Newspapers Face the Prisoner's Dilemma With Google

Hugh Pickens writes "Nicholas Carr has an interesting analysis of Rupert Murdoch's threat to de-list News Corp's stories from Google and Microsoft's eager offer to make Bing Murdoch's exclusive search engine for its content. Carr writes that newspapers are caught in a classic Prisoner's Dilemma with Google because Google's search engine 'prevents them from making decent money online — by massively fragmenting traffic, by undermining brand power, and by turning news stories into fungible commodities.' If any single newspaper opts out of Google, their competitors will pick up the traffic they lose. There is only one way that newspapers can break out of the prison — if a critical mass of newspapers opt out of Google's search engine simultaneously, they would suddenly gain substantial market power. Murdoch may have been signaling to other newspapers that 'we'll opt out if you'll opt out,' positioning himself as the would-be ringleader of a massive jailbreak, without actually risking a jailbreak himself. There are signs that Murdoch's signal is working, with reports that the publishers of the Denver Post and the Dallas Morning News are now also considering blocking Google. In the meantime, Steve Ballmer is more than happy to play along with Murdoch because although a deal with News Corps would reduce the basic profitability of Microsoft's search business, it would inflict far more damage on Google than on Microsoft."

Comments

What?

[haderytn]

What is a newspaper?

Re:What?

[Norsefire]

You joke, however, contrary to what you read on here, the print media industry is thriving. A lot of people prefer the newspaper format and brick-and-mortar companies prefer brick-and-mortar advertising (think supermarket chains et al., they have no reason to advertise on the internet) so they shell out thousands in advertising. As a geek working in the industry, I wish Rupert would throw himself under a bus as he's giving us a bad name.

Re:What?

[mrsquid0]

A newspaper is something that you pick up from the seat next to you on the subway so you can pass the time by doing the crossword.

Re:What?

[Darkness404]

Yeah, and if you look at the demographics who like newspapers they are almost overwhelmingly older. Talk to a 20 something and ask them if they read the newspaper, most will just laugh at you. In about 80 years, just about anyone who likes reading a newspaper now will be dead. Mix that with the fact that even older people who like newspapers are finding out about the internet and getting more news from there means an accelerated death for print. Yeah, print advertising will probably stick around but the newspapers simply aren't the place to get information for national or world news anymore. Local newspapers in small towns will stick around for longer than national newspapers but there just needs to be a few good blogs about the area and soon the newspaper has free competition.

Re:What?

[sakdoctor]

A newspaper is fire-lighters in sheet form.
Usually the paper is printed with troll articles, flame-bait articles and advertising.

Re:What?

[AniVisual]

A newspaper is several sheets of paper that have news printed on them. Compare television news, Google news, blogs and CMSs that provide news.

Re:What?

[roguetrick]

I gotta tell you, the supermarket chain I frequent, Giant Eagle, is quite comfortable with presenting their weekly sale information in an electronic format, along with a variety of other services.

Re:What?

[fullgandoo]

What is a Google? How is it related to news?

But seriously, I've never used Google to search for news. I have a list of all my favorite newspapers (and news sites) bookmarked in my browser. Is this not what most people do? I would expect this to be the default behavior if you wanted to move from paper based newspapers to Internet based.

Re:What?

[otter42]

Yeah, and if you look at the demographics who like newspapers they are almost overwhelmingly older. Talk to a 20 something and ask them if they read the newspaper, most will just laugh at you.

If you asked someone that 10 years ago, it was the same response. And they, for sure, weren't getting their news online.

Not saying you're wrong, just that your example could be better chosen.

Re:What?

[LWATCDR]

Newspapers have several issues to deal with.
1. Craigslist is killing them. Classified ads had to be a huge income stream. I know that just a single help wanted ad in my market was well over $100 and we are not a big market.
2. Costs. They are expensive to print and deliver.
I have not gotten the paper in years. At best they are worth it for the coupons but a web based or even better yet a mobile based way to get them would be much better. Plus my local supermarkets are now using direct mail to send those to me.
I hate the format of a paper. It is too big to be easy to read. The pages are huge and most of it I just don't care about.
The one thing I have to say that I miss is local news but I get that from a website now.
Now here is what I wonder. How much news comes through Google? I tend to just go to CNN.com or tcpalm.com to get my news. I almost never search for news. I doubt that I will head to Bing anytime soon so yes I think this is all going to be a disaster. Will Microsoft be willing to pay everybody to jump to Bing? And will a few hold outs make some big money being the news source on Google and also being on Bing?
Seems to me that is the risk they news services that do this run.

Re:What?

[jcr]

What is a newspaper?

It's an outdated information distribution technology, which is in its death throes as we speak. Collections of articles were printed on paper, and distributed from printing plants to a network of retail outlets, and also to children (paperboys) who would deliver them to customers' homes.

-jcr

Re:What?

[bazorg]

It's the reading material with adverts they give away for free at Tube stations.

Re:What?

[jcr]

Craigslist is killing them.

To be precise, their costs are killing them, because they can't compete with superior alternatives like Craigslist and other online advertising services.

-jcr

Re:What?

[cthulu_mt]

The company I work for monitors and analysis the print ads that are published around the US. Most mid and large chains (Grocery, Drug, Mass) now publish their weekly circular online. Most also email the ads to customers or send notices when the website is updated.

Our company is making a significant investment in tracking these online ads and not for nothing.

P.S. If you shop at a large grocery chain its about 1 million dollars that changes hands each week for the items in ad.

Re:What?

[nanoflower]

I think the same could have been said 50 years ago or even 100 years ago. Most of the population isn't that interested in reading that much whether it be a newspaper or a book. The fact that the information is even easier to get now (on the computer) doesn't seem to be changing things as the general populace seems to be as clueless as ever. So newspapers will slowly fade away due to better mechanisms becoming available like online distribution where it's easier to update stories, or one day soon we may see electronic papers where you get a sheet of a plastic like material that displays the stories and is easily updated for a small fee. Something that combines the easy access to the news with the feel of holding the paper in your hand.

Re:What?

[mcvos]

One of the fastest growing Dutch news papers is directly aimed at 25-35 year old men who get most of their news online. I love it. It's a format that works well.

Re:What?

[L4t3r4lu5]

You've clearly never been to a fish 'n' chip shop.

Re:What?

[c_forq]

I don't think this is true. I am a twenty something, and I remember that 10 years ago most people I went to school with didn't have the internet. 14 years ago a vast majority of my class only used the internet from school, and school and the library were their only option. If you look at my school today I don't think there is a single household without internet, and a vast majority have high speed connections. Where I work I know of 3 people in the warehouse who didn't have an internet connection until this year and only got one for their kids but now are using it all the time themselves. The penetration rate is WAY higher than it was 10 years ago.

Re:What?

[remmelt]

...while Google's search engine 'prevents them from making decent money online... There is only one way that newspapers can break out of the prison...

Or they could find other ways to make money with news online in this new century. Looking at the Netherlands, nu.nl (Dutch online newspaper, started out as a news aggregator, employs its own journalists now) is doing fine. Bailing out of Google is bad for traffic, even if Bing would start to see more users. If there's something that newspapers do not want, it's less traffic to their sites. So, if they're not stupid, they'd find some other way to make money and just stay listed in the Google index (and with Bing and all the others).

That's a big "if", though.

Re:What?

[ColdWetDog]

One of the fastest growing Dutch news papers is directly aimed at 25-35 year old men who get most of their news online. I love it. It's a format that works well.

I see. So. I think the general discussion is about newspapers. Not the thinly disguised escort service fliers that you pick up in most cities.

Re:What?

[tee-rav]

In about 80 years, just about anyone who likes *anything* now will be dead.

A more important problem for newspapers is that their readers do not fit well with most advertisers' target demographic. People beyond a "certain age," have declining disposable incomes, but even before that their purchasing preferences have ossified to the point where advertising doesn't sway their spending habits. Coupled, these two phenomena suggest that newspapers will increasingly become vehicles for medical coupon distribution. Live readers are nice, but if their purchases are few and their habits are stable, advertisers aren't going to spend money to reach them.

Re:What?

[LordVader717]

Certainly not a search engine. Google uses algorithms to index only content which they already put up for free.

They cannot prevent Google from doing this. While they do comply with the Robots Exclusion Protocol, if they see that it is being abused only to inflict commercial damage to them, they might just decide to ignore it.

Murdoch isn't concerned about the profitability of newspapers, he's driven many of them to ruin with his loss generating dumping prices for years.

Re:What?

[geminidomino]

...flame-bait articles...

Isn't that what fire-lighters are for?

Re:What?

[BrokenHalo]

Will Microsoft be willing to pay everybody to jump to Bing?

Microsoft can do whatever deals they want with Murdoch and his friends, but the simple fact at the moment is that Bing is rather a poor example of a search engine, and people will vote with their mice.

Every so often I try using Bing (in an attempt to be fair), but the relevance of its results is at best equivalent in to what I remember as typical of AltaVista back in in 1997. That's just not good enough. If the guys at Microsoft want Bing to be a serious competitor to Google, they're going to have to try putting some serious work into their product.

Re:What?

[mcvos]

I see. So. I think the general discussion is about newspapers. Not the thinly disguised escort service fliers that you pick up in most cities.

Maybe it's because I live in a city where escort service fliers don't need to disguise themselves thinly?

Re:What?

[TheLink]

The ones I went to didn't use newspapers either ;).

Re:What?

[BrokenHalo]

Exactly. The only newspapers worth buying are the big fat weekend offerings. You can light a fire every day for weeks with just one of those.

Re:What?

[Enderandrew]

I just left a newspaper because all they were doing was repeatedly laying people off and giving out paycut after paycut. They talked about how they were doing better than most newspapers in the country, and yet revenue kept dropping more and more each quarter.

I know that some newspapers faced bankruptcy for other reasons (The Chicago Tribune Company's equity was mortgaged for bad real estate deals) but we kept hearing about paper after paper going into bankruptcy.

I've seen several magazines stop printing as well. Wired (fantastic magazine that every ./er should subscribe to) talks about how even they are struggling a bit these days.

Where exactly do you get the idea that print media is doing well?

Re:What?

[twotailakitsune]

Most "paperboys" are not kids. It is a little hard for a kid to walk 10+ miles with over 700 papers. Delivering them in under 6 hours too. Hack, I deliver about 300 in a little area (about 1 km). about 2/3 of the people are ages 20-40. Most of the 1/3 are 60+. In the last year, the price for the paper has gone up 50%, people have to ask for the TV guide thing. But most of the lost in people are older people (the 60+). While I don't read a lot, I have seen stories in the paper that did not show up on TV, or the internet till days later, and this is from a 2 time a week paper. We still need news papers for local news. We do not have the blogs needed to deal with all local news yet, or Bloggers willing to dive into a story, interview, hold peoples feet to the fire.

Re:What?

[bmo]

"Note for Americans and other city-dwelling life-forms: The rural British, having eschewed central heating as being far too complicated and in any case weakening moral fiber, prefer a system of piling small pieces of wood and lumps of coal, topped by large, wet logs, possibly made of asbestos, into small, smoldering heaps known as "There's nothing like a roaring open fire is there?" Since none of these ingredients are naturally inclined to burn, underneath all this they apply a rectangular, waxy white lump, which burns cheerfully until the weight of the fire puts it out. These little white blocks are called firelighters. No one knows why." -Terry Pratchett&Neil Gaiman "Good Omens"

--
BMO
             

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you missed the point. The parent was not arguing with the actual thesis that more people are getting their news online. The argument was that 10 years ago twenty-somethings still weren't reading newspapers, regardless of whether or not they had internet access. Speaking as someone who was twenty-something ten years ago or so, I tend to agree. I didn't read newspapers as a general rule, and even though I did have internet access, I didn't use it to get news either.

Re:What?

[MikeFM]

Scrap the darn things. I don't go to their sites anyway. I certainly won't pay to do so. They're usually biased fluff pieces anyway. I might pay for some journal sites that carry real information but only if they could work out a really transparent (no sign-up, no login) micro-payment system.

Re:What?

[chabotc]

The fact that the comment has been modded insightful instead of funny is quite telling isn't it.

One thing I do wonder about, with many high profile news stories (michael jackson, hudson plane crash, iran uprising, etc) they are first reported on social sites, if the newspapers no longer wish to contribute to the open web, can we also ask them to pay for that content that they are 'stealing from tbe web' ? I mean by Murdoc's reasoning those leads must be worth some serious cash right?

Re:What?

[Tim C]

I live in London, and here there are a couple of free newspapers that are handed out by people outside stations, or left stacked in stands in the stations, etc.

Sometimes I pick one up, sometimes I don't. This week I mostly have, and have found that of the major news stories, most of them I've already read online. That's not to say that the experience was a waste of time, as there is stuff in there that's interesting enough to read that I'd not encountered, but the big stuff I'd read the previous day.

That said I've never bought a newspaper regularly.

Re:What?

[ckaminski]

A perfect example of this is my Dad, a luddite of the highest caliber. He asked me the other day that he'd heard he can get the print version of the Boston Globe on the Kindle. I nearly had a heart attack.

He's older, but he knows that some things may be better. And the $10 price/month of the Globe via Kindle versus the $60/month home delivery price, is enough to pay for a Kindle in a year.

Re:What?

[ckaminski]

Craigslist has already done in organizations like the Wantadvertiser which used to be HUGE in my area (New England). And Google could probably sue the whole lot of them for collusion if they do try to do this.

Google already gives publishers a way out of caching pages. It's in their own best interests to take advantage of the capabilities the googlebot gives them.

Re:What?

[ckaminski]

Bing is okay if you're doing the top-10 actions on the web. Shopping, buying plan tickets, booking hotels, and searching wikipedia. It's when you get into the esoteric searches that it's weaknesses show. I'd probably compare it more to yahoo in 2001 than altavista, but it's no substitute for Google.

Re:What?

[ckaminski]

I use reader.google.com and have RSS subscriptions to all the AP wireservice feeds from AP.org.

Newspapers? I only read those when I'm visiting my parents eating breakfast at the kitchen table.

Re:What?

[j00r0m4nc3r]

A newspaper is something you line your pet gerbil's cage with.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

"In about 80 years, just about anyone who likes reading a newspaper now will be dead."

  In about 80 years, just about anyone who likes reading now will be dead.

  In about 80 years, just about anyone who likes breathing now will be dead.

In about 40 years, newspapers will lose even more money because the people who like reading them now will read the same edition over and over thinking it is new each time.

Re:What?

[hrimhari]

Agreed. I myself only used to read the newspaper 10 years ago because it was there (somebody else bought it), but wouldn't go out of my way to buy it.

Nowadays I appreciate having something in paper media to read now and then. I find it visually more comfortable for some reason, or maybe it's just nostalgia. Either way, I don't see myself paying more or less for it if the news itself got more or less accessible.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it printed on rolling paper by any chance? ;)

Re:What?

