Two More Publishers Talk About Blocking Google

A couple of major publishers are siding with (or at least edging towards) Rupert Murdoch in the News Corp./Google content dispute.  MediaNews Group and A.H. Belo execs have said that they're interested in keeping Google away from parts of their sites.

Let's talk about MediaNews Group first.  It operates 54 daily newspapers with a combined daily circulation of 2.4 million.  Corresponding websites are part of the mix, as are a TV station and some radio stations.

As for the organization's take on blocking Google, CEO Dean Singleton told Greg Bensinger and Brian Womack that some pay walls are going up next year, and "[t]he things that go behind pay walls, we will not let Google search to, but the things that are outside the pay wall we probably will, because we want the traffic."

Then there's A.H. Belo to consider.  It owns and operates four papers and 12 sites, and is weighing a similar approach.  Only Executive Vice President James Moroney seemed less than interested in search traffic, saying, "It's akin to a person who drops into town, buys one copy of your newspaper and leaves town again and yet you spend a whole bunch of time building your business around that type of customer."

The idea of keeping Google away from content appears to be gaining a bit of momentum, then, and with some additional prodding from Microsoft, Rupert Murdoch's idea could go further than critics first expected.

Have You Read This?

> Is The Murdoch Bing Deal Really Just About The Wall Street Journal?

> Murdoch On Blocking Search Engines: "I Think We Will"

> Google Okay With Blocking News Corp.

Reuters Happy to Take Traffic the AP Doesn’t Want

Update: Google evidently likes the Reuters philosophy on this matter. The company recently tweeted the following message:

Original Article: For those of you interested in the online news industry and the never-ending controversial discussion surrounding the Associated Press, linking, fair use, etc., you should be interested in reading what Chris Ahearn, Media President at Thomas Reuters has to say. He appears to come from the opposite side of the tracks as the AP.

Ahearn wrote a piece on a Reuters blog (Via SIA), calling for publishers, bloggers, aggregators, search engines and ad networks to get together and figure out something that works for everyone. Here's an excerpt:

I believe in the link economy. Please feel free to link to our stories — it adds value to all producers of content. I believe you should play fair and encourage your readers to read-around to what others are producing if you use it and find it interesting.

I don’t believe you could or should charge others for simply linking to your content. Appropriate excerpting and referencing are not only acceptable, but encouraged. If someone wants to create a business on the back of others’ original content, the parties should have a business relationship that benefits both.

Let’s stop whining and start having real conversations across party lines...

Reuters is clearly happy to take any traffic that the AP doesn't want, as evidenced by this recent tweet from Ahearn:

Reuters is clearly going to be more popular among bloggers, aggregators, etc. with this kind of attitude. And it's not like Reuters isn't known for high quality content itself. With a major publishing force like Reuters publicizing this kind of position, you have to wonder if it will get other major publishers like the AP its like-minded peers to re-evaluate their position.

Either way, Reuters is bound to get a lot of link love after this. That will be great for the news organization's traffic.

Online Ad Spending Dips 5% In Q2

Global spending on Internet advertising declined for the second consecutive quarter, by 5 percent, to $13.9 billion from $14.7 billion in the same quarter a year ago, according to a new report from IDC.

All global regions posted losses, except for the Asia/Pacific region and Japan, which saw slight gains in the second quarter. U.S. online ad spending also dropped for the second quarter in a row, by 7 percent year- over- year, to $6.2 billion from $6.6 billion.

In the United States, all major advertising formats saw year-over-year revenue losses, with search ads being least affected, display ads losing 12 percent, and classifieds down 17 percent.

All major publishers' ad sales declined, for the most part at double-digit rates, with Google being the only exception, posting single digit growth. Hardest hit was Monter.com with a 31 percent decline and AOL, affected by both weakness in display ads as well as internal sales problems.

For the coming quarters IDC says there is good news and bad news. The bad news is U.S. advertisers will likely decrease their online spending quarter over quarter in 3Q09 by about the same amount as they did in the previous quarters of this year. The good news is things are not going to get any worse in the Internet ad industry.

"We think the industry will continue to see losses in the third and fourth quarters, but the growth rates - or the loss rates, if you will - will eventually begin to improve. However, we also believe the industry may have to wait until mid-2010 until it sees real growth again," said Karsten Weide, program director, Digital Media and Entertainment at IDC.

Local News on YouTube Another Newspaper-Like Issue?

Back in June, YouTube made a couple of announcements that indicated the most popular video site in the world was planning on taking news seriously. YouTube invited major publishers to become partners, and they also launched a new resource for citizen reporters called the YouTube Reporters' Center.

On YouTube's news page, there is a prominent section called "News Near You." What this provides is a selection of news stories from media outlets in your area. This apparently draws from sources that are within 100 miles of your IP address.

Brian Stelter at the New York Times says YouTube is looking to do for local broadcast news what Google News has done for newspapers. The situation seems a little different to me.

With Google News, Google is actually driving traffic to newspaper sites through links. They are not simply republishing the articles (outside of  special deals). This of course have been very controversial itself within the industry.

Videos on YouTube however, are on YouTube. They are watched on YouTube, or wherever they are embedded (when embedding is enabled). Stelter is probably right in that this will also draw its share of controversy.

"YouTube says it is helping TV stations and its other partners by creating a new — but so far not fiscally significant — source of revenue," says Stelter. "But news media companies may have reasons to be wary. Few TV stations have figured out how replicate profits on the Internet. YouTube can easily act as another competitor."

It will be interesting to see if this situation escalates to the magnitude that the newspaper/Google News situation has. The online news industry is just getting more and more complicated isn't it?  In other news industry-related controversy, have you seen the latest concept to come from the AP?

Talk to ArisYulianta and Friends... what you think about the YouTube news situation.