Europasearch.com Tech Debate
Guardian’s Rusbridger Urges Against Industry-Wide Paywalls
It’s not the Berlin Wall and Rupert Murdoch heads News Corp (NYSE: NWS). not the USSR, but Alan Rusbridger’s speech on the future of journalism Monday evokes Ronald Reagan’s exhortation “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” The Guardian editor-in-chief used the 2010 Hugh Cudlipp Lecture to deliver a counterpoint to Murdoch’s plans to put News Corp.‘s online news properties behind some kind of paywall—and his repeat urgings that the rest of the news industry follow suit. Rusbridger reminded listeners that the Murdoch who now embraces paywalls is the same “brave, radical proprietor” who favored “reach before revenue” when he “ruthlessly” undersold his papers or has backed free models.
Rusbridger has made no secret of his belief that open access equals reach equals influence—as he illustrated during the talk, Guardian has gone from selling only 650 copies outside the UK in 1956 to one of the top English-speaking news sites globally— so he isn’t breaking major ground. And he isn’t completely arguing against paywalls as much as the notion that they can work across the industry. (Conversely, some argue that online news paywalls can only work if everyone does it.) But, using Arthur Sulzberger, Jr.‘s admission that charging for frequent access to NYTimes.com is a “bet,” Rusbridger suggests both men are playing a “hunch.”
He adds: “To put it another way, it may be right for the Times of London and New York, but not for everyone. It may be right at some point for everybody in the future, but not yet. There is probably general agreement that we may all want to charge for specialist, highly-targeted, hard-to-replicate content. It’s the ‘universal’ bit that is uncertain.” Rusbridger draws a different line for mobile. The Guardian already has one of the top paid iPhone news apps, selling 70,000 subscriptions at £2.39 the first month. “It’s one clue to the future, not an epiphany.”
Rusbridger’s multi-layered message is best read intact and I urge anyone who is interested in the subject to do just that. (You can also watch a video interview with Rusbridger. Oddly for all the talk of an open web, embedding isn’t allowed.) Some excerpts:
—“If you erect a universal pay wall around your content then it follows you are turning away from a world of openly shared content. Again, there may be sound business reasons for doing this, but editorially it is about the most fundamental statement anyone could make about how newspapers see themselves in relation to the newly-shaped world.”
—“There is an irreversible trend in society today which rather wonderfully continues what we as an industry started – here, in newspapers, in the UK. It’s not a “digital trend” – that’s just shorthand. It’s a trend about how people are expressing themselves, about how societies will choose to organise themselves, about a new democracy of ideas and information, about changing notions of authority, about the releasing of individual creativity, about an ability to hear previously unheard voices; about respecting, including and harnessing the views of others. About resisting the people who want to close down free speech.
As Scott said 90 years ago: “What a chance for the newspaper!” If we turn our back on all this and at the same time conclude that there is nothing to learn from it because what ‘they’ do is different – ‘we are journalists, they aren’t: we do journalism; they don’t’ – then, never mind business models, we will be sleep walking into oblivion.”
Staci D. Kramer
twitter @sdkstl
Disclosure: Our publisher ContentNext is a wholly owned subsidiary of Guardian News & Media.
Showing posts with label Guardian news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guardian news. Show all posts
06/03/2009
Gasta News: Digital Britain
Digital Britain: Online BBC Rival ‘A Priority’; Govt ‘Must Act On Aggregators’
So keen are media watchers to hear the likely recommendations of Lord Stephen Carter‘s upcoming Digital Britain report, an overspill room was needed at the Royal College of Medicine this morning to house those gathered to hear him speak. But the communications, technology and broadcasting minister was giving precious few hints at the Westminster e-Forum...
Carter did say safeguarding independent online and digital news sources that rival the BBC is “an absolute priority”, “something future generations will thank us for”. He said a “strong, fully-funded, ambitious BBC, acting as an enabler for the rest of the sector” is in everyone’s interests, alongside a “strong (commercial) alternative”. But he spoke only generally, dodging detail and saving the real headlines for the publication proper later this month.
