How HuffPaOl Could Force Media Walls To Be Raised
Arianna™ is certainly as good a con as we’ve seen in the last decade. She continues to sell the notion that “Free content is not without problems, but it’s here to stay, and publishers need to come to terms with that and figure out how to make it work for them.”
And I hear, “The monarchy is not without its problems, but it’s here to stay, so the peasants need to come to terms with me living in obscene luxury based on their hard work and them living without even bread to eat. Let them eat cake.”
Of course, the “peasants” that this princess is raping to pay for her bubble baths are major companies, like the New York Times, News Corp, etc.
Every time I read about the unpaid writers, I cringe, but they are not Huffington’s primary victims. (AOLers, in the wake of $315 million, may have their job losses going more directly on her ledger.) Those who write for free for HuffPo do have a choice. It’s not a happy choice, especially in this economy, but still, it’s a choice. If they don’t feel they are getting value for their work, they should walk. Well… first they should unionize… and then when AOL busts the organizing effort, they should walk.
But Huffington isn’t really even paying attention to the scribbling class. Her peasantry… her source of revenue… is Old Media, toiling at great expense and then leaving the barn doors open for rustlers like Arianna.
The choice for the media is more constricted, by their own standards, than it is for the HuffPo writers. There are really only three courses of action and they are all extreme. They can sue. They can shut up. Or they can raises the bridges into their content castles.
The first response to steal-gregation (which is distinguished from “aggregation” by the amount of content appropriation before a link) was to send out the occasional cease & desist, but mostly, to look the other way and to be comfortable by the idea that this was promotion for the sites of the original content creators.
The second response was to complain a lot in public, only to be mocked as impotent by the Media Superstar Assholes.
But there comes a time when the rubber meets the road and the only choice left is to defend what is yours. Arianna Huffing Puffing Wolf joining up with an even bigger audience may be just the person to force the hand of the major original content providers.
And think about this… in terms of the legal rights, which Huffington so callously claims to be irrelevant in the current circumstances, does walling off The New York Times, for instance, change the game markedly, in terms of reasonable expectations of fair use? In other words, does the New York Times putting a more specific value on its content, not allowing it to be accessed for free at all times, mean that using paragraphs of NYT’s original copy as content on another site to generate revenue will now be more likely to be actionable and to be connected to actual financial damages?
That would be my read on the situation. If the NYT wall, for instance, goes up and HuffyAOL makes a page of whatever part of the story is still free, they are using ALL of the content that NYT is offering the public. NYT is clearly damaged. If they go into the subscription part of the story and take copy or information from there, they are going behind a closed wall – the offer of which will surely include detail language about re-use – and taking content that others are paying for. More extreme damage.
It’s hard to claim copyright to information. Information wants to be free. True enough. But once the walls go up, it will be much easier to track who reported what.
Don’t be surprised to see HAffOL spending many millions on buying content rights to reprint from the major original content gatherers within 18-24 months of the first major walls being put up. If revenues actually do go up from the levels HuffPo was at in 2010, NYT could be a $10 million a year syndication client, a new revenue model generating real and needed dollars for NYT and offering a potential future for the best of the industry aggregators.
So maybe, after thousands of people are disenfranchised by greed and arrogance, there will be a happy (or at least not-tragic) ending. One can only hope.
AOL, like so many providers in the 90s, began as a walled garden of content.
Arianna is all about one thing – Arianna. Her “progressivism” was just the coat du jour.
Dave there’s been an unfortunate accident on the set of NCIS today. I’m sure you saw it. Know any good jokes?
who needs NY Times – they are old media ..
Jennifer Aniston Opens Up About Angelina Jolie To Perez Hilton
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/09/jennifer-aniston-opens-up_n_820938.html
Question: do you have a deal to pay for the content that you link to on MCN?
Also, I agree, the unpaid writers thing is pure and utter bullshit. That’s just tacky.
Don, that’s a very sad fucking story.
Exploiting unpaid writers is, alas, an old story in new media. I don’t want to awaken sleeping dogs or re-open old wounds, but I lost an online gig more than a decade ago because a “colleague” offered to do the same thing for free, just to maintain name visibility.
On the other hand: As I have said before, in the not so distant future, we will be paying for a lot of things we’ve been used to getting on line for free. Either that, or those things won’t be around to be gotten.
