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The Forum > Article Comments > Information might want to be free, but who foots the bill? > Comments

Information might want to be free, but who foots the bill? : Comments

By Brian McNair, published 22/6/2011

As newspaper circulations decline can news as we know it be financed from the revenues from websites?

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How about advertising? Free to air TV survives on this model, why not newspapers? I predict business models based on pay walls will struggle. Of course, Murdoch is extremely well placed to be the canary in the cage on this but I know my attitude already - the AFR tried this but got incredibly greedy, then presto, Business Spectator arrived, no pay wall, some ads, no-brainer.
Posted by bitey, Wednesday, 22 June 2011 9:06:14 AM
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Brian you are looking straight through the problem, but not seeing it, a typical fault in academia.

It is the journalism at fault, not the media.

Today when I buy a paper I find it full of "stories" not news or information. So I stopped buying papers.

If I want a "story" I'll go to the fiction department, & pick up Harry Potter. When I pick up a paper the last thing I want is some jumped up twit giving me his opinion, & that's about all you get today. It got to be an obstacle course to find your way through the guff to the facts. I can no longer be bothered playing that game.

I believe I'm one of many, all voting with their feet & no longer buying papers. Get your journalists to go back to reporting, rather than embellishing the news, & things might change.

I don't expect it to happen any time soon, the ego of the average, rather dumb journalist won't allow this, nor will the modern cut & paste of some press release so prevalent today. That being the case, expect more out of work journos, & rightly so.
Posted by Hasbeen, Wednesday, 22 June 2011 9:32:37 AM
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Hasbeen.. I have to agree with you.

Newspapers have evolved from distributing News and Information into " Entertainment" Frankly their entertainment value is too low to interest me nor, I suspect ,the bulk of the population.

I stopped buying the Courier Mail quite some time ago for this reason as well as 2 other reasons.

Firstly because , unless you are Y Gen or a young X Gen.. there is nothing of interest in it at all.. other than acres of (cheap) Sport.

Secondly,. The Paper is packed with opinion pieces by Journos.. the vast majority of whose opinions I couldn't give a Fig .

I'm not a Tree Hugger.. But.. When I realized that the C/M was just a waste of a Tree.. I switched off.
Posted by Aspley, Wednesday, 22 June 2011 10:01:33 AM
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Hi Brian, I think I agree, then I read again and I’m not so sure. So I’ll respond on the basis that I think I agree with what I think it is you are possibly saying.

All companies have a business model, media companies are no different. Products, Markets, Channels, Services, Suppliers, Regulators, Customers and Competitors.

If any entity loses customers or market share, those who operate the business model are at fault, either wrong model or failed execution.

So here we go.

Good morning CEO,
So what does your company do? We are in Journalism, Media and Communication.
Wrong, you are a business selling products and services.

What is your product/service mix? We sell news print.
Is that the product/service or the medium?
Well, I suppose that’s the medium.
OK so what is the product/service?
We sell news, opinion and advertising.

Who is your “customer”, what is the “target market” and within what segment of that market does your customer exist? Well, they buy newspapers, in Scotland.

Is this going well?
Well, actually we have gone from 700,000 customers a day to 286,000.
Why is that?
Internet, and free on-line services, customers shifting and economics.
You mean new “competitors” and “changing wants”?
Yes.
So how long have you had this business model?
“Centuries”

What do you think your customers actually want?
“Journalism that confronts power, exposes corruption, that entertains and enlightens and educates as it services democracy”
Do you think you deliver against your customer expectations?
Well, yes, mostly, not sure.
Do your customers think you meet their expectations?
Well, the ones we have left do I suppose.

What does it take to deliver the right product, to the right market, at the right time?
Money and an effective business model.
Do you have these?
No.

The instant I see any business blame either its customers or its competitors it is fast becoming an ex-business.

So yes, most businesses in this industry will fail because they don’t understand what business they are in, they are internally focused not the customer focused.

And, yes, Murdoch does understand.

Interesting article, thanks.
Posted by spindoc, Wednesday, 22 June 2011 10:08:28 AM
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Neatly summarized, Hasbeen.

>>Brian you are looking straight through the problem, but not seeing it, a typical fault in academia<<

Newspapers have dug their own grave, and are too far up their own egos to claw their way out. Journalists (they used to be called reporters, if I recall correctly) have been asked to debase their craft to such a level that it has all but disappeared.

The concept of a "newspaper of record" disappeared when proprietors turned to news-as-entertainment, in order to keep up with the race to the bottom that was led by television.

