AP: The News Gatekeeper is Dead! Long Live The News Gatekeeper!

from the let's-try-this-again... dept

The CEO of the Associated Press, Tom Curley, gave a speech yesterday to a group of news executives supposedly calling on them to drop their antiquated ways, learn to embrace the new opportunities of the internet and, most importantly, ditch the mindset of being the gatekeepers of the news. At least, that's what the Associated Press's own writeup on his speech suggests. It's powerful stuff, but it seems a little odd. After all, isn't this the same Associate Press that less than a month ago sued Moreover for linking to AP articles? Isn't this the same Associated Press that pressured Google to pay for the same thing? That doesn't sound like an organization that's trying to stop being a gatekeeper and embracing the new opportunities of the internet. It sounds like the opposite.

So, let's go to the details. Thankfully, the AP also published the full text of Curley's speech so we can dig into the details a bit. While the AP reporter's coverage of his speech definitely does capture the gist of it, it leaves out some of the key (and somewhat contradictory) details. So, while Curley says: "Our focus must be on becoming the very best at filling people’s 24-hour news needs. That's a huge shift from the we-know-best, gatekeeper thinking" his own plan doesn't seem to agree with that. He later says: "we're coupling those initiatives with strong new efforts to protect news web sites from unauthorized scraping through tighter site protocols and content tagging." Sorry, but it's those protections against scraping that is part of the gatekeeper thinking. He also says: "Enforcement, too, must be a part. What we do comes at great cost and sacrifice, even death. We believe content should have wide distribution. We intend to be compensated for it." and "We have the power to control how our content flows on the Web. We must use that power...." In other words, we're going to restrict access to what we do in order to create artificial scarcity in order to charge for it. Restricting access is what might also be called gatekeeping. It seems like Curley's big wake up call to newspaper execs is really "say goodbye to the old gatekeeper, and say hello to the new gatekeeper."

There are plenty of business models that make sense for the Associated Press, but it's pretty amusing for the CEO of that organization to call for getting rid of the old way of thinking and then outline what's basically the same old thinking.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: business models, gatekeeper, newspapers
Companies: associated press


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. identicon
    Kinrik, 2 Nov 2007 @ 8:51pm

    That doesn't sound like an organization that's try

    That doesn't sound like an organization that's trying to stop being a gatekeeper and embracing the new opportunities of the internet.


    Unless the new oppertunities are charging people driving visitors to thier content.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Prokofy Neva, 2 Nov 2007 @ 11:42pm

    sn't this the same Associated Press that pressured Google to pay for the same thing?

    And that's wrong because...why? Gathering and writing and distributing news is work, and it needs to be paid, and the costs need to be covered. AP is a non-profit service that charges fees to cover these services. Um...and what's wrong with that? Everybody is supposed to work for free for you to fill your news habit?!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. The AP CEO has said basically nothing new.

    So AP has not figured out how to monetize their business besides charging for news? Having someone link to their website is worthless to them?

    Things have changed with the introduction of the Internet to such a wide audience and AP better realize it and adjust or they will be in trouble.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Fucktard McGimps, 3 Nov 2007 @ 7:09am

    Jews love their news....as long as they have a monopoly on it. Wake up people, "News" in America is just another product that is branded and sold to you sheep. And the truly sad part about it? You eat it up! lolololllolloooollollawl!!!!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    IronChef, 3 Nov 2007 @ 9:45am

    Charles Prince is gone

    I'm more excited that Charles Prince is gone. Seriously. Now you can make some money in Citigroup.

    http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/newstex/AFX-0013-20705610.htm

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. icon
    Mike (profile), 3 Nov 2007 @ 11:13am

    Re:

    And that's wrong because...why? Gathering and writing and distributing news is work, and it needs to be paid, and the costs need to be covered. AP is a non-profit service that charges fees to cover these services. Um...and what's wrong with that? Everybody is supposed to work for free for you to fill your news habit?!

    You seem confused. I never said they don't get paid. I said they need to learn to adopt a new business model for how they get paid. Why is this so hard for some people to understand?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    DittoBox, 3 Nov 2007 @ 11:41am

    Re:

    Wait...

    I thought linking to your site got you exposure, ergo your ads got exposure.

    I would think that would be *helpful*.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. identicon
    Phil, 3 Nov 2007 @ 12:14pm

    What business model?

