Baltimore Sun Reporter Calls Internet “Parasites”—Bloomberg News Columnist Backs Up Claim

posted at 10:07 am on May 27, 2009 by Rovin
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David Simon at the Baltimore Sun makes the claim that the Internet has become parasites and Ann Woolner at Bloomberg backs him up saying the Internet has too much free content using Google as her target.  Woolner also makes the case that it’s a prime reason newspapers are in serious trouble:

This sort of thing “leeches that reporting from mainstream news publications,” as former Baltimore Sun reporter David Simon put it this month before a Senate subcommittee.

“The parasite is slowly killing the host,” testified Simon, author and writer of the HBO series The Wire.

And from Woolner:

There was a time, not long ago, when whoever wanted to use a news story for commercial purposes would actually ask the newspaper’s permission. They might even pay for the privilege.

And yet when I sat at my desk in Atlanta and Googled for the latest news on Obama and Guantanamo Bay, up came links and snippets of stories produced by the Kansas City Star, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Miami Herald and other news organisations. I didn’t pay for the stories. And, for the most part, neither did Google…….As outlandish to the Google generation as typewriters, the idea was that newspapers owned their content. And why shouldn’t they?

They pay reporters, photographers and editors to produce news stories. They spend huge sums to send journalists into the world’s danger zones. Then there is the real estate, the buildings, the equipment needed. None of it is cheap. LINK

Woolner thinks internet providers like Google are getting a free ride and should pay more for the right to this content. Further, she makes a valid point that without these newspapers and their “paid” investigative reporters, there will eventually be no content for Google or bloggers to provide to their readers. From this same story published in the Independent (UK), Google defends their practice submitting that the papers have the option of opting out of their service:

Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker says all that newspapers have to do to prevent Google from copying their websites is to opt out, either wholesale or on a story-by-story basis.

Some do. Most don’t.

Here’s some real irony to this story. At the bottom of this story the Independent finishes with this:

“Taken from the New Zealand Herald” with no links to the Herald. Now who’s that “parasite” again Mr. Simon?

(for the record, I used minimal portions of the Independent’s story to produce this post and linked them three times in the process–does this make me a “mini-parasite”?)

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