Digital Fishwrap Reconsidered
By Peter Scheer
In a recent commentary published here and on the Op-Ed page of the San Francisco Chronicle (“What if online portals had nothing but ‘digital fish wrap’?”), I argued that large metropolitan newspapers, in order to enhance the value of their editorial content on the internet, should consider delaying the free release of their articles online.
Collective action to deprive the internet, temporarily, of free and timely news—leaving Yahoo, Google, MSN and other portals with only digital fishwrap to offer their customers—would help to re-value newspapers’ content in favor of those who create it, I argued.
The commentary generated a huge response from the blogosphere, most of it (though not all) decidedly negative. Some of the more interesting responses–including a criticism by CFAC board member Dan Gillmor and a favorable comment from Freakonomics co-author Stephen Dubner–are excerpted below, with links to the complete postings.
Interestingly, Monday’s New York Times broke news of an advertising and content distribution arrangement between Yahoo and a consortium of 176 daily newspapers–including virtually all papers in the Bay Area. Financial details were not disclosed, but it appears the deal would enable the papers, which have been hemorrhaging classified advertising to online competitors, to recapture some of those revenues, while attracting more readers to their web sites from Yahoo’s expanded distribution of the papers’ content.
While this is not the collective action suggested in my commentary, it is notable that the deal reflects collective action by a large number of papers to attempt to leverage the value of their news. And it’s encouraging that Yahoo apparently sees real value in gaining enhanced access to the papers’ content, most of which is focused on local communities, not national news.
Will this work? The internet is littered with the remains of “strategic alliances” that never advanced beyond participants’ press releases. Perhaps this one will fare better.