Charlie Rose

Mike  04/14/2009 02:35 PM Report

The fact that this discussion is even newsworthy proves the fact that many of today's most important industries upon which our nation's commercial dominance was built, are woefully negligent in recognizing disruptive changes in the marketplace. Huffington is correct - you can't put the proverbial Pandora back in the box!

Another commenter below suggest that like the recording industry, that the press should sue, stating "...it worked for the Record industry". Really? Last time I checked, the recording industry was going the way of the Dodo, for the very same reasons that the print press is becoming obsolete before our very eyes! It doesn't matter at this point who is legally right - consumers have already established their habits and they will likely not respond in a commercially viable manner to having to pay for this content. Even if the press is correct and this results in a diminishment in quality, consumers are likely not to care.

The problem here is negligence on the part of the leadership of the press. They were caught asleep at the wheel while dramatic, seismic shifts were occurring in the marketplace and they failed to innovate - early or often enough to keep pace. Like the recording and automotive industries, the traditional press too now finds itself caught up in a downward spiral. Trying to backtrack and charge for content now is not the answer. There are many other, more innovative ways to create value which consumers are willing to pay for, but the ones Curly suggests are clearly not it!

Innovation is required here - a skill, that for all their homage to the concept, many of our business leaders are stupendously poor at executing. Capitalism is Darwinian - evolve and adapt or die. And this my friends is potentially and sadly the sound of a dinosaur gasping it's last breath! Compensation in a capitalist system never succeeds through demands or through litigiousness, but instead by creating content consumers want, when they want it and how they want it. Unfortunately the A.P. is still under the delusion that they control the purchase decision. Good night and good luck!

Christopher  04/12/2009 01:06 PM Report

I agree with Arianna. I can't stand watching TV or reading newspapers. If it is not on the net and "commercial free", I am not watching it anymore. I look at on the web: AlJazeer english, BBC, PBS, CBC(canadian), and Huffington Post. The only TV channel I “buy” is HBO and Movie network because they have no commercials. Paying for CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN is crazy. People who work for a living no longer have time to sit through 3 minutes of commercials for 6 minutes of television (and pay for the network in their cable subscription).

The above does not have much to do with Associated Press. The Associated Press is a business which sells news to other businesses. Maybe they are charging too much if not a lot of people are paying?

GetaCluair  04/12/2009 12:36 PM Report

Re: Monetization of links

As a an aggregator of hypnotized sensationalism, Ms. Huffington's bloated motive downplays the financial worth of content. Serious newsmakers counter such bubbles: just as a consulting firm or private intelligence agency is commissioned by clients to issue top-notch objective assessments, influential newsreaders are willing to pay good money in exchange for being informed. Further, whether linked or directly accessed, original content is owned, and by law fractional rewards may be claimed retroactively.

hrc  04/10/2009 11:50 PM Report

There should be some kinda public funding for news. That said, and barring that you can't dig your heels into the old model. I think that was Ariannas point. How does the bbc get paid? Maybe the AP should just fold and start again.

StuCop  04/10/2009 09:28 PM Report

I love how Arianna Huffington et al. talk up the "new linked economy" but still charge cold hard cash for advertising on Huffpo and their sites...a little hypocritical isn't it...and telling...what the banks don't let them pay their bills with links????

longislander2  04/10/2009 04:50 PM Report

Newspapers and other news organizations need to be paid fairly for their content. Industry leaders should get together and file a massive lawsuit against those who steal content. It has seemed to work for the recording industry.

Being part of the digital revolution does not exempt one from paying for products and services that are used. Sites such as Huffington Post pay their contributors nothing and appropriate hunks of content from other sources. Then, they sell advertising against this information and keep all the money.

It's quite interesting that, when it comes to her own pocketbook, Huffington changes abruptly from populist to capitalist. Her site is roundly critical of American business for all of its abuses and misdeeds, but her business model of simply taking content for free and making money from it is supposed to be exempt from such scrutiny.

If we don't allow the content providers to make money, there will soon be no reliable content. Instead, we'll have to rely on the largely unreliable and untrained bloggers for "news."

