Newscorp Web sites to start charging users

Murdoch says it will happen within one year.

I hope it works.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/05/07/murdoch.web.content/index.html

 

God.... why couldn't Tribune have been taken over by Murdoch. Aussie with balls ... or.... moron American Grave Dancer who merely fancies he has a pair.

 

If Murdoch could, or would, buy TribCorp do you believe he could turn things around with it?

 

Absolutely.

 

Second Simon. Rupert Murdoch knows how to work a business model and I could also see him maintaining Tribune's serious journalism model (or in this case, restoring it... thanks, Sammy!)

 

The story says: "Murdoch said the experience of the News Corp.-owned Wall Street Journal had proved that charging for content could be made to work."

I hope that is not his basis for wanting to charge, because that is one flawed theory. The WSJ is a whole different animal from a daily, local paper.

Also from that story, which sounds about right to me -

Joshua Benton, Director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University: "I suspect within any readership there is a small slice -- maybe three percent -- that is willing to pay. News organizations are going to have to find a way of getting money from that slice without driving away everybody else."

 

Plus the WSJ is free if you put search for the story on Google and click on the result.

 

Pay-per-story model.

 

So long, Roop. Barely knew you.

Faux News to shut down in a year if this happens.

 

It is one thing to pay for online content in the Wall Street Journal when you need information instantly because a lot of money is riding on it.

It is quite another thing to pay for online content in the New York Post when it comes to articles.

 

As I ranted in the other thread:

-- Giving our product away is proving to be suicide.
-- Web advertising is not lucrative enough to sustain us, and that doesn't appear to be changing.

So it's either this or we die, because there isn't national appeal to East-West football or Whatever County school board for Google news to save us.

Every single one of us needs to be pulling for this to work if we want to work in a sustainable industry.

 

You pay us or you get nothing. Your kid's name in a girls' tennis story is not a civic right. It's what god-damned puts food in my kids' mouths.

It is quite literally that attitude or death.