newspapers could start publishing online tomorrow, and there are plenty of ways to monetize the content -- even without Google.

Maybe if they printed real news.

http://convergencelaw.typepad.com/convergences/2009/02/overfishing-the-news -commons.html
February 03, 2009
Overfishing the News Commons

The dismal state of newspaper finances has produced a spate of articles about the news business, plus a website called newspaperproject.org to defend the relevance and value of news organizations. "More People Will Read A Newspaper Today Than Watched Yesterday's Big Game."

It's a good point, and people do indeed love the news -- they love it on Drudge, Google, Yahoo, and a zillion other websites that feed on the product produced by the newspapers and their wire services. The news organizations have made the news into a commons. Seduced by the free culture-ites of academia, they do not protect their intellectual property, allowing anyone to drop his fishing line into the ocean of content and hook some advertising dollars.

The one solution rarely proposed is to charge for content. An exception: Peter Osnos of the Century Foundation, who says: "With the print newspaper and magazine business model irreversibly in decline, these enterprises have to start demanding payment for use of their material, or they will disappear." He suggests starting with Google: "[Google] spokesmen, especially CEO Eric Schmidt, have repeatedly said they would like to help newspapers, if only they could figure out how. Well, how about sitting down with representatives of the floundering news gatherers and devising a system that would pay royalties for click-throughs supported by advertising?"

Good luck with that project, but Osnos is right. If producers of content cannot monetize their work, then they will stop producing it, and we will be left with a rump business of amateur productions.

Oh great. Google has essentially ruined much that is printed online by insisting on keywords that will make it easier for their engine to search terms. Will they enforce this stupidity with the news as well? If so, it will be as unreadable as so much is on the internet. Thanks Google. You are a great search engine - sort of!

only 3 comments... do people not care? or is it simply too late to for the newspaper industry to 'pull-back' it's content and require a subscription model online? I remember ESPN used a subscription model- where they held back 'valued' content... I don't see that any longer. ESPN has done a great job creating a comprehensive site, or 'sports portal'. The value of their content allows ESPN to sell advertising on their site, providing a significant revenue stream. Perhaps the Newspapers need to build better websites? or they need to do a better job of communicating to their traditional advertisers that 'banner ads' are measurable and can be effective... The Newspaper industry needs to embrace technology and revamp their Ad depts so they can produce cost effective electronic advertisements for their advertisers/local businesses. google's model works well, but google doesn't know the local landscape/habits as well as the local newspaper should. Even though the internet allows me to read my local news site from anywhere in the world with a connection, there is still proximal value in advertising that google can only attempt to simulate. In the end, Newspapers are dinosaurs who refused to acknowledge and embrace the changing landscape/horizon. Instead of lamenting and bemoaning how their revenue stream dried up, they should have- and could have made changes years ago before google became the powerhouse that it is. I feel for them, but they did it to themselves by not spending enough effort being predictive about the future of their industry/livelihood ...

Screw click-throughs. The model should be "reach" (to use a radio term), or as they say in online media, "eyeballs" It has worked for every other medium (TV, mags, news, radio) without the built-in audience research platform that the web currently has. Which brings me to Google's current role: "Distribution." If content providers push for revenue from Google, they will only get deleted from its pages-- which takes them further away from their audiences. If anything, content providers should stand united in taking the revenue model AWAY from click-throughs and sell based on unique viewers (reach) -- or page views (frequency) instead. As for breaking up the Google monopoly, that will only happen if a conglomerate of some sort -- cable companies, perhaps in a joint venture with content providers -- comes together and builds their own browser, the publicize it as the one to go for, for UNIQUE content.

If this site didn't do lead capture before it allowed comments, you would get more comments. But yeah, people obviously don't care or they would be buying papers, and yes it is probably way too late. Sticking your collective heads in the sand for a decade is not a good business strategy.

The author of this article is clearly clueless and has a limited grasp of how Google works. All I hear is a whining "we want our [ludicrously overvalued] ad revenue back!"

As for Netscape, that's not the best example... ever hear of Firefox? Trace the lineage. Business models change with the times, and the traditional newspaper model is stone cold dead.

