News organizations launch clubs, share content
It's been a little more than two months since I joined PBS MediaShift as an associate editor, and that means I've produced two features for the site (in addition to my editing and site management duties). Below are excerpts from the articles. Enjoy.
Cats Sleeping with Dogs? Rival News Orgs Share Content, Revenues
by Craig Silverman, October 21, 2009
Next month, newspapers all over the United States will begin sharing sports stories online and in print as part of an initiative that sprung from the Associated Press Sports Editors. Then, early next year, the Washington Post and Bloomberg with unveil a new co-branded business section on the paper's website that will offer content from both organizations.
These are just two of the next-generation content-sharing initiatives being pursued by news organizations. The first generation of sharing agreements saw stories swapped by papers in Florida, Ohio, Tennessee, New York and New Jersey among other places. (Read this previous MediaShift article about the Ohio News Organization [OHNO].) These agreements focused on print editions, and involved little or no revenue sharing. Content-sharing is now moving into its next phase by bringing stories online and looking at ways to share revenue.
This spirit of cooperation is largely driven by the fact that newspapers have fewer reporters in the newsroom, which means they produce less content. So they are teaming up with once-hated competitors, striking alliances with strategic content partners, and looking at ways to share their content online, while still reaping the resulting clicks and ad revenue. In the process, some long-held taboos of the news business are falling by the wayside...
Can Memberships, Clubs, Cruises Keep Media Companies Afloat?
by Craig Silverman, September 21, 2009
Late last month, an ad for a new job appeared on the Guardian's careers website. The position for "General Manager - Guardian Club" was notable because it signaled an important initiative at the paper in the form of a new entity, the Guardian Club.
"The club will make our most committed readers/users feel they are genuinely part of our organization and reward their loyalty," the ad read. "The General Manager has the unique opportunity to set the direction, create the club and then deliver on that ambition."
Just over a week earlier, the New York Times announced a club of its own, the New York Times Wine Club. It promised to provide "readers and other wine enthusiasts with distinctive wines from many top regions around the world." And by the end of August, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette unveiled a new membership offering in the form of PG+, a paid online service that promised to offer subscribers access to "interactive features and exclusive content" in addition to "access to special Post-Gazette events" and discounts.
These new memberships and clubs, which focus on offering services to readers that are largely different than a pay wall, are a byproduct of declining advertising revenues. As a result of that lost income, news organizations are looking at new ways of generating revenue from readers. The Washington Post has PostPoints, a reader rewards program that offers special benefits to subscribers and online readers...
New column for Columbia Journalism Review Daily
If Regret the Error doesn't satisfy your interest in media errors and corrections, you should read my new weekly column for Columbia Journalism Review Daily. It's called -- surprise -- Regret the Error and runs every Friday on CJR.org.
I've written eight columns so far, and you can read them all here. This column is a chance for me to connect the dots and provide some context for notable corrections and errors. To give an idea of what I mean, here's an excerpt from my November 7 column:
Apologies Not Acceptable
Does The Washington Post apologize?
The Washington Post’s correction policy has some elegant turns of phrase, including “Preventing and correcting mistakes are two sides of the coin of our realm: accuracy.” But it says nothing about apologies. Could that be because “The Washington Post doesn’t apologize”?
That quote was attributed to a Post editor in an e-mail published by the Washington City Paper this week. The email was written by David Winer, the managing partner of EatWell DC, a restaurant group in the Washington area. He sent it to members of his company’s mailing list to respond to a scathing review published in the Post. Winer also contacted the paper to raise questions about the critic’s conflict of interest. As a result, the Post published this Editor’s Note:
Critic Tom Sietsema should have recused himself from reviewing the Commissary, a restaurant featured in the Oct. 29 Food section. He and one of the restaurant’s owners had earlier had a personal relationship. The Washington Post regrets that he reviewed this restaurant, and will remove the review from its online archive.
