What do striking Hollywood writers and journalists have in common? We both see our work distributed far and wide, thanks to modern technology. And we'd both like to be paid for it.
The entertainment writers have an easier time selling their argument. They can demonstrate that studios are making money, or are likely to make money, through new forms of distribution. Journalists, on the other hand, watch their work travel the virtual universe and no one makes much money on it. For the most part, we journalists don't retain any residual claim to our own work; our publishers and station owners do. They own all our photographs, our raw tapes and our clips. And most journalists are well-aware of the fact that media companies haven't figured out an economic structure for journalism on the Internet.
But AP's CEO Tom Curley has a few ideas. PaidContent.org published an
interview this week with Curley. He seems fairly clear-eyed about the open nature of the Internet. He's not suggesting that users will pay for content. But someone should pay, Curley says. Right now he's eyeing search engines and news aggregators.
"If you want our content, we expect to be paid for it," Curley told PaidContent.org. "This nonsense that you can just take the first paragraph or use the picture small doesn't really fly with us. People die trying to take those pictures."
AP is
suing Moreover.com for violating its licensing provisions. Although Google maintains that it doesn't have to pay for such content, the search engine company agreed to pay licensing fees to AP and Agence France Presse.
AP is
restructuring the way it does business with its members too.
What's this got to do with journalism ethics? A lot. If industry leaders like Curley can't figure out a way to increase profit margins, the trend of cutting staff and freezing salaries will continue. Eventually salaries for journalists will fall. If journalists aren't paid enough to support a family (and in some places that's already a reality), the quality of the work is bound to suffer.
Whenever I talk ethics to newsroom leaders from African nations, they describe a never-ending struggle to prevent their poorly paid staff from taking freebies and bribes. It's hard to convince people to do the right thing when you can't pay them enough to support a middle class standard of living.
Sure, it sounds all doomsday to talk about professional journalists as working poor. But it's a distinct possibility that professional journalists will become a class of noble idealists, like artists, who support their passion with a job waiting tables and only a few ever arrive at the point of paying the bills.
I'm hardly surprised by the difficulty of receiving something like...
