Posted by Who owns information? It’s been the issue at the forefront of my mind during the first week of my website, which started with uniformly positive emails from people – apart from one from the Evening Post.
Old economy: Newspaper being printed on a rotary printing press for the Houston Chronicle in Houston, Texas (Photo: Boise Guardian)
In a nutshell, it insisted that I could not rewrite its content and publish it on my site, even with a credit in the first paragraph and a link back to the original source on its website. A particularly amusing complaint considering newspapers up and down the country have passed off re-writes as their own for years.
My reply to them was that if they really felt they had no need of free publicity from sites such as mine, which aims to provide people with a full range of news from ALL sources, then that was fine. I would in future take their own stories on myself, adding new angles and better balance of the issues, but would have no obligation to credit them as the original source. The fact is though is that I will continue to do that anyway, because I feel it is more honest and gives readers the chance to decide for themselves on the validity of what they are being presented.
Their attitude was not surprising, but goes to the heart of why the business of producing news is suffering so much in the internet age. My opinion is: you cannot ‘own’ news.
Before the internet, news could only be spread to a large number of people quickly via newspapers, radio and TV. Media that required large financial resources for the material, physical items needed for production – in terms of newspapers this meant printing presses, vehicles to transport the product, large premises etc.
And because of the huge costs which rose year on year, there was no chance for the individual to produce and spread news. But that has, of course, all changed.
On Wednesday, I went to listen to Chris Anderson from Wired magazine in the US speak at a Festival of Ideas evening at @Bristol. The main point I took was that in the old economy of producing “stuff” – material goods – the costs inevitably rose year on year. But in the digital age the same pattern is repeating in reverse, the cost of producing digital material and content is falling year on year.
What this means for journalists – and the people who still, I believe, want to read the news of what is happening in their community – is that the ability and costs to spread this news is falling closer and closer to zero. And this takes the power of “ownership” out of the hands of traditional news suppliers. We do not have to rely on them to find out what is happening in our city.
That is how it should be. News was never meant to be owned in a democracy. It is about what happens to us and the people around us. And we are free to share it as far and wide as we can.
What does that mean for Bristol24-7 and news provision in the future? I think the ones who will prosper in the 21st century are not those who try to own news. People are moving in their thousands to the internet to find out what is going on. It will be websites such as mine that try to become a news “hub” – whereby it becomes the starting point for people to find out what is happening through original material (that will of course be free for people to share) and links (or at least credits) to the best content elsewhere – that will generate readers and succeed. Those that hide behind ownership and even try to charge people for that content will inevitably fail as people move quickly to the other free sources.
And the trick to make a viable business for publishers is to work with the technology that we use each minute to spread the news, to use it to help businesses, organisations, community groups and individuals spread their message and get it to the people they want to talk to.
At the end of the first week, I feel Bristol24-7 has done OK – nothing amazing yet, but I feel like I am going in the right direction. Please keep visiting!
Further reading
It’s gone a bit quiet …
So you say you intend to employ journalists (plural). Let’s say you pay them at the kind of levels the NUJ maintain is a ‘fair wage’, say £30,000 per year, and let’s assume you need a wage yourself – I reckon you would need best part of £200,000 of ad rev per year for a team of 5 (taking into account other costs etc). If you have a model for that, within the limits of a Bristol aggregation site, I’d love to see it.
Heather,
That’s the aim – thanks for your kind comment.
Typical Bristol Evening Post ( or is that Morning Post) -they have ignored the fact that their readers have been leaving them in their 1000’s for years and yet rather than address the issues as to why they just choose to try and restrict any competition. Bristol 24/7 is a great site – and I reallly hope you make a solid commercial success out of this and unlike the Northcliffe owned Bristol titles you re-invest those profits in this venture, in terms of both jobs and the local community. Good Luck
Martin,
Couldn’t agree with you more. This is certainly not vanity publishing – I intend to make this a successful business which, in time, will employ journalists to provide more and more original content. See http://www.bristol247.com/beyondthead to see how I intend to make this a success.
I’d love to see the business model for this and all the other aggregate sites, eg Dale-Anthony. I suspect they are making next to no money. And ultimately, journalism isn’t charity. Journalists have families and bills. That’s why the EP etc do it the way they do, ie they have a commercial element. It may be tough just now, but there is still a sense of commercial reality. I get fed up listening to all the idealistic old lefties who think it can all be done for pennies. Get real. Eventually you’ll need money for the sandals and houmous. Look at it from the outside … the very best you can hope for is to carry content that someone else has already produced. What’s the point?
Having said that, the website looks good, it’s easy to follow. But it’s a business, not vanity publishing.
