FAIL!!!
The BBC reports that Murdoch signals end of free news:
News Corp is set to start charging online customers for news content across all its websites.
…Mr Murdoch said he was “satisfied” that the company could produce “significant revenues from the sale of digital delivery of newspaper content”.
“The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive methods of distribution,” he added.
“But it has not made content free. Accordingly, we intend to charge for all our news websites. I believe that if we are successful, we will be followed by other media.
“Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalising its ability to produce good reporting,” he said.
In order to stop readers from moving to the huge number of free news websites, Mr Murdoch said News Corp would simply make its content “better and differentiate it from other people”
Well, yes, if you have a good product, people might want it. They also might advertise at good media outlets, but given News Corp’s track record in the media business I can confidently predict bigger losses for their on-line sites as people stop visiting and the ad revenue drops as a result.
Good reporting sells newspapers. If media owners had concentrated on good reporting, instead of their stock price and profit margin, and had stopped mortgaging everything they own, driving up their interest expenses, they just might have gotten a good return on investment for generations, instead of the spike of obscene profits followed the the bankruptcy many are now facing.
6 comments
Being an ex-print reporter, I makes me ill to see what passes for “news” in papers today. Owners and publishers are no longer former reporters, they are business people concerned with only the bottom line, not quality news.
It wouldn’t be so bad, if they were even good business people interested in long range profits and survival of the business, but they don’t even pass that test.
I bought the local newspaper all over the world, wherever I lived, to find out the local news. When they stopped covering the local news, I stopped taking the newspaper. It really is that simple. Unique local coverage is what sells newspapers, and I won’t be convinced otherwise. I can get national and international news from a lot of places, but the primary thing that makes a local paper worth buying are the local stories. Eliminating local reporters to cut costs, is a brain dead move.
Oh, this should be fun, watching News Corp. pretend to be in the newspaper biz. The Houston Chronicle, neither the best nor the worst of city birdcage liners, looks about like a tabloid now (oops, better get a smaller birdcage!) and has obviously increased considerably its percentage ad content over the past decade. I no longer subscribe, and I took that damned rag for almost 30 years. Oh, yes, I’m looking forward to watching Murdoch “make money” selling what he shouldn’t be able to give away…
Craptastic idea for craptastic “product”
.-= last blog ..Viva la Fiesta! =-.
The WSJ has always charged for its unique, core product, so there is no increase coming there. Everything else in most News Corp rags is available for free on local restroom walls in the lower type of saloons, so I don’t see any margin there.
If they start reporting real news, they’ll lose their loyal fans, so that’s out.
Unless the price of Pepsi and Cheetos plummets, I don’t see any additional money available.
A few more “Glenn Becks” and no corporation with an advertising budget will touch Fox, so there’s no good news on the profit front in the near future.
Um. Ok. LOL. Whatever, Murdoch. Dweeb.