Comments on: ‘Rupert Murdoch is the modern-day King Canute’

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:15:32 +0000

I still think that “I tunes” has the right idea. Put a tag on the content, if you click on it you get the whole story and your credit card gets debited by 10c. If you want to you set up an account with R100 credit, thats 1000 stories and it gets nicked off that account.
Somebody has to start or we will loose analsys and opinion. Breaking news we can get for free on twitter and facebook, but the rest needs to be charged for. It has to be.
Opinions and analysis are products and should be valued. Sure we can do away with them and hope that people who are paid by other institutions will give their time for free, like professors, but journalism will die.
We are already seeing it at Independent newspapers, crap pay, and there are no decent reporters left, the news is crap. No pay no decent journalism, bottom line.

By: Gordon

Gordon — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:49:29 +0000

Great article.

20fourlabs News24 application for the iPhone is a great example of how a traditional publisher can exist in the print, web and mobile worlds.

First thing I check when I get up in the mornings. Don’t even have to wait for my dog to bring me the paper…

By: nevo

nevo — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 13:25:03 +0000

Does Murdoch really not get the internet, even with his team of experts on hand or is this part of a bigger negotiation to be paid for his site to be searched , as that generates cash for google? Microsoft definitely seems to be warming up to this as an aggressive number 2 (paying him for his content) and looking for an exclusive search deal. while i dont believe that this will work, it does pose an interesting question; what if the search result you got wasn’t the best, but the best within what that search engine had the rights to search? what if search rights were charged for by publishers, how would that impact search engine profit margins? Publishers would need to carefully weigh up the benefits (increased traffic and advertising revenue) between the two.

By: Lalit

Lalit — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 06:36:59 +0000

Since it is difficult to establish billing relationship with consumers, google’s model of giving search for free and making it up with a transaction (number of clicks) based revenue from advertisers. This can only work if you can get content for free. This moves the problem of charging for content up the clickstream. A large number of genuine content guys will need to unite to block this movement. today socialnetworking and crowdsourcing will easily overcome the challenge of collecting news.

By: Greg

Greg — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 16:55:49 +0000

The way I see it, this is pretty much zero risk for Murdoch. He tries a new model, and if it fails, gets his sites back on the aggregators and carries on like it used to be. He might lose some hits during the trial period of the business model if it doesn’t work, but he’s not committing to anything that can’t be undone in 24 hours.

Murdoch didn’t become a billionaire media mogul from being stupid, so it’ll be very interesting to see how this turns out. I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion that it’ll fail.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 12:49:39 +0000

Good point – in fact a great point – one that seems to have been missing in a lot of the debate. None of the esteemed Vanity Fair writers on media have mentioned this point.

But, still when content is aggregated on the scale of google Murdoch is right when he barked at Hitchens “so you steal from me” when Hitchens said he was involved in an aggregation site.

You cant just credit the source and on that basis get away with mass aggregation.

By: Blake Smith

Blake Smith — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 11:46:11 +0000

Murdoch is indeed getting c(an)ute. Publications world-wide should be thanking him for taking the 1st shot (of significant scale) at that rising tide. If he drowns, they get to stay dry, if he doesn’t they get to join him and pretend that were always on his side.

By: Michael van Dijk

Michael van Dijk — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 10:06:13 +0000

Excellent article, now just make them read it…

(but do they have internet access or at all PC literate?)

By: Editor

Editor — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 12:58:19 +0000

David, to clarify: any inaccuracy about Canute is mine, not Arthur’s. Duncan

By: David Bullard

David Bullard — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:36:48 +0000

Very good piece Arthur but in the interests of historical accuracy….Canute was thought by his followers to have divine powers. To prove to his court that this was not the case he commanded the waves to go back and when they didn’t his courtiers (somewhat disappointed) believed him. Canute, in other words, was the good guy and not the Cnut you make him out to be.