Canadian writers unite in opposition to Transcontinental Media
This has been a long time coming in Canada, if you ask me. Large publishers have been rolling out contracts that are nothing more than unconscionable rights grabs, and now one company has simply gone too far. Today, for what I think is the first time in history, Canadian writers groups have combined with big literary agencies to call on their members and clients to not write for Transcontinental Media, one of the country's biggest publishers.
All of the details are in the press release below. Disclosure: as a board member of the Professional Writers Association of Canada, I was involved in the drafting of the release.
You can also go here to see a list of Transcontinental publications. Please spread the word.
Canadian writers unite in opposition to Transcontinental Media
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Toronto – September 30, 2009) In an unprecedented coalition, more than a dozen Canadian writers’ organizations are calling on the thousands of writers they represent to not write for any publications owned by Transcontinental Media, effective immediately. This act of protest is directed at the company’s new contract for freelance contributors, which these groups, including the Professional Writers Association of Canada and the Canadian Writers Group, believe to be abusive of writers’ rights.
Earlier this summer, Transcontinental Media began sending a new freelance contract – which it calls a “Master Author Agreement” – to the many writers who contribute to its stable of publications, including Canadian Living, More, Elle Canada, Homemakers, and Vancouver Magazine. When this Master Author Agreement was unveiled, respected magazine industry consultant D.B. Scott referred to it as a “take it or leave it” rights grab that, “in effect, indentures the writer and their work to Transcon.”
In mid-June, Derek Finkle, of the Canadian Writers Group, and David Johnston, executive director of the Professional Writers Association of Canada, sent a letter to Jacqueline Howe, Transcontinental Media’s group publisher and vice president for English Canada, requesting a meeting to discuss their concerns about the new Master Author Agreement. This letter was co-signed by many provincial and national organizations, including the following:
• Canadian Freelance Union
• Canadian Writers Group
• The Cooke Agency
• Federation of BC Writers
• Professional Writers Association of Canada
• Quebec Writers Federation
• Westwood Creative Artists
• Writers Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador
• The Writers’ Union of Canada
On July 16, Finkle and Johnston, along with their legal counsel, Iain MacKinnon, met with Howe and Pierre Marcoux, Transcontinental Media’s senior vice president of the business and consumer solutions group. Finkle and Johnston raised four primary concerns:
1. Transcontinental’s new contract was muddying the copyright waters. The Master Author
Agreement grants copyright of each work to the author but then undercuts this copyright by licensing the following extraordinary rights: “The ongoing non-exclusive right to do in respect of the Work any other act that is subject to copyright protection under the Canadian Copyright Act (including, without limitation, the right to produce and reproduce, translate, develop ancillary products, perform in public, adapt and communicate the Work, in any form or medium) as well as to authorize others to do so on behalf of or in association with the Publisher.”
2. The agreement is permanent. Once signed, it covers all future work for Transcontinental publications.
3. Transcontinental has no intention of compensating freelancers for the many additional uses of their work. In essence, the company wants to continue paying what it’s been paying for decades for basic first publication rights but now get unlimited rights to writers’ work.
4. The Master Agreement is one-sided. It makes no mention of payment terms, kill fees, provisions for libel suits, and other important issues that are part of any balanced contributor’s agreement.
On September 1, Marcoux stated that Transcontinental does not intend to make any changes to the contract at the present time. This was in spite of the concerns voiced by just about every writers group, association, federation, agency, and union in the country.
As a result, these organizations are making an unprecedented stand against Transcontinental’s Master Author Agreement. This coalition has also now grown to include:
• Anne McDermid & Associates
• Association des journalistes indépendants du Québec
• Canadian Authors Association
• Toronto Writers’ Centre
The coalition’s campaign to oppose this contract includes the following:
1. A mass communications effort to inform and encourage writers across the country to not write for Transcontinental publications, an effort that will be monitored by the participating organizations and by writers themselves. The coalition will also assist writers in locating alternative markets for their work.
2. A national petition.
3. Lobbying of the federal ministries of industry and heritage. In addition to funding for the magazine industry, these ministries are currently overseeing changes to Canadian copyright law.
4. A multi-platform campaign to make advertisers in Transcontinental publications aware of the company’s heavy handed attitude towards an important part of the massive cultural sector.
5. A unique and creative mass effort to implore Transcontinental editors to strive for change within their own company.
These actions will be rolled out in the coming weeks to show Transcontinental Media that its publications – and, by extension, its readers and advertisers – will suffer significant consequences by moving forward with this contract.
For more information, contact:
Derek Finkle
Canadian Writers Group
416-469-3333
David Johnston
Executive Director,
Professional Writers Association of Canada
416-504-1645
Move along, nothing to see here
My father sent me this scan of an article published April 17 in my hometown paper, The Chronicle Herald. I'm not completely sure why it made me feel homesick, but perhaps it's because the headline portrays Halifax as the kind of place where someone can have their throat slit and it's not a murder.
