
How To Save The Newspapers, Vol. XII: Outlaw Linking - vaksel
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/28/how-to-save-the-newspapers-vol-xii-outlaw-linking/
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brandnewlow
True story.

I show up 5 minutes late to a lunch/forum about the future of news here in
Chicago featuring Carl Bernstein plus the editors of the Sun-Times, Tribune
and other local publications. I find a seat at a table of youngsters and find
out they're all undergrads at Northwestern's journalism program, where I
earned an MSJ.

I introduce myself, tell them I run a news aggregator for local stuff. One
turns to me.

"I hate what you do. You're ruining the industry."

"Wha?"

Intrigued, I try to figure out what she means through a series of increasingly
specific questions about what she doesn't like until finally I ask the big
one:

"Do you think it's wrong for a web site to link to another web site?"

"Yes. Unless they've paid the site they're linking to for the right to do so."

That explained everything. I'm not unsympathetic to her POV. She wants to be a
reporter, and those jobs are increasingly hard to come by. She blames "the
blogs" for this. I explained that there are many more opportunities out there
for her to report and inform the public that didn't involve working for a
newspaper. She wasn't interested. It always amazes me how reporters can be so
clever and entrepreneurial in their reporting while being so darn conservative
and narrow-minded in how they manage their careers.

~~~
old-gregg
_I explained that there are many more opportunities out there for her to
report and inform the public that didn't involve working for a newspaper._

... And still have enough resources (cash) to produce new, valuable
information, as opposed to being a gossip outlet or just blogging about things
you read elsewhere online?

If there are "many more opportunities" how come they're not obvious? Are there
really _many_ of them? Can you name a single operating "newspaper
replacement"?

Assuming every nytimes.com in the world closes its doors tomorrow. What are
you going to aggregate?

~~~
brandnewlow
The problem is looking for a "newspaper replacement." That's limiting.

You could go report for a wire service covering a state capitol.

You could go report for one of the many B2B web sites and publications popping
up to serve industries and audiences that actually have money to spend.

You could report for one of the many e-mail newsletter businesses that I know
are thriving and growing.

You could cover real estate news for the blog of a realtor.

You could cover food news for the blog of a coalition of restaurants.

But if the only job that will make you happy is covering "important stuff" at
a newspaper supported by advertising and classifieds that aims at a general
audience and maintains a stance of complete objectivity and impartiality,
you're closing the door on many opportunities that would employ the same
skillset.

The reason these opportunities are not obvious is because people keep looking
for something that works just like a newspaper. If it works just like a
newspaper, it won't be a viable business.

If the NYTimes goes under, it'll be replaced by 100 blogs of varying quality
and focus. Someone will be rewarded greatly for stepping in there and
aggregating them.

Did you know there used to be dozens of newspapers in Chicago? Every immigrant
group put out its own paper. Is it so crazy to think we might be returning to
that model for a while?

~~~
old-gregg
_"But if the only job that will make you happy is covering "important stuff""_

That's the ONLY job we're discussing here. A journalist, you know. Every
single "opportunity" you have listed isn't journalism, those are _corporate PR
gigs_. Real estate news for a blog of a realtor? Seriously? And a hundred of
those will be a worthy replacement for New York Times?

Blogs aren't new. Five years ago every corporate web site had a "news" section
and now it's fashionable to call it a "blog". So that's what journalism school
graduates should be wasting their lives writing, and I should be reading from
now on? So instead of semi-independent media we'll just have a million little
press-releases

Working for a "newspaper replacement" isn't limiting, it is actually quite
ambitious, especially compared to the PR career you have suggested. No wonder
that girl was mad at you.

And don't pose as some kind of visionary and don't call someone's ambitions
"limiting". Face it: you just want someone else's content to aggregate, i.e.
profit from. And you seem to care very little of what that content happens to
be.

Lets repeat the exercise: how can a young and ambitious reporter find
resources to do a high-quality reporting (i.e. not press releases) on toxic
food in supermarkets, the war in Iraq, corruption in a state senate, etc?
Which "real estate broker" will pay for that?

~~~
brandnewlow
You sound like one of the anti-linking people.

Also, if writing for a wire service isn't journalism, I don't know what is.
The problem with it is that you don't get a byline and you have to churn out
boilerplate stories at a prodigious pace.

~~~
old-gregg
I am not one of the anti-linking people, although it sure may serve as a
convenient "argument" to you here.

The issue in question is you don't seem to be concerned with the media as a
4th branch of the government, you don't see the independent press as crucial
component of our political system. I'm quite active politically, and what I
have learned is that we, as citizens, have the only tool at our disposal which
we can use to fight back against corrupt politicians and various interest
groups: i.e. call for a massive media attention.

At first glance, Internet should help here big time, right? Well, wrong:
Independent web campaigns just don't work: it takes a lot of time and momentum
to become visible, often you need the public to intervene ASAP: sometimes it's
about saving city parks, sometimes its about public outrage against converting
a public interstate highway (paid for with taxpayers dollars) into a toll road
controlled by an out-of-state company, sometimes its about ah fuck it, HN is
clearly the wrong venue for this.

Entrepreneurial programmers simply seek "data" they can crawl and re-post with
their own ads, who gives a flying fuck about 4th branches and all that boring
offline stuff, right?

