“The entire web is based on linking, for heavens sake.”

Posted by Allie Judson on November 22, 2006 at 12:41 PM

Copyright suits against Google roll on in some nations while in others newspapers are striking content sharing deals with search engine companies. The divide between these two approaches is echoed by a divide in opinion in how newspapers should adapt to the Internet. CityTools founder Robert Cauthorn believes instead of resisting changing business practices newspapers need to jump on the bandwagon and learn how to make the Internet work for them.

The basis of the Internet is linking. According to one theory, newspapers gain revenue from site traffic aided by aggregators like GoogleNews. But Cauthorn envisions a alternative means of gaining revenue while simultaneously ruling out aggregator influence: instead of newspapers getting angry at aggregator linking, Cauthorn proposes that newspapers band together for a more creative solution:

“Google's response to the payment rights idea can easily be 'we should charge you for all the traffic we send you because you monetise that with advertising'.”
Newspapers can rule out general publication and band together groups of specific content sharing sights. Linking to each other the way Google links to them.
“Instead of newspapers limiting themselves to their local content and the wire services, they move to a position where they have their local content and this incredibly rich mixture of content from all the different newspaper networks that they belong to as well as citizen journalism through a public interface.”
Having various networks of publications focus on specific content will create a “best of” atmosphere leading to papers better serving the consumer, making more traffic, and hopefully improving advertising as well.

Not everyone agrees with Cauthorn’s ideas. Some comments left on the article reflect that Skeptics foresee the newspaper coalitions getting tagged with anti-competitive lawsuits by competitors. But as changes continue to effect the industry, only time will really tell.

Source:journalism.co.uk

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