Hard News by Russell Brown

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Hard News: NZME and you

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  • Ian Dalziel, in reply to llew40,

    Free view...

    A world in which it becomes easier to get things for free is not particularly conducive to being able to retain and pay for quality journalism.

    Which is why I don't understand Stuff/Fairfax's policy of putting their own content 'online' before it appears 'in print'...
    I hate reading through the paper and having to not read stuff as I already saw it online days ago - devalues the worth of the paper, why would ya buy it if ya already had access to much of the content?
    Not time crucial breaking news stuff, but columns and the like, that they pay for or generate themselves - no one is going to scoop them on this stuff.
    Why not let the paper debut these then migrate them to the web...

    Why the rush?

    The parasite isn't supposed to kill the host...

    Christchurch • Since Dec 2006 • 7953 posts Report Reply

  • Rich of Observationz, in reply to James Littlewood*,

    Funny thing was NZOA chose not to fund news or current affairs, precisely because those genres attracted sufficient ad revenue to pay their own way

    Was that the reason? I thought it was to avoid accusations of bias in the allocation of funding?

    Back in Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 5550 posts Report Reply

  • Sarah King,

    We still get the print edition of the NZ Herald and my favourite game is to guess what page the real news will start out on. The front page has become so irrelevant that it's barely read. A fixation on house prices and what the b/g friends of minor celebs get up to. Quite frequently there'll be a story that was live on CNN days earlier, but the delay hasn't improved the depth etc of the story. As for online ads, I let them run, they're paying for what I get for free. The spam in my physical letterbox, I'm not so tolerant of that.

    Pt Chevalier • Since Apr 2010 • 4 posts Report Reply

  • BenWilson, in reply to Berinthia Binnie,

    With ads, quite simply if the audience for both content and ads match then the reader experience is enhanced.

    Yes, totally. I think of the "you might also like" in the TradeMe auction/sales, which are almost always better than the searches themselves at finding what I actually want. Some of this is because their search engine is shit, but mostly it's because the "you might also like" search engine is good.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Vivid, in reply to Alastair Thompson,

    And there is also Scoop's new approach to news copyright. which is gaining traction fast.

    Wouldn't "new approach to licensing content" be a better descriptor as large part of your content is copyrighted to the organisations that wrote the press releases.

    Wairarapa • Since May 2015 • 43 posts Report Reply

  • Ian Dalziel,

    the importance of being earners...
    Poor old Advertising, poor cousin of Public Relations and Public Information (of the 'kind-you-can-use')....
    I've often thought that Public Address should have a Community Notices page to tout the passing entertainments and fixed trades on offer in the catchment.
    Needn't be much, just a page of classifieds & trade cards.
    ...and maybe a mailorder page as well ?
    - it was always a nice little earner at RIU, the deadline evening lottery of where we'd eat tea decided by the PO Box's bounty...
    What about a t-shirt?

    Christchurch • Since Dec 2006 • 7953 posts Report Reply

  • BenWilson, in reply to Tom Semmens,

    but a small tax on each gigabyte, collected by ISPs and built into the monthly line rental of users, could potentailly be a very profitable way to make public broadcasting free of tax payer funding

    No. Just...no.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Cameron Pitches,

    Google had trouble matching ads to content – it works much better for product and technical blogs.

    But Google ads don't relate to the content of the website they appear on. Google decides what ads to display to each unique visitor, based on whatever the visitor has been googling previously

    For instance just now I googled Adobe subscriptions, and now ads for Adobe appear for me on a number of sites that run Google ads. So advertising revenue from Google ads should be more or less in direct proportion to the number of visitors you get to your site.

    Different story if you disable cookies or run an ad blocker though I guess.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 21 posts Report Reply

  • Alastair Thompson, in reply to Bart Janssen,

    I’d happily subscribe to a genuine NZ news service that used my subscription to pay journalists. But are there enough people like me to make it work? And would I actually get the news I need rather than just the news I want?

    That's pretty much what the Scoop Foundation for Public Interest Journalism is intended to do. We hope to be able to source the other costs in the supply chain out of advertising contra and sponsorship. Once it gets to scale our ethical paywall - which is effectively charging the businesses, political and civil society orgs that use us to both send and receive competitive information - will cover basic infrastructural publishing costs, and we will then be able to invest any donations (hopefully tax-deductable) in journalism which we will have no need to be proprietorial about from an advertising perspective because advertising will be a secondary not primary income source.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 220 posts Report Reply

  • Alastair Thompson, in reply to Ian Dalziel,

    Why not let the paper debut these then migrate them to the web…

    Why the rush?

    The parasite isn’t supposed to kill the host…

    Yip. The managers of our current media companies are daft.

    Which is far from surprising as the media owners are vacuous money managers (Oaktree capital which owns Mediaworks is a so-called Vulture Fund) who think that news is a form of complicated content widget which can be commoditised scaled and exploited for gross profit margin.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 220 posts Report Reply

  • Alastair Thompson, in reply to Vivid,

    Wouldn’t “new approach to licensing content” be a better descriptor as large part of your content is copyrighted to the organisations that wrote the press releases.