    What new business model? Do you do your job for free?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  9. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 3 Nov 2007 @ 2:19pm

    Re: What business model?

    What new business model? Do you do your job for free?
    How much are you paying to read this content on Techdirt?
    Think about that and you should be able to answer your own question.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  10. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 3 Nov 2007 @ 2:27pm

    Re:

    Everybody is supposed to work for free for you to fill your news habit?!
    If that's the way you feel about it then what are you doing reading free sites like this one? Satisfying some "habit"? Pot, meet kettle.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  11. identicon
    PhilKll, 3 Nov 2007 @ 5:37pm

    Not positive if this is the context, but I'm pretty sure gatekeeper is being used wrong here, in journalism its a term for the editor choosing what news is put out there, not who gets access to it and how. But also, why would people be upset about a cottage industry being built on driving people to their websites? I don't see how that would be considered bad for business. If they were scraping entire articles and reposting them, perhaps then it would be harder to make any return on your work, but linkage seems like more of a favor.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  12. identicon
    IronChef, 3 Nov 2007 @ 5:51pm

    Thoughts on a News 2.0 platform

    I would like to see how this pans out. Is Tom Curley suggesting tagging news articles, and allowing commentary? If so, that sounds like a brilliant idea. Especially if they can have some priority based on the social graph of its contributors... TechDirt may be ahead of the ball on this one, especially if Mike and team found some way to implement this.

    Drudge has been one of my primary news sites since 1999, but because it's still in read-only web 1.0 mode, and have seemingly no need to change from their current model, I highly doubt it's going to be as big as "the next" news site.

    Sites that implement thumbs up and thumbs down functionality like Digg and Del.icio.us are good, however they fail to specialize in AP's one area (read: news). Additionally, I enjoy the functionality of Craigslist (Yes, I said Craigslist) because they offer the luxury of going back and fixing and/or deleting the comments. Sometimes I have an interesting idea and something catches my eye and I feel inclined to post something absolutely off topic (See post #5 above) and I feel really dumb afterwards.

    I believe that these simple adds of functionality-- being able to update posts, ties into a social graph, and would offer more credence to author of commentary. Especially than what TD can do right now. In the end, these functional specifications increase the quality of the commentary by offering a commenter the ability to re-visit their thoughts as they dig into the topic a little more. If this is the goal of Tom Curley, please sign me up.

    The struggle I see with TD is that once it's posted, you really can't recall it from public view. In a recent post, I saw it was indexed and cached by Google within 30 minutes.

    So the organization that hosts commentary has their goals- eyeballs. But what happens when the ability to update commentary is made available?

    Simple-- Big threat to TechDirt.


    So here's the question of the year- If you can find a way to put commentary under a no-cache tag, you'll see your commentary answered by less Anonomous Cowards.

    Thanks!

    ~~ A Big Fan

    link to this | view in thread ]

  13. identicon
    IronChef, 3 Nov 2007 @ 6:12pm

    More Thougths on News 2.0

    A mechanism, to allow a response to commenter would also be very nice.

    Then people who have a genuine need to contact that commenter can do so through the auspice of TechDirt, and TechDirt can grow through the community it's attracted.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  14. identicon
    gp, 3 Nov 2007 @ 8:07pm

    Utterly misconstrues "gatekeeper"

    PhillKll was right when he said, "gatekeeper is being used wrong here. In journalism it[']s a term for the editor choosing what news is put out there, not who gets access to it and how."

    Trying to shift the conversation to any other aspect of this mess -- above all, the question of whether you the "journalist" will get paid -- makes our eyes glaze over.

    So. Tell me. What part of we're all tired as hell of being lied to by MSM and we're not going to take it anymore don't you understand?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  15. identicon
    AngrOaf, 3 Nov 2007 @ 9:01pm

    Eeeeeeeehhh... I dunno if this is being taken in the right context.
    To me being a "gatekeeper" of news suggests that the news organization is controlling not only the presentation of their news but also what news is allowed to be presented. This also seems to be the initial definition of "gatekeeper" at the beginning of this article.

    I think there is definitely a difference between this understanding of what what a "news gatekeeper" is and what they're expressing here. Even though they report news of public events, the actual content in the report is their copyright. I from what I understand, they want to protect that copyright while learning to use the internet as a tool while not losing control of their copyrighted content.

