WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.600 Welcome to today's custom -tailored deep dive. 00:00:02.839 --> 00:00:06.360 I'm your host, and I am just thrilled you are 00:00:06.360 --> 00:00:08.339 joining us today. And I'm your resident expert 00:00:08.339 --> 00:00:11.419 for this deep dive. It's really great to be here. 00:00:11.640 --> 00:00:15.039 So today we are going to unpack this sprawling 00:00:15.039 --> 00:00:18.039 multi -billion dollar industry that is honestly 00:00:18.039 --> 00:00:20.640 completely invisible to most people. It really 00:00:20.640 --> 00:00:24.980 is. But this unseen machine fundamentally shapes 00:00:24.980 --> 00:00:28.210 the news you read. the products you buy, and 00:00:28.210 --> 00:00:30.170 even the marketing messages you are targeted 00:00:30.170 --> 00:00:32.570 with every single day. We are talking about media 00:00:32.570 --> 00:00:34.670 monitoring services. Right. It is essentially 00:00:34.670 --> 00:00:37.229 the hidden engine of modern information logistics. 00:00:37.509 --> 00:00:40.649 And when you pull back the curtain on this industry, 00:00:40.810 --> 00:00:42.649 you aren't just looking at how companies track 00:00:42.649 --> 00:00:44.469 the news. You are looking at the exact history 00:00:44.469 --> 00:00:47.490 of how human beings learn to isolate, organize, 00:00:47.750 --> 00:00:50.250 and eventually monetize information itself. Which 00:00:50.250 --> 00:00:53.009 is just a wild concept. And the mission for this 00:00:53.009 --> 00:00:55.909 deep dive is to trace that incredible journey. 00:00:56.649 --> 00:00:58.990 We are going to walk you through how this industry 00:00:58.990 --> 00:01:01.729 evolved from people using literal scissors and 00:01:01.729 --> 00:01:04.890 paste in the 1800s all the way to the automated 00:01:04.890 --> 00:01:07.909 web crawling spiders that dictate corporate strategy 00:01:07.909 --> 00:01:11.090 right now. It's quite the leap. It is. And our 00:01:11.090 --> 00:01:12.930 main source for this is a really comprehensive 00:01:12.930 --> 00:01:15.689 Wikipedia article that details the whole history, 00:01:15.849 --> 00:01:18.409 the evolution, and the legal hurdles of this 00:01:18.409 --> 00:01:20.900 industry. And more importantly, we want to show 00:01:20.900 --> 00:01:23.760 you exactly why this unseen ecosystem matters 00:01:23.760 --> 00:01:26.280 so much to your daily life. It is a fascinating 00:01:26.280 --> 00:01:28.700 trajectory, really. And to truly understand where 00:01:28.700 --> 00:01:31.719 we are today with, you know, automated bots and 00:01:31.719 --> 00:01:34.500 real time data dashboards, we actually have to 00:01:34.500 --> 00:01:36.780 start with something deeply, inherently human. 00:01:37.000 --> 00:01:40.200 Vanity. Precisely. Pure vanity. I love this origin 00:01:40.200 --> 00:01:43.140 story because it is just so relatable. Oh, yeah. 00:01:43.219 --> 00:01:44.799 Think about your own life before the Internet, 00:01:44.920 --> 00:01:47.099 before you could just. type a name into a search 00:01:47.099 --> 00:01:49.459 bar or, you know, set up a notification on your 00:01:49.459 --> 00:01:51.500 phone. How did you know if people were talking 00:01:51.500 --> 00:01:54.000 about you? You really didn't. Right. If you did 00:01:54.000 --> 00:01:56.340 something noteworthy or even something controversial, 00:01:56.599 --> 00:01:58.859 how did you actually find out what the press 00:01:58.859 --> 00:02:01.620 was saying? It was a massive logistical problem. 00:02:01.799 --> 00:02:04.200 I mean, you couldn't possibly buy and read every 00:02:04.200 --> 00:02:07.040 single newspaper, magazine and journal published 00:02:07.040 --> 00:02:10.139 every day. No way. The sheer volume of print 00:02:10.139 --> 00:02:12.419 media, even back in the 19th century, was just 00:02:12.419 --> 00:02:15.120 overwhelming for any one person to track. Which 00:02:15.120 --> 00:02:17.240 leads to this incredible anecdote from Paris. 00:02:17.340 --> 00:02:20.919 This is in 1879. Right. Alfred Cherie. Yes. He 00:02:20.919 --> 00:02:24.139 started an agency called Largousse de la Presse. 00:02:24.219 --> 00:02:27.599 And he didn't start it for some grand journalistic 00:02:27.599 --> 00:02:30.229 purpose. None at all. He started it specifically 00:02:30.229 --> 00:02:32.830 because Parisian theatrical actors wanted to 00:02:32.830 --> 00:02:35.009 read reviews of their own performances. Naturally. 