Paying the paps
Rupert Murdoch's belief that people should pay to access News Corp's content, regardless of the medium, is well documented. In the US, the most high-profile manifestation of this is on WSJ.com, although you can usually get around its paywall by merely pasting the headline into Google, for now.
In the UK, via his subsidiary - News International - things are going a step further. The Times and Sunday Times already require a subscription to access their online stuff, and now it has been announced that the UK's best-selling Sunday paper - the News of the World - will start charging for access to www.notw.co.uk from October.
The site will be relaunched and will charge a pound for a day's access, or £1.99 for a four week subscription. There will also be an iPad app with a separate weekly charge of £1.19.
Rebekah Brooks, chief exec of News International and formerly editor of both the NotW and the Sun, said: "The News of the World website will be the third of our titles to launch a paid-for digital proposition in under four months. News International is leading the industry by delivering on its commitment to develop new ways of making the business of news an economically exciting proposition."
It's easy to assume that this is a precursor to the Currant Bun charging for its online content, and the rest of the newspaper world will continue to look on with extreme interest to see if it's possible to make a success of the online subscription model.
The NotW seems like an ideal title to start charging online because of its strength in investigative journalism. While much of the muck-racking and entrapment its reporters indulge in is cruel and tasteless, there can by no questioning the significance of scoops like the Pakistan cricket corruption story of a few weeks ago.
We don't see how a subscription model is viable if the title in question is producing little content that can't be accessed elsewhere on the net for free. But if the only way people can get access to unique and desirable content is to pay for it, many will.
