The AP Not So Happy About Reporting Restrictions When It Goes In The Other Direction

from the good-for-us,-not-for-them dept

Well, this is amusing. Remember how the AP is trying to limit how others can report on or make use of AP news? Right. Hold that thought. Now remember how the Southeastern Conference (SEC) is trying to restrict how both the fans and reporters can report on games? Well, you know what's coming next. Stephen points out that the AP is now protesting the SEC's policies. Apparently, the AP is only a fan of such reporting restrictions when it impacts others rather than themselves. The full letter (pdf) sent to the SEC by the AP and some other reporting groups takes issue with many of the restrictions, and apparently doesn't notice the irony in the fact that the AP is trying to restrict others in much the same way.

Filed Under: reporting, restrictions, sec
Companies: associated press

The Big Ten vs. The SEC: Embracing Fans vs. Shutting Them Up

from the which-one-is-better? dept

Last week we wrote about how the Southeastern Conference (SEC), a big college sports division was looking to limit how fans could interact with the world while at games. Michael Kruse, at the St. Petersburg Times did an excellent analysis of this move (and I don't just say that because he quoted me), talking about how it's really about the SEC trying to prevent the genie of "fancasting" events from getting out of the bottle, because exclusive broadcast contracts are so lucrative. While a short-sighted economic analysis by SEC officials may think this makes sense, perhaps other college sports divisions see this as an opportunity to pick up fans. CitMediaLaw points out a comparison showing that another division, The Big Ten, seems to take a very different approach, not just encouraging fans to use social media tools to broadcast their views and thoughts, but also providing linkable and embeddable videos and content to make it even easier. Admittedly, college sports fandom often has more to do with where you personally attended, but you have to think that enabling fans to help promote you is going to be a better long term strategy for building up fan loyalty than trying to actively stifle their ability to express themselves and promote the teams and events. How enthusiastic are SEC fans going to be, if every time they try to talk up their favorite team, the league threatens to sue them?

Filed Under: big ten, control, fans, reporting, southeastern conference

Oh Look, Bloggers Can Do Investigative Reporting Too

from the funny-how-that-works dept

Whenever we talk about bloggers or others outside the mainstream press doing some kind of investigative reporting, some traditional journalists tend to stop by and complain that even if it was done this one time by this one individual, that individual won't stick around and do any future investigative reporting. However, that seems to miss the point. With the new tools of production these days, the simple fact is that if there's a story to get out, anyone can now get it out there and get it attention. If they only do it once in their lives, that's great. The next story will be done by someone else. Again, this isn't to knock professional reporters -- who I still believe strongly have a place in this ecosystem. But the complaints that investigative reporting simply won't be done without newspapers still rings incredibly hollow.

In the latest example, sent in by Chris, a blogger in Florida has apparently been doing an excellent job breaking a number of key stories concerning a recent murder. Even the local police say they're now seriously investigating leads brought to their attention by this guy's reporting -- even as the local mainstream press continued to argue against what the guy was reporting. It's still not settled what happened exactly, and some of the blogger's ideas may not turn out to be true, but as the NY Times notes, he has not yet had to retract any of his posts, and many of the factual points he's raised have later proved to be true.

Filed Under: investigative reporting, journalsim, reporting

Southeastern Conference Wants To 'Control Memories' Of Sporting Events; Limits Reporters & Fans

from the good-luck-with-that dept

Over the past few years, we've seen both MLB and especially the NFL try to limit how reporters can report on sporting events. This is highly questionable, in a variety of ways. Obviously, the NFL has no legal right to limit how anyone reports on event, but it was effectively holding "access" over the head of the reporters. That is, any reporter that failed to live up to these "rules" would no longer get a press pass and access to the locker room or players. This seems designed to piss off reporters, and limit the actual publicity that a sports league gets. In the past, I've suggested that newspapers who are threatened with such rules should simply ignore the press passes and start buying their reporters' tickets to report from the stands in protest.

Now, a whole bunch of people have been sending in the news that the Southeastern Conference (SEC) -- a college sporting division -- is now taking this concept to a whole new level, limiting not just all kinds of reporting that can be done by reporters, but also on any fans attending the game (thanks to Jeff T for sending this in first). The press will not be allowed to show more than 3 minutes of highlights -- all of which must be taken down within 72 hours. This includes not just the sporting event itself, but any press conferences related to the event (nice way to make embarrassing press conferences "disappear").

