High-end online magazines are popping up like daffodils in spring, with Scanout the latest entry:
Another online magazine - this one called Scanout
Scanout’s not exactly “just” a magazine; they appear to be a media company, and in fact, they’re producing Loop Tackle’s bi-annual “magazine” (Loop isn’t producing catalogs any more).
This could mean Scanout is an odd combination of marketing piece and vanity project, though no matter what the goal, the quality is impressive (and diversity is good). Their latest project plies the reader with fish porn, though in a move guaranteed to put a smile on the face of the Undergrounders, all the fish were left in the water.
A New Look for Fly Fishing’s Online Universe
As little as five years ago, the number of online media choices – at least in fly fishing – were limited.
Now, online magazines, blogs, message boards, videos, podcasts, fly fishing specific social media – plus a few others I neglected to mention – are creating a tsunami of content choices (and that’s ignoring Twitter, Facebook and the like for now).
While that represents a fundamental shift in how fly fishermen access fly fishing information, it’s also clear that no single formula seems to have emerged as a prohibitive favorite.
In an earlier post, I suggested a multi-channel approach represented the surest path to online success (blogs, online mags, social media – all rolled into one big presence). I still believe that’s the case.
What’s it all going to look like in five more years? Any guesses from the Undergrounders?
See you online, Tom Chandler.
Those on-line magazines are so easy to produce compared with the printed version. The software isn’t too expensive and you have no printing or shipping costs… anyone with a camera, photoshop and computer can get in the biz.
I think we are going to see one or two (more?) fly fishing rags go the way of the ice box. I think fly fishing tv shows will continue to slide in numbers as angler numbers drop and our market size is reduced.
I think we’ll see more on-line magazines that boom and then shrink in number as everyone tries to find advertising dollars. I think we’ll also see further development of the Fly Fishing Flim market.
There certainly are a lot more media options than there were 5 or 10 years ago and I’m imagine that it will continue along those lines.
It should be an interesting ride.
B-
Bjorn(Quote)
If it continues apace, you can see a probable explosion of all related media, followed by the thinning the real marketplace always does when there’s too much froth. To once again trot out the analogy; it’s a bubble, and it will eventually burst. The best, and the best (business) plans will survive. shannon
shannon(Quote)
The same thing seems to be happening with automotive and not too surprisingly, home theater/audio magazines. My question is, “Where’s the money?”
I’ve received mysterious unsolicited subscriptions to both an automotive and an audio/HT webzine. They just started showing up in my email inbox. And not just teasers, but access to the whole thing.
The info seems to be very good and the quality of production is excellent. Am I the only one that never clicks on any of the ads?
And on a different tack, will they archive these webzines so that I can go back and find that article about a spot I can finally afford to travel to or will all that great production value just be lost in the bit bucket?
Jim
Jim Ferguson(Quote)
I have been following this development for a while and a shift IS going to happen. It’s just a matter of time, no one has yet taken the lead, and no one will if all they can come up with are fancy magazines. This stuff is merely an extension of what already exists is paper form, it’s not a business model (just ask the news industry).
The winners will be the ones who come up with something that will create relationships and for communities. Sure, fly fishers want to look a nice photos from exotic places, but what we really want is to find people to share our passion with.
The most successful in the long run is likely to be bloggers or niche type publications. If you live close to a particular river, you want to read about this river and chances are there is a river keeper who will blog about it, and probably make some money from selling very targeted advertising to local businesses. This will happen and none of these fancy magazines can provide that level of coverage, and people will soon figure out that flickr offers the same beautiful photos that you see in the magazines. And you can even get in touch with the photographer and ask about the destination, flies etc.
That aside, there is a big opportunity for tackle companies in this social media age. I thought that the Trout Bums, Loop and Fly Fishing Film on Tour were going to take this space by storm, but I was wrong. It will be interesting to see what company decides to take the lead. Because it’s that easy, they just need to understand the social capital and step away from the one way communication route.
You mention the new Loop Catalogue, it’s great and it’s free when you get it from tackle shops. But why is it not online? what a fundamental mistake that shows, just how much room there is for improvement in the way tackle companies think! (sorry for the long rant)
Kasper Sorensen(Quote)
What is so interesting to me as a photographer is that the digital rights issues that came up with National Geographic photographers a few years ago, are little more than a footnote in today’s marketplace. It “appears” most photographers in the fly genre are simply happy to be published in any format – surrendering long term earning potential for short term spotlights. Am I crazy, or do people still read publications for content (words and photography), and in the process expose themselves to the accompanying advertising? Does that then give content a value in the sale of advertising? And if the content is so good as to be published in paper and digital formats, with accompanying advertising, shouldn’t the creator of the content be compensated for both successes? Sounds kind of “old school” when I see such ideals in writing … I know it’s a new world. shannon
Shannon(Quote)
I believe their is a strong connection between these blogs and websites like facebook and Twitter. I get about half of my viewers via Twitter and facebook every day, while the other half come from links that other writers place on their websites.
