This Is Rupert's Last Stand: Making You Pay

Is Rupert Murdoch too old to matter? In the face of the worst downturn in the history of the newspaper business -- what everybody except Rupert believes is a structural rather than cyclical decline -- he bought the Wall Street Journal, built the world's largest newspaper printing plant just outside of London, and is still talking about buying the New York Times. Yesterday, his company, News Corp., posted the biggest losses in its history. In response, my Uncle Rupert-- who as recently as a year ago, when we last spoke, had yet to go, unassisted, onto the Internet -- announced that he would shortly make his newspapers available online only if you paid for them.

Well, I'll say this, he's swimming against the tide.

His uphill fight is probably even greater than it might appear. Not only is he, among all media executives, the most technically disinclined (actually, totally illiterate), but his company, of all the big media enterprise, is the most technically backward and maladroit. He may now employ more reporters than anyone else in the world, but they use the oldest computers. He may have some of the world's most trafficked news sites, but they are also the slowest and most inept. Technology, at News Corp., has always been regarded as one of those things, like fancy hotels, or long-form writing, that are not part of the company culture.

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Comments

[seakat]

So Rupert thinks he can make up lost revenue by charging for online content. Why do I have a hard time thinking that's going to get his $6 billion back (or however much he lost)?

Maybe he needs to wake up to the fact that maybe people are boycotting News Corp sponsors and that could explain why his ad revenues are down.

[Whitley2009]

Not one thin dime, Rupert, not one thin dime.

[swift goat pet for truth]

I am really interested in this.

Do GOPers really need to be told what to think so much that they will PAY for it?

[NevaforLeadership]

It had certainly crossed my mind that Murdoch was frozen in the days of printing presses, short-hand and "return the carriage."

How astounding that he heads a worldwide news organization, the very survival of which will depend on technological decisions.

[josephXY]

One very interesting result when media moguls, pundits, etc., prophecy their own great future (at the
expense of readers / viewers and advertisers) is that within a short time, again and again, such prophecies turn out to be false prophecies. That's one aspect.
And as for Murdoch's papers readers: many of the tabloid readers don't have much respect for
such papers, rather, they are openly admitting it is sh*t what they are reading, and just because
it is cheap. Some may be addicted, hardcore loyalists but by far not all.
And now Murdoch, and he is not only one, appears huge on the media horizon: now you pay
(we got a huge mortgage to pay). Directly confronting people for their often self-admitted bad habits
by demanding money. The media moguls are likely to fail when they are now try to impose their
will on practically everybody to give them some money. They are probably ending up as fools.

[ThePeacemakers]

If people don't start paying for news, there will be no professional newsgathering. It's profession people and it costs dollars to do. You complain about corporate influence in the news? Then give the news producers an option.....

Also, I'm tired of creative content being held hostage to corporate interests for ad dollars. It happens at all levels.

[NevaforLeadership]

Newspaper subscriptions have never paid the way for newspapers. Advertising has.

Up until now, newspapers have been protected regionally and geographically. Companies in a certain region would advertise their products in the newspapers in that region. On the Internet that protection has disappeared. Advertisers have thousands of choices. The line between local, regional, national and international news has been blurred.

It used to be a newspaper's market; now it is an advertiser's market.

The crisis is not an economic one; it is a structural one. When I watch the nightly news on TV and find I have already read and/or watched the lineup on the Internet -- sometimes days before -- that is called redundant and outdated. I'll stick with the Internet. The advertisers on the TV channel know that. On the Internet, I don't need to click into ten news sites to see the same, repeated -- often identical -- news. The advertisers know that. The redundancy will have to be routed out, before the media crisis settles. That means many news organizations are headed for the chopping block.

Before they go down, in their dying throws, they are shouting, screaming and attacking their consumers.

[Subterfuge]

People pay to go to the "creation" museum.

[zeezan]

Bye bye, News Corp websites. Ask the NYT how well charging people to see their stuff on line worked out.