Associated Press Introduces Important Yet Presently Obtuse Plan to ‘Protect’ Its Content

It has now been nearly 24 hours since Mark Buehrle threw his no-hitter, and my euphoria is slowly being replaced by the reality that there are other things going on in the world. Hopefully you don’t mind, but I am going to step slightly off-topic here to cover a story that could be very important in the weeks and months ahead. 

However, if all you want is Midwest sports news, here are a few relevant links for you:

• Cardinals and A’s complete deal for Matt Holliday — (ESPN)
• Dewayne Wise rewarded for amazing catch with leadoff spot in Game 1 of White Sox-Tigers double-header — (Yahoo!)
• Should the Vikings punt on Fave and go after Vick? – (Pro Football Talk)

Okay, now let’s get back to the original intent of the story: the new policy announced by the AP regarding its attempts to protect content.  If you have not heard about it, let me quickly summarize it in this way: at some point in the next year, it is quite possible that I would have to pay some sort of fee to the AP if I wanted to link to its stories as I’ve done with the sites above.

Yes, I would have to pay the AP for the privilege of driving them the traffic that I work hard to attain.

Or something like that.

Honestly, it’s not all that clear. What is clear is that the Associated Press is leading the charge of mainstream media and newspaper sites working every angle possible to stop the revenue hemmoragging that has been occurring in their world. And let me state for the record: I am all for online reform that will allow organizations like the AP and newspapers to create healthier and more diverse revenue models. After reading about the AP’s latest strategy, however, I’m not quite sure exactly what their plan is.

First, let’s go to the New York Times, where Richard Perez-Pena wrote about the AP’s plan after interviewing the news organization’s president and CEO. 

A.P. Cracks Down on Unpaid Use of Articles on the Web — (New York Times)

Tom Curley, The A.P.’s president and chief executive, said the company’s position was that even minimal use of a news article online required a licensing agreement with the news organization that produced it. In an interview, he specifically cited references that include a headline and a link to an article, a standard practice of search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo, news aggregators and blogs.

Asked if that stance went further than The A.P. had gone before, he said, “That’s right.” The company envisions a campaign that goes far beyond The A.P., a nonprofit corporation. It wants the 1,400 American newspapers that own the company to join the effort and use its software.

“If someone can build multibillion-dollar businesses out of keywords, we can build multihundred-million businesses out of headlines, and we’re going to do that,” Mr. Curley said. The goal, he said, was not to have less use of the news articles, but to be paid for any use.

Essentially, the AP wants to receive revenue when another site uses their content. Fair enough. I have no problem with that. In fact, as I said, I am in favor of it.

As a blogger, not a first-hand reporting journalist, I rely on organizations like the AP, newspapers, and other mainstream sites to publish the news that I have neither the time nor the resources to investigate on my own. My responsibility as a blogger, as I see it, is to find the news that is of interest to me and this site’s readers, package it in a unique way, and offer my opinion or commentary on it. And if I’ve used someone else’s work as a catalyst for my own, it is my ethical duty as a blogger to link to that content and encourage my readers to visit the original source. I take that very seriously, and do it 99.9% of the time (with the .01% being reserved for rare honest mistakes like forgetting to add a link somewhere, or messing up the address).

Keep in mind, web sites that comment on published news stories are protected by something called “Fair Use.” This means that, as I’ve done above with the New York Times article, I can publish the title, excerpt, and link to another site during the course of commenting about it. There are no set-in-stone rules regarding how much of the article I can use, but honestly there is a good chance that I’m pushing the limits by including a three paragraph excerpt. I explain this to give you a frame of reference for the rule.

Fair use also covers the use of pictures and other media, but I don’t want to get too bogged down discussing the minutaie of it all here. To learn more about the general ideas being fair use, go straight to the source itself. 

