Strength

It is interesting to me how my legs are changing as a result of the barefoot running.

I started in the Vibram Five Fingers almost two years ago, but my running was inconsistent. Over the last couple of months, however I have been running consistently over varying surfaces and distances, and along with that I have seen changes in my leg muscles.

The first changes were in my feet and especially on the outside of my lower legs. These were simply because I needed to compensate for the loss of support the shoes provided. Being on the, uh, older end of things meant that it took longer (months) than it probably would have for a younger person. My legs were quite stiff after those earlier runs, but my feet weren't, they just felt used, like they'd had a good workout.

Since I've committed to barefooting my legs have been strengthening, basically from the bottom up. My ankles are stronger, especially now that I've added hills and longer workouts (15 miles last Thursday) to my routine. Also, I'm starting to regain some speed. Today I ran my normal 4 mile course and found that I've taken more than a minute a mile off my time since February. Interestingly, as I've increased my pace I have also felt an increase in strength around my knees.

The increase in ankle and knee strength are completely new to me. I grew up with a lot of lateral movement playing soccer, but this newfound strength around my joints is different. It feels almost as if my ankles were wrapped in tape or my knees bound in an elastic brace. My body is building up its own support which, in turn, makes me more confident about pushing my pace.

The Club Northwest All-Comers series starts this Wednesday. I haven't been on the track for more than a month, and haven't run a fast 800 meters for two years, so I don't think my time will be very good, but I am very interested in how my body will respond to pushing myself for a (barefoot) 800 meters.

Barefoot Half-Marathon

Yesterday I did my first barefoot half-marathon. I hadn't done a half for several years, so I was a little nervous about it. The weather was cool, upper 40s, about what it has been all spring. Rained all night the night before the race and a heavy shower came through just before the start, but the race itself was pretty much rain-free. I broke two hours, which was my goal, but did not break 1:45, which is the pace I need to hold if I want to qualify for the Boston Marathon.

The race was pretty tough on my feet. Being cool and damp (especially damp), it took a while for my feet to warm up, so for the first mile and half or so I felt everything. This was especially tough at the beginning because the streets were quite weathered, the surface pitted and uneven. The roads didn't improve much. They weren't in terrible shape for driving - no potholes to speak of or anything like that - but it would have been tough on a bike and was really hard on my feet. The space between the tires was usually smoother and I ran there when I could, but I really had to watch my foot placement and I never really got a relaxed, comfortable stride going, which made it tougher than I expected.

Still, it was faster than my training runs, and it was my quads tightening up at about nine miles that limited my performance more than my feet.

Afterwards: ouch. Fatigued legs and feet that stayed sensitive all the way to bedtime. The first time my feet have really hurt after a barefoot run.

I got up this morning and did an easy four miles. My feet warmed up in the first half mile, and my legs felt okay after a mile or so, but my shoulders hurt for two and half miles. No idea why my shoulders bothered me; that's a new one. But the last mile and a half it was all systems go with a good, moderately quick stride. I didn't push it, but I felt good, which for me is unusual on the day after a half marathon.

Now I just need to figure out how to shed 40 seconds a mile.

I'm Still Barefooting

It's been more than a year now since that first barefooting experience. In that time I've gotten into shape, slipped out of shape, and gotten going again. Most of my running was in the Vibram Five Finger KSOs, but I did some barefooting as well. After overdoing it and tearing up my feet, I was much more cautious. I never ran two days in a row barefoot, and never more than five miles. It worked okay.

My speed has fallen off a cliff compared to three or four years ago. I wanted to try to run in the Club Northwest All-Comers meets this year, so I started doing some track intervals in my VFFs in November. It was unpleasant. Trying to go fast used all sorts of muscles I hadn't used in many months, and the 30-ish degree weather didn't help. I struggled to do 400m in 90 seconds and regretted it afterwards, muscles strained, unable to recover between intervals.

I took January off.

