Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
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Stung by a collapse in advertising revenue as the recession shredded Fleet Street’s traditional business model, Murdoch has declared that the era of a free-for-all in online news was over.
“Quality journalism is not cheap,” said Murdoch. “The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels but it has not made content free. We intend to charge for all our news websites.”
What does “quality journalism” have to do with Murdoch’s tabloids?
The Australian-born press and television baron was speaking as his News Corporation holding company slumped to a $3.4 billion net loss for the financial year to June, hit by huge writedowns in the value of its assets, restructuring charges and a dive in commercial revenue…
At present, only the Wall Street Journal charges a fee for online access and until recently, received wisdom in the publishing industry was that readers would not pay to read newspapers on the internet…
He accepted that there could be a need for furious litigation to prevent stories and photographs being copied elsewhere: “We’ll be asserting our copyright at every point…”
The group’s television division, including its Fox stations in the US and Star networks in Asia, saw profits fall from $1.12bn to $174m.
His plan to sue everyone should deliver about as much of a return as it did for the RIAA.
When you get lawyers involved, only the lawyers come out on top.
Remember that lawyers produce nothing. They only feed upon the misery of others. Worthless parasites.
He bought the only paid newspaper on the web, and made it free.
OK… Then I’ll get some lawyers, and sue him for his many crimes, and he will spend the rest of his rotten days in the crowbar hotel!
As Bugs Bunny might say, “What a maroon!”
He will lose a lot of money if he stops the Comedy Network and MSNBC from showing clips that end up sending the normal people over to Fox for a few laughs at the absurd.
Rupert has severely underestimated the apathy of the younger generations.
Never saw Rupert Murdoch and “Quality Journalism” used in the same sentence before.
It’s funny… neoconservative Murdoch thinks his journalism is “quality”. Ha!
There are two forces at play here and neither reflect upon Murdoch or News Corp.
There is a paradigm away from print. Since much of News Corp is print, they are dropping customers and advertisers.
The second is we are in a recession. Advertising is down for everyone.
If he charges for his news content, he will face a backlash. AP and Reuters provide news to all its members. Although much of that content is from imbedded reporters, most comes from local members sharing their reporting. If Murdoch thinks he is strong enough to gather all his own news he is welcome to try.
Fair Use allows other stations and news outlets to use photos and clips to a degree. Murdoch would need to change laws in most countries to stop that.
In short, just another day in the right wing world of fantasy.
LOL
Why would anyone pay for fascist programming? More and more people are becoming aware of the con that is the car/ oil/ military/ msm/ advert/ banking mafia. The story of the imperialist corporate gangsters with their Washington corruptocrats and corporate monopolies will soon come to an end. That includes you, Mr Murdoch. You and your Islamonazi Saudi friends.
I wouldn’t mind paying for high quality journalism. But for tabloid BS jurnalism… nah… plenty of free junk out there.
“Ha Ha” as I point at the man with the absurd plan
#1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12
And Viacom wouldn’t be able to remove colbert and J Stewart from youtube, but they have. Get real, Murdoch is always ahead of the curve and if he says it, it generally happens
This is great news. The less people have access to Murdoch, the IQ of the readers will go up substantially.
Quality news, har, what a laugh.
Fusion, I don’t think he is talking about fair use. He is complaining about websites that just copy the entire article. Perhaps he is going to take on Google. Let people make a summary and then link to the article. If you then want to read the article you have to be a subscriber.
There still is the problem that people don’t want to go thru the whole subscription process to read one article.
The end result may be that newspapers are bought out by cable companies who give you a news subscription with your internet, like AOL used to do…
The irony is that by removing his organization’s “news” content from the web, he will be *increasing* the quality of news reporting that is available.
Bravo!
Is Rups waving bye bye in that photo?
Cos that’s what’s gonna happen…
#15
mike
“There still is the problem that people don’t want to go thru the whole subscription process to read one article”
I wouldn’t want to give The Murdoch Players my name, address, credit card numbers, linking to my IP ect.
As Nelson I guess I work for the villain but hey.
Reuters has the same issue how to get money to pay reporters(not that Fox does any reporting-just right wing talking point parroting and punditry.
Sorry folks lawsuits and subscriptions are not going to work, they will just cut your viewer/reader numbers. Find a new model
like I said pointing at the funny man who bought the WSJ “Ha-HAa”
Murdoch gives nothing away. If it is free, then he is being paid elsewhere.
I spewed my coffee when I read about Murdoch and “quality journalism” !
Still, I think newspapers and magazines really screwed-up when they started offering their product for free on-line.
What the heck ever happened to anonymous micro-payments? I’m not going to spend $100 a year subscribing to an on-line newspaper but I would drop two cents for an single “quality journalism” article.
#20, Greg, re: “I would drop two cents for an single “quality journalism” article.”
… after all, they are just giving you their 2 cents worth. 🙂
I think he’s been paid or threatened to get conservative news off the air and the net.
This has kind of a mobby, Chicago-y smell to it.
When recordable DvD’s first came out, I “seem” to recall there were two types: one cheap one for data. Then the same disk sold as “media” that had an RIAA tax on it of .30-.50 cents to pay for what was assumed to be OTHERWISE pirated music===made it all legal.
Did I dream that?
How to apply that to “news.” Micro-payments. I would pay near nothing for myself with it aggragating to a supporting revenue stream for the providers.
Who provides “news?” I thought there were only 2-3 sources? AP and what not==almost everyone else simply copy and pastes while putting their own by-line and cat food ads on it? NYT’s et all making in the nature of micro-payments to the AP?
New Model is needed. New, is hard.
Am I the only one who thinks he is looking more and more like the Sith?
There are other options.
#24, No, that’s Joe Biden, saying “join me, and I can save Padme…” just pledge loyalty to the left to get better health care.
of topic
#26
Hey mike what’s your plan to save healthcare ?
Some things to think about.. just a few I could make this a l very long list.
Medical debt is the #1 cause of bankruptcy in the US, we have the highest per person cost of any nation, our nation’s health care costs are rising faster than wages and will make us less competitive in a global market.
Got any better suggestions to fix it than the left has offered up or does this entropy laden status quo system work for you.
The US Health Care system is very sick but it’s a preexisting condition of the system so the GOP ideology will not cover fixing it.
mikeN please tell us what you have in mind?
If you want to read the WSJ just go to Google News and type in the headline of the article that interests you.
They can block Google from showing their stories, but so what? I try to stay caught up with financial, tech, and political news. There is so much stuff that I’m constantly behind on the RSS feedw. Dvorak and Bloomberg are the only information sites I visit directly.
What importance does not reading the occasional WSJ story have in my life? Huh? Good God! Absolutely nothing!
Caveat emptor
ooof he doesn’t look good….some serious implants or organ replacements going on…of course I have been reading too much P K Dick lately ….
anywho “Quality journalism is not cheap,” as he needs to pay those page 2 girls to show boobies