Techdirt. Stories about "guardian"

And This Little Piggy Went Viral

Leigh Beadon — Fri, 2 Mar 2012 00:05:48 PST

BoingBoing recently highlighted this entertaining commercial for The Guardian, which neatly captures the state of modern news by having some fun with a fairy tale:

It's a great little production, because not only does it effectively portray the potential of what is variously called open journalism, citizen journalism and participatory journalism, among other things, it also serves as a good example of a common mantra around these parts: advertising is content, and content is advertising.

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Building Company Realizes That Threatening A Blogger With Bogus Libel Suit Was A Bad Idea; Sincerely Apologizes

Mike Masnick — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 02:55:24 PST

For years, we've covered stories of companies reacting badly to finding something they don't like about themselves online, and threatening to sue those who posted the content with libel. Many lawyers tend to go to extremes in threatening people, with the idea of scaring them into just taking content down. These days, of course, that's quite likely to backfire, as the recipient can just go public with it, and shame the company. Even so, it's rare for those companies to come out with a really sincere apology. Aaron DeOliveira points us to an interesting story involving a building company, Guardian Building Products, that freaked out over a blog that showed "a lousy installation" of their insulation. The company threatened to sue, saying that the blog post "constitute[s] libel, slander and commercial disparagement." In response, the blogger, Dr. Allison Bailes, went public with the threat.

And here's where Guardian realized that perhaps it was doing something really, really wrong. It sent a very apologetic letter: While you can (reasonably) argue that the company should have known better than to send the original threat letter, there is something to be said for owning up to the fact that you made a big mistake, and (hopefully) actually learning from it.

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Guardian Asks UK Gov't To Investigate Google News For Not Contributing To Journalism?

Mike Masnick — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:29:59 PDT

It had seemed like perhaps The Guardian newspaper in the UK understood how the internet worked. After all, execs there had been saying that they hoped the NYTimes would start charging, since it would just drive a lot more traffic their way. However, it seems like not everyone at The Guardian is on the same page. Similar to Feargal Sharkey's call demand that the UK government investigate Google for not giving the recording industry money, The Guardian is now asking the UK government to investigate Google over its Google News product, specifically claiming that Google gets too much benefit from its content. Of course, there's a simple solution to this: take your news off of Google News (or take it offline altogether). But The Guardian doesn't want to do that.

The reasoning is a bit convoluted, but, basically The Guardian says that since the online ad market is tough right now, it can't make enough money on the traffic that Google sends it. So stop accepting traffic from Google, right? No, it can't do that, because then competitors like the BBC would sweep up all of the traffic.

Is it just me, or does this reasoning suggest that The Guardian should be asking the government not to investigate Google News, but the BBC for representing unfair competition? The Guardian's reasoning here is a bit tortured. It seems to be saying it can't compete with other sources due to Google News... even though those other sources have the exact same issue (getting traffic from Google News). It's only real complaint is that the BBC offers its content for free online -- and (though it doesn't appear to explicitly call this out), the BBC is publicly funded and doesn't have to focus on ad revenue like The Guardian does. So why isn't the complaint against the BBC instead of Google News?

The Guardian always struck me as a pretty good paper, but the logic here is hard to understand. If it doesn't want the traffic, fine, don't take it (though, most people recognize that would be a mistake). If the problem is that it can't monetize the content effectively, then that's a business model problem for The Guardian -- not Google News. Finally, if the problem is (as it appears) competition from the BBC, then take it up with the BBC or those who fund it, but don't misplace the blame on Google News.

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