AP 2010: Associated Portals

Last Thursday night Tom Curley, President and CEO of the Associated Press, gave a speech at a dinner in New York in which he pushes the news industry to “take bold, decisive steps” in changing the way we work and deliver our information, in order “to secure the audiences and funding to support journalism’s essential role in both our economy and democracy, or find ourselves on an ugly path to obscurity.”

Most of the speech is a rousing call for editors and reporters to get off their butts and start adapting, or die, but the other half doesn’t really resonate. In fact, it makes me think that Curley still doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand what all this Internet stuff is about.

“The portals are running off with our best stuff.”

Huh? First of all, “the portals” he’s speaking of are sites like MSN, Yahoo, AOL, .com that aggregate and link to news stories from multiple news sources. But I don’t see how he thinks they’re running off with his, or any news organization’s, stuff. The AP recently signed a deal with Google in which Google pays to reprint AP stories, and from what I understand most of the other news organizations who reprint AP articles have permission to, so I don’t see how this is cutting into their bottom line. Secondly I don’t understand how he thinks non-wire news organizations are hurting from the bevy of news portals. Isn’t the norm to link to the original article, on the content-owner’s site? Unless he’s referring to how the portals are driving down newspaper subscriptions by being more convenient and timely, I don’t understand his point here.

But he goes on. Later in the speech he mentions how to deal with these portals:

“Great content always has needed great distribution. These days that means deals have to be done with portals, especially those with promising new ad models and capabilities. But the deals have to be good deals.”

I think what gets me most about this speech is that Curley thinks portals are something to be dealt with. Newspapers are portals. And they have the advantage, they are producing the news coverage. Newspapers, and their websites, have another advantage too, they’re local.

Newspapers do need to compete with portals, but they can’t do it on their own terms. They do have to adapt, by giving their visitors (no more readers, just visitors) more value, let them “captain their information ships,” as Curley puts it. But “regaining control of distribution” by wrenching it away from portals and thinking of yourselves as those who “rule content” isn’t going to work. Let people focus their news, and help focus it for them with more timely, more in-depth local coverage.

I don’t want to see a newspaper doing a deal with a portal in which the portal is begrudgingly allowed to reprint the newspaper’s content. I want the newspaper to buy the portal and integrate the portal’s cutting edge technology into it’s homepage.

I agree with Curley that ” The perfect paper or newscast is becoming possible — at least in the reader’s or viewer’s eyes. What is it you really want to know? We can personalize content now. ”

“Think of it as a mix from news radio to The New Yorker all under one roof with the New York Public Library thrown in — for a really great data base and interactive programs with the public. Sounds crazy, but it could be a lot of fun.”

It could be a lot of fun, and let me tell you, it is. I could make this resource in about ten minutes using Netvibes or any other RSS reader. Maybe switch NY Public Library with Wikipedia and Project Gutenberg, but it’d be just as useful, and I could add more of anything I could think of! From news on just the Redskins to a feed on global trade news, I can already get my niches scratched.

What I want from a newspaper is to make it easy for me to find what I want. Newspapers already have their sections of the long tail cut out: give me what’s happening in my city or town or neighborhood. And add in the analysis of wider stories. I like the columnists and the personalities, and I like it when I can relate, when I know that they struggle with the same traffic I do and go home and watch the same sports teams I do. Give me the New Yorker, the public library and the news radio, but also give me the watercooler and bar conversations. By then I won’t need to go to the portals, and you can have all the ad revenue from me you want.