News Corp will charge for newspaper websites, says Rupert Murdoch | Media | guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/may/07/rupert-murdoch-charging-websites

Ah, le vieux se lance...

Rupert ­Murdoch expects to start charging for access to News Corporation's newspaper websites within a year as he strives to fix a ­"malfunctioning" business model. Encouraged by booming online subscription revenues at the Wall Street Journal, the billionaire media mogul last night said that papers were going through an "epochal" debate over whether to charge. "That it is possible to charge for content on the web is obvious from the Wall Street Journal's experience," he said.

"Encouraged by booming online subscription revenues at the Wall Street Journal, the billionaire media mogul last night said that papers were going through an "epochal" debate over whether to charge. "That it is possible to charge for content on the web is obvious from the Wall Street Journal's experience," he said. Asked whether he envisaged fees at his British papers such as the Times, the Sunday Times, the Sun and the News of the World, he replied: "We're absolutely looking at that." Taking questions on a conference call with reporters and analysts, he said that moves could begin "within the next 12 months‚" adding: "The current days of the internet will soon be over." |||| What I don't get is how they plan to get people to start paying for content that they've become very, very comfortable with getting for free.

RT @davidakin: News Corp will charge for newspaper websites, says Rupert Murdoch http://bit.ly/dSI3S (back to future?) [from http://twitter.com/writelife/statuses/1726447940]

"The current days of the internet will soon be over."

Current days of free internet will soon be over, says media mogul

Rupert Murdoch is going to battle against the Internet, bent on making readers actually pay for online newspaper journalism–beginning with his London Sunday Times. History suggests he won’t back down; the experts suggest he’s crazy. Is he also ignoring his industry’s biggest problem?

Wolff wrote a biography of Murdoch, and presumably knows the man. My take on this fascinating article is that the old guy simply doesn't understand what's happening online, perhaps because you can only truly understand the online world if you participate in it.

"[Rupert Murdoch] can almost single-handedly take apart and re-assemble a complex printing press, but his digital-technology acumen and interest is practically zero. Murdoch's abiding love of newspapers has turned into a personal antipathy to the Internet [...] In the Murdoch view, media only really works as a good business if it achieves significant control of the market—through pricing, through exclusive sports arrangements, through controlling distribution (he has spent 20 years trying to monopolize satellite distribution around the world). [...] Murdoch has a larger problem still. It is, after all, not the Internet that has made news free. News in penny-newspaper or broadcast (or bundled cable) form has always been either free or negligibly priced. In almost every commercial iteration, news has been supported by advertising. This is, more than the Internet, Murdoch's (and every publisher's) problem: the dramatic downturn in advertising."

"In one of my favorite Murdoch stories, his wife, Wendi, who had befriended the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, told me about how the “boys” had visited the Murdochs at their ranch in Carmel, California. When I marveled at this relative social mismatch and asked what they might have talked about, Wendi assured me that they had all gotten along very well. “You know, Rupert,” Wendi said, “he’s always asking questions.” “But what,” I prodded, “did he exactly ask?” “He asked,” she said, hesitating only a beat before cracking herself up, “‘Why don’t you read newspapers?’”

War is Rupert Murdoch’s natural state. When he launched the Fox Broadcasting Company, in October 1986, he went to war against the hegemony of CBS, ABC, and NBC. With Fox News he crossed swords with CNN’s Ted Turner. At Sky, his satellite-TV system in the U.K., he went up against the BBC. He’s battled China, the F.C.C., the print unions in Great Britain, and, recently, most of the journalism community in his takeover of The Wall Street Journal. He relishes conflict and doesn’t back down—one reason why he’s won so many of his fights and so profoundly changed the nature of his industry. Now he’s going to war with the Internet.

Excellent article about the Rupert Murdoch's apparent allergic reaction to the internet and the reality of the newspaper industry. If the internet is responsible for the downfall of FOX News, I will be so fucking giddy.....

Rupert Murdoch is going to battle against the Internet, bent on making readers actually pay for online newspaper journalism–beginning with his London Sunday Times. History suggests he won’t back down