Here’s how Winer’s e-mail described the conversation with Sietsema’s editor, Tom Shroder:
Mr. Shroder, understanding the ramifications of Mr. Sietsema’s actions offered a settlement; kill the story on the web immediately, print a retraction in Sunday’s paper, and that neither Mr. Sietsema nor any member of The Washington Post food team would ever write about any Eatwell DC restaurant again. What they would not do is apologize for the harm caused by Sietsema’s spurious comments. “The Washington Post doesn’t apologize” but “we will say we regret”.
I’m not aware of any other media organization that has a “no apologies” policy. Plenty of other newspapers have no problem apologizing. Some have even apologized for things that happened decades or even centuries in the past. But it’s true that the Post almost never apologizes.
A Nexis search turned up Post articles offering advice on how to apologize, as well as editorials and columns that judged other people’s apologies. The closest I came to a recent apology was a letter to the editor published in September of last year, written by by an op-ed contributor who wanted to apologize for an error:
I apologize to MSNBC talk-show host Joe Scarborough and to The Post for the cutting description of Mr. Scarborough in a Sept. 7 op-ed, “Guilty in the Duke Case,” by me and KC Johnson about the Duke lacrosse case. I wrote that description on the basis of transcripts of “Scarborough Country” programs early in the Duke case. My attention has since been drawn to transcripts of several subsequent programs, and I realize that Mr. Scarborough was one of the handful of journalists who deserve credit for calling attention early in the case to the emerging evidence of innocence.I am very sorry that because of insufficient research, the op-ed suggested otherwise.
STUART TAYLOR
Washington
In September, Tom Sietsema, the food critic at the center of the controversy, offered a correction and apology while doing a chat with readers on the Post’s Web site. Here’s the exchange:
Point of Correction: Jared Slipp was the GM at the late and much missed Nectar. Danny Boylen was the notable GM of Notti Bianche in the same space.Tom Sietsema: Right you are. My apologies.
But that’s not the same as an apology made by the paper. In order to find an example of the newspaper making a formal apology for an error it had committed, I had to go back to an article published on July 17, 1977. The headline was “An Apology and a Salute To 2 Pilots Named Stinson”:
Katherine Stinson is not dead, even though her photograph was prominently displayed on The Washington Post’s obituary page yesterday,” it began. “And even as The Post apologizes for its error, it salutes the achievements of both Katherine Stinson and the subject of the obituary, Katherine Stinson Otero. The two women shared not only names, but also remarkable aviation careers in a time when no one had heard of a women’s liberation movement.
That appears to be the only relatively recent example of the paper giving an apology the headline treatment, though there have been other variations on the theme. “Apologies to Monty Bessicks of Cushman & Wakefield, whose name was unrecognizably mangled in a recent column item about his job switch from Galbreath Co.,” read an August 1997 correction.
“WE WISH to correct an error in yesterday’s observations here on the consolidation that is rapidly changing the defense industry,” read a March 1994 editorial. “We should have said that it was Loral Corp. (not Martin Marietta Corp.) that bought LTV’s missile division two years ago. We got it wrong, and we apologize.”
There were a few other examples where the word apology appeared in a correction, but nothing was more recent than the 1994 editorial. And in the end, they were corrections, not apologies. So, given the example from 1977, perhaps the correct way for the editor to have described the paper’s policy would be: “The Washington Post doesn’t apologize anymore.”
UPDATED: A night at the Press Club, a grant from the Canada Council
I'm back from attending the National Press Club Awards Dinner in Washington on Monday. I spent the morning at the Newseum, and you can read my report about it here. I also had lunch with Slate's Jack Shafer.
That evening, I attended the awards dinner and was lucky enough to meet two other winners in the press criticism category: David Folkenflik, the NPR media reporter who won the Arthur Rowse Award in the broadcast category, and Rachel Smolkin, who picked up two awards. She won for her body of work at American Journalism Review and for her excellent AJR story about the Duke Lacrosse scandal. It was also a treat to meet Arthur Rowse, the namesake of the award.
I also had a chance to talk about corrections with USA Today editor Ken Paulson, and meet Alicia C. Shepard, the NPR Ombudsman.
UPDATE July 24: I just received word that the Canada Council for the Arts has awarded me a travel grant for my trip to Washington. This money, which is greatly appreciated, will cover my expenses for the trip. I'm pleased to acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada, and invested $37.8 million in the arts in Quebec. Thank you!
