The fact stated was that citers get some value from citing.

However, that fact is neither new nor specific to Google or the web. In fact, newspapers cite and get value from doing sol, and have always done so. Yet, Bob P. doesn’t see fit to call them parasites. (I do like the feigned “I didn’t know that someone would think that I meant parasite as a bad thing”.)

Newspaper folk seem to think that they should be paid when someone cites them but have never paid those who they cite and have no plans to start doing so. (Of course, there are cases where newspapers have gotten paid for citing, but they claim that those are infrequent ethical lapses.)

Bob P. is offended when I point out this double-standard and call it “chutzpah”. What label would he prefer?

Of course, there are differences. Google’s cites make it much easier for readers to get to “the real thing”, making Google’s cites more valuable to a newspaper than a newspaper’s cites are to who it cites. Also, Google is willing to do something that no newspaper has ever been willing to do for those it cites, namely stop doing so.

It’s unclear how either of these differences reflect well on newspapers vs Google.

Note that the relationship already is symbiotic because Google’s cites do generate significant revenue for newspapers. So, Bob P’s complaint really is that newspapers aren’t getting enough.

BTW – The “shark and the pilot fish” analogy doesn’t hold because Google can do perfectly well without newspapers. If they become too much trouble, they may get to find out how well that they can do without Google….

More to the point, one problem with the “casual folks subscribe” argument is that they were subscribing because of the classifieds and that biz is dead, or rather, has moved online. And no, Google didn’t do that, Craigslist and eBay did.

So, casual buyers are the future, just as they were the past. Newspapers will try to grab readers/monetization opportunities with headlines. And, no one is going to pay for their headlines unless they’re unique, and almost none are.

Mishkin could correct me if I’m wrong, but probably what he meant more precisely, was that the value of those people who skim the news was captured by papers because many of those people would *subscribe* to the paper.

If that was true, newspaper rack would not expose today’s headlines. Yet, they all do.

The truth is that newspapers have always used headlines to try to convert casual browsers into buyers. And, anyone who has watched a news rack for any significant period of time has noticed that most folks don’t buy – they scan the headlines and go on their way.

In short, Mishkin is wrong about the way things were.

Traditional news media companies need to change their strategy, consolidate their newsrooms and creating their own networks in order to drive their own traffic and generate their own revenues. All the while knowing that by NOT allowing their content to be linked for now will surely lead to a drop off in their content and product!

The AP is foolish since it is caught between how to create fair value and get paid for what they do ( create news content) versus fighting the same people who are in fact helping them remain relevant in their respective markets and business. Between Reuters, the AP and other wire services, they need to adapt to the new business model of online monetization.

So, yes, those in the business of generating unique content will have an advantage but need to learn how to embrace the linked economy they all need to be part of rather than not being part of at all!

Maybe “parasitic” has too ugly a connotation. I didn’t mean to say that this couldn’t be a symbiotic relationship (see the old thing about the shark and the pilot fish). Somebody else here accuses me of chutzpah. Chutzpah? I was just trying to state a fact, not pass judgment. Those who are very vociferous defenders of aggregators seem very touchy about admitting that a part of the value of news aggregation is derived from traditional news outlets. Of course it is. Don’t get all uptight about it, people. Maybe it’s harder to admit that when you it’s such great fun criticizing the paper dinosaurs.

Maybe, the best way this could really shake out is if these folks start to cooperate a little, stop fighting and find an arrangement that works symbiotically (old thing about the pilot fish and the shark).

You’re right, Warren. Part of the difficulty of using the Web can be the lack of a gatekeeper. How to sort through so much information? Aggregators help. I agree, it’s a necessary, useful function.

> The believers in “the link economy” say charging for content is like “banning links.”

No, they don’t. We’ve said repeatedly that folks should monetize their sites/content in any way that they see fit. We have pointed out that paywalls in front of commodity content probably won’t provide much income, that readers will go to low cost/friction providers, but that’s a long way from saying that such schemes are “banning links”.

The “ban links” thing comes from folks who believe that linking requires permission – I’ll come back to that.

> Alas, what believers in “the link economy” are really saying is they love to link freely to everything (why? because those links have value to them…).

We “[linked] freely to everything” before the web, so why shouldn’t we continue to do so on the web?

Gauvin believes that that a web linker requires permission. Why? Does he also believe that off-web linking requires permission? If so, does he criticize off-line pubs that fail to request permission?

Calling News Aggregators ‘Parasitic’ is awfully inflammatory – you could just as easily argue all business is parasitic (to flip the Marxist rhetoric back in the other direction). Consider travel agents – we don’t call them parasitic, yet they typically don’t provide any of the travel services they sell, they simply sort through everything that’s available to find what is best for the customer. It’s just that they survive by charging a commission to the customer, (or getting paid by the ‘travel content’ creators) rather then advertising to them. Yet airlines, hotels, etc. don’t demand that the profits travel agents make should be theirs – it’s their responsibility to make a profit from what they create/sell, not the responsibility of the companies who direct customers to them.

As coldbrew says, and to paraphrase Mrs Lovejoy ‘Would somebody PLEASE think of the consumers!’ News Aggregators are simply providing a service, and they have found a business model that supports them doing so. I want the news, but I want the news that is relevant and interesting to me. Sure I could go and buy all the papers locally and internationally and sort through them all to find the interesting bits, but I don’t have time to. There is just too much news/content these days, so I prefer to use an aggregator or more specifically bloggers that have the same interests as me to do the sorting for me. That was one of the primary roles of a traditional newspaper editor, but what makes their selection of news more relevant to me then a blogger, and why should I have to pay for what is ultimately a pretty limited selection service?

News content creators need to come up with a way to make money for what they do. The aggregators certainly have a vested interest in their being content for them to scrape, but that doesn’t make them responsible for making it profitable. When big content blames the aggregators for their own failure, what they are really saying is ‘We can’t figure out how to make money, so you should do it for us’ ie it’s a cop-out.

Hmm, I’m sorry Bob P, it’s amazing how a brief comment quickly turns into a mini rant – that wasn’t meant to be directed at you!