Murdoch again threatens Gooogle at Press Club
According to WebProNews http://bit.ly/aEvVpV Rupert is again threatening to stop Google from STEALING NEWS. It is so unfair…but no one is stopping Rupert from hiring boy and girl scouts to deliver his paper-based news copy. That’s the model he loves dearly. Pay to deliver the paper right to the consumers door. The Washington Post, ironically costs per day almost the same as a stamp for a first class letter.
SO, Mr. Murdoch, you have been giving away news all along. Why are you complaining now. Delivery to your consumers can be worldwide and with nearly zero incremental cost…no stamp…just have some IP pipe. Your audience is expanded infinitely. Nice to happen in any business model. Now all you have to do is figure out how to get people to come to your web sites.
Gee…how much would you pay to send consumers to your web site? The same as you do to have it delivered to their door? (less of course the miniscule IP pipe cost). What if some company with a goofy name like Yahoo or Google came to you and said I will deliver your news (not your stupid papers and the trees they kill) to consumers who actually want and are asking for news…how much would you pay?
Now that Google and Yahoo arguably are free…why are you bitching?
When Samuel B. Morse invented the telegraph and news started to travel via telegraph. In May 1845, James Gordon Bennet, editor of the New York Herald, wrote that many newspapers would be put out of business by this new communications technology. Curiously he got the 21st century phrase backwards when he said: “The scissors-and-paste journalism of the country will be annihilated.” He did say that if papers provided commentary and analysis, they would survive!
As the Reuters story goes…it used the backbone of the telegraph network to get started and become overnight a new dominant force in news. Rupert should give up on the old business models and instead of burying his news in some dark hole that no one will ever find or read…he needs to do what every other business has had to do since the beginning of time when new technology comes along…use the Internet technology (of which search is now an integral part of) in a better way than everyone else or face extinction.
(The Economist of December 19, 2009 is the source of my historical facts.)