Needless to say, there is an important and wide-ranging debate that has been ubiquitously raging for years now regarding what is fair use and what isn’t.  And as the NY Times article points out, news organizations have been reluctant to try fair use cases in court because they fear losing and setting a precedent that could harm them even further. But the AP appears poised to push the limits on the fair use law, and the only logical resolution is for this all to be hashed out with a landmark ruling on the matter from the courts at some point in the not-to-distant future.

The problem with the AP’s new policy is that it remains relatively obtuse. The AP says that it plans to embed certain software in each piece of its content that will track how and where it is used. In an article at PC World, Ian Paul attempts to describe what the software will be goaled at accomplishing:

Murky Waters: The AP’s New Content Protection Plan — (PC World)

As part of its protection scheme, all AP content will come with a piece of software that will set out the terms of use for each article, and have a “built-in beacon” to let the AP know how its content is being used. If a member news organization decides to join up with the AP on its voyage to nowhere, the new system will provide content owners with “detailed metrics on content consumption, payment services, and enforcement support.” Not only that, but the AP says the new database will also allow members to create pay walls around their content — I guess because pay walls have worked so well in the past.

Paul goes onto explain some of the complexities inherent in the issue, and some of the apparent contradictions in the explanations being offered by the AP.

Any use? Is the AP expecting payment even if you simply link to their article or quote the headline? It’s not clear, and that’s the point. For example, the AP’s Jean Seagrave, senior vice president for global product development, told InformationWeek the news organization is not going after bloggers, but sites that engage in “large-scale copying of AP content.”

Is it just me, or does it sound like Curley and Seagrave are talking about adopting two different policies? What’s going on here? Is the AP going to pursue every blogger who throws in an AP link, or just those fringe sites that post full versions of AP articles?

The questions that Paul raises are apt, and the answers will define the scope of the impact that the AP’s policy will have moving forward. And make no mistake: assuming this is not a bluff by the AP (and it’s not), this will have a big impact.

But how big of an impact does the AP want to have?

The essence of the problem is this, boiled down to its simplest form: I need mainstream reporting to have factual foundations for the stories upon which I offer commentary. Sites like the AP offer that factual foundation. When I write said stories, and link out to the sites that I use as sources, I drive traffic to them. Am I siphoning off traffic that would otherwise go to the AP or whatever media source I cite? Or am I increasing their traffic by creating my own little corner of the web universe, packaging information uniquely, and driving my traffic their way by citing their reports?

I’m not sure that there is really any way to answer that question other than theoretically. What I do know is that I drive a lot of click-throughs to the sources of my articles, and I am sure that other bloggers experience the same thing. So while this site generates revenue from the pageviews we receive based on our original commentary of first-hand sources, we also drive revenue for the cites we source by driving pageviews their way. In this sense, we do pay for our use of the content indirectly.

Now, let me draw an important line of demarcation so that it does not get lost. If I were to reprint an article in its entirety, I absolutely should pay for that right. Driving revenue exclusively off the work of someone else is a clear violation of copyright law. There is no argument there. And the AP already has programs in place for this. Sites like Google News and ESPN.com pay a licensing fee to the AP to syndicate their content. This will continue, and should, and is not the crux of the debate I am dealing with here.

But the sense many are getting from the AP’s latest statements is that, for instance, search engines like Google should pay a fee for returning a title and 160-character excerpt of an AP story in their search engine results. Again, in this example, the AP essentially wants Google to pay them money for driving its own hard-earned search traffic the AP’s way. To me, this sounds like a quintessential example of biting the hand that feeds you.

Ask any website that drives more than a handful of visitors a day what their largest source of traffic is, and I would venture to guess that 95-98% of them would say search engines. And since Google gets the largest market share of search volume, they are almost always the #1 referring source of traffic for any site. (And if this is not the case, chances are the site owner hasn’t the foggiest idea about the simple concepts of basic search engine optimization, or has their site no-indexed).

Should the AP really require Google, or any site, to pay it for linking that site’s visitors to AP content when that site’s usage falls under the protection of fair use? Maybe I am missing something, but with the way information consumption has evolved online, in its current ultra-fragmented state, I just cannot see that as ending up providing a net gain in the long-term.

