So firstly the omnipresent Mr. Big of news publishing announces he is to begin charging for his newspaper’s online content. Then his company dramatically pulls the plug on their free The London Paper title.

It’s a huge about turn on the direction almost all media has been taking for the last few years. So is Rupert Murdoch wise or brave, foolish or foolhardy? More importantly can he, even with all his global expertise in print over decades, really know what he’s doing in a media industry struggling with the economics of giving everything away for nothing?

Of course not. He’s just reached a point where the losses are really rubbing him up the wrong way and is deciding to take some action on it because the alternative is looking really, really bleak for his financial model.

A Little Savvier

Word has it that Rupert doesn’t use a computer and can’t be contacted by email. He is certainly not a fan of digital, and this drastic move against the tide may prove to be his big mistake. The outcome is very far from certain, but to execute such a gamble, I’d prefer it if the man in charge was a little savvier with his RSS feeds.

There was a time when News International’s digital policies looked relatively visionary. The redesigned Times Online (albeit following The Guardian’s lead), and even the purchase of MySpace (before users realised it doesn’t actually work very well) seemed impressively committed to the game. While launching a freesheet in The London Paper showed an apparent desire to keep on the cutting edge of the new print market trends too. But these projects are now busy laying off staff just the same as at other, less well prepared media outlets. Throwing NI’s clout at the projects hasn’t made them better or more profitable than their analog or digital rivals. All is not well and charging for digital content looks like a fairly desperate about turn.

Forward-thinking net commentator Jeff Jarvis said in his column last week, “Newspapers have had 15 years since the launch of the internet browser to re-imagine and rebuild themselves for the reality of the post-Gutenberg age. But they didn’t. Now they are trying to reclaim old business models for a new media economy — a link economy, I call it, in which links give content value. Cut yourself off from links, behind pay walls, and you cut yourself off from the internet and its real value.”

Unfolding Story

Yes, quality newspaper journalism desperately needs to find ways to be funded sufficiently enough to survive, but the new medium still being forged online relies on access to content be as fast and easy as possible. Blocked pages, registration screens, credit card demands..? Alternatives are always a single, rapid click away.

It’s great to see Murdoch shifting this unfolding story so significantly, but I think he’s potentially lost his touch here. He’s going against the grain too strongly in a battle that for once is much bigger than his own publishing empire.

Are we watching the dawn of a new sustainable age of digital news journalism, or the violent death throes of an outdated media hierarchy? Whatever happens next, it’s going to be dramatic and of huge, lasting significance.

So with the Guardian now reporting that MySpace could follow YouTube’s lead in blocking all ‘premium music video content’ in protest at the financial demands of PRS, it looks like we may have reached an important point in online content history all of a sudden.

It’s quite a twist that now it is YouTube themselves pulling content over a copyright dispute instead of being forced to do so by scary lawyers representing livid major record labels.

Blocking the most popular music videos in the UK is clearly not a long-term plan by parent company Google since it really doesn’t benefit anyone in this (except their direct competitors – say hello MUZU.tv!) In fact, the whole escapade rather smacks of Russia’s little trick of turning off the gas supply to Ukraine when they fancy some more cash for warming European homes during an icy winter. I’m sure Google, with their ‘Do No Evil’ motto wouldn’t be too pleased at that analogy, but I can’t see a better parallel right now to be honest.

Clearly Google/YouTube feel that their service is vital enough to the music industry for them to be able to throw their weight around. Whether that is actually true will be revealed in the next few days (I can’t see us being in for a dispute of Virgin v Sky proportions anyway).

Yet PRS hardly look any better in all this either. Demanding too much payback from services that have yet to sort out a viable funding model is an equally rubbish policy. Making real money from music online is going to be about a lot more than screwing platforms for fees. Google may have earned $5.7bn in the last quarter of 2008, as today’s PRS press statement happily points out, but are PRS also guilty of inflating the actual importance of YouTube when setting out their demands?

In the hurry to try and find the ‘answer’ to making the traditional pots of cash that have dried up for the music industry in the digital era, perhaps both YouTube and PRS (and most other people, to be honest) have overinflated their expectations of what a free video service is actually capable of supporting?

Meanwhile, the artists PRS are supposed to be fighting for are immediately starting to suffer, as the embedded videos on their websites go blank, and their promotional campaigns are left in disarray.

As with the saga of DRM, attempts to block the march of free digital content are messy, costly and ultimately prove futile. Let’s hope this potentially dramatic moment in the development of the new media landscape doesn’t get too nasty. No company, even Google, can afford to make too big a mistake when the fans are in charge.