End of an Era or Rich Man Having a Cry?
Saturday, October 10, 2009 by mrs jones
Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul of the world is campaigning to end free online news. In his latest bid to make this bizarre idea even a small possibility, Murdoch has threatened to charge Google for presenting his newspapers’ content in their search engines. Google argues that “it presents links and teasers, not content. And it sends more than 300 million clicks a month to newspapers”. What right does the mogul have in saying – ‘nope you have to pay for those 300 million clicks that you sending at no cost to me?’ Personally it all sounds like a tight-arse mogul being just a little too tight with his money and just not getting with the times.
The mogul explains: “quality journalism isn’t cheap”. He’s right – must have cost TV3 thousands to send Samantha Hayes and a film crew to I-don’t-know-what festival in some exotic country, but then I bet they made it back capturing male audiences far and wide in NZ by featuring the colourful shots of Samantha looking o-so-sexy in the ad campaigns for the ‘serious news’ show. We have had the Internet for over a decade; it has become engrained into our daily lives to log on to news sites to see what is happening right now all over the world. My internet logs at work are jammed packed with nzherald pages.* My expectation is that I can surf the site for free; if they started charging then I would go elsewhere. Its not the logo at the top of the site that makes me read a site, it’s the content. And let’s face it the content is going to be generally the same everywhere because it’s the same events being reported on.
The mogul did actually attempt to enter the free news market by launching the free newspaper, Londonpaper, which also ran online, and after consistent losses the paper had to be shut down. Upmost failure. This whole issue sounds like what would happen when a very rich man, used to getting what he wants, suddenly doesn’t so he wants everyone else to do what he is already successful at so he can win at his own game. Wake up Murdoch, its 2009 and the people expect websites to be free.
*I must add: I can’t get onto Facebook at work.
The mogul explains: “quality journalism isn’t cheap”. He’s right – must have cost TV3 thousands to send Samantha Hayes and a film crew to I-don’t-know-what festival in some exotic country, but then I bet they made it back capturing male audiences far and wide in NZ by featuring the colourful shots of Samantha looking o-so-sexy in the ad campaigns for the ‘serious news’ show. We have had the Internet for over a decade; it has become engrained into our daily lives to log on to news sites to see what is happening right now all over the world. My internet logs at work are jammed packed with nzherald pages.* My expectation is that I can surf the site for free; if they started charging then I would go elsewhere. Its not the logo at the top of the site that makes me read a site, it’s the content. And let’s face it the content is going to be generally the same everywhere because it’s the same events being reported on.
The mogul did actually attempt to enter the free news market by launching the free newspaper, Londonpaper, which also ran online, and after consistent losses the paper had to be shut down. Upmost failure. This whole issue sounds like what would happen when a very rich man, used to getting what he wants, suddenly doesn’t so he wants everyone else to do what he is already successful at so he can win at his own game. Wake up Murdoch, its 2009 and the people expect websites to be free.
*I must add: I can’t get onto Facebook at work.