In the stroke of a pen a huge swath of Australia's premium content has disappeared behind the firewall of Factiva's exclusive distribution agreement with John Fairfax Holdings Limited - a coup for the child of Dow Jones and Reuters and a major blow to competitors such as LexisNexis and Thomson Dialog. A continent-wide deal such as this is bound to have major ramifications, but don't mistake exclusives as the villain in this unfolding drama. The true culprit is a way of doing business that in large part doesn't work anymore, forcing Factiva and others to consider more focused competitive tactics that mask the need for deeper changes to the manner in which aggregators provide value. Expect retaliatory exclusives to increase in the months ahead, but look also for players with more visionary outlooks on enabling premium content value to make significant strides.

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