"Quality Journlism isn't Cheap."... Rupert Murdoch

What if you had to pay for all the resources that you now enjoy for free on the internet, all the articles that used to be yours for a few clicks? It is no secret how cyberspace has transformed research in just a matter of years.

Rupert Murdoch, who once talked about dropping the online fee for the Wall Street Journal’s content, has seemingly tightened the purse strings since a few years ago.

“We intend to charge for all our news websites,” says Murdoch. “If we’re successful, we’ll be followed by all media.”

However, most experts disagree.

Internet experts say that almost everybody who has ever tried charging for content has failed. The cyber-challenged, media mogul, Rupert Murdoch is out of touch, they say. Michael Wolff, whose book on Murdoch, The Man Who Owns the News, came out in December, says he was shocked to learn that Murdoch didn’t have an e-mail address, could barely use his cell phone and had not been on the Internet unaided. “Technology,” writes Wolff, “has always been regarded as one of those things, like fancy hotels, or long-form writing, that are not part of [News Corp.'s] culture.”

Journalism has reached its all time high, in terms of audience, it seems. Newspapers currently have more readers than ever before. The only problem is that very few of these consumers are paying. According to a Pew Research Center study, more people in the U.S. got their news online for free than paying for newspapers and magazines. Who can blame them?

The nineties saw the boom of the .com age, when money was easily made from advertisers. This caused many newspapers and magazines to put all of their content on the web for free. But it backfired. Instead of paying the news source handsomely, those dollars paid for things like search engines and portals.

I have always imagined that the unlimited free access can’t be good for the print industry, kind of like how Napster was to the music industry. Regardless, we have enjoyed the accessibility of these articles for so long, we feel it’s our right. Print journalism has traditionally had three revenue sources: newsstand sales, subscriptions, and advertising. With web advertising declining, it is a business model that won’t have a leg to stand on.

As a writer, myself, I’ve learned that any exposure is beneficial, that sometimes you need to bite the bullet and give stuff away. But you can only give away so much stuff before you realize that you still have bills that require earnings to pay.

There are a few newspapers that do charge a monthly subscription for content, the Wall Street Journal being one of them. In 2008, online subscriptions were up 7%.

So will this really change the way we surf the net? Will computers now come with a coin drop attached to the mainframe? Will paid subscriptions be required for online news? Will Libraries be getting more traffic? Some envision an I-Tunes-esque system to be modified for the news industry. How will this change the way you get your news?

c.2009