The Associated Press and Yahoo are in the midst of negotiating restrictions and payment for wire stories that appear on the search engine’s news site. This appears to be the latest step toward charging for online news. Similar talks with Google have prompted the company to temporarily stop posting AP contest on its news site. In a Jan. 14 Wall Street Journal article, an AP representative says the current deal with online portals “helped make AP material ubiquitous … also diluted the value of the AP’s news offerings by not limiting availability or distinguishing articles that were unique.” (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703672104574654741484604838.html?mod=djemMM)
I think this article relates to a number of interesting issues. The first is AP’s assertion that portals like Yahoo and Google News do not distinguish between the quality of articles. In aggregating news, all news is created equal. How can a media company make its material stand out when it is an algorithm that determines its placement on a news search? Popularity may be a factor in that equation but popularity is not the same as objective, accurate reporting and writing. (In “Googled,” Ken Auletta describes the creation of Google News. “The placement and selection of stories is made, Google announced, by ‘computer algorithms, without human intervention.’ … It would, Google said, broaden newspaper readership, and allow newspapers to sell advertising once a user clicked on the newspaper’s link. … However, newspapers didn’t all jump up and down with glee.”)
I think that aggregate news sites only hurt online news sources. Let’s say a Google News search directs a consumer to a Chicago Tribune article on the earthquake in Haiti. While that is one more hit on the Tribune’s site, there is a slim chance the consumer will stay on the page or click through the rest of the Web site. I predict the consumer will click out of the site and search for more articles on the earthquake (that is, search through Google News). What can news organizations do to keep consumers on the newspapers’ page? I think it starts by conditioning consumers to go directly to the original site for news and bypassing aggregation sites all together.
Setting aside the issue of quality and access, the Wall Street Journal article explores another important topic – payment. The owner of the WSJ, News Corp., is in talks to eliminate its excerpted content from Google’s search but allow it to remain on Microsoft properties. The Wall Street Journal is one of the few publications to charge for online content and as a result, executives do not want to see any of its work given away for free through an aggregated site. I agree. I strongly believe that consumers should have to pay for online news in some way. It is pragmatic – news organizations need to make money – and it forces the consumer to have some skin in the game. It is easy for a consumer to think, why should I have to pay for content when I can go to Yahoo or Google?
I think people are so overwhelmed with content that they do not even realize how much news, entertainment, music, television programming, blogs, movies and so on they actually consume. Faced with the option of paying $50 a month for a bundled package of the previously mentioned media or a complete shutout of content, consumers will pay.
(This was originally a discussion post for a class at Medill; January 2010).
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