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Rajanish Kakade / AP Photo The News Corp. billionaire is threatening to pull his newspapersâ?? content from Google searches. Douglas Rushkoff on why it may take a real conservative to save journalism from the free Web.
As unlikely as it sounds, Rupert Murdoch may end up being our last best hope for a peaceful solution to the Internetâ??s war on professional journalism. A man who many blame for commodifying, globalizing, sensationalizing, and cheapening news is considering taking a stand against a force even bigger than himself: the Web link.
In an interview with Sky News Australia over the weekend, Murdoch challenged the Cardinal Rule of the Internet by suggesting that information wants to be expensive: â??They shouldnâ??t have had it free all the time, and I think weâ??ve been asleep. It costs us a lot of money to put together a newspaper.â?
Murdoch is talking about more than simply charging for access to the online versions of his newspapers, which The Wall Street Journal and a few others have been doing successfully for years. Railing against â??content kleptomaniacsâ? like Google, Microsoft, and Ask.comâ??which effectively syndicate News Corp. content without payingâ??Murdoch even suggested he might put up walls that prevent the stories in his papers from appearing in Google searches at all.
Thatâ??s right: Instead of rigging the system to achieve higher rankings in search returns, Murdoch is contemplating pulling his content from Google searches altogetherâ??a simple tweak that Google says is available to every Web site.
Of course, Google seems flummoxed that anyone would choose to do so. In a statement released in response to Murdochâ??s challenge, Google stated what the company thought was obvious: â??Publishers put their content on the Web because they want it to be found.â?
But as Murdochâ??s News Corp. and most news organizations are now learning, sometimes Google can make it too easy for Web users to find their content. In their effort to get on board the Internet and cooperate with the notion that information wants to be free, many newspapers have transformed what had been their most profitable assets into liabilities. What good is a global audience if nobody is paying? Without revenue, the newspapers eventually go belly up.
So, as New York Times reporters await word on who will be among the 100 more cut from the payroll in the next couple of months, the Writers Guild holds panels on how to eke out a living as a professional news writer, and the forums on Mediabistro fill with postings from journalists considering new career paths, it is time for someone to consider the alternatives to melting professional journalism into the always-on, always-free blogosphere.
To be sure, the ascent of the free has been a boon for a lot of people. Millions around the worldâ??well, at least the people with Internet connectionsâ??enjoy free access to pretty much any information they need, any time. But just as infinite access to free music ultimately leads to no one making a living at music anymore, free journalism just doesnâ??t pay for itselfâ??particularly not when a search engine is serving all the ads.
But what Murdoch understands is that a revolt against the free will take more than erecting a subscriber login between a Google link and a story. All the login does is push the user to find an alternative source for the informationâ??some other publicationâ??s free link. No, what Murdoch has realized is that a newspaper is not just valuable for the individual stories or tidbits that can be culled, piecemeal, from a generic list. A newspaper provides context. It tells a story through its selection of articles for a given day, their juxtaposition, and even their flow over time.
View as Single Page 12 Back to Top November 9, 2009 | 11:24pm Facebook | Twitter | Digg | | Emails | print Rupert Murdoch, Google, Business, Media, Rushkoff Daily Beast, Ask, Times Reporter, Writers Guild, Murdoch Google, Google Search, Media Death, Sky News Australia, Douglas Rushkoff, Newspaper Business, News Corp, Journalism, Microsoft, The Wall Street Journal, Internet, Newspaper, The New York Times (â??) Show Replies Collapse Replies Sort Up Sort Down sort by date: laDivaG
Most people don't read Internet news outlets for an overall context; Murdoch assumes that people would read his site that way if he could get them to stay, but I think he's wrong. But if he wants to test his theory, he should start by redesigning his free website to encourage people to read for the bigger picture; if he can get them to do that, then maybe he's got a shot at getting them to pay. Still, I have my doubts. One thing he could do to test the waters is charge for premium content; lots of the European evening papers do that. They give general access to the regular news but their exclusive content requires a subscription. The site definitely needs work either way. As it is, it's clumsy, difficult to navigate, requires too much scrolling, and has a boring layout. I suppose the Times could require a free subscription to test their numbers but if they try to charge for the online edition as is, they are sure to lose a great many readers.
