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Chances are you've heard all about the now-'resolved' dispute that opposed the Associated Press to social news sharing site Drudge Retort, over the fair - or unfair - use of AP quotes. Even more likely is the possibility that you've heard emotion-filled - and perhaps inaccurate - coverage of the affair. So this is an attempt to untangle some of the knots.

The four-point recap, clarifications
Lesson one: The blogosphere's outcry is heard
Lesson two: but the winner is?
Lesson three: AP - "Whither" or "Adapt"? Change the DMCA or set a legal precedent?


The four-point recap, clarifications

If you haven't followed the story, here's a four-point recap (or skip to next):

- Earlier this month, AP demanded that the Drudge Retort take down seven entries, which were in its view violating policies of fair use of content and the agency's copyright (AP wants to charge outside sources for using for excerpts longer than four words).
- Drudge Retort Web host Rogers Cadenhead consequently blogged about the takedown notice, and this created a ##-storm in the blogosphere, with many influential bloggers including TechCrunch's Michael Arrington and BuzzMachine's Jeff Jarvis calling on the boycott of AP content.
- Shortly after, on June 16, AP retreated, but didn't recant: it admitted that its request had been "heavy-handed" but didn't withdraw the takedown notices.
- Then, on June 19, AP issued a statement to say its conflict with Cadenhead had been resolved, after AP lawyers gave him guidelines to make the postings suitable, and that "both parties consider the matter closed." This really meant that Cadenhead agreed to modify the contested items and ended up not reposting them.

The guidelines discussed with Cadenhead have yet to be made public though, and the AP is working on a new set of guidelines for "fair use" of its content in general. "If AP's guidelines end up like the ones they shared with me, we're headed for a Napster-style battle on the issue of fair use," Cadenhead wrote on his blog. He told the New York Times' Saul Hansell that some of the key issues for AP related to protecting headlines and first paragraphs of stories.

First clarification: unlike what has been widely echoed on the Web and suggested by another New York Times article on June 16, AP was never supposed to meet the Media Bloggers Association (MBA) in order to draft guidelines for all bloggers, according to MBA President Robert Cox.

Another clarification: the blogosphere went ablaze when it learned that AP had filed a lawsuit against Cadenhead in June, seemingly out of the blue. According to Cox though, "Drudge Retort got on AP's radar due to the posting of entire articles with exact headlines which all parties agreed constituted copyright violations two months BEFORE the most recent spate of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Take Down Notices."

Lesson one: The blogosphere's outcry is heard

News of the Associated Press' June take-down notices was met with severe criticism, calls for boycott - and many profanities - by the blogosphere.

In one of his posts, entitled "FU AP," Jarvis wrote: "Bloggers, unless the AP recants and apologizes to Cadenhead, I urge you to avoid linking to the AP and to link to reporting at its source." Jarvis also encouraged bloggers to copy-paste full AP stories.

In a self-admittedly "ridiculous" post, after being quoted in an AP story, Harrington announced that "I've called my lawyers (really) and have asked them to deliver a DMCA takedown demand to the A.P. And I will also be sending them a bill for $12.50." According to Harrington this "is exactly what the A.P. would have charged me if I published a 22 word quote from one of their articles."

That short posting alone generated more than 230 comments - most of which were harshly critical of AP's stance at the time. The wildfire that spread in the blogosphere and the seemingly rapid turn-about of AP once again illustrated a known fact: blogs have gained enough traction and buzz-generating capacity to concretely influence and shape the media landscape.

Lesson two: but the winner is?    

One - erroneous - interpretation is to say that bloggers - won their battle against the traditional media Goliath, which was trying "to impose some guidelines on the free-wheeling blogosphere, where extensive quoting and even copying of entire news articles is common," - a quote from a New York Times story. (The Times' coverage of the affair was, according to Harrington, hindered by a conflict of interest, considering that the Times is one of AP's members and sits on its board of directors.)

But this isn't a victory for bloggers. "The A.P. is going to assert a much stricter interpretation of fair use than most people on the Internet are used to," reported Hansell on the Bits blog.

As mentioned above, Cadenhead had to agree to AP's proposed modifications, and ended up not reposting the material. Furthermore, this case is really a microcosm for the bigger issue of how to adapt "fair use" policies and copyright to the digital age in general.