Fred,
I take issue with you on two points. First, the very fact that I am stating where the source of the story is coming from means I am not “hiding behind my screen”. I write a short summary of the story and give people clear, precise links to the original source, therefore being open in the fact that this is not an exclusive, original piece. Readers will therefore by encouraged to visit more news sites than simply concentrating on one or two.
Second, I AM going out and doing my own journalism, so that there is a mix of aggregated and original content – which I hope provides a wide range of material for people.
Thanks for taking the trouble to comment.
You are right … no one owns news.
But where you are wrong is your assertion that other people can do all the work for you and you hide behind your screen reaping the benefit.
If this is a real news site, start acting like a real journalist. Take responsibility. Do your own interviews. I find it hilarious that you are so bitter about the Post yet you are happy to take their content (and pass it off as your own).
If I was an artist and someone made a high quality print of my work then tried to sell it I would be rightly pissed off. This is the same thing.
I could just about stomach it if you made it clear that you had lifted the stuff from the Post but you don’t. To most people who don’t understand the news business, they will see it as your work (which it isn’t). Frankly, any geek could sit behind a screen cutting and pasting. In fact, maybe I’ll turn myself into the Sun tomorrow, cut and paste all their stories from their website and pass it off as mine.
On the point of the Post lifting stuff. I’ve worked in regional papers for many years and I know that nine times out of ten they will try to verify stuff independently. How often does this website do that?
I’m all for new ventures and I applaud innovation, but this just seems like a plain old rip-off to me. This kind of thing does nothing for journalism because it undermines correct practices. I am astonished you run court stories, for example, without verifying any facts.
Get out there and be a proper journalist and stop whingeing about those who are.
Spot the difference game:
Here is a story picked at random … a tweak here and there but basically you’ve taken the EP’s structure and content
The schoolboy accused of plotting to detonate a suicide bomb in Broadmead told a court yesterday that he mixed his interest in radical Islam with a fetish for women’s feet, the Evening Post reports.
Andrew ‘Isa’ Ibrahim said he filmed female students’ feet at City of Bristol College and searched the internet for pictures of Hollywood star Keira Knightley’s feet.
The 20-year-old told Winchester Crown Court he was interested in the political side of radical Islam, but did not condone terrorism. He said he researched radical preachers on the net because he felt like a loser and it made him feel bigger.
A suspected Bristol terrorist has told a jury how he mixed his growing interest in radical Islam with a fetish for women’s feet.
Andrew Ibrahim admitted filming the feet of fellow students at City of Bristol College on his mobile phone and searching the internet for pictures of film star Keira Knightley’s feet.
The 20-year-old from Westbury-on-Trym, who changed his name to Isa when he converted to Islam, said it was the political side of Islam which interested him – but insisted he did not condone terrorism on civilians.
It’s not just your view that nobody “owns news” – it’s a phrase that is used a lot.
However it’s a bit of a straw man argument, as I’ve never heard of anyone claiming that they do own the news.
People and organisations can, however, own intellectual property, and I suspect this is what the Evening Post was talking about.
Whether writing a brief summary of someone else’s work actually infringes their rights is debatable, and I personally doubt it.
However, the fact that we are talking about a news story is irrelevant. It could just as well be a novel, an essay, a movie script or any other piece of writing. People do own what they write.
By the way, if the Post’s “news” is actually copy and pasted press releases, why don’t you just copy and paste the press releases yourself?
[...] 9, 2009 by Andy Chris Brown Editor of Chris Brown Bristol247 discusses his correspondence with the Evening News and their position of him rewriting their copy. [...]
I think we should be careful not to confuse ‘ownership’ of news stories or facts with ownership of the expression of those facts and stories, ie. original articles, photos, or video. Those are indeed owned in the legal sense of copyright, and legal action can be taken if whole articles, photos, or videos are used without permission. I think there may also be copyright in television listings and football league tables, ie. the exact way that the facts have been laid out.
Of course media publishers rewrite each other’s stories, hopefully using the information to cover the story with a different angle and/or with new information. But one should not copy entire articles, videos or photos without permission. There are exceptions to copyright for the purpose of reporting news events, and as I understand it this means that quoting excerpts from articles, and perhaps small portions of a video are legally permissable. Note that photos are exempt from this exception to copyright, because you cannot use just part of a photograph, so dont reuse photos without permission.
Sources should be acknowledged, especially on the web where it is easy to have hyperlinks back to the original. It’s good journalistic practice to both check and acknowledge sources, and polite to those who did the original work in the first place. But it is not acceptable legally, or in my opinion morally, to simply regurgitate verbatim the work of others.