Last year we had a very mild February. This year it stayed cold, most days staying below 40 degrees. I did some working out and kept waiting for it to warm up a little so I could start barefooting. Didn't happen. At the beginning of March I got tired of waiting, so on a 43 degree morning I took off the shoes and just started running.

I haven't worn shoes in a workout since then, not even my Five Fingers.

It turns out my feet don't get cold. The increased blood flow when I'm running? Maybe. My hands get cold, but not my feet.

My bare feet must look pretty silly when I'm wearing a hat, tights, and a long sleeve shirt, but it works for me. It's only been over 50 degrees three or four times when I've run, but my feet have never been a problem. I'm still doing track workouts, and in addition to my moderate 4-mile runs I have added one long run a week and even some trail running, all without shoes.

The trail running is still a challenge, especially when it gets rocky. The worst is crushed gravel which is just brutal on my feet, and sometimes I have to run on the side of the trail to get away from it. Downhill is worse than uphill because you land with extra force. I'm still learning how to trail run. I'm sure I'll get better.

The most important thing, I think, is that I've given up the idea that I can't run barefoot every day. That was a self-fulfilling prophecy in that I wasn't putting in enough miles to toughen up my feet, so my feet never got tough enough to take the mileage.

I started with shorter runs, nothing over 4 miles for several weeks. My barefoot track workouts were very short, too, so even though I was running five or six times a week, I was only covering maybe 15 miles. Now my feet have toughened up. Last year after my overzealous 11 mile run my feet were torn up and I did no barefooting at all for several weeks while they healed. Yesterday I ran 11 with no problems, and I'll be on the track again tonight.

My feet are strong. The pads on the outside of my feet and balls of my toes continue to toughen. It will take some really bad conditions to make me put on my Vibrams for a run now.

A few things I  have noticed:

• Yes, it still hurts when I step on a thorn or sharp rock, though I have a midfoot strike, so if it's on my heel it doesn't really affect me at all. Still, it can hurt, so I try to avoid them. I also avoid dog, horse, and goose poop. I'm not stupid.
• I usually run on pavement, but my favorite thing is a compact, rock-free dirt path that is still damp from the rain. Grass is okay, but it hides rocks and uneven ground, so it can be a challenge to run on. But don't fear the pavement; I especially like freshly laid asphalt: it feels great.
• Everything below your skull is just a giant spring. Don't run stiff. Relax, let your joints bend, and settle into your stride. Your joints, tendons, and muscles are made to trot, but you have to relax and let them do their work.
• My turnover has increased, and my stride has shortened.
• My endurance has improved. I attribute this largely to actively using my lower legs. When I ran in shoes I had a tendency to use my lower legs like inanimate pendulums, just throwing my feet out there and letting the shoes absorb the impact. That also meant that I was losing a lot of energy into the padding of the shoes. Now my lower legs are more involved and that energy is returned to my stride, making me more efficient. I'm no speed demon, but when I ran yesterday I had as much bounce in my 11th mile as I did in my first.
• Running barefoot is more pleasant than walking barefoot. I don't know if it's the increased blood flow or the endorphins or what, but many things that bother my feet walking around before or after a run I barely notice during the run. 

I love barefooting. I don't even like the idea of running in Vibrams anymore. A few words of caution, however, if you're starting out.

• You are developing two things: the pads on your feet, and the muscles in your legs and feet. Both those things require time and patience.
• Barefoot every day - as often as you can, anyway. That's how you'll build up the pads in your feet.
• Treat yourself like you're injured. The longer you've been running in padded shoes the more atrophied your lower legs will be. It took me months of minimalist running to getting my lower legs healthy again. Take your time. Don't rush.
• Drastically cut your mileage. One barefoot mile is a long way if you've never done it before. Start with one mile as a workout, and don't be embarrassed about stopping.
• Find a smooth, level place to run. You don't want to do hill work with atrophied legs. Artificial turf soccer fields are great. Natural grass, too, if they're not too rocky. A paved path, something smooth enough for rollerblading works well, too (that's what I started with).
• Check your ego at the door. You will slow down. If you overdo it you will get transition injuries. Barefooting is a lifestyle change, not a miracle cure.

