Google hosts wire stories: Meh
By William M. Hartnett on Sep 1, 2007 in featured, newspapers
Is there a compelling reason for local newspapers to care that Google is now hosting stories from The Associated Press and other services on its own site instead of linking to them on outside news sites? Were you getting loads of high-quality traffic, as opposed to drive-by one-timers, to generic, non-local wire copy on your site? Were people on The Internets beating down the virtual door of your localnewspaper.com looking for the latest, already-available-everywhere updates on big national and international stories?
As far as I know, the AP doesn’t make a habit of covering my town’s commission or police department, or the elementary school across the street from me, or the football and soccer teams at the two high schools within two miles of my house, or the retail woes of the nearby shopping center. My local newspaper does.
Do newspaper sites’ inflated page view and other similarly simplistic audience stats, the only things likely to “take a hit” from the Google-AP deal, matter to anyone except the people who actually run newspapers? This is not print circulation we’re talking about here. Big is over.
Anonymous | Sep 2, 2007 | Reply
You might be surprised how often your local newspaper uses articles from the AP.
William M. Hartnett | Sep 3, 2007 | Reply
I probably would not be surprised, seeing as how I work there and read it every day! But maybe you’ll be surprised to learn that I think that using all those stories from the AP in print is all but obsolete. (Some people would drop the “all but” part.)
Worse, they’re just not much use to a local newspaper web site. If the best we can do online is wait around for roulette-like search engine traffic on the exact same stories carried on hundreds of other sites, then we might as well turn off the lights and call it a career right now.
Joe Murphy | Sep 5, 2007 | Reply
Any thoughts on the significance of all the articles from your newspaper that the AP picks up?
William M. Hartnett | Sep 5, 2007 | Reply
I think the practice makes less sense from the members’ perspective with each passing day. Though, from what I understand, the state wires aren’t part of the AP’s deal with Google. Yet.