The battle over content heating up
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Maury Brown from the Biz of Baseball Blog wrote an interesting piece today on the collision between the mainstream media and those who appropriate our work on line without paying for it, or at least giving proper credit.
As newspapers struggle to stay afloat financially, it’s a question that is not going to go away. Newspapers spend a lot of money to pay beat writers and send them on the road. Why should some blog, particularly those with advertisements, be able to use that information for free?
I’m usually flattered if some other blog links to my work. I figure anything that brings more readers here has to be good. But for every responsible blogger out there, there are other who cut and paste the work of others and either pass it off as their own or barely credit the author.
If you know the solution, contact the newspaper industry because you will be a well-paid consultant. The problem will soon be this: If newspapers decide they can’t afford beat writers, where will that information come from? Somebody has to get on the plane, go to Toronto and ask the questions.
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on Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 at 2:59 pm by Peter Abraham.
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Chad Jennings
Sam Borden
Josh Thomson
Virtual Podcasts w/ streaming video straight from the lockerroom post game where players stand infront of a console and answer questions from NYYBronxBabe69 LIVE ON THE INTERNETS!
bEat reporters, the E stands for ELECTRONIC
Pete, I agree with you 100%. I, too, am a writer (though only for my high school) and write articles frequently, and I like it when others read my work. Blogs enable people to share their opinion with the public and others can share theirs too. It creates a lot of buzz around whatever topic.
Beat writers are a key part of the newspaper industry, they follow the team and have the dream any fan would love to have. They get interviews and find their stories by traveling with the team. There is no way of finding quotes from players on the team without asking them face-to-face.
Pete,
If you haven’t seen the mini-controversy related to this very issue that’s erupted between Gawker and the Washington Post, take a look:
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nyti.....;st=Search
Then there is ESPN basically thinking they can replace local beat writers with their own brand of “local” coverage, which to me is stupid and in no way the same as a local paper covering teams. ESPN is going to find itself way overleveraged and their “content” is going to take a bigger nosedive than it already has.
Kennedy’d rehab… making progress.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200.....es_kennedy
Has anyone had any success buying standing room tickets at Yankee stadium? I’m hearing that they are available, but I can’t get a straight answer from anyone. I’d like to try and get some tickets for Sunday night.
Andrew, your point is exactly correct. ESPN’s definition of “local” is sending out their Baseball Tonight crew to follow one game and judge the team based off that. Beat writers follow the team, they know when something is up, they know what the usual schedule is for the Yankees whereas places like ESPN do not.
Newspapers will just have to smarten up when it comes to their online presence.
I have no doubt in my mind that this blog is worth more than any other Yankee blog out there.
Judging by where your adsense ads are your click thru rate should be pretty decent. Other newspapers need to follow lohud’s lead when it comes to to the blogs their beatwriters have.
Ok
i just saw Darryl Strawberry on the street. Said Hi.
Pete-
You got a mention in the “Rumors” section of Yahoo MLB today!
Steve-
I had thought they were not selling SRO tickets yet.
I still think Kennedy is going to be a quality major league pitcher in the big leagues.
He doesn’t have an injury history either. If Brian Bannister can be sucessful then so can Kennedy IMO.
Here’s who is in so far for “Guess the Line Up”
WTTCTOHA
Fran, Miggs, Servox, YanksFan, Patrick (same)
Hokiehill, AMS223
Upstate Kate
L to the 2nd
Robbykid, Largo, Doink Da Clown, Andrew, Steve B
IDCWYT
Andrew33
RDM
27 minutes to get your line ups in. No line ups after 3:40
its possible they could’ve thought of this before every newspaper in the country panicked and offered FREE online content when the web blew up. If the newspapers banded together at the start, things would be a lot different now.
I think Kennedy will be a factor in 2010 for the Yankees. They could sure us him now considering how depleted their upper-level SP depth is looking. Really glad to hear he seems to have recovered fully from the aneurysm. I think he will get another shot in the Bronx before it’s all said and done and I hope he has better results than he did in 2008, both during games and in his postgame press conferences.
