If ‘We the Media’ Poaches Content, Who Pays for News Production?
Why did Rho Ventures lead a $10.6 million funding round on behalf of NowPublic? To “change the media landscape,” is the PR explanation.
The reality of NowPublic though is that it is exploiting the existing media landscape to its own advantage.
In touting the deal today, NowPublic founder and CEO Leonard Brody went out of his way to assert that not only is he not a proponent of “citizen journalism,” NowPublic itself is no citizen journalism effort.
REALLY? Then why does Brody extol the citizen journalism he says is taking place at NowPublic in his own press release!:
Brody: On a daily basis, NowPublic’s model of citizen journalism is increasingly being embraced by major media.
Not only does Brody contradict himself in spinning the NowPublic VC investment, NowPublic’s publicy stated ”news values” are not being upheld, as I analyzed earlier this morning in FLASH! NowPublic Digg Clone Preps Global ‘News’ Domination.
NowPublic’s interpretaion of “crowd powered media” is strikingly similar to Digg’s “user powered content” philosophy. NowPublic is actually functioning as a Digg like site, aggregating crowd-pleasing soft news stories taken from other Websites.
NowPublic is not being “embraced by major media,” it is iteself embracing the original content of major media, by piggybacking on the professional work done by professional news organizations, amazingly cost free to NowPublic!
If “smart money” is backing the regurgitation of the content of others as a smart media play, who will pay for the production of the news that is being poached?
I asked the same question at the beginning of the year, when Time magazine announced its online news “made simple,” The Ag; A recylcing of the news produced by others:
Now you can start your day by checking our news blog, The Ag, which smartly aggregates and summarizes the most important stories from daily newspapers and blogs around the world.
Time says “The Ag is the work of Time’s Matthew Yeomans, an early-rising journalist based in Cardiff, Wales”:
Yeomans scours his bookmarks and RSS feeds every weekday morning and writes a digested version of the best stories from hundreds of the world’s great newspapers and blogs, giving you all the news you need to read without reading all the news.
Yeomans’ scouring at dawn conveniently provides the Times’ audience with the breaking news produced by the world’s great newspapers, without the inconvenience of having to visit the producing news organizations to read their original content, or view the ads that support such competitors’ news production.
In the “democratic” news tradition of the Web, Yeomans’ better versions of the best stories of others are sprinkled with new media’s online currency: links.
Typically, Yeomans’ “breaking news” stories are standalone “reports” created from the content of various (competing) news organizations. Yeoman attributes his source content, including links, while Time nevertheless underscores to its readers that there is no need to be “reading all the news” appropriated from those that paid to produce it.:
The BBC says,
Reuters quotes,
AP quoting,
CBS news reports,
According to CNN Asia,
According to the WSJ…
Time may be making shrewd Time-centric business decisions, but what if the producing news organizations Yeomans scours for his “news” follow suit? Ditto for the business model of not quite citizen journalism site NowPublic.
At the end of the new media, citizen journalism day, who will pay to produce the news that everyone seeks to aggregate without paying for? Will there continue to be news to aggregate? News may be a commodity, but valuable commodities cost dearly.
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