British online news veteran Peter Bale has had some interesting things to say at today’s Association of Online Publishers conference in London. Mark Sweney reports at MediaGuardian:

“Peter Bale, the executive producer at MSN UK, today warned major British newspaper websites they were likely to see a ‘bump down’ in user traffic because of Google News’ recent content deals.

Mr Bale, speaking as part of a panel at today’s Association of Online Publishers conference, said that popular websites such as the Guardian, Times and the Sun should “be aware” of the ramifications of Google News’ recent deal with news agencies.”

[...]

However, he cautioned that the most recent deal – which involves the scanning of news stories from the agencies and omitting from Google News search results any duplicated versions of stories from these agencies that other news sites host – had wider ramifications.

‘While the agencies will consider it [the Google deal] as welcome news publishers, the likes of the Guardian, Times and Sun, need to be aware of a bump down in traffic from that.’”

It’s too early to know what the impact on traffic will be – Newsknife says we’re only nine days into Google’s agreement with the agencies, and puts the New York Times and Guardian Unlimited top of its Google News sources, ahead of the agencies.

But the only reason I can think of for Google to do that deal with agencies would be to improve its news search listings. By knowing what the agencies are publishing, it can remove duplicates more easily. That, as Bale points out, might damage traffic… but only to those sites dependent on agency copy for a significant portion of their traffic.

So I think – and maybe hope – that Peter’s got his warning aimed at the wrong people. All the sites he mentions – Guardian, Times, Sun – have substantial resources devoted to producing original content, and that’s the material that gets picked up by Google News (and brings in lots and lots of traffic). Those Newsknife stats support my theory, and suggest Google rewards originality. Maybe we should only fear Google if what we display on our sites is generic. [Update: Paidcontent.co.uk later ran comments from Google News business product manager John Cohen which pretty much confirmed this.]

But what Peter’s argument – indeed, the whole Google News deal – raises is this: aren’t the big agencies dramatically devaluing their content by reducing its value on their clients’ sites? I’m sure the Google deal is good for them… but is it as good as hundreds of paying customers around the web?

Over the next year, as news organisations, especially those with big websites, find their agency deals coming up for renewal, watch out for some saying: why are we paying so much? What’s the value here?

And those with more of a local or specialised focus – in other words, lots of unique content not supplied by a wire service – may even ask: should we bother with the generic agency material at all?

I don’t know the numbers exactly, but I’m willing to bet that if many say “nah”, that lost business could be worth a lot more than any deal with Google could bring in.

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