I dont really think bloggers try to pass off other people’s stories as their own. Most blogs dont have Breaking News banners and steal stories like that. ESPN certainly does that. I hate to say it but I think eventually clubhouse coverage will mostly come from the networks that cover the teams and videoblogs and things like that.
something to consider – if you copy any section of an article in the Daily News – a link to that article automatically pastes with it. Now, that can be deleted if you intend to not give credit, but saves me the step of going back and copying the link.
they just started that in the last 2 months or so
I thought standing room only tickets were available for purchase online only starting at 12:01 AM on gameday
Link to the LoHud shout on Yahoo-
Pete, you weren’t given specific credit which is bogus
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/ru.....mlb,180644
I guess I’ll do the lineup for us.
Jeter (SS)
Damon (LF)
Teixeira (1B)
Rodriguez (3B)
Matsui (DH)
Posada (C)
Cano (2B)
Swisher (RF)
Cabrera (CF)
good news for IPK
“I still think Kennedy is going to be a quality major league pitcher in the big leagues.”
Beats being a quality minor league pitcher in the big leagues, like he was last year.
I think he can be a decent low end of a rotation starter in the bigs.
The beat reporter for the dodgers the LA Daily News was let go a few months ago.
With that, the Dodgers are now only being covered by two beat guys – the reporter for the LA Times and the MLB.com reporter. That’s it.
Hard to believe the dodgers are down to 2 reporters.
And the LA Times is on very precarious footing.
In the future some teams may only have an mlb.com guy covering the team.
That’ll hurt fans a lot but that’s where things might be headed.
So far my lineup is most creative.
It’s also probably wrong.
Erica, I believe I was there when you banned RDM from Guess the Lineup by the way. For saying he’d bat A-Rod ninth in the game 2 loss to the Rays, remember?
Kennedy’d rehab… making progress.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200…..es_kennedy
——————————————-
Its nice to read that Kennedy is making progress and I hope that continues. His aneurism was not related to his occupation but apperas to be genetic.
Nonetheless the Yankees have a lot of injured pitchers in their minor and major league system…more than one would expect and more than most other teams. Someone’s head needs to roll over that. As much as I love the Yankees, if my son was a pitcher and got drafted by the Yankees I would not let him sign with them until they figured out why so many of their pitchers were getting hurt and put in a plan to mitigate the problem.
We all want Aroldis Chapman to sign with the Yankees but I fear that if he did, the Yankees would ruin him before he got to the big leagues. Its tragic that so many Yankee farmhands have elbow/shoulder injuries and that Trenton and Scranton have to continually piece together starts from reief pitchers. I hope the organization gets its act together and completes an investigation of the problem.
Every pitch will be twittered by the 1,000 & our collective consciousness will be satiated by all the different opinions on what’s happening–which we will be able to recieve where&whenever on our handheld computer of choice. The robots-cameras on each player’s glove & in each player’s locker will allow them to liveblog as they play and when they finish. The future in one word: showercam (available on MLBXXX.com 2020).
I actually don’t care what the future looks like as long as it doesn’t involve Joe Buck.
“its possible they could’ve thought of this before every newspaper in the country panicked and offered FREE online content when the web blew up. If the newspapers banded together at the start, things would be a lot different now.”
What’s wrong with free content? This website offers free content.
The key is getting visitors to the website and in turn monetizing those visitors somehow.
The newspapers still have the power because they have the most money, it’s just about being smarter in how they go about business.
any chance one of you writers can ask what the hell Cody Ransom is doing on this team? Are they aware of his numbers?
I dont think the newspapers have the most money anymore. And I think it is foolish that most dont charge for online content that is exactly the same as in the paper.
WTTCTOHA-
I believe you are right. That sounds very familiar. I will allow RDM’s submission today. But be alert for the future.
