Rupert Murdoch wants to apply Kindle model to newspapers

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Rupert Murdoch wants to apply Kindle model to newspapers

By CAROLINE GABRIEL

Published: 6 April, 2009

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Amazon Kindle is the flagship for the emerging model of specialized devices with embedded wireless, and News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch is seldom one to miss a major communications trend. He said last week that his firm is investing in a mobile device for reading newspapers, which like Kindle and many other examples, would create new revenue streams and channels to market for established businesses, with the wireless operator being invisible to the user.

Murdoch offered few details, but said the device would have a larger screen than other handhelds. In return for an experience optimized for reading newspapers on the move, users would be expected to pay a subscription. "People are used to reading everything on the net for free, and that's going to have to change," Murdoch told a cable conference in Washington DC.

He threw down the gauntlet to Google, indicating how dedicated single-app devices, if sufficiently attractive and well priced, could be used to keep individual brands in power, and fragment the open internet experience. Murdoch questioned whether aggregators like Google should be allowed to offer newspaper content without paying fees for it.

Should we be allowing Google to steal all our copyrights? If you have a brand like The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal, you don't have to," he went on."You can say thanks but no thanks." While the WSJ, which Murdoch's company owns, has succeeded with a subscription model, the NYT has not, which the News Corp chief sees as a weakness. "The inventory of display advertising on the web is doubling every year. They're never going to make money on an advertising model to replace what they're losing."