Unlike most of the people above, I feel like some print magazines can actually excel and gain ground in the future if they only make a few small changes. Fly Fisherman and Fly Tyer need to add some youth to the mix through different articles and ads that people my age can relate too. Nobody wants to read about the same places in South America every month because those are places that realistically 90% of us will never fish. Fly fishing’s past is great, but it’s time to move things into the present. Times have changed, and fly fishing media needs to change as well. ThisIsFly can do it, so why not everyone else?
For the most part I think social networks, forums, and blogs will drive fly fishing into a new age. How it will look in 5 years is really up to how we choose to handle it.
Benjamin Rioux(Quote)
The print media is competing with one hand tied behind their back…
With all the technologies of the web and the ability to stream media at the touch of a hyperlink within a document, it’s akin to print being 2 dimensional and the web is three dimensions.
Pictures are nice, but imbedded video is much superior.
It’s fairly predictable as to the outcome; the magazines will attempt to port their 2-D into the 3-D format, use the same folks that are writing for them now, and should enjoy mixed results. Those vendors that spend the shekels for an attractive and friendly interface with rich content will be successful.
Those that do little more than web-ify, “10 Sure Fire Flies for Panfish” will bore us to tears – just as their hardcopy does.
kbarton10(Quote)
Did it ever occur to you that recognition can be an earner in the long term. Everything you publish online will be available forever and if your work is good, it will be stolen and copied an distributed even more, nothing you can do about it. But if you don’t publish your content online, your competition will and you will lose again.
So true, it’s interesting but it’s not something that will drive readers back tima and time again if there is never any content that actually relate to them. This is where smaller publications like blogs fit much better, they can cover a small area and people fishing in that area will most likely be interested in 90% of the content.
I’m not sure what it is Fish&Fly has done? Yes, they’ve made a hip magazine that even people at my age think is cool, but that is still a very old school way of publishing.
The problem with young people is that they don’t ‘go out a lot’ online, they get all their info from very few sites called, facebook, myspace and youtube. The most popular websites in the world for young people (and the senior gen. is not far behind) are based on creating and nurturing existing communities. Why on earth would you not incorporate that into a new online venture that targets these people?
I couldn’t agree more. Bu, if publishers don’t start giving over control and starts embracing the communities, then it will take more than 5 years. There is no doubt that fly fishing media ion the future will be driven by the users.
Kasper Sorensen(Quote)
Too many points to respond to individually, but I’ll add a few thoughts.
First, there’s long been an assumption that advertising would fund the online publishing of content creation, but if that’s happening, it’s happening very, very slowly.
In fact, clickthrough rates in social media networks are abysmally low, and all but the biggest blogs are not making bupkus. To see it in more real-world terms, look at newspapers, who have yet to find online advertising revenue streams that can support “professional-level” content generation.
People that assume advertising is a catch-all solution seriously underestimate the amount of time needed to manage advertising and service advertisers.
In fact, Marshall at MidCurrent – the only blog run like a business from the outset – once remarked about the huge amounts of time he spent managing advertisers. It’s just a reality.
Bogging things down is the mindset of advertisers, who don’t seem to understand the very nature of medium has changed, so they produce one series of banner ads every quarter and then run them to death, insuring low clickthrough rates.
Advertising to the rescue? Not simple banner ads, that’s for sure.
And as Shannon noted, digital rights issues (the value of content) also must be answered.
Folks on the Internet want everything for free, and if you want to witness a self-righteous speech, bring up the idea of intellectual property – and ownership of created content – in front of a company aggregating the content created by others.
There are a lot of facets to this, but here’s a critical one: if a reader sees no difference in value between a link to another site or original content (created specifically for that purpose), then the money will flow to aggregators, not creators.
And in fact, that’s exactly what’s happening. Google is the best example: they index the content of others, and make money by displaying the content while passing nothing along to the content creators.
Some will argue that “traffic” is just compensation, but I’d suggest that’s almost extraneous – google’s ad programs are wildly successful because they generate revenue from other’s content. They generate revenue in little increments, yet because they’re not saddled with the costs of creating content, it’s wildly profitable.
In the online world, the aggregators are scoring the money (and doing so with far less effort than creators), though the obvious question is this: what will everyone aggregate when creators don’t bother?
This is what lead me to believe that most of the fly fishing related online stuff will exist in service to some larger commercial entity, which is neither good nor bad (though it gets sticky is when it’s not clear that’s happening).
I expect we’ll see more of this discussion soon.
Tom Chandler(Quote)
Some great discussion here. I’ll have to direct some readers from my blog to join it. Gotta love a good Ol’ Fashion mixing bowl of views and ideas that Trout Underground so often provides.
