Results matching “rupert murdoch”

Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger told Reuters that "if we get the right functionality and design," the iPad could "produce interesting, significant revenue streams," according to PaidContent.

Because developing an application for the iPad will not require any different skills from the ones required to launch an iPhone app, news publishers that have had success with iPhone apps, are now looking to cash in on the iPad.

The MediaNews Group has released details of its plans to charge for content online, announced in November last year, Bloomberg reports. The publisher will adopt a metered system similar to that planned at The New York Times.

Two newspapers, the Daily Record in York, Pennsylvania, and the Enterprise-Record in Chico, California, will start charging in May. They will give users access to up to 25 'premium' articles a month, after which they will be required to pay a fee. Print subscriptions will include access to the website. Premium content may include some columns and investigative reporting, MediaNews president Joseph Lodovic said.

As News Corp announced profits of $254 million over the three months up to December, Rupert Murdoch said his company is close to implementing online subscription models for all of its newspapers like the Times, the News of the World, and the Sun.

The company is also in "advanced negotiations" with handheld-device manufacturers about possible paywalls that would allow customers access to News Corp content "whenever and wherever they want it," said Murdoch.

According to Murdoch, "ingenious and fabulous devices" like the iPad and the Kindle "would be unloved and unsold" without the creative content supplied by newspapers. "Content is not just king, it is the emperor of all things digital. We're on the cusp of a digital revolution from which our shareholders will profit handsomely," said Murdoch.

Three leading British phone companies have confirmed that over 100 customer accounts were illegally accessed by a private investigator and journalist at the News of the World, claims Nick Davies of the Guardian in the latest development in the phone-hacking scandal that let to a parliamentary committee enquiry.

Scotland Yard supplied 02, Vodafone, and Orange with phone numbers used by News of the World's royal correspondent, Clive Goodman, and private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, to access the private voicemails of customers like Prince William and Boris Johnson. Working backwards to trace customers whose voicemail had been dialed from those numbers, Vodafone and 02 each found that "about 40" voicemails had been compromised, while Orange found that 45 customer accounts had been hacked.

Although only 35 people have signed up for Newsday subscriptions since it was put behind a paywall last October, these dismal figures hide the Long Island daily's grander scheme: a paywall that nobody notices because it is bundled with a cable television subscription.

The owners of Newsday also own Optimum Cable, according to Guardian, which supplies cable TV to 75% of Long Island homes, Newsday's backyard. Newsday.com was offered to these subscribers at no additional charge, bundled with cable and high-speed Internet services. Therefore, the number of people who signed up for to the Long Island daily since October was not 35, but 1.5 million, the people that currently have Optimum Cable subscriptions.

Newspapers have not only lost significant advertising revenue in the last couple of years, they have also been losing government support in the form of subsidies in the last forty years, concludes a new study by the University of Southern California.

According to Poynter, a new study of historic subsidies and emerging trends tracks various tax breaks, reductions in postal subsidies first enacted in 1792, and upcoming cutbacks in public notices that government regulations have traditionally forced into American newspapers. The study provides valuable insight, if not clear-cut recommendations for print media to follow, about the thorny issue of government funding for media.

Mirror.co.uk has this week followed the lead of News International and blocked its content from online news aggregator NewsNow, paidContent reported. NewsNow is now the only site blocked from crawling the Mirror online.

"We're not big fans of their business model," Mirror.co.uk digital director Matt Kelly said.

Google News has introduced a 'recrawl' feature which will check for updates in news articles and add them to its index, the Google News Blog has announced.

News articles often aren't static, software engineers Andy Golding and Kiran Gunda explain on the blog, and often change over time to correct errors or add new information. Sometimes they change URLs or become unavailable after a certain amount of time.

Google's news bots crawl the internet looking for new news articles and adding them to the Google News index. The recrawl feature will enable them to focus on collecting all the newest news articles, while still making sure that the index displays the most up-to-date information.