[Triv]

I read the New York times every day. I'm 28. I know I'm in the minority, but I get things from a paper I don't get from a website or an rss feed. It's portable, it's easier on the eyes, it's got a crossword puzzle in it I can do with a pen and all that tactile stuff, but also it's better for my brain - the 'net is good at giving me information I'm looking for, but it blows at giving me information I didn't know I needed until I read the headline. I learn more from 15 minutes reading the paper on my commute every morning than I would get from an hour in front of the computer. YMMV.

Re:What?

[zippthorne]

The big irony there is that Craigslist sucks, and apears to have no intention of improving. The page is visually noisy, and the navigation scheme wheren you drill down by state is archaic and inconvenient for those of us small state'rs and border town'rs.

Craigslist is killing them, without even really trying.

Re:What?

[cababunga]

a really transparent (no sign-up, no login) micro-payment system.

You mean when they take your money and you don't even know about it?

Re:What?

[toriver]

You pirate you.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

pr0n?

Re:What?

[metamatic]

All those things are easily fixed. Read the NYT or news source of your choice on a portable e-ink device, and keep a book of crosswords around if you really miss them.

Re:What?

[Keeper Of Keys]

If you're right, then we probably have better informed 20 year-olds than 10 years ago. Then again, everyone is better informed now.

Re:What?

[mister_playboy]

Not every website needs to incorporate a bunch of Web 2.0 bullshit. /. could learn a thing or two from Craigslist about simplicity.

Re:What?

[jcdill]

It's not Google that should sue them, it's the government. It's tantamount to price fixing which is illegal because it hurts consumers.

Re:What?

[Keeper Of Keys]

Oi! I read newspapers and am still in the prime of my life, you insensitive clod. I also have more disposable income than I ever did, and it will likely increase when my kids start to leave home.

Doesn't mean I am swayed by advertising, though.

Re:What?

[Triv]

And why bother walking to the store on the corner for milk when you can hop in the car and drive?

It isn't the same. Partially because I want to be able to leave the thing on the train when I'm done with it for somebody else to read, partially because paper feels good in my hands and plastic doesn't so much, partially because I like turning actual, real pages, and partially because I don't want to fiddle with a gizmo, or really have anything to DO with a gizmo, at 7am.

I spend all day and a good portion of my evenings in front of a computer or a TV; I want to spend some small amount of time every day not interacting with things with batteries. I want to have less crap in my pockets, not more.

Re:What?

[ShieldW0lf]

Propaganda like Murdoch's should be dropped on our head free of charge from military aircraft, the way they do in the middle east. It would show more integrity.

Re:What?

[ghostis]

Amen.

Re:What?

[masmullin]

I would argue that you don't need any of it. It's debatable whether news media really makes better democracies.

Re:What?

[masmullin]

I think "The Economist" is doing rather well right now (I dont feel like digging up the citation sry). I think its about the only print news media doing well though.

disclaimer: I dropped my subscription to The Economist this month because the "paper" shows up in my mailbox a week after printing.

Re:What?

[HiThere]

From my individual point of view the large newspapers and media channels have destroyed their rationale for existing by lying to me and careless neglect of verification of the data that they could easily have done. (Both/and, not either/or). There are local newspapers that I still trust moderately.

I've been on site (sight?) of a few news events which I later saw covered on the TV, or by a newspaper. Without exception I have found the stories to be grossly, almost grotesquely, distorted. I presume that the news I can't check on is no more reliable than the news that I have been able to check on. I no longer trust ANY media to report accurately. Occasionally by comparing two or three independent sources I can determine a few features of what probably happened.

N.B.: I said distort. AFAICT the media rarely resorts to direct lies, except where they are quoting someone, and even then it's often a lie by omission. But there are a tremendous number of incoming signals. I've seen a single building on fire converted in a news story into an apparent conflagration spreading over much of a city. (In this particular case, that was basically laziness. There were, indeed, numerous buildings on fire, they just didn't bother to photograph any except the most photogenic one. Even so they vastly overstated the degree of the disaster.)

Re:What?

[Shadow Wrought]

I've seen that too. I don't know if it is laziness, intentional, or if they just don't understand what it is that they are reporting.

As for Murdoch and his lot: it's not like they are the only ones reporting these stories. If he removes his sites, the same stories are still going to be covered by dozens of other sources. You would need all of them to migrate away from Google, and that just won't happen. Too many others will see the opportunity that Murdoch either cannot or will not.

Re:What?

[donstenk]

Which one is that? Do they have an online version?

Re:What?

[Keeper Of Keys]

For stuff I didn't know I needed to know I use Reddit.

Re:What?

[Keeper Of Keys]

Google could probably sue the whole lot of them for collusion if they do try to do this.

I wonder if this is true. It sounds like Murdoch is wary of something like this transpiring - if the OP is correct about his plan, which does make sense of his otherwise insane-seeming statements. But what law precisely could apply to this? The papers wouldn't be forming a cartel, just agreeing on a new business practise for their sector.

Google already gives publishers a way out of caching pages. It's in their own best interests to take advantage of the capabilities the googlebot gives them.

So it would seem. robots.txt gives site owners the ability to exclude specific bots by name. If they all excluded just the googlebot, Google would have to obey or be slapped with an infringement suit, though they might then have a case for anti-competitive practises. But if each news site only allowed through one specific bot, with which they had a business agreement, I can't see they'd be breaking any law.

Re:What?

[Keeper Of Keys]

I thought they were orders to save a Vogon's grandmother.

Re:What?

[brianosaurus]

Well you were the one who originally called it a "newspaper", instead of an "escort service flier". Perhaps its not a disguise, but rather just a misrepresentation. A newspaper is more about the content, than the physical medium, though it is their adherence to the physical medium that is leading them to inevitable failure.

In Portland, and several other cities, a new publication has popped up recently called "Busted". Its printed on news-stock, and is simply page after page of mugshots along with the person's name and the offense they were arrested for. I've bought it a couple of times for $1 an issue, which is more than I've spent on actual newspapers in the last decade. Its entertaining, trying to guess the crime based on the picture, or seeing common facial traits of people arrested for possession of meth, or picking out which DUIs were still totally wasted when their picture was taken, etc.

I wouldn't call "Busted" a newspaper, but its certainly a niche publication that can survive on printed media, or at least long enough to make a quick buck before the novelty wears off. As more newspapers fail, I suspect more of these sorts of publications (Busted, Dutch escort fliers, etc) to pop up. A newspaper could offset its losses from reduced circulation by printing these small-batch publications in their off-hours. "Busted" is maybe 10 sheets, and sells for about double the price of the local Portland newspaper, which has several sections each day. The small publications are making way more money per issue, using far fewer resources, than the long-standing, "respected" publications. Newspapers, much like the horse-and-buggy and compact discs, have a limited future. By repurposing their brick-and-morter to fulfill niche markets, a small number of them can "hang on". Even vinyl records survive today; in the hands of a skilled DJ (and for douchebag "audiophiles" ;) there is no substitute.

So while your "newspaper targetting 25-35 year old males" might be thriving, it is probably not thriving on the news. News delivery is much better served by other sources.

Having said that, F News Corp. I usually turn to online editions of British news outlets for real stories. American "journalism" has gone severely downhill, particularly as the Internet has taken over. While a newspaper is no longer relevant for time-sensitive stories, the ability to disseminate information instantaneously over the Internet has greatly reduced the quality of information. In the salad days of print media, when you broke a story, your article beat the competition by at least a day. Scoop enough stories, and your paper would get a reputation for getting the news first, and circulation would increase.

If you "scoop" a story on the Internet, you might beat your competition by a matter of seconds, or maybe minutes. The old metric of getting the news first is not as important as it used to be. Quality should be more important, but the news outlets do not seem to have made that shift. By adhering to the old metrics of being first, news outlets are in a constant state of urgency, publishing rushed articles as quickly a possible. CNN, Fox, Yahoo, MSNBC, local newspaper websites, etc, all post the same AP, Reuters, and celebrity publicist news feeds verbatim as soon as they hit the wire. Instead of journalists researching information, checking facts and writing responsible articles, we simply have reporters and automated systems relaying the raw information as quickly as they possibly can without any regard for quality, accuracy or truth.

We end up with situations like the "Balloon Boy", where 15 minutes of fact checking could have saved the whole world from weeks of annoyance over what ended up as nothing. Instead we had all of the media outlets trying to get the first interviews with the family, and filling days of airtime with the same meaningless video loops, on the off chance that something might eventually happen so they could report it first. However every news outlet had report

Re:What?

[Keeper Of Keys]

They cannot prevent Google from doing this. While they do comply with the Robots Exclusion Protocol, if they see that it is being abused only to inflict commercial damage to them, they might just decide to ignore it.

They would be instantly charged with copyright infringement; there is legal precedent for this (can't be bothered to look it up though).

Re:What?

[Patch86]

No, it really is shit. I live halfway between 2 major towns, but too far from either to conveniently pick up any purchases. My own town has no microsite of it's own. So, I have to search the individual different craigslist site for each of the surrounding areas and scan by eyeball in the hope of catching a local ad by chance.

Could be easily improved by ditching the "every town has a site" model and just going with a "location of ad" and "miles from postcode" system, like just about every other ad posting site I've ever seen.

There are 100 other improvements they could make.

Re:What?

[jcr]

The big irony there is that Craigslist sucks, and apears to have no intention of improving.

Tell me about it!

I know the woman who put Craig Newmark on the map, and she's told me how he basically dragged his feet on every change they ever made. Talk about an accidental millionaire..

-jcr

Re:What?

[Crypto Gnome]

It's portable, it's easier on the eyes, it's got a crossword puzzle in it I can do with a pen and all that tactile stuff

So what you're saying is that THE INSANELY FEW young people today who still *read a news-paper* will DROP THAT HABIT like a hot-potato once a sufficiently portable and readable touchscreen-enabled eReader becomes affordable? (which , at this rate, will be 2010 or perhaps 2011)

Re:What?

[mcvos]

Which one is that? Do they have an online version?

nrc.next (that's the official spelling, I believe). Their online edition is a blog.

Re:What?

[mcvos]

I wouldn't call "Busted" a newspaper, but its certainly a niche publication that can survive on printed media,

There are a lot of publications that survive very well on printed media. Magazines aren't going anywhere. The don't all publish their stories online for free, and there's no reason why the demand for their stories would suddenly disappear. Besides, paper is nicer to read, easier to take with you as you hang on the couch, ride on the train, soak in the tub, etc.

The big problem with newspapers is that long ago they used to be the bringers of breaking news. Radio and TV are already faster than newspapers for bringing breaking news, and with the ascent of internet, breaking news is just not a viable market for newspapers anymore.

So while your "newspaper targetting 25-35 year old males" might be thriving, it is probably not thriving on the news. News delivery is much better served by other sources.

Breaking news, yes. But there's a lot more to news than that. There's background and analysis, and the quick, short AP/Reuter stories online aren't so good at that. They require thought and research.

My newspaper doesn't tell me what happened yesterday, because I already know that. They tell me why it happened, what the different aspects to the story are, and what details the online sources missed. And quite a bit of background info, nicely summarised, in case I missed the events of the past couple of years that led to this.

While a newspaper is no longer relevant for time-sensitive stories, the ability to disseminate information instantaneously over the Internet has greatly reduced the quality of information.

Exactly. And that quality is what my newspaper tries to add. It doesn't try to compete with online news, it tries to complement it.

CNN, Fox, Yahoo, MSNBC, local newspaper websites, etc, all post the same AP, Reuters, and celebrity publicist news feeds verbatim as soon as they hit the wire.

Note that my newspaper does that too. But it doesn't put those stories on the front page. The bottom half of page 3 can fit 8 tiny headlines with a paragraph of content each. Starting page 4, you get big, double-page stories of background info and analysis, which is where the real strength of the paper lies.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

the 'net is good at giving me information I'm looking for, but it blows at giving me information I didn't know I needed until I read the headline.

I don't think that's true. You see those same headlines (and probably more) when you read the article online. I hardly ever go to a specific news website's homepage; most things I read are because I saw the headline at the top of my gmail account, or at the side of another article I was reading.

Re:What?

[Triv]

It isn't true for you. It is for me. If I have a paper in my hands, I flip through all of it - arts, culture, international news, business, sports, whatever. I might not READ all of it, but if something catches my eye that, for whatever reason, piques my curiosity, I'll read more and maybe learn something. Online, I need to actively want to look for international news. It isn't in front of me, it's a click or two away, and in terms of an attention economy that's two clicks farther away than I want to be.

It's possible that someday they'll figure out how to replicate the browsing experience of a newspaper on the internet, tactile goodness aside. And for the way I read the paper, the solutions out there aren't good enough. Glad it works for you, though.

Re:What?

[Nazlfrag]

You say that like it will be an open and shut case and not dragged out in the courts for years.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe there's a difference between Europe and the USA, or between cities and the country, but I'm a university student in a fairly large European city, and when I'm on the train in the morning, almost everyone above high-school age who isn't chatting with someone else is reading a newspaper. It's almost always one of the free newspapers they give out at all the train/metro stops.

There are three or four free newspapers, each with different political orientations, and some owned by the same companies who produce the old pay newspapers. They're smaller than the pay newspapers, but still have the main news stories and some opinion -- enough to read during a commute or during coffee/between-class breaks. They're also profitable and growing, from what I gather, because they reach a lot of people, so can charge high enough prices for advertisements. The pay newspapers are shrinking, and often lose money.

At my university, some of the newspaper publishers also give away copies of their pay newspapers, so some students read them between (or even during) lectures and classes, but the free newspapers still seem to dominate. I'm not going to pay to have a newspaper sent to my flat every day, or buy one in a shop, but I read the free ones all the time.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it isn't price fixing. Murdoch is just signalling, not colluding.

If all the news publishers got together and decided to agree a price that search engines would have to pay to index their sites, that might be considered price fixing. However, given Google's dominant position, even that isn't clear. One of the things that makes a monopoly or monopsony less harmful is concentration on the other side, so competition authorities might view a news publishers' consortium as helping to reduce Google's market power.

As long as Murdoch is just signalling, none of that comes into play anyway. What he's basically trying to do is signal to other publishers that he's willing to block Google if they do, without entering the murky legal waters of actually making any agreements with other publishers. If enough pull out of Google within a small enough time frame, Google's market power in news distribution will be broken, and it will have to start paying for news content. At that point, there will be no reason for any news outlet to let Google index its content for free, so no need for collusion.

Re:What?

[pipingguy]

I hate the format of a paper. It is too big to be easy to read. The pages are huge and most of it I just don't care about.

There are two main formats: broadsheet and tabloid. In the popular meme, usually only the "undereducated, blue-collar" class read the tabloids, while the "more educated" prefer the other.

From Wikipedia:

Connotations

In some countries, especially Canada, UK, and USA, broadsheet newspapers are commonly perceived to be more intellectual in content than their tabloid counterparts, using their greater size to examine stories in more depth, while carrying less sensationalist and celebrity material. This distinction is most obvious on the front page: whereas tabloids tend to have a single story dominated by a headline, broadsheets allow two or more stories to be displayed, the most important at the top of the page - "above the fold." In other countries, such as Spain, a small format is the universal for newspapers - a popular, sensational press has had difficulty taking root - and the tabloid size has no such connotations.