It has been a classic case of the proverbial boiling frog. As global communication has improved a little every year since the invention of the telegraph (small "t"), and in massive leaps since the advent of the internet, the role of the newspaper has morphed. To the extent that the "new" part of "news" is essentially redundant; we hear about earthquakes in Christchurch long before we read about them.

Their role should, given the skills of their journalists, be biased towards analysis, and the "bigger picture". Sadly, they have lost this habit, and along with it, a great deal of their legitimacy.

Paywalls are a feature of the internet world. As a concept, they cannot be judged good or bad, beneficial or evil. The quality of what lies behind them will determine their success or failure at an individual level. It is even possible that one or two of the turnstiles may eventually lead to examples of quality journalism, rather than the antics of the chihuahua in Paris Hilton's handbag.

I'll miss the crossword, though.
Posted by Pericles, Wednesday, 22 June 2011 10:08:44 AM
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Brian McNair wrote: "There has always been a lot of crap journalism around."

Like the kind of 'journalism' that peddled the WMD lies used to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003, or which is now being used to justify the brutal colonial wars being waged against Libya and Syria?

The 2003 WMD claims have been shown by the recent film "Fair Game" to be a lie and known at the time by the US Government to be a lie. Anyome who doubts that the US Govenment knowingly lied about WMDs should see on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k3GuVTfWLw the testimony to US Congress by Valerie Plame, the courageous former CIA agent upon whose story, together with her husband journalist Joe Wilson's story, the film was based. (Some of that broadcast was used as the closing scene of "Fair Game". Actress Naomi Watts' resemblance to Plame was so close and the clip was added so skilfully that I did not even realise that it was not Naomi Watts the first time I saw it.)

It is hard to believe that journalists, including News Corporation journalists, could not also have been aware at the time that the existence of Iraqi WMDs was a myth. As a result of that lie several hundreds of Iraqis are now dead and most of the citizens of that once-prospweous country are now impoverished.

It's little wonder that the Murdoch media, which has fed similar lies almost countless times to its readership at least since 1974, when it savagely turned upon the Whitlam Labor Government, now faces problems in enticing readers to pay up-front for the "quality journalism" they have on offer.

---

Still, Brian McNair is correct to ask how real quality journalisms should be paid for.

If we had not become imprisoned by the "free market" ideology imposed upon Australia and much of the rest of the world by the same Murdoch newsmedia, business models that would allow quality journalism to thrive would be much easier to come up with.

(to be Continued)
Posted by malthusista, Wednesday, 22 June 2011 10:41:04 AM
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(Continued from Above)

One way it could be done (most surely proscribed by the free market ideologue 'journalists' of the Murdoch media) it is to have a pool of money set up by governments raised through general revenue.

That money could be distributed to providers of any online material based upon how much the story is read. Whilst journalists, who are more popular should receive more, the scale of payments would have to be non-linear to ensure that there is still enough to pay those starting out or who serve smaller niche readerships. If a story is more popular the writer should receive more, but there is no need for the a writer of an article read by say, 1 milion readers to be paid 100 times what is paid to an author of a piece read by 10,000 people.

How to measure the popularity of a piece could be worked out and adapted over time. The measure would be a combination of, amongst other factors which it may be possible to quantify, hits and size of the piece. Over short periods of time there would be no guarantee that such a system would hold inaccuracies or that it could not be be abused, but over longer periods of time those innaccuracies would be evened out and attempts to systematically abuse it would most likely be detected.
Posted by malthusista, Wednesday, 22 June 2011 10:42:37 AM
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malthusista, some great economic solutions there. Just one small and seemingly irrelevant point, what was the question?

Perhaps you need to start you own publication. As a potential investor I would give you about a week, but sadly, not a cent.
Posted by spindoc, Wednesday, 22 June 2011 11:13:14 AM
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What Pericles said;
Newspapers only have potential for deeper expert analysis- but because they've employed catchy 'shock jock' type authors- most of which clearly actually ignorant about the issues they are trying to whip up hysteria over- that element doesn't fly either.

I might add that ever since the internet has drawn away news readers, the papers have been capitalizing more than ever on the mug readers who want entertainment and shock stories more than real news (read, people who aren't smart enough to figure out how to use the internet for getting news)- ensuring even MORE people are alienated from the papers and forced to get their news elsewhere.

To say it again- "digging their own grave"

The only way back is an intelligent newspaper full of information- not celebrity gossip and bogan scandal stories.

The Telegraph is the rock-bottom example of the final stage of this bogan capitalization- in fact, the only reason it sells is because it is printed on an A3 format book- rather than a gigantic map.

The Australian seems to only market to insecure 'right wing fanclub' types that need to be reassured that their moronic opinions correspond to any popular outlet.

