Jan 24th, 2008 | Media 2.0, Social Media | No Comments
As the Wall Street Journal is breathlessly reporting, Rupert “Just Try and Stop Me” Murdoch has apparently relented on his much-discussed plans to open up the Journal’s content and get rid of the paywall, and will be keeping some subscription products (and boosting the price for them, oddly enough) while letting more stuff move outside the wall. In other words, he will be trying to have his cake and eat it too.
I know that there are a lot of smart people out there who believe that you can do both — one of them being Rex Hammock, who has been predicting for some time that Rupert would see the light and go for a mixed strategy. I would not claim to have the expertise in publishing that Rex has, but I do know one thing: the kind of content that newspapers produce, in virtually all cases including the esteemed WSJ, is either a commodity (in which case charging for it is nonsensical) or something with added value. In both cases I think it benefits the paper to release it into the wild.
Obviously if it’s a commodity then it should be free. But I would argue that it’s almost more important for the added-value content to be free as well. And here I am in violent agreement with Fred Wilson of A VC, who says that he believes Rupert has made a big mistake by keeping content locked up. As he puts it in his post on the topic:
“Here’s the deal. Digital media is not about scarcity and never will be. That’s the old media game. Online it’s about ubiquity, about being part of the conversation, about links, authority, page rank, and if you are a news organization like the WSJ - its about anchoring the discussion.”
This is the same debate that the New York Times went through, and it eventually decided to get rid of the wall. Was it not making money? No, it was making plenty of money — but that pie wasn’t growing. And it certainly wasn’t growing as quickly as the NYT’s traffic has been since it removed the wall. I think the Journal would be wise to trade the bird it has in its hand for two or three (or twelve) in the bush.
Nov 13th, 2007 | Media 2.0, Social Media | No Comments
Well, Rupert Murdoch has been dropping pretty big hints that the Wall Street Journal pay wall is a-comin’ down pretty soon — and it shouldn’t be too hard to make it crumble, since Digg just put a pretty big hole in it. As Kevin Rose describes in his rather economical post on the subject (I counted 38 words, not including his name), articles at the Journal will start carrying the Digg button, and any stories that get Dugg will be free for readers who come from the social-bookmarking site. Mike Arrington has a slightly longer post over at Techcrunch.
Sep 19th, 2007 | Media 2.0, Social Media | 1 Comment
Not surprisingly, the decision by the New York Times to tear down its pay wall has fueled speculation that Rupert Murdoch will do the same thing with the Wall Street Journal — speculation that has been around for awhile now, primarily because ol’ Rupe keeps talking about it (of course, knowing Murdoch, that’s probably just a way of keeping the media writing about him).
I’ve written about this before, after the Australian billionaire took over the Journal, and I hope by now I’ve made it clear that I think free makes the most sense not just for the Times or the Journal but for virtually every newspaper including the one I work for. There are those — like former journalists Mark Potts at Recovering Journalist and Dorian Benkoil at Corante who disagree, and think that subscription is a model that works, but they are wrong.
I should clarify that. They are right in the short term, but wrong in the long term. As the Times has admitted, charging people for content created a subscription business that made money, but one that wasn’t growing very much (if at all). I’m not privy to the numbers at the Globe and Mail, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we have seen a similar pattern. Steve Boriss argues that this could be because the NYT did it wrong, but I’m not convinced.
Scott Rosenberg of Salon, among others, has written about the difficulties of financing a large newsroom through online revenues only, and that is definitely a concern. But I believe — as Jay Rosen and other smart people do — that being part of the online ecosystem (which includes permanent links to archived stories) is going to be a lot more valuable in the long run than charging people a nickel or two to read the paper online every day.
Aug 1st, 2007 | Media 2.0 | No Comments
If you’re a traditional journalist with any interest in online media whatsoever, one of the central questions hovering over the acquisition of the Wall Street Journal is whether the Journal’s new proprietor, Australian billionaire Rupert Murdoch, will remove the pay wall and give the Journal away for free. He has said several times that he is considering such a move, but he has also mused about whether it would be worth it or not.
I know that many newspapers have looked to the Journal as a model for what a paper can do online, because it is one of the few that has charged for its content from the very beginning and built what appears to be a successful business doing so. But does it make sense now? This Wall Street Journal story notes that Murdoch commissioned a study that looked at what going free would mean for the paper, and from that he concluded that while readership would grow by a factor of 10, advertising would likely only grow by a factor of five, and the loss of subscription revenue would effectively make the whole thing a wash. In other words, maybe’s it’s not worth it. However, Murdoch has asked questions like this:
“What if, at the Journal, we spent $100 million a year hiring all the best business journalists in the world? Say 200 of them. And spent some money on establishing the brand but went global — a great, great newspaper with big, iconic names, outstanding writers, reporters, experts. And then you make it free, online only. No printing plants, no paper, no trucks.”
Fred Wilson has made it clear what his view is: Murdoch should make the WSJ free online, before he does anything else. Fred points out that the New York Times gets 10 times the traffic that the Wall Street Journal does, and is far more often the centre of an online discussion about business or financial matters. That kind of thing is going to drive Murdoch crazy.
Larry Kramer, formerly with Marketwatch, has a different idea about how Murdoch can keep charging for the Journal and use Marketwatch as a free alternative, an adjunct to his much-anticipated Fox Business Channel, but I’m not sure that would work. I’m going with Fred on this one. The Journal could be so much more relevant online if it were free, and Murdoch is just the guy to do it.
Further reading:
Darian Benkoil at Corante, a former AP correspondent and ABCNews editor, does the math and says that it doesn’t make sense for the Journal to go free (although I think one could question some of his assumptions), and Joe Wiesenthal has some thoughts over at Techdirt. Tony Hung at Deep Jive Interests isn’t so sure going free would be such a good thing for the Journal.
Jul 26th, 2007 | Blogs, Media 2.0 | No Comments
From my pal Paul Kedrosky comes a video clip from new Wall Street Journal tech video-blogger Andy Jordan, who went out into the park to see whether one guy’s iPhone would help improve his social life or not. Kara Swisher of All Things D has a clip of Andy explaining his new gig.
