AP Going With Attributor to Track its Content

One of the toughest jobs for one of the oldest "distributed content" companies -- especially in the digital age -- is to track where the stuff it produces ends up.

Now The Associated Press is going with "fingerprinting technology" from a company named Attributor (which I wrote about for Jack Myers Media Business Report last week). Attributor ingests text (and will later ingest images, video and sound, its execs says) and compares the material, or pieces of it, to the billions of website and pages it constantly scans on the Internet to see if folks are using anything without authorization.

Attributor then allows the AP (or other clients) to send a message to the site that's picked up the content, requesting that it be, say, taken down, or used appropriately, that revenue be shared -- various combinations and permutations.

There had been hint that AP was going to go with Attributor, which is still in what Attributor is calling private Beta. Attributor put out a press release last night:

Attributor Is Tapped by The Associated Press to Track Use of AP Content Across the Internet



Attributor to identify unauthorized use of AP text content.



Redwood City, Calif. – May 31, 2007 – Attributor Corporation announced today it will provide web-wide monitoring and analysis of the online use of Associated Press content.



Attributor technology will be used to fingerprint AP copy and to identify and document its display wherever it appears across the Internet. The arrangement with Attributor is part of a larger strategic initiative at AP to safeguard intellectual property rights to its content and to enable new licensing and distribution models.



“Our agreement with Attributor will enable AP to safeguard its investment in creating and distributing news reports, while assuring licensees that unauthorized use will not diminish the value of their licenses,” said AP General Counsel Srinandan Kasi. “These services are part of the next-generation licensing and enforcement services we plan to provide to our global network of members and subscribers.”



“Attributor aims to bring transparency and accountability to the online content economy. As one of the largest producers and distributors of online content, AP is a perfect first implementation for our highly scalable platform,” said Attributor CEO Jim Brock. “In addition to helping publishers of all kinds protect the value of content assets for authorized licensees, we will also help them capture additional editorial and advertising value.”



The Attributor platform will continuously monitor billions of pages on the Internet and perform comparison analysis against AP content to provide a customized view of content usage, including a context sensitive understanding of compliance with applicable licensing and legal requirements. The arrangement will initially cover AP text, which represents one of the largest daily sources of original content in the world. AP content in other media formats will also be tested with Attributor’s comparison technology.



Attributor's services also will be used with organizations that exchange or distribute editorial content or information through AP. Attributor and AP also intend to explore the development and distribution of potential editorial, licensing and advertising applications based on the Attributor platform and AP’s content distribution systems.

Why is Nielsen Really Doing Away With Pageview?

OK, Nielsen is doing away with the pageview because of all the AJAX and Flash and RSS and everything else that lets users aggregate or interact with content without generating a page for that content producer's Web site.

Is the ad industry happy about this? I don't konw, but I will check. I do know that advertisers, or at least media buyers a) tend to be a little behind in getting technology and b) have relied on audited and machine-counted ad numbers in the digital realm, unlike the print and broadcast realm where they buy assertions based on surveys and statistical modeling and suppositions.

If Nielsen gives us some sort of metric for "engagement" such as repeat visits or time spent on site, that's more vague (and easier to spin as a positive) than the pageview metric. Publishers have been arguing this for years, and it's interesting that Nielsen is going along.

True, pageviews are easy to game - you can jack up your pageviews without serving more real content. Then, again, if someone's looking and sees and ad, they've seen the ad.

On Jarvis' Distributed World

I thought BuzzMachine's Jeff Jarvis was going to do the "every page is the homepage" spiel – something that's been around for years. Instead he wrote about how the concept of the website as a destination is essentially over – that it's now about distributed content, in any number of feeds and combinations among different media. Perhaps it all appears on one page, assembled by the publisher/provider OR the user.

Seems like Jeff's talking about what could be a next generation of NetVibes or PageFlakes. Or perhaps a publisher-controlled version, such as ItsMyNews, which comes pre-loaded with whatever content strain the publisher wants, and then allows user control (and whose creators claim was around before NetVibes).

