AP’s response: A visual representation
Posted by Jeremy on April 11, 2009 · 2 Comments
AP has put out a FAQ about its new initiative to capture revenue from search engines and aggregators. Hopefully my linking to them doesn’t constitute stealing.
Just for fun, I created a tag cloud using their text using Wordle (http://www.wordle.net/):
The one word that jumps out to me is “authoritative” and in context it’s referring to the content that is produced and the fact it should be most visible to people looking for it. They’re trying to protect the value of what they do, obviously, but I can’t help but think this won’t go over well with people who understand that the Internet has leveled that playing field somewhat.
Kos touched on this yesterday when he noted that what the aggregator-haters don’t get is that the Internet is more than a medium for content delivery. Because of social media and the innovative nature of Google’s search algorithm, he noted we have a meritocracy of ideas on the Web where you have to earn the right to call yourself a worthy news source. You can’t just claim to be authoritative and expect the dollars to roll in. Not anymore, at least.
Obviously the role professional journalists play has strong value. Any profession that claims ideals based on vetting and verifying information has worth in this emerging information ecosystem. But words like “authoritative” are a step beyond my own comfort zone because it means making impossible claims that ultimately will come back to bite you when the next Jayson Blair or Stephen Glass get exposed. Truthfully I don’t think selling yourself as the only trustworthy game in town is a smart business plan in the era of information abundance, search, and customization.
Words I’d love to see in this word cloud: Innovative, unique, conversation, value, open, responsive, customize, egalitarian, democratize.
Am I missing any? Do any other words in the image jump out that tells part of the story in this latest push by AP?
I’m coming at this with a (mostly) clean slate — I haven’t gone to read the FAQ’s yet, I will as soon as I’m done posting the comment. One thing that I find interesting is the relative ‘smallness’ of “services” and “web”.
The AP, if nothing else is simply a filter for information. Even as we see the content and news industry evolving, there is, possibly now more than ever, a distinct need for those filters. The AP isn’t going to be able to assert anything more than ownership of the original content they create. More importantly, their content is largely available from other sources already, and from sources who won’t come after and attack people for helping to spread the information into the depths of the Internet.
The one angle that AP mentions that I honestly hadn’t considered is the value that aggregators get simply by using headlines. Once a link is clicked, taking the user to whatever original (and presumably AP-approved) source is hosting the AP story, it seems that that the informational transaction has gone ecactly the way that AP would like. When the web started being a place where near-instant access to news items was possible, I remember some more forward-thinking people talking about how news coverage would be afforded more time and virtual space than either cable news (the previous game-changing shift in delivery methods) or print media could possibly allow. While this has unquestionably proven true, I can still understand AP’s perspective that there’s a revenue stream that reporting sources are largely respnsible for in which the financial benefit they see is probably smallerr than it should be. In years past, a glance at the front page of a paper in a stand, above the fold, had headlines for what? 10 or 12 stories at most? I can get 20 times that much information in headline form on any number of aggregator sites now in a matter of seconds, making the incentive to click forward smaller, if only because of the volume of clicks that checking out all of the headlines that grab my attention at a given moment would require. Some kind of adjustment to their revnue model is probably warranted, and depending on how heavy handed they are in implementing it, AP may be one of only 2 or 3 content producers I can think of with the muscle it will take to pull it off.