The Telegraph is probably the paper resisting most of this downward trend, though if its not careful in staying away it will be history too.
Posted by King Hazza, Wednesday, 22 June 2011 11:41:07 AM
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As a print media journalist (albeit in finance rather than general) I can say that Brian is spot on and most of the posters have the issue backwards.

He is saying that the news media's once very large ad revenues are fading away and the money that once subsidised news gathering is no longer there. Quite so, the market is fragmenting.

Previously newspapers had a model similar to free to air TV - bitey please note - where the ads paid for the bulk of production and the subscription virtually nothing, and mostly they had a near monopoly in major markets.

Now the classifieds and readers are going online and newspapers are scrambling to broaden their markets.. and find ways to make their online sites pay enough to make up for the revenues they have.
They have been trying every formulae under the sun and there have been successes in specialist areas, but mostly the magic combination has yet to be found..

Posters are also saying if newspapers are better then that would solve the problem. Although they are reacting to newspapers are they are now, trying to reach a larger audience, rather than as they were, I'm sure newspapers could be better.

The trouble is it wouldn't solve the problem. Almost every combination has been tried both in Aus and especially in the US.. people just won't pay for quality or investigative journalism, and it doesn't really matter how you define investigative or quality.
Posted by Curmudgeon, Wednesday, 22 June 2011 12:20:58 PM
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I stopped buying newspapers years ago. If I read them now at a coffee shop it is for the culture and book review sections. Most so-called journalists are embedded bludgers who would'nt know a story if they fell over one. For example the latest expose of Tony Abbott and the carbon tax saga. Fox "Limited news " is pure propaganda mixed with third rate fiction and a large helping of fantasy about the real political geography of the modern world. The endless liftouts on boring male sport, other boring male obsessions like cars and ads for white goods merchants for the little lady are just so unsustainable. The world's forests are dying for this rubbish? As for these endless eulogies on the print industry, get over it. Adapt. Retrain. And when I was growing up we listened to the radio and read books. The world will probably be a better place without these daily doses of gloom and doom and males endlessly rabbiting on with yet more opinions. Do any of you actually have real work to do?
Posted by Hestia, Wednesday, 22 June 2011 12:22:58 PM
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"If we won't pay, the future is one of poorly researched, unreliable news of uncertain origin." But that's what we're getting now. There's no doubt readership is falling but its also due to younger age cohorts dismissing newspapers as base, boring trivia.

I love newspapers but I fear for their future.
Posted by Cheryl, Wednesday, 22 June 2011 12:57:00 PM
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Apologies for typos in my previous post at #210699 :

* 'journalisms' should have been 'journalism'

'it' should be omitted from "One way it could be done (...) it is to have a pool ..".

* 'once-prospweous' should have been 'once-prosperous'

----

spindoc asks at #210704 "what was the question"?

The question was how to make journalism a viable business given that there are no easy means to collect revenue to fairly pay those who provide Internet content.

I proposed one way. Now, how about explaining why you think it would not work?

----

Also, spindoc, would you tell us if you think any journalist should be paid a cent for writing lies that have caused so much harm, only a few examples of which I have given above?
Posted by malthusista, Wednesday, 22 June 2011 1:07:26 PM
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Newspapers are dead, news on the internet is easy to find, in small bites, if you want more, you find it.

I don't see the big scandal hunting or other writing where journalists used to roam, admittedly.

People of a particular bent will still go to the sites of their politics and lambast anyone different.

The more insecure types keep to sites so they don't even hear of certain things going on in the world, like the horse-sex aboriginal lambasting the other aboriginal for being offensive. Which was news and interesting, but kept from sensitive ears by Fairfax and the ABC, who know what's best for their audience.

Hazza refers to organizations who employ "catchy 'shock jock' type authors" and I agree, at the ABC they have Mariak Hardy and that awful woman who insulted Bindy, can't remember her name, and others, on their payroll for exactly that reason, sensation and titillation.

Would people pay for this sort of content?

Will people pay for newspaper subscriptions to read online? (aside from journalists)

I suspect not if they get the overwhelming advertising as well.

At times I just want to read in a specific genre, NatGeo, SciAm, PopMech or Total911 magazines, so I subscribe to the digital version and read on a PC or other electronic medium.

I like the advertising in some of my journals, it's in keeping though with the subject. Newspaper ads are shotgun, and it's rare I ever was interested.

Like buggy whip manufacturers, who produced a fine product, it's no longer something people want.

The customers have moved on, and the market decides, the journalists are like dinosaurs now, from a bygone age.

It seems to be the trend recently from people who cannot accept that others might think differently, to blame them and agents provocateur for their woes, instead of accepting change has happened.

