murdoch: business suicide is FUN!
- Thread starter twitchmoss
- Start date
- Status
They can't stop the signal.
The big problem is that I almost agree with this move. The AP will be charging soon, too. See, the Associated Press is one of the largest news organizations in the world and it takes a shitload of money to scan the globe looking for this news. Most websites you read that have news get their information directly from the AP. Most times they simply cut/paste it into their code and it looks like their own story. Cracking down on this will help the AP continue to gather news and stay viable. If the AP goes down the only thing we have left is twitter users, bloggers and other user generated content that is difficult to verify at best and downright wrong and inflammatory at worst.
What Murdoch is doing is a precursor to this kind of pay per story news that has been coming down the road since Al Gore made his series of tubes.
What Murdoch is doing is a precursor to this kind of pay per story news that has been coming down the road since Al Gore made his series of tubes.
:clap:
/The schadenfreude is strong with this one.
//Anyone who posts that Avenue Q song will be banned.
///been reading too much farking Fark...
/The schadenfreude is strong with this one.
//Anyone who posts that Avenue Q song will be banned.
///been reading too much farking Fark...
The AP already does charge, they're just very bad at controlling their content.Edrondol said:
http://www.ap.org/pages/about/pressrele ... 2309a.html
I don't think Murdoch is wrong with his logic here.
People, as the WSJ proved, have always been willing to pay for quality.
I just don't think Murdoch has thought out the implications of that thought in regards to the rest of News Corps offerings.
"But it has not made content free. Accordingly we intend to charge for all our news websites," he said.
People will pay for quality is his thought here, but in reality, not many actually do. I've read plenty of papers in my time and most if not all just give you a headline and a short follow up on it. In depth articles are a very rare occurrence, over here anyway. I'd pay for a paper if it would actually give me more info than a free website does, right now, they don't.
People will pay for quality is his thought here, but in reality, not many actually do. I've read plenty of papers in my time and most if not all just give you a headline and a short follow up on it. In depth articles are a very rare occurrence, over here anyway. I'd pay for a paper if it would actually give me more info than a free website does, right now, they don't.
Necronic
Staff member
Here's a crazy thought! Maybe they could provide content interesting enough that it would bring in the ad revenue to sustain them! Like every other bit of journalism on the webs.
The fact is that the old school of journalism is like the old mechanical calculators. The world has changed. It will never go back. Access to information has never been as easy as it is right now. Newspapers worked because it was hard to distribute information in the past. That's simply no longer the case. Its SOOOOOO fucking easy. Not just that but there are a lot of people who, while they might not be on par with a wall street journal quality journalist, are not that much worse, and are willing to do the same job for much less in the form of a blog, a twitter, or whatever. So why should I buy the cow if I can get the milk for free?
Traditional news sources can survive, they just have to change. They have to be interesting. They have to be smaller, faster, more versatile, and less restricted. They have to stop paying people assloads of money. Or they can become infotainment, parade as news, and bring in listeners by entertaining them with highly polished biased journalism people will eat up. Notice that the latter is what most major television news sources have already done.
The fact is that the old school of journalism is like the old mechanical calculators. The world has changed. It will never go back. Access to information has never been as easy as it is right now. Newspapers worked because it was hard to distribute information in the past. That's simply no longer the case. Its SOOOOOO fucking easy. Not just that but there are a lot of people who, while they might not be on par with a wall street journal quality journalist, are not that much worse, and are willing to do the same job for much less in the form of a blog, a twitter, or whatever. So why should I buy the cow if I can get the milk for free?
Traditional news sources can survive, they just have to change. They have to be interesting. They have to be smaller, faster, more versatile, and less restricted. They have to stop paying people assloads of money. Or they can become infotainment, parade as news, and bring in listeners by entertaining them with highly polished biased journalism people will eat up. Notice that the latter is what most major television news sources have already done.
This subject came up a while back on our local news/talk radio station (KIRO). Honestly, if I could pay ala carte for news articles that I wanted to read; especially if I could get my hands on the raw information with as little spin, conjecture, and opinion interjected as possible, I would gladly pay for news online. What would really piss me off is if I had to start paying for cnn.com when it seems like half the shit that they have is grainy cell phone video from iReporters or articles about how some random guy spent his 4th of July. Opinion I can get free anywhere on the net. It's news that I'm after, and if I have to pay for it a little bit, if the source is proven to deliver quality news content, I'm willing to fork over some money for it.
M
Mr_Chaz
The trouble is, with News Corp charging, even if AP start charging too, there will always be free alternatives, good ones too. I can see no way that the BBC would start charging, because they're public service they can't start charging. And their news is, in my opinion, of a higher quality than basically anyone else anyway, although obviously skewed towards a UK audience.
G
Greendog
^ This basically. That, and on my way to work in the morning, I'm assaulted on many occasions by people trying to give me free copies of the Metro and the Manchester Evening News so it's not like I'm lacking for free news-stuffs.Mr_Chaz said:
To be fair, the BBC only has to stay free for UK users. They could start charging international people to view their sites.
That said...I'm willing to pay for quality, but the Sun? Yeah, no. the WSJ or similar, sure, but...they give aay the WSJ Europe for free every day at campus, and the stock never gets depleted, so, err, nope.
That said...I'm willing to pay for quality, but the Sun? Yeah, no. the WSJ or similar, sure, but...they give aay the WSJ Europe for free every day at campus, and the stock never gets depleted, so, err, nope.
- Status