Cutline Speaks

News Wars III: The Papers Strike Back

posted by Michael on April 7, 2009

Yesterday saw another round of developments in the print media's efforts to reverse its flagging fortunes, with Associated Press chair William Dean Stanton taking a shot at online news aggregators in general and Wall Street Journal editor Robert Thomson singling out Google and other search engines as one of the primary threats to these outlets' business.

Google posted a response on its public policy blog, pointing out that it alone sends more than a billion clicks a month to newspapers and helps those newspapers earn millions of dollars per month in advertising revenue. (It also pointed out that it currently hosts AP articles as part of a partnership that dates back to 2007.)

This discussion is likely to escalate further in the next couple of weeks, with Google CEO Eric Schmidt addressing the Newspaper Association of America's annual convention today and Dean Stanton saying that the AP plans to start developing "rules of engagement" for online aggregators.

Those of us who have a stake in the future of a healthy and free press (you know, pretty much everyone on the planet) will likely be watching this closely as it unfolds in the coming months and years. For my part, I think there's one thing that's important to remember as we do: It's easy to point the finger at Google, Yahoo, Techmeme, The Huffington Post, Drudge, and other news aggregators and argue that they're part of what's gotten the print media into this bind, but I think that's a bit disingenuous (check out Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan on this point -- fiery stuff).

In fact, I think these services represent one of the best opportunities for traditional media outlets to evolve, as they drive huge amounts of traffic -- people clearly enjoy interacting with news content in this way. What we need to do is find a way to continue allowing people to access content in the ways they like, while ensuring that the creators of that content are fairly compensated for their work. There are lots of theories out there for how to do that, ranging from newer ideas like micropayments to more-established ideas like indirect monetization. Any thoughts on which of them has the best chance of succeeding? Weigh in below in the comments section.

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