    You guy's are always bashing people who are trying to keep control of their copyrighted material but there really isn't anything wrong with wanting to do that.
    I guess this is hypocritical coming from be because I pirate all my entertainment media but I really honestly don't see anything wrong with wanting to keep ownership of your creation.

    More often than not, their efforts only affect the average Joe. Assholes like me aren't likely to get caught and aren't usually the ones that do.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  16. identicon
    IronChef, 3 Nov 2007 @ 9:19pm

    GP and AngrOaf,

    Please continue and elaborate more...

    link to this | view in thread ]

  17. identicon
    JEQP, 4 Nov 2007 @ 5:44am

    Where's the money?

    Mike, the problem is that at some point somebody has to pay money for something. While I agree that there are other business models for AP to try than the one it's using, if it doesn't get fees it has to go ad-supported. And who's going to buy ads? Content producers? But the content is digital and free, so they're relying on ads... Social networks? Same thing. Online services? Ditto... While its true that companies selling physical goods advertise on the web, I'm not sure how well that will trickle down to AP. And that leaves advertising from start-ups trying to attract an audience, and what happens when the VC funding runs out?

    There are some types of media that will probably continue to do well in terms of attracting advertising -- entertainment media will attract movie ads, sports media will attract ads and so on. But the "hard news" style of news won't do so well...who's going to buy advertising on news of genocide in Uganda? A lot of those readers are probably of interest to advertisers, but how will they know which ones? That will require close tracking of readers, which raises privacy issues.

    It's true there are plenty of business models for AP to choose from, but all the ones I can think of involve the company protecting its content.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  18. identicon
    PRMan, 4 Nov 2007 @ 7:45am

    It's very simple, let me explain it to you...

    Here is what he said:

    We want to "embrace the internet" (steal and scrape everyone else's content) but we need to "protect our content that we struggled so hard to obtain" (keep other people from doing the same to us).

    link to this | view in thread ]

  19. identicon
    Andrew McLean, 4 Nov 2007 @ 10:51am

    AP

    Given that AP spends millions to get and report the news and that some reporters are even killed collecting it, what makes you think that there is anything contradictory about wanting to embrace new technology in it distribution?

    Are you equating the internet with absolutely free distribution? Does something have to be free to be distributed via the Internet? If so, who do you think will sacrifice their treasure and even their lives to provide it?.

    I'm reminded of what one worker in one of the failed "socialist paradises" onece said, "they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work."

    link to this | view in thread ]

  20. identicon
    Andrew McLean, 4 Nov 2007 @ 10:58am

    PS to previous post

    How AP choosea to monitize internet delivery of news is l;iterally "their business", a none of our business (we vote with our feet and that's the extent of it).

    The market will dictate the wisdom (of lake of it) of their decisions, not a bunch of pundits, who havve no" skin in the game".

    link to this | view in thread ]

  21. identicon
    IronChef, 4 Nov 2007 @ 3:08pm

    @Andrew McLean

    So how should things work in the future? You come with only problems but no solutions.

    Obviously you have some ideas...

    link to this | view in thread ]

  22. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 4 Nov 2007 @ 6:19pm

    Re: More Thougths on News 2.0

    Then people who have a genuine need to contact that commenter can do so...
    Like anybody who can afford a lawyer to sue someone who writes something they disagree with.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  23. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 4 Nov 2007 @ 6:23pm

    Re: Utterly misconstrues "gatekeeper"

    So. Tell me. What part of we're all tired as hell of being lied to by MSM and we're not going to take it anymore don't you understand? I don't know what MSM is, but Fox "News" seems to fit that description really well.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  24. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 4 Nov 2007 @ 6:29pm

    Re:

    You guy's are always bashing people who are trying to keep control of their copyrighted material

    Who is this 'you guys' that you refer to? Are they related 'them' and 'they'?

    I guess this is hypocritical coming from be [sic]

    Then why should anyone care about anything you have to say, little troll?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  25. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 4 Nov 2007 @ 7:24pm

    Re: Where's the money?

    if it doesn't get fees it has to go ad-supported.
    Considering that any payment for service is a fee, then aren't those both the same? Don't advertisers pay fees? So it seems to me the question isn't about fees vs ads (both are fees) but about how and from whom fees are collected.

    who's going to buy advertising on news of genocide in Uganda
    How about people who want to sell to people who read such stories?

