Monetizing Speed: AP May Charge for 30 Min Lead
After a summer of establishing blogger guidelines and fair use, the Associated Press is considering charging online customers for a 20-30 minute head start on breaking news stories. According to a report by the AP's Jeremiah Marquez, the AP's chief executive Tom Curley made the announcement at the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents' Club. Curley suggested that because the AP licenses stories to major hubs like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN, these outlets would be willing to pay for scoops.
In late July, ReadWriteWeb covered the AP's controversial introduction of a digital-permissions framework The service alerts the outlet every time a blogger uses AP materials to ensure that content is being used and credited properly. While the news registry effort was met with blogger uproar, this new attempt to monetize breaking stories may meet with different reactions.
Writes Marquez, "Tom Curley did not clarify how a product that provided some news earlier would work or specify the target customers for the potential new service." However, more than anyone, we know the value of this service.
Independent bloggers continually struggle to scoop rival outlets to the point that embargoed releases are often broken. Some outlets have even chosen to forgo embargoes all together; however, ReadWriteWeb makes every effort to honor them. To a tech blogger, a 30 minute lead may mean the difference between the front pages of Digg, Techmeme and major traditional outlets, or appearing like a pack journalist. The groups that purchase a 30 minute lead on tech stories will solidify a huge influx in feed subscribers and mobile app downloads and as a result, gain more favor with advertisers.
Photo Credit: Marina Campos Vinhal
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Hi! Isn't AP monetizing "being slow" instead of monetizing speed? It appears to me that the 30 minutes lead mean "I won't tell this to you in the next 30 minutes unless you pay me". Sounds kind of ugly when we put it that way, doesn't it? Disclaimer: IANAJournalist.
This idea would only work on stories that the AP has a monopoly on AND if the participating media outlets are forced to use the 30 minute delay to only prepare the story - not publish it.
If other wire services will also break the story when it happens (or break an embargo), then media outlets will reference this other service. And if participating outlets chose to publish the story within the 30 minutes, then other non-participating media companies will find the info and reference it second hand.
I like it. News is most valuable when it's new so why not charge more for it when it's new. The people who need (ie it's valuable to them) will pay more for it, and that'll subsidize the masses who don't want to pay a whole lot, but still want the information. Kinda like I can pay $10 to see a movie opening weekend, or I can wait a month and see it at the $1 theatre.
More importantly I think this says that "News is only hot for 20-30 minutes". Anything else is old news.
I avoid any AP articles if they are so marked. Many seem to be pushing a political agenda, and even when they're not the quality of their articles simply doesn't match other news sources.
It is still to early to decide wether it's a good idea or not. However it is clear that the net economy is still looking for ways to monetize and looks like a promising idea.