Brandon is still banned! LOL
“Beats being a quality minor league pitcher in the big leagues, like he was last year.
I think he can be a decent low end of a rotation starter in the bigs.”
What I meant and what I typed are two different things lol.
Meant to say I think Kennedy will be a quality major league pitcher when it’s all said and done.
My lineup:
Jeter ss
Damon lf
Tex 1b
Arod 3b
Posada C
Matsui DH
Cano 2b
Melky cf
Hinske RF
From Metsblog:
According to a poll in this week’s Sports Illustrated, 36 percent of 380 MLB players said they would least like to face Mariano Rivera with the tying run on third and fewer than two outs.
Francisco Rodriguez finished second with 12 percent of the vote.
Tony, Ransom is out of options, so they’d have to DFA him to get him off the roster. I’m not a huge fan of Ransom either, but you have to be aware of the roster moves. It wouldn’t be just sending him down, it could be trading him to another team or making him a FA.
“Meant to say I think Kennedy will be a quality major league pitcher when it’s all said and done.”
Kinda half agree. I think he’d be somewhere in the neighborhood of average. A 4.50 or so ERA guy.
If they did decide to DFA Ransom – they wouldn’t regret it.
Nobody is going to pick him up off the waiver wire.
Maybe the only solution is to develop your own lexicon, sort of like Anthony Burgess did in the novel A Clockwork Orange.
Even then, it wouldn’t take long for the imitators to crop up.
“Nonetheless the Yankees have a lot of injured pitchers in their minor and major league system…more than one would expect and more than most other teams. Someone’s head needs to roll over that.”
It’s most likely selection bias.
The yankees are systematically more willing to take a chance selecting and signing high risk arms than any other team in baseball.
They gave Dellin Betances a $1M bonus as an 8th round pick despite knowing he was completely raw and couldn’t repeat his mechanics.
Alan Horne was a similar case. Brett Marshall last year was also very raw.
Guys like that are systematically more likely to be injured than other pitchers.
And in addition, they yankees, have taken a ton of pitcher over the past several drafts. Their drafts have been far more pitching heavy than other teams.
So even if they had pitchers injured at the same rate as other teams, they would still have more cumulative injuries to the young players in their system who have a relatively high profile.
Jeter ss
Damon LF
Tex 1b
Rod 3b
Matsui DH
Posada C
Cano 2b
Swisher RF
Cabrera CF
And if they make him a FA, what are we losing???? I doubt anyone would pick him up anyway.
tony
I think everyone has said the same thing. Cody’s job should be cleaning the toilets at the NYS. Not playing in the majors.
Matt (NYY fan in Boston) August 4th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Tony, Ransom is out of options, so they’d have to DFA him to get him off the roster. I’m not a huge fan of Ransom either, but you have to be aware of the roster moves. It wouldn’t be just sending him down, it could be trading him to another team or making him a FA.
_____________
It’s not like anyone would pick him up off of waivers.. And so what if they did? This guy is terrible. Terrible 3rd Baseman. Can’t hit worth anything.
But We don’t want to stunt Pena’s growth. He needs those extra 100 at bats in AAA. And practice in the OF too. Because it’s not like we have A Jackson, Melky, Gardner + whatever outfielder we sign in the off season.
Ray is absolutely right that the newspaper business hurt itself by offering up too much free content. I work in a variety of media forms, but other than radio none of those formats is free. This blog is a source of great fun for me because it’s the only place other than my living room I get to be a fan, and I would be willing to pay a fee for it.
I pay for Baseball America on-line. I pay for ESPN’s premium content even though it forces me to accept that wretched excuse for a magazine.
Eventually I think it’s possible that you might see teams return to taking media on the road because the value of having extensive coverage exceeds the cost of that seat on the plane.
If they did decide to DFA Ransom – they wouldn’t regret it.
Nobody is going to pick him up off the waiver wire.
