Newspapers are in trouble. Everybody knows that. But there still seems to be some confusion about the causes. There are many, dominated by the almost unlimited incompetence of newspaper managers in failing to transform their business to take advantage of the Web. But rather than understand that, many traditionalists would rather try to point fingers at somebody else for their considerable problems. The target du jour: That evil Google thing.
Comes now Peter Osnos, a former editor at The Washington Post and Random House, and a man who apparently has absolutely no idea how Google or the Web work. But he's got a platform (a comically link-free blog column at The Century Foundation site), and unfortunately, he's attracting attention among some of the printies who are grasping at straws to try to save the newspaper business.
Osnos' foolishness, delineated in these posts, is that Google is a monopoly that must be brought to its knees and forced to pay for all the content it's purloining from newspapers. He writes:
With the print newspaper and magazine business model irreversibly in decline, these enterprises have to start demanding payment for use of their material, or they will disappear. And no one delivers more of that content online than Google does, through its search functions supported by advertising, the revenues from which go to its bottom line. The notion that “information wants to be free” is absurd when the delivery mechanism is making a fortune and the creators are getting what amounts to zilch.
What nonsense. Osnos and his followers need to get beyond superficial whining and do some actual research into what they're whining about. If they did, they'd discover the following:
- Google carries no newspaper content itself, beyond headlines, a few words and links. It sends people to content on newspaper sites–in fact, roughly 20-30 percent of traffic to most newspaper sites comes from Google. In other words, people aren't reading newspaper stories on Google; they're using it to find stories on newspaper sites. Odds are they wouldn't have gotten to those sites in any other way. Newspapers should be thanking Google for that traffic.
- Google News, no doubt a big part of Osnos' imaginary bogeyman and a key driver of that traffic to newspaper sites, carries no advertising. Check it out.
- One more: Osnos claims the precedent for newspapers forcing Google to knuckle under can be found in a deal that Google cut with the book industry to pay publishers for books that Google digitizes. Well, no, that was different. In that case, Google is putting entire copyrighted works online and forcing viewers to come to its site to read them. Again, Google sends viewers to newspaper sites to read content on those sites.
And here's Osnos' big suggestion for Google: "How about sitting down with representatives of the floundering news gatherers and devising a system that would pay royalties for click-throughs supported by advertising?"
Well, actually, such a system exists. It's called advertising on newspaper sites. Google sends traffic to those sites; the newspaper sites sell advertising that's based on that traffic. If Google didn't send those readers (20-30 percent, remember?), newspapers wouldn't be able to collect ad revenue on that traffic. In other words, Google is a benefit to newspaper Web sites by bringing considerable amounts of additive traffic. Is it unfair that Google itself sells ads on its pages of search results (not on the content, mind you--the listings of results)? No–that's the service it provides. (Are newspapers, to follow Osnos' logic, paying royalties on their own ad-supported links to other sites? No? Just checking.)
The problem with newspapers and Google is that newspapers–unlike Google–do a horrible job of selling Web ads. Trapped in a world of dumb banners and too slow to embrace smarter, higher-value ad types like contextual ads, geo-targeting, etc., newspaper sites simply aren't maximizing the revenue from all traffic sources, including Google. They even do a bad job of taking advantage of Google itself, as I've written before, by not sufficiently search-optimizing their pages to make their sites key destinations for the millions of people who search Google for information every day.
The lack of optimization also scuttles a direct benefit many newspaper sites get from Google–those contextual Google AdSense text ads that many papers include on their pages (or get from a similar service). Ever notice that a lot of those little ads are anything but contextual, and actually quite generic? ("Lose 30 pounds in 30 days!") Well, that's in large part because those pages are badly programmed, making it all but impossible for AdSense and the other services to determine their contents and add appropriate–and higher-value–ads.
I could go on, but you get the idea: Google really isn't the problem here. It's driving readers to newspaper sites in considerable numbers, but newspaper sites are failing to take advantage of that traffic. Nonetheless, people like Osnos and his ilk gripe that Google is somehow stealing the newspaper business (um, no, that was craigslist!). They need to become better informed about what's really going on–and get a mirror if they want to find the true villains in the decline and coming fall of the newspaper business.
