These past few months I've been reading a lot of online chatter about how mainstream media needs to recoup the costs of providing news, make a profit for shareholders and stop advertising revenue haemorrhaging.
I've also been reading items on the expense associated with researching in-depth news stories and how unfair it is that bloggers apparently get a free ride on the backs of MSM journalists.
Now I can't answer for every other blogger or online news website visitor, but I think that Rupert Murdoch and other print media owners are allowing their financial problems to overly colour commercial responses to emerging trends in how ordinary people access/receive their daily news.
I suspect that part of the reason that traditional media owners are so blinkered is that their own editors and journalists are not being entirely honest with them about how they come by some of the facts which end up in published articles (and it's not just that some journos surf the blogs looking for information or ideas for a story).
The reality is that not all bloggers or online news readers simply take from the MSM without giving back.
Whenever I come across something of significant political, environmental or social interest and, after I have gathered together a parcel of research on same, I often pass it on to journalists at no cost and for no glory.
I do this because I feel the material is important and traditional media still has a readership reach that I, as a small blogger among many millions world-wide, cannot hope to emulate.
It is not unknown for my research to form the body of a Page One or Page Three article in local and sometimes even national newspapers.
I rather suspect that I am not unusual in doing this and, I also expect that Australian bloggers like myself will no longer feel inclined to pass on what has often been many hours of research (including emails/long distance phone calls to confirm documents) if the likes of News Ltd or Fairfax decide that MSM news will no longer be free to view online.
So Mr. Murdoch, be prepared for the possibility of an inexplicable spike in costs associated with news gathering and 'scoops' if you go ahead with user-pays news online. Bloggers may just decide that giving you something for nothing is no longer a good idea.
At least Chris Ahearn, President, Media at Thomson Reuters realises that matters are not as black and white as Murdoch suggests when he writes Why I believe in the link economy.
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