Newspapers - The effect of online technology

1) Do you agree with James Murdoch that the BBC should not be allowed to provide free news online? Why?

I do not agree with James Murdoch that the BBC should not be allowed to provide free news because they can do what they want with the way their organisation is setup. Also the BBC have thought of a fantastic marketing strategy in order to get more viewers onto their dedicated news website. This will then earn the BBC revenue from the advertising paying them to display ads.However I do feel that organisations such as the BBC are destroying the business for independent news companies to earn any money for charging for newspapers.


Was Rupert Murdoch right to put his news content (The Times, The Sun) behind a paywall?

Rupert Murdoch was right in putting in pace a paywall as the newspapers that are owned by Rupert Murdoch have already a brand reputation and loyal consumers of their newspapers, therefore would be willing to pay for a digitalised version at a cost. I also believe that because Rupert Murdoch's news company was the first in doing so more people paid a subscription for The Times and The Sun. However these paid subscriptions do not recover profits that the company needs to run as with the paywall in place, there are still people losing their jobs at The Time and The Sun. Having said that, it still makes more money than most websites that offer free news. One new organisation that can disagree with this statement is the Daily Mirror who earns most of its profits through its 6 millions users each day and equates to a revenue of £45 million a year.

COMMENTS -

Just a thought on that: Times gets £14.99 pm from 140,000 subscribers, making it considerably more than it made in online advertising. Are you suggesting that it would be better for a commercial organisation to make less money? Or in other words, what's the point of having a web presence if you make no money?

I agree with this comment as The Times do make a lot of profit and would not be beneficial for a news company to just rely on the revenue from advertising. I also think that making people pay for a subscription is reasonable according to people paying for content that took time and effort to edit and publish onto their app. 

It is so ridiculous if these mainstream newspapers believe that they can "force readership of fee-based news. One can get the same "news" for free almost anywhere on the internet. I'd take a hint from the alternative free weeklies that survive just off their local advertising. I don't think anyone would read them otherwise. These papers are full of paid advertising. The fee model will never work.

I disagree with this comment as The Times have actually made this pay wall system work as they know have 140,000 subscriptions that £14.99 a month. Another reason I disagree with is that content should be paid for so that a news company such as The Times and The Sun are helped with increased that are now faced due to less people buying their print newspapers.