ColemanMedia Report

News Corp. owner and unnaturally creepy old man Rupert Murdoch’s much-ballyhooed plan to put most of his media empire’s online content behind pay walls was dealt a significant setback early Sunday morning when reports of multiple complaints of loud music coming from behind the walls surfaced in local Manhattan media outlets.  Officials with NYPD’s 10th Precinct confirmed that several complaints of “loud music, strange voices, and god-awful racket” were filed between 11:00 p.m. Saturday evening and 4:00 a.m. Sunday morning.  The news has many critics of the pay wall model newly energized.  ”At first we thought the pay wall system wouldn’t work because people wouldn’t be willing to pay for what used to be free content,” said media analyst Louie Schafer.  ”But now it appears that the walls are simply too thin to contain the noise of all the rich people enjoying their premium content while the working class try to get some shut eye so they can catch the 6:45 train.  Ain’t living in the crowded media space a bitch?”

On the heels of the New York Times announcing its intentions to charge for online news content on a metered system, popular news satire site The Onion announced early today that starting March 1st, it will start to charge by laugh for its online content.  Under the new cost structure, The Onion would charge users on a tiered system: $1 for every laugh, $1.25 for every LOL, and $1.75 for every guffaw produced by the site’s online news stories. The move, which stunned thousands of area men and women, was reportedly made to replace declining print and display ad revenues, and according to Onion management, should allow the paper to avoid deep staff cuts.  ”Without this new source of revenue,” said Wilfred P. Lightbody, The Onion’s CFO, “we would have to lay off two of our three American Voices, our entire Infographic department, and Teddy from IT.  Besides, if Rupert Murdoch can charge for what they pass off as news at FOX, certainly we can charge for laughs.”