More on Murdoch and pay-per-view news

Roy Greenslade offers this commentary on Rupert Murdoch's announcement that News Corporation news titles will go towards pay-only access to online content:

I have never received so many calls from so many places across the world to talk about the momentous decision by Rupert Murdoch to charge people for access to his newspaper websites.

As so often with statements by the world's most famous media mogul, the announcement is being treated as the word of god. Where Rupert goes, said several TV and radio presenters, others are sure to follow.

Excuse me if I disagree with those slavish reactions, and with Murdoch and, incidentally, with Lionel Barber, the editor of the Financial Times, who also believes that paid-for content is inevitable.

I tend to agree with Jeff Jarvis (Murdoch's move to charge for content opens doors for competitors), Guido Fawkes (Murdoch bucks the market) and John Temple, publisher of the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News (charging for a basic news service is flawed).

But I concede that there are many supporters of Murdoch's move too. The split is both philosophical and practical. There are those (with whom I agree) who believe that the digital media revolution is in the process of transforming journalism and those (such as Murdoch and most traditional newspaper publishers) who believe the net is merely another platform rather than an instrument of transformation.

It follows that if you wish to continue to fund traditional journalism that you require similar revenues, hence the Murdoch charging strategy.

Oddly, there are advocates of Murdoch's approach who believe him to be a journalistic hero and even a revolutionary, as I discovered when taking part yesterday evening in a BBC World Service discussion.

I was taken by surprise by the passionate support for Murdoch offered by by Tim Luckhurst, professor of journalism at Kent University (and a former editor of The Scotsman).

This also from James Harkin, also available (free) from The Guardian:

The cheerleaders of a free, digital utopia want to resurrect the mass market for news by having us chat to each other and our newspapers all day long. But between the fusty old newspapermen who refuse to tweet and the gadgeteers who do little else, there is little evidence that the rest of us have the time to be cogs in an all-purpose electronic machine. Long before the net tore apart its business model, the truth is that many newspapers were looking bloated and fat, as if lifestyle supplements and the advertising which went along with them was all readers wanted.

What they wanted, it turns out, was focused content, written by journalists who know what they're talking about. The freshest news outlets springing up in the US, for instance, are Politico, the magazine aimed at political junkies which broke the scandal of the Washington Post charging companies for access to its reporters, or TMZ, the well-connected celebrity mag which broke the news of Michael Jackson's death.

News organisations will, as a consequence, divide into populist monoliths which try to be all things to all people – witness the growth of news aggregators, for example – or, more promisingly, slim down and concentrate on what they know about.

For those that can hold their ground and know their niche, the good news is that the advertising industry will eventually have to catch up to the fact that the production of news is moving away from national mainstream outlets into a more global patchwork of niches. What matters then is whether newspapers have anything distinctive enough to pay for, or audiences who are interested enough in reading them to see their demographic data sold on to advertisers in tune with their specific interests. In one way or another, Rupert is right and the free-lords are wrong – we'll end up having to pay for the news that we really want.

Its on - Rupert Murdoch to introduce pay online news

Today saw Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation announce one of its largest corporate losses in history. Details from ABC News are below:

The global economic downturn has had a huge impact on News Corporation's results, with Rupert Murdoch announcing a 30 per cent decline on last year's performance.

News Corp reported a fourth quarter loss of $US203 million ($241 million), in line with its forecasts.

Across the fiscal year the company recorded a $US3.4 billion ($4 billion) loss.

Mr Murdoch says newspapers have been hit particularly hard, with classified advertising never expected to return to previous levels.

"The last year has been one of the toughest in our history and the results today outlined for fiscal 2009 clearly reflect the sour economic environment that affected our businesses throughout the year," he said.

But Mr Murdoch says he is confident the worst is behind the company.

Mr Murdoch has also indicated that access to News Corp material on the internet may soon come at a price.

"The extended downturn has only increased the drum beat for change, but the secular challenge is clear," he said.

"Classified advertising revenues will never again reach the levels that print once offered.

"Quality journalism is not cheap and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalising its ability to produce good reporting."

