Yet Another Newspaper Paywall Goes Bust: SF Chronicle Gives Up After Just Four Months

Business Models

from the not-the-panacea-you've-been-expecting dept

I know that within newspaper circles it’s become popular to claim that we’ve now entered the era of the paywall. Paywall supporters love to point to the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal — along with claims from various paywall companies that more and more newspapers are moving over to such a model. However, we’ve been hearing plenty of stories suggesting that for most every newspaper that isn’t a major national or international brand, the paywalls are looking like dismal failures. Very, very, very few (at times, shockingly few) people are signing up, and by setting up the paywall, they’re actually losing a fair number of online visitors. This isn’t a surprise. As we’ve been arguing for years, a paywall is the exact wrong strategy for most newspapers, since the real business they’re in is building a community and then selling that community’s attention. Yet, a paywall makes it much, much harder to build a community, first by putting up a tollbooth, and then making it nearly impossible for readers to share the news and bring others into that community.

So it should come as little surprise that the SF Chronicle here in San Francisco has apparently killed its paywall after just four months. The quickness with which it’s been pulled certainly suggests that the number of signups was appallingly low and someone finally did the math and realized what a colossal disaster this was going to be. For your typical metro or regional newspaper, all a paywall really does is open up a huge market for online competitors. It looks like the Chronicle found that out the hard way.

Filed Under: business models, newspapers, paywalls
Companies: sf chronicle

Is Google Regretting Paying Off Belgian And French Newspapers Yet? Other Newspapers Demand Their Cut

Journalism

from the like-that-wasn't-predictable dept

For years now, we’ve talked about how various newspapers (and local governments) around the globe were arguing that Google News was somehow unfairly cheating them out of revenues (even as they sent a ton of traffic to those sites, often to visitors who wouldn’t have visited the pages at all otherwise). Back in December, we saw that Google “settled” a long running dispute with Belgian newspapers, with part of it being an “agreement” to buy a bunch of advertising to effectively pay off the newspapers. Then, in February, Google did a similar deal in France, this time to the tune of $82 million. Of course, it didn’t take long for people to point out that this sets an awful precedent for the internet, as these legacy publishers now believe they have a legitimate argument that sites should pay to link to them.

And, of course, newspapers in lots of other countries were paying attention. While Google has insisted that those two deals “won’t be replicated” elsewhere in Europe, it appears that newspaper publishers elsewhere in Europe would like to test that claim. Media companies in Portugal are first up to the plate, demanding that Google pay up:

“Our position is that the content has to be paid for … We showed that our focus is to be paid for Google News using our news,” he said, adding that the two sides planned to continue regular meetings.

A Google spokeswoman said the company “does not comment on private meetings held by its teams”.

Maybe, next time, Google should stand up for its principles on deals like this, even in the face of political pressure. Because giving in and paying up only means that pretty much every country with a struggling media business (meaning, most countries) is going to come calling before too long…

Filed Under: belgium, france, google news, newspapers, portugal

German Newspaper 'Snippet' Law Passes: Watered Down, But Still Stupid

Copyright

from the how-small-is-smallest? dept

For a year now, Techdirt has been following the sorry saga of Germany’s attempt to make search engines and others pay for licenses to show even small excerpts from online newspapers. The main motivation seems to be to take money from Google for being successful, and to give it to the German publishers that are struggling.

Even though the idea that newspapers were suffering because of the short excerpts shown as part of search results is absurd, and existing copyright law already forbids unauthorized use of longer extracts, publishers had enough friends in the German parliament to get the “snippets” law pushed through today. However, along the way, a small amendment was made to the text that makes it slightly less damaging. According to the new wording (pdf – German original), quotations will have to be licensed unless they are:

Unhelpfully, no definition for “smallest excerpts” is given, which means there is still considerable uncertainty over just how many words can be quoted without paying a licensing fee. That’s bound to have a chilling effect on the use of snippets, as publications err on the side of caution before court cases begin to establish what is and isn’t acceptable. Another issue is whether quotations in blogs or on social networks will be exempt: according to the German magazine Der Spiegel they will (“probably”, in the case of Facebook). But again, we won’t know for sure until cases come to court.

