Dear, Rupert Murdoch,
I am writing this letter to you for the decline and charging for online news content, since although you have said that the answer to: ‘can anything be done about all newspapers losing money’. Such as ‘sixty British local newspapers closed in the first three months of 2008’ and ‘70 newspapers closed in the first three months of 2009 alone’. You have said that from June readers of ‘The Times’ and ‘The Sunday Times’ will have to pay £1 a day, or £2 a week, for access to their websites. But the actual question is will it work?. well if you are goin to charge people a £1 or £2 then people might aswell just buy a normal newspaper which will cost them less especially in the time of recssion. Since many applications have proposed ’micropayment’ systems which was inspired by mobile phones and iTunes that charge readers a few pence to access articles. Also recently there has been a blossoming of alternative ways to gather and report written news. These include web-only newspapers-such as successful US site The Huffington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, which has scrapped its print edition to focus on an online presence-to-not-for-profit news organisations such as ProPublica and local newspapers that are run as charities. Also it is useless charging for online news since the internet has made information free and there isn’t going to be any change. Also Newspapers are not worth paying for since they are not original, and in order to do this they need to increase the sort of niche expertise. In addition Media barons have had it good for a decade they have to recognize that their domination on news is now over. Finally to conclude this challenge us citizens have the right to receive news for free, as not everyone can afford the news.
Yours Faithfully,
Dilwinder Poonyani (A-level media student)
