Philip Gomes

I've written earlier here and crossposted (re-edited) at Larvatus Prodeo about News Corp's plans for a pay-to-play model for online news.

Of course a successful implementation of this assumes other mass publishers will be encouraged to get on board.

Today brings further news that here in Australia, Fairfax will follow the lead of News Ltd in attempting to introduce some kind of paid content model.

Speaking before last week's announcement by Mr Murdoch, Mr McCarthy said the industry faced a challenge in ''monetising'' its online news.

''Monetisation will have to happen, because without monetisation of the online sites that the newspaper industries have operated very successfully, we can't afford to keep the big newsroom staffs we have,'' he said.

Fairfax was looking at a number of pay models, including offering readers two levels of access - free entry for a mass audience, with a charge for ''more upmarket, high quality data''.

Mr McCarthy said a two-level scheme could work for Fairfax's new national online news, commentary and analysis site, nationaltimes.com.au, to be launched next month, initially free.

He said theage.com.au and smh.com.au could also have free and paid access levels.

The line that caught my eye was this.

Fairfax was looking at a number of pay models, including offering readers two levels of access - free entry for a mass audience, with a charge for ''more upmarket, high quality data''.

There are two things going on here.

One is an aspect of collusion between the dominant players in the Australian media market to lock down news in their financial favour.

This is not really about making users pay, that alone will never cover the cost of production for these bloated dinosaurs. This is about re-establishing or manufacturing a  'scarcity' in order to drive up advertising rates.

The other will be in unintentionally creating a market where the wealthy have access to a higher quality version of news and data. Further deepening divisions in terms of class, education and culture.

On equity terms alone this has implications for society, and democracy.

For example, imagine a coming electoral season (2010) that sees the broader mass of readers locked out of a more detailed analysis and commentary about electoral manouvering.

Many voters are already disengaged from the political process to some extent, so something like this might deepen this disengagement further - with voters feeling even less informed about their choices.

Of course this would present some unique opportunities for a developing (some would say stillborn) independent Australian political blogosphere.

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News Digital's Richard Freudenstein may be right, we will pay.

Two good examples are music and movies - both of which I sometimes pay for, and willingly - if it's what I want to listen to or watch and if I deem the price to be right.

And as someone who's now in the business of media creation I want to know that the fruits of my labour will have a value above zero.

He's also right about platforms, we will consume media in whatever package we choose. I do already.

So there is nothing really surprising here - less surprising is a media giant with monopolistic tendencies searching for relevance in a world where everyone is a publisher, with fragmentation and loose distribution the norm.

Even less surprising is that advertising is still the real commodity, not news.

But if he still wants to deliver the same old way of doing business dressed up in shiny new technological packages then it ain't gonna fly.

If you want respect and legitimacy in a new media environment then a different way of doing business is required, and right now News fails on that score.

Lastly, it's pretty clear that what we're seeing is a rearguard action by all of the big media players to stitch up a pay-to-play model as fast as possible because for them it's a race against time.

They are trying to cut off to new media content they regard as theirs.

But what they still haven't yet learned is that old saw about the web seeing monolopistic stuff like this as a blockage to be worked around.

They are dying and new media networks are growing quickly and collectively morphing into efficient suppliers of news. Why? Because they have learned to share.

That's something News and others in their position still haven't learned.

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