Poor old Rupert and Fairfax have a fight on their hands. From the SMH:
A new website is coming to Australia, with British tabloid The Daily Mail to form The Daily Mail Australia in a joint venture with Mi9 (ninemsn).
Mi( CEO Mark Britt says the new site will be free of a paywall, with recruitment to commence immediately.
‘With the Daily Mail Australia operating alongside the ninemsn team, we’re aiming to create the largest digital news team in the country. This will provide Australians with a richer offering of news, lifestyle and entertainment stories in the unique MailOnline style. Most importantly, just like ninemsn.com.au, the Daily Mail Australia won’t sit behind a paywall,’ said Mark Britt, CEO, Mi9.”
This and Eric Beecher’s New Daily are both pure plays on the pay walls going up on the Fairfax and News metropolitans. Let a thousand flowers bloom I guess but, to be honest, they all look so samey to me that I’m not sure it’s worth bothering.
All are run by baby-boomers with a simple notion that print journalism can shift online and that’s about all there is to success. They seem to have no conception that the medium is the message and a new form of journalism must also accompany the new distribution or you’re just carving up a shrinking pie.
There’s little genuine disruption in any of this.