Re:What?

[MikeFM]

Absolutely. With automated controls I can set up.

Re:What?

[LWATCDR]

Then do it and become rich.
Actually the solution is for the person doing the posting to cross post in both towns.

Re:What?

[Patch86]

Why would they? If someone lives in a big city, why would they cross-post their ad in all the microsites within a 50 mile radius, just on the off chance that some poor person lives halfway between them and any given neighbour?

And more importantly, why should they? This is the 21st century- websites should have this sort of problem solved.

I Don't See the Comparison, More Like MLB Strike

[eldavojohn]

When it comes to Google and other aggregators, newspapers face a sort of prisoners' dilemma. If one of them escapes, their competitors will pick up the traffic they lose. But if all of them stay, none of them will ever get enough traffic to make sufficient money. So they all stay in the prison, occasionally yelling insults at their jailer through the bars on the door.

So ... the original prisoner's dilemma (if I recally my AI coursework) was basically comes down to two or more prisoner's arrested as suspects in a crime. They are immediately separated into different interrogation rooms. The police officers use every trick they can to get any of the prisoners to lay claim to committing the crime and receive a plea bargain if they testify against the other suspects. If no one caves, then everyone walks. Now, the important thing to note here is that if one suspect caves and the other n-1 suspects don't, then that suspect receives a sub-optimal reward of a lighter sentence while those that did not own up to the crime receive very harsh penalties. And so you have a dilemma ... did one of your crew rat you out already? Should you take the guaranteed three months in prison versus a potential ten years?

The important thing is that one rogue actor could ruin it for everyone.

So the analogy seems to imply that newspapers have taken a suboptimal goal (being in jail) ... but the most important problem is that no one knows if the current situation is a suboptimal goal or optimal goal. And no one's going to find out until they leave Google. If a single newspaper leaves Google, they ruin it for themselves (unlike the prisoner's dilemma) and no one else. In fact, the others might even benefit from that.

What this is a closer analogy to is the MLB strike you may (or may not care about) remember. Basically the baseball players didn't think they were making enough bank so they went on strike. If anyone of them said, "Screw it, I'm leaving the league, I'm going to literally take my bat and ball and go elsewhere," then they would have been broke. But the whole league went on strike, they could have formed a new league, they could have went to a different league, they could have entered talks with the European league to open leagues in the US, etc.

The newspapers should continue to court Microsoft and play the two search leaders off against each other. Also, I'm no robots.txt expert but I think there is a disallow from certain domains syntax they can use to block Google, Microsoft or white list one of the two. Another strategy might be to go on strike and have all newspapers request to be removed from Google for one week. Let the system break down and then enter negotiations with the giant.

One thing is pretty clear, they must unionize/unify and act as a single entity in either leaving or negotiating. And I don't really see that happening. They might be able to negotiate between Microsoft and Google on a case by case basis but Google is still too much larger than Bing to do that.

No Dilemma

[headkase]

There is no dilemma, there is only change. The Internet is a tsunami that is roaring over all aspects of our society. In the content industries it is clearing land for some while washing away the livelihoods of others. It is a force of its own. You can manage somewhat as you go but one thing is certain: it is now impossible to stop it, we have passed the tipping point. You might as well curse the wind, or you could adjust your sails to the best of your abilities.

Re:No Dilemma

[El_Muerte_TDS]

WTF are you talking about? Where is the car?

Re:No Dilemma

[Anonymous Coward]

A sailboat is sort of like a car, only without wheels.

This is similar to the RIAA

[filesiteguy]

Unfortunately, it seems the newspapers can't make money. (I know I haven't bought one in years.) As such, they're turning to desperate measures in their death throws. It is sad, since future generations may or may not be able to look up information as readily in newspapers which are not sufficiently archived.

Re:This is similar to the RIAA

[sakdoctor]

Critically wounded animals are the most dangerous. Stand back or get clawed and bitten.

Re:This is similar to the RIAA

[geekoid]

I buy the Sunday paper because my wife clips the coupons, and my kids like the comics. My kids are young, and I like the fact that the newspapers comics will have a pretty well defined boundaries.

Re:This is similar to the RIAA

[Anonymous Coward]

On the bright side it means that archival institutes, like the British Library Newspaper Library, will be able to plan their storage spaces to fit 1750 to 2020.

Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean all those stupid sensationalist entries will disappear from my Google news page! Great - can't wait!

Re:Great!

[roguetrick]

Yeah instead you'll get bloggers interpretation of news stories on the front page. Haha.

Re:Great!

[segedunum]

Obviously you're not familiar with the news 'content' from Fox and other News Corp satellite businesses.

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's fine with me as long as I can get commentary from experts on that given topic, of the quality of Schneier or Michael Geist. Who would you rather use as a source on ACTA, a Journalist fresh out of a broad-based two-year collage degree program, or a well respected expert in the field? I'll choose the blogger.

Re:Great!

[roguetrick]

He was complaining about sensationalism. My point is, there will be plenty more of it.

Inflict Damage?

[The Yuckinator]

Really? Losing links to the various News Corp sites will "inflict damage" on Google's business?

Really?

Re:Inflict Damage?

[Walzmyn]

Exactly. When I look up a news story on Google, I don't give a damn who is reporting on it as long as it's not the onion or something site.

If any of these news papers opt out of Google, we'll all be opting out too. I'll just go to whatever newservice is still there on google.

Re:Inflict Damage?

[digitalgiblet]

I think the "inflict damage" comment meant if a MAJORITY of news sources pulled out of Google, not just News Corp.

I didn't wriite it, I'm just trying to interpret...

The point of the article is that unless virtually ALL of the news sources leave at once, the result will really just be that those who are left will profit by the others voluntarily removing themselves from the competition.

Personally I think it is a gutsy but stupid move...

Re:Inflict Damage?

[Anonymous Coward]

By switching from Google to Bing, newspapers will just be going from the frying pan into the fire. Now Google is working to the mutual benefit of both, but Microsoft has a long history of crushing and absorbing anything they are involved with. Maybe Murdoch should have an investigative reporter do a report on this before making his decision.

Not Quite...

[Anonymous Coward]

If a critical mass of newspapers opt out of Google's search engine simultaneously, then a critical mass of newspapers will all see their traffic drop significantly. Newspapers are FAR from the only source of news on the internet. Delisting on Google will just allow others to gain more marketshare.

Last gasp of the newspaper

[SuperKendall]

If newspapers opt out of google, they will opt out of existence - already few people want to use them for news anyway, making them harder to ever read or find will just destroy readership further.

Re:Last gasp of the newspaper

[mrsquid0]

This is the key issue, "few people want to use them for news". The way for newspapers to survive is to stop trying to provide up-to-the-minute news and concentrate on in-depth, reliable reporting. Newspapers are idea for covering local issues that do not get the attention of big media. They are also ideal for sports news and providing a forum for informed debate. The big strength of a newspaper is that there is a gate-keeper to prevent rubbish from being published. If newspapers can take advantage of that they can not only survive, but prosper. If newspapers simply try to out-internet the internet they are doomed.

Re:Last gasp of the newspaper

[tixxit]

few people want to use them for news anyway

I'm sorry, but where else would you go for news (especially local)? Yeah, some blogs are fairly informative, but many cite newspapers. Most blogs are run as spare-time projects by people with day jobs. Newspapers are run by people who do it for 8+ hours a day. I think the readership decline has much more to do with apathy then the internet.

Re:Last gasp of the newspaper

[Anonymous Coward]

So the should become magazines? It was not long ago that Gourmet failed. The rest of the industry is on life support. This is a temporary solution at best.

Re:Last gasp of the newspaper

[Anonymous Coward]

The big strength of a newspaper is that there is a gate-keeper to prevent rubbish from being published.

Unfortunately, this does not seem to be true in practice, which might explain the decline in readership ...

Re:Last gasp of the newspaper

[geekoid]

"They are also ideal for sports news and providing a forum for informed debate."

Newspapers? No, all the top sports info is online. Except small local sports.

"The big strength of a newspaper is that there is a gate-keeper to prevent rubbish from being published. "

No.
There is a gate keeper not allowing anything outside certain boundaries from being published.

In depth reporting might be how the survive. By survive I mean 'sell content' not necessarily sell printed content.

The difference between free and a penny is much larger them people ever imagined.
I'm pretty cheap, but ehre is what I would pay a small amount of money for:

1. In depth reporting
2. Good journalism. (min bias, interviewed people, gathering of facts)
3. Follow up to stories
4. Smart website that it design to be advantageous to the reader.

That's all. I don't need some overly groomed Ken and Barbie telling me the 'news'.

Re:Last gasp of the newspaper

[mrsquid0]

Compared to blogs and much of the citizen reporting that is found online newspapers are still very good at weeding out the rubbish. The problem is that a lot of people only want the read things that confirm their own preconceptions, and are not interested in learning anything that challenges them. On of the big problems with online news sources is that people can customize the new that they receive to the point that they are essentially in an echo chamber.

Re:Last gasp of the newspaper

[abigor]

http://www.economist.com/

Re:Last gasp of the newspaper

[gfreeman]

few people want to use them for news anyway

I'm sorry, but where else would you go for news (especially local)?

TV & Non-newspaper news websites.

Re:Last gasp of the newspaper

[Anonymous Hermit]

I think many people who did like to read newspapers recognized that it is a very wasteful way to deliver news in the information age.

Re:Last gasp of the newspaper

[HiThere]

I'd pay a bit for that, if it covered what I was interested in, but how do you convince me that you're offering it?

These days I read New Scientist, Scientific American, a couple of Linux mags. (sometimes), Slashdot, Groklaw, and entertaining fiction. I'd like something of the quality of Groklaw covering national politics...but I haven't found it anywhere, neither in print nor on the web.

And if I catch you lying to me, I won't pay you a penny from then on.

Somebody mentioned the London Economist. I read an issue of that, and it wasn't bad. But it wasn't covering what I wanted covered. (Not too surprising.) You might see if it's what you want.

Re:Last gasp of the newspaper

[tixxit]

Or they read them on-line now.

I for one would welcome...

[Smegly]

...my mainstream media free google news search hits. Let me support some motivated, independent amateur investigative reporters... I have had waay enough of the corporate parrot news line for the self-proclaimed "professionals".

NPR, BBC anyone?

[onionman]

Maybe, just maybe, consumers who value actual news over sensationalized claptrap are finding that the opinion pieces and "human interest" stories which dominate Murdoch's offerings are fungible commodities.

Good bye Wall Street Journal. You were a reputable publication at one time.

Re:NPR, BBC anyone?

[Xest]

This is why the viewpoint in the summary is flawed. I do not believe for example that the BBC would be allowed to delist from Google due to laws governing it because it's publicly funded and can't show competition bias.

I doubt the BBC is unique in this situation either, and the reality is for every thousand companies that delist from Google and follow Murdoch, there'll still be a BBC picking up the search results.

Users wont stop using Google, they'll just pick whatever the first result is on a search whether that's Fox, or the BBC and again, there'll always be the BBCs of the world there.

Re:NPR, BBC anyone?

[roguetrick]

I must be one hell of a liberal, because I actually do get most of my news from NPR, BBC World Service, NYT, and slashdot.

Re:NPR, BBC anyone?

[Nexus7]

Firstly, the WSJ editorial pages are propaganda tools, so I assume you mean the news and analysis pages. As far as those go, I have come across people who will name drop it during discussions, but I work in finance, and these are probably people who decided early on they were going into finance and read it religiously since 4th grade or something. Anyhow, they are a minority of the people I know. In general however, nobody goes around quoting WSJ, if they can quote the BBC ad (although less so), NPR. I know NPR is affected by cutbacks, and is quite shoddy compared to the BBC; but to say that the WSJ has more credibility than the BBC? Not in my world. Do they even have correspondents in 25% of the places the BBC does? Do people in far off countries gather around a radio and tune in to the WSJ?

Re:NPR, BBC anyone?

[jedidiah]

NPR may be biased but it will at least give me a nice bulk of information. They will give you enough information so that you can cut through the hype yourself an make your own decision. Given enough depth, the bias of the reporter doesn't really matter. This was the great thing about Buckley.

The quality of content should nullify the bias of the author. If it doesn't, then it's just superficial yellow journalism actually intended to increase ad revenue rather than inform.

Re:NPR, BBC anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Wall Street Journal has a lot more credibility than NPR or the BBC ever had.

Only to nazi fuckwads like you, Rupert!

Re:NPR, BBC anyone?

[xtracto]

Well, for one the majority of people do not pay the corresponding license tax for the BBC.

People from outside the UK cannot legally use the iPlayer to watch BBC shows. So, in a same way the BBC news could cut their supply of free news to people outside the UK

Re:NPR, BBC anyone?

[mcvos]

I must be one hell of a liberal, because I actually do get most of my news from NPR, BBC World Service, NYT, and slashdot.

You pinko liberal commie! Why do you hate freedom so much?

Re:NPR, BBC anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you had any idea how the BBC is funded, managed and operated, you might be worth listening to, but evidently you do not.

Re:NPR, BBC anyone?

[geekoid]

What if the BBS could De-list from Google and serve only UK residence? If Murdoch was able to figure out how everyone could build there own walled garden, why would the citizens of the UK want to pay to give information to people outside the UK?

Re:NPR, BBC anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Turning news stories into fungible commodities, since the Earth began! Now on Fungal!
Since human interest stories probably dominate the emo-fluctuations of the stock market, Wall Street Journal offering softy, mushy articles is very fitting.

Re:NPR, BBC anyone?

[gfreeman]

I seriously doubt they'll do it for that reason because they rake in money to cover international readership by displaying ads to those who are browsing from outside the UK.

Re:NPR, BBC anyone?

[gfreeman]

Because UK citizens do not pay to give information to people outside the UK.

My non-UK based reading is paid for by the ads that the BBC charges to be shown on pages being read by non-UK web users.

Re:NPR, BBC anyone?

