However, none of these stories portrayed the potential hand that CNBC had in the fall of Bear quite like Bryan Burrough’s piece for August’s Vanity Fairentitled “Bringing Down Bear Sterns,” which is now on newsstands.
Perhaps Burrough, the author of the heralded book Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco, needed a new angle. Or perhaps, he’s actually intrigued by the behind closed door dealings between news outlets and PR executives. Either way, his story is the first to spotlight Bear’s P.R. man, Russell Sherman and CNBC reporters in the final days of the Bear Stearns’ collapse. The result is a fascinating read and if you’re a media junky like me; you can’t put it down. Anyone with experience in working with the different producers at CNBC can understand the situation that Bear’s was faced with and the cautionary tale that Burrough’s tells highlights the high stakes of crisis management communications.
Here’s Burrough’s introduction of Sherman in the piece:
Bear’s P.R. man, Russell Sherman, heard the rumors, too. As the stock continued to slide, Sherman began calling reporters, trying in vain to pin down their source. As he did, Molinaro (Bear’s CFO) checked to see what could be fueling the rumor. Bear itself had no liquidity problem—he knew that. That morning the firm sat atop $18 billion in cash reserves. Molinaro checked with his finance desk, the repo desk, his treasurer. Had anyone heard of anything like a margin call (in which a lender was demanding a huge chunk of cash back)? A trade gone bad? Was anything out of the ordinary? “Across the board, it was ‘No, no, no, no—no problems,”’ a Bear executive says.
The Huffington Post excerpts from the Vanity Fair piece and highlights the rest of the CNBC / Bear Stearns’ story here:
How Repeating Rumors Makes Them Fact
At Bear Stearns, no one was laughing. Publicly speculating on a firm’s liquidity is akin to shouting “Fire!!!” in a crowded theater; in catastrophic cases it can trigger panic selling. It risks, in other words, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
For the next hour the Bear Stearns rumor became a topic of conversation between CNBC correspondents and various market traders and analysts. At 1:50, Matthew Cheslock remarked, “The sentiment [on Bear] is pretty negative. The general consensus is ‘Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
A few minutes later, Griffeth, perhaps sensing the network might have gone a bit too far, asked Dennis Kneale, “What about the jittery nature of this market right now? Are we starting to believe some rumors that may or may not be true?” Kneale agreed. “Someone,” he observed, “is always making money on the other side of that bad news or that rumor.” Yet CNBC’s coverage remained anything but skeptical of the rumor. At two the network’s new “money honey,” Erin Burnett, headlined the hour by announcing “credit issues at Bear,” never mind that there was no such thing. She turned to correspondent David Faber, who observed, “Of course, no firm’s ever going to say that they are having trouble with liquidity, and, in fact, you’ve either got liquidity or you don’t. So if you don’t have it, you’re done. Those are the kinds of concerns in this market, concerns of confidence You can have crises of confidence, causing meltdowns.”
Managing CNBC Egos
Sam Molinaro felt it was time for another public assurance. CNBC’s Charlie Gasparino had been peppering him with phone calls seeking comment. Molinaro talked to Russell Sherman, who felt Gasparino could be played. “He’ll say something negative if you shut him out. But if you talk to him, he’ll go positive,” one Bear executive told me. Around three, Molinaro spoke to Gasparino, telling him, “I’ve spent all day trying to track down the source of the rumors, but they are false. There is no liquidity crisis. No margin calls. It’s all nonsense.” Gasparino’s on-air comments were mild, but for the first time he raised the specter of a nightmare scenario: “They are really worried about this inside [Bear], that these rumors are taking a very nasty turn, and they might cause a run on the bank.” Still, by day’s end, there was no rush among Bear’s lenders to withdraw cash from the firm. At that point, this executive says, “the notion of a liquidity crisis seemed silly.”
That night Schwartz, Molinaro, and others discussed what to do. The talks centered on whether Schwartz should go public in an interview with CNBC. “We debated putting Alan on the air a long time,” says one board member. “Yes, it might draw attention to the rumors. But it would definitely answer the questions. Our view was: we had to get him out.”