They don't care how many readers they lose, if they were not paying. A new business model is clearly needed for the professional media, if it is to survive. Murdoch is feeling his way towards that. He may not be on the right track in terms of the solution, but he has correctly identified the problem. Political bloggers are irrelevant to this. Those who produce original content, still less break stories, are in an achingly small, irrelevant minority. If we can't link to the professional stories on which we comment, most of us are out of the game. We can pay Murdoch's subscriptions ourselves, but when readers click on the links we will have become his unpaid sales force.
Yes, they do care. Newspapers and magazines, online and hardcopy alike, make more money from advertising than subscription fees. Way more. They generate the bulk of their income by showing advertisers how many people they will reach by buying ads in the publication. One way to do that is through subscriptions, but it's not the only way. Subscription fees have generally covered distribution costs, but not much else.
I hear you tompaine, but there is another dynamic at work here. Our newly- minted cyberbrains have learned to search out new sources of information, when the greed factor taints our playground. Bear with me on this for just a moment. About ten years ago, I moved out of the S.F. Bay area to another part of the country. During the twenty-five years of living there, I became a huge fan of the S.F. Giants, and was delighted that I was able to continue listening to the games via the internet. KNBR, the Bay Area radio station broadcast (broadcasted) the games on the radio waves and in cyberspace for free. F R E E !!! Can you imagine, free, free, free, free? It was like whoa baby, I could still be a fan, although I could not attend the games. Then, a funny thing happened. Major League Baseball stepped in, and shut it down. They said they own the internet rights to all major league broadcasts, including radio, and poof! No more free radio broadcasts of my beloved GIANTS. Now, the first step was that MLB would only charge ten bucks a year for the privilege of listening to the Giants games. Ten bucks, or ten thousand dollars, did not matter to me, once the greed factor set in, hockeydog took off. Bottom line: I quit being a GIANTS fan, because I could no longer follow all of the personal info, the color background that only a local media can provide about a team, and this has ultimately caused me to stop truly caring about Big League Baseball in general. So, okay, perhaps it is a little like cutting off one's nose to spite one's face, but the other side of the coin is that I have attained a freedom from having to worry about whether or not the GIANTS could make it without Barry. Yes I lost something, but so did KNBR, and Major League Baseball lost a fan. So, perhaps old Rupert, with his interestingly lined face will be able to save our printed media. But, it could be that our talented writers will find a way to reinvent themselves. Perhaps Murdoch will take a page from the Atlantic's playbook, and offer deeper content on their webpage for subscribers. Content such as videos related to stories appearing in print. Interesting times we are living in, for sure!
@hockeydog - I hear what you're saying, but the greed factor you mention is really in the wrong direction. tompaine is right about how people view being charged for someone else's work as "greed". I'm sure you don't work for free, I know for certain that I don't. Why are we surprised or upset that journalists don't want to work for free either.
As laDivaG said, newspapers' current revenue model focuses on advertising based on circulation. The internet makes traffic (circulation) easier to measure and opens up circulation and advertising beyond the local geographic area. What's wrong with this model? Ok, there will definitely be some content evolution along the lines of television. This is far from perfect, but I can see the Internet evolving in that direction. You pay for access to the content stream and can opt in for premium content like WSJ. If WSJ can create enough value to generate subscription income, more power to it, but the vast majority of sites will survive on advertising revenue, merchandising, or straight product/service sales. No doubt ISPs want to curate our internet content like they see cable companies doing for television. I don't mind allowing them to offer an opt-in package, but the basic default should always be uncurated, uncensored, unrestricted access (free internet).
It's funny how what other people charge for their work is "greed," and what we charge for ours is "hard earned." I don't think Murdoch is on the right track, but if the revenue from advertising was enough, he wouldn't be changing his model. He will have consulted his advertisers for sure. Like him or loathe him he's a great business man. If you were starting a news media operation today, the last thing you would do is start chopping down trees, pulping them, printing stuff on them in big factories and then delivering them to street vendors. Online is the way forward, no doubt, but now it's mainstream the happy free days of cyberspace have to end. Not because of "greed", but because news gathering costs serious money if done well, and there's only so much consistently high quality content you can get for free. We can refuse to buy and go back to newspapers if we like. That works for the media companies too, for a while. But when the newspapers are gone, we are going to have to pay - one way or another - for online content. Murdoch is fumbling his way towards the inevitable and calling him names will make no difference.
