Pipes Of Peace
By Neil Dodds
08 March, 2006
One of the major themes of last week's Online Publishers Association conference was - predictably - the clash between the worlds of old and new media.
Advocates of blogging and citizen journalism called for fewer subscription barriers and a more "open source" approach to news; traditional media companies argued that free content is all well and good, but the money to pay for coverage has to come from somewhere.
Google News came under fire from some quarters. Agence France Presse and the Association of American Publishers have sued Google, a policy that the trade organisation the World Association of Newspapers is considering.
The content creators argue that by publishing headlines, excerpts of articles and photography on its news aggregating site, Google is guilty of infringing the copyright of the content's owners. The World Association of Newspapers believes that its members should be paid when Google uses their content on its site: "Could this content exist if someone else wasn't paying to create it?" WAN's managing director told the conference.
Free media supporters reacted angrily. Blogs and aggregators like Google drive readers to news sites, one critic said, and if newspapers are cut off from supplies of new readers online, their paper edition readership will dry up too.
It's possible to see both sides. Blogging and linking to news can't be un-invented, and someone, somewhere will find a way of giving free access to subscription-only content if all newspapers suddenly switched to pay models. But if companies like AFP weren't spending millions sending reporters to Baghdad, Brussels and Washington, what would Google News look like?
It is true that many online news sources would lose significant numbers of readers if they no longer benefited from Google News links. Even if the number of print edition readers Google creates for publishers in return is likely to be very small, excluding your content from the Google "conversation" could have a deleterious effect on online presence.
There was a sense of compromise in the air, however. The International Herald Tribune reported that Times Newspapers' digital media publisher is resigned to "hard news" - the facts, the front page stuff - having "commodity" or free status online. Try to fence this off by subscription and readers will find identical material elsewhere. In other words, it is difficult to own the copyright on breaking news like the Concorde crash or the London bombings: If you expect readers or bloggers to pay for it online, they only have to switch on their telly or radio to get live coverage.
Subscription models for other news, however, could work. The IHT suggests celebrity-related content, though again publishers would have to be careful choosing what should go "behind the fence" and what shouldn't. More exciting, features could make sense in subscription editions - you might not be able to get people to pay for news of the latest atrocity in Iraq, but you could have more success with analysis, on-the-scene news focus and background.
So there seems to be no way of getting people to pay for the "facts", though more depth and analysis could support subscription models - even if opinion columns are being challenged by free weblogs.
With the above in mind, CNN has come up with a way of sidestepping the equation, by asking that viewers pay to be taken directly to the event itself.
Pipeline is CNN's new subscription-only online news service. It offers viewers commercial-free, extended video footage - including many live streams - much of which will not be shown on the broadcaster's television or web operations.
Viewers are offered a selection of live feeds, running along the bottom of the screen (see image at the beginning of this story). By clicking on one, they get a large-screen version, though they're still able to follow the other feeds on smaller screens. Subscribers are sent breaking news alerts when a new stream goes live, or can browse a calender of upcoming live streams for the day - such as a presidential address or press conference. Exciting live events - car chases, emergencies - might be covered on multiple streams, and the user can switch between them.
The Pipeline player also offers a "mini mode", which plays only one selected screen, so users can keep an eye on an unfolding story while they work. A search facility allows viewers to find stories of interest or watch the day's events in their preferred order.
The service costs $2.95 a month, and CNN isn't giving details of how many people have signed up for it. The company admits that its best chance might be offering Pipeline as a "bundle" alongside other CNN offerings, such as subscriptions to Time magazine.
Partnerships with other news sites could also generate subscriptions. Pipeline offers viewers the opportunity to set their own news schedules. Its live, "raw" footage could be incorporated into a regional news platform, or even individually-tailored news portals.
It's likely that for every commentator that would like to see Pipeline succeed, there will be another that expects it to fail, like many other online paid-content models.
It seems, however, that like it or not, news companies will continue to experiment with ways to charge for content online, until one succeeds or the industry decides that there is no way that internet users will pay to read or watch news online. Whether this will mean the free-for-all web evangelists predict, or will signal a gradual withdrawl from the internet by traditional media companies remains to be seen.
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