"I'm glad that my personal legal dispute with the AP is resolved, thanks to the help of the Media Bloggers Association, but it does nothing to resolve the larger conflict between how AP interprets fair use and how thousands of people are sharing news on the web," wrote Cadenhead, following his two-hour conversation and settlement with the AP.

"I think AP and other media organizations should focus on how to encourage bloggers to link their stories in the manner they like, rather than hoping their lawyers can rebottle the genie of social news."

While Cadenhead may be right in terms of global news consumption trends on the Web, the AP was clearly in its own right under the US DMCA, at least regarding the stories posted in their entirety with the same headline. But the legal provisions concerning "fair use" of content for smaller excerpts have remained vague - simply undefined - until now, something the AP hopes to reform by setting guidelines.

"I think it would be helpful for bloggers and users of social news sites to know what the AP believes to be fair use of their copyrighted work," said Cadenhead's lawyer. But "I hope that any guidelines that are issued are not interpreted as an agreed definition of fair use" under copyright law.

Lesson three: AP - "Whither" or "Adapt"? Change the DMCA or set a legal precedent?

The Associated Press versus Drudge Retort - blogosphere - affair throws light onto two main issues:

- Does this case exemplify the 'old media' versus 'new media' divide? Is the AP's stance representative of its inability to adapt to a new context?

Yes, in the eyes of new media guru Jarvis: "I value the AP and don't want it to die. I want it to morph to a new model and a new future. But I am afraid that in its fights, we are seeing its inability to adapt."

On the other hand, few bloggers have pondered the more controversial view that the AP's approach may actually be a sign of its willingness to adapt - granted, not yet to the 'utopian' world copyright-lessness. But the AP, in its own way and after being "heavy-handed," is now attempting to define new standards that are adapted to the digital age. (Read this note on June 13 by Jim Kennedy, VP and Director of Strategy for AP.) No doubt some of the outspoken bloggers mentioned previously could be quick to shatter this argument.

- As is often the case, the law doesn't evolve as rapidly as the context it seeks to protect. The blurry wordings of the current DMCA must either be reformed quickly, after multilateral consultation, or the issue of "fair use" of content will eventually be settled in court and set a precedent, costing either news organizations or bloggers - presumably both.

This is the real issue at stake: how fast can the law be adapted to the reality of the Web, in order to avoid costly conflicts over subjective interpretations of "fair use" of content? As Hansell concluded in the Bits blog, "the unsettled state of the law makes it a gamble to take the matter to court."

A costly gamble, whether it ends in a loss for the AP or for bloggers. Or both.

Note that, just in case, no AP material longer than four words was excerpted in the above.

Bloggers: you can also watch this video by DigitalJournal.com for advice from Harvard Citizen Media Law Project Director David Ardia.



Source: Buzzmachine (here and here) - Techcrunch (here and here) - Associated Press - New York Times - New York Times Bits blog - Mediabloggers.org - The Moderate Voice - paidcontent.org

The 2008 Newsroom Barometer gathered the answers of more than 700 editors and senior news executives from 120 countries, and was conducted online in March 2008.

This was a relatively big increase from the 435 senior news executives who answered the Newsroom Barometer last year.

The goal is to conduct a Newsroom Barometer every year, in order to compare and contrast the newspaper industry's trends over a longer period of time.

Here's a quick view of this year's respondents:

Job Title / others:

A near majority of the 713 respondents were editors-in-chief (320), and there were 120 managing editors. All respondents were senior news executives, there were neither journalists nor managers, as was the case in 2006.

Three quarters of respondents were male, underlining a still existent gender gap among top newspaper editorial positions. Circulation at 28% of the surveyed newspapers decreased last year, compared to 39% whose circulation increased. These numbers are both reassuring at a time of widespread doom and gloom reports, but they also reveal the transition print newspapers are going through.

Age:

There were more younger respondents (23.5% under 40) than in 2006, although senior editors (age above 50) still constituted 42% of all respondents. The split is representative of the age range of newsroom editors throughout the world.

Type of newspaper:

Compared to 2006, this year's newspapers were more representative of the industry as a whole, as two thirds of respondents came from regional or local papers, compared to a third from national or international titles.

Print circulation:

Many editors from smaller newspapers participated in this year's survey. Nearly half of respondents worked for papers with a print circulation of less than 50,000 copies. 19% of respondents worked for papers with a circulation superior to 200,000 copies.

Website traffic:

For 66% of respondents, their daily website traffic was below 200,000 unique visitors per day, which is also representative of the world press on the whole. 6% still didn't have a website, compared to 9% last year.

