Thursday, March 31, 2005

Please newspapers, charge for online content!

By Duncan Riley

"One of the most spectacular examples of why the old guard of the mainstream media just don’t get blogging, and to some extent, the entire internet, has been provided by Gordon Crovitz, president of electronic publishing at Dow Jones who has said that more U.S. publishers were likely will try to wean readers off free Internet versions of their newspapers by starting to charge online subscription fees.

"I say 'bring it on'.

Why, well it’s simple: it will drive more users to blogs.

"Crovitz tells Reuters that by offering free internet services 'Publishers in all mediums have tended to devalue their brands'. He also argues that charging for news that appears in print and then giving it away over the Web is 'an unsustainable business model'.

"In stating his bizarre beliefs, Crovitz seemingly ignores, or perhaps just does not understand that online advertising and e-commerce is now a multi-billion dollar part of the US and world economy and that online advertising is, even according to the same Reuters article, growing at a faster rate than print advertising. Perhaps his conclusions are being driven by the continued downward slide of print readership over the past 20 years, and he concludes that the only way to save print is to withdraw free content from the web? If this is the case then he ignores blogging at his own peril."
Source: The Blog Herald

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