00:02:35.169 --> 00:02:37.830 But these actors didn't want to shell out the 00:02:37.830 --> 00:02:41.009 money to buy an entire bulky newspaper just to 00:02:41.009 --> 00:02:43.770 read one tiny blurb about themselves. It is the 00:02:43.770 --> 00:02:46.430 ultimate human motivation, wanting to know what 00:02:46.430 --> 00:02:48.590 others think of you, but without paying full 00:02:48.590 --> 00:02:51.189 price for the privilege. Exactly. But while those 00:02:51.189 --> 00:02:53.490 Parisian actors make for a wonderful snapshot 00:02:53.490 --> 00:02:57.009 of 1879, the actual structural timeline of this 00:02:57.009 --> 00:02:59.620 industry stretches back. a bit further. Oh, really? 00:02:59.819 --> 00:03:02.080 Yeah. The first official press clipping agency 00:03:02.080 --> 00:03:05.719 was actually established in London in 1852. Wow. 00:03:05.800 --> 00:03:08.500 It was started by a man named Henry Romike, who 00:03:08.500 --> 00:03:11.599 partnered with a news dealer named Curtis. So 00:03:11.599 --> 00:03:13.719 over a century and a half ago, who were they 00:03:13.719 --> 00:03:16.159 serving in London? Was it also just actors? Well, 00:03:16.240 --> 00:03:18.780 it started with actors, certainly. But it very 00:03:18.780 --> 00:03:21.860 quickly expanded to business tycoons, politicians, 00:03:22.419 --> 00:03:25.620 wealthy socialites. The elites. Right. These 00:03:25.620 --> 00:03:27.900 were people who were eager to see their names 00:03:27.900 --> 00:03:30.280 in print. They were essentially paying for the 00:03:30.280 --> 00:03:33.240 19th century equivalent of an ego surf. An analog 00:03:33.240 --> 00:03:35.620 ego surf. I love that. They wanted the validation 00:03:35.620 --> 00:03:38.120 of being mentioned in the societal pages, but 00:03:38.120 --> 00:03:39.960 they definitely didn't want to do the legwork 00:03:39.960 --> 00:03:42.840 of finding those mentions. Okay, but wait. If 00:03:42.840 --> 00:03:44.939 they weren't using search engines, how did these 00:03:44.939 --> 00:03:47.639 early clipping gyros actually pull this off? 00:03:48.560 --> 00:03:50.860 The workflow to achieve this manually must have 00:03:50.860 --> 00:03:53.340 been incredibly tedious. Oh, it was a massive 00:03:53.340 --> 00:03:55.400 manual undertaking, and it functioned essentially 00:03:55.400 --> 00:03:58.919 as a highly gendered assembly line. How so? First, 00:03:58.939 --> 00:04:01.020 these agencies employed women to sit in large 00:04:01.020 --> 00:04:03.479 rooms and manually scan through massive stacks 00:04:03.479 --> 00:04:06.419 of daily periodicals. Just reading all day? Yes. 00:04:06.520 --> 00:04:10.340 Their entire job was to read walls of tiny text, 00:04:10.580 --> 00:04:13.599 specifically looking for names, companies, or 00:04:13.599 --> 00:04:16.519 terms requested by their clients. Just imagine 00:04:16.519 --> 00:04:19.370 the sheer eye strain. I know. The concentration 00:04:19.370 --> 00:04:22.529 required to do that for 8 to 10 hours a day. 00:04:23.350 --> 00:04:26.310 Scanning thousands of pages of newsprint for 00:04:26.310 --> 00:04:29.050 a passing mention of a specific socialite. And 00:04:29.050 --> 00:04:31.790 once the women found a mention and marked the 00:04:31.790 --> 00:04:34.490 page, those marked periodicals were passed along 00:04:34.490 --> 00:04:37.009 to a completely different department. Let me 00:04:37.009 --> 00:04:40.319 guess. staffed entirely by men of course and 00:04:40.319 --> 00:04:42.639 these men would literally take scissors cut the 00:04:42.639 --> 00:04:44.699 articles out and paste them onto dated slips 00:04:44.699 --> 00:04:46.860 of paper so it was quite literally a clipping 00:04:46.860 --> 00:04:50.939 service exactly scissors paste and paper then 00:04:50.939 --> 00:04:53.139 those pasted slips would go back to the women 00:04:53.139 --> 00:04:55.920 who would sort them by client and physically 00:04:55.920 --> 00:04:58.579 mail these clippings out but surely an industry 00:04:58.579 --> 00:05:01.089 can't sustain itself purely on the vanity of 00:05:01.089 --> 00:05:03.670 socialites and actors forever. At what point 00:05:03.670 --> 00:05:06.810 does this shift from a novelty service to a fundamental 00:05:06.810 --> 00:05:10.050 business tool? That pivot happens firmly by the 00:05:10.050 --> 00:05:13.329 1930s. The bulk of clipping subscriptions completely 00:05:13.329 --> 00:05:16.069 shifted away from wealthy individuals and toward 00:05:16.069 --> 00:05:19.170 big business. It transitioned from a vanity project 00:05:19.170 --> 00:05:22.610 to a corporate necessity. Makes sense. Government 00:05:22.610 --> 00:05:25.110 agencies started subscribing to track public 00:05:25.110 --> 00:05:27.889 sentiment. And critically, companies started 00:05:27.889 --> 00:05:30.269 using the services to monitor their competitors. 00:05:30.610 --> 00:05:32.410 So instead of asking, what are they saying about 00:05:32.410 --> 00:05:35.170 me? The question became, what are they saying 00:05:35.170 --> 00:05:38.699 about my rival's new product? Precisely. It was 00:05:38.699 --> 00:05:41.220 the birth of modern competitive intelligence. 