Schwartz, though, wanted some assurances first. From experience, he knew he faced a risk in picking the wrong CNBC correspondent for the interview. All the network’s talent–Gasparino, Maria Bartiromo, Faber, Larry Kudlow–had requested the interview, and whoever didn’t get it, Schwartz feared, might retaliate on the air. “Each of these correspondents has his own producer, and they all seem to hate each other,” one Bear executive told me. “If you choose Faber, you know Bartiromo will bash you the next day.” Schwartz directed Russell Sherman to identify the CNBC executive who supervised the correspondents, explain the situation, and ask that the correspondents who didn’t get the interview refrain from attacks. Sherman, however, couldn’t identify a single CNBC executive who seemed to have control over the correspondents. “Everyone on Wall Street knows the joke,” says another Bear executive involved in the discussions. “At CNBC, there is simply no adult supervision.”
The Deadly Interview
Faber’s first question was a bombshell. He told Schwartz he had direct knowledge of a trader–a single trader–whose credit department had held up a trade with Bear Stearns, citing concerns about its health. At Bear, many executives gasped. It was a killer statement: Faber was saying, in essence, that Bear’s status as a trader, the basis of its business, was in question. Schwartz answered as best he could, saying everything was fine; only later did Faber say on-air the trade in question had finally gone through. But the damage had been done.
“You knew right at that moment that Bear Stearns was dead, right at the moment he asked that question,” a Wall Street trader of 40 years told me. “Once you raise that idea, that the firm can’t follow through on a trade, it’s over. Faber killed him. He just killed him.”
Wedding budget a little tight? Get corporate sponsorship on eBay!
Kelly Gray and her fiancé Karl Gau were set to be married in April of 2009, but the budget was tight and the couple hoped to have a bit more money to put toward the wedding. The solution to their money woes: creating the “Be My Bridesmaid” eBay auction.
The highest bidder wins a spot in the wedding party, a dress/tuxedo, shoes, and a “plus one” invitation to the reception. The auction created instant buzz, gaining the attention of media people waiting to see how far bidding would go.
When bidding closed on June 25, a member called “drpeppersnapple” had bid $5,700. To Kelly and Karl’s amazement, they had caught the attention of the people at The Dr. Pepper Snapple Group – who later raised their offer to $10,000. (Note: They will also be providing drinks for the wedding… Snapple iced teas all around! Wooo!)
The Dr. Pepper Snapple Group put out a press release yesterday saying “Weddings are about families, and we have a large one … more than 50 different brands from Dr. Pepper to Rose’s Mojitos,” said Greg Artkop, spokesperson for Dr. Pepper Snapple Group. “In fact, you can find us behind the bar at most weddings, so we’re looking forward to being up at the altar for once.”
Snapple has had super-creative advertising campaigns in the past… but this one takes the [wedding] cake. Cheap publicity or not, Snapple sure knows how to leverage online buzz to its advantage.
Portfolio:
oScott Paltrow, investigative writer at The Journal, now a contributing editor
oPeter Waldman, investigative writer, now a senior writer
oDan Golden, Pulitzer-winning reporter, now a senior editor
oHilary Stout, editor of Personal Journal, now a senior editor
oDoug Frantz, senior writer, agreed to join the L.A. Times but left for Portfolio
The New York Times:
o Tara Parker-Pope, health writer
o Brooks Barnes, reporter at The Journal, now a movie business reporter
o Ron Lieber, left The Journal for Dow-Jones-IAC joint venture, now a columnist
Financial Times:
o Henny Sender, senior special writer for Money & Investing, now an international financial correspondent
Orlando Sentinel:
o Robert Block, Homeland Security reporter, now space editor
IAC:
o Ed Felsenthal, deputy managing editor, now working with Tina Brown on her new project for Barry Diller (he originally left for Portfolio)
The Economist:
o Greg Ip, senior special writer and Federal Reserve reporter, now U.S. economics editor
Fortune:
o James Bandler, Pulitzer-winning reporter, will be U.S. economics editor
Forbes:
o Anita Raghavan, London-based reporter, now European bureau chief
o Rebecca Buckman, special writer at San Francisco bureau, now a staffer
BusinessWeek:
o Paul Barrett, editor (only at The Journal briefly)
Reuters:
o Robert MacMillan, reporter (also at The Journal briefly)
Bloomberg:
o Laurie Hays, deputy managing editor, now executive editor for company news
Prospective Jobs:
o Marcus Brauchli, former managing editor, top candidate for Washington Post executive editorship and currently a consultant for NewsCorp.
