News Corp is set to start charging online customers - LOL

Man of Honour
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Not pay for information. It will always be available free, somewhere on the internet. Does it matter who you get it from?

Nate

Of course it does? :confused:

On another note - what would this mean for forums like this one, where news stories regularly get a new thread?

I do wonder why newspapers put their entire newspaper online for free. Stop doing that and you can't compete with BBC. Don't do it an less people pay for your news. I see their point.

But LOL.

Its not free; their pages are riddled with ads which users click on. I think not only is it a problem with the current time we're in, but ad blockers have become very effective. I haven't seen a banner in months. This is bad for "free" websites since it is their business model. As much as I hate Hotmail, I wouldn't mind my blocker being more selective as it is a free service I'm using. The same applies for Yahoo Mail, imageshack, Facebook (I think) etc., eBay on the other other hand... :mad:

Go and buy a newspaper. ;)

No. I want to read my news with my emails! ;)

It's not that silly. The sector is being hit hard and losing money and advertising revenue is falling and falling. I know we like everything for free, but it's just not sustainable. As Murdoch said, he's the first. But you can be sure the rest will follow.

I meant stupid aka it's bad for the free user. :p (See above), I do agree.

It is a pity though, free news was one of the bigger reasons why people changed their lifestyles such that they used the internet more.
 
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Soldato
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[DOD]Asprilla;14631496 said:
When calculating the profit for their sites the newspapers don't take into account the cost of producing their content, only the cost of maintaining the site and getting the content on it.

If the sites had to account for paying for content, which they should, then thay wouldn't show a profit.

Of course we include all costs when calculating profit. If we didn't, it wouldn't be accurate reporting.

I am currently sat in a newspaper's office at work mate, I know what I am on about :)
 
Man of Honour
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I've just read the article again and remembered the huge loss.

Well, why does Sky keep increasing its fees? I bet that hit subscription rates in the last few years more than the rise in fees brought in. I'm sure there's other reasons as well.

I'd also be happy to see football getting much less money; hell it'd do the game some good.

Not only does it cost a lot of money to watch matches on Sky but as said above, they've got adverts as well. I don't mind ITV putting adverts on, but I've the firm belief that if you directly paid for something, then I have the right NOT to have to watch adverts. Yes, we're in tough times but I get a sense of underlying greed as well with the proposed change.
 
Soldato
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Of course it does? :confused:

Why? What is it that makes any source better than the other, because you have to pay, it's now better? The information will always be freely available.

For example in the financial sector Blogs such as zerohedge and from Chris Martenson have been consistantly getting the scoop on the more established names in the Mainstream Media, just by analysing information already in he public domain.

The idea of charging people for information is like akin making wikipedia subscriber only. Also not to mention piracy, how hard is it to copy and paste?

All you'll be subscribing to is a brand name.

Nate
 
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It will be interesting to see how this pans out, i wouldnt pay for the news as i can get most of what im interested in online, but makes you wonder if others will be happy to pay for a online service.
Time will tell.
 
Soldato
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Why? What is it that makes any source better than the other, because you have to pay, it's now better? The information will always be freely available.

For example in the financial sector Blogs such as zerohedge and from Chris Martenson have been consistantly getting the scoop on the more established names in the Mainstream Media, just by analysing information already in he public domain.

The idea of charging people for information is like akin making wikipedia subscriber only. Also not to mention piracy, how hard is it to copy and paste?

All you'll be subscribing to is a brand name.

Nate

It's not the news scoops that will be monetised as like you say when a big story breaks it is all over the web in seconds. It's the columnists that people enjoy reading that could be made into something that can be charged for along with other rich media elements. More and more sites are presenting video clips with their news stories and this is the way I see things going.
 
Soldato
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It's not the news scoops that will be monetised as like you say when a big story breaks it is all over the web in seconds. It's the columnists that people enjoy reading that could be made into something that can be charged for along with other rich media elements. More and more sites are presenting video clips with their news stories and this is the way I see things going.

OK, so it is news (which is freely available anyway) with your preferred brand of opinion attached?.

I'm sceptical it will work.

Nate
 
Soldato
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Why? What is it that makes any source better than the other, because you have to pay, it's now better? The information will always be freely available.

For example in the financial sector Blogs such as zerohedge and from Chris Martenson have been consistantly getting the scoop on the more established names in the Mainstream Media, just by analysing information already in he public domain.

The basic data is available, the effort required to analyse and then produce a commentary or review isn't free.

It's a well known web 2.0 mechanism and it's not free. People use blogs to position themselves as an expert and gain market share in the domain. The price Chris Martenson pays (bandwidth, time etc) is offset by the value of the position he's achieving with it. People will now pay well for his consultancy, research and 'expert' opinons.
 
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Soldato
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I am currently sat in a newspaper's office at work mate, I know what I am on about :)

Join the club ;)

What I meant was that the newspaper covers the cost of the journalists and the news gathering and the site generally count their costs as additional subbing and any workflow / metadata (I'm looking at The Guardian on that one) along with their technology costs.

If the sites were to pay their journalism costs based upon the number of readers of each article it would be a different story, certainly for the titles I'm currently working for.
 
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Man of Honour
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I actually LOL when I heard this yesterday. Murdoch is clearly not an idiot, perhaps he has gone mad in his old age. It will never work.

Or is it just another step along the road of controlling the interwebs. :eek:
 
Soldato
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Or is it just another step along the road of controlling the interwebs. :eek:

In the past murdock attempted to control the interface between you and the outside world (papers, mags, TV) but now the internet has spawned the likes of Google along with MS+Yahoo and Apple etc that all want to control this space.

In short murdock has no future in the free/cheap areas of the market as these will just be bundled to attract subscribers to google's service..

Cloud computing is a nasty lock in mechanism, once in the vendors will attempt to use everything possible to ensure you'd don't leave. Currently there's no legal safe guards either - so no PAC code for you to move your data to another vendor for example.
 
Man of Honour
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[DOD]Asprilla;14632652 said:
Well they can't just keep giving it away, journalism costs money.

Journalism costs money when they have to manipulate for their own ends, mainly financial, we must remember there is always an agenda and now they want us to pay for the priviledge of being feed the crap. I just laugh at the news these days in whatever medium it is presented.

Reporting solely of what has happened stopped years ago, even local newspapers (all owned by one or two companies IIRC) cannot report a stroy without a comment or angle from someone or other. The TV and Web news programs are even worse. I ain't payig for it!
 
Soldato
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[DOD]Asprilla;14632583 said:
Join the club ;)

What I meant was that the newspaper covers the cost of the journalists and the news gathering and the site generally count their costs as additional subbing and any workflow / metadata (I'm looking at The Guardian on that one) along with their technology costs.

If the sites were to pay their journalism costs based upon the number of readers of each article it would be a different story, certainly for the titles I'm currently working for.

I see what you mean but the model we follow apportions all operating costs across print and digital. Some of the smaller sites have made profit on digital, not neccesarily via banners but it has worked :)
 
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