Globe and Mail : will the Commercial paywall become merely a Conservative echo chamber ?

Hoisted on his own Petard !

Ironic, ain't it ? Most of the world's loudest & most bombastic right wing newspapers have totally disappeared from public view --- behind a commercially-oriented paywall --- reducing their public influence to zero. This certainly wasn't their original intention (money,money,money was their intent) - but this situation is the totally unexpected results.


The right wingers who own and run Canada's leading newspaper, the GLOBE and MAIL and who are about to leap in the fire and erect a paywall should pay heed to the sad story of Rupert Murdoch's earlier experiments in this area.

Whatever inane right wing notions Rupert Murdoch's LONDON TIMES is touting this week, you and I (because we are not living in the UK) won't even hear of it, unless we pay to get behind its digital "all or nothing" total  paywall.

The TIMES, as you have probably noticed, as been marked "absent" from the worldwide digital news conversation the last few years - even search engines like Goggle carries nothing from them - because Rupert-Murdoch-the-Genius planned it that way.

As a result, even the influence of the once all-powerful print version of the paper has also been reduced to nearly zero.

Sure its subscribers read it faithfully - but they are die-hard right-wingers so there is no influencing the undecided at play here : you can't preach to the already-converted, you can merely confirm their faith.

The result is a tiny closed community of true believers, echoing each other in the echo chamber that is the LONDON TIMES : a mere 400,000 readers in a world of more seven billion citizens.

Murdoch bought the TIMES to serve as his bully-pulpit, to expand the influence of his inane right wing notions --- and to make him more money.

Paywalls around right wing newspapers reduces their influence to zero : become echo chamber for right wing subscribers only

The paywall didn't make him money, merely reduced his huge losses ---- but it also reduced the political-public impact of this once world opinion leader to echoing the certitudes of a few hundred thousand die-hard far righters.

So news that Murdoch has totally thrown in the towel and admitted this total paywall was an abject failure editorially, comes as no real surprise.

He will now admit defeat and allow Google and other search engines to index the headlines and opening paragraph "lede" of the TIMES' articles : hoping that if the unconverted will not buy a subscription , they will at least absorb some of his bile from the misleading headline and dishonest opening lede.

Public Influence or Profitable Paywall : pick one.

Lots of money and lots of influence, the age-old dream of lots of newspaper barons, is dead : you can have one but not the other.....

Andrew Bolt as the A J Jacobs of denier authors

A. J. Jacobs used to be well known for a series of  very funny and informative books about his year-long experiments in extreme activities - but that fame is soooooo over.

Now he know globally as the King of the Blurbs  - though that title might well be challenged by his fellow mass-blurbers Malcolm Gladwell and Gary Shteyngart.

His "coming-out" article on his blurbing other life is inside The New York Times' paywall and is very funny indeed.

For me, Jacobs' radio interviews on the article are mostly notable for his uncanny ability to hit all - all - of the highlights of the article in 220 seconds or less : a real pro.

He sets a very high mark for the denier crew (people like Andrew Bolt) to set themselves against,  but they do seem to be up for the challenge.

Air-kissingly gushy blurbs "de rigueur" for denier authors

 Just as fictional authors have long created their own echo-chamber where authors agree to gush over each other's latest novel ; so too deniers blurb each other's book and blog with novelist-like abandon.

After all, don't both groups deal strictly in fictional works ?

Darling, who would have ever thought that all those boring old farts in the denier trenches are actually faux-phony air-kissing "actresses"  of the first water .....