back to article Murdoch, The Daily, and life without the web

News Corp doesn't get a whole lot of love on the web, nor does it seek it. Just over a year ago company chairman Rupert Murdoch described news aggregation as "almost wholesale misappropriation of our stories… it's theft", and shortly afterwards the paywalls went up at the Times and Sunday Times. Web readership plummeted, …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Whatever

    Its related to Murdoch, so it will be full of s**t, like everything he owns. The rest is irrelevant.

    1. DrXym

      I used to like The Times

      I quite liked reading The Times online. But at the end of the day if I want a similarly toned rag I can read The Telegraph instead. Then there are broadsheets like The Guardian and The Independent offering similar coverage. In fact there are hundreds of sites offering quality news, opinion, gardening tips, puzzles etc. and sites like Google helpfully aggregate the news into one place and refine it's results to be relevant to my interests.

      So while I used to read The Times I really don't feel inclined to suddenly pay for it because of a paywall. Instead it may as well have fallen into a blackhole for all I care. But I expect The Telegraph was delighted by an influx of ex-Times readers lovingly counting money made from impressions and click throughs on their ads.

      The Daily will probably share a similar fate too. Largely ignored, a money pit. I think Newscorp may be counting on iPad owners having more money than sense, that they fail to realise they have a web browser built into their device with news literally a couple of clicks away. For free.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Pick and choose

        I tend to flit about just reading stories I'm interested in, almost regardless of what site they are from, so there's no way I'm going to buy subscriptions to all the major newspapers just to read the odd story here and there.

        No idea what a better solution is, either. Sorry, Big News.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Re: Whatever

    Nice to see BBC jounalists read the Register :-)

  3. M Gale
    Grenade

    Oh noes.

    One crappy news company has given up on advertising revenue and gone behind a pay-wall, most likely still stuffed to the gills with adverts.

    Not that I'll ever know. Pay? For a news rag with an ever-tenuous grasp on "the truth"? Has nobody ever heard of The Metro?

    Or even, perhaps, The Register. Both better than anything News Corp has ever come up with, and both at zero cost to the readership.

    Yes, I'm probably some awful freetard contributing to the downfall of "news" organisations across the globe. I consider this to be a good thing. By the way, I'm currently in Liverpool, and you should try getting hold of a copy of the Sun around here. Wonder why that is, Murdoch?

    "The Truth", indeed.

    1. Alan 6

      No ads behind the paywall

      But I had to check because I largely ignore online ads, so I wasn't sure if there were any on the Times site or not...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Stop

      Re:Oh noes

      The Metro? From AN&M group? The group that also gives you The Daily Mail? With basically the same stories?

      Equally as bad, for different reasons. El Reg is far superior to that free piece of toilet paper!

    3. Mark Aggleton
      Thumb Down

      City Slicker

      No - Metro doesn't come to anything other than cities - and you can stick them where the sun doesn't shine.

      1. M Gale

        City?

        I'll give you a clue: I pay sixteen quid a week on a ticket that'll get me on an Arriva bus anywhere in the North West of England and North Wales. Okay, so the Metro might not reach the darkest corners of god-knows-where (or you're not enough of a early bird in the morning), but I'd hardly call my current location a sprawling metropolis. You wouldn't have this many farms and old miners' houses, and BT could probably deliver broadband worthy of the name, and this tablet wouldn't have such a bother picking a signal of any kind up.

        As opposed to my location earlier when I posted that.

  4. Sam Liddicott

    "big brands are becoming rarer."

    So.. "big brands are becoming rarer" are they?

    Perhaps we should stop the mergers which would reduce the number of big brands

  5. Alan 6
    FAIL

    Paywall

    I have a subscription to the Times, so I automatically get access to the Times+ bit of the site.

    It's quite slick, I like the way the full story loads, so when you click for the next page it changes instantly.

    What I don't like is the almost constant SSL errors when trying to log in, and the regular server crashes. If they set up a walled garden for paying customers I would have thought they'd have installed enough reliable hardware to keep us paying customers happy...

  6. JimC

    Murdoch or no...

    Fundamenatally he's right. If the public wants good quality content (and admittedly bearing in mind McDonalds sales figures that's a big if) then the balance between the creators and the advertisers needs to be redressed. Unless of course you believe there will always be a new generation of students who are happy to create mediocre content for free just for the joy of seeing their text on a website.

  7. Glyn 2
    Boffin

    pot, kettle, shade

    Got the times today and it contains a fair number of none main news articles that I've seen in other papers or on websites over the past week, the main example being a large piece about made up languages which was on the bbc site earlier in the week.

    "almost wholesale misappropriation of our stories… it's theft"

    true

    1. Sergie Kaponitovicz

      They are all at it

      I subscribe to many blogs (sad?) and some rune stories 2 weeks later. In the UK press I see printed articles previously seen in the blogosphere days earlier. I would happily pay 20p a day to have a bloody good journo save me the effort by sifting out all of the crap and repitiiiiiiiiiiiiitionionionion.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    what i'd pay for (or might pay for)

    is an annual sub to the website which came with some kind of card/voucher

    system so that I could also get a copy in the newsagent when I wanted.

    Mind you, I'm not sure that I'd ever subscribe to a Murdoch publication, no

    matter how attractive their subscription system.

    1. Alan 6

      Already available

      My Times subscription gives me a book of vouchers, plus access to the website.

