Charging for News
Newspapers are dying so quickly because people obtain all of their news via the Internet for free. Websites like Facebook and Twitter and RSS feeds have made it easier to read mass amounts of news without carrying around a bulky, inky paper. The best perk: this is all free. No need to wait at the corner bodega for a copy of the New York Times; Simply refresh Yahoo News.
However, this in no way helps media companies make money. They still have online advertisements, but this only accounts for (I think) less than 50 percent in advertising spendings. So how can the Internet news sources make money? Subscription.
The Wall Street Journal has been a subscription-based company for a while now and other publications strive to do the same. NewsCorp chairman Rupert Murdoch, a money and power-hungry media mogul, wants to begin charging his readers for content from all of his newspapers. He hopes to begin doing so by June 2010, but has been forced to delay charging for news. It will be a difficult process to switch gears for online formats, but will have to happen eventually with some newspapers, like Murdoch’s, declining 81 percent in total revenue.
I think that this must be done because though news is a right for everyone, these media companies must have money to actually put forth the news, pay workers, and etc. The worry is that people will stop reading news entirely when it switches to paid format and will only rely on websites without subscription-based content. I think it will start off unsteadily at first, but when the only legitimate and reliable sources of news (i.e. not citizen journalism via Twitter) must be paid for, people will ultimately pay. It will just be shaky at first.