[Xest]

A few reasons:

- If you access the BBC from outside the UK, ads are displayed which likely makes it cost neutral alone

- The BBC run a commercial arm for overseas business that subsidises the UK operations making it cheaper for UK citizens in terms of license fees whilst retaining high quality, the website helps advertise the BBC's prescence

- Contrary to bad press, a lot of us UK citizens are sharing folk and I don't think to be honest anyone apart from the most racist/xenophobic people (i.e. BNP/UKIP members) has a problem with people overseas accessing the BBC website, sharing is caring! As a license payer I would have no problem with the idea of people in different countries accessing content even if I am footing the bill and the ad revenue doesn't cover it. That said in a way it does benefit us I guess, at the bottom of many BBC articles you'll see a form asking if you were at an event and whether you have images or information about the news event, by letting foreign people participate, they can also provide information to editorial staff making news better for us, as well as them

- Finally, to a lesser extent, the BBC unofficially acts to spread ideology of freedom and so forth, hence why it attempts to counteract for example anti-Western Iranian propaganda in Iran via a satelite service to bypass state control of media. Whilst it is by no means a propaganda machine (the government etc. has no power to mandate what the BBC broadcasts), it does at least try to put the Western viewpoint across where it is under-represented just as the likes of Al Jazeera attempt to put the Arabic viewpoint across in the West for example

Re:NPR, BBC anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to add that there is also e.g. the "Deutsche Welle" which has the explicit purpose of informing foreigners and Germans not living in Germany, and I am sure even the BBC at least in part has the purpose of representing the UK and its views to foreign countries and I seriously doubt that most countries want to give up the diplomatic advantage it can give you to have "your side of the coin" readable worldwide.

The Newspapers Have it All Wrong

[garcia]

When the newspaper corporations continue to spout how the visitors brought in by the search engines are worthless because those people are drive-by visitors, I have to wonder about their content. If someone is brought in by a search engine they should be considered an opportunity. If you are not taking the time to ensure your design and content are meant to draw those opportunities into a goal, well, I think you're looking at this from the wrong way.

This is yet another reason why the newspaper industry just doesn't get it. Google gets it and so do the consumers. Microsoft doesn't get anything more than the bone they are being thrown.

I wish people would stop reporting on this story as, honestly, it's just a lame attempt at getting attention.

Re:The Newspapers Have it All Wrong

[L3370]

This is why newspaper co.'s are dying. They want to stick to the old ways and refuse to try and jump on the oppurtunity search engines give them.

Personally, I don't want to spend hours reading an entire newspaper, or wade through mountains of data on a news site just to get the news that I want. Back before internet was in common use I had to do that. Not because I wanted to but because I had to. Now that I can search for very specific bits of news I will not waste my time doing things the old way. If news corporations want me to waste more time on their papers or news sites they will have to do something drastic--like improve the quality of the articles or report news ACCURATELY. Until then, those that can take advantage of the convenience Google provides will have my undivided attention.

Re:I Don't See the Comparison, More Like MLB Strik

[jonbryce]

I don't think Google will care in the slightest if all the newspapers removed themselves from its index. There are still plenty of online only news sites, specialist media sites and so on that Google can point to. If people know they want to read one of Rupert Murdoch's offerings, they would go there direct, not via Google, and most Google customers aren't going to go to Yahoo or Bing to compare the search results they get.

Relevancy

[Erich]

Isn't Google an AP licensee?

So even if Google doesn't index, say, the Wall Street Journal, can't Google still get the same news contributions form the AP newswire?

Or is there something special about AP license terms or something?

Re:Relevancy

[WinterSolstice]

I think I recall seeing something about that.

I don't know about most people, but I stopped reading the major newspapers (even online) late last year when they became nothing but AP parrots with weird spin jobs.

I mean, I know they were always AP parrots before, but it got *really* bad with the economy. The obsession with very specific stories is completely out of hand.

I'll stick with just the direct AP feeds, thank you.

Re:Relevancy

[RivenAleem]

So, like, Google could just let Murdock stuff himself and report the news themselves? Or they could buy a news reporting agency like they bought youtube and deliver a rival service and then eliminate all the other news reporting sites from searches.

That would be fun

Re:Relevancy

[Jason Levine]

I happen to prefer Google reporting the news that it gets from various different sources. This way it is very easy to see multiple angles on the same story. Let's face it, every news organization spins stories in different ways (some more than others). If you looks at various sources reporting on the same story, you can get a better idea of what the spin is and where the truth lies. If Google were the only news reporting agency on Google News, I don't think I'd continue using it. After all, then Google (like all news agencies) would spin stories and users would have no way of telling what the spin was.

Re:Relevancy

[John Hasler]

> ...users would have no way of telling what the spin was.

Most users want a particular spin (which they insist is the "truth"). They refuse to read sources that do not apply the correct spin (and this applies just as much to liberals as to conservatives).

Re:Relevancy

[Johnny Mnemonic]

That's exactly the problem with Murdoch's tactic. With the deal between Murdoch and Microsoft, Google would be losing access to only the unique stories generated by News Corp. That uniqueness is less now than it has ever been, and is of dubious value to boot.

Murdoch thinks that his brands have value unto themselves. Of course, they don't. People just want the content, and all things being equal they'll get it from the cheapest provider of that. Right now the cheapest provider is the AP, and unfortunately for Murdoch his stories are largely and mostly equal to what people get from the AP.

Murdoch, and really all of the other news services, have another solution--provide interesting, relevant, and unique news content that people are willing to pay for. Too bad for them, that's hard and expensive to do. Their other option--to reprint AP stories--means that are no more valuable than acting as an AP redistributor. That used to have value in the past, when the source of news was the printed page. However, now there is no longer any value to that, since the AP will give that content to Google and Google will redistribute it for free.

never happen

[Weezul]

Will the BBC join? No! So international news is hopeless. Do people care about local news?

What if google endowed a nonprofit news organization? Or just bought wikinews the rights to use AP feeds?

Re:never happen

[saintsfan]

Hard to say what companies will do when money is on the line, although I'd like to believe they wouldn't also.

I would think Google cares whether an industry is not coming up in their search results. That said, there surely is a way to get standard feeds like you said.

People around here and probably across the US care about local news A LOT. Old saying "all new is local". However, I don't think searching Google is the way for people to get a lot of this local news. I think they go to their city's news website and read the headlines or favorite sections. I think the contradiction is when there is breaking news, and people search key terms. But then again, most breaking news can be found by going directly to the front page of these websites. That said, it seems like a moot point. Besides, Bing can't pay everyone. On a side note, I've seen people search their wesite instead of using the address bar for whatever reason, but the top domain will still come up.

Re:never happen

[Jason Levine]

Google News already pays the Associated Press for the right to post AP news stories on their (Google's) site. (Example picked at random: Climate debate heats up Caribbean summit http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hMngtnyb69v5U96jDSem6I5cT0vwD9C7TQPO0 ) Of course, those articles appear *ON* Google.com instead of simply being a title/blurb pointing to another website. It really sounds whiny for Murdoch (and other newspaper execs) to say "Google is sending us millions of people but we don't know how to make money off those people so we want Google to stop sending us those people!"

Re:never happen

[bheer]

> Will the BBC join? No! So international news is hopeless. Do people care about local news?

Actually, in America, people care primarily for local news. But TV affiliates aren't threatening to delist from Google and those cover local news too. But yes, for world news, there's the BBC, Deutsche Welle, Al-Jazeera, NPR, CNN, Xinhua, IBN... ol' Rupert has delusions of grandeur if he thinks himself indispensable. Hell, betcha foxnews.com and skynews.com *won't* delist, because they're not a newspaper.

> What if google endowed a nonprofit news organization? Or just bought wikinews the rights to use AP feeds?

Great point. In fact, the Christian Science Monitor (good newspaper, no Christian Science bias) is a non-profit org, is online-only 5 days a week, and has correspondents all over the world (doesn't only rely on AP/Reuters). And in fact Google pays AP to host AP news.

Re:never happen

[cthulu_mt]

Old saying "all new is local".

That's actually "All politics is local." Tip O'Neill

Re:never happen

[makomk]

Don't worry. In return for the support of Rupert Murdoch's papers, the Conservative Party (who will almost certainly be running the UK in a year's time) are planning on crippling the BBC - especially its online presence.

Re:never happen

[JasterBobaMereel]

My on-line news consists of

BBC Online - for "proper" Local and International News

Various blogs for Tech and Science news

Newpaper sites are not in my favourites and I do not visit them ... full of Flash, Ads, and difficult to navigate as they are

Re:never happen

[drizek]

The sooner big American media delist themselves and deprive themselves of mindshare, marketshare and revenue, the better.

I like Google News because it forces me to get my news from a variety of sources. You click a headline and you can be taken to any one of the worlds newspapers

Re:never happen

[Anonymous Coward]

Similarly the CBC is subsidized by the Canadian taxpayer. Additionally, they are always looking for mass approval to protect the government subsidies. I doubt they would take their baseball and go home.

There are enough of these examples to help make the dilemma impossible to win for the newspapers.

Re:never happen

[Anonymous Coward]

Why wouldn't the BBC join? Allowing content paid for by the UK taxpayer to be effectively acquired for free by (often foreign) advertising firms like Google, and then redistributed for profit (through advertising) back to the UK public and to foreign markets, doesn't exactly fit with the public service aims of the BBC. If advertisers want to profit from content paid for by the UK taxpayer, then they really ought to pay the taxpayer for it.

Re:never happen

[Weezul]

It's true that conservatives are really stupid the world over. The BBC's strength gives the British viewport enormous worldwide influence, so weakening them will hurt Britain's economic and political power.

The BBC however produces such high quality programming, unlike Murdock, that they could ask foreign readers and viewers to contribute through pledge drives, ala American PBS, although how much income that produces depends upon numerous factors.

Re:never happen

[Weezul]

I still say google should buy wikinews an AP feed. AP's license isn't compatible with wikinews, but wikinews could just adapt to multiple licenses, once the story was sufficiently rewritten, the AP license would no longer apply.

Please To Explain...

[Shuh]

In the meantime, Steve Ballmer is more than happy to play along with Murdoch because although a deal with News Corps would reduce the basic profitability of Microsoft's search business, it would inflict far more damage on Google than on Microsoft."

So how would a deal with News Corps reduce the basic profitability of Microsoft's search business?

Re:Please To Explain...

[sznupi]

In several previous stories Murdoch apparently wanted money from search engine for the "privilege" of directing internet users to his stories.

"Reverse Adsense", if you will...

Re:Please To Explain...

[geekoid]

Because MS would be paying for the opportunity to have exclusive rights to Murdoch crumbling empire.

Re:Please To Explain...

[Anonymous Coward]

MS is paying NC without any guarantee that it will make them any profit in near future.

Biggest lemming run in history

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

This is going to be as funny as hell.

Re:Biggest lemming run in history

[Citizen of Earth]

It will be even funnier when Murdoch gets dragged into antitrust litigation for leading an anti-market collusion racket.

Hope

[headkase]

There is reason for hope however. Like all complex systems we will find a new equilibrium until something like this happens again. We are in the transition period right now into the Information Age. A new order will establish itself but because of the stochastic nature of the process we do not know what it will be. Also, there will be a much higher frequency of bifurcation throughout our fabric as a whole. But overall the equilibrium should be stable. If you knew where to look these things are apparent. I'm not being snide, I've read stuff and I'm sharing it with you to explore. Research and prove you are right too.

Re:Hope

[postbigbang]

One would hope that there might be equilibrium, as though this were an algebraic equation to be balanced. It might not be such an equation. What may turn out is something completely different.

Any of the search engines is likely to 'respect' robots.txt. Not doing so has a grey area of possible penalties. The newspapers have had a formula that's been around for centuries. It boils down to global, regional, and local news, coupled to features and driven by copy sales and ads. Classified ads are now eaten by Craigslist and others. Display ads and special sections/'custom media" are what remain for many newspapers. That's dwindling, too.

So is there an added value beyond comics and coupons? Perhaps not very much. Not enough to fund traditional printing presses. The equilibrium you cite may be that electronic sources dominate, with their funding ecosystems-- primitive as they are. Excluding one's publication from search engines might be fatal. There is no equilibrium with fatality.

They are a commodity

[onyxruby]

Newspapers and the news have become a commodity, they just don't realize it yet. When I can read 8 different newspapers with the exact same AP story, the differential between the newspapers becomes the experience. Newspapers are victims of their own business tactics. By removing local reporting resources, and getting most stories from the Reuters or AP, there is very little to differentiate one news source from another. Newspapers have two choices:

1. Create more original content (ie create content by hiring reporters)
2. Create a better experience for the reader (is your website pleasant to use)

Neither one of these has anything to do with Google, however surviving Google (or it's replacement) requires doing one and or the other. The fact that Google is the delivery mechanism for much of their traffic is moot. Changing the delivery mechanism won't change the fundamentals behind the issue. What newspapers need to do is learn how to keep the traffic they get once visitors find their site.

Re:They are a commodity

[symbolic]

This needs to be modded up. The problem is much more systemic than where the traffic comes from. It's like a small group of clueless idiots trying to figure out which garden hose to use to try and stop a nuclear meltdown.

Re:They are a commodity

[Goldsmith]

One wonders why the AP and Reuters allow newspapers to put their stuff online. AP and Reuters have websites of their own.

Re:They are a commodity

[BESTouff]

+1 Insightful.

That's one thing the Interweb told us, by easy browsing of different online versions of various newspapers: they now just display the same news as everyone else they just bought from a common source. In fact they're just glorified RSS readers for the AP/Reuters feed.

And then they wonder why their business model fails.

Re:They are a commodity

[value_added]

yet. When I can read 8 different newspapers with the exact same AP story, the differential between the newspapers becomes the experience.

Sigh. I don't know why I bother with reading any article on Slashdot that involves newspapers.

Your opinion, like your perspective, is embarrassingly narrow. If you think a paper like the NY Times or the Washington post is a collection of AP stories, you obviously haven't read either, and are blissfully unaware of why it is they are read.

As for "8 different newspapers with the exact same AP story", that's a bit redundant given the nature of AP, doncha think? If you're trying to make the point that "lesser" newspapers increasingly do little reporting or offer anything unique or otherwise original, well, that's another "duh". Fewer readers (for whatever the reason) means fewer people to paying for it.

Re:They are a commodity

[Anonymous Coward]

One wonders why the AP and Reuters allow newspapers to put their stuff online. AP and Reuters have websites of their own.

Because AP and Reuters are the newspapers. AP stands for "Associated Press." Emphasis on the associated.

Where did you think the newswires get all those stories from? Their vast in-house reporting staff? Newswires are a clearing house, not (generally) the producer.

Re:They are a commodity

[onyxruby]

Actually, I do happen to read those particular papers and the WSJ on a routine basis because they have more than canned AP stories. If something important is happening in the news, I like to get different takes on it, even routinely reading news sites outside the US. So yes, I can go through 8 sites trying to find a second article on something. Your baseless generalization doesn't change my point though.

My point stands, most major papers anymore offer very little to differentiate themselves from other papers. My point has nothing to do with lesser papers, it applies just as easily to the large papers as well. My own local paper has laid off dozens of reporters over the last year alone, and it is one of the biggest ones in the country.

News sites just don't get it, they are a commodity. If they want to stand out, they have to have something to stand out with. Wither you stand out with original reporting and or a better experience is up to the news source. Until news sites do that, they need to realize that the public is now well aware that one news site is typically just the same as another.

Re:They are a commodity

[locallyunscene]

When I can read 8 different newspapers with the exact same AP story, the differential between the newspapers becomes the experience ... Create more original content (ie create content by hiring reporters)

The problem is the cost of real journalism and the same duplicability you cite. If someone can summarize your well researched article and cite you as the source(which they should be able to do) then you don't have "original content" anymore. The internet has greatly reduced that time window of originality and the cost to republish.