More about methodology

The Newsroom Barometer is a purely online survey through the Zogby website (www.zogby.com). The poll was accessible by invitation only and was conducted in eight languages (English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Arabic, Russian and Japanese). To avoid answers from people who were not senior news executives, a tailored email was sent to editors-in-chief using the World Editors Forum database (www.worldeditorsforum.org), which counts 7,000 senior news executives' emails.

Read Part 1: Presentation - main results, the integrated newsroom will be the norm
Read Part 2: Multimedia, multi-skilled and integrated
Read Part 3: The future of the press
Read Part 4: Who participated in the survey?
Read Part 5: Comments by John Zogby and WEF President George Brock
Read Part 6: Threats to newspapers, areas of investment, more results

Welcome to the 2008 edition of the Newsroom Barometer, an annual survey of editors around the world conducted by Zogby International and commissioned by the World Editors Forum and Reuters.

The global survey gathered the answers of more than 700 editors and senior news executives from 120 countries, and was conducted online in March 2008.

In last year's Newsroom Barometer, newspaper editors had revealed their overwhelming optimism about the future of their newspapers - an optimism that is still widespread today. In this edition, editors worldwide see neither their newsroom nor their journalists as being "print-only," having clearly accepted the multimedia revolution.

Do you agree or disagree that the "integrated newsroom" or "multimedia newsroom" will be the norm for newspapers in your country in 5 years?



Among the main results this year:
 
-  86% believe integrated print and online newsrooms will become the norm, and 83% believe journalists will be expected to be able to produce content for all media within five years.
  
- Two-thirds believe some editorial functions will be outsourced, despite frequent newsroom opposition to the practice.

- A plurality - 44% - believe on-line will be the most common platform for reading news in the future, compared with 41% last year. Thirty-one cited print (down from 35% last year), 12% mobile and 7% e-paper. The rest were unsure.
 
- 35% said training journalists in new media was the number one priority for investing in editorial quality. Recruiting more journalists was cited by 31%, up from 22% last year.
 
- A majority of editors - 56%- believe news in the future will be free, up from 48% from last year's survey. Only one-third believe the news will remain paid for, while 11% were unsure.
 
- Two-thirds of respondents believe the importance of opinion and analysis pages will increase.
 
- A majority - 58% - think the decline in young readership is the biggest threat for the future of newspapers.
 
"The survey shows that editors-in-chief are already multi-media minded and that they have the capacity to carry out the transition from print-only to print and online," said Bertrand Pecquerie, Director of the World Editors Forum.

The 2008 Newsroom Barometer also brought good news concerning editors' morale. Despite some (see Part 4) growing concerns as to the improvement of the quality of journalism in the future, an overwhelming majority of newspaper editors are still very optimistic about the future of their newspaper:


Read Part 1: Presentation - main results, the integrated newsroom will be the norm
Read Part 2: Multimedia, multi-skilled and integrated
Read Part 3: The future of the press
Read Part 4: Who participated in the survey?
Read Part 5: Comments by John Zogby and WEF President George Brock
Read Part 6: Threats to newspapers, areas of investment, more results

Or watch the video here.

For the full Newsroom Barometer results and commentary plus the complete, analytical guide to the monumental transformations taking place in the newspaper industry, please consult the print or PDF version of Trends in Newsrooms 2008 (http://www.trends-in-newsrooms.org/home.php), to be released May 2008. From free papers to e-papers, citizen journalism to social media and integrated newsrooms to Internet aggregators, it has everything you need to direct your paper towards a multimedia future.

About the World Editors Forum
The Paris-based World Editors Forum (http://www.worldeditorsforum.org ) is the organisation of the World Association of Newspapers that represents editors-in-chief and other senior news executives. WAN, the global organisation for the newspaper industry, represents 18,000 newspapers; its membership includes 77 national newspaper associations, newspapers and
newspaper executives in 102 countries, 12 news agencies and ten regional and world-wide press groups.

About Reuters
Thomson Reuters is the world's leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals.  It combines industry expertise with innovative technology to deliver critical information to leading decision makers in the financial, legal, tax and accounting, scientific,
healthcare and media markets, powered by the world's most trusted news organization. With headquarters in New York and major operations in London and Eagan, Minnesota, Thomson Reuters employs more than 50,000 people in 93 countries.  Thomson Reuters shares are listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: TRI); Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: TRI); London Stock Exchange (LSE: TRIL); and Nasdaq (NASDAQ: TRIN). For more information, go to www.thomsonreuters.com.

