"The Office" Makes Paywall Joke, Mocks Wall Street Journal Site (VIDEO)

"The Office" joked about newspaper paywalls — specifically the one at Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal — on Thursday night's episode.

"Hello everyone, I'm sure you've seen the article in the Journal. Just want to stress it's all conjecture," Dwight quoted from an e-mail sent to all Dunder Mifflin employees.

"Erin, do we have the journal?" Michael asked.

"Your feelings journal? You told me to put it in the time capsule," she replied.

"Michael, he means the Wall Street Journal online," Pam corrected him.

"Oh, the Wall," he said.

"I've found the article!" Oscar shouted, but when the team ran over to his desk, they found only a stub of the whole article.

"It's $1.99 to finish the article," Michael said. "I wonder what it was gonna say."

Watch:

Comments

[smchp]

Stupid stupid move. Murdoch just does not 'get' it. He should stick to the stuff he knows. Selling lies in print and on TV.

[TorontoNDP]

I know H P sauce is afraid of paywalls considering all you do is link to news stories on other outlets and underpay laid off columnists who have no other choice.

[SpeakingTruth101]

Yeah, funny how that works isn't it? And odd that they never link to the stories about how it's worked for some papers. But hey, free is HP's bread and butter. As in mostly unpaid writers and links to all those stories on newspapers they like to call old-fashioned.

[MNinWI]

But that is not true. There are very serious and talented reporters for HP like Sam Stein and Jason Linkins just to name 2 . You are free to go to other sites that don't irritate you like this one seems to.

[nermel]

Rather amusing reply from one of the WSJ's blogs:

"We’re concerned for the future of Dunder Mifflin, but we’re more happy for that $1.99 in our coffers. Score!"

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2009/11/13/the-office-cast-encounters-wall-street-journals-pay-wall/

[ticjlo]

Google News has removed all links to Fox .

[smchp]

That's the best news I've read all week!

[BlackJAC]

It's an old joke that predates Murdoch. You ask someone if they read That WALL STREET JOURNAL Article, and if they say no you say something condescending and if they say yes you both laugh because nobody reads THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

[MadeandBakedintheUSA]

Australians warned us not to allow Rupert Murdoch to infiltrate our free press standards

England warned us not to allow Rupert Murdoch to infiltrate our free press standards

Sir Richard Branson said something like "if we let him, Murdock will destroy democracy".

We ignored Australia and England- look at the dumb down we got!

WSJ- Dumb it Down President!

Advertisers- we are watching you! You will be held accountable!
WSJ/Murdoch- Dumb it Down!

Dumb it Down MR President-

We need stupid says Murdoch!

[nooners]

The future of journalism is a pay wall. Giving away a product has never made sense in any industry. Murdoch's right on this one. http://bit.ly/3UD9bV

[Helpcomputer]

Except for TV, radio, local weeklies, and freeware, you're absolutely right. But those industries have nothing in common with journalism, right?

[Bcre8ve]

A free newspaper could never survive more than a few issues.

Just ask the Village Voice. And they win Pulitzers.

The problem isn't "giving it away for free". The newsstand price of a paper does not cover the cost of the paper it is printed on, or the content that is printed on it. The bulk of a paper's revenue has always come from the advertisers.

The real problem with newspaper viability is the trend of publicly traded conglomerates buying them - like Murdoch's Newscorp.

My local newspaper is a perfect example. The Raleigh News and Observer has always been profitable, award-winning paper. It was one of the first papers to go on the internet with Nando.net. It also is the originator of the "Mini Page" children's supplement, which is now in papers across the nation Through all of this, it had remained profitable. And it won Pulitzers.

The problems began when the controlling family, who had owned it for 101 years, decided they wanted out since they had no viable successor in the family. The Raleigh area was rapidly growing, and as the area's only paper they needed to expand and the family was not inclined to invest in the expansion if they had no member of the family that wanted to take the helm.

"McClatchy paid a quarter-billion dollars for the paper — top dollar at the time — and additionally agreed to take on approximately $120 million of N&O debt..

Continued Below.....

[Bcre8ve]

(Part 2)
....Contin­ued From Above

What’s dragging it down is the $2 billion debt McClatchy has heaped upon its newspapers"

http://gearino.com/?p=459

Wall Street looked upon newspapers as a cash cow - "Newspaper companies have historically enjoyed profit margins of 20, 25 even 35 percent. At the industry's peak in 2002 and 2003, Morton says the average operating margin for all publicly held newspaper companies was slightly more than 22 percent." http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A394229

When revenues did not increase each quarter, as Wall Street demands from its products, they started to look upon these papers as "losers". It did not matter that papers were still quite profitable. It did not matter that papers have always had cyclical revenue. What mattered was the quarter. Nothing else.

Continued Below...

[Bcre8ve]

(Part 3)
....contin­ued from above)

"When newspaper companies began going public in the late 1960s, the books were opened, and Wall Street was delighted with what it saw. The only drawback was the cyclical nature of the business. Because it is tied to retail sales plus real estate and help wanted ads, the newspaper business is sensitive to the vagaries of the business cycle. The financial analysts who advise institutional investors make their reputations on their ability to predict the near future. So they prefer companies whose growth patterns are steady year in and year out."

http://www.unc.edu/~pmeyer/ajrprofits/profits1.html

In a country where supermarkets operate on a 1% - 2% profit margin, and health insurance companies supposedly operate on a 3% - 6% profit margin, you would think that Wall Street would be quite happy that they had a product that consistently returns at least an 11% profit margin NOW. This is down from the historical 20% - 40% margin, but considering that they are constrained by the debt that has been heaped upon them, that circulation rarely increases unless the population base in their region is increasing, and that ad revenue will always be as cyclical as the economy, that 11%, in any normal world, would be considered a perfectly respectable profit.

The problem with newspapers isn't the internet, the problem, like much else in America, is Wall Street and the greedy, greedy people that are killing American companies - and with it American jobs.

[Kiri sute gomen]

Well said.

[JessWonderin]

My hope is Murdock makes good on his threat and make ALL his "outlets" paywalled and "forces" Google to REMOVE the links . . . works for me . . . a self contained echo chamber . . . .

[Aleeb]

I love the way they use a workaround to get the article for free....

[CultofGiraffe]

I thought he just logs on because he subscribes?

[blimie]

That's funny because it's true. I'm not paying.

[DixieMelody]

The Michael character has gone from being a mascot for the Peter Principle. . .

Out of touch and incompetent but quirky and amusing. . . with a good heart. . .

To being thisclose to certifiably insane and almost painful to watch.

I wonder if Murder in Savannah might have been that show's Jump The Shark moment.

[LiberalDem]

I think the show has already jumped the shark, sadly. The character of Michael has become annoying and embarrassing to watch.

[AZterritory]

Agreed, I skipped watching for a while, but since always liked it went back . . . . ICK. Apparently it's just not me. (Ricky Gervais in an interview didn't have much happy talk about it now, either. You can get the BBC shows on Netflix.)

[Spencaa]

Ohhh, well you just keep on watching what Ricky Gervais tells you to. I have so much respect for people who quote celebrities and critics when they discuss what is good entertainment like their word is law.

[TheBaffler]

Carell is far funnier than Gervais, and the US Office remains far superior in every way to the original.

[day678]

The best part was when Toby snuck out and drove off in his car, afraid that he was caught as the murderer!!! But, Michael is truly annoying.

[DixieMelody]

That was Creed.

Toby is the (sad) HR guy Michael hates.

I so wish something good would happen for Toby before the show ends.