THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS FREE NEWS
"Without us, the aggregators would have blank slides. Right now content producers have all the costs and the aggregators enjoy the benefits. But the principle is clear. To paraphrase a great economist, there is no such thing as a free news story."
Those are not my words, they're the words spoken by Rupert Murdoch yesterday in an address to U.S. media regulators. But I've been saying the same for several years.
Whilst the debate of exactly how and how much users will pay to access content continues, the fact is the days of being able to access niche news content are numbered.
2 comments:
There was an interesting rant by Murdoch at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107104574569661532881656.html
That story has changed completely overnight.
Personally I kinda disagree with Murdoch. I don't really know what he is whining about.
Maybe for some niche news, paid access may make sense, but now for the most part, news is free.
The business has evolved. Murdoch is trying very hard keep doing things how he is used to...
If it were upto him, he would wish that the internet would "go away" and he could sell his newspapers more...
I think you and Murdoch are 100% wrong on this. The only debate going on is amongst the print newspaper ilk. Online readers are mostly going to pay zero. Putting content behind paywalls (or micropayments or what have you) only serves to make that content less valuable, either by decreasing its exposure, or decreasing its timeliness.
You've got to let the internet do what it does best (get eyeballs on the content) and work out how to monetize that increased exposure. Your enemy is obscurity and irrelevance, not so-called freeloading. Content is advertising for other products and services. It has to be, because if you don't do it that way then someone else in your same niche eventually will.
Once you've got maximized exposure, the whole readership is subsidized by the tiny percentage who do things like click ads, or purchase premium products and services.
Having 50,000 readers paying $20 a year is fine, but having a million readers paying you on average $1.00 a year is the same, and which has more growth potential?
Will everyone succeed in this brave new world? Nope. But some will: those who adapt. To insist that paywalls are the necessary future of print media, as Murdoch seems to believe, is putting a big fat expiration date on one's relevance and one's job.
Attacking aggregators is a red herring. Niche media are perhaps a bit more insulated, but in the not-so-long term you're in the same boat. General news outlets are in the worst shape, because general news simply won't ever cost money again -- genie's out of the bottle. Whoever tries to charge for it will simply be replaced by someone else who is willing to monetize free news in other ways.
Good luck with all that. Hope you figure out how to survive.
Post a Comment