I don’t very often agree with Jason Calacanis but his post today over the uproar created by billionaire Sam Zell when he equated Google News with thievery pretty well nailed the issue on the head; not to mention the fact that he equally and rightfully called two Washington Post journalist to task over their lack of real reporting of the story.
Jason points out that Google makes no money from the Google News site and that contrary to Zell’s uninformed opinion that Google sucks all the content for free Jason points out that Google only takes the first 200 word chunks of a story. This he feels doesn’t impact the originating newspaper because he thinks people will goo to the newspaper site for the whole story.
Well this is one point that I will have to disagree with Jason because he is missing one very salient point about today’s readership. He is forgetting that we have become a short form society. We read in MTV bursts of attention where anything longer than a couple of paragraphs seems to be taking more and more dedication than the majority is apparently willing to give for their news.
For these people that short 200 words; at best, provided by the Google News excerpt is more than enough for folks to digest and move on to the next 200 word story. In effect Google News has become our Reader’s Digest of daily events and this is gradually reducing newspapers to even more of a niche market than they have ever been.
Newspapers need the mass readership to even think about being profitable and every day brings new and different ways that their tradition base is being eroded. It doesn’t help matters that people like Sam Zell are in control of large numbers of news organizations either because that only makes it harder for those journalists in the frontline’s to do what they love to do - bring you the news and opinions each and every day.
This isn’t to say that all journalists are forward thinking to grasp each new way to communicate with their readers; which Jason points out quite nicely in his post. That said though there are journalist; like Mathew Ingram, who do get this new world and make journalists like Frank Ahrens and Karl Vicks; Washington Post journalist who wrote the original article about Sam Zell, look like nothing more than first year cub reporters who in their billionaire boot licking drag down the rest of their fellow journalist.
Conversation Tags: blogs, blogging, journalism, journalists, Washington Post, Sam Zell, Google, Google News
6 Comments
Karl Vick has put his life on the line numerous times covering Iraq for The Post. It’s fair to disagree with our story and the quotes within the story, but to call Karl a cub reporter and bootlicker is mean-spirited, disrespectful and inaccurate. You can easily take issue with our work without name-calling. But that probably wouldn’t be as much fun for you, would it?
Frank I really hope you selected to subscribe to replies by email.
Sure I may have made my point but beside the fact that it probably won’t have attracted the attention of a Wahington Post journalist how else would you phrase an article that was factually incorrect. Facts that even a cub reporter or better yet a [gasp] blogger [/gasp] would have verified - much like Jason Calacanis did.
What I wrote did nothing to denegrate either yourself or Karl in anything beyond the scope of an article about a billionaire who pays more journalist paychecks than either of us can imagine.
And don’t get me wrong - I have the great most respect for any journalist who has reported on Iraq - even if most of them didn’t have the backbone to report about the truth in the beginning of the whole mess rather than towing the Adminstration line under free of being labelled unpatriotic.
As far as your article on Sam Zell if either of you had taken a minute to check the facts of what he both said and implied you would have seen that what was said by Mr. Zell was incorrect and that should have been pointed out as well.
I believe my old editor would have called it fact checking.
On the off chance you do read this thank you very much for dropping by and I do apologize if my comments appeared to insinuate anything about character beyond the scope of the article in question.
It’s not “John Calacanis” (or “Jon”), Steven. The guy’s name is Jason.
This assertion that The Washington Post should have challenged Zell’s assertion that Google makes money from Google News is short sighted. Google does make money from Google News. Truckloads of it.
By driving up links to newspaper Web sites, loads of remnant inventory is created on those sites. Since local advertisers have no interest in these one-off page views, the remnant space is most often filled with Google AdSense ads. This isn’t coincidence. Google understands the effect of driving up remnant inventory via Google News.
All multi-billion dollar companies are in it for the money, Google included. They’re not featuring Google News prominently on their ever-so-sparse home page just to be nice.
And on a related note: Before dismissing him, consider for a moment that the billionaire has some experience and insight of value. I actually think Sam Zell has a point, and I’ve explained why on my blog.
Well don’t I look all foolish now
that’ll teach me to try and write a post when dealing with other pressing matters won’t it.
Thanks TDavid I appreciate the catch … now do you have anything for rubbing off the word idiot from one’s forehead??
Lucas
It’s early and I’m still working on my coffee(s) but two points I wuld like to make.
One: as stated by Jason Calcanis in his post “That has no impact on Google’s bottom line–they make their money from people running Google Adsense on their websites and Google’s own sites. ”
Google’s stated mission is to index all the worlds information and newspapers are a prominent part of that information. That said though Google doesn’t make money in their traditional manner (AdSense) on the Google News pages. So on the face of it this is a free service to the end user.
Second: I read your post and if I understand you correctly (remembering the lack of caffeine) we both agree that the real threat to the newspaper industry is the growing snapshot reading habits of our society for which news aggregaters like Google News is a perfect fit.