I have no idea what happened with the case after this, but my Dad's observation was that policing in Halifax "is not at all like a CSI show." Dead body with its throat slit? Nah, doesn't look like foul play to me. Awesome.
With five games left to play…
I was in a Purolator location today to send my (dead) MacBook off to the warranty company. The guy behind the counter saw my Habs hat and said Stéphane Quintal had recently been in the store.
"He told me we wouldn't beat the Devils," the guy said, relaying Quintal's ill-fated prediction from a couple of weeks before.
Quintal was wrong. The experts were wrong. This team has shocked just about everybody this year. With five games left before the playoffs, this says it all:
TELUS is trying to buy my love
I received a pretty little white box in the mail today from TELUS, my cellphone service provider.
"Happy Anniversary," it said on top.
What anniversary?
I could have sworn I'd signed up in August all those years ago. Had I forgotten our special moment? I worried that TELUS would get mad and deny me service if it found out about my thoughtlessness. I didn't want to be in the dog house.
I opened the box. Inside was a letter and a product that enables me to charge my cellphone via the USB port on my computer. It also has a wall plug adapter.
I was pleasantly surprised. They sent it to me for free. I can use this.
TELUS, baby, you're a sweetheart.
But I'm still leaving you when the iPhone comes to Canada.
Bloggers rule the Test
We heckled, laughed, screamed, chanted, begged for water, frightened Samantha Bee, annoyed Wendy Mesley and, most importantly, dominated. I speak of last night's performance by the blogger team on Test the Nation. It was a blast.
Over 30 Wordpress monkeys were flown to Toronto to square off against cab drivers, celebrity look-alikes, chefs, backpackers and flight crews. We talked a big game before the show and delivered on every front. The bloggers had the highest team score, the highest individual score, and the highest celebrity score. Samantha Bee wiped the floor with her competition. Then she stayed around afterwards to take photos and generally be nice to everybody. This was especially appreciated after we had relentlessly chanted "Bee, Bee, Bee" at every opportunity. Seriously, we were fucking loud. Even during the test. Wendy Mesley would read out a question and inevitably someone in our section would have a smartass comment to make. We were cracking up the entire time. And getting the answers correct to boot.
On a personal note, it was great to meet some of the folks from Torontoist and Photojunkie in person. I also got to hang with the lovely and talented Lainey, who very nicely took a copy of my book. And I slipped a copy into the hands of Samantha Bee. All in all, a good time. Some pics are below. Oh, and I think I got about 54 or 55 out of 60 correct. Holla!
UPDATE Jan 23: I just received my final score -- 54/60. Not too shabby. Also, this is the best round-up I've read so far. Check it out.
Me and Kiss!
Kiss, Pamela Anderson, Shakira, Paris Hilton. No idea who the woman in between Pam and Shakira is supposed to be.
They gave each team props. Backpackers got flags, cab drivers got steering wheels, chefs got kitchen stuff...we got keyboards and the occasional computer mouse. I often brandished mine like a weapon and screamed "I've got a mouse!" It was funny at the time. Okay, maybe not. But this was my mouse.
A look at the set.
This was the controller used to input answers. Very complicated piece of technology.
Another shot of the studio. The air was very dry and featured a light dusting of fake smoke. We soon became extremely thirsty and begged for water.
Taken shortly after our victory.This is the awesome Andy Nulman holding the trophy.
Bad news, good news
Juan Antonio Giner writes a fantastic blog about innovations in newspapers. He's the founder of the INNOVATION Media Consulting Group, which does amazing work redesigning and reimagining newspapers. I read the blog because he often posts images and page layouts of the company's work. They never fail to impress. But in a somewhat off-topic post from today, he points to a Dow Jones story about the economy that delivers one of the best one-two punches of bad news, good news I've ever seen:
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 2,000 points this morning when scientists reported that the earth would soon hit a giant comet and be obliterated.
However, stocks rebounded in the afternoon after the Federal Reserve cut interests rates.
We're all going to die! But at least we'll have access to cheap capital!
19th Century UK newspapers to be digitized, searchable
Media links master Martin Stabe today pointed to an article in the Press Gazette that has newsophiles like me jumping for joy:
The British Library is putting the finishing touches to a website
that will give journalists and academics access to two million pages of
newspapers from the 19th century.
The library will launch its
newspaper digitisation project next month, which will give readers free
electronic versions of every national, regional and locally important
newspaper from 1800 to 1900...
While writing my book about media errors and accuracy, I plumbed the digital archives of papers like The New York Times and Chicago Tribune and often used the wonderful NewspaperArchive.com to locate old corrections and examine famous press errors of history.
Though there have been some excellent books written about the early British press, I longed for a digital archive that could make my research easier. My book will be hitting shelves in a matter of weeks, but I plan to make use of this new archive to find even more gems of history. Can't wait.
