Rupert Mur­doch is boldly going where no media baron has gone before — bravely step­ping out­side Google’s search results and thumb­ing his nose at the inter­net estab­lish­ment — and he’s tak­ing his media estab­lish­ment with him… all the way to Microsoft’s Bing.

I’ve been shar­ing a few links via google reader on this mat­ter (and on that note — does any­body want to see a return to the daily links posts?). Most “new media” experts agree — Mur­doch is a wily dinosaur.

I think there’s a method to this sup­posed mad­ness. Murdoch’s empire pro­vides a fair whack of con­tent to the Inter­net — giv­ing Bing exclu­sive access may give a boost to Microsoft’s bid to enter the search arena. It’s a bold move. But it’s fraught with dan­ger. Mur­doch is fac­ing a decline in cir­cu­la­tion many peo­ple are attribut­ing to the Inter­net — and he’s decided to tackle that by remov­ing him­self from the pic­ture. Quite lit­er­ally. For most casual inter­net browsers.

He’s in a quandary. News Ltd relies on adver­tis­ing dol­lars to pro­duce con­tent, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for Mur­doch to pay for traf­fic to come to his site via google adwords so that they might click on his ads. The inter­net gives the dis­trib­u­tor all the power, not the con­tent pro­ducer — but it’s pretty much the same story any­where in the media busi­ness. Dis­tri­b­u­tion is where all the profit is.

What will be inter­est­ing will be look­ing back on this deci­sion in six months and see­ing if the lesser avail­abil­ity of News Ltd work online (it’ll still be there — you just won’t find it via google) will have any impact on cir­cu­la­tion. Will peo­ple pay to read the hard copy of the paper rather than break­ing habits to use Bing? Will the sta­tus quo bias pre­vent peo­ple chang­ing their online habits?

Much vaunted inter­net mar­ket­ing guru Seth Godin has sug­gested that Murdoch’s approach to the new age of media is back to front. He says:

“You don’t charge the search engines to send peo­ple to arti­cles on your site, you pay them.”

I’m not sure — Rupert Mur­doch hasn’t got where he has by pay­ing other peo­ple — this is fun­da­men­tally a bat­tle of ide­olo­gies between the new “free con­tent to every­body” consumer/marketer and the old school monopoly/conglomerate approach.

Peo­ple don’t want to pay for news any­way — while I read the papers every day (in tan­gi­ble form) I wouldn’t choose to pay for them per­son­ally when I can find stuff online for free. Strik­ing a com­mer­cial and exclu­sive deal with a search engine seems to be a pretty sound rear­guard action from Murdoch.

From a PR per­spec­tive I reckon Murdoch’s tabloid rags are going to go the way of the mag­a­zine — an inter­change­able blend of adver­to­r­ial, adver­tis­ing and paid comment/editorial. Prod­uct place­ment is the marketer’s dream. I’d much rather pay money to bring a jour­nal­ist to Townsville on a tour than spend the same amount on a clearly labeled advertisement.

If I were Mur­doch I’d be trad­ing on my estab­lished credibility/brand and push­ing prod­ucts on unwit­ting cus­tomers via edi­to­r­ial. But I’m not a greedy media baron. So I’ll stick to push­ing stu­pid prod­ucts via my blog and not receiv­ing a com­mis­sion at all — or encour­ag­ing you to buy a shirt…

Author: Nathan Campbell

Nathan runs St Eutychus. He is currently a student at the Queensland Theological College. In a previous professional life he worked in public relations for an economic development and tourism marketing organisation. He is married to Robyn. He likes coffee and the internet.

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