New media

I am intrigued by Rupert Murdoch’s drive to charge for his company/companies news and other content on the Internet. He is now saying he will also remove his content from being indexed and stop the flow of snippets (teaser text) being resolved or delivered by search engines, so that the public will have no access to any of his companies content anywhere for free. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/09/murdoch-google.

In essence he is planning on removing his stable of titles from general public view. I don’t know that this makes economic sense for his companies but it will, I think, vastly improve the general Internet landscape. Murdoch’s started his media career in Australia, gaining ownership of newspapers his father Sir Keith had established, but he made his media empire from pandering to the lowest common denominator and selling filth (no I am not calling Page 3 filth, I mean violence and sensationalism) and tattle in the United Kingdom with The Sun and The News of the World. The quality of the journalism on the majority of his newspapers (most of which are tabloid) and television channels is poor and will not be missed given the wealth of quality free content put out already by other new media organisations, and government bodies such the BBC and ABC. The quality of a number of the opinion columnists in his broadsheet newspapers is good, and those shall be missed. However once those writers realise they are being removed from the public sphere I am sure they will choose new avenues in which to publish. No writer wants to write in a vacuum where their work cannot be widely accessed and thus be discussed and commented upon.

So who is going to buy Murdoch’s online content. Obviously people already pay for The Wall Street Journal (as they do The Financial Times) but this is because there is direct economic value in the information contained therein. His other broadsheet newspapers have no such economic benefit to general users. Libraries unfortunately may pay to do so, through a desire to give access to the public in much the same way that they do to a range of other media. Advertisers, media and public relations companies will need to access the content, large businesses may also want access as they crave information, some Government departments also will need to. So Murdoch’s readership will be a rump of institutional buyers for his content. I can’t believe many or any individuals will pay for his general content. They may in extremis pay for an individual story with direct relevance to them as already occurs with Murdoch’s older online content in Australia.

This institutional use will be of The Times and The Australian, there is little likelihood that anyone would want to pay for the online contents of The Herald Sun, The Sun or The New York Post. Particularly individuals would not want or need to when there are thousands of gossip blogs and websites, with original uploaded content that do the job better and without the vile opinions and editorials.

But the really good thing about Murdoch removing his content is that it may (unlikely though it would be) convince other large commercial media companies to remove their news content from free access too. Imagine the worlds single greatest, largest, most accessible media platform essentially free of such news media. The extent that this would allow citizen journalism to take off would be extraordinary. Already we see on news sites messages asking the public to upload their videos or stories on events as they happen, just imagine how successful that will be once aggregated on a website or multiple websites, by and for the public. There are already numerous free opinion, news and commentary websites such as The Huffington Post in the US and On Line Opinion in Australia these will only swell as more public move to read available free content. Whether they with much increased advertising revenue become like News Corporation we shall see. It is unlikely however, media companies like Murdoch’s only grew from a media market that existed without real choice or opposition. Only governments or very large amounts of money dictated which television channels or newspapers existed, rarely their content, with the Internet a fairer cheaper market place, content is king. The Murdoch old media are now resigning themselves out of the general market, and opening up themselves only to a niche or luxury market. In the past there was little chance to create your own newspaper or television station if you disagreed with the current ones, and your only option as a user was to either watch/read or not. Today you have unlimited online media access so you can find any source that suits you or create your own.

What will be the impact on the nature of what news is, will be most interesting. From Murdoch's hold on Australian and British newspapers, he has made news into a parade of gossip, scandal-mongering, sensationalised and pornographied crime stories and sport.

Murdoch talks about choice, and how he has been the seemingly sole provider of this, and has been very contemptuous of the tax-payer funded government owned ABC and BBC. Murdoch sees these organisations as direct competitors who are using their competitive advantage, of having guaranteed funding, against him. This is absolutely true and I agree with Murdoch on this point. I don’t believe any government should have a stake in the media and nor should tax-payers pay for it. A free media is a free media, free does not always imply free of cost (understanding that cost can be hidden in general taxation) it must also imply free of government ownership, no matter how seemingly benign.





This is a fascinating interview, that covers a lot of ground. As a Librarian I am concerned that he states he is against ‘fair dealing’ (in the US ‘fair use’) agreements and believe they should be legally challenged. I think this is appalling and unjustifiable as this sort of access to information is the cornerstone of civilisation and progress.

But mostly I am surprised in his answer to the interviewers final question which was - What will you be remembered for? To which he replied that he had “used the media to good effect”. I can’t think of a single thing he did in newspapers for the good. Certainly he made new cultural lows the norm in Britain and broke the unions in Wapping, but doing ‘good’ meaning presumably things for the common good, really? He is clearly delusional if he believes this.


Oh and btw