This article is a mess. Google isn't in the content business -- it is a search engine which points users at content that, if they click on it, they get to read. They publish snippets, and if that's enough for folks to survive on, then it could be considered competitive.

The main reason Google is a target is because it's successful, so folks want a share of the revenue -- it's less trouble than making your own business successful (see: net neutrality).

The newspaper business is dying because of classified ad revenue, not content access problems. Why don't you pick on Craigslist?

I, for one, love the world of books. I would like to have journalism maintain high standards, and have reporters and editors get paid. In a nice, magical, unchanging world, that would all just happen. I must say, articles like these stink of moral hazard. It's a Nick Carr retread.

"Google does have competitors, such as Yahoo and MSN, but its reach is pervasive, and the others seem destined for irrelevance, recalling the battle between Microsoft and Netscape in the 1990s. Remember Netscape?"

Not so fast, that's an apples to orange comparison. Yes they all have search but that's like saying saying all cars are the same because they have tires. Those three companies are powerful content brokers in distinct ways.

Google KO'ed Yahoo off it's throne as data catalog and distributor, no doubt. And needs better competition (I'd say regulation if we learned anything from MS), agreed.

Yahoo pretty much gave up search but they could afford to. They own a completely different and just as powerful competency: two of the most visited sites on earth: Yahoo (#1) and Yahoo Japan (#10). They are experts in an area Google just doesn't get: consumers and generating compelling content (Google sees content as data and consumers as clicks). They also have a new CEO that is a very experienced technologist and leader looking to make her mark and knows how to productize: Carol Bartz.

MSN is also an incredible stronghold as a portal because of their browser being in the majority of people's systems at home and work. And Microsoft still owns the people (developers) who fabricate most of the computing applications today.

So the competencies are going separate, but I'd say equally powerful ways. I'd say the other two might come back for a very interesting third act.

So, I'm going to guess the Century Foundation gets its name from focusing on ideas from the 1900s? Begging your pardon, but you don't really seem to be up on your subject matter.

"In a period of epic economic crisis, Google, Apple, and Amazon still are doing fine selling advertisements and/or media online."

Google may be doing better than the average newspaper but they still lost some 50% of their value between 5/08 and 11/08. May seem "fine" to you, but I doubt they see it the same way.

"And there is Microsoft, which was synonymous with operating software and was so tough on rivals that eventually it was forced, again by the courts but also by public opinion, to change its business strategy, opening the way (among other factors) for the rise of Google, Apple, and Amazon."

No no, no, and no. While Microsoft was indeed convicted of predatory monopolistic practices, the remedies imposed in the US bordered on trivial, and had effectively nothing to do with the success of Google, Apple, and/or Amazon.

I think it would be easy to make the argument that Google already helps newspapers, at least those with an effective online presence. Google does not publish news. Instead, they compile indexes of online information, including online information provided by newspapers, and serve up pointers back to the originating site based on the search requests of users. If you have a website and Google search results direct people to your website, then you benefit as a direct result.

To say that Google should pay for the privilege of funneling traffic to a newspaper's website is an argument based on nothing more than the knowledge that Google has deeper pockets than any single newspaper. It's short-sighted and foolish wishful thinking.

Probably a lot like the angry blather than filled the scribe's guild hall when it became obvious that Gutenberg was going to succeed with his invention.

Microsoft has less in common with AT&T than with the dinosaurs, for they are both huge monoliths unaccustomed to nimble moves. MS did not write DOS; it only retailed it for IBM, thus catching the huge wave they have been riding since. Not the word processor nor the spreadsheet nor the browser did they discover, but once someone else had done so, they copied the program and used their prime monopoly on desktop real estate to feather their own nest. Game boxes? The Internets? They mount and ride off in all directions. This is precisely why every other word out of the mouths of Gates and Ballmer is "innovation."

The newspaper enterprise is another that seems a bit long in the tooth, like the Brontosaurus. As for the notion that a more adept model should kick back some funds for the old and the infirm, it's an idea that has been around for a while and should be argued on that basis, with whoever speaks for such as Herbert Spencer on the one hand and William Jennings Bryan on the other stepping up to the mic.