FT predicts
Financial
Times editor, Lionel Barber, has predicted that "almost all" news
organisations will be charging for online content within a year. Barber
claims that building online platforms that could charge readers on an
article-by-article or subscription basis was one of the key challenges
facing news organisations.
Speaking to a Media Standards Trust event at the
British Academy, Barber confidently predicted that within the next 12
months, almost all news organisations will be charging for content. He is
not the only one who thinks that ordinary newspapers will have to start
charging. Rupert Murdoch said in May that he expected his News Corporation
newspaper websites to start charging for access within a year. The New York
Times, could begin charging for online news within the next three to four
weeks. The Financial Times website, FT.com, has more than 1.3 million
non-paying registered users worldwide, with another 110,000 paying
subscribers.
Barber said there was a difference between "crafted"
journalism and blogs "largely based on opinion rather than established fact
becoming increasingly influential. He said that bloggers have broken
important stories and will continue to do so. However they do not operate
according to the same standards as those who aspire to and practice crafted
journalism.
In America we guess that means long boring articles about the
journalist with the news buried in the 16th paragraph. Barber claimed
that bloggers were happy to report rumour as fact, arguing that readers or
fellow networkers can step in to correct those "facts" if they turn out to
be wrong.
At Fudzilla we have no plans to charge for news in the next year so
we think Barber might be a bit wrong on this one.