Newsies: Recapture The Serfs!

Newspapers are being fed feet-first into the whirling teeth of history’s shredder – they’re in at about knee-level now – and it’s making them understandably cranky.

Their final agony has caused all sorts of howls, one of which is that copyright law ought to be rewritten. The villain here is the Dreaded Aggregator, those outfits that make money publishing or searching links to content produced by others.

Links, as in hypertext, is a large part of what makes the internet. It guides readers to content. Money is what newspapers used to make when they had the exclusive on selling ads around their content. No longer.

Now Aggregators sell ads around links to newspaper content and other stories. They usually sell those ads for lots less than newspapers, and they can tell advertisers exactly who got the full ad pitch, when, and whether it resulted in a sale. Placing online ads is often much easier than placing a newspaper ad. And the online audience is defined more by a community of interest than a geography-tied circulation list. Those online advantages – cost, reach, metrics and convenience – have been snatching revenue from traditional newspapers.

The newspaper industry’s posture has been head down in the paper dust mumbling “copyright violation” while the industry’s upthrust rear sports a Kick Me! banner. Aggregators have been happy to oblige, noting that they’re not republishing the stories – a violation of copyright – just pointing to where those stories are lawfully published.

That makes newspaper types suggest that the solution isn’t to figure out how to beat the aggregators at their own game in the future, the solution is to re-create the past. And the past they’re trying to regain never was, but that’s a fact, and newspapers aren’t about to let a fact get in the way of a good revenue story.

The story the newspapers want to tell is that in the past, they developed their audience through their outstanding content that brought loyal readers flocking to become the audience that they sold to advertisers. So if they get Congress to change the copyright laws and prevent anyone from linking to their content for a period of time without paying them, their problem will be solved. Readers will stay for the content, advertisers will stay for the readers, and all will be as it was in the days of yore.

Ahh, those days of yore – when the Newspaper Baron was lord of the only game in town and the readers were bound to the paper and advertisers respectfully paid their tribute. You know, kind of like serfs being bound to the land and tradesmen paying for a spot in the Baron’s market. Or forcing even the serfs who grew their own content to grind it in the Baron’s mill.

Newspapers are fond of saying they write the first rough draft of history. Instead, they ought to read a little of it, especially the success of the feudal barons and other nobility who tried to get liberated serfs rebound to the land and the manor. Or the success of the nobility that passed laws to prevent them from leaving in the first place.

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Here’s a link to Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Connie Schultz calling for a change in copyright: http://www.cleveland.com/schultz/index.ssf/2009/06/tighter_copyright_law_could_sa.html

Here’s a different view from John Temple, former president, editor and publisher of Denver’s The Rocky Mountain News, which died in February: http://www.johntemple.net/2009/06/before-journalists-go-too-far-in.html

And here’s a thoughtful discussion with lots of links by Jeff Bercovici in the Daily Finance at: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/06/30/mixed-media-changing-copyright-law-wont-save-newspapers/

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