Benjamin Rioux(Quote)
Kasper, this is the part where it all breaks down for me. You’re essentially arguing that content creators must give up their intellectual property rights in return for nebulous returns like “traffic” or reputation.
If somebody choses that, then fine. Sadly, the argument seems to be that content creators have no choice but to let others profit from their work, which also happens to be the argument commonly used to justify what Carr calls “the death of intellectual property.”
It works in some instances. In others, there are issues.
For example, my copywriter blog is a model of what you suggested – I traded content for traffic and “thought leadership” and was very successful at it, but I’ve de-emphasized that blog for several reasons, and two conclusions are inescapable.
First, others profited from the content I generated, and without the need for permission.
And second, your argument suggests that all content creators must serve aggregators, enjoying the benefits of only the few scraps aggregators are willing to leave them.
A darker vision is this: the barriers between editorial and advertising – which held surprisingly well in “traditional” media like newspapers and magazines – will disappear entirely, and all content will become commercial in nature, and “stealth” marketing will become the norm – an unhappy prospect if you believe a healthy media is essential to a healthy democracy.
Somebody brought up This is Fly, which is an excellent example. Is it an online magazine supported by ads? Or is it becoming a kind of hybrid online travel agency, using editorial to drive interest in other products?
I’m not arguing that what you’re talking about isn’t happening. It is, and suggesting my arguments will change that is a lot like spitting into the wind.
That said, these things do need to be considered from the perspective of intellectual property instead of blindly repeating what aggregators (like Facebook, Google and others) would like us to believe.
Tom Chandler(Quote)
A darker vision is this: the barriers between editorial and advertising – which held surprisingly well in “traditional†media like newspapers and magazines – will disappear
This has already happened. I cut my teeth on a handheld police scanner, waiting for the sounds that would send me to a page one image – sleeping with the darn thing. (No wonder my wife left me.) Page A1 used to be about news, and when it became fluff, it surrendered news to the common source we ALL now go to – cable news. I will never forget walking into the newsroom at Escondido, CA, and looking at everyone staring at CNN on the TV’s there when Desert Shield went Desert Storm. I knew then that it was all over but the shouting.
Shannon(Quote)
An issue that hasn’t been touched on much yet is the relationship between generalists and specialists. Due to the nature of the internet, aggregators, and search engine function, info seekers are typically requesting and finding specific info in regards to fly fishing. Sites like carp on the fly or roughfisher.com that cater to species specific pursuits typically attract viewers who are specifically searching for that information. Our narrow focus doesn’t encompass the entire industry, and likewise we don’t attract traffic from generalists, since SEO is based on our content. In one sense we need aggregators in order to expand our product to a wider audience.
I’ve perceive that the roles of traditional print mags often mirror that of the aggregator, in which they are collaborating a variety of stories in efforts to placate the diverse interests of their entire readership. The part where the relationship differ, though, is that print mags compensate their collaborators (authors), whereas aggregators can pick and choose from the original content of bloggers, et. al., at their liberty with little to no compensation whatsoever, often in an entirely legal manner.
I believe the model for data redistribution on the internet needs to be reexamined. With little legally binding requirements for aggregators to function, authors of original content are being robbed of intellectual property and potential compensation. I liken this argument to that of a manufacturing distribution model. The bloggers and authors of original content are the manufacturers. While having the mechanism for offering sales direct to the public (i.e. direct hits to the author’s sites) they are often in need of a wholesaler/distributor in order to mass merchandise and distribute their product to a wider audience of the general public. Aggregators serve as wholesaler, distributor and retailer, all in one. Taking original content for little to no compensation to its authors, is no different than stealing right off the assembly line at the factory. This is a crime for textiles and hard goods, but not for intellectual property on the internet? Ridiculous. As was mentioned by other commenters, it is no wonder why this will lead to the eventual ceasing of new content. There’s no incentive to the creator. The roles of aggregators are still necessary, but they need to fairly compensate the authors for distribution.
the roughfisher(Quote)
Tom, to your hybridization theory, it’s already happening in the print world:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/business/media/08adco.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=magazine%20editors&st=cse
Fishing Jones(Quote)
New content will never cease. Yeah, the idea sounds pretty romantic in theory, but there is always gonna be someone out there with something on their mind who isn’t interested in making any monetary gains from their thoughts or experiences.
40 Rivers To Freedom(Quote)
I may sound overly simplistic, but let the person who thinks their content is worth something go ahead and charge for it! Charging for access to content is simple. Everyone, yes a rash generalization, is afraid to charge for fear of losing the free following. I think we’ll see a lot of changes brought on by the current US Government administration, including the implementation of internet sales tax – across the board. No the urban myth isn’t running around again, but somebody please deny THEY are looking for bigger revenue streams.
