Well, well, well. With all the scapegoating and fist-shaking being done at bloggers from unimaginative newspaper folk in denial about the realities of the changing media landscape, but desperate to find a bad guy to blame it on (for all the good it will do them), this is a refreshing change of pace. In a direct response to ramped-up, aggressive efforts by the Associated Press to police the excerpting and linking of their content and punitively charge for linking that falls clearly within the realm of “fair use” law, Chris Ahearn (“President, Media at Thomson Reuters”) offers the following on his blog (naturally), while presenting Reuters as a more measured, less reactionary, and more forward-thinking alternative to the imploding dinosaur that is the AP:

[…]yes the global economy is fairly grim and the cyclical aspects of our business are biting extremely hard in the face of the structural changes. But the Internet isn’t killing the news business any more than TV killed radio or radio killed the newspaper. Incumbent business leaders in news haven’t been keeping up.[…]

[…]Blaming the new leaders or aggregators for disrupting the business of the old leaders, or saber-rattling and threatening to sue are not business strategies – they are personal therapy sessions. Go ask a music executive how well it works.[…]

[…]I don’t believe you could or should charge others for simply linking to your content. Appropriate excerpting and referencing are not only acceptable, but encouraged. If someone wants to create a business on the back of others’ original content, the parties should have a business relationship that benefits both.

Let’s stop whining and start having real conversations across party lines. Let’s get online publishers, search engines, aggregators, ad networks, and self-publishers (bloggers) in a virtual room and determine how we can all get along.

Ooo. But that’s hardly the message many of our local media “experts” have been giving us, as recently as last week. Rutland Herald General Manager Catherine Nelson and WCAX’s Adam Sullivan clearly think if those rotten bloggers would just go away and stop stealing the news, traditional media would blossom anew.  As these folks, and so many of their peers eagerly echo, the bloggers are the problem. How can they be part of the solution?

Even the esteemed Rutland Herald editor David Moats warns against a future left in the hands of “blogmaniac(s).”

With all these experts so vigorously identifying bloggers as the media boogeyman, clearly this Ahearn guy is talking out of his depth. I mean, who cares what he thinks? It’s not like he’s a President of Reuters or anything…