Rupert Murdoch wants more of your money

[RDMcG]

He announced that they are going to charge for news content on the web by the Autumn, so papers like the Times will charge readers. This has been tried in the past with no success, however, he thing he can make it work.

Here is my question.

Would you pay to read newspapers on line?

Part of the issue is that, as a minimum, the many publications I have bookmarked would be unaffordable if they were all pay sites, so my sense is that it would have to have unique content that I need before I would pay for it.

[kazste]

surely this is what www.bbc.co.uk is for no?
why would you pay for internet news when the above is free.

[RDMcG]

Well, the betting is that you might pay for columnists, (Clarkson, for instance), NY TImes tried it and failed, but Wall Street Journal does it. I think its not going to succeed, but Murdoch is not an idiot.

[Hammerwerfer]

With so much free content on the web, I just cannot see this working. The Irish Times was a pay site for some time. Didn't work at all.

[sherman]

Most of the big interesting/ones that matter, stories are debated on here anyway so why do we need to pay to read the news and as above we will always have the BBC.

Just noticed my post count is 666

Edited by sherman on Friday 7th August 02:37

[jamoor]

Nope, not going to work.

There is tons of competition and the barriers to entry are small to setup a news website.

With services like google news that trawl news sites on your behalf, it's even less likely to work.

Edited by jamoor on Friday 7th August 02:35

[anonymous-user]

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...