No credible evidence that Marie Antoinette ever said, ‘Let them eat cake.’
Then again, since the legend seems to have become fact, let’s keep on printing the legend. Its not like this post of yours is a lament about declining standards of media…
Pauline Kael’s ghost is not fit to walk in Brian Orndorf’s shadow.
Joe, there is an entire generation of kids who simply do not want to pay for anything. If they start to charge then they will die. It’s all FREE MAN! IT’S ALL FREE! How anything is sustained from this model is beyond… ADVERTISING!
They’ll pay for it IO. They just won’t notice how they pay for it.
JBD, feel free to share how you can make the kids pay.
Clipping a bigger ticket. A service fee as part of something they will pay for.
huffpost could use a cleaner design with better ads ..
despite this – a lot of posts end up getting over 1000 forum comments … put more ads in the comments section.
IO, there is a clear difference.
We write a headline and link directly to the content. We don’t have a page in the middle nor do we reprint graphs of info before offering a link.
If you can’t see the distinction, nothing to discuss.
David, that’s why you are a shitty debater. Seriously. I get shit all the time for not being OPEN TO OTHER PEOPLE’S OPINIONS, when I am, but you take a stand without budging an inch.
Seriously, you are not paying, they are not paying, but you are both linking to other sites. It’s not like this is a bad thing you know? This is how it works. We go here to go there and AOL purchased a place where a lot of people go to and go to other places. Now they will just link to more AOL portals which seems to be the point.
Does this excuse not paying writers? OH fuck no. That woman has serious liquid and if she didn’t want to pay people, her ass should have never started a website. I am dead serious. You’ve got to pay people. It’s that simple.
Using other people’s graphs and what not, shitty, but they are providing a link to the original material. Is this really any different from a website that uses a small picture of a poster that’s exclusive at one place? Not really but that’s acceptable, I believe you have done that here, and that’s how the net works.
Now, you have given me all sorts of shit this week for not hating this merger because I DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW IT WILL COST JOBS! HOW I DON’T GET HOW THIS WILL FUCK UP CONTENT! Yeah, it will fuck up the way you get content, and how you keep your doors open. That’s all well and good but a page break before a page does get it a hit, but it sure as hell did not keep me from reading the People story about the amicable break up of Ashlee and Pete.
Again, do you pay? If the answer is NO, then explain to us all about why you are fearful of this deal, that will most likely do jack all except link to Moviefone, Cinematical, and Poptastic more. Oh yeah those fucking places have real reporters and what not but what they mostly are… are aggregator sites, so please, stop this bullshit act, and come with the real. If not, you know what you are. It’s not like I have to spell it out for you.
Shocking. Someone besides Drudge found a way to make money off the internet, and everyone on the internet complains about it! Dave, would you turn down $315 million for MCN?
RP… obviously I would. And I don’t think taking the money is a sin.
What’s really hard about these bubbles blowing up again – see the estimates of the value of Twitter on WSJ today – is that it keeps the internet from becoming a real place of business. Every time there is a grotesque overpay, it means that modest businesses, like MCN, have a moment to jump on the hype train and a year unable to properly capitalize – if they want to – because of the massive burn marks.
If HuffPo is a legitimate, stable, $30 million a year business, $315 million isn’t a crazy price. But many indications are that their revenues in 2010 were inflated and that they are driven by content they do not legally control. It could go well… but it could also be another extreme bubble.
Honestly, if someone offered me $10 million for MCN, they would be INSANE. I would rush to cash the check. I am human. But if someone offered a 2-digit percentage of that, they might be getting a bargain, given our revenue history.
I wish I had the stomach for that kind of game. I just don’t. I can hustle, but I have long learned that I am, by nature, a content provider and not a mogul.
And IO… I’m sorry you don’t understand the history of the internet. If you did, you would understand how this has worked out over and over and over again. If I thought you wanted to understand, I would write it out for you, though I am pretty sure I already have.
The very short answer is, if Moviefone/Cinematical has a $500k a year budget and Huffington can generate the same number of page views for $200,000 a year (or less), $300k or more will be cut. Period. Now, please explain how that math works out for the staff.
If you want to argue, “who cares? That’s capitalism!,” it would make you as ass, but not ignorant. But to think that bad things will not happen to good people as a result of this merger is to live in fantasy land.