Academia:
o Bill Grueskin, former deputy managing editor, becoming a dean at Columbia’s journalism school
Public relations gigs:
o Sally Beatty, philanthropy reporter, joined Pfizer’s PR department
o Kathryn Kranhold, GE reporter, joined Sard Verbinnen & Co.
Investment jobs:
o Jonathan Clements, former personal finance columnist, now at Citigroup
o Laurie Cohen, former senior special writer, going to a hedge fund.
The Associated Press has been in the news a lot over the last couple of weeks and unfortunately it wasn’t because it was breaking stories.
Its dispute and eventual resolution with the Drudge Retort over the use and re-purposing of AP content caught national attention. While media columnists and bloggers have blown the AP / Drudge Retort story out of proportion, there may be an interesting AP story for them to follow next month. At that time, the AP will begin to completely reorganize its business news desk.
The AP remains the largest and oldest news organization in the world, serving more then 1,700 U.S. daily, weekly, non-English and college newspapers. In a time of rampant newsroom cutbacks and journalist buyouts, the AP has managed to keep 243 bureaus open in 97 countries across the world. It employs more then 3,000 journalists worldwide.
As one of its first steps in reorganizing the business news desk, the AP named Brian Bergstein national technology editor last week. Brian was kind enough to take some time with me this week to discuss the reorganization the AP will go under next month along with his thoughts on his new role, the East coast versus West coast technology scenes and the need for widely understood principles on content in the blogophere.
RaceTalk: So congratulations on being named national technology editor at the Associated Press. What will your new role entail? Also, who will you report to and can you share who else makes up the rest of the technology unit at the AP?
BB: The entire business news desk of the AP, of which the tech desk is part, is being reorganized. Previously we had some nationally based business and tech reporters, including me, but many more reporters were part of local bureaus and organized their coverage regionally. Now that structure is being blown up, and all AP business writers will be part of the national business desk, as I was, and we will organize coverage around beats rather than region. So previously, for example, we had someone in Atlanta covering Delta Airlines (in addition to other Atlanta companies) and someone in Dallas covering American Airlines (in addition to other Texas companies), but now we have a national airlines team. Similarly, you probably encountered Mark Jewell, the Boston business writer, for some Boston tech or business stories. Now he is going to be writing full-time about personal finance, on a national basis. So think of our tech coverage unfolding that same way. We now will have nine technology reporters around the country, in New York, Washington, D.C., Seattle and San Francisco, reporting to me as their editor. Other AP reporters elsewhere can and will still contribute tech stories, but for these nine, it’s their full-time beat. We’ll organize it along certain beats in tech, such as chips, PCs, wireless, business software, and so on. In time it should be much easier for PR people to figure out whom to pitch on a certain story.
RaceTalk:Obviously, those of us PR folk working in the Cambridge and Boston area have come to turn to you with national technology stories with a local hook. You mentioned to me that you won’t have a technology reporter per se in the Boston area and that a lot of what you have been covering will fall on people who aren’t physically in the area. Before we start an uproar among the local technology folks here, can you further explain the plans for covering technology stories that have a Boston area hook?
BB:Just like I often wrote about companies that weren’t in Boston, now our tech reporters who are in other cities will find themselves writing more often about companies that are here. Since we’re not limited by geography, a cool Boston start-up might get a call from Jordan Robertson in San Francisco or Peter Svensson in New York. So I don’t expect we will ignore Boston-area tech, not by a long shot. Yes, we no longer have a full-time tech reporter based here, but that isn’t necessarily always going to be the case. And in the meantime, some stories will call for an AP tech reporter to travel here. Also, for really intriguing local happenings in tech, we can bring in a generalist from the local bureau who might be interested. And I’m still here, so it’s hard to imagine Boston tech news vanishing from the AP’s radar.
RaceTalk: Are you taking any pitches / embargoed announcements from PR folks in your new role?
BB: I’m OK taking pitches and can send them in the right direction until it’s clearer to the outside world what our new beats look like. But now, more than ever, I’d love to pass on the request to always pitch by e-mail, never phone, and never, ever, call just to check in and follow up on an e-mail. The sheer volume of pitches we get makes phone calls impossible to deal with.
RaceTalk:Do you think the Cambridge / Boston area gets the short end of the stick when people talk about hot beds for technology start-ups? Santa Monica, Austin and even Vancouver seem to be getting more attention then the Cambridge / Boston area as of late. With you in Boston, the Associated Press was one of the few national outlets that had a local writer in this area solely covering technology. There still seems to be that bias at the national level where technology writers dismiss everything outside of Silicon Valley - More specifically dismissing anything outside of Cupertino or Mountain View.