Double Red Blood Cells

After the last couple of days my feet need some time to heal. A couple of down days isn't going to hurt, plus it gave me the opportunity to donate blood, which I haven't done in a few months.

I went down to the Puget Sound Blood Center in Bellevue and after going through the traditional preliminaries (including the finger prick, the worst part of donating blood), they asked if I would be interested in doing a double red blood cell donation.

Although I've donated blood quite a lot, this is the first time the question has come up. Blood is comprised of four main components: plasma, platelets, white blood cells, and red blood cells. In the past I've donated whole blood, which means they just suck the blood out of your arm, stick it in a bag, and ship it off for transfusions. However, most transfusions do not use whole blood. The components are separated out in a lab through a process call apheresis, and each part is typically used for potentially a different person.

With a double red blood cell donation the apheresis is done at the time of the donation, and the parts not used are returned to the donor rather than being sent off to the lab. Because some of the blood is returned to the donor this is a more complicated procedure involving what I call a "machine". This machine separates the blood into its different components, keeps the component it wants, then shoves the remaining detritus back into your arm.

It's kinda cool.

And it's called "double" red cell donation because they draw twice as many red blood cells - which also means you can only donate every four months instead of every two. Because the machine is required, this type of donation is not possible with the mobile donation centers.

So they hooked me up to the machine and the weird part is that it oscillates between drawing blood and pumping it back into your body. The first couple of cycles of pumping it back in felt really odd, plus my face, especially my lips got kind of tingly, the way your foot does when it's getting sensation back after being asleep; apparently this is due to the anti-coagulant that is added to the mix before it's pumped back into you (calcium helps get rid of the sensation: they gave me Tums).

The process took about 25 minutes on the machine for me, about what you'd expect because they're drawing twice as much blood, plus it takes time to fill you up again.

I feel a little strange, more so than after a regular donation. Will definitely not be running today, and probably not tomorrow. My feet will appreciate that.

Giving blood is one of the few things I can think of that is simply an unmitigated good. If you can donate blood I highly encourage you to do so. Is there an easier way to save a life?

Barefoot Running part Deux

I listened to my body, but apparently my body has communications issues.

So after yesterday's barefoot running experience I decided to go whole hog today. I hopped in the car and drove down to the trail, but I left my shoes at home. That was a very strange feeling, like I was forgetting something.

First off I want to say that I ran the full 11 miles barefoot. That's 71 miles for the week. Very psyched about that. And in the process of running 11 miles barefoot I (re)learned a few things:

1. My foot strike is slightly different barefoot even than when I run in my Five Fingers.
2. I dislike stepping on worms more than I dislike stepping on rocks.
3. I really like running through puddles.

The first half mile or so was difficult. That warmup period I was really pounding the pavement and it kind of hurt my feet. As I warmed up and fell into my stride it was much better, except for the slight difference in foot strike. The difference was more noticeable with my left (non-dominant) foot than my right. My theory is that my left foot has always been a little lazy compared to my right, and that it adjusts to my footwear more than my right, so as I have become more minimalistic my left foot has had to make more changes to compensate. But that's only a theory.

What is fact is that my feet strike slightly further back on the ball of my foot when I run barefoot. Not as much of a change on my right foot as my left, and my right foot, although slightly sore, is fine. On my left foot, however, the strike was far enough back that it ripped the callous off my big toe from the back. As I said, my body apparently has communications issues because I didn't notice it until I got home and realized I was tracking blood through the house. Long term I don't think this is a big deal (the callous will build up a little further back next time), but in the short term...well, we'll see how far I feel like running tomorrow. And I may have to do it in shoes. We'll see.

And this is where it's tough transitioning to barefoot running. I ran longer because I am in good enough shape to run longer, but my feet are not conditioned for long barefoot runs. I need to back off the mileage and build it back up slowly. Going too far was a mistake. I did 5 miles yesterday. Today I should have done 6 instead of 11.

