Dear Sirs and Madams, After reading an article online today regarding your intended path of litigation against bloggers who comment on and link to your articles, I am deeply dismayed. While I sympathize that newspapers have lost substantial revenue since the Internet Age began, punishing bloggers who refer users to your online news outlets is self-defeating at best. Your announced course is the same that the RIAA has attempted over the past few years and they continue to lose revenue (by their standards) even as litigation has become more frequent and severe. When a blogger comments on an article you’ve written and links to it, he or she is giving your source material an endorsement as worthy reading. In doing so, this person is essentially telling his or her readers to visit your website, thus potentially generating ad revenue for you to no benefit of the blogger. This person is doing you a FAVOR, not hurting you. They are sharing their audience and therefore revenue stream with you. Punishing them for doing so will only encourage people to blog without citing sources, which makes the blogger less reliable and decreases the potential revenue of both parties. I urge you to reconsider your intended path. As the world moves toward a “greener” model and the Information Age takes even greater hold, print media is becoming a costly and obsolete model that is being replaced more and more by digital formats. Newspapers must come to realize that bloggers are your greatest asset. They are your digital paperboys, only you don’t have to pay them. When a blogger or a service like Digg posts a link to an article written by a member of the AP, they are essentially throwing it on people’s doorsteps saying, “Extra! Extra! Read all about it!” They give your work a significantly wider audience, because this article is considered to have been reviewed for quality by that blogger and/or other users and considered to meet the community’s standards for interest. While I doubt this email will make it to the decision makers within the AP, I hope that enough people are moved to speak out on this topic that it gains notice. Thank you.

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