Murdoch plans to implement pay model for all news sites
Rupert Murdoch plans to start charging users to access his news websites, including The Times, the Sun and the News of the World by this time next year.
In response to News Corporation’s $3.4 billion (£2 billion) net loss for the year to the end of June, Murdoch said the free model era was over.
“Quality journalism is not cheap,” he said. “The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels but it has not made content free. We intend to charge for all our news websites.”
After much speculation about the paid-for model following the success of the Wall Street Journal‘s online access fee, Murdoch has reviewed the possibilities and said he is willing to take the risk of leading the industry towards a new model.
“I believe that if we’re successful, we’ll be followed fast by other media,” he added. “We’re certainly satisfied that we can produce significant revenues from the sale of digital delivery of newspaper content.”
Murdoch hopes to introduce the new company-wide online charges by next year, which will mean “making our content better and differentiated from other people,” he said.
The News International chief believes readers will pay to read red-top online papers such as the Sun and the News of the World because of the popularity of celebrity stories – “When we have a celebrity scoop, the number of hits we get now are astronomical.”
However, Murdoch also said the company will need to be “asserting copyright at every point” to ensure stories and images are copied by rival news sites.
Earlier today, News Corporation announced that profits at the company’s global newspaper arm, which includes The Times and the Sun, dropped 40% to $466 million (see News Corp reports $3.4bn loss).
The media giant, which reported a $3.4 billion net loss overall, took $8.9 billion in write downs on acquisitions, including a previously undisclosed $452 million charge in Q4 against the Fox Interactive Media division, which owns MySpace.
“The past year has been the most difficult in recent history, and our 2009 financial performance clearly reflects the weak economic environment that we confronted throughout the year,” Murdoch said.