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Save Your Newspaper: Don't Let Anyone Cancel
Debunking the AP's Aggregation Aggravation
Associated Press: Shut Up, Internet
"Obama bin Laden" Error Hits Yahoo's Homepage

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krismry
04/20/09

In reply to Save Your Newspaper: Don't Let Anyone Cancel
I just paid 52 usa american dollars in a sub for my local paper for 16 weeks. The paper does no copy editing or proof reading and hires children to write the news, but they aren't sure what news is, so they write down whatever. Some of them are cute, but they can barely spell. I could say more, but I am too nice. The AP once gave me a check for a dollar for some story I wrote, which I still have. The check,not the story. Let's not hear about the word 'cheap' from the AP.
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Uncle_Billy_Slumming
04/20/09

In reply to Save Your Newspaper: Don't Let Anyone Cancel
Isn't this a Seinfeld episode?

When you try to cancel they should first have a beautiful person try to convince you to stay, and then if that doesn't work, they send you the muscley person.
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Kid Twist
04/20/09

In reply to Save Your Newspaper: Don't Let Anyone Cancel
Brokeback Newspaper: I wish I knew how to quit you.
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misslinda
04/20/09

@Kid Twist: Bah! Too funny for a Monday morning!
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SaraRueful
04/20/09

In reply to Save Your Newspaper: Don't Let Anyone Cancel
The Ashton Kutcher of newspapers.
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ChillbearLatrigue
04/20/09

@SaraRueful: Doesn't that distinction belong to USA Today?
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SaraRueful
04/20/09

@ChillbearLatrigue: Hah -- depends on definition, I guess. I was referring to how Kutcher's followers on Twitter aren't allowed to quit following him.
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SarahHeartburn
04/20/09

In reply to Save Your Newspaper: Don't Let Anyone Cancel
They've learned from phone and internet companies. Try to cancel service on anything. I pay 60€ a year for a yearly deposit on an internet company I dumped 4 years ago, because I can't get them on the phone (it costs 60 cents a minute, and I've spent about 40€ on their non toll free number on hold)and the fax number to send a letter is always busy. I gave up.
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Almostbanned
04/20/09

@SarahHeartburn: Call your credit card/bank and tell them to decline the charges going forward.

I had a really similar situation with an internet service and the only way I could kill it was to ultimately change the debit card number that they were sending their recurring charges to.
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misslinda
04/20/09

@Almostbanned [jezebel took away my star]: That is only a temporary solution, banks will only do that for I think 6 months. But by that time all newspaper will be out of business, so problem solved!
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Uncle_Billy_Slumming
04/20/09

In reply to Save Your Newspaper: Don't Let Anyone Cancel
Oh it doesn't matter anyway. Just stop paying all these bills and don't worry about it. We're heading for a major change in the way all business is done in this country, and it will almost certainly involve a debt jubilee. Make plans to feed, house, educate, and care for medical needs and then pull the plug.

I guess we'll have to look at some sort of global solution at the same time because if we default on internal debt, we'll be defaulting on external debt as well. Instead of war, it would be nice to have a plan.
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blogissuchanuglyword
04/09/09

In reply to Debunking the AP's Aggregation Aggravation
This has a ton of flaws in it. First, it doesnt account at all for overlap. I read the Times everyday, because I like. Do I sometimes click a link on a blog or google something that directs me to the Times website, yes, but those page views would have happened without assistance. Also, you've got websites where you can esentially read a Times story without ever actually going to their website. Have you heard of Gawker.com? You can go, read the gist of the article, and never bother to click through to the Times, never affecting their page views and having their writers work for free. I guess the Times could reference Gossip Girl in more of their news stories, but, it might be a good idea to have a few people out there still actually reporting.
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GilroyBrizo
04/09/09

In reply to Debunking the AP's Aggregation Aggravation
dont WSJ, CNN, and NYT all pay the AP for its content? I don't think they're the ones the AP is complaining about. In fact, I bet any offsite links those 3 do have, they actually have business agreements with whoever they link to.

Why even bother trying to lump them in with Google News which just links whatever it feels like?
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Owen Thomas
04/09/09

@GilroyBrizo: Actually, Dow Jones, the publisher of the WSJ, already runs a rival newswire, and CNN is planning one of its own that it's pitching directly to the AP's newspaper customers. In any event, can you explain to me what a licensing agreement to run complete articles has to do with the right anyone has under the fair-use doctrine to quote from news stories?
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MisterHippity
04/08/09

In reply to Debunking the AP's Aggregation Aggravation
Simply quoting Google and Techmeme execs saying that this is bullshit does not "debunk" the AP's stance, as the title of this piece claims. Google and Techmeme aggregate news, so they are directly threatened by this.

Looking to representatives of those two companies for the final word on this subject is like looking to Halliburton for the final word on whether the Iraq war is justified.
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92BuickLeSabre
04/08/09

@MisterHippity: Well, who else would you expect KBR to tell you to listen to?
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UmaGaleo
04/08/09

In reply to Debunking the AP's Aggregation Aggravation
But the chart supports the newspapers' central complaint: Papers' sites would still get traffic without search engines. But those search engines' news sites wouldn't get any traffic without the papers. Yet that dependency is not reflected in revenues.
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Owen Thomas
04/09/09

@UmaGaleo: You live in a fascinating world where newspapers are the only media and newspaper-employed journalists are the only people capable of reporting. Is it pretty there?
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miss_msry
04/07/09

In reply to Associated Press: Shut Up, Internet
As a former employee of this man I can only say: Not dead yet?

He is pure evil.
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If_I_Had_a_Poodle
04/07/09

In reply to Associated Press: Shut Up, Internet
that dean singleton speaks for the AP pretty much says it all, game over.

[en.wikipedia.org]

he is known for buying and then strip mining papers; gutting them from the inside and keeping the cash while killing the content -- 10 years before the internet came.

if this is who the industry has chosen to represent itself, it deserves to die

newspapers are dead. long live journalism.
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ian spiegelman
04/06/09

In reply to Associated Press: Shut Up, Internet
Perhaps they simply don't want the likes of Nick Denton and his giant oblong head and outsized, woman-fearing ego to use their content free of charge to make him even richer while he misrepresents his full-time employees as contract workers and rips off the state and the Fed on taxes and uses the proceeds to party like some 80's club kid and pays the expenses on a huge lifeless Soho apartment?

Just a thought.
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krismry
04/06/09

@ian spiegelman: Hey Ian, that's a good point. Some apparent full timers represented as independent contractors planned to do a class action lawsuit against the Portland Oregonian newspaper a while back. I don't know what happened next. But this seems like standard procedure for the entire industry, don't pay writers anything unless you're forced.
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Tremonius
04/06/09

In reply to Associated Press: Shut Up, Internet
By golly, I've seen this movie before. It happened right here in River City!

There was this operating system called UNIX. Everybody ran on it, and lots liked it, then not so much of either. And so the operation stuck with the license became - what ese? - a patent troll. They tried to survive the same as any maggot by sucking up the blood of more successful companies which may or may not have infringed upon their precious OS, such as Linux. Now I think the Santa Cruz Operation is no more.

The difference, and it's a huge one, is that aggregators truly are living off the MSM. AP ain't just trolling.
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Danilo Campos
04/06/09

In reply to Associated Press: Shut Up, Internet
I don't even know where to start.

Towering incompetence.

Let's leave it at that.
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