[WikiEN-l] BBC blog on WSJ study

[Ray Saintonge]

Durova wrote:
> Mr. Murdoch wants to shift to a paid access model for online the online
> versions of his news holdings.  He's negotiating a deal with Microsoft's
> search engine toward that purpose.
>
> It's hard to understand the conjecture that Wikipedia ties in with those
> plans.  If anything, Wikipedia's habit of referencing historic news articles
> would help Mr. Murdoch's bottom line because it sends traffic to old
> articles, which can generate advertising revenue from old news that would
> otherwise be valueless.
>
> If he's right about paid access being the most profitable model, then his
> self interest would be best served by fencing new content within a paid
> access only for a brief time: a week at most.  By that time it becomes old
> news and there's more money to be made through advertising.  Successive
> release to different venues is standard practice within the entertainment
> industry: a film starts with theatrical release, and once that exhausts
> itself it goes to cable, DVD and network television in descending order of
> profitability.
>
> If this is his plan and it becomes the news industry standard then it could
> make breaking news less burdensome upon Wikipedia's administrators: fewer
> people will read the news immediately and edit Wikipedia.  Of course
> Wikipedia might also be the wrench in his plans because he can't prevent his
> readers from updating Wikipedia, significant news readership would shift to
> Wikipedia, and we have no reason to stop being a free venue.  

The news "industry" is in as much a quandary  as the music and film 
industries. It's a model that depends heavily on news as entertainment. 
That's the only model that seems to justify the /ad nauseam/ treatment 
of such topics as Anna Nicole Smith's death or the Balloon Boy of 
Colorado.  If a Florida mother kills her infant daughter it's a tragic 
personal event, but it should have no real effect on the lives of 
persons away from the immediate situation. Yet another boring speech by 
a politician is not going to sell much news. Those who would critically 
read through such speeches are also likely to be just as critical of 
advertising, or to simply dismiss the ads as background noise.

Certain copyright issues are also at the heart of the problem, notably 
that you can't copyright information.  You can copyright expression, but 
Wikipedians are quite happy to not use the actual wording of news 
reports. News services at one time relied on the patronage of small town 
media who were delighted to receive anything from the outside world; 
they could in turn easily edit that news to suit the pleasure of their 
local advertisers. Now, readers have more access to other 
interpretations of the same information.  If Murdoch charges for 
information, I can often go to another competing site and get it for 
free. If he is the only source for the information, someone with access 
can with impunity repeat that information on another site as long as he 
does so in different words.  Conditions of use that treat public 
information as proprietary may very well be beyond the legal capacity of 
the commercial sites.

I don't dispute that it's expensive to have newsworthy items properly 
covered by enough reporters for credibly objective treatment.  A single 
embedded reporter is too vulnerable to infection from the tunnel-vision 
of those who embed him. At the same time, is an organisation like 
Wikinews in any position to send its own reporters to cover a difficult 
story?  The cost of news coverage and the funding of those costs are 
headed in opposing directions. I have yet to see anyone with the vision 
to resolve that divergence.

Ec