[WikiEN-l] BBC blog on WSJ study

[Charles Matthews]

Durova wrote:
> Mr. Murdoch wants to shift to a paid access model for online the online
> versions of his news holdings.  He's negotiating a deal with Microsoft's
> search engine toward that purpose.
>
> It's hard to understand the conjecture that Wikipedia ties in with those
> plans.  If anything, Wikipedia's habit of referencing historic news articles
> would help Mr. Murdoch's bottom line because it sends traffic to old
> articles, which can generate advertising revenue from old news that would
> otherwise be valueless.
>   
Well, that's a sophisticated view of how rivalry is seen in the media 
world. If the big picture is the Web eating the lunch of the newspaper 
industry, because the papers have been undercutting each other for the 
last decade by giving free content away, then the business solution is 
to get out of free online access, but also to ask who has had the 
benefit besides online readers, and do something about it.

Charles