Focusing on local news helps a bit, but you still need paying journalism for the major stories everyone's covering.

It Still Won't Work

[segedunum]

Even if what seems like a critical mass ouf publishers start delisting from Google, Google's search engine and advertising power and weight is such that other publishers and smaller news sites would simply move in and fill the void. Google might also be more than happy to get less hassle. It certainly won't work if publishers who want to delist start wanting to charge for news, and Microsoft will simply be pouring money down a drain if they pick up that slack and pay the publishers themselves.

It's a horse that won't run and the only reason why Murdoch is banging on about it is because News Corp is making some sizeable losses with no end in sight.

Re:It Still Won't Work

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if what seems like a critical mass ouf publishers start delisting from Google, Google's search engine and advertising power and weight is such that other publishers and smaller news sites would simply move in and fill the void. Google might also be more than happy to get less hassle. It certainly won't work if publishers who want to delist start wanting to charge for news, and Microsoft will simply be pouring money down a drain if they pick up that slack and pay the publishers themselves.

It's a horse that won't run and the only reason why Murdoch is banging on about it is because News Corp is making some sizeable losses with no end in sight.

Microsoft pouring money down a drain, and Murdoch making sizeable losses. Almost in the same paragraph. And I thought today might turn out bad.

Re:It Still Won't Work

[md65536]

Yes, it seems like a bad idea for both financial and legal reasons. But simply *talking* about it benefits both Murdoch and Microsoft. Murdoch calls attention to his issue and gets competitors behind him with the promise of sweet sweet cash. Microsoft gets publicity with all this talk of exclusive content on their search engine, whether or not that exclusive content ever happens. Better yet, they can talk about it all they want now, and never have to go through with a deal, so it's free.

I wouldn't doubt that Murdoch would gladly take cash from anywhere he can, in exchange for sabotaging an ailing company. But I don't think Microsoft would really want to pay as much as it will cost to buy real competitiveness with Google. I can foresee these 2 talking about a deal as much as they possibly can for the next little while, and then in the end saying that a deal is impossible for legal reasons (eg. antitrust). This allows them to threaten/advertise (threatvertise?) exclusive content on MS's search, without ever having to deliver.

tl;dr: It works as a publicity stunt.

DUPE - but not Slashdot's

[grcumb]

Carr has railed about this problem before, and he's still just as wrong as he ever was.

Here's his analysis of Murdoch's first pronouncements on the topic back in April. And here's why he's just as wrong now as he was then.

(I later turned that post into a newspaper column in the country where I live. It's longer and slightly more polished, but more focused on our particular issues, which aren't necessarily germane to the larger debate.)

All Newspapers Having This

[Thyamine]

We get the Philadelphia Inquirer and they give us the weekly paper basically for free. My wife wanted just the weekend paper for the fliers for shopping, and I don't feel like going to the end of the driveway to just pick up the paper and throw it out, but they were so enthusiastic about giving us the weekly paper for free we said ok. With that in mind, I can see how papers may feel the need to try and take some control back, however I don't see how this works unless they are hoping to just use it as a bargaining chip with Google.

When I want to look up some news tidbit, I don't want to have to go to each individual news site I'm aware of just to see if 'oh hey, maybe the Denver paper is covering this'. And even though I don't use Bing in general, I can't see people really thinking 'well, maybe I'll research this news topic on three different search engines and make sure I get a comprehensive point of view'. All I really see is this giving everyone who opts out a substantial hit in eyes on their site.

They're too big

[Anonymous Coward]

If the biggest media players cooperate like this, they will be breaking anti-collution, anti-competition or somesuch laws.

They have simply become too big to be afforded that kind of flexibility from society.

IANAL And I don't pretend to be on /. ;-)

Maybe I am dumb...

[space_jake]

How does moving off of Google to Bing make them more money? I know Microsoft is paying them but I still don't see how this beneficial. If they kill Google and Bing fills in the void marketshare wise won't they just have the same problem?

Re:Maybe I am dumb...

[John Hasler]

I suppose that they imagine that Microsoft will keep on paying them after Google is gone and Bing has a monopoly.

Re:I Don't See the Comparison, More Like MLB Strik

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you completely misstated the prisoner's dilemma, which is impressive, given you linked to a Wikipedia article for it which gets it right. Please go read that article and try again.

Neo...

[headkase]

The matrix surrounds us, it penetrates us.... But it is not there, it is an illusion. The car is our society and we are but passengers. There are only atoms everything beyond that is an abstraction and therefore relative to everything else. When comparing abstractions you can establish equivalence. My brain causes my mind. My mind is in an abstract reality of its own. So is yours. They are examples of systems. So other systems also being abstract share a reality that is as valid as yours or mine but may be of a different degree of complexity. There is only dust, we, they, and it are metaphysical.

Re:Neo...

[headkase]

Thats one way to look at Zen anyway, Japan realized it first but right now they also have a 99% conviction rate in their courts so they still have their own problems to work out... Anyway! Back on topic.

Forgive me while I stare at a shiny.

Craig Newmark

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, trading Google for Bing would be trading one evil for another. The newspapers would be screwed either way. And Google's motto, "Don't do evil" doesn't apply to Bing.

Craig ate the newspapers lunch (their classified ads) with his list. He could atone for this by setting up a news search engine that shares the profits with the newspapers.

I was searching the internet recently for some breaking news (on a Congressional Act that was due to pass that day). Google, with all of it's billions of pages, was almost useless. I wasn't interested in all of the blog posts that had been yakking about the issue for months, or the newspapers saying that a vote was coming up. A very limited search engine (invited news media only) that avoided all of the search engine optimization crap that puts useless information at the top of the list would be a boon to the internet. Craig Newmark, with his non-greedy approach to the issue would be ideal.

Of course, Rupert Murdoch wouldn't be able to understand him.

Re:Craig Newmark

[SteveFoerster]

Craig ate the newspapers lunch (their classified ads) with his list. He could atone for this by setting up a news search engine that shares the profits with the newspapers.

"Atone" suggests he did something wrong. He hasn't. Through Craig's List, he has benefited humankind more than most people could ever dream, even though the sum of that benefit is made up of a great many increments each of which is very small.

Don't let the door...

[snwod]

So, let me get this straight, Fox News is threatening to remove their "news stories" from showing up in the feeds I see at Google News? That's it? I see no problem here.

good please do it!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is great. I can't stand Fox fake news so if they voluntarily remove themselves from my searches I never have to worry about supporting them accidently by using google news. Makes it easier for me to avoid every seeing their awful content and supporting them in any way. So please do!

The ac tual Prisoners Dilemma

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite...

In the prisoner's dilemma both prisoners are facing short prison sentences for a minor crime. Each is offered a deal to go free for ratting the other out for a much more serious crime. However if both rat on each other, both go to prison for the serious crime but with a reduced sentence.

For example:
If neither talks, both get 1 year in prison.
If one rats on the other, the rat goes free, while the other gets 20 years in prison.
If both rat on each other, both get 10 years.

The dilemma is in determining the optimal answer. When iterated there is a clear answer that you should never talk because you will be punished for it. But when applied only to a single event the answer is unclear.

Still, as the parent points out, I fail to see how the situation described is in any way similar to the prisoner's dilemma. Just a bad headline by someone trying too hard to sound smart.

Re:The ac tual Prisoners Dilemma

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the assumption is that allowing Google to index your news site is like ratting. With two sources of news:

If neither rats (lets Google index their news) then both sites get the brand awareness and ad revenue.
If one site rats, then Google gets some of their ad revenue, but they get all the Google directed traffic, which is a win for the ratter.
If both rat (the current status quo), then Google get some of the ad revenue from both sources of content.

What is best for a single site, in order, is:
1. Google indexes their content and no-one else's.
2. Google indexes no-ones content.
3. Google indexes everyone's content.

The dilemma the news sites face is how to get from 3 to 2, without having competitors in position 1.

Of course, this isn't exactly a prisoner's dilemma. The news sites can communicate and make deals. The prisoners caught in the dilemma can't.

Re:The ac tual Prisoners Dilemma

[gerddie]

If one rats on the other, the rat goes free, while the other gets 20 years in prison.

Incidentally, the one who went free was later killed in a mysterious accident.

Re:The ac tual Prisoners Dilemma

[Jessified]

At first I was going to agree. But actually, prisoner's dilemma might be a good analogy. Imagine that the newspapers that don't opt out of google are the rats, and the ones that do didn't rat. This is equivalent. The best situation is to be the newspaper that doesn't opt out when others do, as that newspaper would get the others' traffic.

Re:The ac tual Prisoners Dilemma

[rsborg]

Of course, this isn't exactly a prisoner's dilemma. The news sites can communicate and make deals. The prisoners caught in the dilemma can't.

The communication part is key... if the newspapers collude through agreements that are written, then it's cartel/anti-competetive behavior -- an actionable legal offense.

If they don't... then how can you trust the other entity when there's no written agreement?

So I actually see the "no communication/agreement" as analogous to the Prisoners Dilemma.

Re:The ac tual Prisoners Dilemma

[Anonymous Coward]

I mostly agree, but I think your outcome 2 is wrong. What Murdoch probably wants is to move to an outcome where everyone's content is indexed, but Google pays something to the content owners for permission to index their content. That still isn't as good as being the sole news provider that's indexed, but it's better than having everyone's content indexed and not being paid for it.

Re:The ac tual Prisoners Dilemma

[SmilingBoy]

I don't think that news sites would be allowed to make deals. After all, these deals would be detrimental to consumers, so they would be equivalent to an illegal cartel.

The folks at WSJ seem to be dumb!

[bogaboga]

You may wonder why...

If the content they provide can ONLY be gotten from the Wall Street Journal, then Murdoch is onto something here. if not, then I am sorry they are in trouble.

Just answer me: What can I get from the WSJ that I cannot get from anywhere else?

I wish Murdoch and gang would get to it already!

[Anonymous Coward]

Murdoch and supporters are assuming that everything will remain the same after he takes his news and go home. It won't. If news organizations decide to remove their news from public view, rest assured that someone will fill the void in no time.

In fact, this stupid move may become the biggest boost ever for citizen journalism, NPR, bloggers, and everyone else that cares to do good reporting. Things will improve quickly.

Any publicity is good publicity

[tomhath]

Murdoch is a master salesman, he'll continue to milk this to generate interest for as long as he can.

A more interesting scenario would be if Google started paying for the wire feeds instead of linking to the biased rewrites of them from CNN, Fox, NYT, MSNBC, etc. But I doubt we'll see that either because the newspapers know it would hurt them even more than Google aggregating the stories.

Create their own news organisation.

[Derblet]

I'm sure Google's now big enough to get into the news business for itself. This could be a good opportunity for them.

Re:I Don't See the Comparison, More Like MLB Strik

[jDeepbeep]

Also, I'm no robots.txt expert but I think there is a disallow from certain domains syntax they can use to block Google, Microsoft or white list one of the two.

To block Google from all site pages:
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /

To block Google indexing a certain page (exchange brackets for > / <):
[meta name="googlebot" content="noindex"]

To be less specific in the user-agent line of robots.txt:
User-agent: *

No problemo

[otter42]

Alright, so some American newspapers put up walled gardens. No problem, I'll just read the foreign press. BBC does a good job, and so do many others.

Re:No problemo

[geekoid]

If they find a way to do it effectively eventually every place will do it sto some degree.

There are people in England that feel the BBC shouldn't be free to people outside of England. That can only grumble because there isn't a technically feasible way to do it practically.

There is nothing wrong with that, it's there site and the can limited.

I don't think it will ever be practical for a news source that regurgitates AP and toss there bias on top of it.

Re:No problemo

[Geminii]

Precisely. The people who read physical newspapers won't notice until the papers fold, come back from the dead, fold again, stagger back as zombies, merge with something else as they're going under for the third time, and then finally die.

The people who don't read newspapers will either get the international AP feeds via foreign internet sites, or continue to watch TV news.

Re:No problemo

[quacking duck]

There are people in England that feel the BBC shouldn't be free to people outside of England. That can only grumble because there isn't a technically feasible way to do it practically.

There is nothing wrong with that, it's there site and the can limited.

While true, that would leave their American cousins being the sole highly-visibility source of English-language news to the world, diminishing the UK's influence on the world stage further. What do they think about that? Or are they too short-sighted to see this?

Most countries use tax money to promote themselves overseas. Tourism campaigns are the most visible and more measurable in the short-term, but license fees to help broadcast BBC and UK culture around the world has a much bigger and long-term impact that a year's worth of visitors.

Re:No problemo

[Anonymous Hermit]

I guess those people doesn't see the value of spreading their language and culture globally.

... and Fear

[headkase]

You are correct. The equilibrium may not be stable. It may be a form of perpetual chaos. That would be very bad. I tend to focus on the positive. I have faith that no matter what we can work through our challenges. Even if that means returning to an agrarian society. Incidentally, I do believe completely electronic will be where it settles: it is simply the most efficient use of resources to ignore.

Re:... and Fear

[headkase]

I get ahead of myself all the time. If we were to return to an agrarian society obviously we would keep our essential systems and we would not need to stop collecting knowledge. But if Information technology spread throughout our society proves to be too much to manage as humans then we can adjust to the limits we can manage. Millions of years from now there may not be Gods walking the Earth but I have faith that we'll last for a few hundred-thousand at least living within our means. Determining our means will hurt but we have no other teacher than experience.

Epic fail

[rlp]

Newspapers seem to be doing everything possible to fail. News becoming a commodity - no problem, let's get all our news from wire services and the NYT / Wash. Post. Free opinion / analysis readily available on the web - lets move opinion journalism to page one. Readership falling - put our product behind a pay wall and raise prices.

Here's what they SHOULD be doing:

1) National / international news is a commodity. Good state and local news is harder to obtain - report IN DEPTH on state and local stories. Report real news, not opinion, not agenda driven, not drivel (hint: if your "articles" appear regularly in Fark, you're doing it wrong).

2) Lose the dead trees - ELIMINATE print and distribution costs, go entirely on-line. Support not just the Web, but mobile devices and e-reader distribution.

3) Learn from Google, make the site searchable by keywords, topics, time, and geography. Especially advertising, let me find a store selling a particular product / service at a particular time near my home.

4) Leave the "print mentality" behind - use graphics, audio, and video on news sites (without looking like someone's myspace page).

5) Community - interact with your readers - particularly on local stories / issues. Tie in with web 2.0 sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In, etc.

Re:Epic fail

[7213]

Point 5, IMHO, is the big one.

The great thing about Slashdot & blogs is not necisarily the articles or any original content. It comes from the community's self generated editorials after the fact. I have my own deeply held opinions on things, but I do find it very interesting to hear others opinions, even if they differ wildly from my own.

Slashdot & others have made an entire business out of these communities. Couple a well designed & well cultivated community driven web site to you point number 1) local news, and you have a powerful force not only for revenue generation but also for driving local politics & change.

