Giving away the product for free online

Developing premium newspaper content, something that's worth offering for more-than-free that a significant proportion of potential readers might pay for, is the Holy Grail.

And just about as elusive.

The New York Times is making the effort. The WSJ has had some success.

Can a 40K newspaper's Web site do the same? I'm not so sure.

 

Well, ain't that "Final Jeopardy."
(Man, that's a pretty good play on words)

 

Definitely a strong pun, fw.

 

Apparently, we may not be able to do anything about this, though. Originally, a newspaper in a specific market was able to have exclusive rights to AP within that market. However, in 1945 the Supreme Court ruled that members blocking non-members from membership was in violation of antitrust laws. But is a Web site that contributes no content to the cooperative truly a member of the cooperative or simply a customer? It is still possible to have exclusive rights within a market to New York Times News Service and others, as well as syndicated material such as comics. I do not know where the law draws the line. It makes no sense to me that we should be forced to provide content to a business that eroded our market for world and national news.

 

Good stuff, Frank. That certainly helps the discussion.

 

I am just not sure the Supreme Court in 1945 could have envisioned the Internet. AP's Web site says it is "owned by its 1,500 U.S. daily newspaper members" but "serves 1,700 newspapers and 5,000 radio and television outlets in the United States as well as newspaper, radio and television subscribers internationally. Over the past decade, AP has also sold a selection of its text, photo, audio and video reports to commercial online operations, both closed-end desktops (the Information Services business) and open Web sites (the Digital business). From the beginning, the objective has been to extract supplemental revenue from commercial markets to subsidize more newsgathering and other services for members. This policy has been regularly reviewed and reaffirmed by AP’s Board, mostly recently in 2005."

I am not sure that whatever Yahoo, ESPN.com, AOL and the like pay to AP is true compensation for the damage it has done to our businesses -- and if we have recourse. The Supreme Court ruling was about denying newspapers membership. AP further says:

5. How can I become a member of The Associated Press and receive AP services?
If you are a newspaper, radio or television station, you can become a member of the AP cooperative.

It says nothing about Web sites being members. It just seems to me that we are handing them the gun for them to shoot us.

http://www.ap.org/pages/about/faq.html#2

 

Judging by the way those Web sites spend when they wish to lure someone talented, whay can't they simply hire reporters and freelancers, correspondents, to get the news? Taking more talent from the newspaper world, as the national name and exposure - as well as the stability of the medium - would be too much to pass up.

Oh, it might take a while. But they'd adjust, and we newspaper jockeys would further lose relevance.

 

They can afford to hire away big names only because they don't have to hire people to do all the other stuff.

 

...and most of the talent they hire away ends up blogging or working as an expert on the site using their former newspapers sources to get the meat in their stories. in my opinion, the ESPN brand has single-handidly ruined sports and sports journalism over the last fives years.

 

And in my opinion, the espn brand has done some great investigative stuff online and on television.

Undeniable. Their group does some of the best written investigation and in-depth stuff out there right now.

 

I'll not deny that the Web has hired away some fine talent who deserve as much money as they can get, I just don't think we ought to assist companies that are hurting our business. I have no problem with them throwing big money at newspaper stars who go to work for them full time -- where I have a problem is those companies building their brands cheaply by throwing freelance coins at newspaper writers and getting the bulk of their content from a wire service that we freaking own. We should be doing everything we can to hinder these competitors, not help them. Because they sure ain't helping us.

 

Absolutely. Some of their .com guys are great, and Behind the Lines, IMO, is one of the best investigative outfits in all TV, not just sports. They do a great job.