What I find interesting is that I posted similar comments to those above on the Huffington site and they were censored, undoubtedly because Arianna isn't supposed to be criticized there. This is one more reason why we can't tolerate the demise of legitimate news organizations. They need to be fairly compensated for their high quality content production.

dralabox  04/10/2009 02:41 AM Report

print is passe. to even still discuss makes your show seem stale as well. move on.

tartufe  04/10/2009 12:12 AM Report

tetsuST - So they did responsible, investigative reporting when they had staff and resources?

tetsuST  04/09/2009 08:30 PM Report

A very interesting and complex subject. Instead of trying to swallow it whole, I'd prefer to nibble at one of the edges.

Who's to say, really, that the current business model is totally broken? AP seems to think so, but I wonder. Google makes plenty of money off of ads, no? So why is that Google can make money off of ads and the news sites can't?

Could it be that on news sites are spending all of their focus on great content (which is good for getting readers, and they do get readers) but very little focus on having great ad content?

Google has based its business model on providing high-quality online content (news, information and yes, ads) but news sites have great news content, but often times beyond useless ad content. News websites are constantly evolving, but the ads are crap slapped on the sides of pages, served up with an eye to technology that still seems rooted in another century --maybe closer to the 19th than the 20th.

That is simply unacceptable as part of a business model in a time when technology can be harnessed to build the business model. If news sites could deliver better ads, more businesses would be willing to pay for those ads. If news sites make better money, AP could charge more.

I'm not saying it's a total fix, but its a start.

P.S. to tartufe, it's difficult to "report beyond the proscribed conventions" when most newsrooms no longer have the money to pay journalists with the passion and know how enough money to do the reporting work and keep a roof overhead and bread on the table.

azNephi  04/09/2009 05:45 PM Report

The newspapers could block Google from searching their sites; however, they do not want to do that. They know that millions of people like me would never even go to their site if it was not for Google.

tartufe  04/09/2009 03:29 PM Report

What's so sacrosanct about the press, ink or electrons? None of them report beyond the proscribed conventions of the prevailing oligarchs in sway. WMDs < M-I oligarchs. Subprime loans < Financial oligarchs. Perpetuating conflicts (Iraq, Af-Pak, - on deck Iran, N. Korea, Somalia, Sudan, yadda yadda) < M-I oli again.

If they can buy the best democracy at hand, REAL news suppression is all too easy. Venality = orthodoxy. Buy our ad space, we'll keep in line. If you would like to see our mock-up before press time, let us know. We've learned to monitor ourself but just in case the option is there.

REMant  04/09/2009 02:04 PM Report

The problem here is that AP, unlike the Wash Post, etc, is not a website operator, but only a content provider. They feel, and probably rightly, that they are not receiving adequate payment for their service given the amount of exposure their material is receiving, but what they probably have to do is to negotiate higher fees, not attempt to clean up Internet piracy, and leave that to the people being ripped off. Piracy on the Web is rampant, of course, and the ad providers, such as Google, do not care as long as they collect money from clicks and views. It pisses me off, too, when parasitic websites have content copied from Wikipedia or IMdb, which turns up hundreds of search returns for exactly the same thing. It's the ad providers who've brought this version of spam about and they should be made to get rid of it. But I don't know what the content providers can do except to try to pass the costs downwards to the buyers of ads, unless they want to start scanning the 'net for their material and filing copyright complaints like the porn sites, film studios and record cos do. That strategy seems to have had limited success, and as Ariana intimated, it serves as needed advertising anyway, which in many cases the content ppl end up doing themselves. Now, it ought to do advertisers no good if all the good content disappears and the Web, like TV, becomes just a lot of Huffington (sorry, I couldn't resist), but the population doesn't seem to mind acting the part of a bunch of rats in a Skinner box and I don't know what can be done purely through business to turn that around, esp if the Fed continues to print the money to support it. While one can fulminate about things like credentialism, and make fun of professionalism, without them, I fear, no one would show the slightest interest in quality. Still, it will not help professionals in the long run to restrict their audience. Expecting the Web tho to clean itself up seems to me a little like thinking that banning guns and nuclear weapons will end conflict, but maybe it would if we reduce ourselves to imbecility.