About Zogby International
Zogby International is a public opinion, research, and business solutions firm with experience operating in 65 countries around the globe. Led by founder John Zogby, President and CEO, Zogby International is known as a leading company with a reputation for uncanny accuracy and reliability that specializes in telephone, Internet, and face-to-face survey research and
analysis for political, corporate, non-profit, and governmental clients. The firm is  headquartered in Utica, New York, with offices in Washington D.C. and Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

 

Here's Part 2 of a piece submitted to us by Chris McGillion, former Editorial Page Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald. He currently coordinates the journalism program at Charles Sturt University in Australia.

In the following, he outlines five key points presented by some of his journalism students to top execs in the newspaper industry, who it seems would be better off heeding their advice :

Also read Part 1: The value of the journalism graduate.

Last year the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers' Association (Panpa) invited five of my journalism students from Charles Sturt University (CSU) to give a keynote presentation at its annual conference in Melbourne on what their generation wanted from the newspaper of the future.

Newspaper decision-makers have access to the latest statistics and trends in audience research as a matter of course. But they rarely if at all have five representatives of Generation Y - the readership base of the future - holding court without interruption for ninety minutes on what they want in a newspaper and why.

My students made five major points. First, while not discounting a continuing (if diminishing) market for hard-copy newspapers, they argued that the "newspaper' of the future would have to be web-based in order to attract sustained patronage from their generation.

This is consistent with the results of annual surveys of first year communication students at CSU (200 in all of whom almost half are journalism students). These results show an increasing trend toward accessing news online (34.7% did so at least weekly in 2007) and decreasing hardcopy newspaper consumption (down to 41% at least weekly in 2007).

Further evidence of our students' attachment to web-based technology is daily usage of Hotmail accounts (60.7% in 2007), the Google search engine (72.7%), and social networking websites such as MySpace (33.3%).
 
Second, the student presenters argued that future web-based news sites would have to play a "gateway" role rather than the traditional "gatekeeper" role. Put simply, young people these days don't like to be told what news is or what they should consider important: personalised, tailored content will be the hallmark of Generation Y's media consumption.

Another side of this cultural shift is that Generation Y doesn't like to be told what to buy: they will certainly follow trends and adopt brands but both must be - or must appear to be - peer-recommended (and remember we are dealing with people who may have up to 400 "friends" on their social networking websites).

This shift has important implications for advertisers and thus the way media organizations fund their operations.

Third, the most popular news sites will allow for a degree of interactivity. Young people don't only want to know what's happening in the outside world: they also want the outside world to know what they think about what's happening and even, increasingly, to be the ones defining and providing whatever it is that is happening.

Fourth, reputable media organisations remain highly valued. This seems to be a function of information overload and the consequent need to filter what's "out there" together with attitudes ingrained from parents (and reinforced by teachers and public figures) about reliability and quality. 

Fifth, and most important, Generation Y will change the economics of the newspaper industry. In an internet age, young people do not see the need to pay for information.  But nor do they have the same concerns about privacy as their parents and grandparents. Their's, after all, is the "Big Brother' generation whose private lives have become the stuff of public consumption.

The students at Panpa then unveiled their idea for a proto-type web-based "newspaper". It was designed as a gateway to the internet: it allowed readers to pre-sort the news they received, to access email and other social networking sites, and to provide their own "news" stories, comment and photos. It also offered free mobile phones and/or phone accounts in exchange for personal information which the site host then sold on to advertisers.

I had worked closely with the students for three months on this presentation. Sitting in the audience of 300 or so (mostly middle-aged male) editors and publishers, I heard enough grumbling about what the students were saying to fear that the presentation was a PR disaster for the journalism course I run. "Free newspapers and mobile phones!" I heard one editor complain under his breath. "What else do these people want?"

Then, one by one, three international experts on the subject of trends in the newspaper industry - representing IFRA, INMA, and News Digital Media - were invited to respond to the students' presentation. Their message was clear, simple - and reassuring for me at least: in no uncertain terms they each told the audience that they ignored what my students told them to their peril.


Chris McGillion coordinates the journalism program at Charles Sturt University, Australia (cmcgillion@csu.edu.au).

If you would like to contribute your views and insight, please feel free to visit our 'Contact Us' page and send us suggestions for stories or articles.