    A lot of those readers are probably of interest to advertisers,
    Exactly.

    but how will they know which ones? That will require close tracking of readers,
    How so? You make that assumption but don't present any basis for it.

    It's true there are plenty of business models for AP to choose from, but all the ones I can think of involve the company protecting its content.
    That's because you've made assumptions that prevent you from reaching any other conclusion. In other words, you've painted yourself into a corner. To get around that you need to go back and question your previous assumptions to see which ones stand up and which ones don't. To get you started I've pointed out one of those above.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  26. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 4 Nov 2007 @ 7:27pm

    Re: It's very simple, let me explain it to you...

    We want to "embrace the internet" (steal and scrape everyone else's content) but we need to "protect our content that we struggled so hard to obtain" (keep other people from doing the same to us).

    Good analysis. :)

    link to this | view in thread ]

  27. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 4 Nov 2007 @ 7:55pm

    Re: AP

    Given that AP spends millions to get and report the news and that some reporters are even killed collecting it,
    Oh puhleeze! News reporting is way down the list of dangerous occupations. Way below taxi driver or even retail clerk.

    Are you equating the internet with absolutely free distribution?
    That seems to be what AP wants: Money for usage, and distribution for free. (sorry, Dire Straits)

    Does something have to be free to be distributed via the Internet?
    That's something one might want to consider before putting something on the Internet as a lot of pay-wall business models have been tried but none have been spectacularly successful. Trying the same things that haven't worked before and expecting different results is kind of wishful thinking.

    "they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work."
    How about "They pretend it's working and we pretend to not be laughing"?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  28. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 4 Nov 2007 @ 7:57pm

    Re: @Andrew McLean

    So how should things work in the future? You come with only problems but no solutions.

    Identifying the problem is the first step in a finding solution.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  29. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 4 Nov 2007 @ 8:23pm

    Re: PS to previous post

    How AP choosea to monitize internet delivery of news is l;iterally "their business", a none of our business (we vote with our feet and that's the extent of it).
    I'll comment on whatever I want to, thank you very much. If you want to put your hand over my mouth then be prepared to draw back a nub.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  30. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 5 Nov 2007 @ 12:14am

    Re:

    Not positive if this is the context, but I'm pretty sure gatekeeper is being used wrong here, in journalism its a term for the editor choosing what news is put out there, not who gets access to it and how.

    That was the term used by the CEO of the Associated Press, Tom Curley. Are you suggesting that you know more about journalism than the AP?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  31. icon
    chris (profile), 5 Nov 2007 @ 4:20am

    the AP can sell ads like everyone else

    they can sell ads just every other news org. the news is designed to make everyone feel good about being white and middle class, since it's full of nothing dark skinned poor people killing each other.

    sell ads that target white middle class people: new cars, stocks, golf clubs, insurance, and vacations. you know, the stuff you see advertised on CNN.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  32. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 5 Nov 2007 @ 12:52pm

    Re: the AP can sell ads like everyone else

    Racist bigot.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  33. identicon
    Mischa, 5 Nov 2007 @ 1:46pm

    Re: Re:

    I think he means that we are misinterpreting what Tom Curley said.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  34. identicon
    rachael, 6 Nov 2007 @ 4:39pm

    Re: That doesn't sound like an organization that's

    HELLO THERE!!

    wel ll yeha i finkthat tos site i9s fuled ub theree like no reso why this site shoukld exsite well yeah im am like 1 years old and i relly hate this fukin site!!
    'well tyeha i fink itz srude and disguting!!
    well yeah my two kids semm to alwaye come on dis site i fink you should delet dis site once and for all!!

    fuk you!!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  35. identicon
    Alex Le, 10 Feb 2008 @ 11:10pm

    Re:

    well, try to live in any 3rd world countries or even China and read the news. You should be thankful for what you have for granted here (free speech) in the US. You should also eat up your attitude and start growing up, see and evaluate the pros and cons of things. Otherwise, you are a blind sheep in the herd. Guess what, the blind sheep get slaughtered first, probably by walking blindly and some wolves get a hold of it first before the sheep realizes it is heading to a wrong direction.

    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.