
Newspapers don’t need a special law to help compete with Google and Facebook - smacktoward
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/06/10/newspapers-embarrassing-lobbying-campaign-227100
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xemdetia
I still don't get this. There have only been a handful of newspapers that seem
to have tried anything different than the same model that they used in the
80's and they have done ok, but most of the newspapers I feel like I take a
peek at are barely worth more than the paper they are printed on even if they
have a solid Sunday edition, and their websites end up being trashy from ads,
bad design, slow page loads, or any of the other reasons. Most of the articles
in web or print end up being roughly equal quality to an equivalent mediocre
to random web article as they rushing to be first.

In my opinion most newspapers haven't showed me something I want to buy/spend
money on/visit to collect a few token ad dollars. Did Google really steal your
money because I chose New York Times over some random newspaper with
lackluster articles/reporting? I feel like even radio and local/regional TV
still does a good job of giving me a reason to choose them over someone else.

~~~
staticautomatic
Or their websites actively scare you off, like the San Francisco Chronicle,
which hits me with 3 modal pop-ups in a row every time I try to read one of
their articles. If I was ever inclined to pay them I most certainly am not
now.

~~~
ravenstine
GA says our visitors are clicking an average of 3 times after we added more
modals. That's _engagement_ , bro!

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jpollock
The problem is that the newspapers were already a cartel, and Google and
Facebook broke them up.

There were several large networks:

Associated Press

United Press International

Reuters

Agence France-Presse

etc.

Newspapers generated little unique content. They tended to both act as a
distributor for AP/Reuters content, and share their content back into the
network.

Another example... The sports, stock and weather pages? Yeah, not always
generated by the paper - I worked for the NZ Metservice who had a great
business gathering together the feeds and generating the layout, shipping
print-ready pages direct.

Along come Google and Facebook who are perfectly capable of de-duping the
articles from AP, allowing a winner take all competition among the papers. Add
to that the ability to render the data pages themselves from feeds that they
can buy and there's a lot less of a reason for the end customer to pay the
local news organisation.

~~~
reilly3000
Ok, say you strip away all of the syndicated content. How much unique content
is fair to expect from a local newsroom. They aren’t anything like content
mills. Some stories take 9+ months to develop. They sometimes inform law
enforcement and often change the state of the world in very significant ways.
I’ve spent the last year as a technologist in a newsroom and I am in awe of
how remarkable an impact a big story can have on the real world. It’s hard
work, and I’ve turned down job opportunities for literally double what I’m
making because I believe in the cause of journalism so deeply. I see what vile
hated that they have to endure every day, and try like hell to keep them safe
from a myriad of digital adversaries.

The advertising business model demands attention; it’s the only way to assure
value for advertisers. Its been the enemy of media integrity for over a
hundred years. In our market-worship society we collectively place little
value on honestly, and the numbers back that up. Since 2000, over 270,000
newsroom employees have lost their jobs. Despite all the hubbub, only about
25K coal jobs have disappeared in the same timeframe. It’s as if we have ceded
verification of truth to a UI provided by a private corporation that is
managed by AI systems, instead of other people. Oops.

Unless society supports people being able to dedicate their lives to
uncovering truths and righting abuse, ‘speaking truth to power’ there won’t be
people that can devote the energy and resources to do that well enough to have
a meaningful impact.

Strip away the wire services and the ads and the articles that pay the bills
in traffic for a moment. How do we compensate people to do good work on a
story that might change the world for the better, or invest all of their
valuable skill towards something that doesn’t lead anywhere of immediate
value. There are membership models, tipping, merchandise, but what is the
right way to pay for this type of work? For most people it isn’t a gig, and
not something they can do on demand in a real time marketplace. For most
people they just decide to dedicate themselves to that kind of work and go all
in, and the best way to pay talented people according to the market is to pay
them decent salaries and give them benefits. Only when a journalist can meet
their basic needs for living can they devote their attention to fighting the
impossible battles they face in the public sphere.

So how does the organization that provides that security for journalists get
compensated outside of advertising or state sponsorship?

If we could craft something more beautiful to give to our grandkids, what
would it look and feel like?

Asking for a friend.

~~~
scarejunba
The beauty of programmatic advertising is that it enabled the rare publisher
to profit. When the pool of advertisers is massive and where they advertise is
mostly decoupled from their ad campaign being set up, you don’t get individual
companies “pulling their ads” from places. You do, but the publisher still
makes money because there are so many advertisers and the cost to be on the
market for them is near zero.

