As AI speeds up the pace of misinformation on the internet, every responsible publisher is torn between making content easily available and monetising its output.
Newspaper and podcast publisher News Limited has decided to lift the paywall on The Australian newspaper this weekend as part of its campaign to demonstrate the need for verified reporting in the face of unprecedented levels of fake or intentionally misleading news content.
In the early internet era, when users expected to find everything online for free and publishers needed eyeballs to justify banner advertising rates, News Limited took the brave step of making readers pay directly for content by installing paywalls on its major newspaper brands.
As Rupert Murdoch said at the time, the readership numbers did decrease, but the revenue went up. It has been 15 years since then and online news publishing business models have continued to evolve. Many internet users now see the value of paying for verified news content, but there is still a large segment of news consumers who do not pay, they may be the ones most vulnerable to deliberate misinformation.
The Australian hopes to entice them back to responsible publishers with open access to all its online content tomorrow and Sunday.
The Australian says “verified reporting must be easy to find, read and share… the value of trusted, verified journalism has never been higher.”
Across the weekend, readers will be able to explore the full breadth of the national broadsheet’s journalism, including investigations, long-form reporting, commentary, data projects, podcasts and photojournalism.
Alongside its daily news coverage, the website will also feature a curated catalogue of award-winning investigations and reporting from recent years, giving readers the opportunity to explore some of the publication’s most in-depth journalism.
Claire Harvey, Editorial Director and host of the newspaper’s podcast, will feature a discussion of the reasons for lifting the paywall in tomorrow’s epsiode of The Front.
For some time now, radioinfo has been highlighting the growing challenge of misinformation and illustrating how fakes capitalise on breaking news events to sow confusion and foment distrust.
We have highlighted the contrast between irresponsible social media publishers and search sites that publish first and check later, compared with responsible publishers that check first then publish.
In our 30th year of online trade news publishing, we contiunue to try to balance between our content being easily found and generating revenue from those who value the work we do. Two years ago we decided to put a paywall on our archival and specialist content to generate some more revenue, so if you hit our pay wall, please subscribe to support our journalism and unlock our high value content.
The new tools of publishing are exciting and bring improved levels of productivity, but they should be used with the same respect for verification and editorial processes that responsible publishers have always adhered to.
Steve Ahern is publisher of this audio industry trade journal.