Murdoch says papers should charge on Web – Yahoo! News
Robert Murdoch believes that newspapers will have to start charging people for access to their online editions. That’s well and good, so long as the laws of demand and supply balance at a point where that works.
But so far, that isn’t working. In today’s web 2.0 world, news and quality commentary is available pretty much anywhere.
In the words of a famous folk singer from Hibbing, Minnesota, “The times they are a’changin.”
Still, in times of shifting paradigms, people cling to what they know, and that includes business models that have worked in the past.
I predict we will see the traditional publishers concede more and more of the “everyday” news to the “free” online model, and retreat into what they perceive as more and more specialty premium content.
At some point they will be very good at delivering a product that over-delivers the needs of their customers.
The “flip” described by Clayton Christensen in “The Innovator’s Dilemma” is already occurring in news delivery. This is just part of the story.