Shannon(Quote)
Tom,
Wired editor Chris Anderson disagree with this and so do I. But to be true it’s not a clear cut and their a arguments for and against. Newspapers is a bad example to use, they have been notoriously slow to embrace the online world of digital content and have not yet come up with any solution other than blaming Google for their fall.
The great thing about the web and especially the social web, is that people have a say in what’s deemed quality content. Services like Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious aggregates content based on recommendations from people not bots. Sure these services earn from your content, but they also credit you and give you a link back.
I like to look at it from another perspective. I am happy that digg wants to publish my story, it allows me to get my viewpoint across to more people, which is the ultimate goal for every publisher.
I don’t want to get into the discussion about what business model works or is the best. No one knows yet.
Ironically I think the opposite is true. I look at this from a users perspective not from a business perspective. What is best for the user, a content producer who needs to make money from advertising or an individual blogger who doesn’t serve adds? Reality is that the web is a platform for individuals who doesn’t need to make money from their content, they just want to get their point across to as many people as possible, whether their content is on their blog or on another website. And not everyone is using advertising to make money from their blog for some the reputation is enough.
People won’t pay for content, so giving away content for free is not a choice for most content producers. This might not be a business model, but it’s the way we are heading.
And yes, in the future I think we will see more freelance journalist and individual bloggers who simply uses the quality of their websites (without ads) to land paid jobs in other areas. But I’m not saying it won’t be a bumpy ride, but I believe the end result will be better for the users.
And thanks Tom, for taking the time to type up such a long response, great discussion and one the fly fishing media needs.
Kasper Sorensen(Quote)
I apologise for the bad formatting of the last paragraph in my latest response.
I was too slow to type up my above post, I know see that RoughFisher and 40 Rivers to Freedom managed to get my point across much clearer.
Kasper Sorensen(Quote)
Lots to comment on here. I enjoy the back and forth – appreciate everybody’s willingness to disagree without making it personal.
On an amateur level, sure. But who are the free writers who are protecting our wild places (for free) the same way that Ted Williams was paid to do? I like your idea on one level – and I love the way blogs have allowed new voices to come into the picture – but I don’t for a second believe that parttime content generators can do the same job that Ted Williams does.
Just as one example, will fly fishermen attend endless Board of Supervisors meetings in lieu of paid (barely) reporters from the local paper?
I think a better question is this: Why isn’t Google paying me after it profits from my content? Why can’t I publish my content and then receive even a portion of the commerce derived from it by others?
I’m not lily white here – when I provide perspective on a newspaper story and link to it, I’m potentially profiting from that transaction and providing only a link.
I’d like to say this is all clearcut – and it’s not – but I like to see some discussion about it.
I think Anderson’s way off base in his comments, and in fact, by talking about a content publisher and then using Flickr (a services provider) as an example, he’s knowingly misleading his readers.
And no, I’m not an Anderson fan. His “Long Tail” book used cooked numbers to deliver a flawed conclusion, and his bit about bandwidth and storage being so cheap that everything on the Internet should be delivered for free was laughable.
You’d do better reading Carr instead of Anderson.
And in one sense, you’re making my point for me with statements like:
This is the primary conceit of the Age of Aggregators – that content creators should be happy to just be noticed while we all overlook the fact that aggregators seem to prefer cold, hard cash, and many are earning plenty of it.
And I can guarantee you that the goal of “every” publisher is not attention (as one blogger pointed out, you can’t eat traffic). That certainly wasn’t the case in the pre-digital era, and it’s certainly not now.
Why is it seem so odd that those who create content would want to be compensated for it when others profit by its use?
As for not discussing the business models that work or don’t because we don’t know yet, I think that’s an error – Google’s making bazillions of dollars, as are a lot of sites that are doing little more than aggregating the content of others.
Tom Chandler(Quote)
That’s a fair point, Tom. One I’m having a tough time coming up with a decent argument against :) . Though I will say, for every conservation issue out there, whether it’s a small local one or something that draws national attention such as Pebble Mine; there is a concerned citizen from that community that cares deeply about it and is attending those town meetings just because they care deeply about the issue.
What’s the simplest way for them to get the word out about it? What’s the best way for them to get some important eyeballs, such as yourself or Ted Williams to take a look at it? What’s the best way for that concerned citizen to keep the public up to date on the status of the issue they’re so passionate about?
The answer is a blog. Better yet, a blog which takes advantage of other social media applications such as twitter, facebook, etc.
40 Rivers To Freedom(Quote)
YES! A successful publisher (in the old days) MADE MONEY for the owner (perhaps themselves) and / or share-owners.