I have long maintained that the AP and similar organizations need to focus more on the following areas to help leverage the power of the Internet into more potent revenue models:

• Understand and implement better search engine optimization practices and use the power of search engines for their benefit. The AP and other mainstream sites have more search engine power, based on their link power, than most (if not all) blogs. However, many mainstream sites do not do an effective job of optimizing their content. This is not a complete panacea by any means, but it would be HUGELY beneficial.
• Create more of a cooperative relationship with blogs, as opposed to the current antogonistc relationship that often exists. For instance, the AP could easily figure out that we cover the White Sox a lot here at MSF. If they set up a system to ping me anytime a White Sox news story went up, I would be much more likely to create a piece of content around that story in a timely fashion. Then, I would end up driving a portion of my daily traffic to their story. Bloggers do this with eachother all the time and it works very well. I do not understand why there is not more cooperation between blogs and the mainstream media. I realize that we all are essentially competing for a finite number of information consumers on a daily basis. But by making cross-linking an even more integrated practice, the overall number of pageviews can increase. 

Does anyone see a flaw in my reasoning here? If so, please respond in the comments. I do not profess to have all the answers, but this is a topic upon which I have read and ruminated about at length. I feel like these ideas make sense, but am open to an informed discussion.

Regardless, this is a story and a topic that every blogger and producer of web content needs to understand and follow. The Internet has long been described as the “Wild Wild West” and for good reason. There will unquestionably be many changes, or at least attempts at changes, that will be occurring in the impending months and years. And, as I stated above, there should be. A functioning blogosphere, and more importantly a functioning democracy, needs a healthy media to be successful.

As bloggers, we can’t just dig in our heels and hold onto rigid and righteous notions that we can do what we want, when we want, how we want. Somehow, the AP and other sources of such first-hand reporting need to protect their revenue streams and create new ones to reestablish their financial health and viability. A failure in this happening would be detrimental to all of us.

But at the same time, I think the mainstream media needs to look internally as much as it looks externally for solutions to the problem. They absolutely need to protect their content from unfair use, but they also must exhibit the agility to exist in the changing landscape of information consumption online.

More people having a voice is a good thing, and it makes information consumption a more rich, rewarding, and educational experience for readers. It also, in my opinion, increases the total pie of pageviews that are out there. If we all embrace this idea, and then work together to find mutually-beneficial solutions, we can make the Internet less “Wild Wild West” and more amenable to the goals and needs of everyone involved.

I actually applaud the AP for taking the lead in searching for solutions to the grave problems facing the mainstream media. However, more definition is needed for how those solutions will be implemented, what their true goals are, and how realistic their strategies are for creating the long-term positive impact they seek.

In the end, my final thought is this: we all have turf that we are trying to proect, but is it possible that the best way to do so is to find new ways to cooperatively share said turf and, from an aggregated standpoint, grow it? I think it is.

Now it’s up to everyone who has a stake in the debate to be proactive in offering realistic solutions.

[Editor's Note: I feel compelled to add the following statement to establish my credibility because of what I assume will be the presumptions of many who come here thinking it's "just a sports blog."

I put my heart and soul into running Midwest Sports Fans because I love writing and love sports. But during the day I do actually emerge from the protective womb and cheetos stained floor of my mom's basement to a "real" job. I am an account executive and blogging strategist for one of the most forward-thinking and progressive social media marketing companies in Dallas. And while I don't consider myself to be any kind of omniscient expert on all social media topics, I do have a fairly strong basis of experience and research upon which I based the article above.

My apologies to anyone who wishes I'd stick just to sports talk, but I can't avoid the obvious importance of this issue for everyone, including sports bloggers, who produce content online. This site gets a fairly steady amount of traffic, so I figured it was the best place to galvanize a lively and highly relevant discussion. My thanks and appreciation to those who choose to participate.]

