Paywalls will help fund campaigning journalism
In this guest post, News Limited’s group editorial director Campbell Reid responds to the views of ninemsn’s Hal Crawford that the company’s push into metered paywalls is about data rather than dollars.
Hal Crawford is both right and wrong in his article which argued that our digital subscription plans are all about the data.
Sure, the data you get from having people register and then subscribe, as our metered model does, is incredibly valuable. On that point, I’m not sure I understand Hal’s argument it’s not a decent strategy to have data about your consumers if everyone else has data on theirs as well.
Although his numbers are a bit off, Hal is on the right track when he says the metered model captures your most loyal readers. That’s the whole point of it – you want your loyal consumers to subscribe but not scare off your more casual readers who are still valuable.
However, Hal is wrong when he says that subscription revenue is not going to help. The Australian is not alone in saying that it is earning more money under the new dual-income (subscription plus advertising) model than the old advertising only model. In terms of the significance of the revenue, this model is still in its infancy – we haven’t even scratched the surface of what might be possible.
But in explaining why ninemsn doesn’t need to charge, Hal is missing the crucial point that The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun and our other publications have a very different business model to ninemsn’s.
Compared to our newsrooms Hal runs a tiny operation. I’m unsure precisely how many journalists ninemsn has, but it’s a fraction of what The Tele or Herald Sun and our national news network has.
And that’s as it should be, because ninemsn creates a fraction of the journalism our papers do. It doesn’t need a big newsroom because it doesn’t publish the same breadth and depth of content, the opinion or analysis. It takes a lot of content from the newsroom of its parent company Nine, and much of its content is rehashed from other sites. It doesn’t break many, if any, stories.
ninemsn doesn’t campaign on behalf of its readers and help save them money like The Daily Telegraph’s People Power initiative. The mass movement saved more than 100,000 signatories up to $400 a year, including households that did not change power providers, thanks to the encouragement of The Tele.
ninemsn also doesn’t uncover injustice and fight for the rights of its readers as the Herald Sun did with the Fiskville case. For those who don’t know the story, for decades fire fighters had been exposed to cancer-causing chemicals at a training college at Fiskville, west of Melbourne. Without the Herald Sun’s dedication the scandal linked to the deaths of at least 20 people may never have been brought to light. Prompted by the revelations the Country Fire Authority has apologised, the state government has given nearly $17 million dollars to clean up the area, and the victims stand a chance of being compensated.
All this stuff benefits the community, but costs money.
That’s not to criticise what ninemsn does, just to note the difference. ninemsn has a model which works for itself, but that doesn’t mean it will work for other publications. Just last week an analyst noted that the world’s most popular news website, that of the UK’s Daily Mail which has nearly 50m monthly unique visitors, is still not profitable. No wonder the Mail recently confirmed it was actively considering charging its readers for some content.
Back to where I agree with Hal. The world does not exist to support any particular media company. Absolutely, I couldn’t agree more. It’s all about the consumer. They will vote with their clicks and their decision to pay for things they value.
That’s the business we’re in, and have always been in. Whether it’s newspapers, magazines, television, books or movies, News Corp has, and always will be, about creating content that people value enough to want to pay for.
- Campbell Reid is group editorial director of News Limited. He is a former editor of The Australian and the Daily Telegraph
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large. He returned to Mumbrella as Publisher in January 2025
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Well said Campbell. News Ltd is a community service. A huge and valuable institution that does nothing but good. Just like the Catholic Church.
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