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Real title: Failing news outlets seek government protection for past failures and outdated business models. The legacy news media has completely failed to unde

Real title: Failing news outlets seek government protection for past failures and outdated business models. The legacy news media has completely failed to understand two things 1) that distribution is king, not content and 2) that their potential customers have so many more options now than just news. They gave away their distribution to Google and Facebook and still think that better content is the driver of their businesses. I am sick of hearing the CEO of News Corp whining about Google and Facebook. They could easily have invested in creating their own alternative distribution networks, but they completely blew the opportunity they had, with MySpace and they could have bought Instagram, What's App, SnapChat (if you don't think these are news networks then you've not been paying attention). So now they go whining to the government? Shame on them.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
Eh, I disagree. Content is still king, and the sources of good, quality content is still limited. The problem is that Google and Facebook are more than willing to steal that content, and are too large for anyone to fight. If cornered on it with laws like the Spanish link tax, they're more than happy to just leave until the business situation is more favorable to them, and obviously if any given single provider bans Google's collection, Google can simply post from one of the litany of blogs that reposts other journalists' reporting instead.
- sparkzilla 9y ago
  Thinking that 'content is king' is how newspapers got into this situation. If you have large distribution (Facebook), even if it is pictures of cats, you can make money and then buy "quality" content, which is a niche. If you lose control of distribution (Legacy news) you can't make money and you can't make any content, no matter how good it is. >The problem is that Google and Facebook are more than willing to steal that content Really? While Facebook was letting people copy video content from Facebook with no penalty (freebooting), this was never an issue for the news companies. As for the Spanish situation, the news companies gave in because they realised that without Google they had even less distribution than before.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    That's the whole reason news companies are asking for an antitrust consideration: Google can hurt them massively by simply walking away from the negotiating table. Either they give up their content for free or Google drops them, and they hurt even worse. Obviously for the news agencies, their hope would be that Google be somehow forced to pay them for access and not be allowed to shut down the service. Of course, it's hard to imagine how the government could require Google News to operate as a service. The thing that's broken here is that in any other content situation like movies or music, the content is unique and copyrighted. If you want Katy Perry or Star Wars, you have to deal with the companies with rights to those, and the MPAA and RIAA are formidable industry associations which can swing a lot of weight and force a negotiation. If you want any "music" at all, really, you have to sit down with the RIAA. News, however, can't really be copyrighted that way, since fact can be restated by anyone. It's fair use. In a traditional situation, all the affected corporations (like every major news org) would band together and set the bar for negotiation. Someone like Google would have to comply or lose out on a lot of information to base their services on. However, in the case of news, Google has an infinite amount of blogspam to feed off of that is cannibalizing and resharing the news from journalists. Google wouldn't be hurt enough by news agencies blocking them, at least, compared to how much it would hurt news agencies to not be distributed by them.
    - sparkzilla 9y ago
      >Either they give up their content for free or Google drops them, and they hurt even worse. They haven't give up their content to Google/Facebook; they give up their distribution. Links to news sites on Google and Facebook are a form of distribution that link back to the original article. As for antitrust, that's somewhat difficult to argue when a new entrant (Facebook) is currently taking a massive amount of distribution and ad revenue away from Google. Who's to say that another new entrant, funded by the legacy news industry, couldn't do the same? The legacy news media should have, and still should, focus on making or buying new distribution channels. Instead of whining to the government, they should compete in the market.
      - 9y ago
- Shivetya 9y ago
  I disagree that they are limited. They were limited when these organization had captive local audiences and enough reputation that those if far off places would buy a subscription. Back in the day where getting competing sources was either difficult or not even an option. So now being able to pick and choose from dozens of great companies for news, both national and international in source, these once "protected" companies need to up their game. So like with any other industry, if you ignore competition from other sources to include other countries, that are as equally respected or more, you do so at your own peril
untog 9y ago
> they could have bought Instagram, What's App, SnapChat (if you don't think these are news networks then you've not been paying attention). They aren't news networks. They are social networks that carry news. That's the main problem news organisations face - news is no longer an individual destination for users, it's something they pick up with other content. Any news organisation that bought Instagram would never have been able to execute on it, because its strength was always in social connections, not in delivering news. People rightly criticise news companies for their "outdated business models", but I'm yet to see anyone propose a modern business model that would actually work. When the bulk of traffic comes from Google and Facebook (I don't realistically see how anyone could have stopped this from happening) you're stuck chasing clicks no matter what. Subscriptions help you earn money, but they drastically cut back your reach. I don't have any particularly good answers myself, but I really, really don't like the world we live in today where clickability is the primary metric of success - it leads to overhyped outrage and outright fiction being posted to people's walls every day. And FB and Google sit on top of it all earning more and more money. They have no incentive to change anything. A successful and free press is in every citizen's interest, but today's business environment makes it all but impossible to succeed.
TheGirondin 9y ago
Why single out News Corp (Fox News) when the NYT, WaPo, and the WSJ are also involved in this?
- sparkzilla 9y ago
  Because they blew it with MySpace, and the CEO is always whining on about how Facebook and Google are upsetting him.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago

Eh, I disagree. Content is still king, and the sources of good, quality content is still limited. The problem is that Google and Facebook are more than willing to steal that content, and are too large for anyone to fight. If cornered on it with laws like the Spanish link tax, they're more than happy to just leave until the business situation is more favorable to them, and obviously if any given single provider bans Google's collection, Google can simply post from one of the litany of blogs that reposts other journalists' reporting instead.

sparkzilla 9y ago
Thinking that 'content is king' is how newspapers got into this situation. If you have large distribution (Facebook), even if it is pictures of cats, you can make money and then buy "quality" content, which is a niche. If you lose control of distribution (Legacy news) you can't make money and you can't make any content, no matter how good it is. >The problem is that Google and Facebook are more than willing to steal that content Really? While Facebook was letting people copy video content from Facebook with no penalty (freebooting), this was never an issue for the news companies. As for the Spanish situation, the news companies gave in because they realised that without Google they had even less distribution than before.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  That's the whole reason news companies are asking for an antitrust consideration: Google can hurt them massively by simply walking away from the negotiating table. Either they give up their content for free or Google drops them, and they hurt even worse. Obviously for the news agencies, their hope would be that Google be somehow forced to pay them for access and not be allowed to shut down the service. Of course, it's hard to imagine how the government could require Google News to operate as a service. The thing that's broken here is that in any other content situation like movies or music, the content is unique and copyrighted. If you want Katy Perry or Star Wars, you have to deal with the companies with rights to those, and the MPAA and RIAA are formidable industry associations which can swing a lot of weight and force a negotiation. If you want any "music" at all, really, you have to sit down with the RIAA. News, however, can't really be copyrighted that way, since fact can be restated by anyone. It's fair use. In a traditional situation, all the affected corporations (like every major news org) would band together and set the bar for negotiation. Someone like Google would have to comply or lose out on a lot of information to base their services on. However, in the case of news, Google has an infinite amount of blogspam to feed off of that is cannibalizing and resharing the news from journalists. Google wouldn't be hurt enough by news agencies blocking them, at least, compared to how much it would hurt news agencies to not be distributed by them.
  - sparkzilla 9y ago
    >Either they give up their content for free or Google drops them, and they hurt even worse. They haven't give up their content to Google/Facebook; they give up their distribution. Links to news sites on Google and Facebook are a form of distribution that link back to the original article. As for antitrust, that's somewhat difficult to argue when a new entrant (Facebook) is currently taking a massive amount of distribution and ad revenue away from Google. Who's to say that another new entrant, funded by the legacy news industry, couldn't do the same? The legacy news media should have, and still should, focus on making or buying new distribution channels. Instead of whining to the government, they should compete in the market.
    - 9y ago
Shivetya 9y ago
I disagree that they are limited. They were limited when these organization had captive local audiences and enough reputation that those if far off places would buy a subscription. Back in the day where getting competing sources was either difficult or not even an option. So now being able to pick and choose from dozens of great companies for news, both national and international in source, these once "protected" companies need to up their game. So like with any other industry, if you ignore competition from other sources to include other countries, that are as equally respected or more, you do so at your own peril

untog 9y ago

> they could have bought Instagram, What's App, SnapChat (if you don't think these are news networks then you've not been paying attention). They aren't news networks. They are social networks that carry news. That's the main problem news organisations face - news is no longer an individual destination for users, it's something they pick up with other content. Any news organisation that bought Instagram would never have been able to execute on it, because its strength was always in social connections, not in delivering news. People rightly criticise news companies for their "outdated business models", but I'm yet to see anyone propose a modern business model that would actually work. When the bulk of traffic comes from Google and Facebook (I don't realistically see how anyone could have stopped this from happening) you're stuck chasing clicks no matter what. Subscriptions help you earn money, but they drastically cut back your reach. I don't have any particularly good answers myself, but I really, really don't like the world we live in today where clickability is the primary metric of success - it leads to overhyped outrage and outright fiction being posted to people's walls every day. And FB and Google sit on top of it all earning more and more money. They have no incentive to change anything. A successful and free press is in every citizen's interest, but today's business environment makes it all but impossible to succeed.

TheGirondin 9y ago

Why single out News Corp (Fox News) when the NYT, WaPo, and the WSJ are also involved in this?

sparkzilla 9y ago
Because they blew it with MySpace, and the CEO is always whining on about how Facebook and Google are upsetting him.