Ann Woolner: Newspapers must control internet 'parasite'
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There was a time, not long ago, when whoever wanted to use a news story for commercial purposes would actually ask the newspaper's permission. They might even pay for the privilege.
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There was a time, not long ago, when whoever wanted to use a news story for commercial purposes would actually ask the newspaper's permission. They might even pay for the privilege.
As outlandish to the Google generation as typewriters, the idea was that newspapers owned their content. And why shouldn't they?
They pay reporters, photographers and editors to produce news stories. They spend huge sums to send journalists into the world's danger zones. Then there is the real estate, the buildings, the equipment needed. None of it is cheap.
And yet when I sat at my desk in Atlanta and Googled for the latest news on Obama and Guantanamo Bay, up came links and snippets of stories produced by the Kansas City Star, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Miami Herald and other news organisations. I didn't pay for the stories. And, for the most part, neither did Google.
You wouldn't expect General Motors to give away its cars to Toyota. But we have come to expect all the news in the world at the touch of our fingertips, brought to us mostly by search engines and aggregators that gobble up the product often without paying the producers a penny.
Thanks in part to a steady diet of free food, Google has grown into a worldwide giant while newspapers have had their guts hollowed out.
That isn't the only reason, not even the main reason, newspapers totter on the brink of extinction. To some degree they have cut out their own guts.
Profit-hungry publishers kept trimming staffs, downgrading the product and shrinking circulation areas long before the internet started sucking away ads or sucking in content. At the same time, publishers ignored the potential the internet offered for a cleaner, cheaper, quicker news delivery and cost-efficient want-ads.
But that still doesn't mean newspapers should have to continue giving search engines and news aggregators a free ride. It is in no one's interest for news organisations to collapse. Who would cover the news? The blogger next door?
If you eliminate straight news from journalists backed by newspapers or broadcast organisations, the internet has very little professionally produced, straight news reporting.
The internet has commentary and analysis, search engines and aggregators.
This sort of thing "leeches that reporting from mainstream news publications," as former Baltimore Sun reporter David Simon put it this month before a Senate subcommittee.
"The parasite is slowly killing the host," testified Simon, author and writer of the HBO series The Wire.
While journalists and entrepreneurs look, belatedly, for a way to make journalism work online, newspapers are going bankrupt, their staffs shrinking.
Without the host, what will happen to the parasite?
"You have to have some kind of compensation for the use of content that amounts to journalism, or otherwise you're not going to have journalism," says Bruce Sanford, a media lawyer in Washington with Baker Hostetler.
News organisations already have it within their power to force a sea change by claiming ownership over that which is already theirs.
Search engines and news aggregators are probably within the law in offering headlines, snippets and links to news stories. That is, no doubt, fair use and permissible under copyright law.
When they want to display more, as Google does with Associated Press stories, for example, they get licensing agreements and pay.
But even to offer those snippets, Google electronically scoops up all the content on every website around and stores it on a database. That isn't fair use, even though Google doesn't show the data to others.
Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker says all that newspapers have to do to prevent Google from copying their websites is to opt out, either wholesale or on a story-by-story basis.
Some do. Most don't.
But if all of them opted out, the search engines, the aggregators and their readers might realise that news is worth paying for. It could help save a critically ill and critically important industry.
* Ann Woolner is a Bloomberg News columnist.
Taken from the New Zealand Herald
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Comments
The news industry, like the music industry, has to accept that times have changed. If they want to survive they must accept the new technology is not going to go away and use it to find new ways of generating revenue. Looking back on the past will not change the present.
"Taken from the New Zealand Herald" - is this a joke, then?
There are very few traditional sources of news that I'd miss if they were gone. In fact The Independent is the only one I can think of. Journalism has allowed itself, on high, to become heavily contaminated by biases. While British media sources can be expected to wear moderately political shades, willingness to forego journalistic integrity is, to me, as offensive as a doctor foregoing the Hippocratic Oath. If we cannot trust traditional journalists to give balanced accounts, why do we need anything more than the plethora of freely accessible internet bloggers?
