Journalism

I am at the Carnegie-Knight Conference on the Future of Journalism hosted by the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, & Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.  This is my third conference in three weeks, and I think I have reached my limit on conferences.  These three very different conferences, however, are excellent examples of the various approaches being studied (and in some instances, implemented) to ensure that good journalism survives the transition to new media.

The first was the Journalism that Matters (New Pamphleteers/New Reporters: Convening Entrepreneurs Who Combine Journalism, Democracy, Place and Blogs) conference at the University of Minnesota. This was a participatory affair full of independent journalists, placebloggers, and other citizen media types who are leading the charge of bringing quality journalism and conversation to their communities.  The energy and enthusiasm at this "unconference" was palpable, and I came away quite invigorated -- and optimistic -- that journalism would thrive (and is thriving in some places) on the Internet.    read more »

Neil Netanel, a highly regarded legal scholar, has an interesting post on Balkinization entitled "The Demise of Newspapers: Economics, Copyright, Free Speech." Netanel, who has written extensively on copyright issues, posits that part of the reason for the decline in newspapers stems from Internet competitors that build on the content and value that newspapers create. He suggests that imposing a statutory license or levy on commercial Internet service providers and news aggregators might be a workable solution for ensuring that newspapers receive compensation for their investment in quality reporting.

While I think he gives too little credit to citizen journalists/media, equating them all with bloggers and asserting that they are largely "parasitic," his central points are mostly valid:

[N]ews and opinion blogs are largely (but certainly not entirely) parasitic on the institutional press. They copy, quote from, discuss, and criticize stories reported in the press far more than engaging in original reporting or linking to other blogs. And just like peer-to-peer traders of music and movie files, online readers copy and distribute stories from newspaper Web sites to their friends via email and social network sites. Especially for the young, trading copies of newspaper stories often substitutes for visiting the paper's Web site.   read more »

The Center for Citizen Media is in the midst of a series of posts exploring possible business models for citizen journalism and the processes surrounding the creation of a website. The series is primarily the work of Ryan McGrady, a new media graduate student at Emerson College, who was an intern here at the CMLP this past summer.

The series, which the Center for Citizen Media plans to turn into a comprehensive online guide, began with an introduction on September 24, but has now progressed to cover the following topics:

General Business Issues
Affiliate Programs
Memberships and Subscriptions 

It's an excellent series and well worth following.

(Note: Dan Gillmor, who is the director of the Center for Citizen Media, is also a founder of the CMLP.)

The NFL just doesn't know when to stop. The Washington Post reports on a new NFL policy limiting journalists' use of video online:

In a move designed to protect the Internet operations of its 32 teams, the pro football league has told news organizations that it will no longer permit them to carry unlimited online video clips of players, coaches or other officials, including video that the news organizations gather themselves on a team's premises. News organizations can post no more than 45 seconds per day of video shot at a team's facilities, including news conferences, interviews and practice-field reports.

Now this policy isn't copyright-based -- the NFL doesn't have copyright in the un-fixed statements of its players and coaches -- but good old real property law. The NFL teams own their facilities, and with them have the right to exclude people physically, as trespassers. So the NFL is telling sportswriters, who depend on physical access to gather the background for their stories, they'll be barred at the gates if they use more than 45 seconds of video online.   read more »

A (Louisville) Courier-Journal reporter was stripped of his press credential at an NCAA Super Regional baseball game yesterday and asked to leave the stadium for live-blogging the game. Contrary to the views of some commentators (including, apparently, the newspaper's own lawyer in a prior story), this is not a copyright issue, as the NCAA does not appear to be claiming that the live-blogging infringed or otherwise violated its copyright in the game. (In probably the most widely quoted opinion addressing the issue, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in the NBA v. Motorola case stated that sporting events are not original works of authorship subject to copyright protection.) Rather, the NCAA is claiming that as a condition of access to the press box or for receiving a press credential, a journalist must refrain from live-blogging or filing reports for publication during a game. While it is debatable whether a live blog is an adequate substitute for a television or radio broadcast, the NCAA is clearly trying to protect the value of the broadcast rights it licenses for TV, radio and other live media.   read more »