Forget Anti-Trust: Should ALL Newspapers Charge For Online Content?

The SF Chronicle's normally insightful David Lazarus has come up with the cockamamie idea that the newspaper industry should apply for anti-trust exemption so all papers can start charging for online content at the same time. He also seems to want to charge sites who link to newspaper content.

Whew! There are so many things wrong with these ideas that I don't know where to start.

Lazarus smartly hooked his idea to the Viacom / Google lawsuit, but it's really more about the State of the News Media report. As that report makes clear, newspapers do have a problem with online revenue growth not keeping up with erosion on the print side.

And maybe charging for content will help make those figures tally better. But calling for the industry to unite and do it together is simply silly. As Lazarus notes, beyond the anti-trust implications it would require a level of cooperation previously unknown in the notoriously cutthroat newspaper business. (Whee! I always wanted to use the phrase "notoriously cutthroat.")

Not going to happen -- short of a single company owning all the journalism outlets. Oops, that could happen!

As for Lazarus' other suggestion -- that "newspapers should insist that a licensing fee be paid for aggregators to have access to their content" -- I'm not sure I understand what he's saying. If he means that sites can't reproduce articles wholesale, fine. As he points out, that's already against the rules, and in my experience as a site editor, sites big enough to matter typically stick to Fair Use excerpts, and almost everyone will stop when asked.

But if he's saying sites should have to pay to link to newspaper content, he's making another big mistake. The Web is built on linking. Linking is what sends the people to the site in the first place. Take away linking and newspapers may quickly find that their online readers don't come 'round so much anymore.

Like many others, Mr. Lazarus seems to be wishing for a gentler, simpler time. I don't blame him. The effects of Internet can be very disruptive. I know first hand. But I still believe the Net is a good thing, and in the end it will create far more than it destroys.