I disagree as I believe we should have access to that kind of information for free. It's not right for a corporation to charge the public for something that should be free and accessed by anyone. Even if the BBC did charge for their news, there still would be people on blogs and social networks talking about it and informing others for free and there's not much Murdoch could say to that. He states that newspapers need to adapt yet ironically he's the one that needs to adapt to the new digital era and allow free access to information.
2) Was Rupert Murdoch right to put his news content (The Times, The Sun) behind a paywall?
No, right now all of these are failing, their circulation is in massive decline because there are newspapers and news websites that are available for free so why would anyone bother paying a fee for something that we can find for free on a different website which is a few clicks away.
3) Choose two comments from below the Times paywall article - one that argues in favour of the paywall and one that argues against. Copy a quote from each and explain which YOU agree with and why.
"Mike Darcey may be sceptical about advertising-funded websites, but MailOnline makes a small profit and is on course to make £45 million this year, thanks to its six million browsers a day. Conversely, Times Newspapers Ltd lost £28.7 million for the year to July 1, on turnover of £361 million.
That 20 jobs are to go from the Times shows the costbase still isn't quite right."
"To go from zero to 140,000 digital customers is a significant achievement and was made in the face of vocal opposition and a tempestuous political atmosphere for the company. The company now has lifetime value and renewable revenue attached to its digital customers where previously it had none."
I agree more with the first quote because even though The Times has 140k subscriptions and is growing quite slowly, it will get to a point where there'll only be people that do not want to pay for newspapers left, and these people will not subscribe to the times with the assumption that other reliable news sources such as the BBC stay free. Only middle class and higher class people are willing to pay for this, young people and lower classes are very unlikely to waste money on a subscription to a news corporation when they're very likely to have free access to other sources of information.
4) Why do you think the Evening Standard has bucked the trend and increased circulation and profit in the last two years?
I think it's because it realised in time that charging money for something that is accessible on the internet for free is clearly a plan for disaster, so them making their newspaper free and having advertising causes circulation to increase which in turn increases income from advertising. People who love reading newspapers are more likely to go for a good quality paper that's free rather than paying for a tacky tabloid and getting their information from there.
5) Is there any hope for the newspaper industry or will it eventually die out? Provide a detailed response to this question explaining and justifying your opinion.
I believe there is, just like how the internet will never be able to replace books neither will it be able to replace the traditional newspaper. Even though it will be a lot harder for newspapers to be more appealing than the internet, there are circumstances where a newspaper cannot be replaced. For example phones have no reception underground, therefore a newspaper is the only thing that's available for us to use for a source of news. There's definitely a spot for the newspaper however companies need to ensure that they come for free and that they're of high quality.
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