Worms. It rained last night. I never really thought about worms. I worried about rocks and glass and metal debris. Never thought about worms. Even though I stepped on rocks I assiduously avoided the worms. Eww.

The puddles, however, were a revelation. I avoided them at the beginning as I had the worms, but later in the run I was forced to run through one - and it felt fantastic. I don't know how else to describe it. My feet were already tingling from the constant massage of the pavement and when they hit the water it was a glorious, joyous, sensual event. The whole second half of the run I was seeking them out. Completely unexpected bonus.

One other thing I didn't expect was the anxiety I felt. I think this was on two levels. First there was the question of what if yesterday was a fluke? What if running barefoot didn't work on a longer run? It was the kind of anxiety I probably felt the first time I let go of the wall at the deep end of the pool. Fear of the unknown. Like I said, leaving the house without any running shoes felt incredibly weird.

The other type of anxiety was "what will other people think?" I was stunned that this was an issue for me, but it was. For at least the first two miles I had to force myself to relax when someone was coming down the trail in the other direction. Running in Five Fingers is eccentric. Running barefoot is a commitment. 

So I spent a lot of energy trying to calm myself down, relaxing, finding my stride. I was all wound up and went way too fast in the beginning, and I paid for it with some slow miles in the middle. Once I got out to three or four miles I relaxed and just ran. It was good (except for tearing the callous off my left foot). 

In the end it was an okay run. I should have run fewer miles so I would have been less likely to tear up my foot. Live and learn. We'll see what my feet feel like tomorrow.

Barefoot Running

I ran seven miles today, the last five of them barefoot.

Let me preface this post by saying:

1. I am not a doctor. I don't even play one on TV.
2. I am not compensated in any way by any shoe company (dammit)
3. These are my opinions and my experiences. Your mileage may vary.

I'm a 47 year old pack runner. I am better at short distances than long, but even in high school I was really a JV runner; I only ran varsity because we had a lousy track team. I have done several (eight? ten?) marathons, but haven't broken 4 hours since I was in my early 20s. Over the last ten years or so I've been running 5Ks and 2 mile races and even 800M races over the summer at the Club Northwest All-Comers meets.

But a couple of years ago when I was doing "just one more" 400M interval there was an audible pop behind my left knee. No warning, just a pop. Since then I have tried different ways to work around it. No long distance. Limited intervals. Never run two days in a row. Anything that would let me keep running, but nothing helped. Even weeks of rest at a time wouldn't fix it. Every time I ran I could feel it, just one tendon tightening up, but it was enough to shorten my stride and reduce my turnover. Running slowly didn't even work: any downhill at all, even the slightest grade would make me wince. It was frustrating and took the fun out of running.

Around Memorial Day last year I ran one 800M race. I broke 2:30, but I didn't feel good, and I gave it up. From June to December I ran maybe once or twice a month. Running was frustrating. It just wasn't worth it.

Now, last summer I read about the Vibram Five Fingers shoes and was smitten. All my running from July on was in a pair of KSOs. I wore them around in general. I've gone barefoot around the house for years and don't wear anything more formal than flip flops unless I really need to. It took a while to build up the strength in my feet and the outside of my calves, but it felt good.

The only real drawback to the Five Fingers is that because each toe has it's only little sack there are more friction points than with a traditional running shoe. That means more blisters, at least at the beginning, but for me that was a small price to pay, especially because the blisters quickly abated.

So I started running again on the 9th of January, a Saturday. I put on my Five Fingers and went down to the slough. There's a flat, paved trail that extends 5.5 miles south and 20+ miles to the north. I covered three miles, but only one of it was running. My calf tightened up, so I just walked.

This was my first good decision. I listened to my body. I wasn't running with a partner. I wasn't wearing a watch. I wasn't trying to pass people because my ego said I should be faster than them. I jogged slowly. When my calf tightened up, I pulled up and walked. I didn't force myself to jog to the next distance marker, I just stopped right there. Twice I made it a little less than half a mile. I walked the rest.

