Newspapers Considering Music Industry-Like Royalty System

WSJ:

To stay clear of the trustbusters' sights, newspapers are looking to the music industry for guidance....The news industry's versions of radio stations and nightclubs are the Web sites that rerun stories, or big chunks of them, copied from newspaper sites. To follow in the footsteps of the music industry, news organizations would need an intermediary similar to Ascap.

Read the whole story: WSJ

Comments

[NevaforLeadership]

10:10 PM on 06/04/2009

Music is created by composers and performed by artists and musicians.

The news is not created by news organizations. It is simply reported on by those organizations. No artists' royalties necessary.

The bottom line: newspapers used to enjoy demographic and geographic protection. Now, with the Internet, the no longer do. That means that most of them are redundant; therefore, in the next while many will go out of business. That will be good for consumers.

For those that survive online, revenues will come from advertisers, as it always has. Some revenue will come from subscriptions for specialized coverage. The more relevant and excellent the specialized coverage, the more subscription revenues they will make. This revenue will be equivalent to their current subscription income; however, subscriptions have always just been gravy. They will not need as much gravy to cover costs, as they will no longer have printing press and distribution expenses.

They will get their news from wholesalers, such as the whining Curley over at AP, whom they will pay, just as they have always done.

Right now they can't see the forest for the trees. Instead of asking how they can deliver what their consumers want and putting their houses in order, they have resorted to blaming their consumers for their woes, with this royalty threat and that fee threat.

[medicontheedge]

04:05 PM on 06/04/2009

why do they think THEY own the NEWS?????

are we going to allow MONEY lust to foment censroship?

when you "own" the news, you can control it...

[Budokan]

03:05 PM on 06/04/2009

LOL! Good luck with that. Better to just market newspapers as the fishwrap they are.

[NevaforLeadership]

10:11 PM on 06/04/2009

Thanks for the laugh, Budokan.

[davidwayneosedach]

03:00 PM on 06/04/2009

An intersting theory but I don't think it would work in the real world.

[Maxiesid]

02:57 PM on 06/04/2009

Message to the media: I have an idea, really- just listen. Start reporting the truth. Stop trying to promote the propaganda that you are giving us the 'news' we already know better and that is why you are losing your readers.
It isn't about the business model, or the branding or any of the other bull that your MBA's are feeding you about why your business is dying. It is dying because you are not selling what anyone wants. People will not pay you to read the garbage you have been putting out for the last eight years and if you don't understand that now then you deserve to lose. The business will not die, real news is too important--out of the ashes of this fake coporate owned propaganda dispensing machine will rise new papers... ones headed by people that really care about providing quality information.. real investigative journalism, real stories about what is really going on. They will be local at first and people will learn they can trust them, and will start buying the news again.. it will be much better for everyone. The day that the Rupert Murdoch information empire goes belly up is a day I hope to live to see and celebrate.

[johnie2xs]

02:18 PM on 06/04/2009

First off; "Logic" -- Who could have thunk it possible!?

Secondly; This is obviously so much easier and less complicated, than charging individuals.

Lastly; I can envision a situation whereby papers compete trying to produce the "Best Journalistic Product" possible (Meaning investigative veracity). Those who produce the better product, drawing the most interest, get to sell that product at a greater premium. That should slave the capitalists, amongst us!

[TexasDem0]

02:14 PM on 06/04/2009

Music is someone's artistic creation.
In the case of Fox, maybe the analogy applies.

[escobar]

01:20 PM on 06/04/2009

The newspapers are controlled by fewer and fewer now.
Murdoch is a good example.
This will serve to eliminate competition.

[RobinSeattle]

12:43 PM on 06/04/2009

So if the newspaper adopts the royalty structure of the record industry, does that mean that reporters and columnists will also be subject to cross collateralization (charging them for the ink used and column space used as well as the time used to copy, edit and print to print their articles) so that those writers don't seem dime one until that issue of the paper has sols 500,000 copies like what happens with music companies?

[TJCole]

12:07 PM on 06/04/2009

Here we go...

What was it that guy said from The Brill Building to Levon and The Band members that time with Doc Pomus, I think it was ...?

"Royalties..! If you want Royalties, move to England...!"

[socialtalker]

11:50 AM on 06/04/2009

the same music industry that is running around suing everyone? LOL!

[Jinpachi]

10:57 AM on 06/04/2009

... Because the music industry is such a good business model

[Catfish1968]

04:06 PM on 06/04/2009

exactly!