No More Free Ride for Aggregators?

The leaders of two of the world's major news organizations said today that search engines and others who use news content for free must pay up, Editor & Publisher reports via The Associated Press.

Many news companies contend that sites such as Google have reaped a fortune from their articles, photos and video without fairly compensating the news organizations producing the material.

"We content creators have been too slow to react to the free exploitation of news by third parties without input or permission," Tom Curley, the AP's chief executive, told the World Media Summit, attended by 300 media leaders in Beijing.

"Crowd-sourcing Web services such as Wikipedia, YouTube and Facebook have become preferred customer destinations for breaking news, displacing Web sites of traditional news publishers," Curley said.

"We content creators must quickly and decisively act to take back control of our content," he added. "We will no longer tolerate the disconnect between people who devote themselves — at great human and economic cost — to gathering news of public interest and those who profit from it without supporting it."

Rupert Murdoch also told summit attendees that content providers would be demanding to be paid.

"The aggregators and plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content. But if we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid content, it will be the content creators — the people in this hall — who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs who triumph," the News Corp. chief executive said.

Curley said earlier this week that the AP was considering selling news stories to some online customers exclusively for a certain period, perhaps half an hour.

The AP already plans to roll out a system, called a news registry, that will track its content online and detect unlicensed uses in ways that could help boost revenue for the not-for-profit news cooperative and its member newspapers.

BBC To Share Video News with Print Websites

The BBC has struck a landmark deal with four national newspaper groups to share video news on their websites, the Guardian reports.

The deal -- described as the latest step in the BBC's plans to share content, expertise and technology in the name of public service -- will make a limited range of free BBC video news content available on the websites of the Daily Mail, Guardian, Independent and Daily Telegraph. The BBC video will supplement the websites' own material in the areas of UK politics, business, health and science, and technology.

The BBC plans to make the same video news content available to other UK-based news websites in the future. The arrangement covers only news, not other genres such as entertainment or sports.

The video will carry BBC branding, and partner media organisations are not allowed to place advertising around the clips.

The video news sharing proposal marks a significant shift in relations between the BBC and rival media companies, GuardianMedia writer Mark Sweney points out. Newspaper publishers have long argued that the BBC has used licence fee revenue to fund its expansion into digital media, an arena where it competes with content providers that do not have access to a comparable public subsidy.

The industry won a battle last November to halt the BBC from launching a £68m network of local video news websites when the BBC Trust rejected the corporation's proposals.

The BBC recently has embarked on a series of partnerships with commerical media companies to fend off government proposals to top-slice the licence fee to help support other public service broadcasters, Sweney reports.

"Digital Britain" and the Regional Press

The government's multi-faceted Digital Britain report, released Wednesday, contains a number of components with a direct effect on the regional press, HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk reports.

In addition to declining industry requests to relax merger rules, as described in a companion report from the Office of Fair Trading and highlighted here yesterday, the government has:

* Ordered an inquiry into council-funded newspapers and their effect on the local press. The Digital Britain report says it would be counter to the public interest should a loss of paid-for advertising to local authority publications make community papers unviable.

Ministers have asked the Audit Commission, the local spending watchdog, to conduct the inquiry. It will consider whether curbs should be placed on local authorities competing for advertising revenue with the local press.

* Promised consultation on use of a portion of the BBC licence fee to support alternative local and regional media outlets. The report said the money, approximately 3.5pc of the fee or around £130m, will be "channelled through other organisations, primarily for news."

If given the green light, the scheme would begin in 2013, when the switchover from the analogue to digital signal is complete. Newspaper groups are among the organisations expected to benefit.

"The result could be a greater investment in journalism, newsgathering and multimedia distribution and syndication than today, enhancing the quality of news," the report says.

However, the BBC Trust opposes "top-slicing," which its chairman, Sir Michael Lyons, said would "damage BBC output, reduce accountability and compromise independence.

"The licence fee must not become a slush fund to be dipped into at will, leading to spiralling demands on licence fee payers to help fund the political or commercial concerns of the day," he said.

Digital Britain Report Released

The eagerly awaited Digital Britain report, outlined to Parliament this afternoon, lays out the government's three-year plan to boost digital participation, provide universal broadband access by 2012 and counter digital piracy.

Chapter 5, titled "Public Service Content in Digital Britain," includes a consideration of challenges facing the local and regional press. It cites a companion report from the Office of Fair Trading, also released today, which recommended that "no legislative change is required" to merger regulations in the Enterprise Act 2002.