00:05:41.560 --> 00:05:44.329 Wow. Businesses realized that if they could track 00:05:44.329 --> 00:05:47.230 every mention of a competitor's pricing or a 00:05:47.230 --> 00:05:49.970 competitor's regional expansion, they could adjust 00:05:49.970 --> 00:05:52.970 their own strategies accordingly. That is a huge 00:05:52.970 --> 00:05:55.089 advantage. And it became a massive enterprise 00:05:55.089 --> 00:05:58.569 in itself. In the United States, by 1932, just 00:05:58.569 --> 00:06:01.250 two companies controlled the market. Only two? 00:06:01.449 --> 00:06:04.629 Yeah. The Romica Company and Luce's Breast Clipping 00:06:04.629 --> 00:06:07.170 Bureau. Together, they controlled roughly 80 00:06:07.170 --> 00:06:10.209 % of the entire clipping market. 80 %? Yeah. 00:06:10.250 --> 00:06:14.019 They practically monopolized. It really did. 00:06:14.199 --> 00:06:16.839 But here is where the story hits a fascinating 00:06:16.839 --> 00:06:21.240 wall. Up until the mid -20th century, mass media 00:06:21.240 --> 00:06:25.079 was almost solely print media. Newspapers, trade 00:06:25.079 --> 00:06:27.500 journals, magazines. Right. You can easily cut 00:06:27.500 --> 00:06:29.399 an article out of a newspaper with scissors. 00:06:30.060 --> 00:06:32.980 But as telegraphy expands and then eventually 00:06:32.980 --> 00:06:34.759 gives way to radio and television broadcasting. 00:06:36.040 --> 00:06:38.399 How in the world did this scissors and paste 00:06:38.399 --> 00:06:41.519 industry adapt? It was tough. I mean, you cannot 00:06:41.519 --> 00:06:43.879 cut a segment out of a live radio broadcast. 00:06:44.160 --> 00:06:46.600 You can't. And it was a massive vulnerability 00:06:46.600 --> 00:06:49.639 for the industry. For a significant period, these 00:06:49.639 --> 00:06:52.360 monitoring services were severely limited because 00:06:52.360 --> 00:06:54.540 they simply could not offer comprehensive tracking 00:06:54.540 --> 00:06:56.759 of broadcast media. They just missed it entirely. 00:06:57.120 --> 00:06:59.910 Pretty much. If a company was criticized on a 00:06:59.910 --> 00:07:02.490 national radio program, the Clipping Bureau couldn't 00:07:02.490 --> 00:07:04.370 mail them a transcript the next day. The technology 00:07:04.370 --> 00:07:06.509 just wasn't there. So they were essentially flying 00:07:06.509 --> 00:07:08.709 blind when it came to the fastest growing mediums 00:07:08.709 --> 00:07:12.129 in the world. Until the 1950s and 1960s. What 00:07:12.129 --> 00:07:14.629 changed? That is when we see the commercial introduction 00:07:14.629 --> 00:07:17.509 of audio and videotape recording systems. Ah, 00:07:17.569 --> 00:07:20.649 magnetic tape. Exactly. This was the technological 00:07:20.649 --> 00:07:24.029 leap the industry desperately needed. It finally 00:07:24.029 --> 00:07:26.529 allowed the broadcast airwaves to be captured, 00:07:26.689 --> 00:07:36.529 recorded, Okay. So now they're monitoring what 00:07:36.529 --> 00:07:38.430 is written in print and what is spoken on the 00:07:38.430 --> 00:07:41.589 airwaves. But as revolutionary as magnetic tape 00:07:41.589 --> 00:07:44.589 was, nothing really compares to the shift that 00:07:44.589 --> 00:07:47.839 happens next. The digital age. We have to talk 00:07:47.839 --> 00:07:50.399 about the internet boom of the 1990s. Yeah. How 00:07:50.399 --> 00:07:53.899 did these legacy paper -based companies survive 00:07:53.899 --> 00:07:56.000 the transition to the web? Did they just go out 00:07:56.000 --> 00:07:58.660 of business? Some certainly did. If you couldn't 00:07:58.660 --> 00:08:01.399 adapt to digital, you died. But others adapted 00:08:01.399 --> 00:08:03.639 brilliantly. Pretty cool. A perfect example from 00:08:03.639 --> 00:08:05.639 the source is a company called the Universal 00:08:05.639 --> 00:08:08.459 Press Clipping Bureau. They were founded all 00:08:08.459 --> 00:08:11.360 the way back in 1908 in Omaha, Nebraska. For 00:08:11.360 --> 00:08:13.680 decades, their entire business model was clipping 00:08:13.680 --> 00:08:17.339 physical paper. Then the 1990s hit. emerges and 00:08:17.339 --> 00:08:20.360 they make a massive pivot. They completely rebranded. 00:08:20.360 --> 00:08:21.899 What did they change their name to? Universal 00:08:21.899 --> 00:08:24.980 Information Services. And that was to reflect 00:08:24.980 --> 00:08:27.560 their expansion into digital technology. That 00:08:27.560 --> 00:08:30.579 is a profound shift in terminology, going from 00:08:30.579 --> 00:08:32.980 clipping, which is a tangible physical action 00:08:32.980 --> 00:08:35.659 with scissors, to information services, which 00:08:35.659 --> 00:08:38.139 is entirely abstract. It perfectly reflects the 00:08:38.139 --> 00:08:40.740 digitization of knowledge itself. And the timeline 00:08:40.740 --> 00:08:45.309 moved incredibly fast. How fast? By 1998. Platforms 00:08:45.309 --> 00:08:47.909 like the now -defunct web clipping website were 00:08:47.909 --> 00:08:50.529 actively monitoring internet -based news media. 