Sunday I did the same thing, but was able to run 2.5 out of the three miles.

Monday I jogged all 3 without stopping.

I ran every day for 8 days in a row. All slow. All flat. All paved. No watch. No pushing. I got my mileage up to 5 miles without stopping. When I felt good I picked up the pace. When I felt bad I slowed down to little more than a fast walk. Always listening to the body.

Excruciatingly slow people passed me. I let them go.

The most important thing was that I ran all 8 days with no pain. Some soreness, particularly in my calves because I hadn't been running, but that's the good soreness from awakening sleeping muscles, not pain. For the first time in years I was running without pain.

I took two days off. Then I started up again with 6 miles. Three days later 7. Three days later 8. Three days later 9. Then, because I missed a distance marker I pulled a Spinal Tap and went straight to 11 miles. Two days of eleven miles. 14 days in a row running. 112 miles. No pain.

Then I got my second pair of Five Fingers in the mail. The first pair was a little too small and the toes on my left foot were ripping the fabric. It didn't stop me from running, obviously, but eventually I want to go offroad into the hills, and I didn't want shoes with ripped toes because the rocks would get in, so I got a second pair, this one a size larger.

So on the 15th day I took off for another 11 mile run in my new shoes. Now, with traditional running shoes you don't normally do 11 miles on your first day, you give your feet a little time to get used to them first. But the Five Fingers are different, right.

Not really.

Maybe it was because they were a size larger, but I got a blister. It was nothing but a bloody, pulpy crater in my foot by the time I got done, but I could tell it had been a blister once. The thing that surprised me is that the blister was on the inside of my foot, on the arch, a part of the foot that doesn't even strike the ground. Still, I finished the 11 miles.

Yesterday: day 16. I put a huge band-aid over the raw flesh and ran again. After a couple of miles the endorphins kicked in and the pain in my foot subsided. In fact I felt really good, doing more than half the miles at a reasonably brisk pace (brisk by my new standards, anyway). Given the pain in my foot I was very pleased with the run. Much better than the day before. 134 miles in 16 days. Running 24 out of 26 days. Even with the sore on my foot I was feeling pretty good.

Then I went down to the trail today. I covered the sore with another band-aid and started down the trail, but after more than two miles one thing was clear: the pain wasn't going to stop today. I felt really good otherwise, but that rubbing on my foot was more than a distraction. For the first time in almost a month I pulled up and stopped in the middle of my run.

I took the shoes off. There was some bleeding, but no worse than yesterday. But yesterday it stopped hurting, today it didn't. So I started walking back.

I had heard of barefoot running, and last week I happened to read Born to Run, which talked about Barefoot Ted, amongst other people. I knew my feet had been toughening up from running in the Five Fingers anyway, so when I got to the 3.5 mile marker I just started jogging.

If there is one thing that feels better than running in Five Fingers shoes, it's running without them.

Yeah, I still had the sore on my foot, but like I said, it's not on a part of the foot that hits the ground. It felt good. I started to pick up the pace. It felt even better. It felt so good that when I got back to the 5.5 mile marker I just kept running. Past 6, 6.5, and finally turned around at 7 and it felt like I just kept going faster until somewhere between 6.5 and 6 I slowed to cool down into the finish at 5.5.

My feet were dirty, but I felt really good. It was so much easier than running even in the Five Fingers. I didn't have to compensate for the shoes at all.

I found my own stride.

Tomorrow I'll run again. This time I'll go barefoot from the start so I don't have to carry the shoes with me. If I do 10 miles I will have my first 70 mile week in more than 25 years. If not, maybe I'll get 70 miles next week.

It doesn't really matter, though.

The important thing is that I've been running pain free for a month now. I've done it by not worrying about any goals except mileage. I've done it without rest days. I've done it without relying on fancy shoes, and I may finish it without any shoes at all.

A month ago I couldn't run even one mile without stopping. I ran seven miles today, the last five of them barefoot, and I can't remember enjoying running as much as I'm enjoying it right now.

