Behind Murdoch's pay wall

Filed in archive strategy on July 19, 2010

Go to The Times website and click on the stories and this is what you will get. Rupert Murdoch has put up his paywall. Will it work? So far, the signs are not looking that good.

The Guardian reports that it has wiped out two thirds of the newspaper's online readership. Now of course, Murdoch already introduced the pay wall for The Wall Street Journal but it's comparing apples to pears. WSJ readers are prepared to pay extra for the kind of specialised information you would find in that newspaper. A general news provider like The Times is a different story altogether. Those Times readers are unlikely to come back in any great number. Most will be lost forever.

Murdoch's pay wall could actually change more than newspapers, it could transform journalism. Murdoch's biographer Michael Wolff has some interesting insights in this piece.

Wolff writes: "My sources say that not only is nobody subscribing to the website, but subscribers to the paper itself-who have free access to the site-are not going beyond the registration page. It's an empty world. The wider implications of this emptiness are only just starting to become clear. A Murdoch and Fleet Street veteran with whom I've been corresponding about the paywall reported to me on his recent conversation with an A-list entertainment publicist: "What was really interesting to me was that this person volunteered a blinding realization. 'Why would I get any of my clients to talk to the Times or the Sunday Times if they are behind a paywall? Who can see it? I can't even share a link and they aren't on search. It's as though their writers don't exist anymore.'"

The problem is that readers now want greater connection with the stories. They want to participate and Murdoch's experiment is doing the exact opposite by alienating the readers from the writers and production process. Murdoch's pay wall experiment will kill the market. But then, it will cut costs and for Murdoch, that's really the end game. It has nothing to do with building a connection with readers.