The big news is that Rupert Murdoch has indicated that all News Corporation online news sites will become fee-based in the near future:

"The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels but it has not made content free. We intend to charge for all our news websites."

...

At present, only the Wall Street Journal charges a fee for online access and until recently, received wisdom in the publishing industry was that readers would not pay to read newspapers on the internet.

Murdoch said he had completed a review of the possibility of charging and that he was willing to take the risk of leading the industry towards a pay-per-view model: "I believe that if we're successful, we'll be followed fast by other media."

He said he was thinking in terms of "this fiscal year" to introduce charges. He said News Corp would avoid a migration of readers to free sites by "making our content better and differentiated from other people".

The charging model will be extended to red-top tabloids such as the Sun and the News of the World. Murdoch said he was keen to capitalise on the popularity of celebrity stories: "When we have a celebrity scoop, the number of hits we get now are astronomical."

As Bobbie Johnson observes in The Guardian:

A divisive split has emerged between those who believe that readers must be forced to pay for access to stories or see traditional reporting disappear altogether, and those who believe that a great deal of the information we consume each day is merely a commodity, and journalism must adapt itself to the changing environment.

News Corporation is at the forefront of the former camp, and plans are well advanced to make news on News Corp sites available onto on a fee-paying basis. Jeff Jarvis thinks that this won't work, as it misunderstands the nature of value creation through the Internet:

Newspapers have had 15 years since the launch of the internet browser to reimagine and rebuild themselves for the reality of the post-Guttenberg age. But they didn't. Now they are trying to reclaim old business models for a new media economy — a link economy, I call it, in which links give content value. Cut yourself off from links, behind pay walls, and you cut yourself off from the internet and its real value.

With any radical change to business models of this nature, some of the issues to be considered are:

• Consumer reaction: will consumers simply shift en masse from News sites to other sites that provide free news content?
• Competitor reaction: how will sites such as the Fairfax sites in Australia, or The Guardian in the UK, respond? The role of public service media is another factor here - the ABC and BBC are almost certain not to go down this path;
• Advertiser reaction: will advertisers identify potential "premium clients" here, or simply migrate to where the consumers are going, if they leave News sites for free content?
• Implications for different News properties: fee-based access to the Wall Street Journal can be profitable. But does this apply to The Sun, The Australian, The Courier-Mail, the Hobart Mercury etc.?
• Implications for News journalists: if news is understood as a low-value-adding commodity, then status differentiations among journalists are not so great. But if there is a need to produce content that people will pay for, will this leave a small cadre of "star" journalists, and mass layoffs for those who provide everyday news content?

News Limited has being laying off journalists and other news staff in Australia, and this would be likely to continue under a pay-per model. There is also the interesting point, which was considered in Tech Crunch last week, of whether "star" journalists - those whose content attracts a personal following that readers would be willing to pay for - are better off leaving large flagship newspapers and starting their own sites, hoping to take readership and advertisers with them. Harvard Business Review blogger Umair Haque has been thinking along similar lines with his Nichepaper Manifesto.

(Hat tip to Tim Mansfield for the latter).

If I'm going to pay for The Australian, I want better sub-editing than this

If John Hartigan believes that "the willingness of readers to pay for [news] will depend on the quality of the content", he may want to note how his own pieces are sub-edited in his own News Limited papers. Kudos to Tim Burrowes from Mumbrella for spotting this.

The bad sub-editing seems contagious Rod McGuinness spotted this with Christian Kerr's House Rules column online, which has remained untouched for three days.

News goes for The Punch

News Limited went public on Monday June 1 with its new online site The Punch.

According to editor David Penberthy (former editor of the Sydney Daily Telegraph):

The Punch is a new opinion website aimed at every Australian with a love of ideas, discussion and debate.

It’s not a fancy, la-di-dah site aimed at people with three university degrees, nor is it a site for yobbos who want to engage in mindless abuse.

It’s a place for spirited, sleeves-up, energetic, engaging commentary, written by people who enjoy writing, for people who enjoy reading.

