Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul

So Murdoch has gone ahead with his plans to charge for access to The Times website and it will go behind a paywall in June.

Rates have been divulged: £1 per day or £2 per week.

This seems rather simplistic to me.

I strongly believe that there is a revenue model in what newspapers provide and it can be better monetised. Obviously they face a collapse in traffic and search engine indexing but may be able to monetise the existing Times readership.

However it is my opinion people prefer to read comment in a newspaper when they have more time, most people consume bite size news during the day through lack of time and that you can get anywhere.

If all the newspapers pulled together it could work.

However I think it would work far more effectively as a micropayment system whereby money is deposited and small amounts are deducted based on usage. So you can read the first say 150 words of an article and pay to read the rest depending on article word count. This might be a fee in pence, say 2p-20p.

What would really make this work is if there was a common payment system for ALL NEWSPAPERS. The newspapers can decide the amounts that are deducted for each article. This could take the form of a Virtual Currency that people buy and can top up from one partnered place. However the logistics of getting all the newspapers to agree would probably never make this fly.

I am watching this with interest, kudos to Murdoch for being the first to have the balls to go and implement this at least it will answer one question that publishers have been thinking about for years.