Here’s a nice piece from Scooping The News that outlines clearly why they think charging for online news content is a bit of a non-starter. It covers the main bases: The supply of web content is now vast Charging hasn’t worked for anyone else yet. Newspapers don’t have compelling enough content to compete There will […]
Even casual readers of Freelance Unbound will know I’m pretty sceptical that the news media will find it easy to make a go of charging for online access to plain old news. But, you know, I could be wrong. A case in point is the Boston Globe, which has announced it will definitely, absolutely, start doing […]
There’s a good piece on PaidContent.org about Rupert Murdoch’s plans to charge for News International’s web content. Part of this will be to charge for access to The Sun and the News of the World online. How will he manage to do this? “Just make our content better and differentiate it from other people. And I […]
…as it seems that the Dutch, like everyone else in the developed world, can read a free copy of the Metro on their daily commute. The main difference? Fewer girls in bikinis…
Apparently, social networking sites prevent teenagers from developing rounded relationships, makes them treat friendship as a commodity and helps drive them to suicide. It seems that Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols is not a big fan of SMS and email, either. Friendship is not a commodity, friendship is something that is hard work and enduring […]
Back in 1940, people would stop outside the local newspaper office to read the headlines posted in the window. Well, there was no rolling TV news or internet… Image from the ever-browsable Shorpy (motto: “Always Something Interesting”).
As I’m drowning in web taxonomy at the moment, let’s take time out to enjoy last weekend’s English Heritage Festival of History. I joined 1,000 happy historic re-enacters in a field in Northamptonshire to watch a mini re-enactment of D-Day, be shown how a Sten gun worked and enjoy all the grisly details of Tudor-style […]
Some more evidence that digital creation and distribution of content will keep transforming the media – Getty Images has bought iStockphoto for a reported $50 million. The web and digital technology have transformed the business of photography. But what at first made picture researchers’ lives easier has now made it much more difficult to make […]
After wittering on for ever about why journalism is changing irrevocably, I’ve read two things that make the point much more clearly. One is a post by Scott Porad on Journalism 2.0 on the relationship between journalism and the I Can Has Cheezburger brand of user-generated humour. The other is a weighty essay by internet […]
I’ve just read Build the Wall – a gently impassioned, 4,250 word essay in the Columbia Journalism Review by David Simon – that declares the only future for journalism is if newspapers – all newspapers, everywhere (in the US anyway) – start charging for their online content. It’s billed as “One man’s bold blueprint”. It’s actually […]