Media companies have had a hard time getting consumers to pay for content online, but Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. is attempting to leverage its worldwide news-gathering operation to get them to do just that.
In one of the most ambitious online undertakings by a media outfit, News Corp. has assembled a team of executives to devise a system to charge for content on the Web.
Fanned out across New York, London and Sydney, the global team includes Murdoch himself, his son, James, longtime News Corp. executive and Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton and Jonathan Miller, the former AOL boss who now oversees all of News Corp.’s digital operations.
The team is said to be looking at creating a user-friendly device akin to Amazon’s Kindle to deliver content from such News Corp. newspapers as The Wall Street Journal, The Times of London and The New York Post, as well as content from the company’s television and movie units.
The move comes against the backdrop of a newspaper climate ravaged by reader and advertiser flight to the Web.
In the last year, newspapers in Seattle and Denver have either shut down or moved entirely to the Web, while the owners of papers in Boston and San Francisco have threatened to cease publishing.
Others, like the Star Tribune in Minneapolis and the Tribune Co., owners of the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, have been forced to file for bankruptcy.
For Murdoch, the move is also a clear break from the notion that content, particularly news content, can be offered online for free and monetized solely through advertising.
Upon acquiring the Journal two years ago, Murdoch contemplated making that paper’s Web site free. He reversed his position after realizing that once he eliminated the revenue stream generated by online subscriptions to the Journal, he’d never be able to get it back.