    We are licensing our copyright to the content. Which is news content. So I think both descriptors work. More importantly though the approach to news copyright which Scoop has adopted is not limited to use with Press Releases. It can in theory be adopted by all news content publishers and in doing so could potentially provide a significant source of revenue for our major news companies.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 220 posts Report Reply

  • Kumara Republic, in reply to BenWilson,

    No. Just…no.

    Again, VUW's Peter Thompson proposes levying all communications infrastructure, not just the Internet.

    Which is far from surprising as the media owners are vacuous money managers (Oaktree capital which owns Mediaworks is a so-called Vulture Fund) who think that news is a form of complicated content widget which can be commoditised scaled and exploited for gross profit margin.

    Just as there's "junk-food news", there's also 'junk-food finance'.

    The southernmost capital … • Since Nov 2006 • 5446 posts Report Reply

  • Vivid, in reply to Alastair Thompson,

    More importantly though the approach to news copyright which Scoop has adopted is not limited to use with Press Releases.

    Where it does relate to press releases, though, you have no control over how that information is used, and you certainly have no right to charge other people to use it.
    I notice you put a ©scoop under press releases, but nothing you've done -layout, hosting etc - puts a separate copyright on the work.

    Wairarapa • Since May 2015 • 43 posts Report Reply

  • BenWilson, in reply to Kumara Republic,

    Again, VUW’s Peter Thompson proposes levying all communications infrastructure, not just the Internet.

    I propose levying his communications. Jesus, could communication be one thing that doesn't have the government's finger right up it? They're already scanning it all. Now we have to pay them for it too? Just to maintain something older that people who use it won't pay for, and those that don't use it have found another way for? Gah!

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Alastair Thompson, in reply to Vivid,

    We respectfully disagree :)

    Our view is that a Press Release is a special kind of publication from a copyright perspective. It is effectively a communication issued under a commercial reuse is allowed basis, with derivative works being granted their own exclusive copyright. We regard our copies as derivative works as we curate them, tag them and add typographic layout.

    But even if we do not have an exclusive copyright to our version of a press release (which we believe we do), then we unquestionably have copyright to our "collection" of press releases as well as to our "typographical" arrangement of the press releases. And for our content licensing approach to work from a legal perspective these are all we need.

    Al

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 220 posts Report Reply

  • Alastair Thompson, in reply to BenWilson,

    While I think a per GB communications tax is a poor way to fund NZ culture I do think that some form of Government action is required if NZ culture is to survive in a digital age. Some kind of per household connection tax - ala the broadcasting license fee - is definitely a proven and tested way to address this issue.

    Arguably since the broadcasting licence fee was was abolished in the 1990s we have gone backwards a long way.

    Dismissing other people's solutions is easy.

    Proposing workable ways to address this issue is what is need.

    Neo-liberal economic views on the dead weight of taxation are highly debateable and expressions like...

    "Jesus, could communication be one thing that doesn’t have the government’s finger right up it?"

    ... are not really helpful to a serious deliberation about the subject. Nobody wants the Government communications propaganda to replace independent news production - however in the absence of some positive government intervention this is precisely where we are currently headed. And we will all lose as a result. Economically and culturally.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 220 posts Report Reply

  • David Hood,

    To me, the core problem is that the global process of automation + centralisation + current capitalism's increasing need for profit increases, means that a lot of jobs in the area are under threat, which due to the change in number of people vs number of jobs makes it harder to make a living.


    The two main responses seem to be: preserve the status quo in this particular area by subsidising this area, and the more radical "this is a general problem for everyone" that guaranteed minimum income would address. Though it is a harder, more revolutionary solution, I favour the later as it doesn't make people's livelihoods contingent on their sectors ability to lobby (which the media should be much better at than everyone else).

    Dunedin • Since May 2007 • 1445 posts Report Reply

  • Bart Janssen, in reply to David Hood,

    current capitalism’s increasing need for profit increases, means that a lot of jobs in the area are under threat

    Part of the problem comes from poor and average quality managers. Talented managers, and yes even I believe they exist, increase profit by increasing the value of the product they produce to the consumer. That's just plain hard, and likely to involve mistakes and failures.

    Poor and average managers don't have the talent to improve the business so they improve profit by cutting costs. That almost always is a bad thing long term but since most managers think of their job as a 5 year placement in any one business anyway they never see the long term damage.

    What we are seeing now in the media is the result of average quality management a decade ago when change should have been recognised and changes made to adapt. Those changes would have involved failures that should have been tolerated. Instead any failure was treated as a reason to avoid change, followed by a cycle of cost cutting to maintain profit.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 4461 posts Report Reply

  • Vivid, in reply to Alastair Thompson,

    You will never have an exclusive copyright on your version ( if indeed you really do, I wouldn't be certain that the court would agree with your definition of typography, It is undefined in the legislation, but I wouldn't feel safe saying that copying text into a html file constitutes typography). Once the text is copied from your website your 'typography' is obliterated, so then once I paste it into my website does my typography copyright come into effect? Does that act of pasting make it a derivative work?

