As New 'Digital First' CEO Takes Over At Media News, First Course Of Business Was Dropping Righthaven
from the a-good-first-impression dept
In the newspaper business, one of the few brightspots that we've seen has been the efforts of the Journal Register, which, under CEO John Paton, took a strong "digital first" position, and showed that they meant it by embracing some really great moves that bucked industry trends. So it was great to see that rumors from a few weeks ago that Paton was going to head up the larger newspaper chain MediaNews came true.Even better? It appears that one of Paton's first acts of business was to end Media News' deal with Righthaven. In true "digital first," mode, Paton made this clear in a tweet to Dan Gillmor:
Media News has already terminated their relationship with RightsHaven.In a later interview, Paton said doing a deal with Righthaven was a "dumb idea from the start."
This is quite a shift for Media News, which was previously run by Dean Singleton (who also was chair of the Associated Press), who was a big fan of "cracking down" on the internet. He was the one who brought in Righthaven, and was a huge proponent of putting up paywalls, because he thought it added more value to newspapers. Paton, who has spoken out against paywalls in the past, has said that he's not yet up-to-speed on Media News's paywalls to know what to do about them, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the company reverse course soon enough.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: john paton, journalism, rules, social media
Companies: journal register, media news, righthaven
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
This isn't a really late April Fools is it?
It is nice to seem "common sense" win out sometimes.
Hopefully being bold and ignoring the "best advice" given to his competitors will pay off well for him.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
I think its a last ditch effort to grab the cash they did manage to get, and try to keep it away from the courts returning it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
It is not common sense. It is finally trying something new, now that they have no choice. Where ever communications technology and the internet are common place, newspapers are failing. People are finding what interests them, they are finding this from around the world. In effect the local market was removed, and a global market has occurred. Removing the need for the local papers to parrot each other.
The inefficiencies in the market have been removed, in both the distribution of news, and advertising.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
DO IT DO IT DO IT
The courts have already shown they know Stephens Media/Righthaven was a cheap scam to rip off old ladies/vulnerable adults/the recently bereaved etc....and this would put the nail in the coffin as they expose their "getaway scot free" plan to the world.......
What would be awesome would be if the instant righthaven says its bankrupt, the court forces stephens media into bankruptcy and appoints administrators to "oversee" their finances....
[ link to this | view in thread ]
What I'm suprised at is..
Surely they must know there must be at least one or two gun-toting basketcases in that crowd (its a mathematical certainty given the number of lawsuits) that will come after them with a loaded shotgun or two for revenge......
Stephens Media/Righthaven people are going to end up with bodyguards and looking over their shoulders for a very long time.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]