The masses panicked and now good news is hidden behind the paywall. That’s
okay for me. I’m on the inside and I will use my differential knowledge. While
those who can’t afford news will be outcompeted by virtue of their having
shittier knowledge.

They will be fat. Their unvaccinated kids will die. Their money will go to
fund my roads. They will go on Robinhood and Coinbase and give their wealth to
me. Their taxes will go to fund art galleries they will find no time to visit.

And in their ignorance, they’ll do all this while taking stances that will
only make them give me more. Beautiful.

About the only price I have to pay for this is that they’ll get angry when
they face these facts: that they collectively chose a poorer life than
available and that they collectively chose to give to those with more than
them.

~~~
mrep
> The masses panicked and now good news is hidden behind the paywall. That’s
> okay for me. I’m on the inside and I will use my differential knowledge.
> While those who can’t afford news will be outcompeted by virtue of their
> having shittier knowledge.

Except we live in a democracy and thus the masses can vote in a leader who can
take away all those benefits you get "on the inside".

~~~
scarejunba
They won't. It's because it's a democracy and they read shitty news that it's
guaranteed they won't.

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nokcha
It seems to me that journalism suffers a "tragedy of the commons"-like
situation: since many news stories are available free of cost, there is little
incentive for individual citizens to pay for subscriptions that fund the
information-gathering necessary for robust free press.

Is there any way that the government can subsidize newspapers without exerting
influence? Perhaps the government could offer tax credits (not itemized tax
deductions, but credits against the final amount due) at a given rate for
newspaper subscriptions, up to an annual limit per taxpayer? E.g., each dollar
spent on newspaper subscription yields a tax credit of $0.75, up to a limit of
$150. A newspaper could be defined content-neutrally as printed matter
delivered daily to subscribers. To prevent abuse (such as kickbacks to
subscribers), the government could require that participating newspaper
companies limit the benefits of subsidized subscriptions to (1) delivery of a
physical newspaper and (2) online access to the content of the physical
newspaper.

~~~
mises
Or maybe the government shouldn't pick winners in the market. I am a
subscriber to the Wall Street Jpirnal because they produce high-quality
content which is significantly less biased than other major mewspapers. I
figure if it gets bad enough, much of the media goes out of business. This
leads to a higher demamd leads to more and better news.

Indeed, I'd argue there are you tube broadcasters with high-quality reporting,
often better than traditional media.

Also, have you considered the environmental impact of subsidizing use of
paper? Why can't it be digital? I subscribe only to the digital version of the
WSJ. This has the added benefit of being cheaper for consumer and publisher,
increasing demand.

~~~
SquishyPanda23
The Wall St Journal is biased right of center.

For example they have an anti-regulation bias that they wear on their sleeve
editorially and which informs their news reporting.

You might consider the possibility that you like it better because it is
consistent with your world view rather than because it is less biased.

~~~
RhysU
Who is pro-regulation, in the abstract setting?

Like: "Here's a thing."

Anti-regulation response: "Thanks. I will evaluate it on its merits with the
responsibility being mine."

Pro-regulation response: "Oh, was it regulated? No? No thanks. I only accept
regulated things otherwise I have to accept responsibility for my own
evaluation."

~~~
atoav
What always strikes me as odd is how the US discourse around regulations stays
always on a hypothetical level, while literally 50 other states have
regulations for _decades_ and know where it works and where not.

This feels a little like discussing whether airplanes are a realistic means of
transportation while the rest of the world uses them for years and isn’t
really a rational approach towards reality, but rationalizing ones believes.
Airplanes are made by the devil, therefore they _can’t_ be good.

The way this discourse unfolds in the US says more about the state of the
nation than it says about the practicability of any regulation.

Can you fuck up things with overregulating? Sure thing! Can you fuck things up
by not regulating? Sure thing! And while hitting the right balance can be
tricky at times, this is not a theoretical matter you can observe it empirical
and ask yourself if it works.

I know the tribal partisan divide in the US leads some to leave their head at
the door, but come on, this is just silly.

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weirdstuff
No, they don't need one. The article shows how some groups are pushing for
legislation to allow news orgs to form a cartel, in order to compete with the
likes of Google and friends, who themselves enjoy a high concentration of
market share.