Paying for this content will only serve to make an even more uninformed populace... as Murdoch wants. If paying for content from one site, you would most likely not pay for it from another. So we'll have only Fox's version of news being followed by one person, while another will only follow BBC, or MSNBC. One will not be able to compare media stories to find the true, unbiased truth. This will cause more dissension and anger.
jaydeekay... agree 100%
@jaydeekay - That is actually the best point against pay for content I've yet heard. However, those who would only pay for Fox or BBC or MSNBC would still probably only follow those sources anyway. Those looking for an "unbiased" source would likely search one out or compare multiple stories anyway.
The problem is that so much of the public does not like truthful and objective reporting of the news in the manner of the traditional press. To comfortably reinforce its particular biases, it has turned in large part to slanted Internet blogs and other web postings that twist reality beyond all recognition. Advertisers have followed, to search sites such as Google and Yahoo!, to further pander the dumbing-down of American society. Television already had developed as a pathetic alternative news source, paving the way for the Internet. And Mr. Murdoch has himself to blame, in part, for the disappearance of newspaper subscribers--by virtue of his very own Fox News, which is about as far from the nation's many great newspapers as one can get. Political "conservatives" are a good example of the continuing disappearance of virtue in the dissemination of news and information as, generally speaking, they seem to view every uncomfortable printed truth as unfair criticism and turn to the old rant about a "liberal press" in much the same manner they have worked to make the very word "liberal" some sort of dirty word over many decades.
Murdoch is a Neanderthal. The key thing with them is that they all died. You missed your call, Murdoch.
The digital age is really messing things up for the old school billionaires. Poor Murdoch is scrambling to retain his empire that is so righteously slipping away. Good luck trying to put the genie back into the bottle, Rupert.
Is this the same person who owned Viacom and a few years back disregarded civil liberty laws and imposed a threat and used that action to invade the privacy of Youtube accounts? And is this the very same individual who owned Myspace and turned that site into a file sharing site and then musicians no longer got paid and independent artists lost their footing? And is the same business man who owned MTV which deciphers by definition as Music Television- which oddly doesn't play video's, has rarely new music and caters to reformist reality T.V. programs and boring game shows? Nothing spurs growth more than halting new idea's and washing out creativity while capitalizing from it, and invading peoples privacy isn't an issue if your the one taking liberty. Google should definitely bow down to him.
This is what he owns under News Corporation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_News_Corporation. Like Simon pointed out about what he has done to MTV , is no different to what he did to news on Fox News. Fox only has news at certain times of the day the rest it said was opinions.The opinions of Murdock , but still opinions. If Murdock thought for one second that he would make more money out of Fox News as a Communist Propaganda network it would change over night.The people who leap to the defense of Fox & Beck are fighting for somebody who would ditch them in a second.
actually he's not. you're think sumner redstone.
The world is passing you by, Murdoch. Bye.
DITTO
Mr Murdoch apparently fails to understand how the world runs. If he stops his papers from being accessed by Google etc his reporters will move to other papers. The reporters who write for him WANT their articles read by the world. The information in most articles in his newspapers can be accessed elsewhere. Let him block his papers. Soon after that he will not have any newspapers to have blocked. They will be out of business.
I'm sure reporters want their stories to be read by the world. But I guarantee that none of those reporters wants to work for free.
I have read the WSJ for the past 40 years. In the 'old-days' the content was delivered in print format at our building about 6:00 AM and distributed internally. The cost was high in relative terms. Along came the on-line edition. I signed up and gratefully paid to NOT have the messy newspaper. Better search, but same interesting and focused business news put in context of the business and cultural landscape. Really good reporting. Along came Murdoch. The WSJ format has now changed completely. It looks and feels like a business version of USA today. Gone are the insightful reporting to be replaced by dumbed down articles and banal content. Up went the prices - 56% in less than 4 years. So the WSJ has lost me as a paying subscriber. The point is that Murdoch apparently does not understand the needs of his customers and is chasing some form of revenue and profitability growth like a junior mid level manager without a strategic focus on his customer base and core competency. Most likely he will pass before the results are known and the publication may continue to stumble along for a while.