Mark,
Your number (20 - 30%) for traffic from Google is “at least”. On a website that is properly SEO and has deep archives that number is more than doubled, as it was on a community newspaper website that I developed.
Osnos doesn’t understand what news companies sell. I know I’ve been saying this a lot lately, but it bears repeating. It’s not newspapers, its not news, its not content, and its not information. It’s readership. Why these guys continue to miss this fact boggles my mind.
Job number one for any news site should be to maximize traffic. The people who do websites in other industries have recognized this for years. News sites constantly want to fight Google, fight incoming links from competitors (ahem...Gatehouse), fight readers by putting up paywalls, and on and on.
Develop huge traffic, develop a readership, and sell that to advertisers. Duh.
Posted by: Tim Burden | February 03, 2009 at 05:33 PM
Google is not responsible for the newspaper industry's woes, but make no mistake, it has fast become a competitor to media sites.
Firstly, Google News may not carry advertising positions on it, but it drives about $100 million in search-related revenue funneled through the site, according to a Google VP. I wrote about it back in July here: http://journalistopia.com/2008/07/29/google-news-drives-100-million-in-revenue-to-google-says-vp/
Additionally, Google controls an enormous percentage of online advertising revenue, lacks transparency in its revenue sharing to publishers and continues to create products that carry traditional media site content, such as the hosting of AP articles, its Knol site with articles, its hosting of travel content on Google Earth, circumventing news site's search boxes with its own and so on.
There are host of issues that have caused the news industry's situation: economic climate, lack of innovation, huge debt, etc. However, neither is Google a purely benevolent aggregator sending tons of merry traffic our way while newspaper sites take it to the bank.
Posted by: Danny Sanchez | February 03, 2009 at 07:43 PM
Thanks for the comment, Danny. In other words, Google is a competitor. What a refreshing change in an industry that's largely been built on monopoly. I've written before that Google and Yahoo control more than half of local online advertising spending. That's disgraceful--and the shame lies entirely at the feet of newspapers, for failing to adequately pursue local online ad opportunities and letting Google and Yahoo muscle onto their turf. Newspapers have no one to blame but themselves.
Posted by: Mark Potts | February 03, 2009 at 08:57 PM
I hate to argue any of your points since I agree 100% with your opinion on Osnos and his like minded drones. However Google does display ads on news search - http://zi.ma/GoogleNews
Posted by: Carl Schoenleber | February 04, 2009 at 02:10 PM
Hi Mark,
Just curious what your thoughts are about the .mobi extension? I recently acquired Sedona.mobi and intend to develop it into an moblie ready quick news and info directory for Sedona, Arizona, taking content from my Sedona.biz news website. I think more and more people will begin accessing content via their iphone etc. and that content needs to be formatted for a phone.
The question is, will .mobi take off? I understand that a .com website could be set up to tell if the request is coming from a cellphone and then redirect the request to a phone-friendly format on the server. This suggests that a .mobi may not have value.
However, a consortium consisting of Google, Microsoft, Nokia and others have established the .mobi and they are motivated to support it because it is profitable for them if people start buying .mobi extensions. Also, a .mobi extension by its very nature ensures a mobile friendly format.
Will Google give .mobi preference for mobile searches? Will Nokia make it so when someone types in "Sedona" in their phone browser's address line, Sedona.mobi comes up?
I think this is a topic worth covering.
Thanks,
Carl
Posted by: Carl | February 05, 2009 at 10:09 AM
Carl: Basically, I'm skeptical of the value of any URL that isn't a .com address. Indeed, for many sites, .com is a signficant part of the brand. Unless I see some evidence of major (or any!) uptake on the use of .mobi addresses, I think they're a gimmick. Most mobile-enabled sites I encounter are .com-based, sometimes with a specialized prefix to the standard address (e.g. mobile.washingtonpost.com).
That doesn't mean you shouldn't register a .mobi address to protect an associated .com domain and be prepared in case .mobi somehow does become the Next Big Thing. But .com is the gold standard, and the way the vast majority of visitors are going to find you for years to come.
Posted by: Mark Potts | February 05, 2009 at 10:27 AM
If newspapers really wanted google to stop "infringing their copyright", they could easily block google's bot from crawling their site.
Posted by: SadistiX | February 12, 2009 at 06:17 AM