The much bigger issue, however, may be the attempt to stop fans from taking photos of, or discussing, a sporting event they attend. The conference will put a license agreement on the back of every ticket noting these rules -- which are almost entirely unenforceable. The buyers of the tickets will not have "agreed" to the policy and would likely have a strong argument in court that the license is invalid. On top of that, how insane is it that a sports conference is trying to stop fans from telling or showing others about a game?

Someone in the article explains the (somewhat obvious) reasoning behind these policies. The SEC (Southeastern Conference) is basically "protecting" the rights to sell TV broadcasting rights for huge sums, and it's afraid that others reporting on the events takes away from the value of it. That's wrong for a variety of reasons -- including the simple idea that limiting how people can find out about your sporting events doesn't make them more engaged, it makes them less engaged. That's less value for any big broadcast deal.

The second reason given in the article? The SEC "wants the ability to have full control of the memories that these events can generate." That's nice that it wants that. But it goes against pretty much everything the law says is protectable.

But, once again, welcome to "ownership society." With so many people pushing so hard for stronger and stronger intellectual property rights, you get massive landgrabs such as this one, that go well beyond legal protection rights, in an attempt to "control memories." That's just what Jefferson and others intended when they put "promote the progress" in the Constitution, I'm sure...

Filed Under: control, fans, reporting, southeastern conference

Beat Reporting, Fair Use, Twitter And Free Expression: Mashing Up Some Thoughts

from the what's-happening-here dept

There are a few stories that have been getting some buzz this week for separate reasons, that when combined, paint an interesting picture of our current media landscape. The first was that some baseball reporters picked up on the current debate over fair use when it comes to reporting, aggregating and sharing the news. I think the focus on "fair use" in these stories is a bit misleading. Most people view web-based communications as a part of a conversation. And if you're talking about an interesting story you see, you don't tell that person I can only read you some of it because more would be illegal. You discuss what you think is relevant. That's just a part of the conversation. Holding back the natural flow of dialogue by way of copyright law seems like a clear limit on free expression and free speech.

One of my favorite beat writers, Pete Abraham for the Journal News, picked up on this story and encapsulated what I believe is the love-hate notion that many newspaper journalists have in these situations:

I'm usually flattered if some other blog links to my work. I figure anything that brings more readers here has to be good. But for every responsible blogger out there, there are other who cut and paste the work of others and either pass it off as their own or barely credit the author.

If you know the solution, contact the newspaper industry because you will be a well-paid consultant. The problem will soon be this: If newspapers decide they can't afford beat writers, where will that information come from? Somebody has to get on the plane, go to Toronto and ask the questions.

There are two separate issues Pete raises here, and I'd like to address both. The first is the question of "bad actors" in the space. These are the so-called "parasites" that the Marburgers discuss. The problem is that there's really no problem at all here. No one seems able to point out any such real "parasite" site that actually gets any significant traffic. Most readers who actually follow these issues figure out pretty quickly to go straight to the source itself. In fact, that's how I first discovered Pete's own blog many years ago. I saw him quoted in three separate places within a week, and thought "hmm, this is someone I need to follow." And even though I grew up in NY, I'd never even heard of The Journal News (apparently it publishes north of NY City in Westchester). But these days, I trust Pete's reporting over anyone else's and go to his site first for any news about the Yankees -- because he's built up that reputation, works hard to increase value and (most important of all) has done an amazing job cultivating community, mostly via his amazing blog.

This is a point that we've tried to bring up multiple times before. Many old schoolers view the newspaper business as being in the business of delivering content to the masses. But that's never actually been true. The newspaper business has always been in the community building business. It would bring together a community around local news and then sell their attention to advertisers. The problem today is that there are so many different places to get a community, that the newspapers have competition.

And, in NY, when it comes to the Yankees, there's a lot of competition. But by really building a community and cultivating it, Pete stands out above everyone else. The NY Times beat writer for the Yankees is a guy named Tyler Kepner. He's great as well, and you can get much of the same information that Pete posts on Kepner's blog (or Twitter feeds), but for some reason, Pete's blog feels more comfortable. The NY Times' blog feels... sterile. You can see it as you start to dig into the comments on both blogs. Sure, there are some crazy folks and some classic trolls (and, you know, Red Sox fans), but there's real community building going on in the comments on Pete's blog posts (and Pete participates at times as well). Plus, they've held real world get-togethers (such as at the Yankee's AAA minor league games).

