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What's behind Rupert Murdoch's trash-talking of Google?
Analysis of Rupert Murdoch's vendetta against Google and the aggregators, by Jack Shafer.
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If it were in News Corp.'s economic interests to dig an Internet moat around its newspaper properties, Murdoch would have already done it rather than talk about it. Instead, he's shouting about it to signal to his competitors 1) where he'd like to take News Corp. and 2) his desperate desire for them to follow. And they must follow, because if they don't, the genocidal tyrant's general-interest newspapers—the Australian, the Times, the New York Post, the Sun, News of the World, and others—will be doomed to irrelevance.
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He's also delighted to give away content—to allow it to be "cannibalized," if you like—if he can get the numbers to work in his favor: All of his terrestrial-broadcasting properties are free, which is to say advertising-supported. No user pays Murdoch for the right to settle down in News Corp.'s MySpace, either.
Is Rupert Murdoch stupid like a fox?
Matthew Ingram ponders what Rupert Murdoch could be thinking when he blusters about taking his toys and going home -- I mean taking his sites out of Google.
Your readers are paying you — with attention
More responses to Rupert Murdoch's intention to remove his media sites from Google's search index. Ingram says that the move doesn't take into account the value added by recommendations on social network sites.
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What happens is a potential reader runs headfirst into that wall, or has to jump through all sorts of hoops to read it (i.e., check to see if there is a Google News loophole), and that is a significant disincentive to a) read anything further, or b) share any links themselves. It’s the classic cutting-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face problem: you try to generate incremental revenue through restricted access, but by doing so you deprive your content of even more valuable re-distribution through recommendation networks, which in the long run reduces your traffic and thus your revenue.
The Real Obstacles to Paying for Content
Jason Fry says that the real barriers to paid content online are the lack of geographic isolation driving the market price of news to zero and the fact that newspapers have perhaps been cut too deeply to be able to produce content people want to pay for.
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I don’t think pay schemes are a slam dunk. Far from it, in fact. There are two huge problems here, as I see things. The first is that with geographic isolation no longer protecting newspapers from competition, readers are awash in a glut of commoditized news, driving the price for a lot of that content to zero. Gralnick’s Web democratization strikes me less as some kind of social truth than as sound economic judgment. The second problem is that many newspapers have been cut so deeply that they may lack the resources to produce unique, compelling content that people would pay for.
Newspaper Readers Buy Papers for the Content
Ryan Chittum takes a stance against those who argue that news content has no value, that people are really buying ads and not news.
Stephen Foley: Nice try – but you're wrong, Mr Murdoch
Newspapers will be committing collective suicide if they try to put their content behind paywalls without first making that content into something people want to pay for.
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It's desperate stuff. It won't work, and if newspaper executives on both sides
of the Atlantic follow Mr Murdoch's apparent lead, I predict we will witness
the collective suicide of scores of news organisations in the US and
elsewhere. -
The Sun and the New York Post get an "astronomical" number
of hits when they have a celebrity scoop, he pleads, but he's talking about
a few stories a week at best, and a scoop is only a scoop for a fraction of
a second on the web. - 2 more annotations...
PCUK/Harris Poll: Only Five Percent Of Readers Would Pay For Online News
A PaidContent.org poll shows that 74 percent of users would find a free alternative if their paper started charging for content.
Murdoch says won't make all of online WSJ free
By Ben Hirschler DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - News Corp Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch said on Thursday he would not make all online Wall Street Journal content free. Dow Jones & Co has begun opening access to some previously paid-for items...
Google developing a micropayment platform and pitching newspapers: “‘Open’ need not mean free”
Zach Seward at Nieman Journalism Lab looks at Google's proposal to use its Checkout system to manage micropayments for news content.
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Google believes that an open web benefits all users and publishers. However, “open” need not mean free. We believe that content on the Internet can thrive supported by multiple business models — including content available only via subscription.
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The idea is to allow viable payments of a penny to several dollars by aggregating purchases across merchants and over time. Google will mitigate the risk of non-payment by assigning credit limits based on past purchasing behavior and having credit card instruments on file for those with higher credit limits and using our proprietary risk engines to track abuse or fraud.
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This News Doesn’t Want to Be Free
A Newsweek article about the Newport Daily News, which started charging an exorbitant rate for its online news and saw a spike in good ol' paper subscriptions.
You Can't Charge For Something That Doesn't Provide Value
Mark Potts tells explains that newspapers may want to charge for online content, but they may have a hard time convincing readers their content is valuable enough to pay for.
