The Wall Street Journal
Taking a step toward mapping the future of online news, the Associated Press and Yahoo Inc. are closing in on a deal that would impose tighter restrictions and potentially a higher price tag on AP stories distributed on Yahoo's news site, people familiar with the matter said.
The deal, expected to be reached in the next few weeks, could begin to resolve an increasingly urgent issue in the media industry: how news organizations deal with the major Internet portals, which some publishers say unfairly profit from their work and cost them tens of millions of dollars in revenue.
An AP spokesman declined to comment on the negotiations. Yahoo also declined to comment, beyond saying, "The AP is one of Yahoo's most important content partners. Yahoo values our long-standing relationship with AP and expects it will continue for years to come."
The deal, expected to be reached in the next few weeks, could begin to resolve an increasingly urgent issue in the media industry: how news organizations deal with the major Internet portals, which some publishers say unfairly profit from their work and cost them tens of millions of dollars in revenue.
An AP spokesman declined to comment on the negotiations. Yahoo also declined to comment, beyond saying, "The AP is one of Yahoo's most important content partners. Yahoo values our long-standing relationship with AP and expects it will continue for years to come."
The AP has been haggling with Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo over new terms that would govern the portals' distribution of AP news articles, and the pressure on all parties is mounting as deadlines approach. Google, whose contract with the AP will expire around the end of January, recently stopped hosting new AP stories on Google News in an apparent effort to clear its news site of all hosted AP content by month's end in case a deal isn't reached.
Google said that its agreement with the AP "permits us to host its content on Google properties" but that it isn't adding new AP content "at the moment."
The AP, which has about 1,500 U.S. newspapers as members, has unique organizing powers in a fragmented industry. It is leading the effort to control how and where its members' material appears on the Internet, both on the portals' own news sites and in search results that send readers to AP articles on its members' Web sites. The not-for-profit news cooperative is currently testing a system to tag and track its articles and, eventually, its members' articles to assure compliance with terms-of-use agreements.
The AP has said its objective is to correct previous agreements, which gave Internet portals like Yahoo access to a broad swatch of its online articles in a single, relatively inexpensive package. Those deals helped make AP material ubiquitous, but executives say they also diluted the value of the AP's news offerings by not limiting availability or distinguishing articles that were unique.
AP's negotiations with Yahoo have included the possibility of licensing the news cooperative's material in tiers, separating breaking news from more exclusive material, for instance, according to the people who are familiar with the matter.
The efforts come as publishers grapple with how to collect fees when their content is distributed online now that their key source of revenue, advertising, has eroded and many of their readers get their news from the Web via Yahoo SEO.
News Corp., which owns The Wall Street Journal, has been a particularly vocal critic of Google and other sites that publish excerpts of its stories. The New York-based company has held discussions with Microsoft Corp. about a plan to remove the publisher's newspaper content from Google's search engine while continuing to feature it on Microsoft's online properties, according to people familiar with the matter.
Depending on what Yahoo signs up for, a new fee structure could mean a bigger total price tag for the Internet giant, the people familiar with the matter said. The AP has also asked Yahoo to comply with stricter terms of use in the proposed two-year deal. And it hopes to keep open the option of distributing other valuable content to other news outlets, the people said.
A new AP tracking system has also figured in the negotiations with Yahoo, Google and Microsoft, whose search engines drive as much as 50% of the traffic to the largest newspaper sites.
AP executives have said the system would not only police independent sites that republish articles without authorization or payment, but also bring in more money from content distributed through the search engines. The system, which was announced last summer, is still in beta mode, the AP said.
Google has long held that it is a friend to publishers and that they are free to make their material inaccessible to Google SEO users. It has also worked with some publishers to develop products designed in part to boost traffic to their Web sites.
Some Internet portals could be reluctant to sign on to a system that gives publishers extensive information and control over content. They might also decide that for all its news-gathering clout, the AP is not so indispensable that portals need to agree to more restrictions to carry its material. "All news does not emerge from the AP's forehead," said Danny Sullivan, who is the editor of SearchEngineLand.com, which tracks search engines.
But newspaper publishers hope that won't be the case. In leading the way in these negotiations, the AP "could provide an opportunity for other newspapers and newspaper companies to ride that coattail and cut a similar deal with the aggregators," said Jim Moroney, publisher of the Dallas Morning News.
Google said that its agreement with the AP "permits us to host its content on Google properties" but that it isn't adding new AP content "at the moment."
The AP, which has about 1,500 U.S. newspapers as members, has unique organizing powers in a fragmented industry. It is leading the effort to control how and where its members' material appears on the Internet, both on the portals' own news sites and in search results that send readers to AP articles on its members' Web sites. The not-for-profit news cooperative is currently testing a system to tag and track its articles and, eventually, its members' articles to assure compliance with terms-of-use agreements.
The AP has said its objective is to correct previous agreements, which gave Internet portals like Yahoo access to a broad swatch of its online articles in a single, relatively inexpensive package. Those deals helped make AP material ubiquitous, but executives say they also diluted the value of the AP's news offerings by not limiting availability or distinguishing articles that were unique.
AP's negotiations with Yahoo have included the possibility of licensing the news cooperative's material in tiers, separating breaking news from more exclusive material, for instance, according to the people who are familiar with the matter.
The efforts come as publishers grapple with how to collect fees when their content is distributed online now that their key source of revenue, advertising, has eroded and many of their readers get their news from the Web via Yahoo SEO.
News Corp., which owns The Wall Street Journal, has been a particularly vocal critic of Google and other sites that publish excerpts of its stories. The New York-based company has held discussions with Microsoft Corp. about a plan to remove the publisher's newspaper content from Google's search engine while continuing to feature it on Microsoft's online properties, according to people familiar with the matter.
Depending on what Yahoo signs up for, a new fee structure could mean a bigger total price tag for the Internet giant, the people familiar with the matter said. The AP has also asked Yahoo to comply with stricter terms of use in the proposed two-year deal. And it hopes to keep open the option of distributing other valuable content to other news outlets, the people said.
A new AP tracking system has also figured in the negotiations with Yahoo, Google and Microsoft, whose search engines drive as much as 50% of the traffic to the largest newspaper sites.
AP executives have said the system would not only police independent sites that republish articles without authorization or payment, but also bring in more money from content distributed through the search engines. The system, which was announced last summer, is still in beta mode, the AP said.
Google has long held that it is a friend to publishers and that they are free to make their material inaccessible to Google SEO users. It has also worked with some publishers to develop products designed in part to boost traffic to their Web sites.
Some Internet portals could be reluctant to sign on to a system that gives publishers extensive information and control over content. They might also decide that for all its news-gathering clout, the AP is not so indispensable that portals need to agree to more restrictions to carry its material. "All news does not emerge from the AP's forehead," said Danny Sullivan, who is the editor of SearchEngineLand.com, which tracks search engines.
But newspaper publishers hope that won't be the case. In leading the way in these negotiations, the AP "could provide an opportunity for other newspapers and newspaper companies to ride that coattail and cut a similar deal with the aggregators," said Jim Moroney, publisher of the Dallas Morning News.
