Most of what Scott Karp has been posting lately seem to be thinly veiled ads for a new software package he's trying to sell to news organizations.  I don't have a problem with that but it makes it hard to criticize him because I know he's tied his livelihood to his point of view. 

The problem is, I think that point of view is dangerously misguided.  A good example of this is his most recent post entitled "Drudge Report: News Site That Sends Readers Away With Links Has Highest Engagement" where he says...

There are two main reasons why news sites are reluctant to send readers away by linking to third-party content. First, you shouldn’t send people away or else they won’t come back to your site. Second, a page with links that sends people away has low engagement, which doesn’t serve advertisers well.

But if you actually look at the data, both of these assumptions are completely wrong.

Drudge isn't what I would call a "News Site" in that it doesn't produce original material.  It's an aggregator that hunts down valuable links and presents them to it's reading audience.  So it's primary goal is to "send people away" and it's good at that. 

But Mr. Karp is making a huge leap when he then tries to apply that rule to news sites. 

A site like the New York Times produces it's own content and in doing so is competing with other sources for that information.  So to send people away means to send them to their competitors because their business model is completely different from that of a site like Drudge.  They sell their knowledge and quality writing while Drudge sells his ability to find other people's knowledge and quality writing. 

These are two completely different businesses with two completely different skill sets.

Essentially Mr. Karp is comparing an Apple to an Orange and saying the Orange should be eliminated because more people like Apples.  The contention is ridiculous on it's face.

Again, apologies to Mr. Karp who is betting his business on the strategy of turning news organizations into aggregators but it just makes no sense.  People like having multiple view points to choose from and it's just insane to suggest a site like the New York Times would stop producing original content and just provide a link to someone else instead. 

That's just not what they do. 

His argument does make one important point and that is the value of the aggregator.  As information gets more and more overwhelming we're going to see quality aggregators of that information become more and more valuable. 

But that fact doesn't mean that everyone should or even could become an aggregator. 

Addendum: Mr. Karp has been cagey about all the details of his startup so anything said above is my impression of what it is based on my very limited knowledge.  I could be completely off base on how his startup works.

2nd Addendum: A couple of e-mails encouraged me to explain myself a little further on one point.  I said I thought Mr. Karp’s philosophy is “dangerously misguided” but I didn’t really explain why I thought that was the case. 

Essentially, if I understand Mr. Karp’s philosophy right, he’s trying to encourage media outlets to not write on topics that have already been written.  This is a variation of his “Content Conservation Movement” idea from a while back. 

The problem with this is that writers, by their human nature, are (a) not as objective as they think they are and (b) not as thorough as they think they are.  I know I often have to read several news stories to get the whole picture on a given issue because writers choose to leave things out.  In a world where everyone is aggregating to one or even just a few content sources you lose those multiple voices and in doing so you start to lose the whole picture.  Mr. Karp’s best case scenario is one in which people are flat out denied the clearest picture because there aren’t enough content sources to provide it.

That is something I consider dangerous.

A quick follow-up on this post I made a couple days ago.  An Apple exec is now claiming (days later) that it was NBC and not Apple that caved on the issues that were keeping NBC/Universal shows off iTunes. 

This has been picked up by several sites because it was what the anti-corporate folks and the Apple folks wanted to believe all along.  This is from Techdirt when the initial announcement was made...

NBC Universal keeps realizing after the fact that making it more difficult to find your shows is never a winning strategy. So, almost exactly one year after refusing to re-sign Apple's iTunes contract, claiming that it wanted to charge higher prices, it appears that NBC has realized that it needs Apple and iTunes more than Apple needs NBC.

Now keep in mind the above post was made when all evidence pointed to NBC having won this particular battle of wills (see my previous post on the topic).  Now they're latching onto this corporate face saving on Apple's part to validate what they already wanted to believe.  This is from Mathew Ingram...

Someone who is in a position to know tells me that NBC did in fact do most of the bending, because it discovered after leaving iTunes that it wasn’t having the kind of success it wanted on its own. The announcement was spun a little, this person says, so that NBC didn’t look like it was crawling back with its tail between its legs. Which I guess raises an alternate issue — does this win make Apple’s grip on video even more unassailable? There’s more here (with Apple disputing NBC’s claim that it got the company to bend)

This seems very unlikely to me.  The problem with this "insider" knowledge is that I doubt NBC cares either way about iTunes.  As put so eloquently by the New York Times)...

the sale of video online is still at a nascent stage. Media giants like NBC Universal are aggressively trying to move into the business — in part to avoid the piracy that has plagued music companies — but the revenue they earn from online video sales does not yet have a material impact on their financial performances.

In fact, if Jeff Zucker (NBC President and CEO) is to be believed the iTunes deal only netted NBC $15 million.  For a company with Revenues of $15.4 Billion in 2007 that's not much.  On the other side of the fence NBC was, by Apple's own admission, the #1 selling network on iTunes before it left a year ago. 

The reason I follow up on this is to again point to another example of the online community making their impact on the world into way more than it actually is.  The digital video market is miniscule and anyone who thinks it could make any kind of impact on a company like NBC/Universal is kidding themselves. 

So when sites like Techdirt say "NBC needs Apple and iTunes more than Apple needs NBC" you should realize that they're basically speaking from a position of complete ignorance.

Addendum: I was sent this link yesterday.  Basically it says Jeff Zucker's predecessor was making about $9 million a year meaning the money NBC/Universal made from iTunes just barely covers the salary of the CEO.