Bad news for wingnuts

Can anybody else spot the flaw in - presumably not filthy rich enough already - international press baron Rupert Murdoch’s latest wheeze?

Rupert Murdoch says he will remove stories from Google’s search index as a way to encourage people to pay for content online.

In an interview with Sky News Australia, the mogul said that newspapers in his media empire – including the Sun, the Times and the Wall Street Journal – would consider blocking Google entirely once they had enacted plans to charge people for reading their stories on the web.

In recent months, Murdoch [and] his lieutenants have stepped up their war of words with Google, accusing it of “kleptomania” and acting as a “parasite” for including News Corp content in its Google News pages. But asked why News Corp executives had not chosen to simply remove their websites entirely from Google’s search indexes – a simple technical operation – Murdoch said just such a move was on the cards.

“I think we will, but that’s when we start charging,” he said. “We have it already with the Wall Street Journal. We have a wall, but it’s not right to the ceiling. You can get, usually, the first paragraph from any story - but if you’re not a paying subscriber to WSJ.com all you get is a paragraph and a subscription form.”

Why, you’d almost imagine that his prime motivation was making money, rather than being the kingmaker who anoints prime ministers and fancies he can make or break a presidency.

Personally, I’d gladly pay a subscription to have Murdoch’s rags excised from the intertubes entirely if not for the fact that I sometimes feel driven to see what septicemic carbunkle masquerading as a news service spouted the latest gout of online poison.

So the new game in town’s going to be the privatization of crap. It had to come eventually.

Now what will it take to persuade the Barclay brothers’ Telegraph empire that this is the way to go?

Posted by YAFB on 11/09/09 at 10:01 AM • Permalink

Categories: Politics • Nutters • Our Stupid Media • Skull Hampers •

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I can almost wrap my head around charging for the WSJ, because there actually is some valuable content there (other than the editorial section). But charging for the other shit? Stupid move.

Comment by Tom65 on 11/09/09 at 11:21 AM

So the world’s single biggest purveyor of conservative lies and dogma wishes to pull his content from the world’s largest search engine, and then try to make the wingnuts pay for it?

There is no stupider idea that I have ever heard of, and could fully support.

Maybe it can be said that the GOP is the (Murdoch-owned) MySpace of political parties?

Comment by Pumalicious! on 11/09/09 at 12:15 PM

I think the NYT tried a similar experiment on a smaller scale awhile back—putting their crack (on many levels, in some cases) columnist team behind a subscription wall. It didn’t work out too well. They had to come crawling back begging us to read MoDo for free. Finding ways to monetize media content is a serious undertaking, but this ain’t the answer…

Comment by Betty Cracker on 11/09/09 at 12:28 PM

I think the NYT tried a similar experiment on a smaller scale awhile back—putting their crack (on many levels, in some cases) columnist team behind a subscription wall. It didn’t work out too well. They had to come crawling back begging us to read MoDo for free. Finding ways to monetize media content is a serious undertaking, but this ain’t the answer…

Comment by Betty Cracker on 11/09/09 at 10:28 AM

They did, it didn’t and I never went back except for following the occasional link I follow posted by someone else. I railed against the pay-to-read firewall for a while then realized that I never really liked MoDo anyhoo.

We can only really hope that Murdoch makes FoxNews pay-per-view.

Comment by gimmeabreak on 11/09/09 at 12:34 PM

...or is it the opening step in the creation of a new, alternative, parallel Internets of World-Wide American Freedoms?

The Fox World Web, anyone?

For a modest monthly subscription, you can surf a “fair and balanced” internet with good wholesome and God-fearing American answers to the world’s questions.

Send each other “free-mail!”

Connect with friends on Backstabbing Two-Facebook.

Update the real American world on your life real-time on Twit, the Fox World Web’s even shorter message service. Messages are limited to 15 characters, because what else could you have to say to your friends but AMERICA FTW!!1!

Comment by Allan on 11/09/09 at 12:35 PM

Allan FTW!!1!

That’s shorter. And sweeter.

What other tripe can we persuade them to charge for?

I’m thinking it’s about time Rush went to satellite radio, so he can be underwritten by better advertisers than SleepMagic “dial your hardness!” mattresses.

Comment by Mrs. Polly on 11/09/09 at 12:49 PM

This suggests an interesting subscription model. Could we get enough people who hate Fox et al enough to kick in a few bucks to pay them to do nothing?

Comment by Loneoak on 11/09/09 at 02:37 PM

Does this thing have a separate “Predictions” file? Allan’s comment should go in there so he can more easily collect his $5,000 Soros Bucks when it comes true.

Come on, you know this is how it will go down.

Comment by Hunger Tallest Palin on 11/09/09 at 07:51 PM

I don’t know how in larger scale his scheme might produce any tangible result but, for now, WSJ has surpassed the USA Today merely because of its 300,000 “online” subscribers; without it, they would have still been behind in print. However, his other publications do not produce much of content that people won’t be able to unearth through other online sources. I really want somebody to try this plan to see what the outcome would look like. Obviously he’ll fetch a larger pool of subscriptions but in the longer haul, the popularity of publications would surely plummet with the Internet users.