Editor of the Guardian Alan Rusbridger made clear his feelings on paywalls and the growing importance of social media during the 2010 Hugh Cudlipp lecture yesterday, entitled 'Does journalism exist?' The Guardian reproduced the text of the lecture here.

Hugh Cudlipp was an editor at the Daily Mirror from the early 1950s to early 1970s,
a period in which, as Rusbridger pointed out, newspaper editors' key challenge was producing good editorial content, rather than trying to come up with a new business model, which is a top issue confronting all editors now.

Yesterday, following months of deliberation, the New York Times announced that it was to go forward with charging online, with a plan to implement a metre system in 2011. It is the biggest publisher yet to lay out paywall plans, and the move is undoubtedly highly significant for the newspaper industry as it struggles with a failing business model. Will this save the New York Times? Could it signal the end for free online content?

Similar to that used by the Financial Times, a metered payment system would allow readers to access a certain number of articles free per month, and then request payment for more: a flat fee for unlimited access. Print subscribers will continue to have free access, even those who subscribe to just the Sunday paper. An online subscription will also cover access via smartphones. The first click free from search engines, which is used by the Wall Street Journal, will also apply. More details such as pricing have been released yet, and the publisher's statement said that the next year will be used to build "a new online infrastructure designed to provide consumers with a frictionless experience across multiple platforms."

A metered system rather than a more fixed paywall has the advantage of not alienating the casual reader who can still visit the site free on occasion, and not angering journalists by blocking off specific articles (an issue with the Times' previous attempt at charging online, TimesSelect). "It allows NYTimes.com to remain a vibrant part of the search-driven Web," reads the Times memo sent to staff by executives Arthur Sulzberger and Janet Robinson, published by Poynter.

It does have potential flaws, however. Before the NYT's announcement, Reuters writer Felix Salmon criticized the way that the FT's flat fee system does not actually work like a metre: suggesting that instead the New York Times should implement a payment process under which readers are charged depending on how much content they consume. And presumably those who are determined not to pay will find ways around the paywall, using multiple accounts, for example.

The Financial Times welcomed the New York Times' decision, according to the Guardian, with CEO John Ridding saying "We welcome the New York Times' new online business model, which is similar to the FT's. We believe in the value of quality journalism and we are pleased that others feel the same way." The FT recently announced that for the first time, its content revenue was greater than its advertising revenue in 2009, after raised cover prices and more online subscribers signing on.

The FT now has 121,000 subscribers. Going by the pricing on the FT's website, it seems that they pay between €186 and €363 per year (depending on whether they choose a standard or premium subscription). Working on the assumption that about half of subscribers pay for each (and that the FT is not counting joint print-online subscribers in this figure), that would mean that the paper could be bringing in something in the region of €33 million from its paywall in direct revenue from readers. And the Wall Street Journal, which offers a different kind of paywall, has an estimated one million paying online subscribers.

This figure is encouragingly high, but how much encouragement can the NYT take from this? As a general interest paper with the most popular website out of all US papers, the Times has a far bigger pool of potential subscribers. But the FT's specialist financial content is something that more people might see as worth paying for. Indeed for some, it is news that is necessary for their business. And with the FT's main international rival the WSJ also charging, there is not an ubiquity of similar news free on the web.

The New York Times does seem to have a better shot at making charging for online content work than other US general interest newspapers. Its status as the number one national paper is largely unquestioned. It has always made a greater proportion of its revenue from content than most newspapers do, receiving 55-60% of its income from advertising compared to a typical figure of 80-85%. The current price for a print subscription is high, at between $550 and $770 a year, depending on location and offers, but many people are still prepared to pay this: more than 800,000 continue to renew their subscriptions, according to the NYT's David Carr.

Given the paper's financial situation, it is unsurprisingly that the paper is looking at changing its business model. Despite its reputation and high number of website visitors, financial constraints have pushed the New York Times into carrying out lay-offs and pay cuts. Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim came to the publisher's aid last year with a $250 million loan, but if the paper is to continue to produce top-quality journalism, it needs a steady revenue stream.

