Media Law News
Geanne Rosenberg, writing for the Nieman Lab, jumps into the Federal Shield conversation, asserting that student journalists should also get the protections of their professional counterparts. If you read this blog, you know I’m a big proponent for citizen journalists, bloggers and other “non-professionals” to get this protection, so kudos to her for recognizing the rights of students as well.
The Nieman Lab has an overview of a longer paper from Marion Fremont-Smith at Harvard law about the non-profit model for funding news. There are a lot of questions out there as to whether or not tax law might need to be changed to allow for a current for-profit news org to become non-profit. Fremont-Smith’s paper argues there should be no new guidelines or legislation needed to make this happen.
A very interesting case is going on right now where TV personality Glenn Beck is essentially trying to use domain name laws to out an online critic (and it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere). While it goes against the reason behind the law, it certainly is a creative way to circumvent other media law to take down those who oppose your point of view.
Who’s charging for content – or not
For those keeping score….
- Talking Points Memo: Exploring a membership model, but not an all-encompassing pay wall.
- Newsday – Creating a subscribers-only pay wall – and Steve Outing thinks they’re nuts & suggests a micropayment model.
- Dallas Morning News – DMN is betting on readers being willing to pay more to have a better newspaper – not online yet, but in print.
- Speaking of “premium content” that is “worth paying for”, Outing started a great discussion about what content readers might be willing to buy.
- And now for something completely different. Check out the new site for the non-profit Texas Tribune if you haven’t already. It’s lovely – simple, clean, easy-to-read. And everyone’s really hopeful this is a news experiment that will succeed.
Crazy ideas worth hearing
Robert Niles has a provocative idea – evaluate whether or not your site really needs to be in Google News, Crazy? Maybe, but check it out. There’s some potentially mind-blowing food for thought about why news sites and blogs may not want to be involved with Google News – and it isn’t about that silly “freeloading” nonsense. He argues that search engine page views aren’t “quality” views and they might be leading to more spam.
Or, if you really hate Google and you’re Rupert Murdoch, you’ll insist the search engine is stealing your stuff against your will. Google finally had enough of the News Corp. owner, saying that if he really doesn’t want Google indexing his sites, he can be removed. Of course, this blogger thinks Murdoch knew that already.
Newspaper-sponsored blog networks! Catch the wave! While it certainly isn’t the first such blog network (ahem), the Guardian is hiring bloggers to cover local news.
And seriously, it’s been said before and said again, this time by Paid Content: When is someone going to buy Breaking News Online ? They’re the best there is at breaking news online – and yet, they are still independent.
And a word or two about the Twitter
Social Media Today has a great bit of coverage about Twitter lately i just had to share.
For one, there’s a much-needed reality check on Twitter’s trending topics from the folks at Social Media Today, more importantly, do those topics really reflect what people are actually talking about or what is really going on in the world?
They also take a refreshing look at Twitter lists from the “quality over quantity” perspective. In other words, it isn’t a popularity contest to get listed a lot, especially wen there are a lot of lists.
And get ready to take down your “English only” Twitter search filter. Soon enough, we’ll be able to translate tweets with no problem.