Stay tuned, as we will shortly be resuming our 'Future of Journalism' series with interviews from editors at The New York Times and the Financial Times.

Atex, provider of mission-critical software solutions and services to the global media industry, has acquired of Polopoly, which develops web publishing and content management systems. With this acquisition, Atex hopes to provide a single global vendor for delivering news and advertising through different mediums.

John Hawkins, Atex Group CEO says, "With our roots firmly established in the print world, Atex recognises the shift from print to online and the market trends driving the shape of the industry. Atex wants to see 50% of its revenues come from web-centric, mobile and video applications by 2011."

Atex DNA is designed to "help create innovative revenue sources, reduce operating costs, and engage both younger and older audiences," according to its website. Based in Stockholm, Sweden, Polopoly AB's platform is designed to maximize efficiency in media utilization by offering tools to easily create and manage websites and providing "highly interactive, collaborative and community-focused experiences for visitors" on a variety of digital devices.  
 
Hawkins adds, "As a business partner with the World Association of Newspapers in the SFN (Shaping the Future of the Newspaper) project, we have developed a roadmap for our customers based on our Atex DNA strategy, and this acquisition of Polopoly continues to demonstrate Atex's engagement and understanding of our customers' needs going forward in bridging the print and digital media worlds."

Four editors in chief will be talking about ATEX and Polopoly in a session on content management systems at the World Editors Forum Conference which will be held in Sweden this year.

For more information on the World Editors Forum Conference, click here.

Source: ATEX through IFRA Executive News Service
 

Type up to five keywords or phrases in Google's new Google Trends's search box and see how those topics compare to one another in terms of how often they are searched within Google by region, year, and language.

The benefit of Google Trends is to show which keywords people are using to search for sites. This allows you to optimize your site in search results by finding the terms you need to emphasize in your site's content and navigation design.

Google has also developed a "search within a search" tool that lets users stay on Google's webpage while browsing through another site. For example, one can type in "The New York Times" and search for Times's articles on Eliot Spitzer while still on the Google site. Though this feature helps users save steps and arguably offers a better search engine, it detracts advertising revenue from those sites. Futhermore, Google has ads from competitors on the results page, potentially drawing users to those sites instead.

Alan Rimm-Kaufman, a former executive with the electronics retailer Crutchfield, now an Internet Consultant is skeptical about the new feature because it diminishes a Web publisher's role in helping users find potentially useful content. "You may want to editorialize differently when someone searches, and maybe put a premium on certain reporters or content," he said. "This moves you further out of the loop."

James Spanfeller, Chief Executive of Forbes.com, "takes his hat off to Google." He said, "Google is probably trying to get additional usage out of their [name-brand publisher's] product and monetize those page views. Not to be cavalier about it, but sites like The Post and Forbes, which have strong enough brand names, won't lose more than a very small percentage of people who will go to other sites."

Google only has this feature for a handful of sites, and they have the option of turning it off but may not be able to reverse that decision.

Source: OJR, The New York Times through I Want Media

Blogger Paul Bradshaw has identified ten keys trends in journalism in the past decade.

For Bradshaw, the biggest change has been the increased involvement of the audience, which has morphed from the occasional letter into "something else entirely." New technology also has made communication between reader and media easier than ever before.

Another contributing factor to reader involvement is what Bradshaw terms "the rise of the amateur." The spread of affordable video cameras and camera-equipped mobile phones, coupled with online viral distribution, has put readers in a position to generate news. Media outlets have since realized the value of "user-generated content."  

The new focus on both "international" and "hyperlocal" markets has had an impact as well. Case in point: the Guardian US based readership is now on par with that of the New York Times. Conversly, Trinity Mirror's Teesside Gazette has launched news services geared towards individual postcodes. Services like Adrian Holovaty's Everyblock have also gotten in on the local craze.

Bradshaw points out that the web has forced journalists to step up their game. Everything is connected online, so readers can do their own research and quickly catch wire copy material or holes in stories.

Other important changes include:

-measurability in terms of web traffic and page views

-mapping and geotagging (such as Northcliffe's use of tagging for its ThisIs brand)

-advent of databates

- RSS

-disribution as part of a journalist's job description. As the newsstand is no longer the only point of distribution, a journalist's online activity, from social networking to blogging, is now part of the game

-increased use of multimedia, including video and podcasts. "Now print journalists are learning about white balance, and broadcast journalists are learning about local news," Bradshaw writes.

Source: Online Journalism Blog

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