So, instead of promoting a competitive economy with fewer cartels, there's a
push to promote cartels within the economy, ostensibly to... compete?

Nice. These are, indeed, interesting times. Cartel economy it is!

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vajaya
I think all business has to know what they are selling. Google and Facebook
know it very well. They sell ads. All their business endeavours hence are to
sell more ads.

On the other hand, newspapers seems to not know that they are selling.

If it's content or information, then they don't create enough unique and
valuable content that enough people are willing to pay enough amount.

If it's content distribution or platform for opinions or civil discourses,
they are almost anachronistic.

If it's ads, they simply don't have enough eyeballs.

~~~
slang800
Maybe readers aren't the customers and newspapers are actually selling
narrative control.

~~~
macleginn
That's more or less how Russian printed press worked in the 1990s and early
2000s. All major newspapers and magazines not telling you how to have sex
after properly tying your girlfriend to the bed were losing money, and each
was owned by a major businessperson who wanted to control the narrative or at
least to look like they were able to.

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cyrksoft
They should change their business plan. It's clearly not working anymore. Most
newspapers in my country are basically dead and kept alive by government's
money, ie, tax money. It would be ridiculous to expect a law to help them.
They should build a competitive business.

~~~
totemandtoken
I see comments like this a lot, but I rarely see proposed alternative business
models. The only one I can think of off-hand is ProPublica. Anyone else got
anymore? I'm sometimes afraid that the reason newspapers don't pivot to any
other structure is because there really aren't any viable models outside of
subscriptions (which very few people pay for) or advertisements (which just
makes for a sucky experience).

~~~
cyrksoft
Then it's not a viable business. I subscribe to the papers I want. Tax payers
shouldn't absorb their faulty business.

~~~
dredmorbius
Taxpayers, and all other citizens and residents, benefit by a well-informed
(and accurately informed) population.

~~~
Kaiyou
How do you propose to force people to inform themselves?

~~~
xboxnolifes
Are you in the same thread as me?

------
germanlee
Newspapers aren't competing with google or facebook. No more than newspapers
were competing against news stands. Newspapers are competing against each
other and those that have the power to force google and facebook to give it
preferential treatment will do well. Those without the power to strong-arm
google and facebook will do poorly.

Newspapers biggest enemy are "authoritative sources" and the preferential
treatment these "authoritative sources" get. Small and local newspapers are
going to suffer as their top enemies ( NYTimes, WSJ, CNN, Foxnews, MSBNC,
WashingtonPost, etc ) get the "authoritative source" special treatment on
social media and the internet overall. This applies to other smaller outfits
like huffpo, vice news, vox properties, etc. As they get squeezed more and
more, they'll fold if they are independent or if they are owned by a larger
parent companies, the parent company will either absorb them out of existence
or slowly shut them down.

When the CEOs of Facebook, google, apple, etc all bend to pressure by
"authoritative sources" and pledge to give them special treatment on their
platforms, it spells doom for smaller competitors.

Look at how many nytimes articles we have here. As time goes on, it'll get
worse and worse. The diversity of news, thought and speech online is slowly
being destroyed by a handful of state backed news companies.

Apple, Google, Facebook, etc are each worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
NYTimes is worth a fraction of that. Yet the nytimes is able to bully these
massive tech companies. Strange huh?

How much would "special treatment" on facebook, google, apple, etc be worth?
Tens of billions? Hundreds of billions?

Imagine you had a business and you could force google, apple, facebook, etc to
show your product to customers first . How about you could get them to only
show your product. How much would that privilege be worth?

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_rpd
Say they get their cartel, and negotiate a link tax of a penny per link or
whatever. How does that play out?

Will Google and Facebook drop news altogether? How much would that harm them?
Do they just do a deal with Reuters and AP?

Say they drop news altogether. Does that just boost the popularity of
aggregators like reddit with less than a billion monthly active users? Does it
really change anything for the newspapers?

~~~
Kalium
> Say they get their cartel, and negotiate a link tax of a penny per link or
> whatever. How does that play out?

