The Associated Press's plan to more aggressively police use of its content on the Internet seems less about saving the newspaper industry and more about justifying their own existence.
Do the AP's owner-partner newspapers really want their content removed from the Google index? How much might that reduce their traffic? Depending upon the news outlet, I'd guess Google accounts for between 25-50% of the traffic. How will those rapidly falling CPMs look when they lose half their traffic?
I realize the A.P. is in a tough spot. Newspapers rely upon its syndicated content, especially as they cut their own editorial resources. At the same time, the newspapers have pressured the A.P. to cut its fees. But the A.P.'s approach here doesn't do anything to address the long-term problem.
The problem remains that the basic business model for newspapers - that of being a near-monopoly for local advertising - is gone. The classified business has moved to Craig's List and elsewhere and it's not coming back. And the basic concept that a local auto dealer or department store should fund the cost of an editorial news operation no longer makes sense.
So, should the AP be allowed to go after those who steal its content? There are spam and splog sites out there which duplicate the content in its entirety and provide no links back to the source pages. So, yes, AP should go after those sites and partner with sites like Google to ensure those spam sites are not included in the Google index. But if they go after search engines and aggregators who follow the "fair use" doctrine, I think the cure may be worse than the disease. We'll see AP content removed from the search engine indexes and see new competitors spring up to fill the void. Meanwhile, AP newspaper partners will see a drop in page views, further eroding advertising revenues.
The solution should lie in partnering with the search engines and aggregators to ensure that AP-syndicated content is shown in the best light and drives the most traffic to its partner sites. The AP should be providing widgets for its partners' use on social media platforms and mobile devices, all designed to help them grow their share of news content consumption. They could also work with aggregators to develop ways to generate shared revenues. Instead, they seem focused on a plan to make themselves irrelevant on the dominant platform for news - the Internet. Sure, they may generate some short-term licensing revenues, but in the long-term, they're destined for irrelevance.
Associated Press - be careful what you wish for.
