Steve Shannon

Bravo to Rupert Murdoch for having the guts to say and do what others in the media industry have been wringing their hands over for quite some time: “We intend to charge for all our news websites…If we are successful, we’ll be followed by all media.”

Naturally, and as expected, many of the folks I follow on Twitter and in my Google Reader all piled onto poor Rupert. The worst of the comments: he’s an old man who doesn’t understand that Internet news yearns to be free, yada, yada, yada.

Here’s what I do know about Mr. Murdoch: he bought the Wall Street Journal and kept it on a subscription basis, despite the fact that even he stated he’d remove the subscription wall. I also know that Mr. Murdoch is one very clever businessman who has built a behemoth of a business empire. Who is anybody to question him? Clearly, he’s learned something from the Wall Street Journal and he’s going to put that lesson to work in his other media properties.

Murdoch’s critics point out that if his properties enact a subscription wall around their content they’ll lose audience. To that I would say, and I’m sure Murdoch is too, SO WHAT? What does any media outlet get by giving its content away for free? Next to nothing. It’s a well known fact that online advertising is not a workable model so what does News Corporation, or any other online media outlet, have to lose by asking people to pay for and value the content? Right now, traditional media is taking it on the chin financially. They can either die a slow death by staying with the free model, or show some guts, as apparently Murdoch is going to do, and rightfully charge for their valuable content. They may die faster, but on the other hand they may find the revenue model that WILL work.

Another specious argument is that by enacting pay walls around their content, media properties will lose their link love from the likes of Google and other search. To that I say, who needs it? Nobody goes searching for news; they want it pushed to them. Many claim that they now get their news via Twitter.  But how? By people who are quoting and linking to news that is reported by traditional media!

Too many folks have chugged the Internet Kool-Aid and are confusing medium with the product. In terms of the media industry, the Internet is still nascent, and media is still finding it’s footing, albeit not as fast as other industries. Whether journalism and news are in print or online, that doesn’t matter; the people producing it need to make money. And that’s the bottom line on this issue. My bet is on Murdoch and that subscriptions will definitely be a part of the equation.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 at 11:29 am and is filed under Media Industry, Technology, Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.