How Murdoch's Paywalls Meant Some News It Broke Went Unnoticed & Uncredited

from the whoops dept

The saga of how ridiculously disappointing News Corps.' paywalls have been continues. We've already seen that the number of subscribers looks dismal, advertisers are running away and even publicists are avoiding pitching The Times stories, because it's just not worth it, considering the diminished audience. Now, as a bunch of you sent in, it's gotten so bad that when The Times actually breaks a story, almost no one notices -- and the eventual "credit" for breaking the story goes elsewhere.

Apparently, The Times first had a particular political insider story concerning UK politics -- but the story got almost no attention until nine days later when a blog called Labour Uncut re-"broke" the story and got all the credit for it. That seems only likely to drive tipsters to make sure to avoid the Murdoch paywalled papers even more.
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Filed Under: journalism, paywalls
Companies: news corp


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  • icon
    kyle clements (profile), 15 Nov 2010 @ 2:28pm

    bloging

    I never thought about that.

    For a blogger, paywalls could be VERY beneficial. if no one else is reading the stories, they can subscribe to a few sources, copy/paste, reword a few things, and publish important stories that no one else has seen, and they get to take all the credit, and earn a few pennies from adsense while they're at it.

    Brilliant!

    The only loser is the owner of the pay-walled site!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      sehlat (profile), 15 Nov 2010 @ 2:47pm

      Re: bloging

      Aha! The Judith Griggs approach to blogging?

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      abc gum, 16 Nov 2010 @ 4:50am

      Re: bloging

      Or possibly, a paywalled site steals a story from a blogger which is then stolen by a blogger which is ...

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Richard (profile), 16 Nov 2010 @ 6:35pm

      Re: bloging

      Maybe this is actually the careful planning of the newspapers, who also support hot news laws. Sure, the paywall may not bring in much cash, but if another publication with deeper pockets then a random blogger was to run with the story as "new" they could be open to copyright lawsuits :D

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Jake, 15 Nov 2010 @ 2:47pm

    You could perhaps have chosen a better example with which to criticise the paywall. Some nonentity who had a few minor jobs in the previous administration being offered an admin post in the party is hardly front-page material.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      ChurchHatesTucker (profile), 15 Nov 2010 @ 3:11pm

      Re:

      Rather the point. There is no front page at The Times web site.

      I have to wonder if the dead tree version is now sold in a plain paper wrapper, to prevent 'theft' of their stories from passers by.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      The Groove Tiger (profile), 15 Nov 2010 @ 5:17pm

      Re:

      The front-page of The Times is too full of paywall to have room for any front-page material.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Blatant Coward (profile), 15 Nov 2010 @ 2:48pm

    Heh.

    I like how one of the commenter's on the blog says:

    "Paul Staines says:
    November 12, 2010 at 3:12 pm

    As seen in the Times a couple of weeks ago."

    I would like to ask this guy "By who?" but I don't know enough about prime ministers to defeat their spam thing.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    ervserver (profile), 15 Nov 2010 @ 3:46pm

    Many suffer because of Murdoch

    Because of Murdoch and his stupid ideas many suffer in their careers

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    qyiet (profile), 15 Nov 2010 @ 3:54pm

    It's a PR Dream

    If you have something you have to announce, but you want to miss the news cycle, instead of throwing it to the press at 5pm on a friday, just drop it to the Times.

    By the time anyone notices it'll be old news.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Yaniel (profile), 15 Nov 2010 @ 4:25pm

    This story makes me happy. Anything that might lead to the downfall of Murdoch is OK with me.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    vastrightwing, 15 Nov 2010 @ 4:58pm

    snicker

    LOL

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    out_of_the_blue, 15 Nov 2010 @ 5:21pm

    Maybe no TImes readers cared.

    Comments such as "make Iraq a glass parking lot" pass without notice on "right wing", neo-con, RINO sites. It's only when opposition gets hold of it that it's seized on and denounced.

    [Sometimes your lousy grammar *cannot* be overlooked:
    You've a habit of duplicating words in the same sentence.
    "The continuing saga of how ridiculously disappointing News Corps.' paywalls have been continued."
    It doesn't scan or parse. Might if last word was "continues" but still unnecessarily duplicates words.]

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 15 Nov 2010 @ 6:46pm

      Re: Maybe no TImes readers cared.

      Might if last word was "continues" but still unnecessarily duplicates words. [sic]

      It might if the last word was "continues", but it still unnecessarily duplicates words.

      There, I corrected your bad grammar.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    timhj, 15 Nov 2010 @ 7:58pm

    Paying subscribers get stories 9 days before anyone else?

    Your story is also a good ad for why 'news inclined' people would benefit from subscribing to the times. ;)

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 15 Nov 2010 @ 11:54pm

      Re: Paying subscribers get stories 9 days before anyone else?

      But is a Murdoch publication and we all know they tend to just make crap up.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Idobek (profile), 16 Nov 2010 @ 5:11am

    A sign of The Times

    I now find out what is in the Times by reading the Telegraph's "The Times is reporting..." stories in the blogs section.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Gwiz, 16 Nov 2010 @ 7:20am

    I foresee this "experiment" coming to end eventually with a Murdoch or two claiming "The paywalls were a huge success - we just decided to end them"

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    TtfnJohn (profile), 16 Nov 2010 @ 11:19am

    It's Not News When....

    No one can see it.

    Even Murdoch must understand that. Or you'd think he would.

    Then again, he's the man who almost singlehandedly destroyed Australian journalism by buying up everything in sight before he moved on the Europe and now the United States to do the same thing there.

    While it's sad to see the decline and impending fall of one of the "newspapers of record" in the English speaking world perhaps it will convince it's namesake in New York to put the brakes on it's plans to hide behind a paywall. Then again, maybe not.

    The Wall Street Journal gets away with it, sort of, because it has pretty much got a captive audience who aren't convinced they can get the "inside dirt" on the financial industry anywhere else.

    Come to think of it, how many stories do you see since THAT paywall went up that credit the WSJ for anything?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    adnan, 16 Nov 2010 @ 11:42pm

    all

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    David, 23 Nov 2010 @ 7:10am

    story

    Thanks for the plug. Unfortunately this wasn't some clever Machiavellian scheme to steal content - we, like most other people by the sounds of it don't subscribe to the Times so have no access.

    We missed the story like all the other political press (although it now appears the Times didn't help themselves by spiking the story with a throw away line rather than going big on the story). A week or so later we heard about it from sources and reported it.

    So we were late to the party with everyone else, and still got the credit for breaking the story.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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