Rupert Murdoch announces it periodically, but now the Australian magnate decided to do it seriously because free internet information is becoming more and more unproductive. Yesterday, the News Corporation lost of 3.4 billion dollars for the first half of the year was such a bad news that Murdoch has said "the quality of journalism is not cheap."Yes, the market, because this is the problem: the free online information does not appear to be a good investment in recent times to Murdoch. And we are talking about a media empire that go from the Wall Street Journal up to some of the most important British publications. Now only the WSJ charges to access its site. But now the Australian magnate has announced to take the risk to drive the online information to a model of 'pay per view'.
Information does not yeld (Murdoch British newspapers has had a fall of 14% of the sale of advertising for the recession) and the only way to win is make it pay. No concern to the websites that wil continue to be free, not only because he is convinced that sooner or later everyone will do the same, but also because the competition will be made with better and different content. And what could convince people to pay for "news" could be, at the beginning, just the gossip. "When we have a scoop on a celebrity, the number of clicks we do is astronomical " said Murdoch, and then precisely those news will be among the first to become on payment.
So by next summer all websites belonging to Murdoch will be on payment for the news. The reference model may be the Wall Street Journal, which has long adopted a mixed system, by offering some free content and other fee. The Australian tycoon does not seem worried at all about the competition becuase he is convinced that the other media will follow his choice. In this sense he is right because the New York Times has already thought of introducing a monthly subscription for the online version and, in Europe, newspapers are divided between those who continue in the free and those who are converting to the payment.
For Murdoch, however, may not end here. According to Reuters, the Australian magnate would also considering whether to break his contract with the e-reader of Amazon, Kindle, if he will not be able to have better margins, looking for a more advantageous agreement with electronic rival player, produced by Sony.
Certainly we will not begin to worry for Murdoch and it is true that the revolution will start first from the United States, because overthere the crisis has hit hardest the world of print with the collapse of advertising, but these kind of news let understand how serious is the crisis in the world, despite somebody, occasionally, says that everything is ok.
New York Times, soon you will pay the online access
Marianna Lepore
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