I received an email from the Australian …

The Email ....

I’m not a great reader of The Australian, but there are a couple of things I like such as the Friday Aviation section. Some weeks back I noticed that to actually read original content, you needed to be a registered reader and log on to get access. OK, so I realised that this was a free trial and that sooner or later I would be asked to become a paid subscriber. After all, Murdoch has been pushing the paywall idea pretty hard over the last couple of years.

So now I have received my invitation, and I will decline. The problem is not that I think it unfair to get something for nothing which has a cost of production. It is more that I don’t find enough allure in the Australian to justify any investment. Plus, I think that News Limited are derelict in their responsibilities to move with the times (<–PUN). How much more obvious could it have been that people would sooner or later move from hardcopy to electronic? Why weren’t old media developing a new model earlier that capitalised on this shift rather than be threatened by it?

I will be interested to see how successful this will be (and I guess other media organisations will be watching closely). As for me, I am going to give my periodic outrage with Janet Albrechtson a miss for now …