Thursday, May 28, 2009

Pruitt, other newspaper execs quietly meet to discuss ways to charge for content (updated)

Gary Pruitt and other newspaper execs are reportedly meeting at a hotel outside Chicago today to discuss the possibility of charging for online content.
The nation's top newspaper executives are reportedly meeting today to discuss the possibility of charging for online content. The name of the clandestine meeting, as described by James Warren in The Atlantic, is "Models to Monetize Content" and is taking place in hotel outside Chicago.


The meeting is reportedly organized by the Newspaper Association of America and includes executives from Gannett, The New York Times Co., E.W. Scripps, McClatchy, Advance, Hearst, MediaNews Group, Philadelphia Media Holdings, Lee Enterprises, Freedom Communications, and the Associated Press. Barbara Cohen of Kannon Consulting is spearheading the sessions.



Michael Golden of The New York Times, Gary Pruitt of McClatchy, and Tom Curley of the AP are some of the attendees named by Warren.



Warren reported that this morning there is a session called "Fair Syndication Consortium/Attributor," apparently referring to the alliance put together by content-tracking company Attributor.



Another session covers charging for online access to newspaper content and and there is one on classified advertising revenue.

I don't know anything about Barbara Cohen of Kannon Consulting. But jeez, I'm looking at the people and organizations named in this report -- have any of them succeeded in online?

Newspapers already put their content online for free -- how do you take your newspaper off-line? In the age of Google, Twitter, blogging and Facebook, I don't see newspapers successfully charging for content when there is information out there for free.

UPDATE: A reader says the newspapers could make it work if they all got together in a coordinated effort and planned to charge for content at the same time. Except that would be illegal, as another reader points out here.
.
.
.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Google executives have already pointed out that any newspaper can remove themselves from their news searching with some simple steps to block the google crawling software.

But newspaper execs realize that they get a ton of traffic from google news and others.

If a newspaper trys to become a paid content website, then the number of visits will decline by 80% to 90% and canabalize their exisiting online advertising revenue.

It is incredibly risky and I doubt these guys have the ability to do it.

I think they will threaten Google and others, trying to get some fees out of them. I also think they will fail. Google can ignore these twits and just continue.

Anonymous said...

The solution is simple. Every newspaper chain has to start charging for online content all at the same time. It has to be a coordinated effort and across the board. If readers have a print subscription, then online access will be included. If you don't have a print subscription, then they'll have to pay for it.

Anonymous said...

This is not "quiet". It is been on CNBC all day.

But, this is the only way that it would every work...the whole industry would have to do it at one time. No one can try to blaze the trail as it would fail. But if the whole industry did it at the same time the impact would be minimal.

Part of the problem they could run into though would be colluding/price fixing, etc. Not sure how that would play out.

Anonymous said...

What kind of hell would the liberal media raise if execs from big oil companies or pharmaceutical companies were meeting to discuss price fixing?

Anonymous said...

The solution is simple. Every newspaper chain has to start charging for online content all at the same time. It has to be a coordinated effort and across the board. If readers have a print subscription, then online access will be included.


============
Simple yes. Illegal even more so. Anti Trust Lawsuits would flow like wine as this is the quintessential definition of Collusion by a Cartel.

I'm pretty sure they don't have that much of a special exemption from Anti Competitive practices. Not yet anyway. In fact, the meeting alone could easily be considered as Conspiracy to commit.

Anonymous said...

Too late to charge fees, no one pays for news on the internet unless it's financial news. If they do start charging expect a lot more competition.

Anonymous said...

Why is this meeting not considered collusion amongst competitors and a violation of the anti-trust laws.

I expect we can forget enforcement of the laws...they are all Democrats and Obama mouth pieces.

Anonymous said...

Since when have you right-wing Republicans been against businesses having the right to do business? There's no collusion nor conspiracy... it's survival.

Anonymous said...

Competition law, known in the United States as antitrust law, has three main elements:

prohibiting agreements or practices that restrict free trading and competition between business entities. This includes in particular the repression of cartels.
banning abusive behaviour by a firm dominating a market, or anti-competitive practices that tend to lead to such a dominant position. Practices controlled in this way may include predatory pricing, tying, price gouging, refusal to deal, and many others.
supervising the mergers and acquisitions of large corporations, including some joint ventures. Transactions that are considered to threaten the competitive process can be prohibited altogether, or approved subject to "remedies" such as an obligation to divest part of the merged business or to offer licences or access to facilities to enable other businesses to continue competing.

Yes...anti-trust laws should apply here.

Anonymous said...

Odd choice of words, “ top newspaper executives”
Shouldn’t that read, bottom newspaper executives? Isn’t the Pru there?
~~~~~~~
“The nation's [top newspaper executives] are reportedly meeting today to discuss the possibility of charging for online content.”

Anonymous said...

They had an anti-trust attorney there to attempt to give the meeting legitimacy. Question is, who did the attorney represent? Clear conflicts of interest which create bar ethics problems for the attorney. The meeting itself was probably illegal.

Anonymous said...

I want to ask a question.

Let's say a newspaper is the only daily in town, and they make a policy to not allow any advertising from competing news web sites.

Is that an anti-trust violation?

And yes, this is happening in my town.

Anonymous said...

Is that an anti-trust violation?

And yes, this is happening in my town.

=============

Probably not and if it were, that would likely fall under the FCC. Interestingly enough however is the way that they got to the position of being a local monopoly in the first place absolutely was a violation of Anti Trust laws.

Unfortunately our government failed to enforce the laws and eventually even allowed them to collude with other media as long as they could show that the company was in danger of going under.