Murdoch's Pay-For Paper Empire

Rupert Murdoch intends to charge for access to all his news websites, including the Times, the Sun and the News of the World, by next summer.

Speaking yesterday on a News Corp conference call Murdoch was quoted in the Guardian:

Quality journalism is not cheap

If he is suggesting the Sun and the News of the World are "quality journalism" then the old man has lost his grip on reality. By building a wall between your readers and your content, you cut links from other sources. You reduce the potential audience and as numbers drop so will the advertising. Murdoch goes on to say that News Corp will be:

making our content better and differentiated from other people

This line of reasoning is great in theory, but given that the Sun and the News of the World together trailed in fourth place last month as the most popular UK newspaper website whilst still being free, I can't see charging will do much for raising up the ranks.

Murdoch intends to use the popularity of celebrity stories to sell the Sun and the News of the World:

When we have a celebrity scoop, the number of hits we get now are astronomical.

As recent events like Michael Jackson's death have shown, sites like TMZ and Perez Hilton are more than capable of covering celebrity gossip, and do it profitably with very few staff- at no cost to the reader.

When it comes to keeping his content behind the paywall, he'll have his lawyers standing by:

We'll be asserting our copyright at every point.

Because the film and music industry found that road worked really well for them?

The argument I made last week, that people will never pay for news when they can get it free from the BBC, was perhaps a little over-confident. People still buy bottled water, but they are paying for the convenience of bottled water, there is no convenience in pay walls. The New York Times tried pay walls and it failed. Success online requires innovation, openness and experimentation, clinging desperately to the old business models will not work.

Update

Huffington Post reports that Murdoch stressed readers would only be charged for "real news" that appears on his sites:

which means that 99% of the content will remain free.

This seems at odds with the rest of his statement. That said, its good to know Murdoch realises that most of what his newspapers contain shouldn't be classed as "news".