pay for news online

Following News International's decision that the Times and Sunday Times will charge for online access, the news industry is dividing into distinct camps over the question of whether journalism is worth paying to read.

Everyone inthe Centre should know my view: the idea that journalists can gather facts and hold power to account on a charitable basis is nonsensical. The industry was built on the principle of fair payment for quality reporting.Free access to news spells the end of professional newsgathering on which representative democracy depends.

Not my words but the words of Ian Dunt for politics.co.uk.

He talks about the Times Online's decision to implement a pay wall in June by charging £1 per day or £2 a week for their content. He also discusses the possibility of the Indie becoming free by the end of the year.

I like his view that journalism shouldn't go down the road of being fully funded by advertising and become free to consumers:

(Continued from Part 2).

Rupert Murdoch makes a false distinction between his “expensive and distinguished” reporters, whom he claims create original journalistic content and the evil online “aggregators” who merely “rewrite – at times without attribution” information from other sources.

It’s simply not true. Journalists report news or comment on it, they don’t create news. Today journalists, including Murdoch’s, spend more and more time online “aggregating” their stories.

(Continued from Part 1).

Rupert Murdoch is no fool and surely realises that the internet is rapidly destroying the traditional journalistic function of newspapers, radio and TV (i.e. to break news stories and tell us what’s going on).

But his speech to the Federal Trade Commission’s Workshop seemed reluctant to admit it.
This is what psychiatrists call “cognitive dissonance”. Cognitive dissonance is when you refuse to accept the impact of new information because it’s too overwhelming.

PART 1.
“Feisty”, “combative”, “shrewd”, “pugnacious”, “clever”.. All words I’d use to describe Rupert Murdoch the owner of News International, Sky TV, The Times, the Sun and more. But I’d never have described him as “desperate”.. until this week.

This week Murdoch launched an attack on online journalistic thieves who steal the stories of his “expensive and distinguished journalists” who he says invest “days, weeks or even months in their stories”.

Murdoch brands these parasitic vultures “aggregators”