00:08:51.210 --> 00:08:54.629 Fast forward to 2012 and the research firm Gartner 00:08:54.629 --> 00:08:57.230 estimated there were more than 250 different 00:08:57.230 --> 00:09:00.210 social media monitoring vendors operating globally. 00:09:00.429 --> 00:09:03.570 That is wild. From two guys in London in 1852 00:09:03.570 --> 00:09:07.090 to a sprawling digital infrastructure with hundreds 00:09:07.090 --> 00:09:09.570 of tech vendors. It's exponential. But beyond 00:09:09.570 --> 00:09:11.330 just the speed and the technology, there's a 00:09:11.330 --> 00:09:13.389 much deeper conceptual shift here, isn't there? 00:09:13.470 --> 00:09:15.710 There is. And it is arguably the biggest aha 00:09:15.710 --> 00:09:18.049 moment of this entire evolution. Tell us about 00:09:18.049 --> 00:09:20.230 that. Well, the transition wasn't just about 00:09:20.230 --> 00:09:22.889 fast. delivery or better technology, it was a 00:09:22.889 --> 00:09:25.330 fundamental psychological shift in how human 00:09:25.330 --> 00:09:27.909 beings interact with data. Walk us through that. 00:09:28.070 --> 00:09:31.090 How did a clipping service change human psychology? 00:09:31.580 --> 00:09:33.759 Think about reading a newspaper before clipping 00:09:33.759 --> 00:09:36.500 services existed. An article was permanently 00:09:36.500 --> 00:09:39.100 bound to its context. Right. You sat down, you 00:09:39.100 --> 00:09:41.440 opened the paper, and you read the article alongside 00:09:41.440 --> 00:09:43.460 the advertisements, the neighboring stories, 00:09:43.620 --> 00:09:46.639 the editorial page. The information was part 00:09:46.639 --> 00:09:49.539 of a larger cohesive package. You took in the 00:09:49.539 --> 00:09:52.139 whole broadsheet. Exactly. But clipping services 00:09:52.139 --> 00:09:56.059 introduced the concept of the isolated snippet. 00:09:56.059 --> 00:09:58.759 Because they literally cut the information out 00:09:58.759 --> 00:10:02.029 of its context. Yes. foundational idea that a 00:10:02.029 --> 00:10:04.549 specific piece of information could be extracted, 00:10:04.750 --> 00:10:08.210 isolated, and consumed entirely on its own, that 00:10:08.210 --> 00:10:10.269 was revolutionary. I never thought about it that 00:10:10.269 --> 00:10:12.990 way. And that specific conceptual leap directly 00:10:12.990 --> 00:10:15.830 influenced the interfaces of early digital news 00:10:15.830 --> 00:10:19.090 databases like LexisNexis. Oh, wow. It laid the 00:10:19.090 --> 00:10:21.289 psychological groundwork for the keyword searches 00:10:21.289 --> 00:10:23.629 you and I use every single day. We no longer 00:10:23.629 --> 00:10:25.950 search for publications. We search for isolated 00:10:25.950 --> 00:10:28.529 pieces of data. So the 19th century actors who 00:10:28.529 --> 00:10:30.049 just wanted to read their own theater review. 00:10:30.120 --> 00:10:33.279 were inadvertently pioneering the way we Google 00:10:33.279 --> 00:10:36.379 things today. Pretty much. They trained us to 00:10:36.379 --> 00:10:39.840 consume information in isolated snippets. It 00:10:39.840 --> 00:10:42.299 is the genesis of modern search behavior. The 00:10:42.299 --> 00:10:45.000 Clipping Bureau was the analog predecessor to 00:10:45.000 --> 00:10:47.059 the search engine. Let's bring this directly 00:10:47.059 --> 00:10:49.399 into the present day and directly to you, our 00:10:49.399 --> 00:10:52.100 listener. We have covered the history and the 00:10:52.100 --> 00:10:54.940 shift in how we consume data. But what does this 00:10:54.940 --> 00:10:57.120 invisible machine actually look like right now? 00:10:57.279 --> 00:10:59.740 Why should you care about media monitoring today? 00:11:00.090 --> 00:11:02.529 Because it runs the modern business and political 00:11:02.529 --> 00:11:05.649 world. Oh, absolutely. The industry has evolved 00:11:05.649 --> 00:11:08.529 so far past physical clippings that it is now 00:11:08.529 --> 00:11:11.129 referred to as media intelligence or information 00:11:11.129 --> 00:11:14.370 logistics. Today, if you look at online tools 00:11:14.370 --> 00:11:17.129 you might use, like Google Alerts or massive 00:11:17.129 --> 00:11:20.029 corporate platforms like Meltwater, Cision, Medianet, 00:11:20.090 --> 00:11:22.409 and Muckrak, they're all the direct descendants 00:11:22.409 --> 00:11:24.850 of that Parisian clipping bureau. But instead 00:11:24.850 --> 00:11:26.970 of employing rooms full of people to read every 00:11:26.970 --> 00:11:30.129 page, they utilize automated software. Right. 