The beginning of the end for free news on the Web? Let’s hope so

August 5, 2009
By Billy Dennis

A Wall Street Journal article on News Corp. earnings included this little tidbit:

[News Corp owner Rupert] Murdoch said News Corp. plans to charge reader fees for all its news Web sites, which aside from The Journal include newspapers such as the Australian, U.K. tabloids the Sun and News of the World and the Fox News Channel. Many newspaper executives have said they plan to start charging subscriber fees to read their stories online, though few mass-market papers or news outlets have done so. News Corp. executives offered few details of how they will implement the new business plans.

I approve. I’ve argued for years that the sooner news organizations transition from a dead tree medium to online, the better.

It’s based on the premise (far fetched as most ink-stained wretches seem to find it) the value in a newspaper in reporting, not the paper and ink. The Internet has buggy-whipped the business model that says if you own a printing press and hire some reporters, you can make a fortune. A printing press means nothing but massive supply costs, massive operating costs and massive distribution costs — none of which applies when you distribute news on the Internet.

The only reason newspapers give their news away for free now is because they want to make it impossible for a reasonably well-funded start up to come along and charge a subscription fee.

If competing newspapers are smart, they will just at the chance to slap up a pay wall, too.

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5 Responses to “ The beginning of the end for free news on the Web? Let’s hope so ”

  1. Cameron on August 5, 2009 at 7:54 pm

    Ha…they’d have to pay ME to read Fox News :)

  2. Michael on August 5, 2009 at 8:32 pm

    I would be happy to pay for paperless news … but I want it portable, such as Kindle, and I don’t want a bunch of ads cluttering my bandwidth. Just charge me a fair price for the news and lose the ads.

  3. AnotherExJSer on August 6, 2009 at 1:18 am

    I wouldn’t bet the ranch on this. Your WSJ link is free. Seems like less and less stuff there is behind the pay wall, despite the fact that WSJ is considered an example of a successful pay site.

  4. Scruff on August 6, 2009 at 11:59 am

    Every attempt to charge people to view content on the internet has been thwarted. There will always be an alternative. The key is to attract advertisers to your site. The model is there – when is the last time you paid money to Google?

  5. 11Bravo on August 6, 2009 at 4:29 pm

    News orgs, at least long term profitable outfits, will never charge users for content. The ad-based model which has worked forever will continue to work online once the print media ceases printing. Advertisers will realize that online ads are at least as effective as print ads and have many more benefits like the ability to track conversions and much more.