      I can take a voucher into most newsagents and get a paper, or read it online, or on a fondle-slab or whatever.

      I would imagine other papers will offer the same thing if Newscorp get a decent number of subscribers after 12 months...

  9. Horson Wheels

    Meanwhile, down in the engine room...

    A week ago, I was talking with a Murdoch journalist working on the app launch who confirmed that since the paywall, readership has dropped to the hard core - and there's a lot of nervousness about the app.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    why pay

    for 'news' that is exactly the same cut and paste everywhere. I hear a bit of news on the radio, think 'there must be more to it than that, I'll get the full story in the paper tommorow'. I don't, just the same rewritten copy, so I don't buy a paper ever. I read one for free in the Café with my morning coffee. The Reg has more news than I can count on finding in a daily paper.

    1. JimC

      @why pay/cut and paste

      Funnily enough that's one of Murdoch's points if you read the article...

  11. ColonelClaw
    Grenade

    Am I the only person who...

    ...sees a picture of James Murdoch, and immediately thinks 'wanker'?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Not just you

      If you listen to Murdoch v.2 you quickly realise he didn't get his position by being best at his job. That's the weakness of NI, too few people being brought in from outside to come up with new ideas. They're wedded to pay-TV and paywalls and really don't have a plan B.

  12. Sergie Kaponitovicz
    Pint

    Why does everyone hate a successful man/woman/person?

    I think that Murdoch has got his strategy "abso-bloody-lutely-right mate".

    I have a hell of a lot of bourgeois capitalist respect for the man, but freely admit that in company I'd likely break his nose for being such an arrogant shite. The crap that he sells on Sky is a masterstroke. Never under-estimate the stupidity of your average punter.

    BUT Sky News is a much more reliable source than the BBC News (aka propaganda = Gardianista) service. So, for a quid a week - why don't I give it a try?

    Ah! I know why not - it's because I do not have an iPad. Why on earth does not Gates shove this on iTunes?!!!!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Down

      Re; Why does everyone hate ....

      I don't hate successful people. I hate people who are obsessed with tightening their grip on an already too large and influential media empire. First person in downing street each time theres a new incumbent? I'm surprised he's not sitting there in the PM's chair waiting for him/her when they walk through the door for the first time.

      Also:

      >>Why on earth does not Gates shove this on iTunes?!!!!<<

      I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume I didn't get the joke/irony

    2. Sergie Kaponitovicz
      FAIL

      Whoops

      Strike Gates insert Jobs

  13. MinionZero
    Happy

    Murdoch is a 20th century control freak.

    His business model doesn't translate well into the 21st century. News Corp's business model is to control distribution channels. When it can't control the means of distribution, it can't dominate. It can't control the Internet.

    Murdoch can control TV channels ... for the moment, until we have viable widespread Internet TV channels.

    Murdoch can't control news access on Android. Maybe Murdoch's failing empire can make a deal with Apple, but I very much doubt it. So that's mobile out as well as a means of control of distribution.

    Murdoch can control distribution on old paper newspapers, but what is the point, the Internet is killing newspapers. Murdoch tried to buy his way into power in this business area and back pre-Internet era that worked. But now newspapers are threatened by the Internet. Paid for newspapers will be killed by mobile internet access. Maybe some of the free ones will still survive, but that's on the tube etc.. and Murdoch is more greedy than that. He wants more profit to support his (crumbling) empire.

    So what are we left with? We don't need Murdoch for new distribution any longer, as we have the Internet for that. Therefore Murdoch can't control what and how people view news.

    Plus within 5 years we will have streaming TV as standard for the majority of the population. Its possible now, but not widespread just yet.

    Also mobile access to the Internet is really just starting. We are just a few years into that now. Give it another 5 years and mobiles will kill paid for printed newspapers as millions will be reading the Internet via mobiles. Give it another 5 years after that and streaming video via mobiles will also end up being thought of as standard, for the majority of the population, so that's the final straw for Murdoch's TV channel dominance as well.

    @"Murdoch's view, size and brand are key to his company's future"

    Yeah sure he does. Size to him means power to dominate. Yet that's almost meaningless on the Internet. Bigger companies than his have tried to dominate the Internet and failed. As for Murdoch's Brand, that's being an arrogant scum bag Narcissist, forcing his propaganda on us. Why read Murdoch propaganda when I can have access to the entire Internet!

    Good bye Murdoch, you are old news.

  14. JaitcH
    Unhappy

    If the news letter pay wall is anything like Murdoch's pay TV satellite security ...

    out here in the Far East he won't be making much money.

    Modded Pay TV receivers can be bought openly in many markets along with all the necessary cards, etc.

    Total failure.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Re: Sergie Kaponitovicz

    That's the funniest thing I've read for ages. What a spoof. Total genius. You could earn a fortune doing this sort of thing

  16. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Pay works...

    I pay for Ars Technica, and I used to pay for The Economist. The problem is, to get people to pay you, you have to do research, provide insight, you know, journalism.

    Fox has gone the opposite way. They provide tripe and dribble that turns eyes in the checkout lane, but no one would actually subscribe too.

    So yeah, they spent money investing in their pay-wall. Maybe they should have spent money investing in content.

  17. Flybert
    Joke

    see content ;-0

    "which he says is "vastly under-penetrated."

    I really don't know how you Brit's could be more penetrated, mostly by your government, however perhaps he has the sense that you'd enjoy more

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