As I get older (where did my 20s go?!?!) I'm getting more & more interested in state & city issues around me. And the sites that cater to that are few & far between, and the 'community' behind them is often horrible (if it exists at all, comment sections with 0 comments are very common).

How should Google respond?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rupert and Newscorp threatens Google that they will stop Google from indexing their websites.

Google's response should be?

CNN NEWS HEADLINE: Google stops indexing Newscorp, traffic drops 50%. Shares off sharply. Film of Rupert crapping himself at 11.

Murdoch learns what HTML is

[Sleen]

If the interviewer asked Mr. Murdoch, so what do you think HTML stands for; what would he say? Does he know what HTML stands for? The reason I ask is that I suspect he does not know the words the acronym represents. In fact based on this, I am not sure he understands what the internet is and the fact that not only are there pages, but there are links. In fact the links and relationships between information is to be considered just as 'valuable' as the information itself. Without those relationships, without the fragmentation all you have left is propaganda. Switching to Bing won't be any different, just an older asshole that yells into his speakerphone.

Fundamentally I think older people see the internet as a communication channel like a pipe, instead of a shared network. I think older people imagine something like a PSTN but with fancier features, Murdoch included. Although Google is mentioned here as some kind of adversary and drain of revenue, the rationale to block any search engine from content, is fundamentally an act to block people from content. Murdoch is against the internet.

From a thanksgiving discussion I described the continuing decline of M$ coming down to hubris, and a simple choice they made a long time ago; to be in business or to help people. Murdoch is simply in business and could give a shit about helping people. The things happening around you whether near or far is bait for advertising for the newscorp. The middlemen are indifferent and occassionally haphazard with the content so long as revenue is coming in. Rather than change, or improve the quality of their delivery there is a chance to scapegoat and rally some shared hate amongst all those who share the same folly. Its kind of like looking across a population of mixed ethnicity in a political race and asking yourself, which ones can we massacre that would make everyone else happy? Of course this only works if everyone is ignorant of your efforts to single out the 'demon', so they don't see who the real demon is.

This is a last ditch effort and they see and feel the decline coming. If they take their content off search engines, it violates fundamentally the mission of a news agency which is to reflect the world in a timely fashion without bias. Maybe they would rather setup their own prodigy or compuserve or AOL network that they own and can control.

The future of media is with individuals and aggregators and the internet is the nervous system that connects them.

China is not fond of, and is also very opportunistic with the internet. Their reasons for blocking and filtering the internet are the same as Murdoch's. Murdoch made the choice a long time ago to be in business first and help people second. That obviously came with some profit.

The news is not his any more than the world is. If Murdoch pulls his agencies from the google index, it will be a perfect expression of bias that has existed in his content all along. Others that follow suit are propagandists who would rather hiss in a closet than speak in the world.

Google already licenses the AP feeds

[brunes69]

Google already licenses the AP feeds. Click any AP story and you go to the Google-hosted AP text.

This is why this scheme is NEVER going to work. Google already licenses AP, which creates 75% of the content in all these papers anyway. Also there are many major international players, like the NPR and BBC and CBC, that will never opt out of Google, as they are not-for-profits in the first place.

The end result is everyone will get their local news from NPR/CBC/BBC, and all these newspapers will just go under FASTER.

No one will pay for news online. Give it up.

Re:Google already licenses the AP feeds

[whencanistop]

Unless Murdoch comes up with an ingenious way of reducing funding for the BBC. Say for example, striking a deal with the opposition politcal party to cover them in a complementary way in their press, in exchange for reduced funding of the BBC when they get into power.

Maybe we should ask Andy Coulson about that one (ex editor of News Of the World - a Murdoch title - and current 'Strategist' for the Conservatives). If he can buy out the UK's free source, he can buy out any other 'not for profit' options.

Re:Google already licenses the AP feeds

[Enderandrew]

Individuals won't pay for news online for the most part.

But Google will pay the newspapers. That's why it is so brilliant for newspapers to alienate Google.

Re:Google already licenses the AP feeds

[Geminii]

Of course, even with local news, there are problems.

Firstly, it costs more to go find local news using reporters than to source non-local news off the wire. So local-news-heavy papers will have more costs per page. This is bad for them.

Local news can only usefully be shared amongst other local newspapers, increasing competition and decreasing uniqueness. This is bad for them.

If the local papers do _not_ share their gathered news with each other, then if it appears anywhere online at all, it's still easily snaggable by newscrawlers which don't respect robots.txt, meaning that it's got a good chance of appearing on other sites without being paid for - and Google will blindly index those sites. This is bad for the local papers in two ways, as they not only lose the exclusivity on their expensive local news, but they then have to try and launch and fight some kind of legal battle against any newscrawler site. Even asking Google to block that newscrawler site won't mean that the next one is blocked - or the one after that. It's expensive and time-consuming.

If the local papers try presenting their content in hard-to-index forms, like bitmaps of entire pages, it will make using the site more difficult and cumbersome than other news aggregation sites, and drive consumers away to competitors. Until some newscrawler sets up an OCR filter.

They can certainly try moving offline altogether and back to just the paper format, but that's already proven to be a shrinking market. Perhaps not to "completely vanished in 10-20 years" levels, but it will slowly go the way of the buggy whip. The industry will become less and less important as a member of the Fourth Estate, and will find it harder to attract new journalists and editors. As it shrinks, more advertisers will move away from it to electronic formats, until finally newspapers are reduced to specialist minipublications with names like The Geezer Weekly.

Associated Press will lose up to 30% of its revenue as newspapers become unable to afford to license AP stories. Someone somewhere in a country which is not particularly interested in the tantrums of American corporations will start operating unpaid-for AP feeds. The AP will thrash about wasting money on trying to either kill this source or at least block it on major search engines, and will threaten to sue anyone who gets their stories from this source instead of paying for them. Some years later, they will get lucky and after a major expenditure, manage to cripple the operation. A week later, five others will spring up in its place, with additional levels of legal and technical defenses. Before they too can be wiped off search engines, major blogs will report their existence, and the search engines will index the reports for perpetuity. Some people will start using the new free services for a number of reasons - redundancy, raw access to the full feed, as a source for Web 2.0 applications, and purely because they don't particularly want a local-newssite 'spin' on things. Someone will set up a super-friendly search engine for the raw feed, and will make internet headlines on non-AP sites. AP will try and get ISPs to block the search engine and the services, either directly or by getting unimplementable laws passed. Any degree of success in this endeavour will be short-lived as the blocked sites reinvent themselves and the ISPs tell AP to get bent. AP will become a snarling attack dog that sues anything that stands still long enough. Unfortunately, it won't die a quick death as it will continue to get propped up by TV stations which still enjoy strong profits and are not agile enough to get away with using bootleg AP feeds.

AP will try poisoning the feeds and, after a few incidents in which genuine AP buyers publish/broadcast fake news and take AP to task over it, try to implement some kind of special key for its customers so they know what's valid news and what's not. Which means it will have to spend considerable time and effort to generate the fake news to a high enough

Re:Google already licenses the AP feeds

[drinkypoo]

Google paid AP because it represented an end-run around the newspapers. It was a shot across their bow, a statement that they could be made irrelevant. As has been said elsewhere, the majority of content in these papers comes from AP... and damned near the rest comes from Reuters — which Google also indexes. Ultimately, the papers derive the greatest benefit from providing google index access to articles, and then making them subscriber-only after a week or so, like several do already. To block google from carrying any of the text would/will be pure folly. The masses will not pay for news articles, and google is not going to pay for them either.

I pray that a huge number of these jackasses try to pressure google. It will be more than pleasurable to watch them fail.

Re:Google already licenses the AP feeds

[10101001 10101001]

Well, as we all know, the MSM in the US has a liberal bias. And since the MSM is a by-product of the free market, it must be the case that it is optimal for and people want news to have a liberal bias.

Of course, this just shows the free market has failed. The only solution is for socialism, a buying of major parts of the MSM by the government, to push a more conservative/libertarian bias against socialism, which doesn't work. Of course, if you're in the UK, socialism has produced an even more liberal news source, so they'll have to go back to a more free market approach which has proven to work so well in the US.

Re:Google already licenses the AP feeds

[bertoelcon]

That first one sounds like the Old Media way, and like the RIAA way too.

Re:Google already licenses the AP feeds

[Anonymous Coward]

Wire stories are the key to understanding what's going on:

The Internet, mostly, is allowing us to make more efficient versions of existing systems. In the past, you bought the Local Paper Gazette because that's what was available. The LPG bought wire stories to cover national and international news...and there was no other real way for you to get those stories. Newspapers wanted to feel like they were doing a service, so sometimes they'd adjust the wire stories a little with a few quotes from local politicians or from a local mother whose adult child was affected by the distant story.

Now, we have direct access to national and international stories from the journalists who write them. Local papers are an inefficient middle-man on those stories. Obviously, they need to cut back on the budget for re-writing wire stories because nobody cares enough to pay for it...I'm sure they're trying, but they waited until the situation was desperate to start making cuts, and now they can't make cuts fast enough. The solution for local papers is pretty straight-forward:

  - cut all duplicate reporting. If someone else is covering something and you can't cover it more profitably, cut it immediately. If you have a desk in a distant city, cut it immediately.
  - sell high-quality high-interest local stories to distant local papers...whether this means becoming part of a network or wire agency or what, turn your local coverage into a broader profit. If you don't cut it in the previous bullet, you need to sell it to someone else in addition to your own publishing
  - keep your paper as large as possible -- slash your print ad profits until they are razor thin. Newspapers have value because they cover a broad array of topics. Dad reads this, mom reads this, bro reads this, and sis reads something different...once you start cutting the comics b/c there's no ad space, and the business reporting because it's all online, and sudoku because everyone has it on their phone, you erode the perceived value and subscriptions stop. On Sunday, you want ads from every story in a 100 mile radius. On Wednesday, you want ads from every grocery store store that has at least one store in your area.

Re:Google already licenses the AP feeds

[shirotakaaki]

There is still plenty of news besides the BBC. If Murdoch does this then it will not only kill his papers but the BBC as well. I say good riddance to Murdoch and his newstainment but I do like the BBC and hope they stay around.

Re:Google already licenses the AP feeds

[laddiebuck]

That is the scariest thing I've read all year. I don't live anywhere even near Britain, but I get most of my news from the BBC, and I really admire their news-gathering and the quality of their stories.

What Dilamma?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no dilemma here! There's only dinosaur newspaper management who mistake Google as an enemy. Why would google be an enemy? What basis is there for the quote that it 'prevents them from making decent money online — by massively fragmenting traffic, by undermining brand power, and by turning news stories into fungible commodities.'
1) What money? What does Google do that prevents them from making money? List other possible sources of news? That's like saying the yellow pages prevent you from making decent money because it lists competitors that might be cheaper
2) Undermining brand power? If your brand is preserved by the fact that customers don't know the value of the competitors products, you're doing something wrong. Isn't brand power based on a quality product and service? I don't see how Google linking to you or others has anything to do with that.
3) Fungible commodities? See 1 and 2, but besides that, welcome to the world of the 21st century. We've got the internet now, and copying is punished here. Back when people had no choice, they read their favorite paper to get the news. News was a fungible commodity back then as well, but there was no sense in buying multiple papers. The internet just helped people realize how fungible news really is. If you want people to come back to your site, you have to have your own style, your own news, something that differentiates from all the other papers.

Newspapers "grew up" in a time when they had to be alike to be read. They all had to report on everything in order to compete, otherwise people would buy another paper which had "more" news. They made themselves "fungible". If you look around on the internet, there are lots of sites/blogs reporting news from really small "niches". Think of a sport, hobby or interest, and you'll be bound to find (using Google!) a website reporting exclusively on that subject. Yet despite their niche appeal these sites thrive and flourish, and the bigger blogs even generate nice profits for the owners. Why? Because they're unique, either in style or in content. Newspapers should learn from that, instead of misguidedly bashing Google.

Re:I Don't See the Comparison, More Like MLB Strik

[SmilingBoy]

You forgot about the most important aspect of the prisoner's dilemma: Whatever the others do, you are better off to confess. Typically, the dilemma is presented with two prisoners: - If both keep silent -> both get one year jail based on weak evidence - If both confess -> both get three years jail - If one confesses, and the other keeps silent -> the one that confesses walks out free, the other one gets ten years jail Now what do you do if you are the prisoner. There are two possibilities what the other one has done: - If the other one has kept silent, you will get one year jail if you also keep silent, and walk out free if you confess -> Better to confess in this case - If the other one has confessed, you will get ten years jail if you keep silent, and three years if you confess -> Better to confess in this case So irrespective of what the other one is doing, you are better off confessing. So the only rational choice is to confess. Since both prisoners face the same incentives, both will confess and both get three years jail. There is no way for them to reach the clearly superior outcome of only one year of jail for both of them.

Who?

[mapinguari]

Who is Bing Murdoch?

Re:I Don't See the Comparison, More Like MLB Strik

[b4upoo]

Wouldn't it be easy for Google or anyone else to bypass a block and use a third party to mine that data? It seems to me that as long as their data is open to one it will sort of remain open to all.

Re:I Don't See the Comparison, More Like MLB Strik

[Anonymous Coward]

In the prisoner's dilemma it is always in the suspect's interest to cooperate with the investigators regardless of what the other party does. However, if both suspects rat each other out, they will both be worse off than if they both stayed quiet.

not going to work

[khallow]

If there were only a few newspaper providers, this might work. But there's too many for cooperation in my opinion. And sooner or later (assuming generously it hasn't happened years ago) someone is going to figure out how to make money from that Google traffic. That means you'll have news providers who won't block Google traffic because it would lose them money. At that point, you no longer have the Prisoner's dilemma. Cooperation is no longer the best long term strategy.

Newsprint == Yesterday's distrubution medium

[Giltron]

News used to be primarily distributed through newspapers as a medium and each newspaper generally was distributed in a smaller geographic market (minus some of the big papers). Ad spaces were sold for a high price because of that (and I could say because of the more locally focused content) Now the Internet is the dominant distribution mechanism along with search engines like Google enabling us to find our content. The newspaper companies don't hold the power they had once. People can read national/international news stories quite easily now. The news organizations that will continue to have a healthy future will be dealing heavily with LOCAL content. (These "national" or "international" news organizations have been cutting back on this for years and its their OWN fault now). Business models change and margins on the Internet are not going to be as high EVER as they were in the TV or news print ages. You have a large potential audience, but at the same time face a larger pool of competition. This will force the price lower always unless you are providing something of REAL differentiating value.

Whats the worst that could happen?

