As a follow up to Monday’s post, Adam Brereton at New Matilda has uncovered a rather perverse side-effect of the News Limited paywall. The company’s staff will become its customers, being required to pay to access the content they have created (albeit at a 50% discount):
Although staff have been aware of the switch to paywalled content for some months, having to sign up to read their own premier masthead was a development “sprung on us in the last couple of days”.
It’s worth remembering that the paywall strategy is supposed to secure the future of journalism, which proverbially we are told is threatened by the free circulation of news and views on the intertubes, and the decline of the ‘gatekeeping’ role of the journalistic profession so sadly lamented by Laurie Oakes.
Non-journo observers have been doubtful for a long time that this will work any more than the various other magic bullet ideas have (remember when smart phone apps were going to save newspapers’ business models?) … and there’s more confirmation of that from Brereton’s piece:
Andrew Birmingham, a former associate published at Fairfax’s paywalled Australian Financial Review has pointed out that the pricing plans for digital content — $2.95/week for full digital access, vs $7.95/week for digital + print delivery — send “a clear signal to a rational buyer to abandon print, if they are in a position to do so,” but that advertising revenue online, hardly worth the pixels it’s displayed on, is unlikely to increase in value behind the paywall: “It’s the same audience, just smaller — not exactly a recipe for rate increases. Savvy advertising buyers will have them on toast.”
No wonder then, that News’ staff will be made to pay.
The capitalist logic of the corporatised internet has long been clear. We, as the content producers, simultaneously form the market and provide the labour. If no one updated their Facebook status, Facebook would have no monetary value to be realised through online advertising. So the “prosumers”, by utilising the commercial intertubes, are both producer and consumer. There’s a certain irony in this logic having now extended itself to journalistic producers of content.
Unbelievable they are making their own staff pay for digital access!
Best bit is Rupes can then declare the project a success by using his staff numbers as instant audience numbers. “From day one our readers saw the value and signed up.”
Maybe the journos should club together and have a joint account that they all access for one low, low fee …
Then again, perhaps they should only cite those parts of articles that are public.
Still, it’s hard to feel sorry for journalists who work for the Murdochracy. These mouths-for-hire can twist in the wind for all I care. If they had any self-respect they’d get real jobs. They’d make a contribution to the world, rather than trashing it.
This means they have to read their own bullshit, for new stories?
But as a Media watch fan, its been amply demostrated more than a few of them do that anyway, don’t they?
Best bit is Rupes can then declare the project a success by using his staff numbers as instant audience numbers. “From day one our readers saw the value and signed up.”
It’s sounding like the start of an old Soviet joke, where all those apparatchiks competed for power and favour by ordering as many copies of “Collected speeches of Khrushchev” [*] as they can in their name. “I ordered one thousand copies.” “Well, I ordered two thousand copies.” The only difference is that they generally got theirs for free, and had the only keys to a convenient storeroom nearby.
[* I was going to say "Stalin", but that's practically a Godwin's law violation in this year of our lord 2011. ]
Would it be too lowbrow for this website to point out that Rupert Murdoch is just, well, a cock?
Someone has found away around it as the paywall looks to be flimsy.
http://www.austech.info/general-chat/64604-how-bypass-australians-new-paywall.html
I do like the idea of putting the rubbish behind a paywall.
I do wonder if I should sign up for the 3 month free trial – hopefully to help inflate numbers so the peddlers of the made up think it’s a good idea to keep their sand pit with the shit and piss from Bolt and Bolt wannabes.
There’s a certain irony in this logic having now extended itself to journalistic producers of content.
I suspect the News Ltd paywall will flop. ‘Follow the free’ was one of them ‘digital economy’ maxims. I think it was the only maxim that actually applied. Who would pay to abuse someone on Andrew Bolt’s blog when there are so many places you can do it for free?
Mercurious@6
Absolutely not. In fact your description of Rupert Murdoch is a little high brow in terms of positioning and probably gives him an anatomical description somewhat insulting to the anatomical part so described.
[There’s a certain irony in this logic having now extended itself to journalistic producers of content.]
Perhaps they are trying to raise the standard of their publication. Now they will be temped to use other sources, you know the ones that are more informed, and free.
They can claim it on tax.
Would the employer be up for fringe benefits tax if they gave free access?
@OBR:
If they expect their employees to be aware of their in-house output, then shouldn’t that be the least of their fiduciary obligations?
OBR – newspapers and magazines for business purposes (easy to justify for an employee of the newspaper) are explicitly exempt from FBT.
@12 – I was just saying – face plant on desk stupidity if you ask me.
@13 – thanks Chris.
Mercurious@6, Alice@9 my anatomical part is already disgusted at this comparison!
I like these paywalls, as there will finally be real evidence about how much people value their content. If we look at one of their competitors, I enjoy the way the Guardian embraces its readers not only through print, but through podcasts, video, data feeds, live events etc. That is value I might actually pay for (still playing with the iPad app but not entirely happy with it).
@15 — yes, yes, I know. But can you think of a better appellation?
Still, like Fran I find it hard to shed a tear for the Murdoch journos. Back in my advertising days, we were guided by the maxim “you’ve got to eat your own dog food” ie. if you sell it, you gotta be prepared to eat it. So, by God, if my client was Maxishields, you better believe I damn well wore Maxishields!
Besides, now I’m a teacher and I have to buy all my own stationery and consumables for lessons, since the taxpayer won’t spring for paperclips and erasers any longer. So cry me a frickin’ river, you hacks…..
“now I’m a teacher and I have to buy all my own stationery and consumables for lessons, since the taxpayer won’t spring for paperclips and erasers any longer.”
Schools do not provide these things anymore?
Since when?
@12,it’s distinguishing the “in-house output” from the “out-house input”,and the difference between a paywall and a bin-liner that is not clear in this case.Goodbye,News Ltd.
What this demonstrates is that even Murdoch’s marketing department suffers under the delusion that commercial journalists are in the business of informing or, at least, entertaining audience and readers, rather than in providing content to serve the actual business model of selling audience / readers to advertisers. And what kind of numbskull would pay for the privilege of being a product?
Or maybe it’s a clever psychological ploy, based on the notion that we value more that which we have to pay for. Like the superspecialsecrets of Scientology you only get to know after you’ve coughed up thousands of dollars, coz if they told you straight off you’d say “well, that’s ridiculous” but the cognitive dissonance associated with handing out your life savings to discover we’re all infested with alien souls once imprisoned in a giant volcano leads to the more nuanced response of “hmmm, that seems… plausible. Coz otherwise I’d be an idiot.” So by making people pay to read the guff of his spineless mouthpieces Rupert hopes to enhance their credibility (note that The Australian‘s function isn’t to generate profit in itself; it’s to enhance Rupe’s other business concerns through the peddling of influence) on the grounds of “there must be something to this, otherwise why would I spend good money to read it?”
Nicholas @ 17
Gold!
I love this site.
David MacRae, that’s a really ancient (in intertubes time) technique for bypassing firewalls – I’ve known about it since about 2003. It still works on lots of paywalls, and if the article is being discussed online somewhere it will work on most of the rest because some blogger somewhere will have posted a copy for Google to find. The only really effective way firms can prevent it is to make the wording of the link different to the wording of the actual article, which requires extra work by a subeditor.
No problem, then, as none of the newspapers seem to employ them any more …
@17, not for the last 10-15 years, my colleagues inform me.
Certainly not in the few years since I began manning the chalkboards.
Incidentally, why do you go by the name “Savvy”? Is it some sort of hipster intentional irony thing?
@23: Maybe it’s short for saveloy?