I am mostly unversed on the whole “aggregators” as the current great satan though. If you don’t want to be indexed, can’t you just write code to prevent it, and charge to enter (to go one step further)? And, in capitalistic terms, don’t they (google) have the right to make as much as the market can bear (until the government steps in and leashes the hounds)? Maybe I really am lost in talking about “aggregators” … they are regurgitating your content in whole somewhere other than on the original source site?
I think an entire treatise is in order for those unfamiliar with intellectual property, what really goes into creating content, and the reality that time HAS value. The new generation coming along, many of those I teach about photography, think the concepts of usage and rights are old school “pie in the sky”.
Shannon(Quote)
Hey guys, I gotta run to a meeting, but to clarify some of the “fair use” vs intellectual property issues, there’s a link to Good Morning Silicon Valley – a story about Associated Press and Google.
Tom Chandler(Quote)
It’s a shame we live in an attention economy then!
But I do partly agree with you and I also pinted tha tout in my previous post:
That’s why content producers will have a hard time and individual bloggers and freelance publishers will have the advantage. There is a reason that the general public don’t trust newspapers and mainstream media, because they know they have to make money. But which model is best for democracy and the end user? The content producers that desperately needs traffic to please advertisers. Or the individual (amateur) blogger or (a professional) freelance journalist who produce content because he cares?
I don’t see a reason to be concerned with aggregators. They bring loads of traffic, if people like your story they help you spread the word. If you don’t like them you can just put your content behind a pay wall. If it’s so bad for the newspapers that these agregators ‘steal’ their work, why do every newspaper provide a link to them underneath al their articles? I just don’t buy it, these aggregators bring millions of visits to the original content producers.
because you have asked them to index it for them! You can simply turn them off if you don’t like it, Google even provide guidelines for you. But I’m sure you could ask Google to pay you a commission if you pay them a commission for the traffic they send you.
My experience is that people who care will attend and involve themselves in important, and boring, stuff even more so than people being paid to attend.
Glad to see I’m not the only one who believes in this ;-)
An example from where I live is this. There was a plan to develop the city centre of Birmingham, UK. The plan wasn’t really well described and ‘regular people’ couldn’t really understand the language or have their say in it. A group of bloggers got together and re wrote the whole thing, set up a web site and invited contributions from the general public, and they did it all for free with no hidden agenda :0. This information was then used by the city council and the bloggers worked together with the city council to reshape the plan.
This is just one example and I’m sure there are more. ‘Amateurs’ working together towards a goal they care about, opposed to journalists and council workers being paid to distribute the information. I know where I stand in terms of what is best for democracy, or the users.
Kasper Sorensen(Quote)
Hmm, I must’ve forgotten to add the /a at the end of that link. Sorry.
MHH(Quote)
If that fixes it, feel free to delete comment #24.
MHH(Quote)
That’s a fairly embarrassing rant from a lot of perspectives. First, suggesting that those wanting to protect their intellectual property simply turn Google off is akin to suggesting the employee who demands safe working conditions leave the company; if what Google’s doing is a violation of copyright, then punishing the copyright holders isn’t going to solve the problem, is it?
I’m always impressed with the amount of glee demonstrated by some bloggers over the demise of newspapers, especially when so much blog content is in fact generated by others. Some of it feels – like the link you mention – feels like faux populism. It’s easy to cast AP as some kind of corporate monolith, but it’s simply an association of news gatherers and publishers, and a great deal of the content is generated by barely living-wage writers working in small and medium-sized towns.
That dead-tree media (like newspapers) are failing is undeniable.
That Google profits heavily from the content of others – without asking permission and without providing perspective or analysis – is also undeniable.
Once all but the major news-gathering organizations have gone, we’ll be left with a multitude of small providers, many of whom will be funded by corporations and political parties, and then we’ll see how well crowdsourcing works against the concerted efforts of the really big money.
Having fought the world’s largest food & beverage multinational myself, I have a pretty good idea how that’s going to go.
In any case, this has wandered a little far afield, though it’s been damned interesting.
Tom Chandler(Quote)
It’s what I call “striking a nerve”, and there are so many more of them to strike when the economy pulls in like it has.
Shannon(Quote)
You still fail to provide evidence that Google is in fact robbing you from your intellectual property. And I see no on mentioning that turning Google off would save your intellectual property, simply providing a solution for not getting indexed. I’m not following the comparison, so won’t comment on that. Just wanted to set the record straight.
The conservative commercial view that some people have on news and the organisations that provides now a days always confuses me. News has only been a commercial commodity for around 150years. Why does 150 years makes such a big difference?
I have absolutely no idea about where the future is heading and for all I know, everyone who participated in this discussion could be right, or wrong. Personally I like to be optimistic about it, but it is certainly a damn interesting discussion ;-).
Kasper Sorensen(Quote)
Very interesting stuff. From a small writer guy’s point of view, I blog because I like to write and there seems to be enough people that read what I write. The bottom line is, I can write what I want in as free a format as I choose. Like anything and everything else on the web, whether or not someone reads it or not is their choice. If it’s something (I think) may have value, I don’t write it and save it for print publication. Of course, what I think (or my editor) may have value, may not be worth squat to you.
