Obviously, people will be more inclined to subscribe or pay for news content from trusted, prestigious, sources.You will not find any who are more highly thought of or respected than the BBC, and they may well now be the only “free” news provider left online (although in the words of Robert A Heinlein “TANSTAAFL”– see licence fee). Quality broadsheets and periodicals like the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Times, Guardian, and Economist could all comfortably and very credibly charge for access to online content.As a classic example, can anyone seriously doubt that people would have been queuing up to hand over their money to enable them to get more details on the Telegraph’s huge scoop about our MP’s expenses, this was a great story from a well trusted source.

What is Quality?

Would you pay for sites that aren’t “quality”?In other words, even though this works well for the broadsheets, can you see it working quite so well for the tabloids like the News of the World and the Sun?Is there any chance you would pay money to read the “exclusive” interviews with these so called celebs, or perhaps to see a Page 3 girl? I would hazzard a guess that the answer to this is probably yes.  Many people would do just that because after all, it depends on how you define “quality”.In my opinion, tabloids such as the Sun are in fact very good quality because they appear to be well written, deliberately amusing, well put together and they know their audience and when they want.

News is a Precious Commodity

So yes, charging for news is going to happen and yes it’s going to work.  Partly because it’s Murdoch behind it and partly because it all makes sense and may well be the only route to survival open to hard pressed newspapers.It’s not like we don’t already pay a charge for a newspaper right now.That charge has always been ridiculously low in the UK, if you compare this with the cover cover for the same sort of quality US or European broadsheets.So if you think about it if you part with your cash for your daily news via a newspaper, the reality being that your already paying for it through the radio and TV via the licence fee we all pay, we are all more than happy to pay our fees for Sky to enable us to watch Premier League Football, why isn’t it feasible that we will pay for our news?

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There is a move to start charging for access to News Corporation’s newspaper websites, and this has caused a lot of unrest amongst commentators and aficionados who regard this as an intrusion into the whole ethos of the “free web” as we should be getting free access to all news.     It’s not the first time Murdoch has taken the Internet to task of course, having previously accused Google of poaching content it doesn’t own and urging media outlets to fight back.

“Google Devalues Everything it Touches”

Newspapers have watched new distribution channels change the economics of their business.Murdoch continues to say that Google, who don’t actually produce any news of its own, have actually managed to make themselves a fortune simply by changing the work of others and in turn selling advertising against it.  Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson has said that: “Google devalues everything it touches. It divides content quantitatively rather than qualitatively.”  Google of course see it differently, maintaining that all they do is show just enough information to make the user want to read a full story with the headline, a line of text and links to send more than 300 million clicks a month to newspaper web sites.

It has become clear that even if hard news does come direct from Fox it is in fact a very valuable and precious asset.To achieve good journalism, albeit from a nationaly daily paper or even a monthly trade magazine is going to cost money.  Whatever you think of him, Murdoch is a smart cookie and has long regarded free-to-access news websites as a  “malfunctioning” business model.The huge influx of online subscriptions fees at the Wall Street Journal have confirmed him that it is indeed possible to charge for content on the web.Could it be that perhaps Murdoch for once could be right, and not just because he himself needs to generate money to make up for the declining earnings across News Corporation.

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