—————————————————
I think you are right!!! Spots on the 40 man roster in MLB are too valuable at this time of year.
Oh and he had a Chinese menu in his hand and his hair was perfect – Darryl that is.
Erica, count me in…
Jeter SS
Damon LF
Tex 1B
Arod 3B
Matusi DH
Posada C
Cano 2B
Swisher RF
Cabrera CF
Kennedy’d rehab… making progress.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200…..es_kennedy
========================
Good to hear.
game thread up
I havent had a second to breathe at work today ( I guess this is my fault for taking off yesterday?), but I am taking a 2 minute “time out” to play.
Jete SS
Damon LF
Tex 1B
Alex 3B
Matsui DH
Jorge C
Cano 2B
Melky CF
Hinske RF
Per Pete’s original question I think the answer is to create some sort of micro-payment system that funnels money back to the organization which provided the original source material. In other words if I run a blog that receives money from advertisers who pay for space on my site and I quote or link to work that Pete did for LoHud.com some fractional amount of advertising money generated by my story (the secondary work) should go to LoHud (the primary source).
In order to make that work though I would think we’d need some sort of system and standards to ensure things work properly (at least most of the time).
Google will figure it out. Resistance is futile.
In any case, Pete is doing a great service to professional sports writers and bloggers alike by showing the world what a proper team-centric blog looks like.
lol – the Ransom is out of options monster just refuses to stop rearing its ugly head.
rival GM: “Hey, did you see that? We can get Cody Ransom for virtually nothing! What a steal. How often can you get a career .242 minor league hitter for peanuts?”
I know he isn’t the best of players, but you have to be considerate of these people. It would be changing his life style, maybe even giving him a huge demotion. Yes, it would be beneficial for the team, but you have to be considerate.
Plus, this is the team that kept Angel Berroa sitting on the bench for a full month before designating him for assignment. Plus this is the team who went roughly three weeks without using a reliever (Melancon).
Pete, do a Kindle deal. I would pay $5/month or $10/month for your content.
CB – not to change the topic, but you asked me last night about Bucholz. I didn’t get a chance to get back to you.
In a nutshell, when he throws a fastball it (1) misses the plate, or (2) drifts over the middle and gets hammered. He doesn’t get hurt with his curve and changeup, but his fast ball is getting killed.
The Red Sox insist on fastball primacy and fastball command. Bucholz tries to please, gets creamed, gets despondent, and loses focus. I’m sure he’d rather feature his secondary stuff (which can be very good).
I had hoped he’d get traded while his value was still high. Unlike the young Jon Lester, who battled (even while weakened by cancer), Bucholz just seems to disintegrate …. and with good reason …. sometimes, it seems as though EVERY fastball is creamed.
If he and/or Smoltz are effective against the Yankees this week, it will be a very plaesnt surprise.
According to the original article that spurred this topic from the Washington Post, The Death of Journalism (Gawker Edition) By Ian Shapira, Sunday, August 2, 2009
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....02476.html)
One thing to be done is to “amend the copyright law so that it restores “unfair competition rights” — which once gave [newspapers] the power to sue rivals if our stories were being pirated. That change would give news organizations rights that they could enforce in court if “parasitic” free-rider Web sites (the heavy excerpters) refused to bargain with them for a fee or a contract…media outlets could seek an order requiring the free-rider to postpone its commercial use or even hand over some advertising revenue linked to the free-riding.”
Sorry to bring up the Red Sox, but it completely baffles me how Ortiz has not addressed the media yet. I absolutely would not be surprised if Francona sits Ortiz for the majority of the upcoming series. I’m sorry, but no athlete would get away with this in New York.
In my opinion the question is really about how much money people are willing to pay for the content provided. For example lets say Pete makes on average 3 posts a day at 50 words per post. How much is someone willing to spend on 150 words of news. If they were to charge 5 or 10 bucks a month I would expect detailed analysis, essays, I want to know what each player is doing right this minute and what they had for breakfast. But for a 150 words idk how much you could charge, 3 cents? I mean a newspaper is only 75 cents per day.
