Friday, February 19, 2010

End of free news online?


Debate is on and news media companies across the world are considering the best way to make money from the internet, particularly in a time of falling advertising revenues.

The debate got a new height after media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s announcement last summer that his company—News Corp—would start charging for news content online. He believes that the company could produce “significant revenues from the sale of digital delivery of newspaper content” (BBC 2009).

News Corp owns the Australian in Australia, the Times and Sun newspapers in the UK and the New York Post and Wall Street Journal in the US.

Following Murdoch’s footstep, the New York Times last month announced that it would make people pay for reading articles and news content online starting next year.

The move strikes at the heart of the debate within the publishing business—whether to continue giving away valuable news and features on the Web, or start charging at the risk of losing readers.

Few weeks earlier, I had an opportunity for a chitchat with Shiva Khadka, a journalist of Nepal's leading web news portal, www.nepalnews.com. For charging online content, he says: “It’s not a new idea and nothing comes free".

The Financial Times and Wall Street Journal already charge readers. In the region, malaysiakini.com is a successful venture that runs on online subscription model.

He admits that charging for online content is partly to supplement on revenues of media houses. But he says: “The readers (subscribers) get more differentiated content and access to old archives, among others.”

However, a latest survey by Nielsen Co., shows that 85 per cent internet users believe that online content that is currently free should remain free. The online consumers may be more willing to pay for certain categories, such as movies, games, TV shows and music, and less likely to pay for news, blogs and user-created-videos.

I think the debate has to go on. However, the companies considering to charge for their online content must understand the fact that for a sustainable venture pricing should be a consumer driven.


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