Arianna Debates New Media With AP CEO Tom Curley On "Charlie Rose"

On "Charlie Rose" Wednesday night, Arianna discussed the topic of how journalism will be distributed in the digital age and what new models might emerge. She was joined on the show by Associated Press CEO Tom Curley.

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Comments

[Dave the reader]

Blogging versus Professional Reporting

I agree that you can't go back to the past; the technology has moved on.

However, we need some formula to pay the professional reporters to report professionally on the stories of the day. Unpaid bloggers aren't going to travel to the hotspots in the world looking for news.

I am sorry that I can't do this without doing an endorsement, but the Kindle model is one way to get around this problem. Subscribers pay a fee to get the news on their Kindle. You can go to the Huffington Post to get the mostly unpaid news. I assume that they are mostly unpaid. I haven't seen the HuffPost remuneration formula. Over time there will be competition to the Kindle, but the Kindle has the obvious lead. For instance, you can get the New York Times on the Kindle.

[scpatl4now]

Its sad...watc­hing the death of a great news organization. Arianna tries to diplomatically tell him he's out of touch, but anyone that knows anything about the internet knows if the AP tries to shut off its content, people will get it somewhere else. There are too many ways to do that now. He really doesn't get it. Consumers wont pay for the APs content because there is no scarcity in content. You'd think that all the money they probably paid to consultants to figure this out would have lead them to what Arianna tried to point out...but obviously it didn't...j­ust ask the music/movie industries in a couple of years if all the legal BS was worth it

[PhilipJames]

A letter from the CEO

Dear Employees:

As the CEO of this business that employs 140 people, I have accepted
the fact that Barack Obama is our new President, and that our taxes
and government fees will now increase in a BIG way. To compensate for
this additional overhead, I figure that the clients will have to see
an increase in our fees of about 8% but since we cannot raise those
prices right now due to the dismal state of our economy, we will have
to lay off several of our employees instead. This unfortunate economic
reality has really been eating at me for a while, as we believe we are
family here and I didn't know how to choose who will have to go. After
giving it considerable thought, this is what I did. I strolled thru
our parking lot and found 11 Obama bumper stickers on our employees'
cars and have decided these folks will be the first to be laid off. I
can't think of a more fair way to approach this problem. They wanted
Change; I gave it to them. If you have a better idea, let me know.

Sincerely,

Your Boss

[insultant]

Dear Boss,

It was so great to hear that your business is making such a huge level of profits that will require you to pay a higher tax rate during these tough economic times.

Our department has done some serious soul searching and have decided that we would like to "take the bullet for the team" by leaving your prestigious firm. Seeing as most of us are independent with no bumper stickers on our cars, we hope you would suspend the "Obama 11" layoffs and have them retrained for our vacated positions.

We have just received an enormous amount of capital infusion tied to a major contract to begin a new firm for a broadband-enabled renewable energy company with all the employees provided an equity stake.

We have moved out today as we have to get going on this right now. Well, that as they say is that then. We wish you all the future success with "Amalgamated Buggy Whip, Inc." as we move on to "Cool Wind & Solar Technologies".

Kindest regards,

The IT Department

P.S. The passwords to the servers have been left on your former secretary's desk and if it isn't too much to ask, could you please let us know the phone numbers to the rest of the secretarial pool as well as electricians and shop mechanics that you are firing? We need them badly for systems, maintenance and office operations. Let them know that we are not politically biased and definitely profit motivated.

[armacas]

Well done, insultant.­..

[Minotaurus]

Arriana is totally right on the subject and very intelligent about it.
AP is making no sense at all....
Another controlling way to be that no-body can afford...

[davidwayneosedach]

Pay for it we will. Whethr we like it or not!

[DestinationsUnknown]

Pay for AP News--- I think not--right there with WSJ

They suck

Better get on board with Google News ---they are done stick a fork in em

[Tracy Hale]

I'll pay for the news just as soon as I hear/read some news, not conjecture and opinion disguised as news.