Behind the Keyboard: Hannah Patrick of Sports Media Challenge Takes us Behind the Buzz

As many of you know, I started the Behind the Keyboard series as an opportunity for you and I to get to know some of the influential voices and personalities in the sports blogosphere. We kicked it off a few months back by profiling Barry McBride of the Orange and Brown Report and then last week we interviewed Sarah Spain of Mouthpiece Sports.

Today, Behind the Keyboard is highlighting an individual who is actually not a blogger at all (at least not that I know of, but you never know who is lurking in the dark shadows of their parents’ basement…) but who still has the ability to influence the sports blogosphere on a daily basis. That individual is Hannah Patrick, a Media Analyst with Sports Media Challenge.

If you are an avid viewer of the 10:00 am SportsCenter, you may have noticed a new feature that popped up a few months back called Blog Buzz. The goal of this feature is to highlight the five most important and talked about sports stories, as seen by the sports blogging community. As you will find out from the interview below, Hannah is the point person for submitting the editorial content for the daily Blog Buzz feature. This is actually how she and I were first “introduced” — when she emailed to alert me to MSF’s first appearance on Blog Buzz, back when we wrote about Mike Brown being named NBA Coach of the Year.

Because I am at the office when Blog Buzz runs on ESPN, I have never actually viewed the segment myself. (I did, however, receive many calls from friends who were watching when MSF was on there.) And while I think all sports bloggers like the general idea of Blog Buzz, it was met with some criticism upon its initial launch (for examples, here and here).

One of the main reasons I contacted Hannah about participating in this interview was to give her and Sports Media Challenge an opportunity to discuss their objectives with Blog Buzz as well as to get her unique perspective, as someone in the middle, on where the blogger-mainstream media relationship is headed.

I am sure that many other sports bloggers know Hannah from being contacted about Blog Buzz and her effective use of Twitter to network, as well as the recent Blogs With Balls conference that she attended (and that I wish I had too!). Hopefully this interview will allow you to get to know her even better, as well as understand the objectives behind Blog Buzz and some of the ways that Sports Media Challenge continues to be a pioneer in the merging of sports and online media.

My sincere appreciation goes out to Hannah for her diligence in completing this interview, which we conducted over email. As usual, a few quick background notes first and then we jump right into the interview.

Hannah Patrick Background Info:

• Education/College: East Carolina (Arrrghh!) with degree in Communications
• Current Company and Position: Media Analyst with Sports Media Challenge
• Favorite sport: I grew up loving baseball. But in recent years football has become my favorite.
• Favorite teams: Panthers, Bobcats, Hurricanes, and all ECU Sports
• Favorite athletes: Jake “Day light come and I wanna” Delhomme, keeping it local. We are both originally from Cajun country and ended up in the Carolinas. Plus, he has persevered and accomplished a lot regardless of all the scrutiny around him.
• Twitter: @mhannahp

Hannah Patrick Behind the Keyboard Interview:

Jerod: If you would, provide our readers with a quick background on Sports Media Challenge, how you got involved with them, and what you do as PR coordinator.

Hannah Patrick: Sports Media Challenge is a brand monitoring, marketing, and PR consulting company specializing in sports and entertainment clients. I got involved with SMC through networking while dominating in a kickball league. We were named “Balls of Fury” (pictured left, click for larger view) and were champions in Spring ’08.

As media analyst my responsibilities include monitoring our client’s reputations online. Currently, my responsibilities have shifted to leading SMC’s efforts with SportsCenter’s Blog Buzz, which means I am in charge of the editorial content that is submitted on a daily basis.

Jerod: How did the idea for Blog Buzz come about? Was it initiated by SMC or ESPN? How has the response been from fans, bloggers, and the Worldwide Leader?

Hannah Patrick: SMC used to do a section for the “Sports Business Daily” called Blog Hound. It was based on the same premise, where we submitted to them the top five most popular blog topics on a daily basis. ESPN came to SMC looking for a similar concept, thus Blog Buzz was born.

