Good content creators deserve a good living which is not dependant on ad revenues from the echo chambers of blogs which feed of on original reporting.

He transformed the UK’s TV landscape, setting up a subscription only platform when there were existing free (both state sponsored and advertizing backed) alternatives. Sky now has 9 million subscribers – (that’s at least a third of the possible UK market).

He played a long game, paying huge amounts for exclusive rights to ‘must have’ content
(live soccer initially)
forcing fans to subscribe. He then branched out from that loyal base to get the rest of us.

The situation with news on the web isn’t identical, but don’t underestimate Murdoch.

First, as evident by the NY times (sub to free model now) and the WSJ (free to sub to free back to sub model), i think we will come back to free for the following reasons:
a) quality journalism is becoming highly fragmented and is no longer owned by large institutions
b) bloggers, such as yourself, develop an expertise and like it or not, your commenters and followers such as myself, expect you to be a quality journalist (eventhough you are a blogger and may not identify yourself as a journalist, i submit, your readers expect it)
c) you and Om and Brian Lam’s team at Giz (p.s. i am not lam eventhough we share the first name), are supplanting the journalists of these large institutions and are specialized, recognized as the experts for interest areas.

Thus, people like myself and others not technically adept, simply close the tab or window when presented with a log-in/subscription at these major media outlets – or google it. Only the highly attached followers with pay for the sub model, which is an decreasingly smaller pie.

Sorry Murdoch, but I think you might want to try a different model.

It will be fascinating to watch how this affects his advertising revenues, in the short term who will advertise with him (especially if the readers disappear).

The reality is even if I do not get access to “high quality” journalism. I will have access to lower quality rereports which are you know free. I will just ignore the WSJ. It will not cost me much.

I dont see myself paying for news when I get the same from cnn.com and twitter.com for free. And there is also no convenience factor (whcih is why i pay for iTunes music)

If they can make a no-charge business model work via ad revenue or some other means, great. But lets not be shocked if we’re actually asked to pay for services that we recieve.

What business are you in advertising or news. Everyone has to make money
but charging for what is free all over the internet may need some rethinking.
Increasing your traffic maybe the key.