Here's a pic of my lovely award:
Regret the Error wins press criticism award; work for ROB mag earns gold medal
Well, it's been a rewarding few weeks for me. Allow me to take a moment and toot my own horn.
On June 6, I shared a gold medal at the Canadian National Magazine Awards for my work on the Corporate Survival Guide published in Report on Business magazine.The award is shared with Mark Schatzker, Sabitri Ghosh, and Lisa Fielding. Here's the full list of winners. Credit also goes to David Fielding, the editor who oversaw the package of stories.
A week or two before that, I received a call from the National Press Club in Washington. I was told that my book, Regret the Error: How Media Mistakes Pollute the Press and Imperil Free Speech, had won the 2008 Arthur Rowse Award for Press Criticism (book) in the Club's annual awards. I had to keep it under my hat until the news went public. That has finally happened, and the announcement is here (and here). It's a great honor. I'm looking forward to traveling to Washington to receive the award at a dinner on July 14.
As a result of these two lovely awards, I've added an awards page to this site. It includes a few other pieces of recognition I've received.
Snippity snap! CJR fires a dart at the Ottawa Citizen
I follow the Columbia Journalism Review's online work via its RSS feed, and the publication rarely reports on happenings north of the U.S. border. Today, however, it posted some Canadian content from the magazine's latest issue.
Unfortunately, one of our largest daily papers -- and the big media company that owns it -- comes off looking pretty backward. CJR haded out one of its negative "Darts" to the Ottawa Citizen after the paper basically ran promotional copy as front page news:
Dart to the Ottawa Citizen for a little Canadian logrolling. When the Canwest media conglomerate launched a proprietary wire service and relocated the anchor of Global National, its nightly news program, to Canada’s capital city, the Citizen flooded the zone. On its front page, the paper ran a serious-faced color photo of the newscaster graced by a ray of light, under the words “Ottawa becomes news capital of Canada.” Of the lead article’s 768 words, more than four hundred were puffy quotes and glosses from Canwest corporate honchos—the CEO and president and the chairman of the board, among others. Inside, the paper recounted the anchor’s premiere day with a “great man”-style tick tock: drinking coffee, doing a publicity interview, buying long underwear. Another article tallied the boldface names that dropped by the premiere party. Online, the articles were paired with extensive photo galleries. And a video interview. Easy to miss in all this glowing coverage was any editorial disclosure—save one slight, circuitous mention tucked at the bottom of a throwaway fact box—that the Citizen, too, is owned by Canwest. Graham Green, the Citizen’s executive editor, declined to comment on the coverage but offered this: “I think the Columbia Journalism Review has lots of things you could be looking at.”
A stellar quote from Green: It's barely grammatical and delightfully hostile. Just the image we want to project to the world.
The CBC’s bad citizen contributor terms of use
In March I highlighted some of the problems with the terms & conditions for The Gazette's new hyperlocal citizen journalism website. One of my biggest concerns was the section requiring people to waive their moral rights in order to contribute to the site. Simply put, it's not a right that needs to be waived in order for The Gazette to be able publish user submissions.
Requiring citizen contributors to waive their moral rights sends the message that the site isn't about community or bringing people into the news process. It's just about grabbing as much free content as possible without having to compensate or offer any consideration to the people supplying said content. As I noted in my previous post, I'm sure The Gazette isn't planning to take submissions and then deny people credit. But making people waive their moral rights give the paper the right to do so, among other things. Unfortunately, the same can be said for the CBC's citizen contributor terms of use.
Yesterday on the great Inside The CBC blog Tod Maffin raised many of the same issues about the terms of use for the CBC's website. It seems as though large media organizations are adopting unfair practices when it comes to their potential use of user generated content. I understand that they need to be granted certain rights in order to be able to use the content. Totally necessary. But that doesn't mean you just take any and all rights you can think of. Tod highlights one particularly troublesome section from the CBC terms of use (emphasis mine):
By posting or uploading Submissions to the Web site, you grant CBC/Radio Canada a royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive, irrevocable, unrestricted, worldwide license to use, reproduce, store, adapt, translate, modify, make derivative works from, transmit, distribute, publicly perform or display such Submissions for any purpose; and to sublicense to third parties the unrestricted right to exercise any of the foregoing rights.
