Media Crisis Solved!

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Traditional news outlets flopping about the beach gasping for revenue saw an idea that would save them this week, but it was presented backwards, so they’ll probably ignore it.

Tom Curley, president and CEO of The Associated Press, told an audience in Hong Kong that AP is considering selling time exclusives on news stories to online customers – maybe a half-hour, maybe less.

There might be some money in news media selling exclusive first-half-hour rights on some hot online stories. Think Dave Letterman’s Top Ten Employee Dating List, or a revelation that Sarah Palin secretly holds a doctorate in English.

That notion might help traditional media a little bit, but it’s a dim mirror image of one that could generate truly enormous revenue:

Never mind the chump change from selling exclusive rights to publish, the real dough is in selling rights not to publish.

Suppose your newspaper had discovered your United States Senator with more panky in his hanky than his marriage license allows. Someone might pay for the exclusive first-half-hour publication rights, but how much would the senator pay for never-ever-publication rights?

Even without the compost of MBAs and focus groups, the odds-on first-to-flower favorite in that garden has to be the senator.

Or suppose a drug maker’s spectacularly profitable anti-impotence drug is mentioned in a study that says profits are the only thing it dependably inflates. A men’s health website might pay for a half-hour exclusive on that news, but the drug maker would certainly be interested in a permanent keep-it-zipped purchase.

Besides providing a much-needed revenue stream, the sale of non-publication rights could revive the investigative reporting teams many publications ditched when the economy tanked. Instead of looking at investigative reporters as an expensive group of advertiser-irritating prima donnas, cost-conscious publishers could now see them as serious revenue producers.

Implementing this Renaissance of The Fourth Estate would not be without minor problems. Narrow-mind do-gooders might sneer that this was really blackmail, but well-paid media lawyers could surely drape the warm cloak of the First Amendment over this practice as they have so many others. If the Constitution enshrines the right to publish something for a fee, does it not also hold sacred the right not to publish for a fee?

Although there are clear-cut examples as we have discussed, some other stories might result in competing bids between those who want to publish and those don’t. Ethics committee of the various professional journalistic organizations would have to work out rules for a fair and competitive bidding process, paying close attention to the obvious guidelines of transparency and cash or certified checks.

In spite of the obvious benefits to cash flow, don’t look for traditional media to jump on this bandwagon. After all, they were slow to recognize the internet as a threat, and slower still to respond to it, so their record of embracing innovation is spotty at best.

But even if they don’t drink, let the record show we led these horses to water.

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