A new division of Sky Sports is to provide exclusive breaking-news sports videos available to News International newspapers’ paying subscribers, according to the Sports Journalists’ Association.
Norman Giller, writing on the SJA website, says: “Sport is going to provide a main thrust for selling subscriptions for Rupert Murdoch’s gallery of online newspapers, The Times, Sunday Times, News of the World and The Sun. I have been privy to confidential in-house memos, and the plan is for a division of Sky Sports to be set up to provide exclusive and breaking sports news videos to the webmasters for instant broadcast on the paid-for newspaper sites.”
Giller says that the Murdoch plan is to “make his websites irresistible to news, gossip and sports junkies…there are small bands of sworn-to-secrecy internet-savvy News International journalists and webmasters preparing for the paid-for launch”.
General news will continue to be free under the new subscription model, Gillard writes, but big name columnists like Jeremy Clarkson will be part of the paid-for package.
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