Andac
“From Blueprint to Building: Making the Market for Digital Information"
An action congress for trust, identity and Internet info commerce
June 23-25, 2010 / Reynolds Journalism Institute / Columbia, Mo.
What is ANDAC?
The American Newspaper Digital Access Corp. (ANDAC) is a working title. It describes a business plan for an operating company or association which will serve the business needs of America's newspapers -- of all sizes and frequencies -- in the emerging digital-information ecosystem. It will be focused on profitably sharing, protecting and managing their digital content.
- Hear and comment on Thursday's first-public unveiling of a business plan for a news-industry hub for sharing users, information and commerce. The American Newspaper Digital Access Corp. (ANDAC) will solve current problems for newspapers. It’s the inspiration of the Multistate Digital Task Force -- a seed group of publishers from Iowa, Missouri and Kansas.
ANDAC represents a multi-state publisher grass-roots effort to help newspapers monetize the Internet by collecting, digitizing and marketing newspaper content. The Task Force has concluded that it is imperative that publishers begin to discuss the possibility of forming a new entity that collects, stores, digitizes, protects and markets newspaper content. The mission of this corporation would be to provide news organizations with a means to digitize and archive their content for research, historical and commercial purposes.
The primary function of the new entity would be to create a central collection point for the receipt of royalties derived from reused content. The technology now exists to allow the tracking of all content posted on a newspaper website but used on a content pirate’s website without the permission of the newspaper and without the paying of royalties. The new company would create a way for anyone wanting to reuse newspaper content to do so legally by paying for it…or facing possible legal action. The company also would create a system to track and distribute royalties to all participating newspapers.
The critical operating principles of this corporation or association would include:
- Respect for copyright laws and aggressive pursuit of violators
- Mutually beneficial royalties and profit sharing
- Historic preservation
- Efficient and effective newspaper participation
- Easy customer user access and
- Scalability to be able to help newspapers of all sizes.
The Task Force thinks the state press associations are the logical organizations to move this effort forward since almost every newspaper in America belongs to its state association and all state associations are controlled by the newspapers they serve. Integration of content through state press associations could lead to substantial benefits for all involved parties.
The market for the re-sale of newspaper information would include:
- Newspapers-In a day of smaller news staffs and a push to localize all information, an archive of both weekly and daily newspapers would be valuable. The archive should also contain past issues, giving any reporter the ability to quickly research any subject.
- Clipping services
- Advertising tear sheets
- Individual stories by subject
- Genealogist and research historians
- On-line news aggregators
Read more about the case for action in behalf of newspapers -- SPEECH by Bill Monroe, Feb. 4, 2010