Translation: the CBC could take your photo and resell it someone else. You give, they take. And maybe make money selling your content. Maffin rightly slams the CBC for this (emphasis his):
I have a major stick up my butt about this one. If I send a photo or short video of a breaking news event to the CBC web site for the CBC to use freely on air and/or online, that’s one thing. But I certainly would feel cheated if the CBC turns around and resells the content to, say, CNN! (The Terms don’t specifically say any money would change hands, but there’s nothing that says it can’t.) Shouldn’t I get at least a cut, if not a say in the matter?
This is exploitative and unfair. Maffin also takes on the issue of waiving moral rights (italics his):
To be clear, if you waive those rights — which you do as soon as you submit anything to the CBC — the CBC can do what it wants with it, regardless of how it might affect your reputation.
Some might argue, in fact, that the CBC is in violation of section 14.1(2) of Canada’s Copyright Act by asking you to waive your rights “in favour of CBC.” In the Act, it says that “moral rights may not be assigned but may be waived in whole or in part.” I’m not a lawyer, but to me waiving my rights is waiving them. Kissing them goodbye. But if I waive my rights “in favour of the CBC,” it sure sounds like I’m specifically assigning those rights to the Mothercorp, which would be a clear violation of the Act.
I’ve asked the CBC law department for its interpretation of how “moral rights” are used in practice.
I look forward to the answer. And I look forward to the day when large media organizations stop treating citizen contributors as gullible free labor undeserving of any rights or fair consideration.
This is not the way to encourage citizen journalism.
On CBC Radio’s Sounds Like Canada tomorrow
I'm going to be on the CBC Radio program Sounds Like Canada tomorrow morning. The show airs at 10 a.m. local time across the country. (I don't know the exact time my segment will air.) Orato editor Paul Sullivan and I joined host Stephen Quinn for a discussion about citizen journalism.
I 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 involvement with NewsAssignment.net. It was an interesting discussion, and we were given a decent amount of time to talk. Still, as Stephen said to us at the end of the taping, we could have gone on much longer. Give a listen tomorrow and let me know what you think.
Freelancing the future
I've been following Adrian Monck's series (1,2,3) of blog posts about how "journalism is not to blame for the decline of newspapers." The most recent one, which quotes from a post/speech by News-Record editor John Robinson, got me thinking about the changes we're seeing in the world of media and publishing -- and how these changes are impacting freelance writers.
The newspaper business ain't what it used to be, and therefore neither is writing for newspapers. Magazines are also changing. (Robinson's speech was also noted by Gazette Editor-in-chief Andrew Phillips on his recently-launched blog. Bookmark it.)
Being a freelance writer today is remarkably different than it was when I sold my first article 12 years ago. To name a couple of the more discussed points, pay rates haven't changed much over the last 30 years (at least in Canada), and new contracts being offered by publishers demand more rights than ever before, which can make it tough to resell and republish work.
I know: wah, wah.
I'm not interested in complaining about the situation because I'm equally tired of hearing editors and others complain about their plight: falling revenue and subscriber numbers, fragmentation of the audience etc. These are serious challenges, but it's time to focus on solutions. I say the same thing to freelancers when I speak to them, as I did last week in Ottawa.
Yes, we should be trying to negotiate better contracts and word rates, but we should also recognize the current business climate and stop pining for the good old days. Most importantly, we should be focused on taking advantage of opportunities created by all this change.
I think a lot of freelancers and editors/publishers got caught watching things change. In some cases, we were reporting about the larger trends, yet didn't see how they applied to us. I get the sense that newspaper people are currently more focused on solutions than freelancers are. I often hear my fellow freelancers complaining and trying to reclaim the way things used to be.
Our clients are changing. We've got to change, too.
How should we change? I don't have all the answers, but here are a few ideas. I'll also say up front that I need to work on each of these areas. Writing this post has driven that point home.