False Friends

Swedish speakers leave the room, this is not for you.

Browsing through The Local, an English-language Swedish news site I ran across an article covering a viral video that provides a brief and humorous introduction to Swedish for English speakers. (Don't ask me why I was browsing a Swedish news site, it's just what I do, okay?)

Warning: the language is a little coarse, so if you are easily offended you probably shouldn't play it.

My favorite little phrase from the article is: It’s not the fart that kills, it’s the smäll. For those of you who don't speak Swedish (and that should be all of you because I sent the Swedish speakers out of the room), this is funny because it combines two Swedish/English false friends* to make a reasonably meaningful sentence. The word "fart" in Swedish means "speed", and "smäll" (pronounced like the English "smell"), means impact. So if you translate the words, the sentence becomes "It's not the speed that kills, it's the impact," which still makes sense. I think it's a nifty little double meaning for those in the know (which now includes you - welcome to the club).

Other Swedish/English false friends include:

bra - fine, well, good
ful - ugly
full - drunk
kissa - to pee
hamstring - hoarding

Notice how much funnier false friends are when they mistakenly include scatological and anatomically sensitive terms. Somehow it seems a part of us will always be stuck in third grade.

The BBC website has several false friend examples for English (if you can really call British English "English") and other languages. There are also several websites for false friends, just search for "false friend" plus the language pair you're looking for ("false friend English Spanish").

A classic for written French is chat, which means to talk in English, but means "cat" in French, and in spoken French the English word "shovel" can easily be confused with "cheval", the French word for horse. With a little work you can find French/English false friends that don't involve French animal names.

And for those of you who like word play, here is an old Two Ronnies sketch about learning Swedish, except that there's no Swedish involved and Corbett is dressed in German lederhosen.

 *a false friend is a word that sounds like a word in another language but has a different meaning. I thought that's what false cognates were, but in reading about such word pairs today I have become enlightened. Shame, really, because I always felt that saying "false cognate" made me look taller.

Sources:
The Local
BBC
Transparent Language
Spidra

Promotion Fail

You make it all the way through Friday the 13th and then this crap happens.

"Mailorama va distribuer des dizaines de milliers d'Euros en cash dans les rues de Paris," claims the Mailorama.fr website - at least for the moment. For the monolithically English speaking, that roughly translates to "Mailorama will distribute tens of thousands of euros in cash in the streets of Paris." Didn't work out that way.

Mailorama, an email marketing website in France, set out to promote their service by having a drive-by-giveaway, tossing envelopes of cash to people from a van as it passed the Eiffel Tower. However when an unexpectedly large crowd estimated at 5000 showed up, blocking traffic and causing safety concerns, police and  Mailorama agreed to call off the publicity stunt.

The disappointed crowd overturned a car. At least 10 people were arrested.

The Mailorama fiasco is right up there with other great promotional disasters. My favorites are the (real) Disco Demolition night and the (fake) WKRP Thanksgiving Giveaway.

Disco Demolition night took place in Chicago in 1979. Disco music, the signature music of the 70's, had divided the nation into those who could do The Hustle and those who couldn't. A growing rejection of what had become the Disco norm was spawning the New Wave and Punk movements, and in Chicago a disc jockey expressed his disdain for Disco by destroying Disco records by any means possible. His claim to fame came when he was scheduled to blow up boxes of LPs between games of a Chicago White Sox double-header.

The White Sox were owned by Bill Veeck, a shameless promoter who had once sent midget Eddie Gaedel up to bat in a major league baseball game. For him the Disco Demolition night was a no-brainer.

The demolition took place, but then, as with the Mailorama crowd, the scene turned ugly with hundreds of people coming onto the field and starting a bonfire in center field. The second game of the double header was cancelled (the White Sox ultimately forfeited the game - the last time an American League game was forfeited).