Poynter writer Rick Edmonds maintains that the NYT's decision to charge "makes business sense." He believes that the Times will not "lose any meaningful number of unique visitors," and agrees with Ken Doctor that paying users represent a significant targeting advertising opportunity. The Times' memo sent to employees said that executives expect that "digital advertising will continue to be the major contributor to our success on the Web."

Slate editor Jack Shafter is critical of the NYT's strategy, judging it "too easy for freeloaders to game their way around it" and "a waste of the gargantuan audience they've attracted." He suggests that looking into improving web advertising would be a better way to go forward. Jeff Jarvis argues on his blog BuzzMachine that the NYT's plan will end up charging "the readers who are worth the most while serving free those who are worth least," which he believes does not make sense. 

With the New York Times on board, efforts to charge online are likely to speed up. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp publications are expected to introduce paid online content in coming months, and there is an increasing sentiment that it just doesn't make sense to give away content that should be seen as valuable. Not everybody agrees, however, and over at the UK paper with the most popular website, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger has said that his publication will remain free online. Others will undoubtedly stick to a similar course and provide free alternatives, making it harder for those who do charge. Which business model will eventually prove more successful? 

Editor of The Guardian Alan Rusbridger ruled out erecting paywalls around The Guardian's website, expressing optimism about the future of the newspaper, Journalism.co.uk reported.

Speaking as part of the Coventry Conversation series, run by the Coventry University journalism department, he said the newspaper had no plans to put up paywalls, as Rupert Murdoch has planned to do for News International titles. "It would be crazy if we were to all jump behind a pay wall and imagine that would solve things," Rusbridger said. He did agree, though, that it was good that journalism was "trying different things".

The New York Times is on the verge of charging for its online content, according to the New York Magazine. The paper "seems" to have settled on a metre system, similar to that operated by the Financial Times, and a final decision could come within days, the magazine reported. CNET quoted a Times spokesperson Diane McNulty who said, "we'll announce a decision when we believe that we have crafted the best possible business approach."

The New York Times has been contemplating paid online content for the best part of a year, with a decision originally expected far earlier. It was first suggested that the NYT was looking at a metered system for paid content back in May, along with reports that the paper was considering some kind of membership scheme. This latter idea was abandoned last autumn, sources told the New York Magazine, as it would be too expensive and cumbersome to maintain. 

It appears that Rupert Murdoch has been making good on his promises this week. A Massachusetts newspaper owned by his Dow Jones Local Media Group has begun charging readers for online news, News & Tech reports.

This comes after the announcement that News International will block aggregator NewsNow from all its websites. Murdoch has previously accused news aggregators of theft.

The Standard-Times of New Bedford, Massachusetts, this week started charging readers a fee to access articles from its website SouthCoastToday.com. Users are still able to access 10 articles a month for free, after which only a short excerpt is displayed with a prompt to log in or subscribe. Rates vary, up to $3.56 for new subscribers.

Search engines could be protected from liability for copyright infringement under proposed changes to UK copyright law, Press Gazette reports.

If implemented, amendments to the Digital Economy Bill would mean that publishers of websites, including news websites, would be presumed to give open access to search engines. This would make it impossible for a news website to take legal action against a search engine for indexing its content. This would not apply if the website used specific technology to block sites which aggregate content, using, for example, the Robots.txt protocol.

On Friday, the news broke that Rupert Murdoch was to make good his promise of preventing aggregators from crawling his websites, by blocking NewsNow from all Times Online content.

In a statement, News International said:

"NewsNow has been using Times Online content as part of its paid-for, commercial as well as free services. They have continued to do so despite our direct requests for them to stop. As a result, we have taken the decision to disallow their indexing of our content."