Getting back to the original topic, the ezines, while relatively easy and cheap to get started, still take effort and originality to maintain reader interest. At some point, the creators will either burn out or ask themselves whether its worth the time and effort……………..I think the web is like water, it will find/seek its own level.
It’s a lot like fly fishing. How many flies come along and work like candy on the first outing or year of use, only to fizzle and dissapear after a few years? The truly effective flies stick around.
MG
Caddis Chronicles(Quote)
@TC: Is what Google’s doing a violation of copyright? Honest question; I’m no lawyer. Even if we assume it is illegal, though, Google is far from the only guilty party. They just have some of the deepest pockets, no?
I think your analogy regarding safe working conditions is slightly flawed. First, Google does not employ the newsmedia. Second, the AP, Newscorp, et al. are not nearly as fungible as typical employees; there are no massive international content generators that are out of work and loitering around Google HQ, happy to take the place of their fellows who insist on a better deal. And third, Google does not have a monopoly or any sort of patent on search. The AP is more than free to develop and invest in its own engine and simply cut Google out of the distribution network altogether.
Also, I’m not sure gleeful faux populism is an accurate characterization of Sullivan’s rant. His tone is certainly vehement, but he repeatedly states that he wants newspapers to survive. He just thinks their management and executives are doing a rather poor job of making sure they do survive.
Lastly, I find it difficult to dredge up much sympathy for the media on this issue seeing as how they engage in the very same behavior (only worse) themselves. For just one example, it was just a couple years ago that a blogger friend of mine had an entry lifted and re-run almost verbatim by a major network. When he called them on it, he was informed in no uncertain terms that he was not entitled to any sort of compensation or even a citation because he was “just a blogger.” I have a hunch that his is not an isolated case; at the extreme end of the spectrum perhaps, but not rare by any means.
MHH(Quote)
You’d have to write a book (or two) to fairly address all the excellent and valid points of view here. But one thing that no one has mentioned is that fly fishing is a very small “market.” I’ve been involved in publishing since I was 17, and rule number one has always been, “If you want to make money in publishing, be sure you don’t try to speak to a small audience.” In fact there was a always a “critical mass” in non-controlled-circ magazines of around 50,000 readers, beneath which you were a hobbyist (or very wealthy.) The same independence from critical mass empowers bloggers from an editorial perspective, but from the perspective of those online advertisers who might support them financially the expectations on numbers, if anything, are even higher, because on the Web the relationship to the visitor is even more dilute. Narrow-casting’s time may come, but only if the ad networks do more demographic profiling and the really good bloggers force their visitors to accept third-party cookies. So is aggregation the only model that works? I don’t think so, but if you throw it out with the bathwater (or out of sheer frustration), you’ve turned your back on at least one thing that seems to work.
And by the way I think there is very little journalism being done now — online or in print — that does not “aggregate.” The difference that seems to be arising now is that some folks attribute, and some folks don’t. I’m not sure that the AP building a story from a variety of online sources and attributing nothing so that they can charge more for it is more honest than Google letting their machines index the stuff and attribute everything. But you can probably tell which way I’m leaning.
Marshall Cutchin(Quote)
Not to drag this back on topic, but I thought Scanout was clumsy and not well executed. I couldn’t even flip through it for more than minute or two and I have no real inclination to return for seconds.
As for copyright, I think its an antiquated set of rules that don’t fit the new mechanisms. IP law needs an overhaul.
Ethan(Quote)
An excellent example of how the internet has changed things so dramatically. Now the more niche your audience (which is a terrible word to use because they are users) the better and more targeted advertising you can provide.
I know he’s not a publisher and some might not agree with what he says, but he sure knows about online businesses. I once heard Gary Vaynerchuk say that if you had a user base of 2500 users a day, you can make a good living from selling advertising, as long, as you position yourself to monetize (But I guess that equals around 50.000 a month as was mentioned).
Kasper Sorensen(Quote)
Certainly Google is making money, but how is it displaying your content? A search for Tom Chandler brings up, in the No. 3 position behind a decorator and a poetry professor at Bryant University in Smithfield, R.I., this blog. Beyond the title and the URL, here’s the total content that Google displays:
There are a lot of shameless aggregators (is feedscraper the term these days?), but how is Google violating anyone’s copyright here?
Bruce Ross(Quote)
I’m going fly fishing (for big trout – a place I get to once a year), so this will be short.
First, Google admits they make money off the content of others. It’s not really a question. The question that remains is does it constitute fair use? Google says yes, but the newspaper world thinks not. If Google was completely sure, they wouldn’t have signed a contract with AP to use APs content, though that contract is up soon and AP is making noises about bigger numbers.