Like Chris Hutt, I worry that the aggregation model of the internet will kill off original and professional journalism, and then what will news hubs such as Bristol24-7 have left to publish or share? One person cannot cover all the news singlehanded. News gathering is best done with a team, and is expensive in the time and people needed to do it. But without proper journalism, our democracy would be in an even worse state then it currently is.
A hub such as Bristol24-7 has to tread a careful line between as much of your own original journalism as possible, together with links to other news sources, but let’s not forget that the vast majority of your current content has been gathered by others. Colleagues in agencies, papers, and TV, and the companies that employ them, need to receive payment and prosper enough to survive and keep gathering news at the coal face.
It’s true that there is far too much “churnalism” of re-writing PR press releases, and that reflects both lack of investment by publishers and declining sales and advertising. But a news hub cannot replace original journalism, because without original journalism there wont be much if anything worth publishing on the hub.
For those who believe in the DIY culture, go ahead, but really do it all yourself, and dont take other people’s effort for granted, or their work for free. Authors’ rights should be a human right; the right to have your work acknowledged and respected, not used against your wishes, and paid for if you so desire. Authors’ Rights (authors here means any creator of intellectual property) is more established in some EU countries, and the National Union of Journalists is pushing for the adoption of Authors’ Rights in the UK, to give more protection to both freelance and staff journalists in the work they produce.
As someone who has spent time in the Post newsroom, I can tell you that one of the first tasks I had to do in the morning was go through all the day’s nationals and find stories with a local connection for rewriting. Hypocrites.
[...] 24-7 is a free-to-read online news portal, set up and operated by Chris Brown, and he’s just reported his first run-in with his print media rivals: In a nutshell, [The Bristol Evening Post] insisted that I could not [...]
[...] Nobody owns news – we were never meant to | Bristol24-7 the ones who will prosper in the 21st century are not those who try to own news. People are moving in their thousands to the internet to find out what is going on. It will be websites such as mine that try to become a news “hub” – whereby it becomes the starting point for people to find out what is happening through original material (that will of course be free for people to share) and links (or at least credits) to the best content elsewhere – that will generate readers and succeed. Those that hide behind ownership and even try to charge people for that content will inevitably fail as people move quickly to the other free sources. (tags: news newspaper hub) [...]
Its a bit rich the Evening Post complaining about this site. Much of their paper is made up of re-writes of press releases from the Council. Police, Fire Brigade etc.
….and sometimes I’ve seen the output of the Council press office just printed without re-writes.
Newspaper chains never like competition. I remember when free weekly newspapers were lauchned in the ’70s and ’80s, the Evening Post started the Bristol Observer to put them out of business.
Clearly they see you as a threat as your website is much better laid out, easier to use and more pleasant to read than theirs!
Hopefully not. As a professional journalist I aim to develop this site so that the awkward questions can be asked and presented on a news website that has a sustainable future
I agree that what’s happening is inevitable, but the end result could be that a lot less investigative reporting. As the traditional media cut back on journalists they become ever more dependent on press releases from PR professionals generally working for powerful vested interests. Then are we dependent on amateur bloggers to ask the awkward questions?
Oh I can certainly see why the Post don’t like it. But you have to remember that the Post has been losing readers and ad revenue for a long time before I came on the scene – hence the reason for the large number of job losses from the editorial side in the last three to four years.
The media industry is transforming and traditional newspaper groups are closing newspapers down across the UK. Unless they transform to work WITH the internet age rather than against it, then I really do fear for their future – whether sites like mine exist or not. I am simply trying to develop a new business model that will allow journalism to thrive. Remember, I am not ’stealing’ their work, I am doing a short re-write with a link to their site – which gives them free publicity and sends readers to their website – and I am doing my own reports and will do as much investigative work as possible.
The Evening Post don’t mind taking stories from local bloggers from time to time and don’t necessarily acknowledge the source. On the other hand local bloggers frequently base posts on reports from the Evening Post, including giving ‘credits’ and links to the original. As far as I’m aware neither side has objected to any of that.
But your site isn’t just another blog. It seeks to provide an alternative to the Post’s thisisbristol site, so you can see why the Post don’t like it. Some of their stories are the result of significant work by paid journalists so they naturally don’t want a competitor ’stealing’ that work. If competitors are allowed to help themselves to Post stories the associated advertising revenues will be spread ever more thinly and ultimately the Post won’t be able to employ journalists at all. Then who does the investigative stuff?
I’ve recently launched a Bristol website which also has a news section and I had the same problem with the Evening Post.
Even-though I asked for permission to use or re-write there news they sent a very rude reply saying that if I even try and use their news in any way they’ll take me straight to court.
By the way, great website you’ve setup here, keep up the good work!