I really don’t understand all this fuss about Rupert Murdoch.

So, he’s announced that his newspapers will soon start to charge for online content having failed dramatically to make them pay their way through advertising.

So, he claims that if his plan is successful other media outlets will follow his lead.

So what?

Let’s dismiss the second claim straight out of the gate. Of course if Murdoch makes a go of pay-per-play news coverage other outlets will copy him.  Likewise, if I come up with a foolproof way to break the bank at the Bellagio I’m pretty sure everyone else will pretty quickly follow me to Vegas. But neither of those things will ever happen. Mainstream news coverage – low-quality, opinion-driven news offal aimed at the common man; Murdoch’s speciality – has been completely commoditised online. The masses have shown that they will not pay for that kind of journalism. Not now. Not ever.  But then, as Shane Richmond points out on these very blogs, they never have.

Now back to the real point – why does anyone care what Rupert Murdoch thinks is the future of news online?

Read on at the Telegraph…