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News Corporation is on the frontlines of the battle to make people pay for online news, sticking a paywall around its Times, Sunday Times and News of the World publications, in an attempt to persuade people that theirs is journalism worth paying for. It’s a brave move — some would say a little suicidal.
But mega tycoon Rupert Murdoch has already made public his enthusiasm for tablets like the iPad, and it seems News Corp is well on the way to developing a publication built especially for tablets, according to Reuters.
Murdoch’s mob could then charge people for news sent directly to their tablet device. The digital publication will be titled The Daily and initially focused mainly on the US, but it could be a step towards a more lucrative future for online journalism.
“The tablet in general, it lends itself to a type of journalism that is really new. These really are becoming our flagship products, even though they’re very much in their infancy,” said old Rupe’s son James.
The chip off the old block has a point. If news publications can offer something on the Web that people feel is worth paying a small fee for, then who knows? Some are already in the habit of spending a huge amount of money on apps, so it’s not a stretch to see people paying regularly to use a tablet app for news, especially if the content is valuable and not available for free on the Web.
One of the things News Corp has been particularly sore about is the way Google aggregates news, accusing it of “stealing” content from its various news sources. Last year, News Corp took its content off Google’s search engine, amid plans to build its own news aggregator, Project Alesia.
This project was stalled due to a reported lack of interest from other newspapers, which, understandably, didn’t like the idea of being under the thumb of a Murdoch-owned news machine.
