This past week, the European Publishers Council and one major advertiser called for an end to free content.

The advertiser, Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of the world's second-largest advertising group, basically thought it silly that news organization don't charge for online content, claiming that he himself was "prepared to pay for breaking news." Not the most convincing argument.

The publishers based their argument on the ongoing spat between Agence France Presse and Google. Last spring, AFP demanded that Google stop using its content on its news aggregator, a request that many consider a death wish.

And those many are right.

AFP should happily invite Google to direct people to its website because in the near future, it is where AFP will make most of its money. It's old business model of selling content to newspapers around the world is rendered null by the Internet through which anyone can get any information they're looking for from virtually anywhere anytime of day.

This ties in with a concept of media pundit Jeff Jarvis, that large news organizations no longer 'own' content. He points us to the On Demand Media blog that expands on his concept claiming that consumers don't 'own' it either. "...we like to feel we own things. But what we really care about is experiences and practices... things only serve us inasmuch as they let us engage in practices, i.e. do things."

This is the point where anyone under the age of 25 reading this would shout "Bingo!" Ironically, the 74 year-old Rupert Murdoch seems to be the only old media mogul that has caught on to that shout.

With his purchase of MySpace, the social networking website, Murdoch has found an Internet advertising gem that, according to Business Week, accounted for 10% of all viewed online advertisements in the month of October. But he 'owns' none of the content on the site.

BW also writes that the site's "advertising can be so subtle that kids don't distinguish it from content," to which one of the founders of the site, Tom Anderson responds,"It's what our users want."

Bingo again!

This is why MySpace works. Despite being a humongous digital entity of 40 million registered users (up 4 fold from January 2005!), each one of those users can do what they want, create whatever type of content they want and easily contact anyone they want, resulting in groups of kids getting together on common niche interests.

On the other hand, newspapers provide content, but readers can't do anything with it.

This is where newspapers have it wrong. What they should be doing is using their niche publications to create forums and blogs for those interested in like content, giving up their control of content, but maintaining control of advertising revenue. This advertising would pay for a skeleton staff or invitee experts on the subject to provide some insightful content as well as website maintenance.

And with online advertising predicted to double in the next three years, such small expenses will soon turn a profit.

Keeping that in mind, back to general news.  

Youth won't pay for it now, and they won't pay for it in the future. With innovations such as MySpace, they will increasingly have access to free content of their specific interests and be able to easily contribute to those interests. They will be too busy to care enough about general news to pay for it.

And some further advice for Sir Sorrell and the European Publishers Council; these kids don't care either that your businesses are suffering under the transforming media climate. You need to stop trying to attract them with the same old gimmicks and adapt to what they want.

You'd better hope that you're not too late.

Sources: Buzzmachine, On Demand Media, Paid Content, Business Week