If you have been reading our blog over the past 12 months, you will know that we’ve tried our best to keep you all current on the newspaper publisher paywall discussions.  So, with that commitment, we bring you this little tidbit of news.  It seems as though Rupert Murdoch has taken to paying folks to pick up the printed version of his newspaper.  Let me explain…

Rupert Murdock’s ”The Sun‘ newspaper in the UK,  announced on Twitter that they were going to include real cash in thousands of their Saturday edition newspapers.  We see this as one of Murdoch’s marketing and mind-share efforts to see what he can do to raise print circulation for his brands.  However, what is most interesting about this is that he chose to test the “let me pay you for reading my newspaper” ploy, with the only free title he has left in the UK.  Could it be that Rupert is not seeing the results he had hoped for with his paywall shamble?  Is he ferociously looking for new circulation increasing tactics (because the paywall thing just isn’t working!) and as a result, is going to the extreme to pay readers?  Irregardless, the move to pay readers does seem a little desperate and limited in value, as it has no lifespan effect.  Unless Murdoch plans to pay his readers every Saturday, there is no guarantee that the person who picked up the paper this Saturday (when they were getting paid to do so) will pick it up again the next or any other day out of the week for that matter.   I think Murdoch may have lost on this one.