[marcus_holmes]

The business model for news is "pay a journalist to write a story, serve that story to readers accompanied by ads, make enough money on the ads to pay the journalist".

Neither FB nor Google pay journalists. But they have the audience. So the newspaper posts their news story to FB and lets Google index it in the hope that enough people click through the link to read their story and see their ads.

But FB and Google both also serve ads along with the story listing, and they often post enough of the story so that the reader doesn't have to click through to the actual news site. So FB and Google get all the revenue that the story generates, and the news site gets none, despite having to pay the journalist to write it.

[postingawayonhn]

> But FB and Google both also serve ads along with the story listing, and they often post enough of the story so that the reader doesn't have to click through to the actual news site.

This is already covered by copyright law and the news sites can tell Google not to index the site and provide less OpenGhaph data for Facebook.

[marcus_holmes]

The problem is that the news sites don't have a loyal audience of readers, and instead rely on traffic redirected from Google and FB.

> This is already covered by copyright law and the news sites can tell Google not to index the site and provide less OpenGhaph data for Facebook.

They can't delist with Google, because then they don't get that traffic.

They can't provide less data, because then FB's algorithm won't shove their article into enough people's feed.

They can't sue for copyright infringement when they specifically granted both Google and FB permission to use their content as part of their listing.

It's a really tough position for newspapers. The solution is that they need to charge readers directly for news. But that would be a massively difficult undertaking (though the success of the Guardian's "support us directly" campaign using the Wikipedia model does show some hope). It would also mean changing a generation's worth of journalistic practices.

[bryan_w]

I don't know why the news media hasnt innovated like Hulu or Netflix or Apple music or Spotify or... has in the wake of the internet. It's like they think that they are a special form of media or something.

They seemed content to stand by and let their business die rather than adapt a new business model.