00:11:30.269 --> 00:11:33.370 We are talking about web crawlers, bots or spiders 00:11:33.370 --> 00:11:36.110 that constantly roam the Internet. Just continuously 00:11:36.110 --> 00:11:39.230 scanning. Yes. They are automatically monitoring 00:11:39.230 --> 00:11:43.090 the content of free online news sources, newspapers, 00:11:43.509 --> 00:11:46.470 magazines, trade journals, news syndication services. 00:11:46.669 --> 00:11:49.450 And they are doing this 24 hours a day, seven 00:11:49.450 --> 00:11:52.250 days a week. And the applications for this constant 00:11:52.250 --> 00:11:55.289 surveillance are endless. It is no longer just 00:11:55.289 --> 00:11:59.200 actors checking reviews. Not at all. Today. Every 00:11:59.200 --> 00:12:01.620 single organization that relies on public relations 00:12:01.620 --> 00:12:04.600 uses news monitoring. They use it to track their 00:12:04.600 --> 00:12:06.740 own corporate publicity, obviously. But they 00:12:06.740 --> 00:12:09.440 also use it to monitor new legislation that might 00:12:09.440 --> 00:12:11.600 affect their supply chains or to track emerging 00:12:11.600 --> 00:12:14.639 trends in their specific industry. It's also 00:12:14.639 --> 00:12:18.139 a massive tool for verification. PR and marketing 00:12:18.139 --> 00:12:20.360 departments use these platforms to verify that 00:12:20.360 --> 00:12:22.500 their messaging is actually landing with their 00:12:22.500 --> 00:12:24.919 target audience. If a company launches a new 00:12:24.919 --> 00:12:26.639 product, they don't just hope people talk about 00:12:26.639 --> 00:12:28.860 it. They have bots quantifying exactly how many 00:12:28.860 --> 00:12:31.419 times it was mentioned, in what regions, and 00:12:31.419 --> 00:12:34.039 with what sentiment. So they know instantly if 00:12:34.039 --> 00:12:36.769 a campaign is working or failing? Exactly. And 00:12:36.769 --> 00:12:39.549 it extends far beyond the corporate world. City, 00:12:39.830 --> 00:12:42.730 state and federal government agencies are massive 00:12:42.730 --> 00:12:45.610 consumers of these monitoring services. Oh, to 00:12:45.610 --> 00:12:48.409 keep tabs on public opinion. That and they need 00:12:48.409 --> 00:12:50.649 to stay informed about regions and municipalities 00:12:50.649 --> 00:12:53.809 they couldn't possibly monitor manually. They 00:12:53.809 --> 00:12:55.990 use these services to verify that the public 00:12:55.990 --> 00:12:57.870 safety information that they are putting out 00:12:57.870 --> 00:13:00.490 is accurate, accessible and actually reaching 00:13:00.490 --> 00:13:02.870 the communities that need it. And the way this 00:13:02.870 --> 00:13:04.990 data is delivered to the client has completely. 00:13:05.100 --> 00:13:08.019 transformed. It used to be overnight mail with 00:13:08.019 --> 00:13:11.340 physical slips of paper. Now it's real time digital 00:13:11.340 --> 00:13:14.620 dashboards. Yes, the focus is entirely on auto 00:13:14.620 --> 00:13:17.500 analysis. The data isn't just dumped on a client's 00:13:17.500 --> 00:13:20.220 desk. It is indexed into highly searchable databases 00:13:20.220 --> 00:13:22.960 where it can be viewed, cross referenced and 00:13:22.960 --> 00:13:25.440 compared in real time across multiple different 00:13:25.440 --> 00:13:27.740 media formats. But how do they handle television 00:13:27.740 --> 00:13:30.240 now? You can't just have a bot watch a video 00:13:30.240 --> 00:13:32.649 in the same way it reads a text article. It is 00:13:32.649 --> 00:13:35.169 a really clever technological workaround, actually. 00:13:35.269 --> 00:13:37.470 For television monitoring, particularly in the 00:13:37.470 --> 00:13:39.990 U .S., the companies capture and index the closed 00:13:39.990 --> 00:13:42.429 captioning text of the broadcast. Well, that's 00:13:42.429 --> 00:13:44.970 smart. Right. They run keyword searches against 00:13:44.970 --> 00:13:47.090 the subtitles, essentially turning the spoken 00:13:47.090 --> 00:13:49.830 broadcast back into text data that can be easily 00:13:49.830 --> 00:13:52.269 scraped. But even with all of this incredible 00:13:52.269 --> 00:13:55.110 technology. The web crawlers, the closed caption 00:13:55.110 --> 00:13:57.970 indexing, the real time databases. There is still 00:13:57.970 --> 00:14:00.149 a massive blind spot, isn't there? There is. 00:14:00.210 --> 00:14:02.870 And it is a fascinating limitation. You would 00:14:02.870 --> 00:14:05.509 assume that a multibillion dollar network of 00:14:05.509 --> 00:14:08.190 bots catches absolutely everything. Right. But 00:14:08.190 --> 00:14:10.549 they don't. And the reason why is the enduring 00:14:10.549 --> 00:14:13.809 divide between print and digital media. Right. 