Are British Papers Going To Start Demanding Payments From Drudge?

from the this-is-a-local-paper,-for-local-people dept

While some British newspapers have realized that Google (and other sites that send them traffic) are helpful to them, there are still plenty that feel like Google should be paying them, for some reason. It's a strange argument: Google sends them traffic and readers, yet should be paying for that "privilege"? If the papers can't figure out how to monetize the traffic Google and other sites send them, that's their own problem. Now comes word, though, that The Drudge Report sends UK papers more than three times the amount of traffic that Google does -- so will the papers start making noise about suing Drudge for a cut of his ad revenue? The editorial director of a UK news outfit illustrates the backwards mentality some papers have by saying "You are just paying an awful lot of bandwidth and an awful lot of server costs to serve those people." Well, if that's such a concern, why have a web presence at all? That would drive bandwidth and server costs down to pretty much zero. Instead of seeing international visitors and the additional traffic they generate as a burden, they should be seen for what they are -- an opportunity to further grow revenues and profits.

Filed Under: britain, media, newspapers
Companies: drudge report, google