The office had been asked to alter existing media public interest provisions, for instance to include the need for independent investigative journalism.

The Digital Britain report outlined the potential for three pilot "Independently Financed News Consortia" (IFNC) projects, in Wales, Scotland and a region of England to be determined. Consortia would include but not be limited to existing television news providers, newspaper groups or other news gathering agencies. The report said criteria for selection would likely include "the ability to achieve reach and impact; high production and editorial standards to sustain accuracy and impartiality; and the financial stamina to sustain the service at quality throughout the period of the award."

Analyses of the 245-page report will be emerging in the coming days. Among the additional points summarised by the BBC in its initial overview are:

* A levy of 50p a month on all fixed telephone lines to establish a national fund for next-generation broadband. This was one of the biggest surprises in the report, and some observers have expressed doubt whether the amount generated will be sufficient.

* Legislation to curb unlawful peer-to-peer file sharing, with regulator Ofcom given new powers.

* Upgrade of all national radio stations from analogue to digital by 2015.

* Liberalisation of the 3G spectrum.

* A changed role for Channel 4.

* Consultation on how to fund local, national and regional news.

Big Green Addition for Local Websites

Northcliffe's "thisis" websites have launched a new section dedicated to environmental issues and information, holdthefrontpage.co.uk reports.

The channels, which tie in to Northcliffe's two-year-old "Big Green Switch" environmental site, include tips, local surveys, energy-saving advice and targeted advertising, in additon to local stories and other information. Users are asked to send in their "green ideas," as well.

Additional features include a carbon footprint calculator, insulation grants checker and downloadable posters for the office.

"We hope to educate a wider audience about the small things they can do to make a massive difference to the environment, said Big Green Switch publisher Sian Armstrong. His site, which last year was a Campaign for Change winner in the New Statesman New Media Awards, also has undergone a makeover to tie in with the 'thisis' network design.

Hyperlocal Training and Revenue Sharing

CN Group is providing training and sharing revenues with community journalists as part of its hyperlocal site development.

Nick Turner, head of the group's digital content development, said at the Digital Editors Network meeting in Preston this week that the 19 hyperlocal sites around Cumbria provide a bridge between the newspapers and the community. Both groups and individuals contribute content directly to the sites, and correspondents get 25% of the ad revenue generated. Advertising on the hyperlocal sites is priced low to attract community businesses.

Training, some of it offered in conjunction with the University of Cumbria, is provided in local libraries.

Turner said local correspondents tend to have a different agenda from journalists; they feel connected with their communities and are interested in trying to resolve issues rather than exacerbate problems. He emphasized that the correspondents provide additional information but that it is not generally the same sort of information that journalists provide and is not a replacement for journalism.

A report on journalism.co.uk provides additional details.

Northcliffe Set to Trial Hyperlocal Sites

Thirty new local Northcliffe sites combining citizen journalism, blogging and Facebook-style social networking will go live next month, according to an item posted to journalism.co.uk.

The initial six-month trial of hyperlocal websites will target towns with populations of 10,000 to 40,000 people that currently have no dedicated local newspaper or website, said Seamus McCauley, strategic analyst at Associated Northcliffe Digital.

"There is a real fear in the journalism industry about the future of local newsgathering. This at the moment is our hope for the answer," McCauley told an audience at City University. "In every town, there will already be a person who writes match reports for football games, businesses who like to talk about their work, churches who host events every week. We want to co-ordinate that activity."

He said the sites will be overseen by "community publishers", whose role will be to keep discussion live and active, oversee content, and provide fresh information. "To make this work, it's crucial to have people on the ground who can find, generate and curate the content," McCauley said.

The sites will be powered by social networking software and by Northcliffe's own news generation facilities. A central moderation team will monitor output across the network and advise the community publishers.

The 30 sites scheduled to launch in June will be concentrated in the southwest of England, from Gloucestershire to Cornwall, including 10 towns around Bristol.

McCauley said the new hyperlocal sites would not compete with its existing network of regional websites under the "thisis" brand. Northcliffe also publishes a series of postcode sites, automatically fed by content from a local title.

"In every town, sooner or later a big issue comes up, and local people will try and knock up a website very quickly. We want to set up these sites so that when an issue arises, they're already there," he said. "But they will also be a place to discuss minor issues and news. Newswires don't localise to that level, and there are no aggregators that provide anything sensible for smaller towns.

"The question is, can we get a certain proportion of a town's population onto each site? This launch will show us."