Don't Newspapers Owe Google Money For Helping Them Research Stories For Free?

from the of-course-not... dept

Last month, we parodied the mainstream press' criticism that everyone else "owed" them money because they were the original creators of a story, by noting that the press never paid the newsmakers for creating the story in the first place. Danny Sullivan has now taken a more serious look at this, noting that for all the talk about how Google is "stealing" from news publications, those same publications never seem willing to admit how much they rely on Google for their jobs these days -- and perhaps one could make an argument that these publications actually owe Google for helping make them more productive. After all, the newspapers claim they want a "fair share" of the money Google makes since it's using their content for "free." But, the same argument works in reverse. If it's "fair," then shouldn't Google get a share of the money the news publications make, since its reporters use Google's tools "for free"?

Obviously, the real point is that both sides benefit, and each is responsible for putting in place business models that work. Google has done that successfully. Many news publications have not. But no one should be claiming its "unfair" or that someone else owes them money.

Meanwhile, Sullivan's piece also goes into great detail about how a random AP story he found was written after an AP reporter found some stories on some blogs, and used them to do more research and publish his story. But were the blogs on which he found the story credited? Of course not. Did they get "their fair share"? Of course not. Hell, unlike Google linking to publications' stories, these bloggers didn't even get any traffic or attention from the AP reporter, who simply wants to pretend he came up with the story from nothing.

And the AP wants to claim that it's being treated unfairly?

9 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Stop Blaming Google For Your Own Mistakes

from the say-it-loud dept

With plenty of attention going towards Eric Schmidt's attempt to convince newspapers that Google is helping, rather than hurting them, the much more interesting thing to read is Danny Sullivan's absolutely brilliant outpouring of frustration to newspaper industry execs and publishers, thinking back to a presentation he gave to (as he describes it) "a hostile audience" a few years ago -- where they were all missing the point. And, they're still bringing up the exact same wrong points today. Sullivan gets it exactly right. He takes the industry to task for lashing out (incorrectly) at everyone else for their problems, rather than recognizing that they're the ones who need to change in order to keep up with the market. The problems they're facing aren't because of Google or blogs. It's because they haven't kept up and haven't kept serving their market. In fact, he points out how much Google loves newspapers, and the newspapers are doing everything to spit back in Google's face:

I also explained that unlike virtually all other publishers on the internet, newspapers were given extraordinary special status with Google. They were among the very select few to be admitted into Google News and receive the huge amounts of traffic it could send their ways. That many small blogs with excellent content struggle for admittance that these other publishers just got handed to them on a silver platter.

My favorite part, though, may be Danny's response to the silly idea that newspapers should take their content offline for a week. We discussed that back in February, but Danny gets to the heart of the matter:

Please get all your newspaper colleagues to agree to a national "Just say no to Google" week. I beg you, please do it. Then I can see if these things I think will happen do happen:

• Papers go "oh shit," we really get a lot of traffic from Google for free, and we actually do earn something off those page views
• Papers go "oh shit," turns out people can find news from other sources
• Papers go "oh shit," being out of Google didn't magically solve all our other problems overnight, but now we have no one else to blame.

Indeed. But there seems to be some sort of incredible "logic blindness" that blocks newspaper industry execs from getting these simple facts.

36 Comments | Leave a Comment..