circulation and delivery staff. Advertising revenue has really paid the salary of the newsroom staff. The Internet makes delivery of that free content more cost effective. The problem is not failing to charge for content, it is failing to market (or deliver) a newspaper website that is just as good or better than the print version.
Ditto Tim Knol
The real issue is that people like me are producing content and people like you (the reader who is reading my comment) are consuming it instead of paid content.
Many people now prefer to read dissenting comments to blog posts and media articles more than the original content itself.
Admit it...you find what I am now writing interesting. More interesting than today's column from the local paper's gardening expert. That will be 30 cents please. Oh wait...I've decided to let you read this for free. Why? Well, besides not having a way to embed a donate button in this text, there's a link to who I am and what I do which is valuable enough to compensate for the 45 seconds of time I gave this. If I were to write an entire blog article over a one hour period, complete with research, it would get more readers and I would be become marginally better known...where recognition is the new currency.
Against this new model where people write with the compensation of becoming better known quantities, paid content only has a chance when it comes to very specialized knowledge...often knowledge that a person would rather not just hand out to everyone because that, in itself, would change the data and dynamic.
I won't say everything I know on Twitter. Some things I would charge for.
Example: Say I knew that the best restaurant in town has only 4 tables. It would be against my interest to get those tables booked solid for the next six months by blabbing on a blog about the place. But I could part with such information in a special "insider" restaurant report to a subscriber base of 1000 people paying me $20 per month. I could live with my favorite table being taken Friday night if I got $20,000 in compensation. The same could be said about anything that would be ruined by too many people knowing about it.
You may have noticed that a lot of paid content online is "unsubstantiated" on purpose and cannot be called "news" for that reason. Take Stratfor as an example. This site presumes to tell subscribers what *really* happened in world politics over the last week (presumably based on the site owner's contacts in various world governments). The site says it cannot reveal its sources and, therefore, supposed *real* news sources would write it all off as a rumor site. But I can imagine enough people find what they write to be believable and are, therefore, willing to pay to get what seems to be insider information (what people are supposedly really saying in the State Department and the Kremlin). If the media were to delve into some of their stories, sources would deny them and stonewall...one could almost say the only content people will pay for is that which the sources officially deny.
So yes, some really useful information often does come at a price (with the price sometimes including learning something that isn't true just as the sources would officially said wasn't true)...but very little I've ever seen in a widely available $1 per copy newspaper has really qualified as "insider information", precisely because the publisher expects the info to be read by millions and widely repeated.
If Rupert Murdoch foresees an exclusive club of subscribers, he is on the right track. His content, however, would have to become more exclusive, which would certainly mean nothing that would be officially substantiated by sources and, Heaven forbid, any press release. Subscribers would also, ironically, be more willing to pay for content delivered by an organization that wasn't known for having lots of employees who would be presumably getting the info for free themselves.
Allen
I actually think that's tertiary. Let's distinguish between professional and amateur content. No offense, but your content is not better than Media Post. I mean you are COMMENTING and not AUTHORING. So while I don't disagree with anything of what you're saying, I think generalizing content consumption as a whole the way you describe it is a bit of an exaggeration.
Let's look at the bigger picture. Should content consumption be free.
My thoughts would take up an entire essay. I'd rather make my response more rhetorical. I mean not everyone is going to understand the simple supply and demand economics behind content consumption - and I won't bother to delve one level deeper with marginal costs and opportunity costs.
Some questions:
Which do you think has more value?
(A) the opportunity to advertise to consumers along a buying cycle
(B) the opportunity to monetize the end user before he/she consumes granular information
Is the definition of "quality" content analogous to "engaging?"
And is there a disparity in value between "professional content" and "amateur content?" If so, where is the disparity?
(Point I'm trying to make is that the value behind professional content is INFLATED. Even if you ignore the economics, information in a newspaper or television channel is aggregated as a WHOLE and sold to consumers. So I don't get to put a value on each story inside the newspaper. I don't get to pay less if I negate the "cooking" section or "classifieds," but I still have to pay for the entire paper. I can't pay less to Comcast to eliminate "Judge Judy" or "The View."
If you assume that there is MORE money in marketing than there is at the point of consumption (referring to all content) then a large portion of content should be free.)