BB: I suppose I’m biased, since I’m here and know how important the Boston technology landscape is, but I disagree with your assessment. Undoubtedly Silicon Valley is the Hollywood of technology, and most things happening there get blown to a higher degree of hype. But all I know is that we write an awful lot about companies and ideas emerging from other places, including states not even considered tech hubs. We do that probably more than any other news organization. And to my mind, Boston is next after Silicon Valley when it comes to important U.S. technology centers. What’s especially interesting to me is that this happens largely because of the area’s intellectual capital rather than because of some ecosystem created by a very large company. I’ve heard the complaints from people here about how there won’t be another EMC-sized tech company in Massachusetts, because all the good local tech companies keep getting bought up by companies elsewhere, but to me that’s a good sign of innovation here, not an ominous harbinger.
RaceTalk: I know you spent two years as a technology correspondent in the Silicon Valley bureau of the AP before coming to Boston. How do you personally compare the two technology scenes? As well as, how do you compare your experience in dealing with companies / communications’ executives there versus here?
BB:I get asked this question a lot. I think people expect to hear that the West Coast/East Coast divide is so striking in tech, like how rappers kill each other over it. I think the Silicon Valley scene is more obsessively covered by its local media. And Boston’s overall vibe is more New England reserved. Someone once put it to me that VCs in the Valley are all out to hit home runs, while VCs here do great hitting doubles and triples. I think that’s a bit of an oversimplification, though there is more of a rip-roaring feel in the Valley. But the truth is, I’ve met plenty of start-up founders here and in the Valley, and there’s no difference in their talent or level of motivation.
RaceTalk: As you’ll have a further role in dictating the types of technology stories that the AP is following – what are some of the larger technology trends that you are most interested in? You’ve followed the One Laptop per Child project closely and it is a truly global technology story. Can we expect AP technology correspondents working together on more global tech stories?
BB: I’m mainly interested in stories that capture how technology is changing society, the law, business, ethics or, our concepts of ourselves. So trends we will follow include such topics as user-generated content, privacy, technology and the environment, outsourcing, computer security — all the big-picture stuff you might expect. As far as more global tech stories — sure, why not? We have the foreign bureaus to produce more stuff like that, unlike most news organizations these days. And a previous AP technology editor happens to be a bureau chief for us in South America — he did a thorough early look at OLPC in Peru.
RaceTalk: Be honest, are you going to miss following breaking news on a daily basis? I know many reporters I talk to, speak of that thrill as being akin to a drug.
BB: Well, I still have to follow — and edit — breaking news now that I’m the editor. There’s certainly a thrill in getting out a well-crafted story on deadline, but if it’s a drug it’s a pretty mild one. I get just as much of a thrill out of turning around a thorough, well-crafted feature.
RaceTalk: Is there one interview with a technology industry executive that you sat down with over the last couple years that stands out in your mind?
BB: There are so many, it would be hard to pick one. I don’t have any good examples of finding some mild-mannered tech icon turning out to be a chair-throwing tyrant. I also find tech researchers and developers more interesting than most executives. The people who work in the labs tend to have a beautifully optimistic yet realistic view of how their work fits into the world.
RaceTalk:I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least try to ask you one question on the Associated Press’ highly publicized dispute and resolution with the Drudge Retort. Even your colleague Seth Sutel covered the resolution. Given the abundance of highly trafficked technology blogs it would seem that your former and future content has a high likelihood of at least being cited on blogs and making its way through the blogosphere. Do you have a personal opinion on the matter and have you been getting a lot of flack from technology bloggers that you have relationships with? (I’m guessing you’ve crossed paths with a few over the last several years on the beat.)
BB:Well, I do have an opinion, but it’s just that. I don’t speak for the AP as an organization in any way. And since the business and editorial divisions are separate, I don’t have insight into how the AP went about this. I learned what I know on this the same as you did, from reading Seth Sutel, Saul Hansell in the Times and the main tech blogs. I certainly hope that before long these kinds of issues get worked out, and widely understood principles emerge on how content like ours moves through the online world. I have a lot of respect for many technology bloggers, who often circulate really intriguing ideas.