Happily, there is still some doubt over whether the law will ever come into force. According to Der Spiegel again, the SPD (Socialist Party) may be able to overturn the law in Germany’s other legislative body, the Bundesrat. Let’s hope it succeeds, and saves Germany from the embarrassment of trying to implement such a backward-looking and unworkable law.

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Filed Under: copyright, fair use, germany, newspapers, search engines, snippets

British Politician Tells Local Paper It Can't Quote Him Because He Dislikes Its Readers' Comments

Say That Again

from the didn't-really-think-this-out-at-all,-did-you? dept

Being in the public arena is not for the thin-skinned. Or, at least, that used to be the case, right up until the internet made it possible for thousands to give instant (usually negative) feedback on public figures’ statements, actions, sudden weight gain, etc. True, older, thicker-skinned public figures had it much easier “back in the day,” but today’s political aspirant should know that a.) their life is an open (face)book and b.) the angriest people talk (type) the LOUDEST.

However, rather than develop thicker skin, some politicians have instead made efforts to keep all the bad people away from the paper vellum they call skin. Some try to shield themselves (and the children!) with vague anti-cyberbullying laws. Others push for “real name” requirements. And some (well, maybe just this one), just tell the offending entity that it’s no longer part of the conversation, no matter how ridiculous this “arrangement” actually is.

Christopher Hawtree is a very unusual politician because he dislikes being quoted. The Green councillor, who has just been selected to fight for a parliamentary seat, has told a reporter for his local paper, the Brighton Argus, to stop approaching him after meetings.

So, a local politician who deals with local issues would rather not answer questions from the local paper. One of the correspondents for the offending paper logically asked (via Twitter), “Isn’t that his job?”

Why doesn’t Hawtree want to talk to his district’s paper of record?

Hawtree tweeted in response: “I have a great dislike of the Argus readers’ comments and so prefer to appear in other papers.”

That normally wouldn’t be a problem, but Brighton & Hove’s only paper is the Argus. Hawtree apparently would like to be the sort of public figure that can coast through several successful terms, untroubled by his local paper and mouthy constituents. But if that’s truly the sort of person he wishes to be, he needs to drop the “public figure” part of it.

Not only will he not respond to the paper’s inquiries, but he’s actively steering anyone who will listen towards an alternative “paper of record.”

So, given that the city of Brighton & Hove is served by only one title, what “other papers” does he prefer? The New York Times, evidently, because he urges his followers to sign up for a subscription.

I’m not sure how much longer Hawtree’s planning to “serve” his community, but I would think his constituents will be trimming a few months or years off that total. It’s pretty tough to remain a community leader when you’ve implied that many in the community are “dreadful” and “hateful.” Topping it off by cutting the press out of the loop makes Hawtree look like the sort of person who’d be better off returning to the private sector and becoming a hermit, rather than attempting to bypass all that “unpleasant” communication the real world’s known for.

Filed Under: newspapers, politics, uk

Google's Other Bad Idea: Offering 50 Million Euros To French Newspapers [Updated]

Journalism

from the is-that-really-wise? dept

Earlier this week we wrote about a strange move by Google: apparently agreeing to pay the French telecoms company Orange extra to deliver its traffic — thus abandoning the principle of net neutrality it has championed for so long. And now here’s another dubious decision: allegedly offering to pay French publishers 50 million Euros in order to settle the dispute over the display of news snippets in its search results:

This suggests that Google is trying to frame these payments as more of a partnership with the newspapers than an acquiescence to their demands. That’s no surprise, because if it is seen to be paying a license to display copyright material in this case, the pressure to do the same elsewhere will inevitably increase. In fact, it has already adopted this “partnership” explanation for the deal it cut with Belgian publishers last month:

It remains to be seen whether publishers in France and around the world will be happy to “partner” in this way, or whether some will hold out for a formal recognition by Google that it is paying them for a license to display snippets from their publications. Let’s hope not: it would be a truly awful precedent that would undermine not only Google’s business model, but much of the Web as we know it.

