News International, the British division of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., announced on Friday that two of its newspapers, The Times and The Sunday Times of London, are set to begin charging readers using its sites in June.
The two papers have been offering their content in a combined news Web site called Times Online. Under the new plan, however, News International would introduce new, separate sites for each publication in May, according to several news accounts citing a company statement.
The sites will reportedly be offered for 1 pound ($1.48) for a day's access, or 2 pounds ($2.96) for a week's subscription. Those fees will cover access to both sites, which will be available for free during a trial period.
As newspapers struggle to stay alive amid declining print circulations and weak advertising revenues--only made worse by recessionary times--there's been much talk about charging users for online stories.
"At a defining moment for journalism, this is a crucial step towards making the business of news an economically exciting proposition," News International CEO Rebekah Brooks said in a broadly reported statement. She added that "This is just the start," but did not offer up details on plans for the company's two other U.K. publications. http://newscri.be/link/1055863
The Wall Street Journal, which News Corp. acquired in 2007, is already behind a pay wall and has fared much better than some of its print-media brethren in the aftermath of the recession. The Financial Times and Newsday also charge for access and The New York Times has plans in the works to do so as well.
But the move by the British Times publications, would mark the one of the first mass-market, consumer newspapers to start charging for content. (Newsday and Le Monde in France are two that we know of.)
Meanwhile, in another move to save his business, Murdoch continues to point fingers at Google for depriving the industry of revenue by making news articles searchable for free. He plans to press legal action against the search giant if talks fail over its indexing of news content.
http://newscri.be/link/1055863
4 comments:
by paulej March 27, 2010 5:33 PM PDT
I disagree. You learned this news on a service that charged no fee. The fact is, people get news from all kinds of sources. Further, news is factual information and anybody can write a news story about whatever event is going on in the world. It's extremely hard to replicate the video services of organizations like CNN, but the print media outlets are in serious danger, in my opinion. We'll see, I guess. Even if they get a certain number of subscribers initially, what would motivate a young person who has been accustomed to learning about news from a vast array of sources to suddenly start paying somebody for that? It just doesn't seem likely. News Corp. needs to learn the value of video real fast.
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by CyR00k March 27, 2010 2:50 PM PDT
You are right no one works for free, however, the news which is released on the net has already been paid for several times over. The reporter only gets one salary for reporting no matter how many times the news agency runs that story and collects money for it. News Corp pays it's people one salary and then reprints the same story in multiple markets, News Corp gets paid for that story in print (separately for each market), on television news networks (again separately for each market), and on the net. News Corp gets paid three times (per market) for content they only had to pay for once.
Murdoch, like others, is upset that the economy is in the toilet so rather than ride out the recession like everyone else he thinks it make more sense to increase his profit margin by losing customers and charging exorbitant prices.
Since you don't seem to have any idea what you are talking about @yacahuna, let me explain. There are a great number of people on the internet presently who do not charge for access to their content who make more then enough to buy houses and brand new Macs. They do this by selling ad space and they sell merchandise. Historically, musicians used the exact same model. Up until the mid-60's is was unimaginable that a musician would ever make any money by being in a recording studio, in fact, they lost money by being in the studio and not being out playing in public, maybe selling T-Shirts and whatnot. The same is true on the internet, this is not the business model which huge dead tree presses want, but it is the one that exist.
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by ekholbrook March 27, 2010 2:30 PM PDT
People are ok paying for a FEW select websites they visit to particular news. ie, the Wall Street Journal. However, if all these sites start charging, and every site you goto asks for a fee, expect someone to introduce a new global subscription model the puts everything into a huge umbrella.
For example, imagine right now if I went to ABC and they wanted $1 for the day. Fine. I then get bored and goto CBS and they want $1 too. Then I switch channels to CNN and Fox and again I have to pull out my credit card and fill out yet ANOTHER form to get a subscription....
No bloody way would that work.
Where I see perhaps a "Google" like company coming in is saying, ok, we'll pull all these subscription sites together into one mass subscription package and we'll get a piece of the pie. One signup. Access to 50 news (or whatever) websites.
In the end though, I don't see it working either way. The internet is not "free" but it is open as far as getting information is related. The internet didn't start because of Videos or Music or baseball or Facebook ... it started because of the desire to share news. Plain and simple.
Visit Newscribe - Get Free News online:
http://newscri.be/
Many newspapers, print or digital news are free as they don't depend on subscription fee because their advertising revenues are more than cost.
The British Times gone to the stone age because of creditability and uncompetitive issues.
The people/markets would close down the British Times eventually if they remain in the store age!!
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