Month: February 2016

As revenues continue to decline for newspapers in the U.S. and elsewhere, many have adopted paywalls or digital-subscription models, inspired by the New York Times‘ metered access plan. But there have been a number of significant holdouts, and one of the most prominent is The Guardian in Britain. Now, the paper’s CEO says it may start to charge readers for content—does that mean its commitment to not having a paywall has crumbled?

Chief executive David Pemsel says no. What the Guardian has in mind, he says, is expanding its existing membership-based program, and potentially offering content to paying members that isn’t available to non-paying readers. As he described it in a recent interview:

That might mean producing some journalism which only our members can access but no, it’s not a paywall. A paywall is a very different route, which of course we have considered, but putting one up now would diminish our reach and influence around the world, which is the opposite of what we’re trying to do.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “The Guardian, paywalls and the death of print newspapers”

A few months ago, a U.S. appeals court ruled unanimously that Google’s scanning and indexing of millions of books was not a wholesale attack on authors and the copyright system, as the Authors Guild has been arguing for years, but is clearly permitted under the “fair use” exemption in copyright law. Unsatisfied, the Guild is now trying to convince the Supreme Court to hear its case.

But the authors’ group is still wrong.

In 2004 Google sent its moving vans to the libraries and carted off some 20 million books. It copied them all, including books in copyright and books not covered by copyright. It asked no authors or publishers for permission, and it offered no compensation for their use.

Clearly, the Guild wants to make it sound as though Google somehow got away with a daylight robbery of 20 million books, stealing them from copyright holders with no thought for the impoverished authors who wrote them. But that’s not how two separate U.S. courts have seen it, and it’s not even close to being an accurate reflection of the case.

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “The Authors Guild is still wrong about Google’s book scanning”

After a series of reports about ballooning losses at The Guardian, the British newspaper’s parent company Guardian News & Media announced recently that the company is looking to cut more than $70 million in costs over the next three years, after losing more than that in 2015. The paper has spent the past several years focusing on a mission its former editor called “open journalism.” Is that to blame for its losses?

In a recent column, media critic Michael Wolff said the Guardian “has been something of an ultimate experiment in the migration from paper to digital publishing,” but argues its expansion and online experiments have resulted in nothing but financial ruin, in what he calls a “quixotic test of digital faith.”

Instead of cutting its costs and implementing a paywall like other newspapers, Wolff says, the Guardian maintained its open approach to journalism in the face of overwhelming odds, and now it is doomed. Why? Because advertising revenue alone can’t support media organizations, he says—which he argues was the central digital conceit the Guardian bought into. The British paper, according to Wolff, is to digital media “what Cuba is to socialism.”

Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I was a senior writer from 2015 to 2017

Continue reading “Do the Guardian’s losses mean that its “open journalism” has failed?”