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Most, if not all, newspaper Web sites aren't really very good—they're still (mediocre) newspapers pasted on a screen. They're clunky, text-heavy, unimaginative and hard to navigate. They're not designed for audience service; they're usually constructed for the convenience of the people who produce them.
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Add Sticky NoteThis is a dangerous conundrum for the newspaper industry, at a dangerous time. To amp up the quality, newspaper managements have got to get a lot smarter and spend a lot more money. But money's tight, and in fact, resources are being cut, deeply, throughout the industry. Innovation is essentially at a standstill. Smart, visionary staffers have left in frustration. Upstart competitors are moving in on things that newspapers used to take as birthrights. Papers still aren't being daring enough about trying things that will really serve readers, that will really move the needle on quality, that will really attract new audiences and new lines of revenue. They're stuck in the past, unwilling and unable to truly move into the future.
- Sounds hopeless - on 2009-07-25
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Three ideas to make newspaper pay walls work
Dave Lee gives some suggestions for how to make the seemingly inevitable paywalls work for newspaper Web sites.
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Add Sticky Note
Hey hey! It’s Free Column Friday! Or something. Let’s not just lie-down and say “right then, everything is 2op, off you go”. Let’s be inventive. Let’s have Alan Rusbridger’s five picks of the day for 50p. Let’s have five Jeremy Clarkson columns for the price of four. Let’s have a loyalty bonus: You’ve read Charlie Brooker for the past 5 weeks? Hey, guess what, Charlie loves you — here’s a sixth article for free. Hell, here’s an EXCLUSIVE article for free. Why not?
Put your online price right up there with your offline price. Advertise content with the online price tag attached. Make it seem like a bargain. Make the reader think “Hey, you know what, 20p isn’t bad. I put 20p in a charity box the other day, and thought nothing of it”.
- Why not do this? We should treat newspaper articles online like any other purchase; namely, we should offer deals like Lee says. Editor's picks. Bargains. It would open up a whole new world for promoting certain content. - on 2009-05-10
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Newspaper publishers need to get round the table and launch their own PayPal. It’s the only way it can work. I should be able to use the same account for every single newspaper on the planet. Or, at the very least, in the UK. But really, the planet. A PayPal for newspapers would be a revolution. It means I can keep track of what I’m reading, and spending, and not have to worry about signing in to 30 different sites.
Why newspapers can't charge for online content
Dan Kennedy thinks paying for content will fail, just like it failed the first time back in the 90s, mainly because people can turn to lots and lots of other news sources that offer decent quality and which are likely to remain free.
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I am not philosophically opposed to the notion that newspapers ought to be able to charge for their online content. The trouble is that it hasn't worked before, and it almost certainly won't work now. It's not that there aren't plenty of people who value what newspapers have to offer. It's that there are too many free sources of high-quality information, even at the local level.
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Do CNN.com and MSNBC.com offer the sort of depth and analysis that a great newspaper does? No. But consider that the discerning news consumer can also visit the Christian Science Monitor, NPR.org, The Guardian and Guardian America, BBC News and other sites that are now and will likely remain free. All of those sites are non-profits with Web strategies more advanced than most of those offered by for-profit newspapers. The truth is that even for someone who puts a premium on being well-informed, the Slate Five are optional.
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The case for charging to read WSJ.Com
Former WSJ.com editor Bill Grueskin guest blogs this post about why the Wall Street Journal charges for its online articles and debunks some misconceptions about how the system came to be.
Eight barriers to local paid content
Steve Yelvington gives us eight reasons why charging for local news content online will be tricky.
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The painful lessons of experience. You might want to look into the history of attempts by general news sites to get consumers to pay for access. Did you actually think we hadn't thought of it, and tried it?
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It takes scale to make paid content work, and you don't have the volume you think you have. Quit making up wishful percentages based on your totally bogus monthly unique-user count
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Whack-a-mole with micropayments
Jeff Jarvis takes a whack at micropayments, which are rearing their heads again
Penny for his thoughts
Jeff Jarvis criticizes David Carr's "iTunes for news" idea by reminding us all of the failure that was Times Select.
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But the real fallacy in Carr’s delusion is that a news story or an opinion, like a song, is unique—that you can’t get it somewhere else and so you have to buy the original.
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And even if Carr had a unique idea here, the essence of it—without guitar accompaniment—can spread without having to hear him sing the tune. Information isn’t art. Neither are opinions.
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Murdoch: WSJ.com expected to be free - Yahoo! News
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trading subscription fees for anticipated ad revenue.
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