Tag Archives: News Corp

Round-up: Charging for online – Murdoch and the FT

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Quick link post rounding up some of this weekend’s chatter following Rupert Murdoch’s latest decision that News Corp properties will start charging for access to online news by 2010.

Kevin Anderson on Guardian.co.uk asks what news organisations can learn from the music, video and games industries when it comes to charging for online – especially relevant given the Financial Time’s announcement that it is considering introducing a ‘pay-per-article’ system.

On econsultancy Malcolm Coles address the frequently voiced arguments against Murdoch’s plans (e.g. it won’t work unless all sites start charging) in a mythbusting post.

(Backing up Coles points that people, outside of WSJ and FT readers will pay for content, is Press Gazette’s report that Which? increased online subscriptions by 11 per cent in the year to the end of June.)

The First Post: Murdoch’s ‘radical rethink’ for online news; announces $3.4bn loss

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News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch announced yesterday that within a year the Times, the Sun, and the New York Post will all be charging for access to their websites.

“”Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalising its ability to produce good journalism,” he said yesterday as he announced a $3.4bn loss for News Corp, which owns 20th Century Fox, Fox News and Sky TV as well as newspapers.”

Full story at this link…

Paying for podcasts? A Times Online poll

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Interesting poll currently running (well, at 2:54pm on July 24 at least) on Times Online asking if and how much listeners would be willing to pay to listen to its podcast The Bugle.
Times Online podcast payment poll

Of course this means nothing more than the podcast’s producer’s curiosity over whether its audience would be willing to pay. So far, 41 per cent of respondents have suggested they would pay something; though 59 per cent say they wouldn’t cough up at all.

It’s also quite refreshing to see a newspaper site ask its users outright – whether this means there are any plans to charge or not.

According to a Bloomberg report today, Jonathan Miller, chief digital officer with News Corp, whose News International arm owns the Times, has suggested the group could start charging for news and entertainment online.

Back in June, MediaGuardian reports suggested the Times’ sister title, the Sunday Times, was considering setting up a paid-for standalone webiste.

How the news sites are treating the phone tapping story

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Yesterday afternoon in a powerful Guardian exclusive, investigative journalist Nick Davies reported that the Murdoch News Group papers paid £1m to ‘gag’ phone-hacking victims.

Rupert Murdoch, who owns News Group, recently argued he had little influence on his publications’ editorial content; it would be interesting to see how his other UK papers would treat the story about their sister title today.

Let’s see how each of the UK news websites is running the story [as around 9.30 – 10 am]. [News organisations owned by Murdoch are labelled (M).]

Note: Observations correct at time of writing; subject to updates.

  • The BBC has headlined many of its bulletins across radio and TV with the story. Channel 4 ran with the story yesterday. Both news sites feature the story as the main article. Sky News (M) ran it last night and its main (breaking) story on its website is “Cameron: ‘Coulson’s Job Is Safe'”.
  • Guardian: Top story with several supplementary features and stories
  • Sun.co.uk (M): Not running the story
  • NewsoftheWorld.co.uk (M): Not running the story

The Murdoch empire (source: BBC website / News Corp)

NEWS CORP BUSINESSES

HarperCollins
New York Post
Fox News
20th Century Fox
Times and Sunday Times
Sun and News of the World
BSkyB
Star TV
MySpace
Dow Jones Co. (incl. Wall Street Journal)
The London Paper

Australasia:
Daily Telegraph
Fiji Times
Gold Coast Bulletin
Herald Sun
Newsphotos
Newspix
Newstext
NT News
Post-Courier
Sunday Herald Sun
Sunday Mail
Sunday Tasmanian
Sunday Territorian
Sunday Times
The Advertiser
The Australian
The Courier-Mail
The Mercury
The Sunday Mail
The Sunday Telegraph
Weekly Times

Guardian: Columnist fired for reviewing leaked Wolverine film sues Fox News

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Roger Friedman, the former Fox News columnist who was sacked after reviewing a leaked copy of the last X-Men film, is suing his former employer for a reported £3 million ($5 million) in damages.

Friedman’s dismissal on April 4 was followed by a statement from News Corp, which said the company had ‘zero tolerance for any action that encourages and promotes piracy’, the Guardian reports.

But the writer claims his review was ‘tacitly cleared’ by his editors.

Full story at this link…

BeetTV: Michael Wolff says News Corp. ‘knows nothing about technology’

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From Beet TV: Journalist and Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff on why News Corp’s acquisition of MySpace could be seen as a ‘relative calamity’ because the corporation ‘knows nothing about technology’.  “We’ve seen this again, and again, and again and again … when mainstream traditional media companies buy technology companies they don’t do very well. Often they do terribly and often they actually collapse.”

FT.com: WSJ to introduce micropayments

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The Wall Street Journal is planning to bring in a micropayment system for individual articles and premium subscriptions on its website, according to Robert Thomson, editor-in-chief.

The pricing structure will be ‘rightfully high’, according to Thomson.

Last week Rupert Murdoch, News Corp chairman, said he was now convinced it was possible for newspapers to charge for content online given the success of the WSJ’s existing model.

Full article at this link…

Crikey.com.au: ‘Who reads a newspaper website the way they used to read a paper?’

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Guy Rundle, over at Crikey.com.au, tells Rupert that no, he’s not prepared to pay for News Corp. content.

“Paying for a physical newspaper is/was something you just did, even five years ago. Now, the idea that your morning’s news would come encased in a single source seems odd – and paying for straight news items on the web (as opposed to the excellent goulash of punch and pugilistic your reading now etc) seems absurd. Who reads a newspaper website, the way they used to read a paper?”

Full post at this link…

FT.com: Murdoch considers charging for online news, developing e-reader

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News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch is now convinced that ‘it is possible to charge for content’ online given the success of paid-for business news on the Wall Street Journal, he said last night.

Any pay model would be tested on one of the group’s stronger titles, he added.

Murdoch also described Newsgroup’s interest in developing its own e-reading or digital paper device.

At the FIPP World Magazine Congress this week Guardian Media Group’s Carolyn McCall suggested Guardian.co.uk could also start charging for specialist areas of the site.

Full post at this link…

paidContent:UK: News Corp forms global editorial hub

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News Corp is ‘setting up a new unit designed to share content’ from all of the company’s global sources, reports paidContent.

“The News Corp editorial portal will be headed by John Moody, who has been EVP for News Editorial at Fox News. Moody will report directly to Murdoch.”

Full story at this link…