Since the dawn of the Internet, news organizations have accepted the notion that the only way to survive the onslaught of the Web is to publish everything online, at no cost to readers, and let anyone in the world synopsize it, refer to it, and copy and link to it. You can't charge for your work--that's rule No. 1 on the Internet. And you can't block others from copying or linking to it--that's rule No. 2.Those aren't arbitrary rules, if you've been paying attention since about the time Al Gore invented it...
But those rules are starting to look stupid.
They're not stupid, but they don't support the same economic model that was in effect in 1960. Teletype machines and typists and typesetters working with hot lead aren't part of the new model, either...
All the media companies that follow them are going broke, so now they're casting about for a new business model. Some are talking about making readers pay subscription fees.
Many of the larger names in news tried that, only for the most part to drop the approach. You can charge if you're the only game in town, but nobody was.
But the most radical idea, and the one I find most intriguing, is being advanced by Mark Cuban, a billionaire Internet entrepreneur. Cuban's advice: declare war on the "aggregator" Web sites that get a free ride on content. These aggregators--sites like Drudge Report, Newser, and countless others--don't create much original material. They mostly just synopsize stuff from mainstream newspapers and magazines, and provide a link to the original.
That'd include the Burg, naturally. So what he's talking about is a block list so you can connect to your friendly neighborhood New York Times from home but not via Drudge. I'm guessing there would be a slight technology shift if that actually happened, but even more a shift away from the sites doing the blacklisting. They're not the only game in town. Can't link to a story on WaPo? Washington Times probably carries about the same news, and if they don't the Examiner will. You might not get the original story the same day it comes out, but you'll get it the next day, in many cases within four hours.
Think about this for a minute. The aggregators and the old-media guys are competing for the same advertising dollars. But the aggregators compete using content that the old-media guys create and give to them at no cost. This is insane, right?
Nope. It's a good business model for the aggregators. Not so much so for the old line rags.
It's like fighting a war and supplying the enemy with guns and bullets.
More like deploying in a Maginot Line while everybody else is Blitzkrieging...
But this, we are told, is how the Internet must operate--it's the spirit of the Web, where everything is freely shared. Cuban says that's hogwash.
But has he designed something that breaks that mold?
He says the media companies should kill off these parasites by using a little piece of software that blocks incoming links from aggregators. If the aggregators can't link to other people's stories, they die. With a few lines of code, the old-media guys could snuff them out.
Never happen. Most of the links on Rantburg come from target area publications: al-Arabiya, Pak Daily Times, and other Middle Eastern sources. Page 6 and to a lesser extent pages 3 and 4 rely on domestic news sources, but even those aren't exclusively domestic. When AP or Reuters or AFP stories appear their original homes as far as we're concerned are Straits Times or Iran Press or what have you.
Sure, it's brutal. But it sounds like it could work, doesn't it?
Nope. When you're cutting links you're cutting eyeballs. Without eyeballs news organs wither and die.
Yet for espousing such heresy on his blog last month, Cuban was condemned as either evil, or stupid, or both. MARK CUBAN IS A BIG FAT IDIOT was the headline of a response piece by Michael Wolff, a columnist for Vanity Fair and the founder of Newser, one of the aggregator sites that Cuban suggested was ripe for blocking. Wolff claims Newser and other aggregators are "doing a service to news organizations because a portion of our readers click through to the original story."
What the aggregators are doing is expanding the news producers' readership, not eating it. Drudge runs headlines, not the whole story. Newser summarizes stories in a couple paragraphs and provides links to the originals.
Most Internet gurus agree. Not Cuban. He says that (a) very few readers actually click through to the original story; and (b) even when they do, the news companies don't make any money from them.
So he's assuming that people who're too lazy to click through will have the energy to go to a half dozen or a dozen news sites to get their content, paying for each? How're things on Arcturus lately?
The problem with Cuban's "blockade" strategy is that it works only if everybody does it.
Picked right up on that, didn't he?
If your Web site blocks links but your competitors don't, you're basically committing suicide. You'll be cut off from a big source of traffic, while aggregators will survive by feeding off your rivals.
But you just said they don't get any worthwhile traffic from linkers?
But the embattled news organizations must take some kind of drastic measure.
My guess is that most of them will go under, and not for economic reasons.
Marc Andreessen, another Internet billionaire, thinks most of the old-guard publishers will start forcing readers to pay subscription fees. But if the old companies do start charging fees, they will drive away readers.
Interesting, the way that works, isn't it?
Advertisers will go where the audience is--which means they'll spend more of their advertising dollars on the upstart sites. The new guys will start making serious money, and will be able to hire reporters and editors away from the old-guard companies to create their own original material. "That's the thesis," Andreessen says. It's partly why Andreessen has recently invested in two Internet news publications--Business Insider and Talking Points Memo.
When I was a tad, a newspaper cost a nickel, 20 cents or a quarter on Sundays. Most of the revenue actually came from advertising. Sunday papers were enormous, chock full of ads and coupons and such. There's a reason ad revenues have dropped as a percentage of overall revenues. What could it possibly be?
So will today's low-rent parasites become tomorrow's highbrow news organizations?
Something will take the place of the paleopapers. It will likely be Drudge and agencies and maybe Rantburg and certainly bloggers and teevee site tie-ins...
That's not such an unusual evolution. HBO started out as a mere distributor of movies made by others, but as revenues grew, it began producing its own shows. Miramax started out schlepping indie flicks to art-house cinemas, then made enough money to start producing its own artsy films. So maybe, one day, the Huffington Post will become the equivalent of The New York Times--perhaps operated by the same writers and editors and sales reps who used to work for the Times.
That's what I just said, though I wasn't actually thinking about the Huffington Post. But he's making the assumption the new media will be as liberal as the old media. But it's my opinion that the old media is hastening its demise by taking sides against at least half its potential readership, to whit, by disparaging and demeaning conservatives and libertarians. I think Washington Post isn't tanking as dramatically as the New York Times because it's not as overtly biased. And the Washington Times is still around because it's a quality alternative to the Post. The Examiner, with a nationwide business model that looks to my uneducated eye better than USA Today's, may outlast them both, because if it tanks in Baltimore it might thrive in Washington -- or Duluth.
Maybe all of us old-media guys will just end up walking across the street and doing the same job, but for a new, print-less publication.
I have my doubts. Why should new media hire the guys who lost the old media race?
Or maybe the old-media guys will take Cuban's advice and declare war by blocking links from aggregators, figuring it's their last chance to kill the parasites before they kill the host. I'm not sure it would work, but I'd love to see someone try, just to see what happens. Oddly enough, Cuban doesn't think news organizations will take his advice because it's too risky. "For the same reason that in the 1970s and 1980s no one ever got fired for buying IBM, no one ever got fired for following conventional wisdom," he says. He's probably right. And that's a shame.
Lyons is NEWSWEEK's Technology Editor.