The recent Copyright Tribunal ruling in the long running dispute between the Newspaper Licensing Agency and the PRCA and Meltwater has been greeted by both sides in terms that make you wonder if they were reading the same document.
Both sides claim partial victory in what is now clearly a bitter dispute.
I’ve never been a fan of the NLA; it charges for something but offers nothing in return.
let’s not debate the rights and wrongs of the Tribunal itself, but instead look at whether the NLA accurately reflects the thinking of the newspaper publishers it represents.
Where I think it is short changing its members is its resolutely analogue view of the news industry.
Firstly there is the value of sharing links which it says damages its members’ interests and it seeks to control by charging for them.
While the NLA behaves as if link sharing is wrong, the Daily Mail which is arguably the most digitally savvy newspaper group, has built the financial value of sharing links into its business model.
At the conference of The Society of Editors in Glasgow in late 2010, the publisher of the Mail Online Martin Clarke revealed just how valuable link sharing is. Dominic Ponsford editor of the Press Gazette reported his speech thus:
‘Clarke: “The web is one big conversation. A free conversation. People send each other their new baby pics, the joke they heard in the pub, and, yes, a link to something they saw on a news website. On Facebook, via Twitter, or even by email.”
‘Saying that journalists should see Facebook as “a gigantic free marketing engine”, Clarke revealed that Mail Online’s five-fold traffic increase in the space of little more than three years had been achieved without spending a penny on marketing.’
I wonder what Mr Clarke thinks about the NLA pursuing actions which might potentially make anyone who shares a link a criminal?
The other way I think the NLA is out of step with its members is in the way newsrooms regard themselves as gatherers and interpreters of information.
The NLA holds that the content published by newspapers is theirs and its value derives from the investment the publishers make to produce it.
Newsrooms are expensive, no doubt about it and content has value, so it’s not an unreasonable position to hold. But the NLA ignores the way newsrooms operate in today’s world of content creation and sharing.
It used to be that newsrooms were citadels.
Information was supplied to them on a speculative basis from outside and those inside would toil to turn this into truth.
Today’s newsrooms are tearing down the walls and becoming permeable.
The Guardian leads the charge in the UK, publishing its story list each day, something that used to be jealously guarded.
Explaining the move, national news editor Dan Roberts said:
“What if readers were able to help newsdesks work out which stories were worth investing precious reporting resources in? What if all those experts who delight in telling us what’s wrong with our stories after they’ve been published could be enlisted into giving us more clues beforehand? What if the process of working out what to investigate actually becomes part of the news itself?”
I have italicised the phrase about investment because it’s crucial to an understanding of the NLA arguments.
The Guardian is acknowledging that its newsroom (like others) doesn’t have the monopoly on valid information and is embracing the idea that its content can be improved by ceasing to be gatekeepers to the truth.
The New York Times is making similar moves using social media journalism to partner with outside contributors.
For a really good presentation of how newsrooms can and should become open to outside content generation, read John Paxton’s speech “Old Dogs New Tricks and Crappy Newspaper Executives” in it he describes how the co-creation of content is becoming physical, with newsrooms opening their facilities to bloggers and interest groups.
These are difficult changes to make, but let’s not forget that the content they are creating is increasingly sourced at no cost from people who have an interest in seeing it published.
This is where the NLA is behind the times. Whilst their members are already changing their business model to recognise the financial value of information they get for free, the NLA disagrees, charging the organisations that supply some or all of the raw material and offering nothing in return.
It’s a bit like charging your employees for desk space.
The questions of how you value publishers’ content are difficult and fluid but the NLA increasingly seems to be an analogue King Knut whose actions are at odds with its members.
Links and content you don’t have to pay for have immense value to publishers, only the NLA seems not to have grasped these ideas and this is unsustainable for them.
What do you think?