The Gazette’s new hyperlocal website and the importance of moral rights
Thanks to Roberto Rocha, I just learned that The Gazette will soon be launching a hyperlocal website for the West Island of Montreal. Steve Faguy also has a post up about it.
The site is in "late beta testing" and anyone can visit and sign-up. In general, I think this is a step in the right direction for the paper. The West Island represents a core audience for The Gazette, and the site is potentially a way to forge a stronger bond with the community.
User generated content is at the core of Westislandgazette.com. People can create an account and begin contributing news, photos and event information. A major bonus is the fact that the site is not under the auspices of Canada.com, the national network of CanWest web properties that is, to put it bluntly, horrible and borderline unusable.
The paper’s best web success to date is its excellent Habs Inside/Out blog. Like the new hyperlocal site, it’s free from the bonds of Canada.com. The Habs blog has managed to attract a very loyal and vocal following, which is not a complete surprise. Habs fans are passionate about hockey; a blog fed by The Gazette’s writers and editors would seem to be a can't miss idea.
But that doesn’t mean it’s an easy thing to execute. The paper deserves credit for building H I/O into a solid property. Some of the posts generate hundreds of comments, and users have even organized an outing to a game. It’s a community that works. (I’d like to see more daily content and analysis on the site, but that’s one fan’s opinion.)
Westislandgazette.com shares some of the same potential, yet it has one key difference: a reliance on user generated content. The paper needs to get a critical mass of people signed up and contributing to the site in order to make it a success. The Gazette will also be uploading content from staffers, but that’s not enough to make the new site a true hyperlocal community.
The idea of building hyperlocal sites fed by citizen journalists is becoming more popular, but the concept itself is no guarantee of success. I’m sure The Gazette is well aware of the challenges. The oft-quoted line “if you build it, they will come” does not apply. How you build it is important, and people need to see the value of contributing. This value could come in the form of a financial reward (we pay you if we use your story/photo); a reputational benefit (you can become a valued and recognized contributor, a so-called "super-contributor"); or a specific value in terms of exposure (get your event, writing or photo published by The Gazette).
The paper isn’t offering any financial reward for potential contributors, so the first incentive doesn’t apply. Here’s the value proposition on the site:
If you are organizing an event, we have a space for you to tell everyone else in the region. Did your child score a goal at his or her hockey game? Do you have a photo of that triumphant moment? Send it to us. We'll make sure everyone sees it. Are you a mom who wants to touch base with other moms in the area? Is the family dog not feeling well? Perhaps you would like to ask our resident veterinarian a question on her blog?
In the end, according to the paper, “This is going to be the place where West Islanders and off-islanders to the west will come together. You will be able to comment on each other's contributions, communicate with one and other, and connect in a way that will add a new dimension to life in the West Island.”
The promise is publicity, participation, reputation and community. Not bad things. My main concern at this point is that anyone thinking of contributing should pay very close attention to the site’s Terms & Conditions for users. These Terms & Conditions are not written in the spirit of delivering reputational or community value. In fact, they undercut these ideas.
By signing up, you’re giving CanWest a bundle of rights and licenses to your contributions. Everything that goes on the site can be used in any form by any CanWest entity “in perpetuity, throughout the world, in any and all media now known or hereafter devised.” That's to be expected. One positive aspect is that the company is only asking for a “non-exclusive” right and license, meaning a person could republish their photos or writing somewhere else.
The troubling part is that CanWest is demanding every contributor waive his or her “moral rights.” The relevant section:
4. You hereby expressly waive, to the fullest extent permitted by law, any so-called "moral rights" which may now or may hereafter be recognized by legislative enactment or otherwise at law or in equity with respect to the Content.
Here’s how the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, a government agency, describes moral rights:
Even if you sell your copyright to someone else, you still retain what are called "moral rights." This means that no one, including the person who owns the copyright, is allowed to distort, mutilate or otherwise modify your work in a way that is prejudicial to your honour or reputation. Your name must also be associated with the work as its author, if reasonable in the circumstances. In addition, your work may not be used in association with a product, service, cause or institution in a way that is prejudicial to your honour or reputation without your permission.
By asking people to waive their moral rights, CanWest is in effect removing itself of any responsibility to credit them for their contribution. That’s not a very community-minded thing to do. The company could, for example, use a photo you took of someone fleeing the scene of a crime and run it in papers across the country without having to give you credit. It could also remove your byline from a written contribution.
I’m not saying this is what the paper plans to do. In fact, I’m certain The Gazette sees the value of crediting its citizen contributors. But then why demand people waive their moral rights? Why take away their right to be credited for their contribution? There’s no justification for it.
