This New England

Finally, news organizations are fighting back to protect their copy from being swiped by the likes of Google and Yahoo, which have been operating like steel companies that get free iron ore!

The fight started in Europe and now it has spread to the U.S.

As The New York Times reported Tuesday in an article by Richard Perez-Pena headlined "A.P Seeks to Rein in Sites Using Its Content,'' the Associated Press, which is owned by newspapers, says "that sites that used the work of news organizations must obtain permission and share revenue with them, and that it would take legal action against those that did not.''

What took them so long? Giving away your stuff is not a business model, unless the model is bankruptcy.

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An underreported aspect of the woes of newspapers like The Boston Globe is the effect of newspaper companies that once were closely held being bought by public companies borrowing vast sums of money to do so.

Public companies are at the beck and call of Wall Street, which demands very high returns. While a closely held (often family-owned) newspaper might have been content with a 12 percent profit, the publicly held company might demand 30 percent to try to keep the stock analysts happy and the stock price high.

(Oddly, not many people notice that the newspaper business as a whole is still quite profitable, with profit margins on average over 11 percent -- which is higher than for many companies. Their problem is that they're unfashionable.)

The closely held newspaper companies' owners and managers derived much ego satisfaction and influence from owning the local paper. It wasn't all about the money.

Wall Street, however, is heartless -- it cares ONLY about the money. "Public mission'' and that sort of thing just raises a cynical laugh at the NYSE.

Also the new owners of the newspapers have to pay off the huge debt they took on to buy the papers during the media-buying boom of a few years ago.

To subsist in this harsh new world means squeezing costs as tightly as possible. That largely means firing people.

Perhaps there will be a revival of nonchain, local ownership as locals buy up newspapers cheap. Or maybe not.

 Tags  AP Associated Press Boston Globe Google Richard Perez-Pena Yahoo

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