Update: Right on cue, Eric Schmidt has just unveiled — you guessed it — a “partnership” with French publishers:

So the price seems to have gone up slightly, from €50 million, to €60 million, plus unspecified amounts to “help increase” publishers’ advertising revenue. But no mention of the dreaded “licensing” word in there, so maybe the French publishers blinked, and Google won this time. But expect the issue to come up again in other countries — Germany, for example — where Google might not be so lucky.

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Filed Under: france, newspapers, paying to link, payments, search engines
Companies: google

Irish Newspapers Budge Slightly: Now Say Links Don't Require Payment, But Snippets…

Copyright

from the keep-digging dept

Last year, we wrote about the insane position from the group Newspaper Licensing Ireland (NLI), which represents the major newspapers in Ireland, in demanding that a charity pay them for linking to newspaper stories. In the last few weeks that story has been getting more and more attention in Ireland, in part because a related, but different organization representing mostly the same Irish newspapers, National Newspapers of Ireland (NNI), made a submission to a government review of copyright arguing that linking is infringement if done on any kind of commercial site (so, yeah, they’d probably consider that link to their site infringement).

NNI made a submission to the effect that our view of existing legislation is that the display and transmission of links does constitute an infringement of copyright and our existing copyright law should not be amended in the manner discussed in the Consultation Paper.

Meanwhile, the lawyers representing the charity have noticed that NLI appears to have backtracked ever so slightly and are now saying that “links alone” are not infringement, but if you include any text, you’ve gone over the line. They’ve put up a new statement reading, in part:

For commercial use: NLI does not require a licence from any organisation which only displays or transmits links to newspaper content. A licence is required when there is other reproduction of the newspaper content, such as display of PDFs or text extracts.

Of course, whether or not they consider reproducing that text as copyright infringement is left as an exercise for the reader.

Filed Under: copyright, ireland, links, newspapers, snippets
Companies: national newspaper of ireland, newspaper licensing ireland, nli, nni

Confused Irish Newspaper Editorial Argues That Search Engines Need To Pay Newspapers

Copyright

from the time-to-drop-the-irish-examiner dept

As a few folks sent in, recently the Irish Examiner newspaper had an editorial arguing that copyright law needs to be expanded because, of course, newspapers are suffering. Though, as you look at the details, whoever wrote the article appears to be quite confused:

The scale of the piracy is astounding. In 2010, while every media company in the country shed jobs and cut costs to the bone, a single search engine operating in Ireland offered around 150,000 newspaper articles that cost publishers an estimated €46.5m to generate. Last year that site offered more than 350,000 articles at a cost equivalent to more than €110m. And all without paying one cent to those who created those articles.

This free-for-all has put Ireland’s 8,600 creative enterprises, the 116,000 jobs involved — some 7.5% of GDP and 6.5% of total employment — under a darkening cloud. Multinational corporations, ironically styling themselves champions of free information having stolen it themselves, pretend that they see nothing wrong with hijacking the work of others. They do this to create entities that exist primarily, in a news context, to deliver rather than generate content. To rub salt into the wound these entities are determined to secure advertising revenue on the back of that snatched news content. This is the very revenue that made the gathering of the news possible in the first place.