The moral rights clause is in bad faith. It’s contrary to the spirit of community that the paper is trying to foster. It in effect says, “we value your contribution and want you to help build this site, but we reserve the right to deny you credit and recognition.”
My goal isn’t to criticize The Gazette before it even gets the site underway. I think westislandgazette.com has a lot of potential, and I imagine people at the paper are excited to be able to strike out and create something new. It’s a good initiative.
The issue I raise is not simply about a byline or photo credit. It’s about the nature of the relationship between the paper and its citizen contributors. There needs to be a foundation of trust and mutual benefit in order for the site to succeed. By taking moral rights, the paper is beginning the relationship on a decidedly unfair note. It's missing out on an opportunity to forge a closer bond with its would-be contributors.
In contrast, NowPublic.com, one of the most successful citizen journalism networks going, uses a Creative Commons license. Its terms of use are relatively easy to understand. It doesn't demand people waive their moral rights. NowPublic.com also offers the potential for payment. It gives and takes. Fair exchange is the essence of any community.
I imagine a lot of people will sign up to westislandgazette.com and not pay attention to the Terms & Conditions, but that doesn’t make it okay for CanWest to make a wholesale rights grab. The paper should take another look at the T&C and create an agreement that better reflects its goals for the site, and better serves citizen contributors. Step one is getting rid of that nasty moral rights clause.
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7 Responses to “The Gazette’s new hyperlocal website and the importance of moral rights”
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Hey there. Thanks for stopping by. I'm a freelance journalist and author in Montreal, Canada. I serve as an associate editor for PBS MediaShift, a website that reports on trends in new media and journalism. I edit RegretTheError.com and wrote a book of the same name. I'm also the co-author, with Michael Calce, of Mafiaboy: How I Cracked The Internet and Why It's Still Broken. Both books are listed to the right.
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I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Chris Moran
Great post, Craig. Very insightful and well thought out. These are indeed important points for The Gazette to consider. Thanks for the quick feedback.
[...] Craig Silverman, a freelancer and blogger, takes issue with the terms of service, which he accuses of “bad faith” because it demands you waive moral rights (i.e. the right not to have your work distorted to say [...]
Nice breakdown. Really nice.
I’d like to see The Gazette respond to this.
What we all know is that the first time The Gazette or Canwest “steals” a contribution from one of its West Island writers or photographers, that will be the dagger through the heart of this project.
A thousand journalists working for free also means a thousand journalists watching the administrators of the site closely.
But I also agree that it would be nice to see this project succeed for everyone involved.
Poor design, though, as Fagstein points out. Would they restrict their above-the-fold content to a bunch of photos without cut-lines on their physical paper too? I doubt it.
Craig, you’re right in hitting on the bottom line button. This is all about the erosion of the paid-circ market. The NADbank/ABC numbers tell us the Montreal Gazette has been bleeding subscribers for the past decade, which is why they’re offering weekends-only subscribers the paper seven days a week for a penny more for six months. Why? To keep the advertisers on board.
They’re fighting the Globe, which offers West Island/off-island business subscribers door delivery for $3 a year.
They’re fighting the free weeklies in going local and door to door. We deliver free to Hudson, St. Lazare, Vaudreuil-Dorion and Pincourt. The middle two are number five and seven on the top-ten list of Canada’s fastest growing municipalities of more than 10,000; the December Statscan numbers showed the biggest influx is by bilingual anglos and allos. Those are droolworthy numbers.
Our paper sets the news agenda out here. We cover all municipal and regional council meetings and regularly break stories that are picked up by La Presse, the J de M and the Montreal Gazette. Only the Gaz regularly neglects to credit us when it’s clear the story originated with the Hudson/St. Lazare Gazette. I’ve had exchanges with ME Ray Brassard over ‘diffuse provenance.’ He counsels me to feel flattered.
These posts confirm what I’ve long suspected — the Gaz has to reinvent itself or die. Part of that equation will be to go free circ, maybe even tabloid in the core market. What we’re seeing here is the other shoe dropping. Right now, they’re paying their West Island Gazette squaretab contributors $250 for a 600-word story. Against that, free’s good.
Yes, I’d love to see what the Gaz has to say about all this.
[...] was asked to go on the show because of a post I wrote about the Gazette’s new hyperlocal/citizen journalism site, and because of my previous [...]
[...] March I highlighted some of the problems with the terms & conditions for The Gazette’s new hyperlocal citizen journalism website. [...]