It seems to be the way of the future, but would you pay for something you could get free elsewhere?

Let’s face it – the smackdown of the economy has people turning away from printed newspapers in droves and those same newspapers are looking at new ways to find revenue. For most of the history of the internet, the websites of those newspapers have been considered an add-on value to their paid-for publication, but that seems to be changing at an accelerating rate. Of course, subscription content on the web already exists but if the latest announcement by Rupert Murdoch, billionaire media mogul, is anything to go by and, of course, if it works, we can expect other major newspapers and content providers to follow very quickly.

As Murdoch says in a recent interview in The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/aug/06/rupert-murdoch-website-charges) he feels that with the astronomical hits their stories get for a celebrity scoop, there is great potential to replace the lost revenue from decreased sales of the printed product. Murdoch intends to have all his online portals charging for content within the next financial year.

Not everyone is sure this is a good idea. Personally I wouldn’t pay to read Murdoch’s papers online, but that’s just me. Others would. But personal opinions aside – would it work?

Informed opinions also seem to waver but the overall consensus is a no. One simply needs to take the nature of the internet into consideration to know that if a popular story appears on one site, it takes minutes to appear elsewhere, and within an hour you have fresh analysis, new angles and rewritten stories. So to have paid-for mainstream news seems to be a doubtful prospect.

Frankly, I think Murdoch is facing the challenge in the wrong way. You cannot superimpose the print business model to the net, just like you can’t impose the print model on television. I’m not a net entrepreneur so I am not the one to tell you what that model would be, but the beauty of the net is the capacity it has to publish niche content that would not be printed through traditional channels. Mainstream news – no pay, no way, but interesting niche content that targets smaller groups of users, that seems possible to me.

Like I said, I wouldn’t pay to read news online, but I would pay for added services like a tailored news service emailed to me, specific labour intensive extended features, or even some particular writers.

Looking forward, I don’t think Murdoch’s plan will work but kudos to him for trying. Whatever the outcome of his experiment, it will set the tone for how online content is treated for a few more years to come.