Rupert Murdoch said at a recent Federal Trade Commission workshop that media companies need to do a better job of convincing consumers that high-quality journalism isn’t free.
Has he been to nytimes.com lately? I read it in Google Chrome without an account, for free, everyday. I’d say that’s pretty high-quality journalism.
I’d say that’s not really the issue. News organizations don’t need to convince consumers of anything. Their job is to offer an alluring product that fits the consumer’s need. What organizations really need to do is convince advertisers that the digital medium is just as viable and lucrative as print is.
After all, subscription and newsstand rates have always been low, per industry standard, because news organizations thrive off the ad sales. But if you don’t have to worry about presses and shipment and all those pesky overhead costs that go into actually printing a paper, then I would guess you don’t really need to charge news consumers to make up that end, no? You just make sure the ads continue to pour in. You continue to tailor your various website sections to advertisers where it would make sense, just as you would in print. That’s the convincing that really needs to take place, because ads that move and flash and, in some instances, force you to watch or skip over, are definitely as noticeable as staid printed images…at least, in this amateur blogger’s opinion.
See?
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