My friend Dylan also contributed to the discussion and I left a largish comment on his post during lunch, which was consequently munged into an unreadable wall of text So I decided to post my reply here…

Firstly, in my defense, I left Stuff because of it’s content. Now the stories I want to read are aggregated with Google News. I still visit Stuffs site regularly to read the stories I want.

I would also argue that Jobs.org.nz (and by extention Google News, digg, techmeme and any other aggregator) are not stealing content. They’re using a headline and a small excerpt of the post (permitted under copyright “fair dealing”), and giving a perma-link to the content hosted on his blog. If they were using his entire post as content, referenced or not, I’d understand his anger and would agree that was “stealing content” because that would be copyright infringement and plagiarism.

Jobs.org.nz is obviously a questionable looking site, and I’m not saying that Lance is beyond his rights to ask his feed to be removed. I probably would as well – I wouldn’t want to be associated with that site as it has potential to damage your brand.

Dylan said:

Google News takes traffic away from publishers by “stealing” and republishing content within a news aggregation site where the original publisher has no opportunity to make revenue from ad sales.

I don’t understand how he came to this conclusion. Google uses a headline and sometimes a 20 character excerpt. If you want to read the story you have to link out to the publishers site (except for AP content which Google pays for syndication).

Dylan Said:

In conclusion I’d argue that Google News takes traffic and eye balls away from the publisher…thus reducing their revenues. If I were a publisher I’d be nervous.

I would agree that Google News takes eyeballs away from publishers front pages, but that’s simply because Google do a better job at providing a portal for content the user wants to see.

And of course publishers are nervous. So were the other industries when they realised that they had to change.

We’re entering a stage in our society where consumers want to pick and choose what they consume. The music industry is realising that some people don’t want to pay for an album for a few good songs (iTunes, other digital services). The television industry is realising some don’t want want to watch the endless river of shitty reality TV shows to get to the good stuff (TVNZ on demand, Hulu). The print industry must realise that some won’t want to wade through their quagmire of crap to get to the stories which are important to them.

This morning, Keith delivers a severe fisking to the Greens and other cheese-mongers with the morning milk.

Trumping the Herald’s “28% price rise”, Jeanette Fitzsimons has taken whinge-mongering to new heights with her claim that there has been 60% rise in the price of milk (and that Fonterra and the supermarkets are to blame).

It’s not true. It’s really, really not true.

According to StatsNZ’s Food Price Index, the average price of 2 litres of milk in April 2008 was $3.22. The price in April 07 was $2.62. That gets us to 28% — let’s chalk that other 32% up to rounding error, eh? But how about we look over the slightly longer term?

2008: $3.22
2007: $2.62
2006: $3.15
2005: $3.12
2004: $2.96

Even ignoring the fact that Fitzsimons pulled the 60% figure out of her compost heap, her claim is still fundamentally bullshit. If we choose *any* point of comparison other than 2007, the current price of milk is completely and utterly un-goddamn-remarkable.

There needs to be more of this kind of fact checking to keep our politicians honest. Unfortunately, this kind of analysis frequently gets swept under the rug and doesn’t get to the people that were influenced, further adding to the axiom “A lie can run around the world before the truth gets it’s boots on”.

This is the work the mainstream media should be doing. This is the job of a journalist or a reporter to fact check information before they regurgitate party press releases to the people in extenso, not the job of a blogger with the reach of a small-town rag.