[Anonymous Coward]

If News Corp, the Denver Post and the Dallas Morning News all are thinking about blocking google, then why don't they actually do it for a week and see what happens? All this talk about the possibility of leaving google is just that, all talk. I'm sure that bing also has sent their little robots to index these sites so if you are using bing over google then people will still be able to find your stories. But the real issue still lies with the fact that they can't just abandon the search engine with the biggest share of the search market. Not just nationally, but globally. As of October 09, google has 80% of the US market and 90% of the global market according to StatCounter Global Stats. IMHO it sounds like it is a much bigger risk for the newspaper companies to lose google than the other way around. As stated here before, there are many sources for the news other than the newspaper and their internet sites.

There is a phrase for this:

[John Hasler]

> ...if a critical mass of newspapers opt out of Google's search engine
> simultaneously, they would suddenly gain substantial market power.

It is called "a combination in restraint of trade". Combinations in restraint of trade are illegal in the USA.

Re:There is a phrase for this:

[Aldenissin]

> ...if a critical mass of newspapers opt out of Google's search engine
> simultaneously, they would suddenly gain substantial market power.

It is called "a combination in restraint of trade". Combinations in restraint of trade are illegal in the USA.

That's right, you just be you Google, and while you are just you will prevail, even if the other side just thinks they are getting up a notch. If they would just think of doing things right in the first place and not be greedy and follow their customers, they wouldn't be in the position they are in now as newspapers.

What?! It's all Google's fault?

[MadJo]

"while Google's search engine 'prevents them from making decent money online — by massively fragmenting traffic, by undermining brand power, and by turning news stories into fungible commodities.'"

- How about offering accidental readers incentive to visit your main page more often?
- How about leveraging Google's search results to boost your own brand power?

If you wait on Google to boost your own brand then you're doing it wrong.
And it's the newspapers that treat news as commodities, not Google.

Let's not lay the blame for mainstream newspapers' failure to grasp the 21st century.

Its not really newspapers verus google at all

[Liambp]

its really newspapers versus the internet and the newspapers are going to lose. If all of the newspapers together blocked google tomorrow I suspect that the majority of people using google wouldn't notice. The problem for newspapers is that they neither create nor own the news which is their major product. They are merely a distribution channel for that news. While they have served us well for many years as a good and professional distribution channel there are now so many other ways to get that same news that they are in danger of becoming irrelevant. Their only remaining market power is the fact that they offer a higher quality distribution channel than random internet posters but In the battle between quality versus convenience, convenience wins. If newspapers remove their offerings from the internet's largest search engine they make their services much harder to use and pretty much destroy whatever little market power they have remaining.

Low risk nonsense

[gx5000]

Big talk from people that see a sad future for the INTERNET.
Changing the internet from the free expression information highway to the
pay for content quagmire won't come easy, and will probably fail.

De list all of Murdoch's stuff, please, it's all biased and negative content anyways...
We'll make do with bloggers and open minded sources of "news" and "information" without
having to filter his muck. Microsoft ? well, the day we have to pay to get access to
their websites they'll see traffic drop in conjunction with online sales and profits.

It's just like the music industry, the more you squeeze the customer, the less he will spend.
I don't really think that Murdoch has a lack of understanding the net, I just think he
wants to turn it into his own view of it's potential as a direct marketing source with
complete control, something the internet isn't set up to do at the moment. The Internet is
and hopefully will continue to be somewhere we can all have freedom of choice, information
and navigation. The day they throw up pay booths we'll just start using side roads, until the
whole net turns into a line of sign two way transaction system.

I might just start running a BBS again...lolz.

Re:I Don't See the Comparison, More Like MLB Strik

[geekoid]

This is a Prisoner dilemma where at any point a new prisoner may be introduced, thus making it less and less likely it will succeed.

"Solution" or not.

[Exception Duck]

The information transfer that occurs during a game can be viewed as a physical process. In the simplest case of a classical game between two players with two strategies each, both the players can use a bit (a '0' or a '1') to convey their choice of strategy. A popular example of such a game is the Prisoners' Dilemma, where each of the convicts can either confess or defect to having committed the crime. In the quantum version of the game, the bit is replaced by the qubit, which is a quantum superposition of two or more base states. In the case of a two-strategy game this can be physically implemented by the use of an entity like the electron which has a superposed spin state, with the base states being +1/2(plus half) and -1/2(minus half). Each of the spin states can be used to represent each of the two strategies available to the players. When a measurement is made on the electron, it collapses to one of the base states, thus conveying the strategy used by the player.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_game_theory

Re:"Solution" or not.

[Rockoon]

It should be pointed out than in any 3+ person game, the optimal strategy is [B]always[/B] to team up. Strive to be in the strongest coalition, destroy the opposition to it, and when dominance is inevitable start in-fighting trying to break off the weakest pieces of the coalition and destroy them to, until its a 2-player game.

Targeted news and branding their writers

[Enderandrew]

Biased, targetted news sells well. Those are the facts. Whether you prefer Fox News or Huffington Post, people enjoy going to a news source that tells people what they want to hear.

Newspapers need to find their niche in targetting local news. Here in Omaha, the big news is stories on the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

Furthermore, I know that I am fairly agnostic about generic news, but I do search out certain authors I enjoy reading. I just left a newspaper, but I often encouraged them to do more to brand their writers. Put more photos of writers in the paper. Push those huge bylines. If someone really likes reading Tom Shatel (local sports columnist for the paper I just left) then they will specifically look for his content.

Furthermore, Google has already said they want to pay newspapers for the content they produce. Our stories already go into an AP feed that others aggregate for free. When big stories happen (our mall shooting last year for instance) we had people all over the world recycling the World-Herald's story. Some linked back, and others didn't. When the BBC recycled the story, they didn't pay the World-Herald for it. However, Google is saying they do want to pay for content.

So how is Google this evil entity that newspapers must rail against? If they were smart, they'd sign up with Google to start selling their content today, and start collecting checks. Newspapers who want to survive in the new market must transition somewhat to a content producer rather than focusing solely on selling a printed product.

Going Rogue

[turkeyfish]

"The important thing is that one rogue actor could ruin it for everyone. "

Be that one Rouge actor, boycott the cartel-building Murdoch and his efforts to game the internet for his personal profit.

Boycott everything that is Murdoch and teach the budding cartel that we don't need their stinking "news"! We will decide what is news and how much we want to pay for it.

Even Murdoch's own son is bailing out on this greedy dinosaur and is selling his shares in News Corporation to buy a different media enterprise, while the stock still has value.

When will they understand?

[BlackBloq]

Distributing content is not about rights, that's insane. Making real money off content is about ABILITY. Movie's make money because we can do 40 foot screens. 3D movies are a draw because there is no 3D at home. Before we couldn't burn CD's so the actual value of a disk was way higher. News can be redistributed easier than practically any other content. Why...because we know news by definition is to be shared. Get over yourself and stop making massive asses out of your-self's. The nature of people is to share (news, songs, movies) the business end is trying to get us to pay for something we are going to do anyway. You want to make cash... then offer us something we can't do!

Re:I Don't See the Comparison, More Like MLB Strik

[BrokenHalo]

I'm sure even Murdoch must be aware of robots.txt by now, and he must have someone on his staff who knows how to use it. But Murdoch needs Google much more than Google needs him, given that as at least one earlier poster mentioned, few people actually google for news. They'll go straight to the news sites most congenial to their interests.

Murdoch has no interest in blocking Google, he just wants to gouge them for money. Hopefully Google will have the balls to just tell him to get fucked. Or perhaps more professional words to that effect - like "Go get professionally fucked".

Long haul

[nurb432]

Steve Ballmer is more than happy to play along with Murdoch because although a deal with News Corps would reduce the basic profitability of Microsoft's search business, it would inflict far more damage on Google than on Microsoft

That is because Microsoft looks further down the road then most, and has the money to fund the 'short term loss' required to outlast your competition in a war of attrition. Much in the same way that they look at the various fines being levied against them for unfair practices. its just another business expense.

Re:Long haul

[geekoid]

"That is because Microsoft looks further down the road then most,"

That's completely contrary to their history.

Re:Long haul

[Anonymous Coward]

That is because Microsoft looks further down the road then most, and has the money to fund the 'short term loss' required to outlast your competition in a war of attrition.

True, Microsoft have always been better at that than most, but they've also made a few blunders -- most notably failing to realise the strategic properties of the internet early on.

Google might be good at this too, but it's too early to tell. Unlike Microsoft, who have a track record of gradually dominating most of the strategic businesses they enter, Google really only have one success so far, that being search.

By investing in loss-making businesses like YouTube and Chrome, Google might be showing the same sort of strategic behaviour Microsoft are known for -- assuming they have some idea of how to eventually turn these into profitable businesses. Alternatively, they may just be throwing money at anything that looks like it might threaten their search rents. The latter would leave them highly vulnerable to any increase in competition in the search sector, with the resultant erosion of search rents.

new search niche

[canadian_in_beijing]

So newspapers have the choice to innovate or die a slow death staying with the current model at Google.
How to innovate? Obviously there's a need to shake up the business model and provide value to customers but that's too much work teaching old dogs new tricks.
Other options are form some sort of union and use the collective bargaining power to force Google into an alternative business model for newspapers.
But if you can get all the newspapers and mainstream media together then why not just take all your content and build a new search engine with different revenue models better suited to their needs....
Something will be drastically changing in this niche and it's going to be an interesting one to get into

Re:I Don't See the Comparison, More Like MLB Strik

[Enderandrew]

Doesn't Google have a deal to just index the AP directly? Who cares if the Washington Post or an individual paper leaves. They aren't going to leave the AP anytime soon. So long as invidual papers feed the AP, and Google pays the AP for their feed, it won't matter.

The Washington Post won't get direct traffic from Google, which will hurt the Washingston Post, and Google still gets their news. How is this good for papers again?

Change or Die

[whisper_jeff]

Most newspapers haven't clued into something very important - things are changing. You'd think that an industry that is focused on staying current with events would have noticed this, but they are dinosaurs holding on to a bygone methodology (hello music industry). The key thing is this - news is out there, in abundance. People don't _need_ to buy _that_ newspaper to get the news - they can get it from 1001 different sources. What the news industry needs to do is make people _want_ to get it from their source rather than someone else's source.

ted.com has a great lecture by Jacek Utko about using design to save newspapers. Now, I'm biased since I'm a graphic designer so any story about graphic design having a major beneficial impact on a product is one that is going to interest me but the results of Jacek's work are impressive. He made his clients newspapers special - different. There was a reason for people to _want_ to buy them to get the news from that source rather than the other sources available. It took a major leap of faith and some radical change but that's what's happening, whether people want it or not - change is going to happen. You can either sit back and try to hold on to the days gone by and let change happen to you or you can step up and proactively make some changes on your own. I suspect those that do the former are doomed to vanish into obscurity.

Re:I Don't See the Comparison, More Like MLB Strik

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing is pretty clear, they must unionize/unify and act as a single entity in either leaving or negotiating. And I don't really see that happening. They might be able to negotiate between Microsoft and Google on a case by case basis but Google is still too much larger than Bing to do that.

When people unionize, it's protected by the law. When corporations unionize, it's called collusion, and is forbidden by law. When corporations compete, it's good for the consumer, and that's who the laws should be protecting.

It sounds to me not that the newspapers aren't playing a game of the prisoner's dilemma, they're playing a game of buggy-whip-making. If they don't re-invent themselves for the new marketplace, they will become a historical footnote.

But theres a problem with you solution

[turkeyfish]

I agree with your sentiments completely, but there is a big problem with this solution. It was noted by Adlai Stevanson when running for president against Ike.

One enthusiastic supporter shouted out to Stevensen "You are every thinking man's candidate", to which Stevensen replied "Thank you, but I need a majority."

The problem for newspapers is that the number of thinking people is shrinking, while the number of those who now simply own a keyboard is increasing.

You can see this effect in the Huffington Post. During the run up to the 2010 election it was full of investigative reporting and could be seen as a source for substantive "news". Now, its full of "news" stories about Amazonian models, breast implants, and other things that cater to those seeking self-titilation rather than any deeper understanding.

Re:But theres a problem with you solution

[mrsquid0]

>The problem for newspapers is that the number of thinking
>people is shrinking, while the number of those who now simply
>own a keyboard is increasing.

I disagree. I suspect that the number of thinking people is actually increasing. The problem is that the idiots have a much louder voice today than they have ever had before, thanks (as you say) to the keyboard. Before about fifteen years ago it was very hard for most whack-job ideas to get a large audience. Now, it is very easy, and the people who believe them can shout very loudly, which leads to the impression that they are far more numerous than they really are.

Re:But theres a problem with you solution

[Lemmy Caution]

You can see this effect in the Huffington Post. During the run up to the 2010 election it was full of investigative reporting and could be seen as a source for substantive "news".

Dear Mister Future-man:

Do you have any stock tips or winning lottery numbers you could share with those of us living in your past?

Answer:

[geekoid]

A monthly bill from the WSJ.

Number 3

[turkeyfish]

Should add:

3) Get rid of expensive salaries for CEO's and other greedy corporate insiders, who have done for newspapers, what they did for General Motors.

Maybe you've hit Newspaper's Salvation

[turkeyfish]

Newspaper should advertise that they promote exercise for overweight American's too lazy to get their larded asses up out of their chairs and away from the computer screen just long enough to walk to the end of the driveway!

And with more advertisements newspapers would be heavier too, making for even more exercise.

Google News

[MikeFM]

Google is big enough to just buy or create their own newspaper. If the newspapers cut themselves off from Google there is no reason for Google not to compete with them. Hire their own journalistic team to create high-quality content that people actually want to see instead of the dribble in most newspapers. They could take advantage of technology to be something between a newspaper (text) and tv news (multimedia).

Re:Google News

[HiThere]

If they did, I might just subscribe to them...until i caught them lying to me.

Most of the current newspapers and media don't deserve to exist. They only promulgate lies. Of the existing papers, my favorite is the Weekly World News. In that one you don't need to wonder how they are lying to you.

Re:Google News

[SEE]

Google is big enough to just buy or create their own newspaper.

And how!

Gannett (GCI) has a market capitalization of $2.44 billion. It owns 85 US and 17 UK dailies, over 850 US and 200 UK non-dailies, and 23 US television stations.
The New York Times Company (NYT) has a market capitalization of $1.27 billion. It owns 17 dailies and 1 weekly, plus About.com and various other assets.
The McClatchy Company (MNI) has a market capitalization of $0.252 billion. It owns 31 dailies.
GateHouse Media (GHSE) has a market capitalization of $0.012 billion. It owns 91 dailies, 294 weeklies, and 121 shoppers.
E. W. Scripps Company (SSP) has a market capitalization of $0.34 billion. It owns 15 newspapers and 10 television stations.
Lee Enterprises (LEE) has a market capitalization of $0.167 billion. It owns 49 dailies, has a joint interest in 5 more, and operates about 300 weeklies and specialty papers.
Media General (MEG) has a market capitalization of $0.202 billion. It owns 24 daily newspapers, 250 other publications, and 19 television stations.
A. H. Belo (AHC) has a market capitalization of $0.098 billion. It owns 3 relatively large dailies and a few minor publications.