There's bound to be a battle here, though, among publisher/providers' desire to control and the perfect universe where we can assemble all we want from anywhere, at any time. I'm not calling for regulation – far from it – but there are not going to be true feed standards for awhile, if ever. Yes, .xml is easy and can be used universally, but the different flavors of it, even of RSS, are not adopted by all. In other words, some portion of what you want won't be available to assemble on your perfect page. Just as you can't get every feature on any single cell phone or cellular network, or every show or channel on any cable TV or satellite service.

So, I predict we're back at a cable TV model, albeit on steroids. Instead of getting the channels you want – in this case the content you want, which is a glorious salad of of video, audio, text, scrolls, maps, visuals, whatever – you get the content that's available for whatever aggregation tool you're using. And, inevitably, those whose desired consumption isn't part of the fatter or taller parts of the long tail will tend to get left out – as those who have particular interests now get left out of any given cable service (or aggregator, for that matter). Yes, you can cobble together all your podcasts and audio feeds, and get a scraper and and and – but who has the time, let alone the acumen, for that?

Jarvis said he was blowing our minds with these descriptions of the ultimate future – and asked how long it would be to come. Here's a further mind-blow, when the device we use is 1. a flexible piece of paper-like substance, that you can fold and put in your pocket and gets wireless reception from anywhere and you can type on, etc etc. 2. a projection from a pen like the photos of the supposed prototype that's made the rounds. A few pens in your pocket, one projects a keyboard, another a "screen" on a wall, and voila. 3. eyeglasses and ear plugs and gloves, so you're in a virtual environment even as you move through the real world 4. a biochip implant that obviates the need for any external device or screen, let alone the need to learn any computer commands. The computer learns you.

The Internet Has Taken Over

From outside a thrift store in Greenport, Long Island, on Memorial Day weekend.

In Video, Newspapers Will Win

"In the online video syndication space, the largest video owners will not be the broadcasters. It's going to be the newspapers." That prediction from Critical Mention CEO Sean Morgan at this morning's NYMIEG breakfast (full disclosure: I'll be moderating a breakfast in June on career change in media for NYMIEG). Morgan mentioned how a local TV station in San Jose produces, maybe, five or six videos a day, but the San Jose Mercury newspaper produces 60.

"When we see these newspapers turn the corner by adopting new technologies that allow them to put a braodcast voice on their text news, the market is going to erupt."

Takes the "get ready for a video ad explosion led by the the NY Times" idea a big step further. And quite a prediction from a guy whose bread and butter today is from the broadcast affiliates -- putting their conent up behind a paid wall that others pay to access, search (via closed captioning), tag, organize, import, etc. (It's basically a video clip and syndication service much like the older one that employs people watching hours of video and transcribing it, then shipping it around the country).

Morgan also took the wraps off a free version of Critical Mention called Clip Syndicate that he said will offer clips for free that the stations (and others?) want to distribute without the wall in front if it. It won't, he said, eat Critical Mention's lunch. He made an analogy to Google vs. LexisNexis. Nexis, he noted after the event, has more sophisticated search and manipulation and organization tools.

More on Business for Journalists

I wrote over on Rebuilding Media and here about WSJ.com's Bill Grueskin's (and my) urgings that editors understand the business imperatives of digital media. An editor, and all working in these kinds of media, need to be omnivorously interested -- in everything and anything that touches on what we do, from the technology to the financials and the deals. Managing, people, focus, etc, all that goes with it, as well -- that's always been good business.

Editors no longer have the luxury of being only, say, in magazines, or newspapers, or even "print" or "TV guys." Poor would be the mechanic who knew only how to work on a Model T. Sure, some people are better at one medium than the others. But just as writers have for 25 years I'm aware of been told to learn how to shoot at least a basic photo to illustrate a story, so, too, should all digital content producers know something of the basics of the various ways to put material up on the Web, or in other digital formats. It all adds up to a sh--load to learn, but you have to be omnivorous. For me, that spells survival, perhaps prosperity.

