The iGeneration And The Downfall of Murdoch

6:00 Nov 21st, 2009 | Notes

I was dumfounded when I heard Rupert Murdoch’s interview on Sky News a few weeks ago. There I saw the founder of the modern journalism industry proclaiming that he is going to undo a decades worth of progress into the online market by reverting back to the tired, old methods of the past. What really struck me was this: Murdoch doesn’t know who he’s up against.

The iGeneration, my generation. The generation born from the early 1990s up until now. The generation who has been the first to grow up from childhood with the computer. We’re the first generation to have known instant communication, the MP3 player, digital entertainment, cable television and the cell phone since birth. And yes, we’re the first generation to grow up with the internet. Growing up in such a world, connected like never before, earned us the nickname “Digital Natives”.

Growing up in the internet age also taught us a frightening lesson: media is free. We explore our world and find two realities in front of us. We find the first reality, in which people go into physical stores to purchase movies, music, news and games. In this reality, physical versions of these items are received in exchange for currency. We see that the older generations like this reality and remain content to exist solely within it. The iGeneration are confused by this. For as we turn our heads we see another reality, an invisible one. In this second reality, those same items exist, but we can’t see them. We delight to discover that all of the items are much cheaper than they are in the first reality. Sometimes, if we’re sneaky, we can get them for free! But for everything that means breaking the law to do so. Everything but news.

You see, here is where Murdoch’s plan to raise the dollar sign in front of peoples’ faces hits a snag. It hits a snag with my generation, the iGeneration. As I’ve explained, we’ve grown up watching free news on the TV, listening to free news on the radio and reading free news on the internet. The only time where we’ve encountered payed news is when we wanted to get berated by loud, intolerant people, or when as young children we looked at our parents, wondering why they would bother struggling to unfold a giant piece of paper with tiny writing on it when there were easier alternatives. I’ve personally bought a newspaper only once in my life and regretted it very soon after as I realized I had to carry it around with me, and even more so when I realized I could get the same news for free on my iPhone. In fact, the only person I’ve know to carry around a newspaper is one who drinks way too much coffee for a 17 year old and who so obviously belongs with the university crowd that it could be said he is already subconsciously practicing his future habits.

Murdoch is forgetting that despite my generation being the wealthiest in history, we are also the most stingy when it comes to news. We have cell phones to buy, skinny jeans to try on. There are social expectations to conform to, politicians to swear at without discerning our own political views. We don’t have the time or money to spend on some of the smut you describe as “Quality Journalism”. We’re the status update generation, garnering all our news and information from one line of text. We’re the 8 second news grab generation, the targeted advertising generation, the news on tiny screens generation, not the news on paper generation. We’re the generation with the world in our pockets, the history of anyone and everything at our fingertips. All the while, it is free. Information flows into our elastic minds more freely than water into our mouths.

Rupert Murdoch faces the most commercially hardened generation in history as his upcoming audience, and he expects them to pay. Rupert Murdoch wants the iGeneration to pay for online news. Good luck.