
Are Operations Like Flipboard Scams Against Publishers? - microtherion
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/--100456
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ChuckMcM
I think this was a great article, it touches on the transformation that is
going on in the news economy.

It does cost money to report on things, and people who spend their time
thinking about the issues and summarizing them or coralling them together. And
historically those people were paid by the fees from Classified Ads [1].

What was interesting in the 'old school' was that the classifieds of the
newspaper that had the most readers did best, and so they could charge the
most for them, and subscribers and circulation became the variable you
maximized to make your paper successful. But in the 'new school' there is no
single paper, there is the web, and it has voices from all over and all of the
ad revenue is going to places like Craigslist and Google so the support cost
of serious news is 'gone' or its entirely subscriber based.

TPM is 100% correct in that it gets no benefit from Flipboard (or Feedly, or
whatever) in showing its story if it never sees the reader.

People are willing to pay for editorial, the New York times, the Economist,
and others have shown that. But how do you create their scale or markets these
days? Can you even make a 'lean startup' type organization based on editorial
content? That will be an interesting question for the current generation of
entrepreneurs, and a vital question to Journalism/English majors everywhere.

[1] [http://www.mediabistro.com/mediajobsdaily/mediamemo-
google-d...](http://www.mediabistro.com/mediajobsdaily/mediamemo-google-didnt-
kill-newspapers-craigslist-did_b679)

~~~
fallous
You're of course correct about the classifieds business funding the news side
of newspapers, as well as certain editorial brands as a revenue source.

The problem is that in the absence of actual news gathering, editorializing
becomes either navel-gazing or shilling for whatever bias you have. It's hard
to have meaningful editorials about government spying on its citizens or
companies shipping shoddy products if you don't actually have the news of such
things in the first place due to a lack of revenue to fund investigative
reporting.

There is of course the possibility of citizen journalism devoid of any
substantial revenue model, but the passion necessary for Joe Smith to take
time from his normal life to dig around dumpsters probably reveals an existing
bias to begin with, so you're back to the editorial without dependable news on
which to base it.

There's a reason it's a hard problem that few news organizations have come
remotely close to solving.

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leephillips
This lament reminds me of the scornful recounting of many photographers (Jason
Wilder is one: [http://www.ishotyourband.com](http://www.ishotyourband.com))
about how they are frequently asked for permission to reproduce pictures for
no compensation, or just have their photos ripped off, with the explanation
that they'll get valuable "exposure". They know very well that this exposure
is worth zero, and is offered as a cynical excuse, often by large publishing
organizations that just don't want to pay for anything.

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rkarachinsky
I run News360, which is a popular news aggregator, and TPM pulled their full-
text feed from us as well.

I think the issue here is that aggregators are trying to own the reading
experience without replacing the monetary value of traffic to TPM's site,
which is what's really bugging Josh, not losing direct relationship with the
reader. He's fine with Google News, and he's fine with a truncated RSS feed
being consumed in News360, or Flipboard or wherever as long as the main story
has to be read on talkingpointsmemo.com.

This makes sense to me, and I think it's a very common problem across all
content creators except the top-tier publishers who can actually make ad deals
to sell inventory inside the aggregator (see TechCrunch/AOL's experience
described here - [http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/23/flipboards-mike-mccue-
confi...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/23/flipboards-mike-mccue-
confirms-50m-raise-says-windows-8-app-more-international-versions-coming-by-
end-of-year/)). But looking at the mobile version of any article on
talkingpointsmemo.com I have to question how effectively they're monetizing
that traffic right now - it seems like it's all a bunch of network banner ads
that I can't imagine anyone ever tapping on except by accident.

I think with the right native mobile experience, TPM can get a much larger
value from a mobile reader, and if someone can provide an aggregator that
delivers that to everyone, not just the top brands, it should be a no-brainer
to jump on board. And I think we as an industry are pretty close to figuring
out how this can work (we @News360 are certainly working very hard on this
specific problem).