This week, along comes "Independent Publisher" Mac Slocum, whom I know of from Poynter, nicely elucidating and expanding on Grueskin's business imperatives for the digital journalist. See what he has to say here.

Mirror Award Finalists Announced

First ever media Mirror awards for media about media. mediabistro.com's up for one (yes, I submitted it), as are names you'd expect: Auletta, Carr, Kurtz, Andersen. No Wolff, though.

Here's the release:

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

S.I. NEWHOUSE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC COMMUNICATIONS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Wendy S. Loughlin

Monday, May 21, 2007 Phone: (315) 443-2785

wsloughl@syr.edu

Finalists announced in Mirror Awards competition

Awards honoring excellence in media industry reporting to be presented June 14

Twenty-three finalists have been announced in seven categories in the first ever Mirror Awards competition honoring excellence in media industry reporting. The competition drew 140 entries. The media’s top writers, readers and leaders will gather June 14 at 11:45 a.m. at W New York (541 Lexington Ave., New York City) to fete the winners.

Finalists include:

INDIVIDUAL AWARDS

Best Single Article

• “Al Jazeera’s Global Mission,” Linda Tischler, Fast Company
• “Blogs to Riches,” Clive Thompson, New York Magazine
• “The Day the News Left Town,” Katherine Seelye, The New York Times
• “Google’s China Problem (And China’s Google Problem),” Clive Thompson, The New York Times Magazine
• “Dividing Lines: Why Book Industry Sees the World Split Still by Race,” Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, The Wall Street Journal

Best Commentary

• “The Imperial City,” Kurt Andersen, New York Magazine
• “The Media Equation,” David Carr, The New York Times
• “Media Misfires,” Howard Kurtz, The Washington Post

—more—

Mirror Awards Finalists—2

Best Coverage of Breaking Industry News

• “Why Journalists Risk Their Lives to Cover Iraq,” John M. Higgins and Allison Romano, Broadcasting & Cable
• “Critics Question Reporter’s Airing of Personal Views,” David Folkenflik, National Public Radio
• “A Local Newspaper Endures a Story Backlash,” Dean Miller, Neiman Reports

Best Profile

• “Life With Brian,” Rachel Smolkin, American Journalism Review
• “Mad as Hell: Lou Dobbs’s Populist Crusade,” Ken Auletta, The New Yorker
• “A Guy Named Craig,” Philip Weiss, New York Magazine

Best Subject-Related Series

• “Among the Audience: A Survey of New Media,” Andreas Kluth, The Economist
• “Mixing, Matching and Multi-Media,” Joe Strupp, Editor & Publisher
• “Viacom Coverage,” Brooks Barnes and Matthew Karnitschnig, The Wall Street Journal

EDITORS OR TEAMS OF WRITERS

Excellence in Media Information Services

• Benton’s Communication-related Headlines, Benton Foundation
• Mediabistro.com
• HealthNewsReview.org, University of Minnesota School of Journalism & Mass Communications

Overall Excellence

• Three issues of American Journalism Review
• “Reliable Sources - Turning a Critical Lens on the Media 2006,” CNN
• “America’s Investigative Reports,” Thirteen/WNET New York

The Mirror Awards, established by Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, are the first of their kind. Meredith Vieira, co-anchor of NBC’s morning news program “Today,” will serve as MC of the awards luncheon. Peter Bart, editor-in-chief of Variety, will receive the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award.

Luncheon committee co-chairs for the event include Rob Light, partner, Creative Artists; Judy McGrath, chairman and CEO, MTV Networks; Ron Meyer, president and COO, Universal Studios; Aaron Sorkin, writer; and Jeff Zucker, president and CEO, NBC Universal.

—more—

Mirror Awards Finalists—3

For more information about the Mirror Awards or to reserve a table at the June 14 luncheon, see mirrorawards.syr.edu or contact Catherine Gay Communications at (212) 501-7231 or mirror@cgcomgroup.com.

For press information, contact Wendy Loughlin at (315) 443-2785 or wsloughl@syr.edu.