Rupert Murdoch's News Corp is going to take the Times of London and Sunday Times behind a paywall starting in June.
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp is starting to make good on its threats to take some of its major mass market newspapers behind paywalls in an effort to generate revenue directly from subscribers, rather than relying solely on online advertising. Starting this June, News Corp will take Britain’s the
“These new sites, and the apps that will enhance the experience, reflect the identity of our titles and deliver a terrific experience for readers,” said News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks, in a statement. “At a defining moment for journalism, this is a crucial step towards making the business of news an economically exciting proposition. We are proud of our journalism and unashamed to say that we believe it has value.”
News Corp says the Times and The Sunday Times are “just the start,” and expects to convert additional UK papers to a paywall model in the future. In the UK, News Corp also publishes The Sun and News of the World.
The move makes the papers the first major British newspapers to go behind a paywall. News Corp has been urging the newspaper industry to adopt a paywall model that prevents its content from being available for free to non-subscribers via the Internet. While New Corp has had success with this model with The Wall Street Journal and its specialized business content, nobody really knows how many news consumers will be willing to pay for newspaper content online, or whether they’ll simply migrate to other free news sources.
While The Wall Street Journal is the only major U.S. paper currently behind a paywall, The New York Times has announced plans to go behind a paywall in 2011. France’s Le Monde also announced earlier this week that it plans to begin charging for some online content next week.
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RSSMany publications – such as the Wall Street Journal for example – have already gone down this route and others are considering the same.
The ongoing challenge for publishers, in the aftermath of installing pay walls, will be to ensure their customers are aware of the valuable and compelling content being created by their journalists. This could very easily be content that readers would be more than happy to pay for, but which they might not even know exists. Getting the balance right between the availability of free content and access to paid-for content will be crucial.
As a truly global media monitoring company, Meltwater believes we can play a valuable role in this regard. We are already creating global awareness of restricted content behind login pages and pay walls for numerous media outlets such as the Financial Times. We promote and market their restricted content to a global audience of potential paying readers and thereby drive traffic and revenue for our partnering publishers.
Jorn Lyseggen, CEO of Meltwater (http://meltwater.com/en/who-we-are)
I think the conspiracy is really missing hear. Murdoch simply wants to make enough money to pay for the people and costs associated with producing content for the web. Right now, very few, if any, content providers make money on the web right now.
When you pay for content on the internet it usually means you give up your real life identity. That combined with what you think (i.e. read) is an extremely valuable commodity.
It is also information that can be used against you should it come to that. It infringes on your right to privacy and to hold your own thoughts. It is why authorities shouldn't know what you check out of the library.
The internet offers tremendous cost savings over print. Murdoch is an extremely greedy man and too stupid to know how to successfully associate content with advertisement or advertisement with content. Or to successfully make the argument that ads should be paid for even if they aren't clicked on.
The identity driven information Murdoch could glean from you is even greater than anything Google ever imagined.