World Editors Want Search Engines To Pay More For Content

From The Inquirer, World Editors Want Search Engines To Pay More For Content. An excerpt:

Newspaper executives and editors gathered in India from around the world heard calls to seek more payment for their content on the Internet

as they decried their industry’s sharply falling advertising revenues.

“This is a critical moment in our industry. ... If we don’t dare to take these first steps, no one else will,” Andreas Wiele, board member and president of BILD Division and Magazines Axel Springer AG Germany, said Tuesday.

He also said newspapers must demand of search engines “fair share, fair search,” meaning that content providers should be compensated even for very short strings of content and that the search results should not be manipulated unfairly against the original content providers.

In North America, PriceWaterhouse Coopers has predicted that by 2013, combined print and digital revenues would be less than print-only advertising revenues in 2008, said Timothy Balding, joint chief executive officer of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-Ifra), which organized the three-day conference that ends on Thursday.

“One thing is sure, unless we protect and commercially exploit our high-value content, the journalistic standards so important to our readers and to society will no longer be financially viable,” he said in his world newspaper trends report.