Pete,
I don’t know if you remember last year when I asked you if your were offended with some people, pasting word for word your stuff on there “Yankees Blogs” or even on some web sites. I did not get a response then, I think those people should not be allowed to continue.
On any of the 3 blogs that Mike, David, and I operate we do not adverstise or charge we just write our little dumb opinions.
I think your work is so great we would all pay a monthly subscrition to read your stuff. ITS better than 99% of the sites.
We thank you for keeping it real.
Yo Pete-
This is probably a stupid thing to say, but I would be willing to pay an annual subscription fee for your blog or newspaper. Just like print. That’s probably where internet content is heading.
Keep up the great work.
-Ed
The links from reputible web sites that fairly use your content and include attribution far outweighs anyone who is stealing your content.
That being said, I think the newspaper industry took too long to figure the web out. And the shills at the AP are only digging the hole deeper with their inane ideas.
The die is cast Pete. I predict within the next 2 years you will be a free agent writer, creating content for multiple outlets (online and offline).
Funny (but true) story:
I was blog-surfing a few days ago and came across an article of Pete’s I had just read here – WORD FOR WORD. I thought I was having deja vu..
Looked for a credit or a heads-up at least. Took me a while, but I found a realllly small reference that said “from PeteAbe”. No quotes, no link. I am sure Pete’s words were being passed off as that random blogger’s.
Argh! I can’t remember where I saw it though…
Going to go through my PC history and see if I can come up with a name…
Pete Abe is the best baseball reporter out there.
This does not apply to him…
but the answer to assuring baseball coverage at the local level is clear…
Provide more news that people want to read about…
More negative stories about A-Rod’s personal life.
More stories about the Yankees spending too much money.
More stories about what a clean organization the Boston Red Sox are.
More Stories about George Mitchell and his ability to provide an unbiased but very expensive report about steroids and how the Yankee star players are users but RedSox are Clark Kent Klean!
More Stories on why the commission of Steroid-ball always operates in the best interest of the game.
Pete, v. interesting post, ideas I’ve struggled with- I used to write (freelance) tiny pieces on the Yanks for a free NY weekly paper- the word count/limit was literally 350 words per piece – in which I’d offer my “humorous” take (for what that’s worth) on whatever was up in Yanks news that week. Obv’ly the events & details I commented on/retold were gleaned from other NY (occasionally ESPN/SI) beat writers’ accounts, esp details about behind-the-scenes clubhouse stuff (which of c. are the most interesting). I always wondered how kosher this was, even though my editors at the paper never had a problem with it – due to the word count in print (& before the Internet was such a given), there was no way to give citations/hyperlinks to the sources of these details. I esp wondered about the legitimacy of using actual quotes from players, managers, etc. that I’d only read in other publications’ articles (as of c. I wasn’t in the clubhouse getting them myself). Nowadays, I could continue doing this kind of writing in a blog, with appropriate hyperlinks, but it still seems like a bit of a gray territory. I worry (as you suggest) that proper, paid beat writers will be gradually eliminated by local papers, esp the smaller ones.
You can’t give it away for free online and have people pay for it in print. This is an old model of gaining market share ala the late 90’s. The industry needs to look at what WSJ.com is doing and mimic it, regarding full blown articles. As it stands, there is not a single newspaper you can’t read for free online.
Maybe look at the MLB, you get the scores for free, but you can’t watch it for free.
Regardless, worry about tiny sites that have some google ads on them, there is no money being made there.
And can you please kill the ad pop up when hitting the comment link?
The changes will keep on coming. When newspapers drop the beat guy, the club loses a major PR advantage as many beat guys are in the club’s pockets. Many papers are just generic info. allready. I just hope the Times sticks so good writing doesn’t die.
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