“Internet media company Yahoo Inc. (NasdaqNM:YHOO – news), in its latest move to expand its business through fee-based services, on Tuesday said it has opened a pay-for-use archive of Associated Press news stories.” – Reuters, Dec. 17.
The TeleRead take: The Reuters account goes on to say that after two weeks, stories will vanish from the free part of Yahoo and will then carry a charge of $1.50 per access via archives. Not sure what the online survival time for free AP stories has been. Still, the item illustrates a trend accelerated by the recent advertising drought.
This affects you, fellow bloggers. It’ll be interesting to see how many news organizations reduce the supply of now-“free” information or introduce new “products” that once would have been free to citizens, er, consumers. Of course, nothing is truly free in the long run, since it must be paid for by consumers, advertising, institutional budgets or in other ways. TeleRead, as noted many times earlier, could be applied to newspaper and magazine archives, not just books. Articles could appear with stable links–ready as grist for bloggers and others.
In The Real World, paid archives are a setback to those hoping for greater journalistic accountability. The more expensive information becomes, the less likely it is that ordinary citizens will be interested in the track records of media organizations. Fatcat lobbyists? A different story. No financial barriers there. I doubt that AP is deliberately creating obstacles for media watchers who don’t work for big corporations; the reasons for the Yahoo arrangement are almost surely just financial; editors and reporters must be paid; the wire service is just doing what comes naturally. Still, the effect is the same–less of a “free” Net.
Stay tuned for a full reproduction of The Brass Check, the Upton Sinclair classic, in which he discussed the business side of the Associated Press and other news organizations and mentioned unorthodox alternatives such as, gasp, municipal newspapers. We’ve already posted more than 15,000 words of his work.
Just in case anyone is curious, no, we’re not suggesting that the New York Times be shut down and replaced by a municipal newspaper. Quite the contrary. Instead we need a wide range of media with a variety of business models–the best way to encourage greater diversity than the press allows us today, especially here in the States.