The industry is indeed critically ill and in many ways it's sad to witness its demise, but when journalists are being censured for their honest and heart-felt middle-east reporting, in demonstrations of blatant foreign political cowardice and wholly unacceptable media bias, I genuinely feel there is little left to save.
The most essential aspects of traditional journalism, that are at risk and that are worth saving, are those of investigative reporting and exposes such as we have seen from the Daily Telegraph in recent weeks. Perhaps this invaluable journalism is the platform on which Ann Woolner is standing, but if she is indeed sourcing strength from the DT's endeavour, she is no less guilty of "leeching" as those she accuses.
Newspapers have been caught on the hop, being far too slow to establish themselves in the new media environment. It isn't the first time this has happened. Christie's probably wishes it had been as quick off the mark as Ebay, but it wasn't. Them's the breaks, as they say.
If all of the mainstream news providers opted out, then the void would be filled by the online-only news providers, who would I'm sure gleefully fill that hole and take a larger slice of the online advertising revenue pie.
Leave it to the market.
If you eliminate straight news from corporate press releases carried unblemished by newspapers or broadcast organisations, the newspaper industry has very little professionally produced, straight news reporting.
I don't know why you do this, you don't make any money from me (I use the Adblock plugin in my Firefox browser to block adverts) but you keep on providing me with up to-date news stories that are usually written to a high standard.
I'm going to keep on reading your website for as long as it keeps going. I'm not sure how long you can afford to keep doing this but please carry on.
As an afterthought, did you have any business study or commercial justification for producing and maintaining this website? How does it fit in with your business plan and does it make any contribution to profits in any way? Does anyone know? I've got lots of similar questions, do you have any answers?
I blame it on the government with their need for control. They seem to have got it into their heads that 1984 was a manual as opposed to warning (which is very odd considering the dark, ironic atmosphere of the book) and that we are not real poeple with hopes, dreams, aspirations and decision making capabilities (some of even have analytical skills) and that the only think to do is exert control over us minions. (Because, of course, the only point of 'us' is to provide 'them' with cash so that they can pay for moats and what-not). This seems to have spilled over into media and banking.
[Incidentally, those are three professions which are *generally* filled with 'upper middle' class who are able to fund work experience (via parents, naturally) and eventually get a job in the industry. This (perhaps among other things) seems to provide them with a sense of entitlement. A sense that we, the little people, are just pawns to manouvre in between lunchbreaks and home-time.]
In real life, what they need to realise is that WE are the clients. WE decide what news we want and how we want it. WE decide who looks after (yeah, that's right, 'looks after'; not 'STEALS'!) OUR money and how WE want our country to be. Practially, a governent to consist of a whole country is ludicrous, so we elect those that we think are up to the job to work FOR US.
If media can't keep up with the times then that's not my problem. There are a lot of people that can and there are a lot of ways to get news other than buying a newspaper (isn't there Indy? The New-Zealand Herald always has good articles, right?)
Your business model is flawed. I am your customer. If you continue to refuse to update your business model I shall go somewhere else. This is almost an instictive way that businesses run and why 'the media' thinks it's exempt from that is beyond me.
Ann, I thank you for your resignation from the post. You see I am looking for the vacancy as a reporter and I have a PC with the antivirus. No Send No Forward without my saying so.
I tried to control the parasite, my Ed told me, ?You need all the comments, blogs and natty grittiest to make your head think. If you do not, you go.? Then I realised the value of the think tank that comes from these parasites or the cockroaches and rats and mouse. Any idea what you lose. To start you lose me, a very red haired youth of 70, rich as Dowdy Fayed. Who is in Canada, swimming in the warm paint or white as Dr. Fu Manchu told him? This is great energizing paint. Obama want him to paint his house whit and he sent Dr.Whoose to paint the roads white. The Canada refuse this offer saying the snow melts faster. Now if I do not give you this parasite, you have nothing, I mean nothing. First, control yourself then others.
I thank you
Firozali A.Mulla