Two More Publishers Talk About Blocking Google

MediaNews Group, A.H. Belo will erect pay walls

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By Doug Caverly

A couple of major publishers are siding with (or at least edging towards) Rupert Murdoch in the News Corp./Google content dispute.  MediaNews Group and A.H. Belo execs have said that they’re interested in keeping Google away from parts of their sites.

Let’s talk about MediaNews Group first.  It operates 54 daily newspapers with a combined daily circulation of 2.4 million.  Corresponding websites are part of the mix, as are a TV station and some radio stations.

As for the organization’s take on blocking Google, CEO Dean Singleton told Greg Bensinger and Brian Womack that some pay walls are going up next year, and “[t]he things that go behind pay walls, we will not let Google search to, but the things that are outside the pay wall we probably will, because we want the traffic.”

Then there’s A.H. Belo to consider.  It owns and operates four papers and 12 sites, and is weighing a similar approach.  Only Executive Vice President James Moroney seemed less than interested in search traffic, saying, “It’s akin to a person who drops into town, buys one copy of your newspaper and leaves town again and yet you spend a whole bunch of time building your business around that type of customer.”

The idea of keeping Google away from content appears to be gaining a bit of momentum, then, and with some additional prodding from Microsoft, Rupert Murdoch’s idea could go further than critics first expected.

Related Articles:

> Is The Murdoch Bing Deal Really Just About The Wall Street Journal?

> Murdoch On Blocking Search Engines: ”I Think We Will”

> Google Okay With Blocking News Corp.

leon
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