You see this in politics, climate change, other areas, the denial of change and acceptance that it happens. We all need to adapt.
Posted by Amicus, Wednesday, 22 June 2011 2:23:30 PM
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mudge, I can’t believe you said that, well, if I take into account that you were a “financial journalist”, not only can I not believe it but I just can’t believe it!

Since this is probably the first time I’ve ever disagreed with you, I’m going to preface this with, “perhaps I misunderstood your comments”.

What I understood Brian to say, and supported by you (perhaps), it that the “market is fragmenting”.

So might I ask whose market this is? Why it was allowed to fragment? What has been done about it? Who is responsible for action/inaction? Why did your marketing department not spot this? Why new “channels to market” were not identified? Why new technologies as “market access” were not identified? Why new products and services based on new technologies were not identified? Why your industry cannot articulate the difference between a client (investor/advertiser) and a customer (buyer of the product)? Why the socio-economic variables that drive your industry were not understood and mitigated? Why does your industry still not understand what “compliance with customer needs” means? Why cannot your industry identify the “trend lines” that determine where it is heading? Why cannot your industry understand the relationship between SROI, (Shareholder Return on Investment) and customer compliant product/service/price drivers? Why is your industry incapable of understanding “competitive analysis”? Why is your industry incapable of understanding the difference between quantity/accessibility and quality?

And finally, the SPERE factors. Why is your industry totally incapable of understanding the destruction that socio-political contamination is doing to destroy media credibility and its markets?

Like I said, this is an industry that does not have the faintest idea of or who or what it is. It is doomed and deservedly so. It has reached rock bottom and started digging because it is run by the “employees”.

Unless of course you can tell me differently?

malthusista, your comments noted. Perhaps you would like to begin here? You said “tell us” I just did. Over to you.
Posted by spindoc, Wednesday, 22 June 2011 4:10:17 PM
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The same thing is happening to newspapers that happened to television: they are losing their brighter readers to the Internet, and as a result they feel they have to dumb down and become populist to try and maintain their circulation. This drives more bright readers away, and the cycle continues.

The Herald is now largely composed of press releases relating to 'youth culture' and scare stories on global warming. It's clearly trying to grab the attention of Generation Y, but without success. The Murdoch Sydney and Melbourne papers have always aimed at a less well-educated demographic, so they are not feeling quite the same effects yet, but they will. The Australian at least has a captive market in Canberra.

But so what? New technology provides new opportunities. I bet the town criers felt pretty lousy when they were sacked after the penny post came in, but who misses them now?
Posted by Jon J, Wednesday, 22 June 2011 4:25:34 PM
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Thanks, spindoc (&page=3#210748).

---

My research today has found one way that would enable users of Internet services (including journalism) to pay more easily for the services: micro-payments.

An intermediary (e.g. http://flattr.com) records the micropayment that each of its customers wishes to make each time he/she clicks on a Flattr button on a page for which he/she wishes to make a micro-payment for.

At the end of each month an amount, say $10, within that customer's account is split up in proportion to the number of click makes on the Flattr buttons on the web pages of each each content provider. The intermediary then deducts its 10% commission from each micropayment, aggregates, agreggates the micropayments less its commissions, then pays the aggregated micropayments to each content provider.

This would have to be a far better way for customers to pay for services than the pay walls that News Limited is erecting. I can't see how it could fail.

I doubt very much if more than a small minority of Internet users, when faced with a choice on the one hand, of the disinformation behind News Limited paywalls (examples of which I have given above at &page=1#210699) and truthful journalism available elsewhere, for which they need only make micropayments should they think the material of any merit, would choose the former.

Even on a more level-playing field, were News Limited to make micropayment facilities available on its web-sites, I doubt if they would receive sufficient income to maintain their business.

Whilst I think http://flattr.com's micropayment system is still considerably short of perfect, it obviously leaves for dead the News Limited paywalls.
Posted by malthusista, Thursday, 23 June 2011 12:57:26 AM
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It can be noted that at a funeral the crowd can be divided in two groups; the ones who are there to mourn the dead and the ones who are there to make sure that the dead is well dead.

At the funeral of the newspaper you’ll find me there, in the second group.

I instead love the ABC. I love it…to its death.
Posted by skeptic, Thursday, 23 June 2011 8:46:43 AM
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I feel the need to comment. I love newspapers - there is more in-depth coverage possible and they stop me from spending my time in front of a screen.

My problem is that I agree with many previous commenters - papers are becoming full of junk articles, huge amounts of spin, and a very shallow attempt at covering the news of the day. Unfortunately the internet is the same. A further problem with sourcing news on the internet, for the unwary, is that many news sources are even more poorly researched than the papers and associated websites.

