Newspapers Reconsidering Google News

News.com ran an article earlier in the week talking about the somewhat strained relationship between newspapers and Google. Google's stance is firm: 'We don't pay to index news content.' Just the same, newspapers with an online presence are starting to reconsider their relationship with Google, the value of linking, and the realities of internet economics. Talk of paying for content, as well as ongoing court cases, has observers considering both sides of the issue: "While some in newspaper circles point to the Belgium court ruling and the content deals with AP and AFP as a sign Google may be willing to pay for content, Google fans and bloggers interpreted the news quite differently. To them, it was obvious that the Belgium group had agreed to settle--even after winning its court case--because they discovered that they needed Google's traffic more than the fees that could be generated from news snippets. Observers note that with newspapers receiving about 25 percent of their traffic from search engines, losing Google's traffic had to sting."

Comments

"Wall Street Journal" is the right model.

[reporter]

The conflict between the newspapers and Google is due to financial issues. With nearly 100% of news being free, newspaper revenue is declining rapidly. The newspaper companies just want Google to pay them for the free news.

However, Google has no legal obligation to do so. Google is not causing the newspapers to lose money. Google is just a pointer to the news. The news organizations are the ones who actually provide the news -- for free.

So, the solution is obvious. The "Wall Street Journal" (WSJ) has already implemented the solution: charge for news. The readership of the WSJ has declined little since the start of the Internet Age. Revenue has also been relatively stable.

Now, look at the "Los Angeles Times". Every bit of news and opinion at the "Times" is free. Why would anyone subscribe to the "Times" when she can get the news for free?

Re:"Wall Street Journal" is the right model.

[yelvington]

Everyone talks about newspapers going under, but you never hear anyone (seriously) talking about the AP or UPI going under.

UPI went bankrupt years ago and has changed hands several times. The company that now owns the UPI brand actually is an agent of the Unification Church (also known as "the Moonies"). Hardly any newspapers use UPI these days.

The Associated Press is a cooperative owned and controlled by American newspapers. The AP has gone through a massive restructuring over the last several years as it scrambles to adjust to the realities of news distribution in an age when distribution is near-free. Demand for its core services from its owner-members is declining as those newspapers themselves shift from global to local content focus. Many editors of smaller newspapers are contemplating dropping the AP entirely. They're not ready to do that, but they're thinking about it.

As for the Wall Street Journal's economic model, it's not relevant to a discussion of general-circulation newspapers.

WSJ sells essential business information to subscribers who don't pay with their own money (they typically use company expense accounts). No general-interest local newspaper anywhere in the world has been able to make such a model work in its own market. Local civic news may be essential to the function of a democracy, but that doesn't mean anybody wants to pay for it.

Old models and old assumptions -- such as those advocated by "reporter" -- do not work today. Newspapers that do not change their fundamental approach to coverage are losing audience to other media choices that didn't exist 20 years ago. Attempting to charge for content only accelerates that loss.

I don't mean that newspapers are doomed, but those that fail to change and adapt to the new environment are doomed. The ones that adapt can thrive. But the necessary changes are not small and a lot of people -- including many older subscribers -- aren't going to like those changes.

Large newspapers are at highest risk, as they are unable for economic and cultural reasons to cover the kind of hyperlocal news that might rescue their falling readership numbers. As their circulations sag they become perilously close to catastrophic failure of their mass-media business model. You can't run a mass medium if you don't have mass.

Small newspapers, neighborhood-level newspapers, are extraordinarily strong. And there's significant growth in free-circulation newspapers both in the U.S. and international markets.
So this is not a problem of print versus electronic distribution. Print still works. But old assumptions about content and business models do not work.

I do this for a living. I'm a strategist for a newspaper company, and I do not advocate blocking Google from spidering local content. I do advocate blocking the spiders from wire feeds, which we have done for years using a robots.txt directive.

Google home page, javascript dependant?

[Secrity]

I just verified that my javascript was turned off and went to google.com. I didn't find that anything required javascript.