The response, other than the initial launch, has been mostly positive. We have seen both sides though: bloggers that are totally stoked to see their hard work on SportsCenter and others that just don’t see the value. In the end, our goal is to connect one of the world’s largest sports entities to some of the most intelligent, informed and passionate sports fans and writers.

Jerod: What other Blog Buzz-like initiatives is SMC planning for the future?

Hannah Patrick: In the immediate future we would like to see the segment in other SportsCenter show times, like the 6:00 pm hour for instance. We would also like to start doing an in-depth analysis one day of the week, where we give several different blogger perspectives.

Jerod: Time for a random question. If you had to bet your last $10 on a fight-to-the-death cagematch between me, John Gonzalez, and Ken Rosenthal, who are you picking?

Hannah Patrick: Definitely you. But you are going to need some sort of super power first. Like… the ability to walk through cages.

I polled the office on this question as well. Results were pretty entertaining and are as follows:

• “Ken Rosenthal would win because he is backed by the traditional media and he would squash Jerod with his huge budget.” @ryanstephens
• “Ken Rosenthal because he came on screen like the Hebrew Hammer or the Jewish Juggernaut. But no matter what… Buzz Bissinger would beat all of them.” @jakerosen
• “Kimbo Slice.” @jackieadkins
• “Jerod being a blogger wears underwear like cage fighters. So I am going to go with Jerod.” @matthewgarner
• “I would go with the guy asking you the question.” @brittanylane

[Editor's Note: While I appreciate Matthew Garner's trust in my willingness to wear underwear, Brittany Lane clearly had the right train of thought here considering I'm the one posting the interview...]

Jerod: Shifting gears to Blogs With Balls, what were you overall impressions of the event?

Hannah Patrick: Everyone has said this, but it was awesome to put a face with all of the talented names that I have been working with. For me, it was a great opportunity to talk to people about what they do and don’t like about the segment.

For example, Blog Buzz’s biggest fan, Chris Motram, and I finally got the chance to meet. That might have been my favorite part. Getting to pick his brain about the segment was great. I took some much appreciated notes that we plan on going over with the big guys in Bristol.

To me, that was the spirit of Blogs with Balls. Everyone was just out to learn something new, share information, and shake someone’s hand. I think it was a great success, and I look forward to seeing it evolve into something even greater in the future. The guys at HHR really did an outstanding job.

Jerod: Excuse me for a moment while I kick myself again for not going. What were the three most important things you took away from the event?

Hannah Patrick:

1. Bloggers can be professional without losing the spirit of what they do
2. Sports bloggers are just as eccentric, talented, and entertaining in person.
3. When they say wear comfortable shoes, they mean wear comfortable shoes.

Jerod: I would define your role as somewhere in between bloggers and the mainstream media. Would you agree? If not, to which side do you see yourself falling; and if so, how do you navigate through the sometimes choppy waters of bridging the gap between blogs and the MSM?

Hannah Patrick: I would agree with the statement that my role lies somewhere in between bloggers and the mainstream media. The line between traditional media and social media is being blurred more and more every day and SMC’s and ESPN’s efforts with Blog Buzz are another step in that direction. We have worked to establish a place as the communication arm between the two platforms. Blog Buzz has simply created another intersection between the MSM and bloggers.

Jerod: What is your most memorable personal sports moment?

Hannah Patrick: In 2006, when the Hurricanes won the Stanley Cup. I had just moved to a new city and didn’t know anyone but my roommate. When the Canes won, everyone stood up on the tables and on the bar and sang “God Bless America!” At that moment I felt like I knew everyone in the place. It’s funny how sports can unite a group of people.

Jerod: Coming from a PR perspective, I would love to get your honest thoughts (good or bad) on how the Raul Ibanez controversy was handled and played out publicly. Specifically, if you had been prepping me for the OTL interview, what would your advice have been?