~~~
Retric
What balance is modern media placing on the government compared to what blogs
are doing? From what I have seen blogs have done more to vet political
candidates than the main stream media. Read up on who actually broke major
issues. From what I have seen over the last year "blogs" have done about as
much to balance government excess as the entirety of main stream media
combined.

------
greyman
In my opinion what the newspaper websites really don't like is not linking,
but quoting.

Quoting some idea from another source with attribution is a very common thing.
But this practice has specific implications when applied to reported news. I
saw the following practice on blogs like Huffington Post or news aggregators:
they take headline and one or two paragraphs from a news article, provide a
link to it, and optionally add their own content to it. Technically it is
quoting with attribution, which is perfectly legal.

But as we know, the news articles are usually written in a dense form, and to
produce just the headline and one paragraph is sometimes very expensive, for
example when a real reporter had to go there and gather the facts.

And then, some blogger or aggregator just take it and gives back just a link -
and the news websites doesn't feel that is an adequate compensation for the
work needed to produce that headline and paragraph.

And, more often than not, the aggregator or blogger earned enough money to
survive (since what he did is not that expensive), while the news outlet who
did the reporting didn't earn enough to operate.

But of course, on the other side, it's not a fault of the blogger or
aggregator that they didn't earned enough, and that's where the newspapers get
it wrong. I just wanted to provide the perspective from the "other side".

~~~
zhyder
_"the aggregator or blogger earned enough money to survive (since what he did
is not that expensive), while the news outlet who did the reporting didn't
earn enough to operate."_

Great point! This is why I'm worried about a future without NYTimes and other
traditional news outlets. The most dangerous possibility is that there won't
be any economic incentive left to do the original investigative reporting. But
maybe we don't need any economic incentive anyway, and we'll get plenty of
free news from the twitter-ers, casual bloggers, cellphone video uploaders and
other common folk.

~~~
brandnewlow
I think new ways to fund investigative reporting will arise, and that they'll
be just as problematic, ephemeral, and controversial as the current ones.

Obvious example: How deeply can an investigative reporter at NBC really probe
into the affairs of General Electric, the company that owns it?

Similarly, if a bunch of local realtors got together and hired an
investigative reporter to cover real estate, people would howl and moan about
conflict of interest...but that person would probably dig up some great
stories, just not stories about the companies funding him/her.

------
Sam_Odio
This is absurd. If a website wants to block linking it's easy: just use
http_referer and/or dynamic urls.

Nobody does that because it's horrible business practice and a easy way to
isolate yourself from the rest of the web. Regardless, we certainly don't need
the government to enforce a behavior that individuals could easily adopt on
their own.

------
dotcoma
newspapers that think along these lines should just take their websites down,
and stick to the print edition plus other non-linkable forms such as a kindle
edition, an ipod edition, and adobe air reader edition etc.

for all the others, learning how to link themselves to other newspapers and
blogs, i.e. learning to take part in the online conversation, is absolutely
crucial if they want to have a chance of surviving.

------
colins_pride
_Yet in a blog post last week on the future of newspapers, he concludes there
may be only one way to save the industry_

Hint: if you have to change the law to protect an industry, the industry is a
dinosaur. You are not really saving it, merely delaying the inevitable at
great global expense. The proper course of action lies in that eastern
technique known as _letting go_

------
mjgoins
Could someone explain what would motivate a newspaper to limit other sites
linking to it? I can't think of a single reason it would be harmful to their
business.

~~~
Dilpil
This is indeed the problem: newspapers have no understanding of the business
they engage in.

------
gojomo
A law to outlaw linking without permission is unnecessary; they can already
block traffic by 'referrer'.

That essentially no papers do so illustrates the problem with such a strategy:
as long as one reasonable-substitute competitor allows inlinking,
bloggers/aggregators don't care, and the anti-inlinking paper has only hurt
itself.

What I think they really want is to outlaw _all_ linking unless some cartel
(rather than individual targets) approves. Then they can lock out all
'parasites' (in their view) from their newsgathering value.

You can see this true agenda in opinion pieces like the following:

"Newspapers need an antitrust exemption"
[http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/la-oe-
rutten4-200...](http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/la-oe-
rutten4-2009feb04,1,4979706.column)

"Laws that could save Journalism" [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2009/05...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2009/05/15/AR2009051503000.html)

~~~
jamesbritt
"That essentially no papers do so illustrates the problem with such a
strategy: as long as one reasonable-substitute competitor allows inlinking,
bloggers/aggregators don't care, and the anti-inlinking paper has only hurt
itself."

Or they really have no understanding of the technology. Every so often some
site complains about "deep linking" (the misnomer itself indicate their level
of cluelessness). They seek out legal sanctions when some simple site coding
would fix the problem faster and cheaper.

------
sutro
This linking debate is analogous to the perennial protectionism versus free
trade debate.

------
naveensundar
I read it as outlaw "thinking" the first time.

