[LINK] ACCC's Mandatory Media Bargaining Code

[Tom Worthington]

On 31/7/20 4:40 pm, Karl Auer wrote:

> ... opportunity ... to set up a news search service ...

Such a service would need media companies willing to cooperate, which is 
not easy.

The Australian Associated Press (AAP) has operated for 85 years, but 
recently the cooperation between media companies and willingness to pay 
has been lacking: 
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-29/aap-newswire-service-sale-finalised-nine-news-corp/12404748

If Google doesn't want to pay multiple media organizations, they could 
subscribe to AAP, or buy it.

How much is the news content from traditional media companies worth to 
digital platforms? Do users of social media really value accurate 
factual news reports on public issues? If the customers just want gossip 
then there is no business case for Google and Facebook to pay for hard 
hitting investigative journalism: users can generate the gossip themselves.

James Marcus recounted in his book "Amazonia: Five Years at the 
Epicenter of the Dot.Com Juggernaut" how he wrote book reviews for 
Amazon. But Amazon then starting selling things other than books and 
publishing customer reviews. Amazon found that customer reviews were 
just as effective for selling and there was no need to pay experts to 
write reviews. https://blog.tomw.net.au/2006/02/lost-in-amazon-jungle.html

Journalists have never wanted to admit that their job is to fill in the 
gaps in the newspaper between the advertisements. If a media 
organization could find a way to sell advertising without news, they 
would, as ads make the money. The digital platforms have, in effect, 
worked out how to do that.


-- 
Tom Worthington, MEd FHEA FACS CP IP3P http://www.tomw.net.au
+61(0)419496150
TomW Communications Pty Ltd. PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia
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Honorary Lecturer, Computer Science, Australian National University
https://cecs.anu.edu.au/research/profile/tom-worthington