We don't have to speculate! It happened in Spain.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/9f7fmj/this_is_how_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/9f7fmj/this_is_how_google_news_looks_like_from_spain/)

Google shut down their news product in Spain. Full stop.

~~~
_rpd
Did Facebook do the same? Did they have to actively prohibit users posting
links? It seems odious.

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sametmax
No but they need one to do so _while refusing to evolve_. Let them die. Let
them be replaced. Humanity will produce something better.

------
BeetleB
You would think that an article on Politico about the effect (or not) of
Google/Facebook on ad revenue for newspapers would at least have a disclosure
that Politico makes money from ad revenue.

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mark_l_watson
Sorry, a little off topic, but I wonder how partnered publishers are doing
financially with Apple’s new News+ service. I am somewhat surprised to find
myself cheerfully paying $10/month for spending perhaps 90 minutes a month
reading material there. I assume that Apple is giving about 70% of the
prorated proceeds to publishers and keeping about 30% for themself.

I sometimes contribute to The Guardian but the. Aridity in News+ is fun.

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ForHackernews
Meh, if Major League Baseball gets a special anti-trust exemption, I think the
newspapers are at least as deserving. A vigorous free press is a rare and
valuable thing, and we'd be fools to give that up in favour of Googbook-bait
listicles.

~~~
helloimagr
Why do you think newspaper cartels will give you a vigorous free press?
Historical evidence suggests that is not the case.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
A very valid point. And yet, newspapers' primary competition today is not
other newspapers.

~~~
mrep
Then what is it?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Other sources of news - radio, TV, and the internet. And other sources of
commentary - radio, TV, and the internet. And other sources of advertising -
radio, TV, and the internet.

Newspapers aren't in the _paper_ business. They're in the _news_ business, and
commentary business, and they're really in the business of finding ways to get
you to see advertising.

[Edit: Newspapers mostly don't compete with other newspapers because almost
all cities are down to only one newspaper. Their only "paper" competition is
USA Today.]

------
ummonk
Does local TV news experience any of the same troubles as written media? Video
news doesn’t seem to be struggling.

~~~
Nasrudith
Local news TV has been infamously consolidated to conglomerates and often
clearly makes a mission to do as little journalism as possible - often
overreporting one story in development with speculation and forgetting about
the actual resolution.

You do see some good work in complaints forwarding "name and shame"
occassionally where they pressure for resolution about bueracratic failures
and dodgy businesses fixing the situation as it is the easiest way to make the
problem go away.

~~~
mrguyorama
It's worse than that. A significant portion of of American "local" news is
actually just parroting Sinclair Broadcast Group which is a national group
trying to push right wing opinion.

See this for a chilling example
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLjYJ4BzvI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLjYJ4BzvI)

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ptah
I don't see newspapers as being competitors to google and facebook. newspapers
create content and google and facebook distributes it. this law doesn't seem
to be aimed at balancing this relationship. EDIT: I think Facebook and google
should pay for each click through to a newspaper

~~~
Nasrudith
If they aren't making money through clickthroughs somehow (subscriptions, ads,
or donations) they are frankly doing it wrong and deserve to be out of
business because they don't know what the hell they are doing.

Is there any field where you need to pay to advertise someone else? That is
abject insanity even if it "worked" it would be a death spiral as short term
gaind peter out as nobody wants to mention you.

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rootusrootus
Google takes about 75% of all ad revenue flowing through their platform? And I
thought Apple had a sweet deal taking 30% of app store revenue.

~~~
paxys
Where are you getting that number from?

~~~
rootusrootus
Just a misunderstanding, I suppose, of the meaning of "Google and Facebook
take 76% of all advertising revenue."

------
chungleong
Given that Google and Facebook are natural monopolies, what newspapers are
demanding seem fair to me. The law just levels the play field. The alternative
--breaking up these Internet giants--isn't in the public's interest and
probably won't work.

~~~
slang800
Why wouldn't breaking up Google and Facebook be in the interest of the public?

~~~
chungleong
Because people value the convenience of Google's integrated services. Market
fragmentation is unnatural in the software world. Generally, the winner takes
all in a given category. If we break up Google, one part of it will end up
vanquishing the other parts.

~~~
slang800
> People value the convenience of Google's integrated services

So, short-term convenience should prevent us from breaking up a monopoly? The
long term benefits of having a competitive market far outweigh the
inconvenience of having to use tools from separate companies, or buy ad space
from separate markets.

> Market fragmentation is unnatural in the software world

Oh yeah, that's why we have one text editor, one operating system, one
browser, one CMS, one type of forum software, one chat app, one web framework,
etc. Right? Having a fragmented market with tens, if not hundreds of competing
solutions would be weird.

