Dear Rupert Murdoch,
I am writing this letter to address a number of points raised in the ‘The death of the newspaper’ article regarding the online charges for news.
I would like to start off my saying that I do not personally agree that there should be any vast charges for readers to access news off of the Internet. Although I do agree that the newspapers are losing profit due to the publication of news on the web, I feel that by in effect abolishing the newspaper and placing all news on the internet would not only put an end to a world-wide news staple but it would also cause a number of difficulties in accessing news for various different social groups.
Statistics show that online news s The Wall Street Journal makes more than $100m per year, however this is a business paper and has a target audience consisting of high-paid professionals so it is not unlikely that this audience would be willing to pay a weekly fee. However in the case of other tabloid newspapers for examples the readers are less likely to have such funding and therefore may not be able to afford such weekly fees.
Also for many the British newspaper is seen as a staple of history within the society , on a number of historical events the print media has been the first to expose such events such as the Watergate scandal and the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. By abolishing print media , an era is in effect coming to an end , which in some cases may put people off such news publications all together , which would in the long run result in major losses of profit.
As well as this , many people especially those with disabilities or those who are elderly may have difficulty gaining access to the internet with ease like some of the younger generations , this will also lead to a decrease in profits , loss of customers and also loss of reputation for the news publications.
Finally , due to the rise in social networking and blogging etc , people are likely to still be able to gain access to the news as those who do pay for the news could publish the stories on their blogs etc. This people will not actually have to pay to access the news they wish to see.
Yours faithfully ,
Nicki Edwards