00:14:13.870 --> 00:14:16.870 Because most local and regional newspapers do 00:14:16.870 --> 00:14:18.970 not actually upload all of their physical print 00:14:18.970 --> 00:14:22.110 content onto their websites. Exactly. And conversely, 00:14:22.110 --> 00:14:28.649 a lot of public. Yes. If a company relies solely 00:14:28.649 --> 00:14:31.850 on an automated online bot, they might completely 00:14:31.850 --> 00:14:34.970 miss a crucial, highly damaging article that 00:14:34.970 --> 00:14:37.269 only ran in the physical Sunday print edition 00:14:37.269 --> 00:14:40.210 of a prominent local paper. The digital record 00:14:40.210 --> 00:14:42.769 is simply not the complete record. Which is why 00:14:42.769 --> 00:14:44.669 some of these monitoring companies still employ 00:14:44.669 --> 00:14:48.190 actual human monitors to review certain broadcasts 00:14:48.190 --> 00:14:50.950 and write abstracts. They have to. Because... 00:14:51.129 --> 00:14:54.769 Bots can't easily detect sarcasm or read a physical 00:14:54.769 --> 00:14:57.950 paper that isn't online. Exactly. Human comprehension 00:14:57.950 --> 00:15:01.230 and physical access are still necessary to capture 00:15:01.230 --> 00:15:03.970 the nuances that algorithms miss. OK, so let's 00:15:03.970 --> 00:15:06.090 look at the big picture here. We have this massive 00:15:06.090 --> 00:15:09.460 global industry. It operates by deploying bots 00:15:09.460 --> 00:15:12.659 to crawl the web, copying text, scraping headlines, 00:15:13.059 --> 00:15:16.159 indexing closed captions, packaging that organized 00:15:16.159 --> 00:15:19.679 data, and selling it to paying clients. If you 00:15:19.679 --> 00:15:21.320 are sitting there thinking, wait a minute, isn't 00:15:21.320 --> 00:15:23.720 there a huge legal problem with taking other 00:15:23.720 --> 00:15:25.639 people's articles and selling access to them? 00:15:26.190 --> 00:15:28.350 Well, you would be absolutely right. It was only 00:15:28.350 --> 00:15:30.549 a matter of time. When you build an entire infrastructure 00:15:30.549 --> 00:15:33.210 on copying and sharing the hard work of journalists 00:15:33.210 --> 00:15:35.950 and publishers, eventually the lawyers are going 00:15:35.950 --> 00:15:37.669 to get involved. Unavoidable. And that brings 00:15:37.669 --> 00:15:40.230 us to the dramatic climax of this industry's 00:15:40.230 --> 00:15:44.009 evolution, the legal showdowns. The year 2012 00:15:44.009 --> 00:15:46.389 seems to be the tipping point. It was the year 00:15:46.389 --> 00:15:48.950 the original creators fought back. There were 00:15:48.950 --> 00:15:51.929 two major parallel cases that developed in 2012. 00:15:52.720 --> 00:15:55.679 You had one landmark case in the United States, 00:15:55.980 --> 00:15:59.100 Associated Press versus Meltwater. Okay. And 00:15:59.100 --> 00:16:01.440 another major case in the United Kingdom involving 00:16:01.440 --> 00:16:03.820 the Public Relations Consultants Association, 00:16:04.120 --> 00:16:07.399 the PRCA, against the newspaper licensing agency. 00:16:07.779 --> 00:16:10.220 And while they were happening in different countries, 00:16:10.379 --> 00:16:12.620 the core issue the courts were being asked to 00:16:12.620 --> 00:16:15.120 decide was fundamentally the same, wasn't it? 00:16:15.200 --> 00:16:17.600 Yes. The courts were essentially being asked 00:16:17.600 --> 00:16:20.299 to rule on the core legality of the modern media 00:16:20.299 --> 00:16:23.179 monitoring business model. Let's break down exactly 00:16:23.179 --> 00:16:25.519 what Meltwater, the media monitoring company 00:16:25.519 --> 00:16:28.600 acting as the defendant in these cases, was actually 00:16:28.600 --> 00:16:30.600 doing. Because they weren't just sending their 00:16:30.600 --> 00:16:32.700 clients a hyperlink to an article. They were 00:16:32.700 --> 00:16:35.159 sending automated web scrapers to news sites, 00:16:35.320 --> 00:16:37.740 making temporary digital copies of the articles, 00:16:37.860 --> 00:16:40.299 and then displaying those media clippings, the 00:16:40.299 --> 00:16:42.860 headlines, and the snippets of text directly 00:16:42.860 --> 00:16:44.899 to their paying clients on their own platform. 00:16:45.320 --> 00:16:47.639 And the plaintiffs, the Associated Press in the 00:16:47.639 --> 00:16:50.820 U .S. and a copyright collection society representing 00:16:50.820 --> 00:16:53.820 newspapers in the UK argued this was blatant 00:16:53.820 --> 00:16:56.500 copyright infringement. They were happy. No. 00:16:56.559 --> 00:16:59.179 They argued that Meltwater was profiting off 00:16:59.179 --> 00:17:01.259 of their journalistic labor without permission 00:17:01.259 --> 00:17:05.140 or compensation. It's a massive test of the boundaries 00:17:05.140 --> 00:17:08.279 of copyright law in the digital age because the 00:17:08.279 --> 00:17:11.279 Internet is built on sharing links and snippets. 