It has a full-time team of four writers (Penberthy, Tory Maguire, Leo Shanahan and Paul Colgan), and an eclectic group of signed on occasional contributors:

Our political contributors include Mike Rann, Maxine McKew, Anthony Albanese, Joe Hockey, Mark Arbib, Nick Xenophon, Barnaby Joyce, Jason Clare, Scott Morrison, John Cobb, Jamie Briggs, George Brandis, Chris Pyne, Michael Costa, Bronwyn Bishop and Peter Dutton, as well as Mark Textor, Peter Lewis, David Gazard and Tim Gartrell.

Our sportswriters include Kate Ellis, Ben Buckley, Anthony Sharwood and Luke Foley, on business and economics we have Clive Mathieson, Steve Keen, Frank Zumbo and Cameron England, and a broad suite of writers including Catharine Lumby, Tracey Spicer, Fergus Linehan, Ed Charles, Clive Small, Matt Kirkegaard and Nedahl Stelio covering entertainment, technology, food, fashion, crime, movies, music and trends.

The Punch will also include exclusive original content from established and emerging News Limited journalists including Joe Hildebrand, Dennis Atkins, Di Butler, Alan Howe, Alex Dickerson, Tory Shepherd, as well as journos from other outlets including Leigh Sales from the ABC and Fiona Connolly from ACP.

Much of our content will be News Limited content. But it will also come from people at independent news sites, from people who aren’t in journalism but are great writers, from people at rival news organisations whose work on The Punch opens them, and us, up to new audiences. And every morning we will link through to content on sites which we own, but also on sites which we don’t own, to give you the most enjoyable reading experience.

Suggesting that Penberthy may be reading this blog, he notes:

Against this backdrop, our hope for the site is this: at a time when every tenured communications academic on the planet is sending tiny urls via twitter, linking you through to wrist-slashing stories about the apparent death of journalism, we want to demonstrate that journalism is alive and well.

Commentary on The Punch can be found online at Larvatus Prodeo, Club Troppo and Public Opinion. Not surprisingly, the blogosphere is not enthised by News's entry into their patch.

Two lines of cricicism have been most common. The first is whether you can make a site of this nature work without some commitment to quality writing, even if that means writing for "people with three university degrees". Hell, I will have five by year's end (six if you see Honours as a separate year!), and my own suspicion is that it is a lot more common than David Penberthy may be allowing for to find people who regualrly read and post to blogs having above-average levels of educational qualification (and don;t interpret that as saying they are smarter, just sayin' ...).

The second is that it is opinion, not journalism, and that most of the contributions come at no cost. All true, and it may be causing some ructions wihtin News, particularly for those who get paid to write opinion, and now face also having to write for The Punch, or perhaps having their work replaced by material sourced from The Punch. This may indeed come to pass - I first became aware of the site by reading Penberthy's piece on Australians abroad on The Australian online - but it does seem odd for bloggers to be criticising other media outlets for drawing on crowdsourced free labour as an alternative to paid professional journalism. Isn't that what many have been arguing is the future?

At any rate, the fact that News has gone for The Punch indicates above all else that the Crikey model (and that of other sites such as On Line Opinion) is getting audiences and commerical traction, and that going head-to-head with them is a sure sign that this is being acknowledged. That siad, we'll know whether this site is getting readers in a way that matters when we see regular postings from the likes of Mike Rann, Anthony Albanese, Barnaby Joyce and Chris Pyne.

Milne Watch #2

In a week where the Canberra commentariat universally decided that the Federal Government was too boring to pay attention to, so offered their advisory services pro bono to the Federal Opposition, there was a lot of competition for the silliest column on the question of whether Peter Costello wanted or did not want to be leader of the Federal Liberal Party.

Glenn Milne's prognostications were on a par with others - and no more silly than those of Paul Kelly, who takes himself more seriously - but this snippet from the Sunday column caught my eye:

Key former Costello supporters have now switched to Turnbull.

I ask them: "If Turnbull mounts a challenge and Costello rings to say, don't do it, what would be your response?''

They say: "Peter has now dealt himself out of the party's future; therefore, he has no say in it. We will make up our own minds''.

So there you have it. 'Key fomer Costello supporters' - whoever they are - not only receive the same questions from Glenn Milne, but collectively offer the same answers. They 'will make up their own minds'.

Repeat after me: We are all individuals!