Rupert Murdoch made a bold pronouncement today. In case you don't know this is the guy who has worked hard to make sure media (television and print) is focused on 1) generating revenue, 2) being owned by as few people as possible, 3) isn't required to adhere to anything resembling factual statements, and 4) continuing the fine tradition of yellow journalism. He's the mastermind behind the News Corp conglomerate. A modern day William Randolph Hearst. Today he announced that, within 12 months, News Corp websites would require some type of payment to view news and that the current model of internet news is on the way out.
His support for this statement is that "360,000 people downloaded a WSJ app for the iPhone" and that the online Wall Street Journal is thriving with a paid subscription model. Not bad evidence on the surface. But when was the last time the average Joe read an issue of WSJ? WSJ subscribers are mostly (though not completely) wealthier people and investors that have a vested interest in that type of news. It's a publication that caters to an upper class clientele. So Murdoch's biggest support is essentially "wealthy people pay for news, let's make lower class people pay too."
Now I'm not saying people shouldn't pay for the services offered by news outlets. People have always paid for newspapers and magazines. Commercials pay for air time for news programs. But there are major problems with combining concentrated media ownership (and thus viewpoints) and then nickel and diming people for news. Let's just look at a few.
1) You'll inevitably get monopolistic behavior and monopolistic pricing.
2) People will most likely only subscribe to a limited number of news sources, making their already low quality news even more biased in what stories are covered, what information is provided, the quality of sources used, and how the stories are presented.
3) We live in a society where information is valued even slightly more than money and that's because information makes money. So controlling who has access to information (i.e. only those who can pay for it) is devastating to those left out. It's another way to keep information in the hands of those that already have it and away from people that don't.
4) Journalism has become a much lower overhead business. Fewer in depth stories are being made and fewer foreign reporters are working. Communication and transportation costs are lower than ever. "24 hour news" is mostly opinion pieces that are cheap and quick to make. Online distribution has destroyed the need for printing facilities, warehouses of papers, and thousands of jobs. Advertising on tv, in print, and online is higher than ever. So lower overhead + higher advertising revenue = the need to charge online readers? That doesn't make sense.
5) Rumors, wrong information, and bad information are already rampant (fanned in part by the media). By reducing easy access to news, will this problem get any better? Personally, I doubt it.
I'm not opposed to some kind of subscription system if it is structured with reasonable fees and with provisions for those that can't afford it. Personally, I would turn to 3rd party sources and news outlets with better business models. But in principle I already pay for a newspaper and I'm willing to pay for the same thing electronically. The more important idea is this: we, as a society, need to determine what constitutes information that is so important we should disseminate it without regard to the all important Business Model and what information should be bought and sold. If we lock it all up with a price tag, we hurt the entire society and make a few people wealthy and powerful.
We'll see what happens. Murdoch has done wonders taking a news station that presents opinion as fact and has never, to the best of my knowledge, bothered to make a retraction or correction even in the face of overwhelming evidence that what they presented was false, misleading, and wrong, and turned it into a program that people rely on for news. So I wouldn't be surprised if he was successful in his endeavor.
