By Darryl Mason
Rupert Murdoch's News.com.au 'heralds' the end of Free News. Yeah, go away free information. How we hate you.
I'm as reluctant as The Professional Idiot and Tim "Immeasurable Hurt" Blair are to announce that soon you will have to pay to read this blog.
But you will.
I'm sorry, but days of Free Information are gone now.
Wake up to yourself. You know it's true. Rupert said so. Yes, he lost a couple of billion dollars, but so what? He's the Sun King.
Like Rupert's 'quality journalism', you will soon have to pay to read this blog.
Or I will no longer be able to bring infrequently posted, vaguely coherent, content before your eyeballs.
It's that simple.
So here's how The Orstrahyun 'You Will Pay!' business model will work :
1) I will data-mine any and all personal information I can find out about you, then I'll find out where you live.Death to Free News (And Blogs)!
2) I will turn up at your front door expecting a decent dinner (no vegan shit) at least twice a year. "My family's asleep" and "who the fuck are you?" will not be acceptable excuses for non-honourance of our verbital food-for-blog-stuff contract.
3) After dinner, you will only be allowed to show me holiday photos of places I haven't been, and you will accept that I can shout "Oh, Boring!" whenever I want to.
4) You will have to supply drinks before and after the dinner. You don't have to come on all flash. This is not a shakedown. Woodstock Bourbon & Cola in a can is fine, but if you're rich, you will be expected to break out the Wild Turkey Special Blend.
And don't miss this. The Inquisitr has an hilarious story where a media buyer claims Murdoch is preparing to sue Google and Yahoo because their search engines drive traffic to Murdoch media sites. The bastards!
UPDATE : Only hours after Rupert Murdoch announces he wants to have a go at foolishly attempting to destroy the link-based free-sharing New Media culture by locking his content behind pay walls, Reuters announces that not only do they want independent bloggers, like me, to link to their news stories, they are also happy for bloggers to excerpt their news stories and build new content from it. As long as we all play fair.
Of course, compared to the bloated executive excesses of Murdoch's News, Reuters is a lean and mean operation. But they aren't taking a chance by encouraging bloggers to link to and share their content. They don't have a choice. Murdoch thinks he can still Own The News. He becomes more like Mister Burns every year.
Rupert Murdoch still doesn't get it. Reuters gets it.
So on day one of the New Murdoch 'You Will Pay!' Digital Media Reality, the legend of 20th century Old Media goes and gets trumped by Reuters, who clearly understand the way it has to be.
What a monumental fuckarama the rollout of Murdoch's 'You Will Pay!' new media devolution promises to be. It's a shame so many Australian employees will lose their jobs as the awful reality of Murdoch mega fail sinks in.
UPDATE : Success! My 'You Must Pay!' proposal to readers of The Ostrahyun is already showing results only a few hours after launching. I've now received twelve invitations to dinner via comments, Twitter (@darrylmason) and e-mail, in Sydney, Brisbane, Wyong, Adelaide, Cronulla, Melbourne, Baja California, Boston and Exeter, England. There was, however, a general reluctance to supply bourbon with the meals, but regardless....
I was wrong. The 'You Must Pay' system clearly works. Go for it, Rupert!
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