Publishers Face Another Existential Threat Beyond Their Own Management Decisions
March 7, 2023
Existential threat, existential threat. I hear that from many executives. The principal existential threat is a company’s own management decisions. Short-term, context-free, and uninformed deciders miss the boat, the train, and the bus to organic revenue growth. If I read a news story, I learn about another senior executive playing fast and loose with rules, regulations, and ethical guidelines.
Today I read the clickbait infused headline: “Big Media Is Gearing Up for Battle with Google and Microsoft over AI Chatbots Using Their Articles for Training: We Are Actively Considering Our Options.” (The headline seems to be pandering to the Google, does it not?)
What is an existential threat? Here a whack at a definition by Dictionary.com, a super duper source:
An existential threat is a threat to something’s very existence—when the continued being of something is at stake or in danger. It is used to describe threats to actual living things as well to nonliving thing things, such as a country or an ideology.
I think the phrase has been extended to cover an action or process which could erode the revenues of a publisher.
The write up cited is, of course, behind a paywall. No existential threat for Business Insider … yet. I learned:
It’s a moment some publishers consider the most disruptive change they’ve seen to their industry since the dawn of the internet — and the threat is no less than existential. The worry is that if people can get thorough answers to their questions through these bots, they won’t need to visit content sites anymore, undermining media’s entire revenue model, which has already been battered by digital upheaval.
But here’s the paragraph that caught my attention. Remember, that Rupert Murdoch and Fox News are in the midst of a conversation about dissemination of knowingly incorrect information. Remember the New York Times is discussing in a positive manner its coverage of some individuals’ efforts to shift from male to female and other possible combinations. Yep, Rupert and the Gray Lady.
“AI is a new frontier with great opportunity, but it can’t replace the trust, independence, and integrity of quality journalism,” said Danielle Coffey, EVP and general counsel of the News/Media Alliance, a publisher trade organization whose members include The New York Times and Wall Street Journal publisher News Corp. “Without compensation, we lose the humanity that journalists bring to telling a story.”
The issue was the loss of advertising revenue. Nope, that money is not coming back. Now the issue is loss of a reason to buy a subscription to “real news” publications. Nope, those readers are unlikely to come back.
Why? How about convenience?
I subscribe to dead tree newspapers. If the paper edition arrives, it could be torn, wet, or folded incorrectly because maintenance of the paper feed rollers is just an annoyance when someone wants to get a coffee.
What’s the fix? The desired fix is the termination with extreme prejudice of the evil Googzilla and its fellow travellers: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and probably a few others on publishers’ dart boards.
A few observations:
- AI is not something new. Publishers have, as far as I know, been mostly on the sidelines in the AI refinement efforts over the last 50 years. Yes, that’s a half a century.
- The publishers want money. The “content” produced is simply a worm on a fish hook. Existential threat to revenue, yes. Death of publishers? Meh.
- The costs of litigation with an outfit like Google are likely to make the CFOs of the publishing companies going after Googzilla and its fellow travellers unhappy. Why? The EU and the US government have not had a stellar track record of getting these digital outfits to return phone calls, let alone play by the rules.
- Which outfits can pay the legal fees longer: Google and Microsoft or a group of publishers who seem to want Google traffic and whatever ad revenue can be had.
Net net: How about less existential threat talk and more use of plain English like “We want cash for content use”? I would ask why the publishers and their trade associations have not been in the vanguard of AI development. The focus seems to be on replacing humanoids with software to reduce costs. Søren Kierkegaard would be amused in my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, March 7, 2023
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