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MediaNews Group, Belo Mull Blocking Google, Too

MediaNews Group is making radical changes in the way it handles content. The publisher of the Denver Post and a number of other newspapers plans to put its content behind pay walls for its newspapers in Chico, California and York, Pennsylvania. The publisher also plans to block Google from indexing the stories behind those pay walls, says CEO Dean Singleton.

A.H. Belo is also considering online subscription fees and blocking Google News, though no action is “imminent,” said evp James Moroney, Bloomberg reports. Moroney said blocking Google would be part of a larger strategy.

A.H. Belo plans to put some of its content behind pay walls at either the Dallas Morning News, the Providence Journal (in Rhode Island) or the Riverside Press-Enterprise (in California) within six months.

MediaNews Group and A.H. Belo’s considerations follow an announcement from News Corp that it plans to block Google from indexing its news content. News Corp also plans to charge for content at all of its news sites, likely beginning some time next year, though News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch has said the company might not meet its goal of having all sites behind pay walls by the middle of the year.

News Corp is in discussions with Microsoft about being paid to display its content on Microsoft’s Bing search site and keep it off Google’s search engine, according to a person briefed on the situation.

Moves by newspaper publishers to block Google’s access to their stories would be risky. In the U.S., Google searches make up 65% of the search market, while Bing gets 9.9% of domestic searches, according to comScore.

Still, the possibility of getting fees from search engines could be a significant development in the online strategies of newspapers, establishing a precedent that sets a value for news that has to date been mostly free, writes The New York Times.

Though it is uncertain how much of an increase in search revenue Bing could bring in by increasing the number of searches via content deals with publishers, it is clear that Microsoft is on the offensive in the search market. And the company could score points with the public by coming to the rescue of struggling media companies, says Brendan Barnicle, a software analyst with Pacific Crest Securities.

“The ability to have some sort of objective news media is pretty important,” he is quoted as saying. “Maybe Microsoft is in a position to fund that.”