Boston is TitleTown. While cleaning out the final cobwebs left in the wake of another local championship run, here is a look back at some interesting media notes that made it into my mailbag last week.
I’ve always thought that the greatest perk of being a sports journalist is the relationships they get to make with athletes. More specifically, the once in a lifetime opportunity where they get to take in (be part of) a locker room championship celebration. Yes, Boston sports journalists are spoiled, but once again I took pleasure in the guys with mic’s in their hands getting a Budweiser bath from the likes of Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce last Tuesday night.
That along with reading The Sports Guy’s column last week, which included a back-and-forth text conversation he was having with Matt Damon’s posse courtside at Game 5 got me thinking – do any other journalists have it this good?
Sure, if you’re Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times you get to fly with Barack Obama - on the way to a history changing nomination. But even his behind the scenes access to a transcending individual is guarded by PR folks (not so unlike myself). He’ll likely never get to take in Obama the way a Bob Ryan gets to take in a Kevin Garnett – with overflowing and unguarded emotion – at the peak of his career. Sure Jeff Twiss, VP of media relations for the Celtics (who happens to be the father of one of my college buddies), was there - but it’s not like he’s keeping KG or Paul Pierce on message.
o Fake Steve Jobs (AKA Dan Lyons) will be taking over Steve Levy’s old gig at Newsweek. Levy wrapped up his last column for the magazine last week and is now on Wired’s payroll. Tell me I’m not the only one that thinks Fake Jobs taking over for Levy – a few months after Levy literally trashed the MacAir – is slightly ironic? Fake Steve may finally get to meet Real Steve (RS) as well - as Newsweek is one of the few publications that “RS” will talk to.
o Sam Whitmore (A human media encyclopedia) stopped by Racepoint last week and passed along one interesting tidbit that I’ve been mulling over. His sources tell him that TIME Inc., the parent company of Fortune, asked for 15 Fortune heads (contracts to buy out) within the last month – and they got no volunteers. Sam thinks Fortune is in trouble and believes it will become more of an event brand over the next couple years – which is hard to argue with given the success of the events that David Kirkpatrick leads for them including Brainstorm: Tech.
o Had an interesting conversation with a source close to News Corp. last week that further confirmed for me, Rupert’s borderline obsession with the Wall Street Journal right now. “He’s 100 percent focused on the Wall Street Journal, with little or no attention paid to his British papers.”
o Spent some time with Wilson Rothman of Gizmodo last week. Rothman, who’s written for TIME magazine and the New York Times, is now Features Editor for Gizmodo. Part of Nick Denton’s Gawker blog empire, Gizmodo now averages 7.8 million unique visitors a month. These impressive numbers along with its ranking on Technorati as the #3 blog in the land have communications and public relations executives taking notice. “This week alone, we had two on-site visits to major corporations along with an invite from a major motion picture studio for an exclusive set visit – all proactively arranged by PR folks,” he noted.
When CNN anchor Kiran Chetry was scheduled to speak with America’s Spelling Bee champion Evan O’Dorney, she probably didn’t think it would be one of the most difficult interviews of her life. However, their discussion quickly turned into one of those interviews that even makes the viewer cringe.
O’Dorney gave very brief, awkward answers to almost every question he was asked, and twice told Chetry that she was pronouncing a word wrong – one of them being his last name. In the middle of the interview Chetry even told Evan that he was making the interview tough for her, to which he had no response.
To the surprise of the Drudge Report, last week the Associated Press (A.P.) sent them a letter requesting that several items containing quotations from AP articles be removed from their site.
Apparently, the A.P. isn’t too happy with people reposting or reusing their content, and is willing to take concrete steps to prevent this.
According to the New York Times, the A.P. issued a statement defending its action on Friday, saying it was going to challenge blog postings containing excerpts of A.P. articles “when we feel the use is more reproduction than reference, or when others are encouraged to cut and paste.”
Jim Kennedy, vice president and strategy director of the A.P. had some interesting words on the subject:
“We don’t want to cast a pall over the blogosphere by being heavy-handed, so we have to figure out a better and more positive way to do this. Cutting and pasting a lot of content into a blog is not what we want to see. It is more consistent with the spirit of the Internet to link to content so people can read the whole thing in context. As content creators, we firmly believe that everything we create, from video footage all the way down to a structured headline, is creative content that has value. We are not trying to sue bloggers. That would be the rough equivalent of suing grandma and the kids for stealing music. That is not what we are trying to do.”