00:17:11.380 --> 00:17:14.440 True. But these services were scraping the content, 00:17:14.619 --> 00:17:16.500 pulling it into their own walled -off systems, 00:17:16.660 --> 00:17:19.440 and charging corporate clients a premium to view 00:17:19.440 --> 00:17:22.420 it. So how did the courts actually rule? The 00:17:22.420 --> 00:17:24.660 outcomes dealt a heavy blow to the monitoring 00:17:24.660 --> 00:17:27.180 services. In the United States, the court ruled 00:17:27.180 --> 00:17:29.559 that Meltwater's activity was unlawful because 00:17:29.559 --> 00:17:32.019 it did not fall under the fair use doctrine. 00:17:32.160 --> 00:17:34.099 For anyone who might not be deep into copyright 00:17:34.099 --> 00:17:36.960 law, fair use is basically the legal concept 00:17:36.960 --> 00:17:39.700 that allows you to use a small portion of copyrighted 00:17:39.700 --> 00:17:42.180 material under certain specific conditions, like 00:17:42.180 --> 00:17:44.599 if you are providing commentary, criticism, or 00:17:44.599 --> 00:17:47.099 parody, without having to ask the original creator 00:17:47.099 --> 00:17:49.980 for permission. Correct. But... The U .S. court 00:17:49.980 --> 00:17:51.900 looked at what Meltwater was doing and said, 00:17:52.019 --> 00:17:55.460 no, this is not fair use. You are not critiquing 00:17:55.460 --> 00:17:57.380 the news. You are just packaging and selling 00:17:57.380 --> 00:17:59.759 someone else's news. Which is a huge distinction. 00:18:00.079 --> 00:18:02.960 Very much so. And over in the UK, operating under 00:18:02.960 --> 00:18:06.960 UK and EU. copyright law, the ruling was just 00:18:06.960 --> 00:18:09.000 as consequential. The courts determined that 00:18:09.000 --> 00:18:11.500 service providers absolutely require a license 00:18:11.500 --> 00:18:14.180 to operate this kind of business. And what about 00:18:14.180 --> 00:18:17.079 the clients using the service? They ruled that 00:18:17.079 --> 00:18:19.380 the corporate users paying for the service also 00:18:19.380 --> 00:18:22.559 need to be licensed. There is a really interesting 00:18:22.559 --> 00:18:26.220 nuance to the UK ruling that highlights the complexities 00:18:26.220 --> 00:18:29.380 of the Internet. Technically speaking, if an 00:18:29.380 --> 00:18:31.740 individual person just went to a website and 00:18:31.740 --> 00:18:34.099 viewed the original source without copying a 00:18:34.099 --> 00:18:36.539 snippet or printing it out, that is not infringement. 00:18:36.579 --> 00:18:39.500 And making temporary cached digital copies in 00:18:39.500 --> 00:18:41.819 the background of your browser just to enable 00:18:41.819 --> 00:18:44.720 a web page to load a lawful purpose is totally 00:18:44.720 --> 00:18:47.369 fine. But the courts recognized reality. They 00:18:47.369 --> 00:18:49.410 looked at the monitoring services and said, that 00:18:49.410 --> 00:18:51.410 is not what you were doing. These businesses 00:18:51.410 --> 00:18:54.609 don't just passively facilitate a view. They 00:18:54.609 --> 00:18:57.670 aggressively aggregate, organize, and present 00:18:57.670 --> 00:19:00.869 the content as a commercial product. The purely 00:19:00.869 --> 00:19:03.549 commercial nature of the service meant they couldn't 00:19:03.549 --> 00:19:06.309 hide behind the excuse of making harmless temporary 00:19:06.309 --> 00:19:09.650 copies. It was a business model. Exactly. They 00:19:09.650 --> 00:19:12.230 were packaging and selling access to copyrighted 00:19:12.230 --> 00:19:14.650 material, and therefore they had to pay for licenses 00:19:14.650 --> 00:19:17.009 from the original publishers. It creates such 00:19:17.009 --> 00:19:19.630 a fascinating tension. On one hand, you have 00:19:19.630 --> 00:19:23.430 this deep historical human desire to aggregate 00:19:23.430 --> 00:19:26.769 knowledge, to know what is being said, to organize 00:19:26.769 --> 00:19:29.549 the absolute chaos of the daily news cycle. And 00:19:29.549 --> 00:19:31.329 on the other hand, you have the absolute legal 00:19:31.329 --> 00:19:33.930 and ethical necessity to protect the original 00:19:33.930 --> 00:19:36.049 creators, the journalists and the publishers 00:19:36.049 --> 00:19:38.809 who actually put in the hard work to report and 00:19:38.809 --> 00:19:40.529 write the news in the first place. It is the 00:19:40.529 --> 00:19:43.170 central conflict of the information age. Who 00:19:43.170 --> 00:19:46.099 owns the snippet? When a headline or a sentence 00:19:46.099 --> 00:19:48.500 is isolated from its original source and put 00:19:48.500 --> 00:19:50.960 into a database, does it become public domain 00:19:50.960 --> 00:19:53.460 or is it still owned property? And the courts 00:19:53.460 --> 00:19:55.940 said it's property. In 2012, the courts firmly 00:19:55.940 --> 00:19:58.519 answered that yes, it is owned property. So as 00:19:58.519 --> 00:20:00.779 we wrap up this deep dive, take a moment to look 00:20:00.779 --> 00:20:02.839 at the incredible scope of the journey we just 00:20:02.839 --> 00:20:07.549 took. We started in 1879. With Parisian theatrical 00:20:07.549 --> 00:20:10.390 actors paying Alfred Cherie to physically cut 00:20:10.390 --> 00:20:13.190 out paper reviews with scissors just so they 00:20:13.190 --> 00:20:15.890 could stroke their own egos. A very humble beginning. 