While critics may describe aggregators as freeloaders, users can attest that aggregators “bring context and clarity to the 24 hour news cycle,” (Stearns 2010). According to their website, the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard is “a collaborative attempt to figure out how quality journalism can survive and thrive in the Internet age.” Josh Benton from NJL pointed out at a conference this spring “journalism is the original aggregation,” (Stearns 2010). As journalists, we gather information from diverse sources to understand what’s going on. Early in the history of America press, postal policy allowed newspapers to exchange papers for free with other cities’ papers. They would use stories from papers around the country to share national news with the readers of their local papers (Stearns 2010). In this video, Benton speaks about "the history of content aggregation, and how the practice has shaped journalism."
Acknowledging the indispensable value of news aggregators and the legal protection they have, what are news content providers going to do about it? The AP is leading the battle, and they have specific goals. One goal of The A.P. is to make sure that the top search engine results for news are “the original source or the most authoritative source,” not a site that copied or paraphrased the work. The A.P. will also pursue sites that reproduce large parts of articles, rather than using brief links, and is developing a system to track articles online and determine whether they were used legally (Perez-Pena 2009). They have committed to working with the aggregators, but promise to seek legal action against those that won’t cooperate. This progressive action is reflective of the views of their president and CEO, Charlie Rose. “We have seen the future and it is here. It is a linked economy. It is search engines. It is online advertising. That’s where the future is,” said Rose, “And if you can’t find your way to that, then you can’t find your way,” (Huffington 2009).
As we move forward into the digital age, the profit model being used by the news media is going to have to adapt. Fighting the aggregators is not the answer. Aggregators send traffic to your site. They’re convenient for users and add value to the system. We can’t pretend that the last 15 years didn’t happen. Technology has advanced and we can’t ignore it. This leaves the news media with a few options. Laura Indvik of the Poynter Institute outlined five ways to monetize the future of news media.
The first option, as was addressed earlier is pay walls. The Times’s network of sites went under an impermeable pay wall earlier this year. This means that not even search engines can reach the content without paying a yearly subscription fee. However, this could be potentially damaging in a few ways. First of all, since search engines account for over 20% of upstream traffic to news sites (Indvik 2010). Also, when the Wall Street Journal first established their pay wall, they only had 35 subscribers in the first 3 months (Indvik 2010). That’s a mere $9,000- can that account for the loss in traffic?
A more flexible option is to establish a semi-permeable pay wall. This allows search engines to find your articles but also may allow some of your content to leak through to Google. Another disadvantage is that other sources may not want to link to your article because there is a chance that their readers won’t be able to reach it.
The New York Times utilizes a metered pay system, or a premium, in which users get to see a set number of pages per day if they pay.” The New York Times believes it will be more profitable to target the 19% of readers who say they will pay for online news content than to extract revenues from increased page views and/or higher online ad revenues,” (Indvik 2010).
The most progressive option is to remain free. But with newsrooms being cut and budgets clashed, how is this possible?; by generating page views more quickly. Hosting free blogs and articles by unpaid writers from across the country can offer new perspectives and more places for ads. The incentive for writers is to be published on a reputable site, but the risk for the news media is poor quality. Citizen journalists must be carefully monitored to protect the brand image.
Lastly, Indvik proposes creating better value for advertisers. News sites need to find what they can offer advertisers that the rest of the web can’t. One example that Indvik cites is The Palm Beach Post. By using Twitter streams and aggregators, they were able to increase their advertising profits and increase visits to their site. By making themselves out as “online experts”, advertisers come to trust and rely on The Palm Beach Post.
There is not one correct way for the news media to proceed. There will be overlaps and a lot of experimentation. But what can be said for certain is that the technological future is one that we must embrace in order to succeed. Fighting the forward progress, including aggregators, is not the answer. Perhaps by embracing aggregator’s ability to generate traffic to their sites and by working with them the news media will be able to make more profits.
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