I don't get it...I was under the impression that sites like HuffPo, and other free sites, live on through advertising dollars...­why do they need my dollars?

[NevaforLeadership]

Excelllent point, Tracy.

One of the reasons I cut off my cable TV was all the opinions disguised as news and expertise. My life is so much better now that I don't listen to all that crap - on the left and right.

As far as why AP needs your dollars -- greed and poor management. AP is paid by news services for supplying news, whether online or on paper. The news services in turn are paid by advertisers.

Problem: their soft cushion has disappeared. Geographical newspapers used to have captive advertisers looking for space in their regional and limited newspapers. Now advertisers have huge and varied internet choices, so along with the recession and more competition, newspapers have been caught with their pants down.

Curley's misguided answer to that is to go into lockdown and charge everyone exhorbitant prices for AP's non-exclusive news, while setting up hugely expensive tracking systems to nab anyone who "steals" its news.

Wave him goodbye.

[paulita]

I saw this interview. Arianna was excellent as usual. She kept trying to hammer the point home to the API guy that he must move into the current age and do business as it is being done now or they will fail.

I agee with her; she was pointing out that people now are used to surfing and finding information for free, so if API tries to divert this process people will just use other sources for information.

The API head kept saying he/they must be paid for their reporters doing the investigation and finding the story, all true, but she was trying to tell him to think outside of the box, which I am not sure he got that point.

[NevaforLeadership]

Large newspapers and hence their suppliers, such as AP, have been operating under a house of cards for a long time.

The high entry level -- high cost of all those printing presses and distribution systems -- has kept competitors at bay and newspapers regionalized. With fewer competitors, local advertisers have often had no choice other than to go with the largest newspapers in the region - propping them up for years.

Now the high entry level has disappeared -- no more large printing presses -- and advertisers are not constrained to the larger regional newspapers. They have a whole internet of potential advertising space. The house of cards is collapsing.

On-line media outlets will have to learn how to compete. It's just a matter of time before all newspapers and magazines disappear. The numbers of journalists will be greatly reduced. Only the best will survive. Online media outlets will not be like newspapers: Many sections will become irrelevant and disappear. Newspapers will become merged, online, interactive media conglomerates.

[WasteNJ]

Curley is dreaming. I see this all the time in IT, these guys don't understand how technology makes the rules irrelevant.

Let's say I want an AP article to post on my site. I copy/paste it from AP. I may have to register with a fake name, as usual. If they disable copy paste, I'll go to the page source code and copy the text. If they disable that, I'll take a screen grab and feed it through a text recognition application. As soon as they post it I own it. The end.

The best they can hope for as far as generating funds is that I click on a banner ad on their page before I navigate away from it. Premium content my ass.

[BluebirdofUnhappiness]

Two words
Copyright Law
One more
Plagarism
and another
Stealing

[amigosito]

one more...

FAIR USE

For many years now, AP has legally diminished their ability to defend their copyrights by essentially allowing anyone to grab their content for free. I'm not saying they don't have a right to control their content; I'm saying they f--ked up by not charging from the very beginning, and now they're all indignant about it. If I were a journalist risking my life to get information to the public, I'd be very pissed at Curley for being so damn clueless about the Inter-Webs.

[abuttah]

Arianna is correct with her idea about a new business model. I do believe there is one thing that's not talked about, and this is the reason why the AP will fail. The AP is putting the cart before the horse. They are so concerned with getting paid that they forgot they were a news agency. The thing that will help the AP continue is to find the talent in the industry. If you produce news that is truthful honest and creates a dialogue then you win the game. The money comes to you. Th AP is failing because their news is marginal at best. They are not the news portal of note. Huffpo is what AP wishes it was. Why? because they cultivate the talent of everyone attached to the website. It values its talent as well as it's audience. We have a voice here. It keeps us coming back everyday. From there you can build a business and a brand. AP has to look at what they're producing first.