Google has $21 billion cash on-hand, as of its last quarterly report, enough to buy all the above four times over and still have billions left.

Re:Google News

[MikeFM]

I could see Google buying out a bunch of papers just for the right to scan all the old material in. Imagine how many small 'home town' papers it could buy up. It'd be awesome to have all that history searchable. To me, that history is a lot more interesting than all their fluff opinion pieces that the big papers think people are going to pay to read.

Side note.. I remember when About.com was the Mining Co. It was less spammy then and a lot closer in spirit to Wikipedia. It'd be interesting to see Google acquire them and send them back down their original path.

wtf- floods

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is cnbc slamming google? Why is everyone slamming google? news.google.com is all you need.
For the past week I've been seeing nothing but negative reviews about google. Who's getting paid to do this?

A Murdoch news filter for google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone have one already? Or do I have to wait until they block themselves?

Goodbye...

[Anonymous Coward]

and Good-Riddance.

Newspapers don't need to restrict access

[tweek]

They need to get out of the news print business. I was JUST playing pundit about this the other day:

http://lusislog.blogspot.com/2009/11/saving-newspaper-industry.html

You are NOT going to be able to compete with instant information via print that I can see.

Re:I Don't See the Comparison, More Like MLB Strik

[Johnny Mnemonic]

I ANAL, but:
One thing is pretty clear, they must unionize/unify and act as a single entity in either leaving or negotiating. And I don't really see that happening.

I'm pretty sure that would amount to illegal market collusion among competitors. They might be able to signal their intent to each other through the marketplace (like what Murdoch appears to be trying to do) but an actual binding requirement on each for behavior would be a no no.

What the market is clearly asking for is one national news service, with perhaps regional stories provided by local news sources. Newspapers are in trouble because they each reprint each others national stories, and there's no need for that replicated distribution in the age of the internet.

horse and buggy makers were mad at model-t

[Dan667]

news corp agreeing to pay microsoft to be listed in their search engine is a good thing. Newspapers have not been paying for all the traffic search engines have been sending to them for free, but they should. And taking control of the news out of the hands of the few and putting it into many is only a good thing.

Re:horse and buggy makers were mad at model-t

[geekoid]

If ssomeone want to make a list of where my website is and let people go there that's fine. Bit it in no way obligates me to pay you. I didn't ask you to do it.

It's like me erecting a sign the tells everyone about your place of business, and then saying you have to pay me.

Re:horse and buggy makers were mad at model-t

[Dan667]

news corp is not choosing to see it that way and wants to pay microsoft to be listed in their search engine. And if people put up signs to your business would you be mad that them? It makes no sense to be mad at Google for making your business more viable.

weak results on address look ups

[wakim1618]

One of the biggest weakness of Bing is that when I type in a search for an address (in London,UK), it does not bring up google maps http://www.bing.com/search?q=1+exchange+square+london+uk&go=&form=QBLH&filt=all. With google maps, I can see nearly transport options and I can quickly see nearby candidate restaurants and coffeeshops after an event http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=1+exchange+square+london+uk&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a.

Re:weak results on address look ups

[TheThiefMaster]

God help you if you actually try the search on their maps: http://www.bing.com/maps/default.aspx?q=1+exchange+square+london+uk&mkt=en-GB&FORM=BYFD
That's a horrible mess of a map.

It's not a prisoners dilema

[geekoid]

It's a tragedy of the commons.

Sherman anti-trust act

[plasmacutter]

If the newspapers collude they can be brought to court under the sherman anti-trust act for cartel activity. They are not exempt.

Beeb is the answer

[copponex]

The BBC is really the gold standard here. A well funded public project to deliver news, more or less autonomous from government, more or less autonomous from corporate influence. As long as their are multiple nation states with their own version of publicly funded news, there will be someone somewhere who can get your story out. Throw in a mix of completely autonomous news sources and local blogs/papers, and I tend to agree that the future doesn't look that bleak.

The NYT and the Post and the rest are still subject to the whims of their advertisers, and are therefore pretty worthless as unbiased sources of information.

Re:Beeb is the answer

[gtall]

Gold standard my ass. Ever listen closely to BBC news, they get information wrong, its highly biased with editorial comment, it is so shallow a five year could have written the copy. The best thing the BBC could do is stick to entertainment and leave the news to the professionals....errr...assuming there are still any left.

Re:Beeb is the answer

[Darkness404]

While the BBC is better than most American cable news channels it is by no means the "gold standard". Even when their coverage is unbiased on a certain story, they cherry-pick the stories that helps the UK government. They are in general liberal stories (look at the large amount of climate change stories on their RSS feed), stories that don't tell the whole truth (look at any of their copyright law stories), etc.

Their editorial comments page is the worst offender though and really tells whats going on in the BBC. Lets have a civilized debate on

Should Google remove the racist Obama image? Google has apologised over a racially offensive picture of Michelle Obama which came top of its search results. Should Google remove it? The doctored image of the first lady earlier came top of Google Images search results for "Michelle Obama". The search engine put a warning above the picture titled "Offensive Search Results" but it has so far refused to remove the picture. Should search engines remove offensive images from their results? Or should "free speech" prevail? Should the internet be policed? If so, by whom, and how tightly? Have you ever found something offensive about you posted on the internet?

Now lets see here, how is this skewed? For one they said it was "racially offensive" they made no mention to the actual picture itself (if it the same one as it shows up for me it just shows Michelle Obama looking ape-like), nor Google's policies. And of course there there was no debate on if the picture itself was even racially offensive. No, that would be too free thinking! It -has- to be a racist picture (which we don't see nor get any mention of) of the US first lady. For another did anyone notice that they used "free speech" in quotation marks? So obviously the writer doesn't view free speech in a good light. And for

have you ever found something offensive about you posted on the internet?

discussion point it doesn't bring anything to the debate because very, very, few BBC commentators are going to be public officials out in the press and its not going to be indexed on Google but rather be a private e-mail posting, perhaps a 4Chan troll defaced an image and thats it.

The BBC is far from the "gold standard" it just happens to be a step above the crap that is mainstream US news.

A factor unconsidered

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Something that was apparently not considered is the echo chamber nature of the American press. So much of what we read in newspapers actually originates somewhere else.

Even if Google lost half or more of the newspapers from their index, they would be unaffected because the ideas presented and stories covered by newspapers are homogenous across the nation.

It's like Starbucks or McDonalds. We won't really miss anything if half of them close their doors. The newspaper of McDonalds on my side of town is identical to the one across town, or across the country.

Microsoft's Transition to Content Provider

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft knows their days are numbered. Anyone thinking Open Source will not rule the world is delusional. The deal with Rupert dipstick is Microsoft moving into the content provider business...after all, look how well that's worked out for Yahoo.

how about...

[Anonymous Coward]

...a Firefox add-on to block all Murdock domains, you know, just to help him out.

News/Porn - not paying for either one :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Paying for news on the internet is kinda like paying for porn on the internet. Why pay for it when so much of it is free? :)

Good Luck Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, let's see how this pans out,
Let's assume Murdoch and Microsoft manage to block all of the public news. The public response is simple. Small web sites popup that summarise the news headlines from other sources. Voilais - you're back to step 1 and news is free again.

Dear Murdoch
- You're a smart man. I don't think you realise that information wants to be free. Sorry to break it to you mate. Anything you do to control the masses will be worked around, guaranteed. You can use all the lawyers you like. See thepiratebay for a good example.

Dear Ballmer
- I was brought up to believe that if I don't have anything nice/positive/constructive to say about a topic (in this instance, you and Microsoft) that I should say nothing. Enough said.

AC

Hey Murdoch! Look! There goes your point!

[Falcon4]

Leeeet's see here. How do people get their news? They... Google it, a lot of the time. If all the big sites opt out of Google (or any other search engine), what do they get?

Lost profits and lost traffic. That's it.

People will still Google the news. People will ALWAYS Google the news. Maybe this guy doesn't understand, but there is such a thing as "independent words" now. So, people won't see the big-bad-news-company's twisted and biased words anymore (Love ya for opening my eyes to that, Fox News). In place of that, the top result will be the leading independent news site's posting on the matter. And they'll get the ad revenue and brand impression. Score one for the little guy, I guess.

That internet-box is evil, I say! I hate senile old farts. *facepalm*

Newspaper

[marqs]

If it where as new as the name make us believe, I'm sure I would have read about it on the internets.

Fundamental problem.

[Maxo-Texas]

Most content of most print newspapers is the same wire news.

Online, anyone can see the wire source-- so what is the value in the local paper?

That and the fact that as papers stopped doing true "deep" news, they lost their value against TV and magazines.

I read the free newspaper on my way to work

[HannethCom]

We have the 24-Hours newspaper that is free and I find it a good source of information. Before the free newspaper I got all my news online.

Monopoly type action anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one that sees this as a massive attempt by the new + Microsoft agency to push another monopoly game on the financial industry?

Please, can we think about this as the one that would try to profit from the actions therein?

Re:I Don't See the Comparison, More Like MLB Strik

[Eudial]

The analogy works pretty well, actually, if you let not leaving google correspond to confessing, and leaving google correspond to hoping nobody else confesses.

If a small group of newspapers remain on google after a bulk of them "escape", they will get a humongous market advantage over the escaping newspapers. If no newspapers leave google, they are at a suboptimal stalemate. If every single newspaper escapes, they reach an unstable optimal situation.

Though in the end, the only newspapers that benefit from leaving google are newspapers with established brands. But in doing so, they would hand over large quantities of readership to smaller newspapers with no established trademark that would not benefit from leaving google. The prisoner analogy would be that 5 guys are brought in for questioning with regards to a bank heist, and 3 of them did the actual bank job and face serious jail time, one guy drove the car and face less jail time, and one guy was marginally involved and faces a fine and community service -- the price for confessing and keeping quiet are unevenly distributed, which changes the dynamics of the game significantly. It isn't even really a dilemma any more, as the guy facing a fine will walk if he confesses.

I learned this lesson in elementary school.

[Nyder]

'we'll opt out if you'll opt out,'

4th grade, private school.

Had some stupid music class we had to take, and they were giving us a test. a group of had decided to purposely flunk the test.
Well, ends up I was the only one who purposely flunked the test.

Sure, maybe I was an idiot for thinking they do it to, or maybe I was just someone talked into it because I was a bit naive. But what it did was tell me not to trust the word of anyone.

Dude is posing. He's apparently too told to figure out how to make money in the modern day, and wants to be remembered or something.

Life is evolution. Life constantly changes. You gotta just accept it.

No one is going to pay for news. seriously, no one wants to pay for anything now.

This is some pretty blatant behaviour

[Whuffo]

Let's see now: Microsoft pays Murdoch - if he agrees to block Google (Microsoft's competitor) from indexing his site. Nothing illegal about that, is there?

Re:This is some pretty blatant behaviour

[Anonymous Coward]

With a market share of 10%, no, there's nothing at all illegal about entering into an exclusive agreement with a supplier.

So What?

[keatonguy]

No, really, who cares at this point? Is there anyone here who isn't aware that the news that comes from News Corp is utterly skewed by the reigning powers in politics and industry? This wouldn't be a loss, it would be a gain, people would get news results from independent journalists instead of a media conglomerate. I can promise you that the losses to Google's engine use by a move like this would be negligible at worst.

What if ...

[javaObject]

What if all the major newspaper block Google. And suddenly ...
1. All us Google users realized that we can survive without those newspaper, and can find news sources elsewhere ... OR
2. One of the newspaper play dirty and license their news to a 'subsidiary' that does not block Google ... OR
3. Alternative news source sprung up .. wiki-type news, etc. That become mainstream.
If any of these happened, suddenly the newspaper will find themselves on a deadly path with no return. The whole business could be lost.
I think that's why they are still talking and not actually blocking Google already.

Re:I Don't See the Comparison, More Like MLB Strik

[pipingguy]

...making enough bank...

Let me guess: do you ever use the words, 'bling' or 'swag' in casual conversation?

Yes, I know already, the English language continuously evolves, blah, blah, blah.

I NEVER use WSJ, WP, NYT if I can help it

[Anonymous Coward]

These publications are the establishment, and exist mainly to amplify the gov's messages. Judith Miller

The amount of independent, investigative journalism they do is very small, despite bragging such as this:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/white-house-watch/

All of that is undercut by the very many editorials and articles that support the administration's line. When was the last time any of these publications opposed any war?

The rest of it puffery, their recent Pulitzer on Walter Reed's medical care for Vets was very likely the result of a large number of vets trying to get their attention, not any deep digging.

Re:I Don't See the Comparison, More Like MLB Strik

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't at all like buggy-whip manufacturers. Buggy-whips became obsolete, so nobody wanted to buy them. News content still has value. People still read it, and advertisers are still willing to pay to reach those people. The problem is that the news aggregators like Google have figured out a way to siphon off most of the advertising revenue and turn the upstream content production into a commodity industry with an expected profit of zero. News organisations produce all the content and news aggregators siphon of all the profit.

Re:I Don't See the Comparison, More Like MLB Strik

[syousef]

I don't think Google will care in the slightest if all the newspapers removed themselves from its index. There are still plenty of online only news sites, specialist media sites and so

Don't forget bloggers. Newspaper's don't face the prisoner's dilemma. They face the under paid 3rd world factory worker's dilemma. The whole workforce could quit en mass, and there would STILL be plenty of people willing to take the jobs that have just been abandoned. Threatening to walk out, even if you organise with others, is just bunk.

Jeez, conservatives are stupid

[Weezul]

Britain's economic & political influence are enormously augmented by the BBCs reputation for high quality reporting, which nevertheless always communicates the British opinion.

Best Thing to Happen to America

[eyendall]

If the US newspapers pulled-out of Google Search, Americans might finally get easy access to a broader range of newspapers such as The Economist, The Guardian, Finanacial Times, Independent. to just name a few newspapers in the UK, and not to speak of English language editions of European journals such as der Spiegal. In general, more intelligent and diverse journalism.

Produce Actual Content

[cjb110]

As many have already said, AP and Reuters provide the source of the news, and far far to many 'newspapers' just republish it.

People like content, which Murdoch seems to forget about his own site, WSJ was good and people pay for it because it was more than just AP reprints, it was decent articles...similar to the BBC they tend to start with a summary and then add value by adding more detail.

It's like the difference between Engadget and AnandTech, Engadget will tell you Intel have launched i7 and some bullet points. Anandtech will have a 10 page analysis. I read both, but would only ever consider paying for Anandtech, knowing that I could get the same info as the Engadget from hundreds of other sites.

Newspapers need to reposition themselves, either go back to geographical seperation, or hirer proper journalists that can write proper stories, there will be less news per paper, but should better information, that I can't get elsewhere.

There are places for local news

[SuperKendall]

Local TV stations actually have pretty decent news still (at least in my area) without all the pretension of a newspaper.

But also there are sites like Yourhub, there are a lot more people willing to devote some time to citizen journalism now and the people of a community are the best ones to report what is going on. It's also much easier that way for some regions to not be overlooked.