Rupert Murdoch is looking to start charging readers to access his online papers. While many will dismiss it as rearguard fighting, I will not be surprised if other publishers jump in at the chance. As their readership moves online, newspaper publishers just can't make enough money on the Internet through advertising alone to run their business. The billion dollars question is whether there would be sufficient willing payers to compensate the drop in online readership (i.e. online advertising revenues) when they start charging. It looks like we will soon find out.
CNN article (still free).
2 comments:
Working out how to get paid the biggest challenge facing all areas of the publishing industry right now.
People might think that people will inevitably give up on traditional news publishers and simply get news from bloggers. The problem there is which bloggers have the resources to lead the news agenda, which are actually full time and which of them are getting paid and how? Those that are getting paid aren't always using advertising which also brings up questions of impartiality.
The future of the whole caboodle always returns to that question - how does everyone get paid and what does the future of news (completely new news a la reuters) look like.
I suspect niche publishing will have a large part to play in what this future looks like.
There's a new mobile app for PR people that's all free news using the top blogs. It's called M.insight and is available on the major platforms.
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