I love newspapers, I love journalists, I love a well researched article written with intelligence and the bigger picture in mind. I love knowing that I can get information about what’s going on in the world, from people whose profession it is to suss it out and tell the story. And until this morning I loved the Associated Press. (OK, love is a bit strong – but I often turned to the AP for news.)
While preparing my Morning Coffee Articles post this morning, I found three AP articles I wanted to share with my readers. I went to the post link on the articles and was given a few options:
- The free one required me to post the entire article with ads, but only for one month.
- If I wanted to pay I could post an excerpt or a PDF.
Now, I know they want to get paid for their hard and sometimes dangerous work. I appreciate that. But I think iCopyright (the service they use) or the AP got the options wrong. They missed the part where the Internet becomes valuable to them because they’re part of a web of information and sharing, a community. I’ll pay to put a picture on. I’ll pay to put a certain amount of the text right on my site (they charge $12.50 for as little as 5 words). But I won’t pay to do what I see as the right thing:
- Post the headline
- Post two sentences
- cite the author
- link to the article
- and link to ap.com
So, AP, you’ve lost three good links this morning. And for the record, that’s costing your affiliates (in this case the Montgomery Advertiser, the Albuquerque Journal, and KMOV-TV, Inc.) visitors, ad dollars, Search Engine “link juice”, and brand exposure. Nice work AP.
Give me and a couple of folks a few days with the AP and I bet we can come up with a better model that would increase their exposure, make them money AND not alienate their readers.
By the way, I think iCopyright is on the right track – and I don’t know what options they offered the AP. Either way, it’s the AP that made the decision.
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