Still, IMHO, the best promotion failure was from the fictional WKRP radio station from the TV series of the same name. If you know the story it needs no explanation, and if you haven't, well, I won't spoil it for you, just watch the clip (sorry, can't find an embeddable version).

Sources:
CBS News
Mailorama

Not What They Seem

Austrian Times
Police close down the Alesso family bakery in Turin, Italy.

Two bakers in Turin, Italy have been arrested for selling cocaine hidden inside loaves of bread. Michelangelo Alesso, 51 and Alessandro Mancino, 22, have been arrested and their family bakery shut down. Alesso blamed the economy for their desperate measure: "I had no choice. No-one was buying special bread or cakes any more so we had to find something they would buy or we would be out of business."

Police became suspicious when the bakery line began to reach around the corner.

---

Austrian Times

Confiscated cigarettes with (bonus!) rabbit droppings in the Canary Islands.

Also, counterfeit cigarettes confiscated in the Canary Islands have been found to contain not only tobacco, but also rabbit feces.

Police and customs officials have arrested at least 12 people on Tenerife, the largest of the Canary islands with a population roughly the size of Oahu, Hawaii.  The rabbit feces were used to save on tobacco content. The police seized 1.5 million packs of cigarettes and over a million Euros in cash.

According to one customs official, "They stunk. They smell just as you'd imagine burning shit to smell."

Sources:
Austrian Times (and again)
Memo
Daily Express
Tenerife Forum
Island Connections
Wikipedia

NewsCorp v Google

Several news sources report that News Corp, run by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, may pull their stories from Google in a matter of months.

Most of those sources seem to be (or cite) articles published in News Corp properties.

I found those sources using a Google search.

For those of you who haven't been in touch with this issue, the general background goes something like this:

1. Media sites are trying to make money on the web.
2. Web revenue comes primarily from advertising.
3. Google currently has the largest income from web advertising.
4. Content providers (like News Corp), feel that Google (and other search engines) are unfairly using their content and want to them to pay for it.
5. Google says, no, thanks, we don't want to pay.

So now News Corp is threatening to pull its news off of Google. They also have a self-imposed deadline to put all their sites behind paywalls by June 2010.

Ain't gonna happen.

The reason I am sure they won't pull their Google listings is because if they wanted to they could do it not in a few months, but today. Right now. In less time than it takes to read this article.

There is a convention used by all search engines to respect sites that don't want to be searched. You do it by adding a file (robots.txt) to your website. You want to stop all the search engines from searching your site? Put these two lines in robots.txt and it's done:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

If it's so simple then why doesn't News Corp do it?

They don't do it because they need Google more than Google needs them.

News Corp has a tremendous number of print holdings around the world, including The Times (London), The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), The New York Post, and the Wall Street Journal. Of these four, all a completely free to read with the exception of the The Wall Street Journal.

Up to the 19th century, print media was a natural oligopoly on the news. If you lived somewhere most of your second-hand news came from the local papers. You didn't have a choice. You couldn't very well subscribe to the New York Times if you lived in Chicago. Because papers are regional by their very nature they are also limited in the number of potential subscribers. Subscriptions eventually topped out, but newspapers really turned into a business when they realized they could make more money by advertising than subscriptions. In fact, advertising revenue is the prime source of income for most newspapers today.

Don't agree? Do you get a local town or neighborhood weekly newspaper? Do you pay for it? I get one in delivered to my house every week for free. It's paid for by the advertising.

Even if you pay a fee for a daily paper it probably doesn't cover the cost of production and delivery.

Newspapers are not in the news business, they are in the advertising business. They make money by providing a service, and the service is providing eyeballs for advertising. News is what they use to attract the eyeballs.

When you look at newspapers as an advertising service you see why they feel threatened by Google (or any other search engine). Google provides the same type of service in that they connect eyeballs to advertising, and they do it at a far more massive scale than a print newspaper could ever achieve.

Newspapers are threatened by this and rationalize it by claiming it is unfair that Google makes money off of their news content.

They are wrong in two fundamental ways: first, the service Google provides is a service which is not provided by the newspapers, and second, individual news sites provide very little original content.