The Google/AP thing is topical, which is why I’ve used them as an example (they’re not the only one).
Oops, Wayne’s here. More later.
Tom Chandler(Quote)
It’s hard to see how indexing could not be fair use. A search page, at least, doesn’t show the content but only tells the user that it’s there. Did H.W. Wilson pay royalties on the Readers Guide to Periodical Literature?
Google News is a bit different. You can read entire AP articles (in a nice clean format) on Google, so I’d fully expect Google to pay its share of the freight like any other publisher. And I’d fully expect AP to want higher membership fees for such a successful outlet. (Usually rates are based on circulation; I assume there’s a similar scale for Web traffic.)
Newspaper publishers are ticked because business sucks, but their problem is the Internet — the technology itself. Lowered barriers to entry and the heightened competition for readers’ time and attention — plus free classified ads — are killing print. Google’s an amazingly successful Web company, but it didn’t actually invent the Internet. And it could disappear tomorrow but the old print business model wouldn’t come back. Sniff.
Bruce Ross(Quote)
It’s good to see things getting shaken up – not before time. The net affect is that fly fishing is being demystified, shifting down a demographic and being made all the more accessible.
All good things IMHO
Carl
Carl McNeil(Quote)
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/04/06/the-aps-desperate-attempt-to-outlaw-linking
Shannon(Quote)
Tom, it seems you’re right on the zeitgeisty meeja button. Do you have a view on Phorm, currently causing a bit of a row in the UK and Europe, I hear?
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article5367153.ece
Leaving aside privacy issues for now (because those could take us well OT for a long, long time) is there an intelligent funding stream here for the nichier bits of the blogosphere?
Theo(Quote)
Sadly, I’ve been way too busy to give this discussion the time it deserves. I’ve been consumed teaching an Online Marketing Boot Camp for an economic development agency, and no, the irony doesn’t escape me.
I can’t address every comment, so I’ll focus in one area.
Simple. Type in “Phillipson Bamboo Fly Rods” and the Underground’s article comes up #2. It excerpts the headline and a passage, and also offers Google the potential to make money if someone clicks the ads that display.
That this is an appropriation of my content isn’t a question. The question is “does this fall under Fair Use?” Or worse (for Google), does the legal concept of “misappropriation” apply?
Fair use was originally intended to provide access to protected content for purposes of comment or criticism; Google’s offering neither. If you read the article suggesting the AP may sue, there’s also the 1918 case law surrounding the concept of “misappropriation.”
I’m not suggesting I’ve been significantly harmed by Google, and I’m not about to litigate this right here on the Underground.
I do, however, have an uneasy feeling about what’s happening, and if you’ll recall, my initial comments around this suggested that – instead of the Golden Age of Content we were promised – we’re actually experiencing the Golden Age of Content Aggregation for the aggregator’s profit, not the creator’s.
At some point, this will likely cease to be a legal question and morph into a purely philosophical concept. As Ethan suggested, IP law needs an overhaul to reflect the new digital realities, and I couldn’t agree more.
Google is aggregating content without permission, making a handsome profit, and not compensating creators in any real sense – especially once the content creator’s site is obscured by a higher-ranking site using the original content (perhaps even meeting the Fair Use standard in doing so).
I’d sugges that’s fundamentally at odds with the concept of creators owning the content they create, yet I don’t have any easy resolution for the problem.
Certainly, the realities of a couple billion users clamoring for more free content can’t truly be ignored, but allow me to get a little squeamish when I hear self-righteous aggregators suggest that musicians must now give their music away and try to eek out a living on the road.
I mentioned Nicholas Carr before; he recently posted an article addressing this, offering an interesting perspective about Google (hypermediators) and the newspaper biz:
Carr’s a smart guy.
Scott Karp of the Publishing 2.0 site had his own take on the Google vs content creators question:
I’m not sure I wholly agree with Karp, but it’s a perspective that places the current issues far outside the reach of IP law.
As Marshall deftly pointed out, the fishing space isn’t a particularly good test-bed for this discussion; it’s never supported more than a handful (at best) of truly fulltime content producers, and aggregation might offer the only path to any sort of monetary compensation.
I’m not against that in principal – provided it’s voluntary. Publishing is a time-honored (and voluntary) method of aggregating content, and the new digital reality would seemingly open the door to a new kind of publishing.
We’re seeing the first glimmers of that now, but – heading back to where this all started – I don’t believe current forms of online advertising will be enough to support these ventures – especially at the kind of traffic levels experienced in niche markets.
Rates paid for online advertising are falling – as are clickthrough rates in social media settings (which includes blogs). That’s one reason I’m experimenting with online ad formats that extend beyond the banner ad.
Anyway, that’s all the time I’ve got tonight; it’s 10:40 PM, and I’ve got one more thing to write – the curse of today’s content creator.
