Web sites to charge for content: Rupert Murdoch

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch expects News Corporation-owned newspaper Web sites to start charging users for access within a year in a move which analysts say could radically shake-up the culture of freely available content.

Speaking on a conference call as News Corporation announced a 47 percent slide in quarterly profits to $755 million, Murdoch said the current free access business model favored by most content providers was flawed.

"We are now in the midst of an epochal debate over the value of content and it is clear to many newspapers that the current model is malfunctioning," the News Corp. Chairman and CEO said.

"We have been at the forefront of that debate and you can confidently presume that we are leading the way in finding a model that maximizes revenues in return for our shareholders... The current days of the Internet will soon be over."

Murdoch said the experience of the News Corp.-owned Wall Street Journal had proved that charging for content could be made to work.

He said 360,000 people had downloaded an iPhone WSJ application in three weeks. Users would soon be made to pay "handsomely" for accessing WSJ content, he added.

Murdoch said he envisaged other News Corp. titles introducing charges within 12 months.

Murdoch's international newspaper empire includes the New York Post, the News International stable of UK titles including the Sun and the Times, and a cluster of Australian papers including the Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun.

His comments come with the U.S. newspaper industry in a state of crisis amid plunging advertising revenues and falling circulations with several historic titles already going out of business.

Joshua Benton, Director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, said Murdoch was not the only executive looking to generate new income streams from online content.

"News executives are starting to recognize that online advertising revenues are not enough on their own," Benton told CNN.

But he said the challenge for media organizations was finding a balance between advertising and subscription revenues and figuring out how to charge for content without alienating existing users -- which could lead to Web sites offering tiered levels of free and paid-for material.

"I suspect within any readership there is a small slice -- maybe three percent -- that is willing to pay. News organizations are going to have to find a way of getting money from that slice without driving away everybody else," Benton said.

"I don't think you can afford to put a lock and chain on the front page. It is a matter of figuring out which products you can charge money for."

Benton said the U.S. newspaper industry was in a "horrible state" which was likely to get worse.

"We're starting to see holes where newspapers were. The question is, will new Web sites fill the holes, will traditional names come in -- or will they just not get filled?"

Earlier this week, the 137-year-old Boston Globe said it would be forced to shut down unless it reached an agreement with unions over a $10 million program of cost-cutting measures.

The paper's owners, The New York Times Co., postponed plans to close the paper after reaching a deal with six of seven employees' unions but said the Globe was expected to lose $85 million in 2009 if it did not make major cuts.

The developments followed the demise of print editions of The Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colorado; The Seattle Post-Intelligencer; and The Christian Science Monitor.

The Rocky Mountain News shut down completely; both the Seattle paper and the Christian Science Monitor remain in online editions.

At least 120 newspapers in the U.S. have shut down since January 2008, according to Paper Cuts, a Web site tracking the newspaper industry. More than 21,000 jobs at 67 newspapers have vaporized in that time, according to the site.

Despite the general mood of gloom over the state of the economy, Murdoch said he believed the worst of the financial crisis had passed.

"I'm not an economist and we all know economists were created to make weather forecasters look good," he said. "But it is increasingly clear the worst is over."

Thoughts? Would you pay to use news websites?

Did Obama bow before the Saudi king?

Upon returning home from his 8-day tour of Europe and the Middle East, President Barack Obama has been greeted with some pretty harsh criticism over photographs and video footage which show him bowing to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia during the G20 Summit.

While the White House has denied the bow and the mainstream media has largely ignored the political gaffe, it has not gone completely unnoticed.

The Washington Times called the bow a “shocking display of fealty to a foreign potentate”, which runs contrary to a long-held American tradition of not deferring to royalty. “By bending over to show greater respect to Islam, the US president belittled the power and independence of the United States. Such an act is a traditional obeisance befitting a king’s subjects, not his peer. There is no precedent for US presidents bowing to Saudi or any other royals,” The Times continued.

The Weekly Standard reiterated the tradition, stating: “American presidents do not bow before foreign dignitaries, whether they are princes, kings, or emperors.”

The White House has denied that President Obama bowed to the King. One Obama aide spoke anonymously to Politico.com, stating: “It wasn’t a bow. He grasped his hand with two hands, and he’s taller than King Abdullah.”

The Saudis themselves believe it to have been a bow. Muhammah Diyab, a commentator for a Saudi paper, approved of Obama’s gesture and says that he saw it as a clear blow:

“Obama wished to demonstrate his respect and appreciation of the personality of King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz, who has made one of the most important calls in the modern era, namely the call for interfaith and intercultural dialogue to defuse the hatred, conflict and wars”.

So, was it a bow? if it was, is it really that big a deal? an uproar over a show of respect?



Thoughts?

The AP wants to outlaw search engine linking? What?

The AP is launching an all out assault on any use of its content that is not licensed (read that as purchased) for use by Internet publishers and search engines.

The AP is not JUST focusing on the blatant violators such as spam type blogs or sites that quote paragraphs without attribution or link backs. On the contrary, the AP is specifically going after bigger mainstream blogs, Internet publications and, believe it or not, search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

The AP believes that desperate times call for desperate measures and that means demanding royalties from any company profiting from any aspect of their content. When Google links to an AP story in a search result with an Adwords ad on the page the AP expects to be paid. Include a rewritten headline link to an AP story, Matt Drudge and you will be sued for payment by the AP. Add a paragraph snippet of content from an AP article in your PaidContent.org blog post and be ready for a call from an AP lawyer demanding their cut of your ad revenue.

From the AP's perspective, the concept of fair use is primitive and counter to their desperate desire to prevent their demise in an ad supported Internet content economy. The Associated Press Board of Directors, which is made up mostly of newspaper executives, has issued a member call to arms against anyone and everyone who misappropriates AP content.

The release quotes AP Chairman Dean Singleton who spoke at the AP annual meeting in San Diego, "The news cooperative would work with portals and other partners who properly license content – and would pursue legal and legislative actions against those who don't." Mr. Singleton added, "We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories."

Thoughts? Do you agree or disagree with the AP on this one? will it have the desired effect for them, or do you feel this is something that will backfire?

1 person, many votes

I was surfing around, and I came across this little youtube video, check this out!!

Hypocrisy in Texas? In the State Legislature? whoddathought?

We've all heard "One man, One vote, let your voice be heard" right? well take a look at this!

The senators are all literally falling over each other in trying to get in as many votes as they can!! They'd vote once for themselves, and then move and run around and vote using the push button panels of the legislators that are not present.. all in full view of everyone else, NO ONE else seems to mind that they're doing this!!
Watch the video closely. One guy actually had his vote stolen away by the guy sitting in front of him. I doubt he'd give the other guy the power to vote while he was actually there. The other ones seem to just randomly walk to empty desks, and more than one person tries to vote on them.

How is THIS not voter fraud? this video is a little old as well, sometime in 2007, why hasn't there been more of an uproar over what's happening? if it happened there, where else could it also have happened/be happening?