Facebook Instant Articles Just Don’t Add Up for Publishers

[Commentary] In effect, digital content is being divided between a lucrative high-end entertainment world, where licensors receive a negotiated fee for allowing the distribution of their property, and a low-end publishing world where content is expected to be “free,” supporting itself on often elusive advertising sales and ad splits. In this particular deal, publishers can sell ads on their articles and keep all of the revenue, or have Facebook sell ads in exchange for 30 percent. An important and grievous question is how this anomalous division in the media business came to pass. The more immediate question is about whether Facebook’s “instant articles” and other republishing initiatives are digging a deeper hole for publishers or helping them get out of the one they are already in. Publishers of course believe the latter is true, or why else would they be doing such deals? On the other hand, publishers have largely found themselves in this dismal situation because of their past bad decisions -- accepting the general free ethos, bowing to a vast catchall of casual and formal sharing and reposting agreements, and failing to challenge an ever-expanding interpretation of fair use.

It seems only logical to doubt the business acumen of people who have been singularly inept when it comes to protecting their interests in the world of digital distribution. There are of course differences between entertainment content and news and other editorial matter, and perhaps that accounts for why the old rules and basic business models that worked so well for so long should not apply in a digital context. Or perhaps publishers are just shamefully bad businessmen.

[Michael Wolff is the author of "Television is the New Television: The Unexpected Triumph of Old Media in the Digital Age"]