“The News Corp arrangement would allow headlines from properties in its Dow Jones unit… to appear in the Facebook news section, linking to the publications’ sites. For nonsubscribers, links to Journal stories that are behind the site’s paywall would trigger a prompt for the reader to sign up.”
Facebook is apparently paying publishers for the right to link to their stuff. Is that a good thing? Of course, it’s good for publishers to get revenue from quality reporting. But since when do you have to pay to link to content? Why would Facebook suddenly do that? One theory is they’re simply paying for reputation. They want the media to think better of them and trying to undo the damage they’ve done to journalism’s business model is one way to do that. But the alternative is scarier. If paying to link became the norm, Facebook is one of the few organizations well-heeled enough (and with enough bargaining power) to pull it off. The blogger, the independent newsletter writer, the small-time magazine — none of them can afford to pay to link to The Wall Street Journal.
I’d love to see Facebook paying news organizations for syndication rights to the content itself. But there’s a reason we don’t require payment to link (in the U.S. at least). It’d be bad for the internet, good for Facebook, and it’s unlikely to solve journalism’s business model problem.
beyond the times 