[HeartT]

You are so right. The news is crap these days. If it weren't from Huff, we'd be as lost as we were the past 8 years. In fact, thanks to Huff, many of us didn't fall of the cliff of ignorance and apathy.

[StuCop]

ummm...don­'t you understand that 90% the "news" on huffpo comes from the AP and Newspapers and Magazines???? All she's doing is linking to them. It's baffling how many people don't understand this.

they scoff at the AP and newspapers and praise Huffpo...a­ll while not understanding that they are reading the AP and newspapers­....just on huffpo...

[FogBelter]

APs business model is a loser in the Internet Age. What is AP basically, but an in house news aggregator? Now there are accredited journalists worldwide fully capable of supplying an endless stream of copy, and likely with a more astute local focus than AP has access to. All that needs to happen is the creation of an international journalism centralized story repository for web or newspaper organizations, comprised of independent journalists and you could do away with the need for AP, after all, UPI already met its fate. What AP provides is news according to AP standards ... who needs the filter nowadays?

AP is paddling against the force of a tsunami with a soup spoon.

[WasteNJ]

This is the same story as the recording industry trying to limit downloads. The genie is out of the bottle. You can't copyright a paragraph on the internet, it's a dinosaur mentality that refuses to change.

[Deli]

Here is a great blog on the topic of newspapers and the talk of some in the industry for a "bailout". The former journalist who wrote this blog does not agree:

http://remmersreport.blogspot.com/

[KayWrites]

Curley does have one very cogent point. It does take money to get out there in the field and get the news. That needs to be monetized or we won't be getting news. You can't just depend on "citizen journalist­s." Someone with journalistic integrity and training needs to cover these stories as well. We need more than the event itself, we need in-depth coverage. We need investigative journalists like Seymour Hersch or we will never know about things like what Cheney was truly up to.

I don't know what the new model is, and neither does Curley really. We all saw what happened when the NYT decided to charge for the Op-ed page: plummeting viewership. The bottom line is, reporters have to eat and raise their families. We have to find some way to make that happen, whether through licensing fees as Curley suggests (I'm not as sanguine about this avenue as Arianna) or some new idea yet to come.

Arianna is right about links. Monetization will probably have to come through links and click-throughs. But how? Okay, Arianna, the ball's in your court. It's in your best interest AND ours to ensure the survival of news-gathering agencies. Now, what's the solution?

[All in All]

Innovation doesn't always come from the "Top Down"; the problem with many Businesses is that they rely on R&D and/or insiders for most of their innovation. While in both cases sure they will produce some innovation one way or another, however there is more of a pool of untapped potential within the general public then there is in a select group of individuals; and that's even when some of that potential once themselves showed great potential & ideas!

However...­. the internet brings potential & ideas together more often then what once was within in the past; yet it still takes a trained eye & willing people to tap all this potential, even if it's just for a short time only (what is seen now can become unseen once again & vice-versa, and time always determines the relevance of all)!

[NevaforLeadership]

AP currently wholesales its news, journalism and photos to online news sites -- the same model it has always used for newspapers. That's how it pays its team and, when not caught asleep at the switch, makes a profit.

The difference now ? Curley is getting greedy and trying to make up for not having a contingency fund for recessions and reduced advertising.

He wants to make money all the way down the chain -- over and above what AP has been making all along.

[All in All]

It's a good model, however I wonder how much time & money the AP wastes on gathering information on events that other News outlets didn't or wont cover.

If the AP is going to play the middle man then they might want to fully devote it's resources in such a way; which is harder said then done, since news covers a wide swap of things, and why one news outlet may not pay for one event another one might instead.

[THEPILGRIM]

Good Interview Arianna, again you are making a lot of sense.

I also think nobody owns the news, what happens in politics, industry and elsewhere is public and belongs to everybody.