Oooh boy, I’m revving up my schadenfreude engines now, I tell ya. Rupert Murdoch, global tabloid media mogul, has seen the future of internet news – and it’s hidden behind paywalls.
Encouraged by booming online subscription revenues at the Wall Street Journal, the billionaire media mogul last night said that papers were going through an “epochal” debate over whether to charge. “That it is possible to charge for content on the web is obvious from the Wall Street Journal’s experience,” he said.
Asked whether he envisaged fees at his British papers such as the Times, the Sunday Times, the Sun and the News of the World, he replied: “We’re absolutely looking at that.” Taking questions on a conference call with reporters and analysts, he said that moves could begin “within the next 12 months‚” adding: “The current days of the internet will soon be over.”
“The current days of the internet will soon be over?” At least we now know where the tautological house style of Murdoch’s papers originates from… and, y’know, people pay for the Wall Street Journal because it actually contains some factual reporting and informed opinion pertinent to their careers or investments; I really don’t think people read The Sun for the same reason.
But please, Mr Murdoch, do go ahead with this bold entrepreneurial move. Anything that reduces the amount of crap your media empire spews into people’s eyes (and that hastens your potential destitution and bankruptcy – financial rather than moral, of course) is absolutely fine in my book.
/sign
I actually would like to look at ways to accelerate this process. What can “our kind of people” (cough) do that will spur people such as rupert to hoist up the drawbridge even further? What will entice him to become protectionist of his article? What will seduce him into charging more, for ever shorter, more superficial, more politically slanted pulp? What will move him to censor every scrap he doesn’t want repeated and blare out nonsense suggestive of his over-myelinized brain.
Shouldn’t be too hard.