By Patricia H. Kushlis
Oh my gosh, right wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch announced earlier this summer that he plans to charge for access to online news content. Since I’m no fan of Murdoch productions – online, in print, or in any other form – that’s just hunky-dory with me. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think he should be encouraged to do so.
Let me explain.
Although there are a very few news organizations that have successfully succeeded in firewalling off their content to subscribers only, most have failed. And the few that have succeeded – The Financial Times and Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal – do so because in Jeff Jarvis’ (The Guardian) view their “readers . . . make money on the content, and pass the cost on to their employers.”
If Murdoch’s goal is foremost to increase his oversized fortune – I wish him the best of luck – but if NPR CEO Vivian Schiller is right, and she should know, he’d be financially more successful if he left his news operations alone.
But that’s his call.
Here’s how Jarvis explains it “charging for content brings marketing and customer-service costs. On line it reduces audience and the advertizing they justify. Putting content behind a wall cuts it off from search and links; they cut off your Googlejuice.” He continues: “when publishers build those walls, they open the door for free competitors.”
I see it happening right here in Albuquerque on the Rio Grande. A subscribers’ firewall – which is nuisance to deal with so I don’t – does not seem to have increased subscriptions to the major newspaper, The Albuquerque Journal. In fact, its subscribers continue to decline and right they should. It claims to be independent but in reality it’s usually highly supportive of whichever Republican candidate comes down the pike and it's content is becoming ever more local - like the bobcats in Placitas top story today. Big deal. We had regular bobcat visitations, in fact I even wrote a post about them once - with better photos than the Journal's by the way.
Sadly, the paper has a lock on the market here so it would be just fine with me if it went the way of the Dodo bird. But that will take time – and it may not even happen: this is a politicized and polarized city and the Journal now increases its coffers by printing The Wall Street Journal in off-hours and then distributing it to help the local company survive.
Nevertheless, let’s look at the pay for content from another perspective. That’s the question of influence.
If Murdoch’s primary goal is to influence the American public by promulgating his right-wing views of life as exemplified by, in my view, the less than “fair and balanced” Fox News, then I think it’s just great that Murdoch plans to firewall his online “news” presence from those of us hoi-poloi.
The more pay-for-view firewalls the merrier, because all that will do is reduce the number of readers. Hence, Murdoch’s influence on the politics of this country just might even decline as more and more people turn off the television and log into the web.
But wait.
There’s more to the Murdoch pay-for-news-view story and its implications.
I came across an interview of Vivian Schiller, the CEO and president of National Public Radio, in the most recent Middlebury Magazine. No, I am not a Midd graduate – but Schiller is – and I think the alumni magazine is one of the best around. Moreover, the Magazine is free online, and the article entitled “News Radio” is well worth reading.
Here are a few major points:
• NPR has substantially increased market share while newspapers are tanking. More than 27 million people listen to public radio each week – up from 2 million in the 1980s and “Morning Edition’s” average daily audience of about 7.6 million is now 60 percent larger than the audience for ABC television’s "Good Morning America" and about one-third larger than NBC’s "Today Show." Its listeners have increased by seven percent since 2008 and,in Schiller’s words: “audio is an incredibly nimble form of media.”
• Less than one percent of NPR’s budget comes from the taxpayer funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Yet the financial downturn has negatively affected NPR despite its audience increases. Could the increase in audience be because the station’s priority has been to protect its core news operation and full-time reporters in India, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Mexico City while the private competition else is slashing reporters and downgrading and degrading content? Schiller, by the way has pledged to support NPR’s core news organization while bolstering its investigative reporting efforts and building its online presence with online news and information as well as podcasts, blogs and streaming video.
• As vice president and general manager of The New York Times online before moving to NPR, Schiller convinced the organization to open all web materials for free “to increase viewership and remain dominant and relevant.” She was right. Since ending Times Select in 2006, page views have doubled and overall advertising has grown. “The amount lost in audience and ad revenue is not worth the subscription dollar” – according to Schiller. No surprises that she was quoted in Newsweek recently saying that the talk of charging for news online is “mass delusion.”
So what is it Mr. Murdoch?
Come to think of it, it may not even be an either or choice – more money or greater reach? Who knows, could be NewsCorp will end up with neither: a shrunken stash and less influence. That would just suit me fine.