Towards the end of last year, Rupert Murdoch, head of News International, spoke out against news aggregators. In an interview with Sky News Australia, he condemned the likes of Google as nothing more than "thieves", intent on stealing content from his newspaper's websites for their own benefit. The media mogul has long wielded threats of removing all News International articles from search indexes and implementing stringent paywalls around all his websites by the end of 2010.

It's only January, but Murdoch has already set about putting his plans into action: On Friday, the Guardian reported that News International is to prevent the aggregator NewsNow.co.uk from linking to content found on the Times Online website, by changing its search engine settings via the robots.txt protocol.

In the biggest reorganisation since News Corp bought Dow Jones in 2007, the company has merged its consumer and enterprise operations, uniting The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones Newswires, Barron's, MarketWatch and Factiva for the first time.

Of the move, Dow Jones Chief Executive Les Hinton said: "This structure will provide the focus to make us faster and better than our rivals at identifying and meeting customer needs."

In a seasonal greetings email sent to US and UK branches of News Corp International, Rupert Murdoch has praised his staff for weathering a difficult financial year and pointed to the "steps" the company is taking today which will "define the character of our company for many years to come." - Namely Murdoch's intentions to protect all News Corp produced content behind paywalls, as well as removing these articles from Google's search index. Both the Huffington Post and the Guardian have published the full email, the contents of which is posted below:

The BBC, who yesterday announced a new initiative to grant the general public access to professional media training resources, has also revealed it will expand the content available on its news website by linking to rival sources via an aggregation-like system, reports The Independent.

The move comes after accusations headed by News Corp's chairman and CEO for Europe and Asia, James Murdoch, that the corporation, in choosing to remain free, is flooding the market and preventing competitors from expanding online and charging for their content.  The new plan would reportedly see links to commerical websites added at the end of BBC stories.  

Sunday was the second anniversary of Murdoch's purchase of The Wall Street Journal, an event that many press and journalism experts decried as sullying the hallowed status of the respected paper. Under Murdoch's leadership, the Journal has turned away from business-only analytical focus and towards broader general interest stories and politics with big front-page photos.

As the debate between Google and news publishers rages on, an opinion piece in The New York Review of Books has proposed a different solution: that Google should fund a new journalism venture.

A variety of new ventures have been established in response to the tough times the newspaper industry faces. These include non-profit news publications such as the Chicago News Cooperative, California Watch and the Texas Observer. Other organisations including ProPublica, Spot.us and The Foundation for Public Interest Journalism receive funding from community or philanthropic sources, and use the money to support investigative or public-interest reporting.

Rupert Murdoch is not the only mogul looking to make money from online content - it's just that what with the intense media circus surrounding his rants, not to mention the severity of his accusations (think calling Google and Yahoo out and out thieves on international TV) he's the only one we've really heard about of late.

Led by Matthias Döpfner, Axel Springer, publisher of Europe's biggest daily, Das Bild, and other newspapers across Germany and Eastern Europe, is plotting the numerous ways in which it too can go about monetising its content online.

Christoph Keese, Springer's head of public affairs, said: "The meta-philosophy of free - we should get rid of this philosophy. A highly industrialized world cannot survive on rumours. It needs quality journalism, and that costs money." Döpfner added: "I see no justification, neither democratic nor market-related, for content to be generally free on the Internet. For centuries, people have been willing to pay for things of interest to them."

In an article in The Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch is optimistic about the future of journalism in this age of newspaper cutbacks and the overwhelming concerns with bottom-line budgets rather than quality journalism. 

In an innovative project from the Netherlands, the Dutch Minister for Education, Culture and Science has managed to gain support from the Parliament for more funding for journalism.

It's not in the form of government subsidies for newspapers, though, which have been criticised by various industry insiders including media mogul Rupert Murdoch and editor Frédéric Filloux. Instead, the Dutch government will finance two-year contracts for 60 young journalists across 30 titles in the country's press, reports Media Trend.