Tom Chandler(Quote)
Didn’t see this before posting my response (above). And yes, I had to look up “meeja” to see if I had been insulted.
Behavior-based selling isn’t new (I once wrote copy for a company called MyBuys, which does much the same thing as Phorm).
Relevance and “one-to-one” marketing are the holy grail for today’s marketers; anything that makes their marketing more effective tends to reflect nicely on publishers. Still, in niche markets like fly fishing, I think the simple matter of critical mass remains, and yes, the techno-marketing lag in the FF industry (compared to similar-sized industries) is well… disappointing.
Tom Chandler(Quote)
Kasper Sorensen(Quote)
Sorry for the formatting in my previous post. Everything after the words ‘without permission’ in the first paragraph, is my response to Tom’s comment.
Kasper Sorensen(Quote)
Carr certainly is a smart guy. Thanks for the link. To me, though, is is the main point:
Actually, a few sites do an OK trade, but the Internet raises the level of media competition by a few orders of magnitude — and that’s having the standard economic effect of squeezing everyone’s earnings, from venerable press barons to free-lance writers in Siskiyou County. When he says the news business needs to shrink, sad to say, he’s right. Some day we’ll look back on the early to mid-’00s as a golden age of information, where everything was suddenly available everywhere, but the economic foundation of the old-line professional media hadn’t yet collapsed.
But the search engines aren’t the culprit; the new environment of the Internet is. Indeed, with this “tsunami of content choices,” the hardest trick is getting noticed, and a search engine really is your friend when it works.
No. 2 result for Phillipson Bamboo Fly Rods? Damn, you’re an Internet fly-fishing demigod. Maybe the answer isn’t to grouse about Google but to open a retail channel. Seriously, that’s probably what will be happening in five years.
Because as writers, we’re probably all doomed.
Bruce Ross(Quote)
Overly selective quoting is turning this thread into a parade of strawmen, which renders this more an argument than a discussion. Suggesting I’m simply objecting to Google’s indexing content without permission isn’t accurate.
Neither have I suggested I “own” any search terms. I do, however, own the content I create.
Second, Google is not a bookstore. In fact, your example helps support my point: A bookstore has a legal relationship with content creators (authors), and if a book is on the shelf there, then the author’s been compensated. Correct?
In your analogy, if there was Google, it would be a guy who walks in, takes a book off the shelf, leaves without paying, then sells individual pages to passersby, justifying it under fair use.
The point of all this isn’t to paint Google as the great satan. It’s to point out that Google profits handsomely by displaying the copyrighted content of others and does so without paying for it (which they tried to do when scanning whole [and copyrighted] books for indexing).
I think I’ve made my point, and you’ve made yours, and since we’re not going to agree, I’m going to stop.
As for the retail part of your comment (I have yet to “grouse”), I think you’re basically correct. In an earlier post I suggested that individual blogs were likely dead ends as viable media properties (e.g. profitable properties), and that – in the current environment – they needed to serve a larger master to generate enough revenue to make sense.
Giving away content in return for traffic only makes sense when there’s a profit waiting somewhere down the line. That could be a product (like a book, gear, etc), or a larger, multi-channel site that offers enough scale to generate more reasonable advertising revenue (the kind of voluntary aggregation that Marshall mentioned).
D oomed? I’ve been in marketing for 23+ years. I’m going to hell.
Tom Chandler(Quote)
Just noticed this today: “Old-Media Execs Launching Paid-Content Firm” – essentially a pay-to-play subscription service that allows users to pay one fee and access multiple sites: http://eepurl.com/Y9H
Why is it most “new” ideas in publishing have already been tried by the porno industry?
Tom Chandler(Quote)
I bet you know why those porn sites have the “new” ideas! It’s like robbing banks, that’s where the money is. Monetizing the Monster will be the next revolution.
Shannon(Quote)
It’s also possible that, in five years, when the great shakeout has left all the former reporters and editors working as greeters at Wal-Mart, quality content will become scarce enough that subscriptions might be viable again and that ad rates might climb a bit — that is, publishers won’t be competing (at least not quite so fiercely) with free.
And good grief, that’s the optimist’s forecast.
Bruce Ross(Quote)
One more interesting take on the subject from Jack Shafer at Slate.
Bruce Ross(Quote)
Just to avoid any confusion for people in this discussion: Google doesn’t sell other people’s content!
On your first point: Correct!
And if the book isn’t on the shelf but the salesman has read it and suggests other books based on the content, the creator hasn’t been compensated. Correct?
I don’t see this as a challenge to get people to agree with me, although most do ;-), I’m just putting my ideas and opinions forward. But from your latest post it seems like we are talking about two completely different things, so it would be a waste of time anyway.
Kasper Sorensen(Quote)