Twenty-three years on from Wapping, Rupert Murdoch is planning a new media revolution – only this time the sides aren’t quite so clear cut.
The Dirty Digger has announced that his companies are to begin charging for access to their websites. The Sunday Times online will trial the new policy.
Among the technophiles, his move is causing consternation. It proves he doesn’t understand the internet, they cry. After all, content is free. But there are many others – media companies, of course, but journalists, too, – who hope he succeeds in creating the basis of a new model.
Producing quality content on any platform is not cheap. And it is essential to invest in good journalism, new music and creative drama and comedy. If there is investment, then there needs to be a certain return in order to ensure that it is possible to continue investing in the future. Creators need to be paid. And with the traditional business model of many media companies in real trouble – Murdoch’s empire lost £2 billion last year – someone has to take a brave step.
The man with the deep pockets is the one who is going to fire the first shot in what will inevitably become a dirty war. Some rival media companies see the opportunity to secure a greater market share of the online audience at Murdoch’s expense. And they may succeed – but will they be making any revenue?
The online purists believe you can never get away with charging for what is free elsewhere and that there is a whole generation who have grown up believing online means free. With the BBC offering such a comprehensive online presence, they argue only very specialist or exclusive information could be charged for. They are right to a certain extent and at the outset there will be huge resistance to charges. But there was over watching football and Sky seems to have got the business of football right, even if it has have stripped it of so much of its passion and dictated the timings of games. It has been good for Sky, if not for all football fans. Sky was able to succeed because it was offering something no one else delivered: live football.
And isn’t it about time we took on the “content is free” brigade? Content is not free. It costs money to produce and it is the creators who so often end up losing out in the free-for-all world of online media. In newspapers, there was always a balance between the proportion of revenue derived from advertising and the proportion from the cover price. At present, there is no cover price online.
We in the National Union of Journalists have always argued that quality content sells and therefore you need to compete, not on the basis of the lowest cost, but the highest quality.
To an extent, that’s what Murdoch is also saying now. We can argue until we are blue in the face about what quality content is, but there’s no doubting Murdoch’s papers deliver sporting and celebrity scoops. We might not like all of it, but they do what they do brilliantly. So can he prove the case for charging?
Without an industry-wide agreement, I’m sceptical that he can. But Murdoch has proved me wrong before. Further, despite my antipathy towards everything he stands for, I hope he can, because it would set a model for the future that can ensure there are new revenue streams for online media.
I certainly don’t think all online media should charge – that would destroy so much of what is good about the creativity and the slightly anarchic spirit of much of the new and niche publishing. Also, to be frank, some of it is so poor that it could never get away with charging. But just as we are looking at new forms of ownership and funding for all media, so we must be prepared to look closely at the coming revolution.
Murdoch has been vague on detail. On closer inspection, it may only prove to be a counter-revolution. And, if it is simply a prelude to renewed attacks on the BBC’s online presence, it will do nothing to serve journalism. Has Murdoch already done a deal with the Tories to ensure that happens or is this a flicker of hope for beleaguered media workers? All will be revealed over the coming months.
Jeremy Dear is general secretary of the National Union of Journalists