I am therefore in a quandry - there is very little news left to read or watch on TV.
Posted by Phil Matimein, Thursday, 23 June 2011 3:32:59 PM
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Malthusista,

You should ask the people of Halajba whether they trusted Saddam when he claimed he had no weapons of mass destruction. You would obviously have to talk to those who were not among the thousands killed by chemical agents in attacks on the town in 1988. Or you could talk to one of the hundreds of thousands of Iranian soldiers who were gassed during the Iran-Iraq war, that is if their lungs stll work.

Hindsight is 20-20.

Saddam had a track record of possesing and aquiring WMD. Besides his thousands of tons of chemcal weapons (Sarin, VX and mustard gas), Iraq had at one time produced 30,000 litres of biological agents, such as botulism and anthrax for weaponisation.

Saddam did his best to hide these programs. He lied about what they had produced, and he did not cooperate fully with the inspectors at any stage of the process.

In hindsight it turns out that Saddam was telling the truth. But what reasonable person could have been expected to take his word for it? Especially given his record of obstructing the UN inspectors. Not even Hans Blix was unequivocal when his early reports came out. He criticised Saddam for the 'cat and mouse' games that the Iraqis were playing with his inspection teams.

Whilst I have some sympathy for your claims that the Bush and Blair manipulated the intlligence, I'm less than convinced that either of them KNEW there were no WMD left in Iraq. And if neither of them knew this for a fact, how could any jouranlist know?

Turning up at an Iraqi warehouse for a regime organised inspection of suspected sites to find no WMD hardly proves their lack of existence. How could mainstream journalists prove that there were no WMD stockpiles in Iraq, especially given the fact that Saddam had a massive secret police and intelligence organisation whose job it was to prevent people from finding about things he wanted kept quiet?
Posted by PaulL, Thursday, 23 June 2011 10:29:30 PM
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PaulL,

You watched the YouTube video I gave the link to above (again at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k3GuVTfWLw ) haven't you?

Have you seen "Fair Game" which is a factual depiction of the US Government's deceit of its people and of the rest of the world to justify the invasion of Iraq?

If you had seen either you would know that Hussein's past use of chemical weapons against Kurds and Iranians at a time when the US, particularly Donald Rumsfeld (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUPb-3zkh0c) was on good terms with Saddam Hussein did not form part of the US's case as to why it was necessary to invade Iraq in 2003.

It was claimed by the US Government that it was necessary to invade Iraq because Iraq was building nuclear weapons with uranium imported from Africa. "Fair Game" shows that the US Government knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that Saddam Hussein's program to build nuclear weapons was broken in the 1990's. They knew from Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame's journalist husband, who went to Niger to investigate claims that large shipments of Uranium were being sent from Niger to Iraq that no Uranium was being shipped from Niger.

The claim that there was a risk of Iraqi nuclear weapons was a lie.

Given that it was already known that the US had lied about the circumstances which led to the earlier 1991 war against Iraq (the "incubator babies lie" (http://911review.com/precedent/decade/incubators.html) and US ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie's role in setting up Iraq to provide the US with a convenient pretext to attack Iraq (http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/ARTICLE5/april.html) then the US and Australian surely owed the public that they place the WMD claims under closer scrutiny. Instead they, particularly the Murdoch media, unquestionlingly pushed the lies being peddled by the US Government in 2003.
Posted by malthusista, Friday, 24 June 2011 1:54:13 AM
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Apologies for the error of omission in my previous post. The word 'newsmedia' should have been included in the last paragraph. It should have been written as follows:

Given that it was already known that the US had lied about the circumstances which led to the earlier 1991 war against Iraq (the "incubator babies lie" (http://911review.com/precedent/decade/incubators.html) and US ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie's role in setting up Iraq to provide the US with a convenient pretext to attack Iraq (http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/ARTICLE5/april.html) then the US and Australian newsmedia surely owed to the public that they place the WMD claims under closer scrutiny. Instead they, particularly the Murdoch media, unquestioningly pushed the lies being peddled by the US Government in 2003.
(ends)

What is being fed to us today about Libya and Syria by the Murdoch newsmedia, the Fairfax press, the ABC and even much of the supposed 'far-left' and 'alternative' media are no less lies than what was fed to us in 2003, 2001, and 1991.

For the truth about world events I recommend, amongst other sites, http://globalresearch.ca . If you find the articles as helpful as I did, then please consider making a donation to Global Research (as well as to OLO) before paying to cross any paywall to read lies.
Posted by malthusista, Saturday, 25 June 2011 11:29:44 AM
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