Hannah Patrick: The Ibanez controversy really was an interesting case study about the dichotomy of bloggers vs. traditional media. This brought about a conversation that was inevitably going to surface. Blogs With Balls was a perfect place for the two sides to share their thoughts… and there were many different thoughts.

From a PR standpoint, there are times to take a lower profile until the heat dies down; this was not one of them. We would give you four stars on the way you handled the Ibanez controversy, specifically for three reasons:

1. You were gutsy for jumping on the issue.
2. You should always go into a media appearance with an agenda that is as strong, if not stronger, than the person asking the questions. You should be able to articulate your message easily and repeatedly. You successfully did all of these.
3. You should also craft your message so that people will first listen, then understand, then believe, and finally remember. Which you did!

Jerod: SMC appears to be one of the leaders in assisting athletes in managing and promoting their reputations. How much of your focus is shifting to the online world and what are the specific challenges/opportunities that athletes face when it comes online PR?

Hannah Patrick: The vast majority of our focus is online. We have been working to push our clients towards the social media landscape and we stress to them that social media has to be a single component of an overall media strategy. Many athletes are hesitant about getting involved in various forms of social media because they are afraid that they won’t be able to control their message. But the reality is that whether they are in the space or not, they are being talked about. Buzz Manager enables us to provide our clients to with critical information about “the buzz” on the web.

Jerod: We know that there is lots of hype around Twitter and that it is the new time-waster-du-jour for many people in many different industries. How do you use Twitter from a professional standpoint and what kind of sustained impact do you see it having 6 months, a year, 5 years down the road?

Hannah Patrick: We always tell our clients that whatever you put into Twitter is what you will get out of the experience. It has been compared to a river of conversation. You can step back and watch if flow on by, but at any time you can jump in and take part.

Professionally, Twitter has enabled me to keep my finger on the pulse of what’s going on in the sports blogosphere second by second. I think that will be the heart of Twitter when this initial explosion dies down. The ability to track current topics of conversation will have more of a sustained impact than the other uses of Twitter. I love that Twitter is championing citizen journalism and I don’t foresee that dying down. I think it will play a large role in future elections for sure.

As far as using Twitter as a tool to interact with and follow celebrities, I am more wary about the long term impact due to the high level of involvement that it requires. Other forms of social media, like Facebook, seem more likely to stand the pass of time because it doesn’t require such intense devotion.

Jerod: Time for another random question. You can play a round of golf with any three people relevant in the sports world (including the media, bloggers, etc.) today. Who are they? Why?

Hannah Patrick:

1. Skip Holtz, because I am a Pirate fan.
2. Shaq, because he would crack me up.
3. Jerod Morris, assuming his mom would let him out of the basement.

Jerod: Unfortunately, my mom only lets me out of the basement for dinner, yardwork, and White Sox games; so I’ll have to pass. Finally though, getting back to Blog Buzz and the slow but steady blurring of the lines between blogging and the mainstream media, where do you see it going? Where should it go? And what do you think are things that bloggers and the MSM should keep in mind to make this inevitable transition as successful as possible?

Hannah Patrick: Yes the process has been slow and steady, but I think that Deadspin implementing their new commenting policy will be a huge catalyst in this process. Also, the FTC has become more aware of the blogosphere and is making writers become more accountable.

As long as bloggers recognize that professional organizations are taking notice and giving bloggers a voice, there has to be some sort of give and take. The blogosphere is changing, and that means that those who are looking to make money from it will need to get used to the changes.

**********

Our thanks again to Hannah Patrick for taking part in the Behind the Keyboard series and for supplying me with pictures to use throughout. You can follow her on Twitter at @mhannahp and you can jump over to the Sports Media Challenge website to learn more about Blog Buzz and to keep your finger on the pulse of how sports and online media interact.

If you are interested in being the subject of Behind the Keyboard, follow me on Twitter (@JerodMSF) and shoot me a message. Let’s make it happen.