Teachings from a Monck
Adrian Monck, the head of the journalism and publishing program at City University in London, has recently been blogging some wonderful things. In particular, he's taken a couple of pieces of writing about topics that are seemingly unrelated to journalism and showed how they in fact do apply. Now I propose to take those same items and make them apply specifically to accuracy. It's a fun game.
Monck's most recent post quotes from the "conclusion to the report on the disaster which destroyed the space shuttle Challenger in 1986." There's one line in particular that I love:
NASA owes it to the citizens from whom it asks
support to be frank, honest, and informative, so that these citizens
can make the wisest decisions for the use of their limited resources.
Substitute in "the press" for "NASA" and it works just as well. In my upcoming book, I write about the need for the press to be frank and honest about its level of accuracy, and also more honest about correcting and publicizing its errors.
The other post of Monck's that caught my eye had him quoting from a report in The Washington Post about some recent scientific research. From the Post:
...the mind's bias does affect many people, especially
those who want to believe the myth for their own reasons, or those who
are only peripherally interested and are less likely to invest the time
and effort needed to firmly grasp the facts...
The research also highlights the disturbing reality
that once an idea has been implanted in people's minds, it can be
difficult to dislodge. Denials inherently require repeating the bad
information, which may be one reason they can paradoxically reinforce
it.
This is interesting in terms of corrections. I support the idea that a correction should make clear what the initial error was, but is repeating the error a bad idea? I imagine this research doesn't exactly apply to a correction, but the point is interesting. Overall, this passage and the one below show just how hard it can be for the press to do its job of informing the public. Put aside the challenges of newsgathering and verification and there is still an inherent challenge in overcoming the biases hard wired into people's minds. Our brains play some funny tricks on us. More:
Indeed, repetition seems to be a key culprit. Things that
are repeated often become more accessible in memory, and one of the
brain's subconscious rules of thumb is that easily recalled things are
true.
Many easily remembered things, in fact, such as one's
birthday or a pet's name, are indeed true. But someone trying to
manipulate public opinion can take advantage of this aspect of brain
functioning. In politics and elsewhere, this means that whoever makes
the first assertion about something has a large advantage over everyone
who denies it later.
Furthermore, a new experiment by Kimberlee
Weaver at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and others shows that hearing
the same thing over and over again from one source can have the same
effect as hearing that thing from many different people -- the brain
gets tricked into thinking it has heard a piece of information from
multiple, independent sources, even when it has not. Weaver's study was
published this year in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Fascinating stuff. But here's the key conclusion:
...People are not good at keeping track of
which information came from credible sources and which came from less
trustworthy ones, or even remembering that some information came from
the same untrustworthy source over and over again. Even if a person
recognizes which sources are credible and which are not, repeated
assertions and denials can have the effect of making the information
more accessible in memory and thereby making it feel true, said Schwarz.
Okay, CNN, we get the message
From the home page of CNN.com just a few minutes ago:
Agent provocateurs
As I was watching this video of what appears to be three undercover police officers trying to instigate violence at a peaceful demonstration in Montebello, Quebec, I was reminded of the recent rantbait op-ed by journalism professor Michael Skube published in the Los Angeles Times. The headline was "Blogs: All the noise that fits" and Skube wrote:
Bloggers now are everywhere among us, and no one asks if we don't need
more full-throated advocacy on the Internet. The blogosphere is the
loudest corner of the Internet, noisy with disputation, manifesto-like
postings and an unbecoming hatred of enemies real and imagined.
He argues that bloggers are for the most part a bunch of partisan amateurs flailing away at each and lowering public discourse in the process. He also believes bloggers do little to no real reporting. It's up to journalists to save the day!
I'm a journalist and I'm getting really tired of hearing other journalists talk as if we need to save journalism from the public. As if non-journalism school people can't do reporting, shouldn't do reporting. It's insulting and arrogant.
For many years, the church and governments sought to restrict access to printing presses for fear of what people might publish. Now people like Skube are trying to shut up blogs because they fear what people will say. He fears that journalism will no longer be the sacred haunt of those who go to journalism school, or work at some form of established news outlet. Back off, amateur. Show me your press pass.
I went to journalism school, but anyone who thinks that's the only way to be a journalist (either full-time or part-time) is crazy. And anyone who thinks they can talk about the so-called "blogosphere" or bloggers as one homogeneous entity is fooling themselves. Jay Rosen has already created a list of examples that show some blogs are doing great reporting, and he published a reply in the Times. Josh Marshall also highlighted Skube's unprofessionalism.
But back to that video. The reason it made me think of Skube's op-ed is because he's really no different than those morons in the video. One of the fake protesters is holding a rock, and they are trying to instigate a riot. Fortunately, a union leader steps in and prevents the provocateurs. But Skube managed to throw his rock. The Times let him do it.
We shouldn't seek to silence him; that's his game. But let's see him for what he is: an agent provocateur.
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.
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