00:20:16.230 --> 00:20:18.430 Then we watched that vanity project morph into 00:20:18.430 --> 00:20:21.730 a massive corporate necessity in the 1930s, dominating 00:20:21.730 --> 00:20:24.299 the print landscape. We saw the technological 00:20:24.299 --> 00:20:27.299 leaps moving from tracking radio waves on magnetic 00:20:27.299 --> 00:20:30.019 audio tape to building automated web spiders 00:20:30.019 --> 00:20:32.900 that relentlessly crawl the Internet 24 hours 00:20:32.900 --> 00:20:35.460 a day. It's just staggering. We saw an entire 00:20:35.460 --> 00:20:38.220 industry force a psychological shift in how humanity 00:20:38.220 --> 00:20:40.579 views information, paving the way for the keyword 00:20:40.579 --> 00:20:42.799 searches and isolated data points we all rely 00:20:42.799 --> 00:20:45.460 on today. And finally, we arrived at the modern 00:20:45.460 --> 00:20:47.940 courtroom battles over copyright and fair use, 00:20:48.180 --> 00:20:50.920 proving that even invisible automated logistics 00:20:50.920 --> 00:20:53.849 machines are still bad. by the laws and property 00:20:53.849 --> 00:20:57.109 rights of the physical world. It really is a 00:20:57.109 --> 00:20:59.650 massive global infrastructure shaping corporate 00:20:59.650 --> 00:21:02.609 strategy right beneath our noses. It is. But 00:21:02.609 --> 00:21:04.730 I want to leave you with one final provocative 00:21:04.730 --> 00:21:07.549 thought building on the trajectory of everything 00:21:07.549 --> 00:21:09.470 we have discussed today. I'd love to hear it. 00:21:09.509 --> 00:21:12.990 For over 150 years, from those Parisian clipping 00:21:12.990 --> 00:21:15.690 bureaus with their scissors and paste to the 00:21:15.690 --> 00:21:18.369 modern server farms at Meltwater and Muckrack, 00:21:18.549 --> 00:21:20.990 media monitoring has fundamentally been about 00:21:20.990 --> 00:21:24.170 one thing. tracking what human beings are writing, 00:21:24.329 --> 00:21:26.849 broadcasting, and saying about other human beings. 00:21:27.029 --> 00:21:28.710 The human element has always been the core of 00:21:28.710 --> 00:21:31.230 the data. Exactly. But today we are entering 00:21:31.230 --> 00:21:34.529 a radically different era. As artificial intelligence 00:21:34.529 --> 00:21:37.230 increasingly generates our news articles, writes 00:21:37.230 --> 00:21:39.910 corporate press releases, and floods our social 00:21:39.910 --> 00:21:43.029 media feeds with synthetic posts, we are rapidly 00:21:43.029 --> 00:21:45.859 approaching a surreal future. Where is it heading? 00:21:46.039 --> 00:21:48.039 We are heading toward a world where AI -driven 00:21:48.039 --> 00:21:50.819 monitoring bots are endlessly scraping the web 00:21:50.819 --> 00:21:53.819 simply to analyze and index the output of other 00:21:53.819 --> 00:21:57.339 AI bots. Wow. An endless loop of machines reading 00:21:57.339 --> 00:22:00.059 machines. It forces us to ask a profound question. 00:22:00.599 --> 00:22:03.440 What exactly happens to media intelligence when 00:22:03.440 --> 00:22:06.500 the media itself is entirely artificial? Are 00:22:06.500 --> 00:22:09.859 we simply building multi -billion dollar infrastructures 00:22:09.859 --> 00:22:12.420 just to read what our own algorithms have written? 00:22:12.940 --> 00:22:15.220 That is an incredible point to end on. An entire 00:22:15.220 --> 00:22:17.740 industry built over a century and a half to track 00:22:17.740 --> 00:22:20.680 human opinion, slowly turning into a closed echo 00:22:20.680 --> 00:22:22.680 chamber of algorithms. It's definitely something 00:22:22.680 --> 00:22:24.380 to think about. We hope this journey through 00:22:24.380 --> 00:22:26.960 the unseen history of media monitoring has completely 00:22:26.960 --> 00:22:29.019 changed the way you look at the news snippets 00:22:29.019 --> 00:22:31.279 in your feed today. Thank you so much for joining 00:22:31.279 --> 00:22:33.519 us on this deep dive, and we encourage you to 00:22:33.519 --> 00:22:36.359 keep questioning the invisible systems that shape 00:22:36.359 --> 00:22:36.940 your world.