Because geek is cool and clever

Brother can you spare a dime? August 11, 2009

How would you feel if someone suddenly asked you to start paying money for something you have always had free?

It’s an interesting question and one that, if you’re a regular reader of The Times or The Sun websites, you may soon find yourself answering.

Rupert Murdoch, head of News Corps that owns these and other media giants, has said that his company plans to start charging for all its editorial content within the next 12 months, citing another of his newspapers, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and its profitable subscription model as an example of how asking people to pay for journalism online can be success.

Announcing his plans last week he said, “The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels but it has not made content free”.

Murdoch isn’t a man who is known for the generous things he’s previously had to say about journalism and he’s not exactly up there with the top web entrepreneurs, having purchased MySpace in 2005 for $580 million, just as the social networking site’s popularity started to wane dramatically in favour of Facebook.

So what has brought about this decision and is anyone really likely to start coughing up to read articles that will be in a million other places for free?

It wasn’t very long ago when the buzz in the newspaper industry was all about getting your content online to capture as big an audience as possible. Eyeballs are good for advertising and a potentially global marketplace just a click away equals a lot of eyeballs.

Murdoch may be right that quality journalism comes at a cost but the business model of giving away content in favour of advertising dollars is now well entrenched. Just because we may be going through a phase where those dollars are more like cents, it doesn’t mean that at established model can be turned around.

The WSJ enjoys a decent income from subscriptions because it has never been free and its content caters to a niche market who can directly make money themselves from its reporting.

Paying to read stories about Big Brother or standard commodity news that is plastered freely over the net doesn’t seem quite as attractive or, frankly, likely to happen.

Next week I’ll delve deeper into this fascination subject. In the meantime, let me have your thoughts on the issue.