Where is the money for the media on the Internet?

Following the news of the decision of the publishers of the New York Times newspaper to open its archive for all comers, which, despite its expectation, agitated the Internet public, the continuation of the story fell on the heads of analysts. According to Reuters, on Tuesday the head of the media giant News Corp. Rupert Murdoch (Rupert Murdoch) shared with the audience of the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference his idea of ​​“releasing the freedom” and the electronic version of the Wall Street Journal business newspaper along with all its old materials. WSJ is published by Dow Jones News Corp. recently acquired for $ 5.6 billion

Let me remind you that until recently, only two of these major American newspapers restricted access to their materials via the Internet. Attempts by other publications, such as the Los Angeles Times, also to introduce a paid subscription system, ended with a sharp drop in attendance at their Internet resources. However, the similarities between the NYT and the WSJ practically end at the very fact of success in implementing such a system. The reasons for this success are different, and so different that a calm reaction to the news about the release of the archives of the NYT contrasts vividly with the reaction to the words of Murdoch regarding the WSJ. Market analysts, and what is most unpleasant, and the shareholders of News Corp. perceived the prospects of such a step with great doubt, and certainly not with approval. What is the matter?

For comments, I turned to the publisher of the newspaper Vedomosti , which, as you know, is published jointly with the WSJ and the London Financial Times and is aimed at the same audience. My questions were answered by the marketing director Yulia Selyukova.

Does your publication see its online version as a significant source of income?
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The Internet version, of course, is a serious source of income for Vedomosti, but most of it is earned from the sale of advertising, not the archive.

Does the management of your publication consider the possibility in the near future to open free free access to their materials through the site vedomosti.ru?

In August, the site and archive for the last month were fully open to all users. On full free access, we have not yet thought, because There is a steady demand for a paid service. Now we have free access to the archive for students, which we open at the request of the university or faculty.

How much increase in the number of visitors to the site do you expect in case of opening the archive?

We do not expect a big increase - our electronic archive and now people who use it for work use: investment and banking analysts, employees of large companies, financial consultants, specialists of press services. “Vedomosti” is a professional business information, which is required precisely in its niche.

Most of the comments on Murdoch’s idea came out in a similar vein: do not expect free access to niche articles for professionals, in-depth analytics by Journal columnists and, importantly, the disappearance of any hint of the elite status of the publication, which you read thus you emphasize your status, - none of this is able to benefit the site, which, on a paid subscription, brought the owners $ 65 million a year. The experts immediately made predictions on which such a move by Murdoch would bring the newspaper losses in the amount of $ 50 to $ 100 million. And his assurances that “if the site is good, you will get much more,” have not yet acted on the shareholders.

Thus, moving in the general direction to advertising, as the main and practically the only source of income, even for branded media on the Internet, the market still does not want to abandon the reference points migrated to the Network from traditional media. If everyone can read the Journal, will the world be better, will it become smarter? Hardly, because not everyone will read the Journal.

From the point of view of income, if it is impossible to leave everything as it is, the mixed scheme seems to be more reasonable, according to which, with universal free access to archives stuffed with advertising, you can only read the necessary information, but based on the same subscription. However, the image of the publication suffers here. And the more than once to choose between quality and price, whether the reader will not go where there is no such choice?

With all the seeming abstraction of this topic from the realities of most Internet publications, trying to somehow convert their content into income, there is one important point in it. If Journal and Times give away their articles for free, then who dares to ask for money for access to their articles? The outcome of this story can unambiguously determine the mode by which for us, the readers, there will no longer be any alternatives other than pages that are dazzling with advertising blocks. And the lack of alternatives brought up on European values ​​can hardly be approved.