“Drudge Retort is doing nothing different than what Digg, TechMeme, Mixx and dozens of other sites do, and frankly the fact that they are being linked to should be considered a favor …So here’s our new policy on A.P. stories: they don’t exist. We don’t see them, we don’t quote them, we don’t link to them. They’re banned until they abandon this new strategy, and I encourage others to do the same until they back down from these ridiculous attempts to stop the spread of information around the Internet.”
Last month I wrote how Fox News correspondent Liz Trotta joked about a possible assassination of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. Well, Fox News apparently hasn’t learned from their mistakes.
Media Matters reported that Fox News’ America’s Pulse, host E.D. Hill apologized for her June 6 comments about a ‘fist bump’ between Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, when she took a hint from Michelle Malkin’s criticism of Dunkin’ Donuts, and called the act a terrorist move. “A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab? The gesture everyone seems to interpret differently,” Hill said during the broadcast.
Now, The New York Times reports that for the third time in less then three weeks, Fox News is apologizing for more inappropriate comments and/or judgment towards or about Obama:
The network has released a statement saying it should not have referred to Mr. Obama’s wife, Michelle, as “Obama’s Baby Mama,’’ as it did on Wednesday in an on-screen headline commonly called a “chyron.”
“A producer on the program exercised poor judgment in using this chyron during the segment,” Bill Shine, a Fox News senior vice president, said in a statement.
While Fox News has clearly been stepping over the line, it’s interesting to see how many of these slip-ups are going unpunished. Could this be a result of the comments being laughed at and not taken very seriously, or the one-sided views of the network?
In order to take a stand against the false statements, Obama’s camp has launched a new site, FightTheSmears.com. The site acts as a fact and fiction differentiator, separating the truthful and fictional statements and comments about Obama and his campaign.
The power of public relations can change perceptions and do a lot of good in the world.One of the accounts that Racepoint Group is extremely proud of is our work handling all of the external communications for One Laptop Per Child – a visionary organization that is dedicated to educating poor children in the developing world through technology.
The outstanding work Racepoint has conducted on behalf of OLPC has won us numerous industry awards – but last week came on of the greatest honors a public relations agency can receive.The United Nations awarded Racepoint Group the 2008 United Nations Grand Award for Excellence in Communications for issues of high importance to the UN.The award was to celebrate and acknowledge the global communications plan we conducted for OLPC for the last 18 months. It is a humbling experience to be praised by the UN.Here’s Racepoint Chairman Larry Weber’s reaction:
“The One Laptop per Child campaign is a great example of Racepoint Group’s ability to use both traditional and social media to deliver powerful messages that inspire both individual and governmental action. We are proud that our work for OLPC supports an organization whose mission is in line with the goals of the United Nation.”
The campaign Racepoint undertook for OLPC helped shape public opinion in favor of OLPC and the XO laptop the organization has developed. Racepoint secured more than 20,000 print and broadcast features and 60,000 blog posts (yes, you read that correctly!).
As a result, the campaign helped persuade governments such as Uruguay and Peru to commit to OLPC, and purchase hundreds of thousands of XO laptops for their school children. In addition, a giving campaign targeting North American consumers raised more than $35 million, enabling the delivery of more than 100,000 XO laptops to children in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti, Ethiopia, Mongolia and Rwanda.
In the world of Google News, newspapers and blogs are doing everything they can to increase their search engine rankings. Some newspapers are writing ‘search engine friendly’ headlines, while others are turning to SEM and SEO to increase their ranking.
The common goal? Appear towards the top of the page, get clicks, attract readers, and increase advertising.
Belgian French-language newspapers said Tuesday they want search engine Google to pay up to euro49 million ($77 million) in damages for publishing and storing their content without permission.
The newspaper copyright group Copiepresse said it had summoned Google to appear again before a Brussels court in September that will decide on their claim that they suffered damages of between euro32.8 million ($51.7 million) and euro49.2 million ($77.5 million)
Last year Google lost a lawsuit filed by the newspapers that forced it to remove headlines and links to news stories posted on its Google News service and stored in its search engine’s cache without the copyright owners’ permission.
Techdirt thinks “Google should counter that these newspapers owe them every damn cent of ad revenue that was generated by anyone clicking through from Google to those newspaper sites — plus an additional fee for being so kind as to “advertise” those newspapers websites to those who had never heard of them before.”
