Why News Corp's Stupid Idea Won't Work
This afternoon presented me with a perfect example of why Rupert Murdoch's dumb idea of charging for access to his media empire's "knowledge" is such a loser.
There was a fake hijacking or bomb threat called in to San Francisco International Airport today. I saw the item on my Google News page. I clicked the headline without paying attention to the source of that particular story (I've often done that) and was taken to the story on Murdoch's once-respectable, now-trashy Wall Street Journal. The generous folks there allowed me to read a two-sentence teaser of the story and then suggested that if I'd just log in they'd let me read the rest of it.
The story they reported on the WSJ wasn't even their original reporting. It was from Fox. I closed the WSJ page, went back to Google News, picked the same story from one of more than 100 additional sources, and read the entire account. For free. Imagine that.
As if that weren't ample evidence of Murdoch's faulty (you should pardon my loose use of the word) "thinking," all I had to do was go to the Fox site and read the piece in its entirety...again, for free.
I can see charging for access to unique reporting or commentary, though I'm not sure that model's sustainable. But when you tell me i have to pay -- or even subscribe so you can bury me with spam and claim we have a business relationship -- to read someone else's story or general reporting on a topic of broad news interest, I say, "Thanks, but no thanks."