And while I'm obviously not privy to the traffic numbers, I would guess that from the comments alone, it's pretty clear that Pete's Yankee blog for The Journal News of Westchester gets a lot more traffic than Kepner's Yankee blog for the gold standard NY Times. The content is often frighteningly similar, but the community makes a huge difference. Building up a community is a skill that journalists (and newspapers) need to learn. Whether on purpose or not, Pete's been quite good at it.

And, from that we get to Pete's second point: questioning how newspapers, such as his own, can continue paying for the expense of beat writers. Here there are a few different potential answers. Pete has attracted a large enough community, that if the Journal News hasn't figured out how to profit from him and the "expense" of having him on payroll as a beat writer, then they're doing something wrong. But even if a newspaper couldn't afford him, with the community that Pete has built up, if the Yankees would allow him to be an independent beat writer, I'd bet he could bring in a fair amount of money that way. Team Pete up with a business guy and a tech guy, and go to town. Everyone would benefit. The Yankees would get more awesome coverage and a huge community of vocal, loyal Yankee fans. Pete would still have a job. And us fans would still have a great place to gather virtually.

But there's a separate issue as well. I've already mentioned some of the overlap between Pete and Tyler. But those are only two of the beat writers. There are also Yankee beat writers from the NY Post, the NY Daily News, Newsday, the New Jersey Record, WFAN, MLB.com and perhaps some others as well. I follow a bunch of their blogs and Twitter accounts, and there's a tremendous amount of overlap. I am not saying to just dump them all and have a single beat writer. But at some point you do have to wonder about why it makes sense to have so many reporters effectively reporting the exact same thing.

Also, there are other models that are coming out for paying for reporters. Mark Cuban has talked about actually having the sports teams pay the newspaper for coverage -- which certainly horrifies some reporters, but is yet another potential model, since the teams themselves benefit from the coverage. On top of that, we're seeing nationally focused publications -- such as ESPN and Sports Illustrated -- snap up lots of top reporters. Hell, just this week Sports Illusrated hired away another favorite of mine, Joe Posnanski. And while they don't do so yet, you could see national media like that add beat reporters as well.

Of course, if they're going to do that, they shouldn't do silly things like tell their reporters they have to limit their Twitter usage, as ESPN recently did.

Then, you have the fact that there are many impressive fan-driven blogs adding to the ecosystem as well. I'm certainly not suggesting that the fan-driven blogs replace the beat reporters, but it is an addition that fills in a lot more information and insight. I get a ton of insightful analysis about the Yankees via River Avenue Blues, a blog run by three fans, who are knowledgeable, thoughtful and insightful when it comes to the state of the Yankees. And, sometimes they get or break news as well. While these fanblogs and the beat reporters mostly have a pretty good relationship, you'd think that those could be leveraged even more, to enable the creation of more great content that drives more community. Teams should allow more access to the top fan blogs, and the news publications should be teaming up with some of the best fanblogs as well to leverage their insight and traffic for their own business models.

And, finally, let's not forget the fact that the athletes themselves suddenly have the ability to go direct as well. While the NFL is trying to crack down on players using Twitter, the fact is players have more direct channels to reach fans and provide information as well. Again, this is not a replacement for beat reporters, but does add to the ecosystem as well. And, at times, those players are breaking news themselves.

So you have a situation where there is more information than ever before out there about sports teams. There are more ways for fans to convene and converse with each other, with professional reporters and with the athletes themselves. Technology has made it cheaper and easier to do all of this -- and the ability to bring together a community of folks has not diminished even slightly. If you can't make money with all of that, then you've got bigger problems.

However, since Pete insists that anyone who has an answer to how to keep funding beat reporters employed can make a living as a well-paid consultant, he should tell his bosses at Gannett to contact us. We're more than happy to help put together a strategic plan for how to keep Pete and others gainfully employed.

Filed Under: beat reporters, fair use, journalism, pete abraham, reporting, sports reporting, twitter

Corporations Hiring Their Own Reporters

from the business-model-fun dept

A year ago, I was fascinated by the news that Miller Brewing Company had hired its own journalist to create a news blog all about beer. It wasn't just about Miller, but about the overall beer/brewing market. To me, this was a fascinating, if very narrowly focused, example of where content and advertising are merging in a good way. In such a scenario, if it goes well, everyone can benefit. The reporter did plenty of real reporting, even breaking stories about competitors. Everyone knew that the site was from Miller, so there was nothing secretive about it, and anyone could take that "bias" into account. But it was an interesting model for advertising, content, reporting and journalism... all wrapped up in one. Unfortunately, it looks like it didn't work out. Without much of an explanation, the blog shut down last fall. Perhaps the market was too niche. Perhaps the economic collapse was an issue.