First of all, they seem to be claiming that search engines that index content, show a snippet and link people to the original content are “piracy.” That’s crazy talk. Furthermore, while they don’t name the “search engine” they claim that it “offered” these articles. Of course, if it really posted all the articles itself, then there is no need to change copyright laws — the company could already sue them for infringement. However, assuming that they’re really talking about Google or just about any other search engine, what they really mean is that the search engines aggregated the content and linked people back to the original. The “cost” to produce those articles is irrelevant to the overall discussion. Yes, it costs money, but it’s the job of a business model to bring in even more money. If the business geniuses who run your paper are too clueless to figure out how to monetize the traffic from Google, then perhaps you deserve to go out of business.

In the end, as we’ve seen elsewhere, this isn’t about “piracy” at all. This is about newspapers who don’t know how to adapt, and are staffed by completely technologically illiterate folks, who simply see that Google is making money while they’re struggling and assume (totally incorrectly) that Google needs to pay them for sending them traffic.

Filed Under: ireland, newspapers, search engines
Companies: google

UK Newspaper Licencing Agency Says Musicians Need To Pay To Quote Reviews

Copyright

from the live-by-copyright,-die-by-copyright dept

I wonder how copyright maximalist musicians feel about this particular story. Techdirt reader glassneedles alerts us to an offline (!?!) news article in the publication Private Eye, about how the UK’s Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) has declared that musicians who quote positive reviews from newspapers need to pay £1,250 per year (which would allow them to quote up to 50 reviews). Seriously. Apparently, the NLA went around to various music agents and managers a while ago, and they (quite reasonably) ignored the threats. That just made the NLA mad.

… the phoney war has turned into a real one, with the NLA chasing agents, threatening legal action and demanding not just license payments for future quotes but also retrospective payments for past ones.

The amounts are crazily excessive for the modest, shoestring operations that most classical music management and PR companies tend to be, with £7,000-£8,000 a typical demand.

For folks who help market a number of musicians, the NLA claims are apparently adding up to being fairly serious.

The most outrageous example… concerns a small PR company called ElevenTenths, which is effectively one woman, Claire Willis, working form a spare bedroom…. Poor Ms. Willis was collared by the NLA a few months ago, required to fill in forms about her clients and activities, and then received a bill for £23,500.

Willis complained and apparently the NLA “backed down” and offered a deal for “only” £1,588.45. In the past, we had written about the NLA winning a lawsuit against news aggregators, so perhaps it’s now turned to those who quote its reviews as a new, highly questionable, revenue stream.

I wonder if folks in the UK are regretting the decision, in the Hargreaves report, that the UK doesn’t need an explicit fair use rule.

Filed Under: copyright, licensing, musicians, newspapers, quotes, reviews, uk
Companies: nla

Brazilian Newspapers Apparently Don't Want Traffic; They All Opt Out Of Google News

Business Models

from the how-much-do-they-spend-on-seo? dept

We’ve already seen newspapers in Belgium and Germany argue that Google needs to pay them for linking to them in Google News. And we just wrote about how French newspapers were looking for the same ridiculous handout. But a bunch of Brazilian newspapers have taken the issue even further, and colluded to all pull out of Google News together (well, 90% of all newspapers in Brazil). They’re demanding that Google pay them to link to them. Of course, I’m curious if any of those newspapers has ever hired an SEO expert to try to get them better search rankings…

Google, as it does, has pointed out that it sends these newspapers a ton of traffic, which you would think they’d appreciate. A Google representative pointed out how ridiculous the newspapers’ stance was:

it would be absurd for a restaurant to tax a cab driver for taking tourists to eat there.

In the meantime, if I were one of the 10% of newspapers smart enough not to opt-out, I’d be going all out to try to steal that traffic from the big newspapers.

The newspapers defended their decision by arguing that Google News is “not helping us grow our digital audiences.” Instead, they claim that “by providing the first few lines of our stories to Internet users, the service reduces the chances that they will look at the entire story in our web sites.” I’m wondering how they determine this, because I can’t see how that would possibly be true. Google notes that it sends four billion clicks to news sites each month. The newspaper guys seem to assume that without Google News people will just go straight to their newspaper sites, which is a huge assumption. It also assumes that the people looking at Google News aren’t clicking through on news articles. Those both seem like very big assumptions that are likely to be entirely incorrect.