First, newspapers have gone online to attract more eyeballs, and Google's search engine increases those eyeballs.

Consider the dictionary. A dictionary has a phonetic pronunciation for the word which can be handy if you see a word written down but have never heard it spoken. However, if you need to know how to spell a word a dictionary is pretty useless. But what if someone created a dictionary sorted phonetically? Then you could take a spoken word and find the correct spelling (or spellings, when there are homonyms).

Google provides a service analogous for news sites analogous to the phonetically sorted dictionary. If someone just wants to see what the news is they can go directly to their news site of choice, but if they want news on a specific event then Google provides a mechanism to point their eyeballs at a relevant news site.

Google does not charge for providing this service. Google absorbs the technology costs for providing this service the same way newspapers absorb production and delivery costs, and both make their money back in advertising.

Now, some news sites do not need Google. They attract readers enough readers by reputation alone.

Of Alexa's top 100 global sites, only two are news sites: CNN and The New York Times. A search on "Fort Hood shootings", a fairly hot topic this week shows CNN at the top of the list, but the New York Times isn't even on the first page.

Though the NYT doesn't charge for an online subscription, it does require user registration. This means that if you're not registered you can't read the articles. Because not everyone is registered the links on the NYT are frustrating to pass around - a lot of people can't click through - so links to NYT articles don't get ranked as high on Google. The NYT has a strong reputation, they can get by without Google, but how many other news sites can do that?

The NYT is 97th on the list. CNN is 59th. I can't say how much larger the NYT audience would be if it's articles showed up on Google, but I don't see CNN rushing to put up a barrier between themselves and those eyeballs.

Google provides a service, and the market has deemed that service valuable enough that Google can support the costs of that service by advertising.

The second thing is content: news is, by its nature, a local event. An event may have worldwide implications, but the bottom line is that news is an event that occurred in some specific location. No newspaper can cover the entire world, so they take advantage of wire services like Reuters and the Associated Press as a source for non-local news stories. Many of these wire service news stories are replicated in newspapers around the world. Not just major stories, either.

Anyone who has read through my blog knows I like to pull up odd news stories, and I am amazed how difficult it is to find differing sources because so many of the stories are replicated word for word. While I often find out about a story from a source that uses the wire service, I also try to find the original story. The wire services almost never site the original source for the story (interesting double standard, but I digress), but Google often allows me to get back to the original sources.

(And before you go off on piracy and copyright tangents, note I am only talking about news sites that actually pay for the right to print the wire service articles, okay?)

Take a look at your local daily and see how many of the articles are wire service articles, especially in the front and sport sections. This does not mean that the newspaper is useless - far from it: using wire services is a cost-effective way to enhance news coverage. But the transition from print to online makes wire service stories significantly less valuable because you can find the same story in so many places. Local news makes a news site valuable. Interpreting the implications of a non-local event on the local area makes a news site valuable. Running a wire service story does not make a news site valuable; this is a fundamental difference between print and online news.

Running wire service articles doesn't hurt an online news site, but because the article is replicated all over the world, it doesn't make the site more valuable either. The valuable content is the original content, not the wire service articles.

Now, the internet has drastically changed the game over the last few years. A large portion of  newspaper advertising used to be for classified ads, but craigslist, ebay, and monster.com have (from the newspaper point of view) devastated that market. The eyeballs and the money associated with classified ads has left the newspaper coffers and will not be back.

The situation with Google is fundamentally different. Google does not remove money from online news sites. Online sites still have their own advertising. All Google does is drive more eyeballs to that advertising. And Google does it free of charge. And that is why News Corp will not pull themselves from Google.

What if News Corp does pull its sites from Google? Like I said, of Alexa's top 100 sites, none of them are News Corp properties. What do you think the impact on Google will be?

Murdoch understands all of this.

So I say it again: ain't gonna happen because if it were going to happen News Corp would already have done it.

Sources:
Wikipedia
Telegraph
RobotShop