By Katharine Mieszkowski Columnist Connie Schultz over at the Cleveland Plain Dealer has some company across the pond. As readers of this blog will recall, Schultz has argued that the government should curtail free speech to help save the journalism business model.
Now, European publishers have asked the European Union to do the same, according to the New York Times. Leading European newspaper and magazine publishers have sent a letter to the government, arguing that Web sites and online news aggregators are undermining their attempts to create an online business model, and should be stopped.
"Numerous providers are using the work of authors, publishers and broadcasters without paying for it," the publishers said in a letter to Viviane Reding, the European media and telecommunications commissioner. "Over the long term, this threatens the production of high-quality content and the existence of independent journalism."
The letter was signed by executives of News Corp., Axel Springer, Gruner + Jahr, Lagardere, the Daily Maily and others.
This letter looks like the first salvo in a long fight, since it stopped short of saying exactly what the government should do to protect the publishers, but for the moment asked specifically only for stricter enforcement of existing legislation.
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Comments
Listen, the WSJ and the FT can charge for information because it's information about money. Other than that, I'm not sure anymore if information can, or should have financial value anymore.
Understanding, on the other hand, that can have a monetary value. But, personally, I want to live in world where the content creator gets the biggest share of the financial pie.
Good luck publishers. It's going to be interesting to see if you can really re-gain control of distribution. But I don't see it.
Can you clarify what you mean by THE government. Europe, which is the context of the item you are writing about, has many governments.
So, for me, to say that we won't have news, or high quality creative content without wealthy, fat cat providers is ludicrous. In Canada the government pays for high quality broadcast journalism, and NBC, CBS and ABC routinely come in raid our network for journalists and crews.
Quality has so rarely come from the private sector. Mostly private sector news creates this huge distracting din that blocks out quality information. So, no, I'm not worried. I can see that you guys are, but it's because you've lived with the din all your life.
Journalism is a vocation and a necessary service. People aren't going to stop doing it simply because they don't make big, Hollywood or New York bucks for it.
Honestly, it's like you're brainwashed to think it good information doesn't exist anywhere else. But it does, I swear!
Anyway, fuck all that. Readers qualify content; not editors. And what journalism is more-independent than that which is unbeholden to both shareholders and the Knight Fund?
This post, I understand, is written by people with some authoritative knowledge on OS and in journalism in general, so we would assume,
1. that some research has gone into the topic
2.should there have been a typo that has been discovered we would have a professional response.
I see no response, is this because you have assumed that everyone here have not realised that Europe is NOT one sovereign nation? O/E certainly has indicated in a recent post that most of his countrymen have no idea about the situation etc abroad, but is that any wonder if the authorities on OS are happy for a misrepresentation such as this to be left to stand unanswered.
Surely there are SOME of you Americans out there who have a measure of education to understand there is something strange in what has been written here.
The following is a copy of what was written above, if you wish to answer it:
" Leading European newspaper and magazine publishers have sent a letter to THE government"
Can you clarify what you mean by THE government. Europe, which is the context of the item you are writing about, has many governments.
Whilst it is true that the European Union has what is called a European Parliament you will realise that many across here would be very upset at referring to them as our GOVERNMENT.
As things stand (though there are those who would wish this to be changed) The European parliament is not like the various state of America that look to the federal government. Each state in Europe has its own government.