Ohhhh, please remove all Murdochian content from Google -- what a luxury that would be! *sighs dreamily*
So people aren't already paying enough for Internet access? We now should pay site-by-site? Will this eliminate the sight of those obnoxious Flash ads, if we have to pay? This is the conundrum with cable television, too - why are there commercials on these channels I am already paying dearly every month to access? There is the possibility here that Murdoch realizes finally that he's got to find some way to make up for the huge losses on his newspapers, like the NY Post.
"But what Murdoch understands is that a revolt against the free will take more than erecting a subscriber login between a Google link and a story. All the login does is push the user to find an alternative source for the information-some other publication's free link. No, what Murdoch has realized is that a newspaper is not just valuable for the individual stories or tidbits that can be culled, piecemeal, from a generic list. A newspaper provides context. It tells a story through its selection of articles for a given day, their juxtaposition, and even their flow over time." Bullcrap! Where exactly does Rushkoff find the evidence for this understanding? I didn't hear Murdoch say one thing about context in his interview. Murdoch simply wants people to pay for access and doesn't give a rat's ass about context. As long as you pay your monthly subscription, I'm sure he'd be just as happy if you didn't visit the site at all. Less traffic per user means capacity for more subscribers with fewer servers. This story definitely has the smell of a commentator ascribing his own latest pet theory to a situation based on very scant evidence. Careful you don't fall off that hobbyhorse, Doug.
Then why would he not want the articles to be listed on Google?
The article says: No, what Murdoch has realized is that a newspaper is not just valuable for the individual stories or tidbits that can be culled, piecemeal, from a generic list. A newspaper provides context. It tells a story through its selection of articles for a given day, their juxtaposition, and even their flow over time. So it sounds like he wants to put his unmistakable perspective and spin on the content and not just let the reader decide freely what it means.
I love his decision. i don't think that he will follow through,but i can dream. less hate to be spread
Google has a market share of 84.5% globally. Anyone that would remove what they want people to find and see from that type of base is basically an idiot. Google doesn't need him and his companies, he, however, needs Google much more than he realizes.
A couple inaccuracies with your article: WSJ and other newspapers haven't been charging for access "successfully for years". They have been charging for access to a limited selection of content that is financially relevant - ie, you can't find this information elsewhere, and it will help you make money of your own. There's a direct incentive to pay for this type of information that there isn't with other types of content. And WSJ has still been losing money in an impressive way. Second, "infinite access to free music ultimately leads to no one making a living at music anymore" it patently false. Music creators are making as good or better a living than they were before the advent of the internet. The people who aren't making money are the bloated bureaucracy that used to make up the music industry. Just as bands have found a way to deal directly with fans and profit from relatively lower sales but more merchandising and live performance, I think writers can potentially find a way to deal directly with readers and develop a smaller readership that more directly supports them. It won't be easy, but it's certainly possible. Last, your characterization of a newspaper as an editorial grouping defined by the sum of its articles is nice, but probably not relevant to how people consume information now or in the future. What percentage of Americans even glance through an entire paper, let alone read a decent portion of it? Newspapers are catering to a general-interest population that is shrinking, if it ever really existed. People are interested in specific things, and uninterested in others. No matter how you try to package it, you can't compel people to pay for parts of a publication they don't want. If I'm deeply interested in politics, I might pay for access to Politico or Talking Points Memo, but I wouldn't pay for access to Daily Beast just so I could get a handful of mildly interesting pieces on politics, art, fashion, sports, etc. I do think it's possible to successfully charge for access, but the motivator is going to be deeply valuable content that can't be found elsewhere and is covered in more depth and precision than any other source. It's a high bar, but there will be winners.
What Murdoch needs is more synergy. He could have the WSJ do a series highlighting the most popular folks on MySpace while Glenn Beck plays air guitar in the background. But I do hope he follows through on his threat. I doubt few things would harm Murdoch's bottom line like chopping off all traffic from Google.
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