ABC Managing director Mark Scott has announced that the Australian national news service will never charge for its online content. Speaking at the annual AN Smith Memorial Lecture in Journalism in Melbourne, Scott said that a fully paid online content model for media organisations was doomed to fail and that the ABC would not bow to pressure from commercial media outlets to go down this path.

"The public pays for the ABC to deliver distinctive, quality content to them - and if it is content we are creating and packaging for them now, they are entitled to view that content free of charge," he said.

A government-owned public news service, the ABC has not felt the post-crisis pain of many commercial publications who depend wholly on advertising, sales and subscriptions to survive. None-the-less, it's refusal to charge for content makes it harder for other publications to do so. For people to accept paying for content, it has to become the norm for all news publications. If there is a respected alternative source that remains free, readers will continue to seek this out, as a recent PCUK/Harris poll found.

Something the ABC is not immune to, however, is the challenge to stay relevent. In his speech, Scott talked of the difficulties currently facing the media industry to continue to prove it's value when there is so much other content available. He emphasised the need for publishers to adapt if they are to endure the emerging climate saying that the only organisations that will survive are the ones that accept that "all the rules have changed."

"It's that kind of transformational thinking - and only that - which will bring the true critical analysis of the business mode, he said. "Successful organisations will be endlessly inquisitive about the new, understanding that no-one knows where the next breakthrough idea or technology will come from.

Scott's sentiments echo those recently made by Alan Mutter on his Newsosaur blog, which similarly advocated a total overhaul of the industry. Unlike Scott, Mutter belives that some publications could charge for niche news, but confirms that the wide majority need to shift their focus. Mutter argues that many publications still have "a suicidally stubborn determination ... to be in the business they want to be in, instead of attending to the business they need to attend to." Stuck in a out-dated frame of thinking about how news should be written and consumed, newspapers are missing out. Scott agrees, saying that modern news organisations need to "declare war on silos and insulated thinking" and to be "audience, not organizationally-centred".
"If we are to survive as anything more than a shell - than a legacy broadcaster - as an empire in decline - this is what we must do."

Source : ABC