Murdoch Wants a Google Rebellion / Make the News Personal

[Colin Gilchrist]

Further to this post by Dirk Smillie of Forbes: Murdoch Wants a Google Rebellion I want to offer up a train of thought for other innovators / investors. Those of you that know me, will be aware of the "Adpay" model that we developed - putting that to one side I am more interested in opening up a discussion centred around a dying publishing business.

It is clear that irrespective of what Google do, advertising revenue will fall as with pirate music downloads - their content is becoming devalued.

Should we inspire the big publishers to create unique / premium content (as the FT.com or the Economist) in order that we, the general public, find real value in it and therefore are willing to provide our age, sex and postcode?

Should they produce content more relevant to a specific audience?

Ok - the sting: How do we as innovators / investors encourage the publishers / journalists to change their online model - make the content specific to "Gemma, 24, from Inverness" - to give it more value (and provide advertisers with a more targeted audience).

Or do we let them fail by asking us to subscribe / pay?