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Topic: Letters Sent to Romenesko
Date/Time: 5/30/2007 2:48:40 PM
Title: It's time newspapers learned from Google
Posted By: Jim Romenesko
 
From MATTHEW R. BAISE, online editor, BaltimoreSun.com: Hardly a week goes by that there isn't an article or letter on here laying the troubles of the newspaper industry at the feet of Google and other aggregators. Or worse, they suggest a shakedown in which we teach that nasty little search engine a lesson and wrestle back some of those dollars that are rightfully ours.

I don't understand how this myth that aggregators steal from us got started. They do not publish our content. They do not steal our stories. And they most certainly do not generate huge profits by linking to newspaper stories. What Google and others do is send us readers we otherwise would not have. At their worst, the little nuggets aggregators display are nothing more than a 21st century rip-and-read (except in this case we actually get credit and increased readership).

Paired with the Google-bashing is the inevitable charge that we have to stop giving it away, as if Web operations have embraced some radical new business model completely alien to our venerable industry. Fact is, the newspaper industry has never charged for its content. Ever. That 50 cents you flip to a hawker barely covers the cost of newsprint and distribution and does not begin to pay for our editorial operations; that burden is shouldered entirely by advertising and classified. We give away our content in the paper, same as online. Ditto for broadcast radio and television.

Our real problem is that advertisers now have other options. As a result sales staffs face constant downward pressure on rates because of the hundreds of advertising options available online or, worse, they face competitors like Craigslist who simply give classified advertising away.

If we give in to these isolationist arguments and turn the aggregators away, if we throw up the pay wall and push readers to free sites that post nothing but wire copy, then the dire predictions for this industry will come true.

We are trying to come up with solutions and in many cases we're succeeding. But one thing is certain: the aggregators got to where they are by helping people organize their lives and find useful information. Rather than the constant stream of brickbats we chuck at Google, perhaps we should learn something from them. [Permalink]

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