—Broadband for all: “In our fixed networks, I think we are reaching the stage where we require an acceptable minimum level of service for everyone.” Some reports have suggested Carter will ask telcos to guarantee internet access as a universal service obligation. BT (NYSE: BT), for its part, has requested government investment to offset its own spending on next-gen infrastructure.
—Carter’s thinking: Carter said UK ad spend will fall by six to eight percent this year. Another big influence - the falling share price and market cap of big media players like BT, BSkyB (NYSE: BSY) and ITV (LSE: ITV), which has seen its share price drop 70 percent in recent years. “These are salutary statistics, not least because they give you some idea of the ability of private markets to provide continued investment,” he says.
—BBC/Google (NSDQ: GOOG) effect: Guardian Media Group CEO Carolyn McCall told the forum BBC Worldwide has a distorting effect on the UK media market because it has exclusive access to BBC content. Though she was careful not to use the “G” word, her target was clear when she highlighted the concern of many in the newspaper business regarding search engines: “They don’t invest anything in UK content at a time when content producers are finding it very difficult. The government really needs to think seriously about the effects of aggregators.”
—Public service TV: Carter criticised commercial public broadcasters - whose sustainability is being reviewed by Ofcom - for failing to propose their own funding ideas: “Given that this is supposed to be one of our most creative sectors, it is one of the most conservative sectors when it comes to looking for future solutions”.
Carter’s review for the DCMS and BERR will urge legislative and regulatory changes to safeguard broadband access, salvage DAB, protect kids online and more, and could also result in regulatory framework changes at Ofcom, which is itself conducting a review of public service TV funding.
So keen are media watchers to hear the likely recommendations of Lord Stephen Carter‘s upcoming Digital Britain report, an overspill room was needed at the Royal College of Medicine this morning to house those gathered to hear him speak. But the communications, technology and broadcasting minister was giving precious few hints at the Westminster e-Forum...
Carter did say safeguarding independent online and digital news sources that rival the BBC is “an absolute priority”, “something future generations will thank us for”. He said a “strong, fully-funded, ambitious BBC, acting as an enabler for the rest of the sector” is in everyone’s interests, alongside a “strong (commercial) alternative”. But he spoke only generally, dodging detail and saving the real headlines for the publication proper later this month.
—Broadband for all: “In our fixed networks, I think we are reaching the stage where we require an acceptable minimum level of service for everyone.” Some reports have suggested Carter will ask telcos to guarantee internet access as a universal service obligation. BT (NYSE: BT), for its part, has requested government investment to offset its own spending on next-gen infrastructure.
—Carter’s thinking: Carter said UK ad spend will fall by six to eight percent this year. Another big influence - the falling share price and market cap of big media players like BT, BSkyB (NYSE: BSY) and ITV (LSE: ITV), which has seen its share price drop 70 percent in recent years. “These are salutary statistics, not least because they give you some idea of the ability of private markets to provide continued investment,” he says.
—BBC/Google (NSDQ: GOOG) effect: Guardian Media Group CEO Carolyn McCall told the forum BBC Worldwide has a distorting effect on the UK media market because it has exclusive access to BBC content. Though she was careful not to use the “G” word, her target was clear when she highlighted the concern of many in the newspaper business regarding search engines: “They don’t invest anything in UK content at a time when content producers are finding it very difficult. The government really needs to think seriously about the effects of aggregators.”
—Public service TV: Carter criticised commercial public broadcasters - whose sustainability is being reviewed by Ofcom - for failing to propose their own funding ideas: “Given that this is supposed to be one of our most creative sectors, it is one of the most conservative sectors when it comes to looking for future solutions”.
Carter’s review for the DCMS and BERR will urge legislative and regulatory changes to safeguard broadband access, salvage DAB, protect kids online and more, and could also result in regulatory framework changes at Ofcom, which is itself conducting a review of public service TV funding.
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