{"id":2485,"date":"2021-08-28T11:44:44","date_gmt":"2021-08-28T18:44:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/?p=2485"},"modified":"2021-08-28T11:51:26","modified_gmt":"2021-08-28T18:51:26","slug":"make-google-pay-for-content-hmnnn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2021\/08\/make-google-pay-for-content-hmnnn.html","title":{"rendered":"Make Google Pay for Linking to Content? Hmnnn."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Journalism, like the arts, has seen its business models upended. According to the\u00a0Pew Research Center<\/a>, advertising revenue in newspapers \u201cfell from $37.8 billion in 2008 to $14.3 billion in 2018, a\u00a062%\u00a0decline. Newsroom employment at U.S. newspapers dropped by nearly half (47%) between 2008 and 2018, from about 71,000 workers to 38,000.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One could find equally dire equivalents in the arts, where artist income has shrunk and jobs have been lost, accelerated by the pandemic. William Deresiewicz<\/a>‘s book Death of the Artist <\/a>is replete with examples documenting this. Big Tech, while getting fabulously rich, has disrupted industry after industry, in the process promising a better new world. And in many ways it has delivered. But the dystopian impacts of that “progress” have also become more obvious, and after years of watching, the US Congress finally seems to be in a mood to modify the regulations these companies have been operating under. It’s about time. Those rules were largely written before the internet was around. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the impact of Big Tech on the arts has been profound, there has not been a lot of organizing to change the rules under which Big Tech operates. That was true also for journalism until recently. But after the rise of social media disinformation and the closing of more than 2000 daily and weekly newspapers across the country over the past ten years, members of Congress from both parties seem ready to enact reforms, from breaking up monopolies to rewriting how information is shared. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the most popular measures would force Google and social media platforms to start paying news organizations for linking to their stories. Given the $147 billion in advertising Google earns annually, the money is a tempting target. But it’s exactly the wrong way to try to cure tech’s negative impacts, and it would actually do little to solve journalism’s revenue issues. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You might think this is just a journalism issue, and admittedly it’s not an exact comparison, but one can draw some parallels between paying to read stories an paying for music streaming, which has not proven to “pay off” very well for the vast majority of musicians. I’ve written an explainer on the issue and the complexity and contradictions of trying to get paid for content over at Post Alley.<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You might think this is just a journalism issue, but one can draw parallels of paying to read stories to paying for music streaming, which has not proven to “pay off” for the vast majority of musicians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2486,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2485","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-tech","8":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/search-engine-76519_1280.jpg?fit=1000%2C548&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ePZm-E5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":91,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2009\/04\/creative_destruction_and_the_c.html","url_meta":{"origin":2485,"position":0},"title":"Creative Destruction And The Critics","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"April 16, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"A shameless plug for a piece on All Things Considered by Laura Sydell on what's happening with arts journalism as newspapers drop arts coverage. As I say in the piece, IMHO what's happening is not the destruction of arts journalism, but the reinvention of it. Arts journalism has often had\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 2 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 2 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2009\/04\/creative_destruction_and_the_c.html#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"criticsthumbs.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/criticsthumbs.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":45,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2008\/02\/why_newspapers_are_failing.html","url_meta":{"origin":2485,"position":1},"title":"Why Newspapers Are Failing…","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"February 20, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been posting lately at the National Arts Journalism Program's new Articles blog. Today I enumerated the business reasons why newspapers are laying off staff, cutting content and scaling back their businesses. Does it really have to be this way?","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":121,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2009\/07\/a_future_for_journalism_about.html","url_meta":{"origin":2485,"position":2},"title":"A Future For Journalism About The Arts","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"July 11, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"In the past couple of years, half of all the staff arts journalism jobs in the US have been eliminated. In some cases, newspapers offloading their staff critics have replaced them with freelancers. In some cases, the freelancers have done a better job than the staffers they have replaced. But\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 4 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 4 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2009\/07\/a_future_for_journalism_about.html#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"summitpage.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/summitpage.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":165,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2011\/08\/the-classical-music-critic-goes-extinct.html","url_meta":{"origin":2485,"position":3},"title":"The Classical Music Critic Goes Extinct","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"August 23, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Seems important to note the passing of music criticism as a legitimate job in Canada. John Terauds, for six years staff classical music critic of the Toronto Star, was reassigned this week to the paper\u2019s business section. He was the last full-time classical music critic at a Canadian newspaper. The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "arts journalism"","block_context":{"text":"arts journalism","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/arts-journalism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/eacae9164a65af69f68bb9fe5451.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":46,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2008\/02\/a_new_blog_at_najp.html","url_meta":{"origin":2485,"position":4},"title":"A New Blog At NAJP","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"February 4, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"In my other life (what other life?) I'm the acting director of the National Arts Journalism Program (NAJP). NAJP started out as a project of the Pew Charitable Trusts in an attempt to help improve the state of arts journalism. I was an NAJP fellow at Columbia University in 1996-97.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":88,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2009\/04\/atlanta_journal-constitution_o.html","url_meta":{"origin":2485,"position":5},"title":"Atlanta Journal-Constitution Offloads Its Arts Critics","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"April 14, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"It's hard to accept the premise that newspapers are worth saving when they cut away the reasons to buy them. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has pretty much declared it's out of the culture coverage business by getting rid of its arts staff, including a few critics who have had national prominence.\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2009\/04\/atlanta_journal-constitution_o.html#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2485"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2488,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2485\/revisions\/2488"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}