~~~
yashg
How about aggregators paying the publishers for full-text feed and then
monetizing in the best possible way on their own mobile platforms? This is
like paying a royalty to the content creators.

~~~
rkarachinsky
Well, isn't that the same thing essentially? We've already figured out how to
do rev-share from ads and subscriptions and we have the infrastructure for it
- I think it's better to use that than invent a royalty-based system that just
creates obfuscation (I mean look at the complexity in royalties in
music/movies/books - I don't want that in news content as well).

------
kstrauser
Scams or not, I - as a potential reader - don't care. I read my morning news
through Flipboard, and if you deliberately pull your content out, then you
don't exist on my radar. It's nothing personal against you. It's just that I
have finite time to discover and enjoy content, and Flipboard helps me do
that. There isn't enough time in my day for me to want to do that myself.

~~~
BIair
You sir, bring no value to the site as a reader, and offer justification for
their move away from Flipboard.

What if someone invented a slick, uniform UX for free mobile apps and
repackaged them for easy consumption? Would you jump at the chance to have
your apps featured? What if your free apps were ad supported?

~~~
kstrauser
You very well may be correct and I don't begrudge TPM their right to pull
their content. I don't have any native right to read it outside their own
website, and it's their business decision to concentrate viewers there.

However.

I'm still not going to directly visit a hundred different websites each day to
filter through a thousand articles, most of which I won't be interested in. My
morning and evening commutes are packed with riders scanning Flipboard and
other aggregators as they try to relax en route. It is TPM's undeniable right
not to share their content with me and my fellow passengers. It's also our
undeniable right to skip on to their competitors' content, probably without
ever noticing that TPM is missing from our feeds.

~~~
pessimizer
I think a symptom of the New Transparency is that journalism is going to have
to be produced by people who actually care about being read above all else.
Advocacy journalism, advertising, status journalism, and hobby journalism. I,
for one, welcome our new passionate overlords.

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sgustard
There are at least 3 options for publishers:

\- don't allow content on Flipboard

\- allow truncated content

\- allow full content

A/B test and tell us the results. This article is just speculation and
complaining about the variety of options you have, without any data.

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malandrew
Flipboard really should offer a "news store" where you can sign up for any
news service for approximately the same amount as ads bring in per user for
those publications plus Flipboard's cut.

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MattGrommes
"You can't eat 'reach' and we can't pay salaries with 'brand awareness'."

Something people in a great many endeavors should keep in mind.

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apricot13
As a blogger I agree with this but as a reader I dislike visiting other
websites purely because I find it so hard to adjust to all the different font
sizes/layouts I'd be exposing myself to each day.

I like a good layout as much as the next person but when it comes to reading I
just want white background, black text and a few images.

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marban
I created popurls (aka the mother of aggregators) in 2005 (acquired 2010) and
within those years I've had exactly three requests from publishers who wanted
to be removed from the site – compared to a few thousand who wanted to be
included, i.e. aggregated. Go figure.

~~~
riffraff
Please excuse me as I may be misunderstanding, but doesn't popurl just show a
news summary?

It would seem to me the case of flipboard is quite different, instead of
driving traffic it actively decreases it.

~~~
marban
That's correct, but the underlying philosophy of making money off of someone
else's content still applies.

To quote Andy Warhol:

"I'm confused about who the news belongs to. I always have it in my head that
if your name's in the news, then the news should be paying you. Because it's
your news and they're taking it and selling it as their product.

But then they always say that they're helping you, and that's true too, but
still, if people didn't give the news their news, and if everybody kept their
news to themselves, the news wouldn't have any news. So I guess you should pay
each other. But I haven't figured it out fully yet."

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andrewfong
Is there a reason content providers can't just put ads in the RSS feed?

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mattbarrie
Aggregators are parasitic business models. Look what Indeed.com did to
Monster, Google did to news sites etc.