Build Your Brand, Rather Than Your Clients' -- Freelance writers have, in my opinion, traditionally been bad at branding ourselves. We often define ourselves by the brands we work for ("I write for The New York Times" etc.), rather than making those brands a part of our identity. Someone will tell you whom they write for and expect that name brand to tell you something about them. Freelancers need to create their own personal brand -- something that can attract clients in this Googleized world. Also, thanks to the Internet, your brand can attract an audience. We used to have to rely on clients for that. Take a look at how Penelope Trunk has built her brand. (Her blog is here; her company is here.) Her clients will change, but she will always be the Brazen Careerist until she decides otherwise.
Yes, branding means a website, but it really means thinking about what you want to convey about yourself. Clients will come and go; you can't define yourself by them. That's their brand, what's yours? Who are you? How are you unique? As Seth Godin said to me during a recent interview, you want to make it so that you're the best, the only, choice for what you do.
Be Platform Agnostic -- This is the buzzy term used by Arthur Sulzberger to explain that The New York Times isn't just going to be a newspaper -- its reporting will live on multiple platforms. I don't think most freelancers have begun thinking this way. In truth, it represents a huge opportunity. There have long been people who sell a story and photos as one package, but we can go beyond that basic combo. This could mean selling a story and photo for the newspaper, a photo slideshow and/or short video interviews for a website, a radio report from your recordings etc. If contracts are going to demand more rights, which can make it hard to resell an article, then we need to find better ways to slice and package our work in order to extract the most value. One story can become many different things, all of which can earn additional income. But in order to do that, we need to...
Always Be Training -- One of the smartest things I've ever done was take an HTML programming course one summer during university. It helped me understand the Web, which caused me to learn more about the Internet and eventually to take up blogging. That led to Regret the Error, which led to a book etc. As freelancers, we need to expand our skillset. I'll always be a writer first, but if I can also take a good photo, and shoot and edit video and audio reasonably well, then I'm in great shape to tell -- and sell! -- a story in a variety of ways. That means more jobs, more exposure, more possibilities for me. By constantly working to add new skills that can aid us as storytellers, freelance writers will be even more useful in a platform agnostic world. These skills can help us replace revenue lost due to bad contracts and other factors.
Build Your Own/Sell Direct -- Meet Paul Lima. Paul is a fellow freelance writer/speaker based in Toronto. Paul sells some of his work to newspapers and magazines, among other things, but he also sells some of his writing on his website. He's selling his words direct: no dealing with pitching editors, invoicing etc. He has written several ebooks and makes them available on his website. He's taken advantage of services like Lulu.com and PayPal to become both a creator and a retailer. Some things will naturally need to be sold to a traditional market such as a publication, but there are services and technologies that make it easier than ever to sell your work directly to people (your audience). Blogging services and ad networks have also made it possible to build your own publication or service. If you're not happy with the markets you currently serve, then you need to go after new markets or create your own. Selling direct is one option. Building your own is another idea. One more suggestion is too...
Develop Networks -- Forgive me for stating the obvious, but we are living in a networked world. Freelancers often work alone and from home, so networks are crucial for us. Social networking tools like Facebook can help connect us to our community. Business networking tools like LinkedIn can connect us to colleagues and clients. Organizations like PWAC are an additional business network. Building and maintaining these networks is essential for a freelancer, but I think there's one network that we need to get working on: story networks. Take FeatureWell as an example. Freelancers should be coming together and creating organizations that can help place/syndicate our work. We rely so much on others to accept a pitch, offer a fair rate, give a good contract. We should be looking to shift some of the power into our hands so we have more negotiating clout. We should be taking advantage of the Internet and building new networks that distribute our work and increase our exposure and revenue.
The bottom line is that freelancers need to start thinking strategically about what we do. Our business is changing and, just like our clients, we need to adapt and innovate.
No more complaining; it's time for ideas and solutions.
What are yours?
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.
Welcome
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.
I write weekly columns for Hour and Columbia Journalism Review online, and am a former columnist and blogger for The Globe And Mail. Read my bio by clicking on the "About Me" link above, or check out the "Writing Samples" page to read some of my work. If you're interested in speaking with me about an assignment or project, email me at the address listed below.
Recent Writing/Work