[Infowarrior] - Reuters Prez: 'News Linking is Good'

[Richard Forno]

Well said!!    -rf


16:09 August 4th, 2009
Why I believe in the link economy

http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/2009/08/04/why-i-believe-in-the-link-economy/

The following is a guest column by Chris Ahearn, President, Media at  
Thomson Reuters.
“Do unto others”

It’s a simple standard my mom taught me when I was a kid – yours  
probably taught it too. It isn’t always easy, but in business it’s a  
good guiding light if you don’t want your company to be evil.

Recently there has been a rising crescendo of finger-pointing,  
shrieking, braying and teeth-gnashing about the future of the news. In  
the last couple of weeks there have been many comments on the AP’s  
proposals, Attributor’s proposals, Ian Shapira’s story and fair use.

After some of the AP commentary, I posted a tweet directed at Jeff  
Jarvis that prompted some members in the community to ask me to be  
more outspoken, asking me to be blatant about it, to post a public  
statement. For those who know me, I usually don’t need to be asked.

To start, yes the global economy is fairly grim and the cyclical  
aspects of our business are biting extremely hard in the face of the  
structural changes. But the Internet isn’t killing the news business  
any more than TV killed radio or radio killed the newspaper. Incumbent  
business leaders in news haven’t been keeping up. Many leaders  
continue to help push the business into the ditch by wasting  
“resources” (management speak for talented people) on recycling  
commodity news. Reader habits are changing and vertically curated  
views need to be meshed with horizontal read-around ones.

Blaming the new leaders or aggregators for disrupting the business of  
the old leaders, or saber-rattling and threatening to sue are not  
business strategies – they are personal therapy sessions. Go ask a  
music executive how well it works.

A better approach is to have a general agreement among community  
members to treat others’ content, business and ideas with the same  
respect you would want them to treat yours.

If you are doing something that you would object to if others did it  
to you – stop. If you don’t want search engines linking to you, insert  
code to ban them.

I believe in the link economy. Please feel free to link to our stories  
— it adds value to all producers of content. I believe you should play  
fair and encourage your readers to read-around to what others are  
producing if you use it and find it interesting.

I don’t believe you could or should charge others for simply linking  
to your content. Appropriate excerpting and referencing are not only  
acceptable, but encouraged. If someone wants to create a business on  
the back of others’ original content, the parties should have a  
business relationship that benefits both.

Let’s stop whining and start having real conversations across party  
lines. Let’s get online publishers, search engines, aggregators, ad  
networks, and self-publishers (bloggers) in a virtual room and  
determine how we can all get along. I don’t believe any one of us  
should be the self-appointed Internet police; agreeing on a code of  
conduct and ethics is in everyone’s best interests.

Our news ecosystem is evolving and learning how it can be open,  
diverse, inclusive and effective. With all the new tools and  
capabilities we should be entering a new golden age of journalism –  
call it journalism 3.0. Let’s identify how we can birth it and agree  
what is “fair use” or “fair compensation” and have a conversation  
about how we can work together to fuel a vibrant, productive and  
trusted digital news industry. Let’s identify business models that are  
inclusive and that create a win-win relationship for all parties.

This is not code for some hidden agenda – it is an open call for  
collective problem solving. Let’s do it wiki-style and edit it in the  
public domain. Let’s define the code of conduct and ethics we would  
all like to operate under.

My suggestion is we start with “do unto others” as our guiding spirit  
– I bet it would make all of our mothers proud.

Post your comments below (good, bad or ugly) or send me an email. You  
can reach me directly at chris.ahearn at thomsonreuters.com or via twitter