That doesn’t mean the world will stop spinning on its axis. The world didn’t end when Time-Warner allowed the insane marriage to AOL. But all those people who scream about how great it was and that it was the future were wrong and proven wrong over and over again.
IO: I realize that my defending David’s position on this will seem as bizarre as The Undertaker’s years-ago impulsive decision to help Stone Cold Steve Austin out during a match. But David is right: What he is does with Movie City News is simply not comparable to what is done on certain other aggregate sites. There’s no way you can equate one a one-sentence blurb with a link — the equivalent of “Hey! Check out this story about a new Sundance Theater in Houston!” — to an extended story summary that, by the way, has a link at the end. Put it like this: After I read a Movie City News blurb, I need to click the link to know more. On some other sites — well, all I have to do is read the excerpt, and I pretty much know all I need to know. So I don’t really have to click the link. And the original content provider is screwed.
Joe, it’s all fine and dandy like sour candy but let’s be honest: he’s still not paying. Huffpost is not paying either but there’s no paying going on but the WAY Huffpost does it, is EVIL! It’s also apparently cheaper even though David once again is just pulling numbers from mid-air and that he has not quantified, but we’ve GOT TO BELIEVE!
I would believe but all he’s doing is insulting me for not buying his bs. Excuse me for not exactly buying it anymore.
But why should David pay? He (or whoever does the work for him) is simply performing a service for us that actually drives traffic to other sites. In many cases, if he didn’t run the blurb links, I would not be aware that these other stories existed. Look, David and I have have had our disputes in the past — and likely will in the future — but in this case, I don’t see where he’s doing anything more than providing a road map.
Joe: I find most of the links and write the headlines. It’s a point of pride that on the occasions I use the exact wording of the source headline? It goes in quotation marks to indicate I’m citing the original: I wouldn’t want to copy another headline writer’s summa or sensibility as if it were MCN’s. That’s how exacting linkage ought to be. The bulk of the headlines, I hope, function as either appreciation or critique of the information at the link in a modest number of words but, as you say, it’s a service both to the reader and to the lovely folks at the receiving end of Hypertext Markup Language.
Joe, that’s not what I wrote at all but the dude is splitting hairs when he does the same. Ray does indeed, no doubt about it, a classier job in handling the link but it’s still driving the same machine. I simply do not get, outside of David’s dislike of these type of mergers, why this merger is the end of days.
It may cost jobs but why exactly does AOL own Cinematical and Moviefone? Speaking of a merger that should have happened years ago. Nevertheless, AOL spent a lot of money on a portal, and until it brings about what David fears. I am going to chill but may pull my own numbers out from thin air.
Ray: I hope nothing I wrote can be interpreted as a slam of your diligent work. If you took offense, I apologize, it was not intent to diminish your contribution.
Joe: Nope, not at all. I was taking the moment to describe how the links are intended to equally benefit reader and writer, and not just hijack a look-see at the reporting and writing and editing of the original publication or bloggeur. And spun with a little media critique sugar.
IO… you’re just wrong. You talk a lot of shit and you assume because you don’t have any real knowledge about something, no one does.
You also love to put words in other people’s mouths, even when those people – me, in this case – are being quite precise with most of their language.
If you can’t tell the difference between a consensual kiss and getting unwillingly penetrated, because its “still driving the same machine” and to claim a distinction is to be “splitting hairs,” I can’t help you.
It has nothing to do with “classy.” It has to do with what content that someone else created is being used in what way to what end. If the NYT loses a single page view because someone read the first two graphs of a story in HuffPo, it is making HuffPo money and losing money for the NYT. Do you believe that a headline and two paragraphs of content are virtually of the same value? If so, again, no way to explain it to you.
Even if I were to accept a content equivalency, the fact is that HuffPo is building a second page view out of that headline and MCN is not. So even under that false premise, they are talking twice the advantage than a “headline only” aggregator. And sometimes, it’s more than one page being created to use that acquired content.
It’s not the end of the world. But it is a balloon full of hot air and there is a price that ends up being paid by everyone in journalism. You don’t choose to value my opinion, based on the experience of living through it a half-dozen times, great. But to suggest that I am just pulling it out of thin air means that you can’t see past your own prejudices, not that I can’t see past mine.
Hot Blog Postings dot not equal HuffPo article synopsizes.
MCN Blogs do not equal HuffPo article pages.
IO’s brain on tilt. No understandy of wireframe or click-throughs.