Filed Under: brazil, business models, google news, newspapers, search traffic, seo, traffic
Companies: google

The Return Of Dumb Ideas: A Broadband Tax To Save Failing Newspapers

Journalism

from the make-it-go-away dept

RobW points us to an opinion piece over at The Guardian, by David Leigh, who argues that there should be a £2 tax on every broadband connection sent to newspapers in order to prop them up for their own failures to adapt to a changing market place. He tosses out the usual tropes about how only newspapers can do real investigative reporting (what, like hacking voicemails the way Rupert Murdoch’s journalists did?). Of course this is a complete myth. First of all, most newspapers do very little investigative reporting — and UK papers are also somewhat famous for their ability to stretch the truth at times. Is this really something we want to reward?

The idea is hardly original. It’s been suggested for years and seems to pop up in random places at random times. While it may be more reasonable than taxing Google to fund newspapers, it’s still a horrifically bad idea. Leigh tries to work out how this would work, arguing that the sum would be divvied up among UK newspapers based on their web traffic. Of course, how you measure web traffic suddenly becomes very, very important. Leigh seems to assume this is easy, and that any such system wouldn’t be gamed — which it would. On top of that, he fails to recognize that the second you base such a huge sum of potential money on purely one metric, news sites would optimize solely on that metric, even if they’re not “gaming” the system. So, expect plenty of attempts at sensationalistic stories and the like, rather than the thoughtful investigative reporting he thinks they’re going to get.

And how do you define who gets access to the money in the first place? Leigh thinks he has that worked out too… but he does not:

There would be no insuperable problems in defining “news providers”. The starting point would be to designate those organisations already classed by the state as zero-rated newspapers under the 1994 VAT legislation : “Newspapers … issued at least once a week in a continuous series under the same title … [which] contain information about current events of local, national or international interest. Publications which do not contain a substantial amount of news are not newspapers.”

Other original news providers could subsequently apply to the independent levy board for admission to the scheme, case-by-case. But there would have to be a reasonable size threshold for admission, perhaps set at 100,000 monthly users, and also some rules to exclude content aggregators.

Ok, so that starts out by favoring the very companies who have done the least to adapt to changing times and ignores upstarts who have worked hard to build audiences and business models that work. And then you have to “apply” to get access in a long bureaucratic process where a small group of people (probably pulled from newspapers) gets to pick and choose? That’s not how you build innovative companies with innovative business models. And, really, why the ban on “content aggregators”? There is this ongoing argument among old school newspaper people who seem to think that “aggregators” are the enemy — despite the fact that they send original news sites more traffic and more users, and many aggregators expand into original content production themselves as well. Either way, lots of news sites would start applying, just because there’s a ton of cash sitting there, and they’d all just start trying to optimize for the metric to get in.

But, of course, the real problem with all of this is the idea that it ever makes sense to tax a new technology to prop up those who failed to innovate, failed to adapt and couldn’t compete. If they can’t do it, let them fail. Contrary to Leigh’s rather myopic view of the world, others will come in to fill the need, and they’ll do so with innovative business models that don’t require a tax. Really, Leigh’s piece is best summed up by the first comment, from user “romandavid” who noted:

“A £2-a-month levy on automobiles could save our horse and cart business.”

Exactly. If this got approved, every other disrupted industry would seek the same thing. Record labels? Movie studios? You bet. Travel agents? Absolutely. Really, what industry wouldn’t want to add their own “tax” to the internet to try to pretend that we still lived in the 1980s? Thankfully, nearly all of the comments on the article seem to be taking the same general stance, that Leigh’s idea is completely ridiculous and self-serving, without any reason or merit.

Filed Under: broadband tax, newspapers, tax, uk