Still, that doesn't mean the idea itself is bad -- and, in fact, we're actually helping some companies do something quite similar via the Insight Community (if you want to know more about that, just ask). So it's interesting to see yet another example of this in action as well. Salon's Future of Journalism blog points us to a Fast Company story about a journalist who left a newspaper job to take a job with Carpenter Co., makers of cushioning. But he's not reporting on that. He's reporting on life in Stephenville, Texas, (which isn't even where the company is based). But the idea is to create interesting and compelling content that's worthwhile just as content.

Of course, it certainly makes Carpenter look good ,as well. And, there's a new music business model hook involved in all of this, as well. Apparently, Stephenville is where the singer Jewel lives, and part of this whole effort is to help market her new album, which (conveniently) has a tie-in to Carpenters' bedding cushions in that the album is called Lullaby.

Now, I'm sure some will naysay this whole thing, and insist that it's not journalism, it's bad advertising and it's a bad business model for music to boot. But, honestly, I have trouble seeing what the problem is here. It's a neat experiment (for a limited time) where everything is entirely upfront (no one's being tricked), new music is getting paid for and promoted, interesting journalism work is being done and the company footing the bill gets some nice promotion, without having to ram a marketing message everyone would ignore down their throat. That seems to be a win, all the way around. Obviously, we're a bit biased, since we're powering some similar efforts by other companies, as well, but that's why we started doing such things with the Insight Community. It makes a ton of sense and solves a bunch of different problems in one single effort. Once again... we're reminded that if there's a need, business models will be created to solve that need. And this one is clearly one we believe in. Still, for those who still think this is somehow a bad thing for journalism, can someone explain how it's any different from the fact that GE employs a ton of journalists by owning NBC? Or that Disney employs a ton of journalists in owning ABC? This is the same thing, but on a much smaller scale.

Filed Under: jewel, journalism, reporting, sponsors, stephenville
Companies: carpenter co.

Irony: Columnist Who Berates Bloggers For Not Fact Checking, Didn't Fact Check

from the whoooops dept

A month ago, we wrote about a column by Connie Schultz, of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, supposedly talking up a a plan to change copyright law to better protect newspapers from "parasites." This was a dumb plan no matter how you look at it, and Schultz ended up in a battle of words with Jeff Jarvis that kind of derailed the actual discussion on the plan itself. As we noted recently, the brothers behind the plan, David and Daniel Marburger, contacted us (well David did) to let us know that Schultz had totally misrepresented their plan. So we took a look at the full plan, and, indeed, Schultz's column was simply wrong in describing their plan. While we still think the Marburgers' actual plan is misguided, Schultz's write up of it was not at all accurate.

Schultz summarized the Marburgers' plan like this:

• Aggregators would reimburse newspapers for ad revenues associated with their news reports.
• Injunctions would bar aggregators' profiting from newspapers' content for the first 24 hours after stories are posted.

Neither point is actually in the Marburgers' plan (and, it's important to note that the Marburgers are only talking about a very, very narrow range of "aggregators" which I don't even think count as aggregators). They talk about sites like The Daily Beast, which is a competing publication more than an "aggregator." They make it clear that they think real aggregators like Google News are only a good thing. Also, they flat out do not suggest a 24-hour block makes sense:

1. We do not advocate a statutory 24-hour moratorium on rewriting news reports originated by others. Like you, we'd vigorously oppose that.

2. We do not think that linking to originators' news sites, as Google News does, is bad; on balance, we think it's good for any news originator.

So why bring this up again? Well, it seems Schultz can't leave well enough alone, and has to poke "bloggers" again as being some sort of anti-journalists. In her most recent column she talks up how real journalists fact-check and "citizen-journalist" bloggers do not:

The so-called citizen journalism of most blogs is an affront to those of us who believe reporting and attribution must precede publication.

Fact-checking is tedious; it often derails juicy rumor and deflates many a story.

So... um... why is it that she got her facts wrong and it was blogs that published the full story on the Marburgers' plan? Meanwhile, it was her high-minded colleagues at the Cleveland Plain Dealer who brushed off all the criticism of Schultz by declaring: "It's really a bunch of pipsqueaks out there (on the Internets) talking about what the real journalists do."

In the end, we have an original story that Schultz continues to stand behind, despite it being incorrect. You have a number of bloggers who have been digging into the details, and posting thoughtful analyses of the Marburgers' plan -- while the folks at the Plain Dealer brush them off as "pipsqueaks" who don't fact check? Yeah, that's credible...

