Will the Associated Press let tech companies buy it up, perhaps in tandem with the more progressive of the big media outfits like the New York Times and the Washington Post? Or is it a power thing—an RIAAish urge to control content in the most obnoxious ways? Is the AP less interested in the prosperity of its members than preserving the pathetic status quo?
Maybe AP members need to remember two words. "Sam Zell." Repeat after me. "Sam Zell." He’s the billionaire who bought the Tribune Company. Under Zell, Trib execs are coming up with such beauts as making column inches the prime measurement of productivity. So all writing’s the same? Investigative reporting vs. accounts of city council meetings? Point made. Look not to Zell types for salvation.
Sulzbergers not—but better than Zells
No, tech companies aren’t Sulzbergers at heart, far far from it, but they do seem more in tune with the needs of the wired generation (photo shows Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. with Bill Gates—both at least more wired than Zell). Beyond that, via a reinvented AP, corporations such as Microsoft, Yahoo and Google could help newspapers on R&D-related matters. E-Ink Newspapers? When Cars Fly reads a blog item on Conde Nast’s Portfolio site. "E-Ink is saying that real business tests will begin with newspapers in 2009. But newspaper companies have R&D budgets that, in a good year, would buy lunch for a handful of engineers. And this is not in any way a good year."
Tech companies could help local newspapers roll out E Ink experiments and others and integrate themselves well with online services. And, yes, there’s an e-book angle here, a major one—since word-friendly hardware for news-reading could also work for book-reading. For that matter, yes, maybe tech companies and publishers can consider alliances to aid the transition, just so they avoid stupidities like DRM and eBabel (problematic but not impossible—see "The Standards angle" later on).
Aid with e-transition at a crucial time
No, newspapers are not going to vanish. But they will shrink, and tech companies could at least help with the transition—while, I’d hope, making more funds available for, say, foreign bureaus, which is what counts much more than newspapers as physical objects. These are not abstractions. Newspapers have drastically cut back on, say, coverage of the Iraq War. I don’t trust tech giant such as Microsoft, Yahoo and Google to get everything right, but as shown by power grabs from the White House, we need the Fourth Estate more than ever to help serve as a watchdogs—-ideally in cooperation with bloggers and other independents, the very sort of people against whom the AP is warring.
Detail: Copyright struggles are one reason why Google News hasn’t grown as quickly as it could. A buyout could help deal with issues like this.
One more idea: If the AP insists on preserving the business model of a news cooperative, is there a way of integrating the tech giants into it—with dues costs reflecting the greater resources they have than newspapers do.
In fairness to the Trib people: They are doing some good things.
The standards angle: I think it would be a horrible idea for any single tech conglomerate alone to buy the AP. We need to guard against, say, Microsoft using this as just another way to let Windows keep dominating the OS scene. Most important of all, the news industry should insist on nonproprietary standards such as ePub, as a way to reduce the chances of content being tied to specific companies’ technologies.
And a reminder: I own a tiny speck of stock in Google for retirement purposes. As veteran readers of this blog know, however, I love to bash Google when it deserves it.
Image credit: CC-licensed photo from Fortes.