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I'm not one of those who thinks there's some sort of war brewing between "mainstream media" and "bloggers." I actually find the whole concept silly. Blogs are simply a publishing platform. Some use them for journalism (including many mainstream media publications). Others don't. Lumping them all together makes no sense. But pretending that old school journalists have some sort of higher ground to stand on just because they work for a publication that prints itself out on paper doesn't make much sense to me.

Filed Under: blogging, cleveland plain dealer, connie schultz, fact checking, reporting

News Organization Realizes The Future: Train People To Help

from the the-role-of-the-professional-journalist dept

As newspapers struggle, some seem to think that those of us advocating newer, better business models think that professional journalists somehow go away. That's not true at all. There's still a tremendous role for them. The point that we try to make, though, is that their role changes a bit, and it needs to incorporate what the rest of the world is doing. It's good to see some news organizations figure this out. Aaron deOliveira points us to Jeff Jarvis' coverage of how a news organization in the Philippines is training the public to help out in covering the upcoming election. The idea isn't to replace the journalists but to augment them, by training everyone to help capture, report and spread the story. The professional journalists still have a role in working with everyone else, but it's a much more collaborative effort. As Aaron points out:

• They get people over the learning curve of how to operate their cell phones, cameras, etc. as well as upload content.
• They've magnified their reach far beyond what they could ever pay their own reporters to cover.
• They're doing it far more cost effectively.
• The trained news staff in the news room can use their experience to do editorial work on the submissions as well as curate. They can also pass along their experience to these 15,000.

Seems like a great idea, and one that plenty of other news organizations could use effectively to empower their community, rather than just looking for ways to suck money out of them.

Filed Under: journalism, participatory journalism, reporting

European Publishers Latest To Call For Special Copyright Expansion Over News

from the if-this-is-your-business-model... dept

In the last few weeks, there's suddenly been a big push by folks in the newspaper business to start talking about how copyright law should be expanded to help protect their business. The latest to do this, apparently, is a group of European publishers, including some big names, asking for copyright law to be changed in some way to benefit newspapers. They didn't make specific proposals, but they're likely thinking about the various ideas that have been floating around about stopping aggregators or providing some sort of copyright or copyright-like protection on breaking news.

This whole idea isn't just ridiculous, but it won't help newspapers. It would almost certainly harm them, however.

• First of all, if the only thing protecting your business from failure is government protectionism... you're not doing a very good job at building a real business. And, you won't be able to hold back real competitors from eating your lunch (or, at least, the parts of it they haven't eaten already).
• Next, stronger copyright won't bring more people to your site or get more people to give you money.
• Stronger copyright protection will only harm your online distribution efforts, in making it that much more difficult for others to send you traffic or to participate in the discussion.
• Relying on these things, and thinking that stronger copyright somehow is a business model will just mean that you've opened the playing field wide to those who actually embrace the collaborative, sharing nature of the internet.

So while it would be damaging for those pushing for it, it would still create quite a mess in the meantime. Hopefully European politicians see through this blatant attempt at protectionism and don't let it get anywhere.

Filed Under: copyright, europe, journalism, reporting

This Is Investigative Reporting? News Corp. Allegedly Hacked Into Phones, Paid Off People To Silence Them

from the hmm... dept

We keep being told that only newspapers can do "real" investigative reporting, even though we've seen plenty of evidence of others doing quite impressive investigative reporting without having a background in journalism. And, now, we find out that some investigative reporting by those "real" journalists apparently involved breaking the law, violating individuals' privacy... and then paying people off to keep quiet about it. At least that's the charge from The Guardian against Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. According to the Guardian's report (and, yes, the Guardian is a real newspaper and appears to have done a nice investigative job here -- we're not saying newspapers can't do good investigative reporting), there's growing evidence that a lot of folks involved in Murdoch's News Group Newspapers were involved in hiring people to hack into thousands of mobile phones to record and transcribe phone calls between various politicians and celebrities, and also involved tricking "government agencies, banks, phone companies and others... into handing over confidential information." And? When that evidence started to come out, they apparently paid up a bunch of hush money and convinced a court to seal the files. Again, this isn't to implicate all newspapers (the fact that another newspaper figured this out is great). But the idea that newspaper investigative reporting is somehow "pure" once again seems to be in question.

Filed Under: hacking, newspapers, privacy, reporting, spying
Companies: news corp.