    As for commercial re-use, unless you have specific licence from the owners of the copyright then you have no right at all to profit off the copyrights of others. Press releases, like everything else, fall under the fair dealing exemptions.
    As for 'tagging' them, a tag is nothing more than a fact about what is in a text, and facts are not copyrightable.

    With respect I think you are both wrong and walking a fine line. Even if you are right there is nothing stopping somebody else from taking all those press releases and undercutting you, whichever way you slice it your business is, at heart, based on work that you don't exclusively own.

    Wairarapa • Since May 2015 • 43 posts Report Reply

  • David Hood, in reply to Vivid,

    As for ‘tagging’ them, a tag is nothing more than a fact about what is in a text, and facts are not copyrightable.

    I think you are importing some US notions into this debate. Without wanting to make this a copyright thread that will never die, you might want to read http://www.hgmlegal.com/ideas/category/intellectual-property/no-copyright-in-compilations-and-databases/ to quote:

    The New Zealand approach to “originality” with respect to compilations was clarified by the Court of Appeal in University of Waikato v Benchmarking Services Ltd [6], which held that the threshold test for originality is not high, the determining factor being whether sufficient time, skill, labour or judgement has been expended in producing the work. The Court further held that there can be no claim to any right in the information contained in the compilation where the compiler of the factual information is not the author or originator of the individual facts recorded in the compilation.

    and later

    It, therefore, appears that New Zealand follows the UK “sweat of the brow” approach on questions of originality. In other words, compilations and databases will attract copyright protection if sufficient time and labour has been expended in the collection, selection or arrangement of information – a low level of originality and creativity is required.

    That said, yes I find it questionable about the copyright on the documents, because they are not the author, and there is a whole argument there about reproduction and publication. But the tags are, to me, clearly copyright in "sweat of the brow".

    Or course, I am not a lawyer.

    Dunedin • Since May 2007 • 1445 posts Report Reply

  • llew40,

    Poor and average managers don’t have the talent to improve the business so they improve profit by cutting costs. Part of the problem comes from poor and average quality managers. Talented managers, and yes even I believe they exist, increase profit by increasing the value of the product they produce to the consumer.

    You're a hard task-master Bart! - I think there are a lot of exceptionally talented people around the world who have been grappling with how to respond to the digital disintermediation of media (and advertising, and telcos, and hotels, and taxi's and soon to be pay TV, banks, investment companies etc) but the forces against them are pretty powerful and not easily solved.

    I agree that the response to digital revolution *should* be to disrupt your own business model and provide something of sufficient value for consumers to be willing to pay more for, but easier said than done (plenty are trying).

    Things like having massive $$ in sunk assets, or declining consumer interest in paying $$ for a product/service, or sudden changes in regulation, or massive pressure on costs caused by the very forces they are seeking to respond to .... the constant 'more value for less $' dynamics of many industries makes growing your way to profitability hard, and scale can become the most important thing (I think it would be hard for a NZ company to do what Uber, AirBnB, Amazon, Google, Facebook etc are doing, and even they arent that profitable (yet).

    Xero is one - granted (but again, focused on gaining scale not profitability at this stage)

    Since Nov 2012 • 140 posts Report Reply

  • Moz, in reply to Russell Brown,

    When I played with an iPhone a while ago the "free" apps I saw all had ads embedded in them. ... Isn't that exactly the case with free apps on Google Play?

    I assume so, but the ad-blocker I have removes them. It's been a while since I saw an ad other than "buy the pro version of this app".

    Well, yeah, iOS is better locked down than Android. Which means you get few malicious apps

    Oh, absolutely. But the price for that is a crippled device, and it's locked down primarily against the user. The licensee is only allowed to do the things Apple think they should do. Unfortunately a few of the things I do a lot are not on the list, so iPhones don't work for me (web-based terminal emulators are not an acceptable substitute, for example). And the tiny storage space kills it - I cycle tour and use airplanes, so relying on iCloud for storing music and photos isn't an option. To be worth even looking at they'd need a 256GB option (since extra internal storage is also not allowed and dongles break), but given their prices I expect that would be a $2000 phone. And on that note, not being able to drive my DAC would be an annoying restriction.

    Sydney, West Island • Since Nov 2006 • 1233 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha, in reply to BenWilson,

    It's through DoubleClick, a Google subsidiary

    Really? Maybe I'm wrong then.
    Can we get a Russell in the house?

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha, in reply to BenWilson,

    There's no reason a levy like that could not be distributed through a vehicle like NZ on Air, but with less control being ceded to boadcasters/publishers - and a broader range of them across media types including print and online.

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • Rob Stowell, in reply to Sacha,

    There’s no reason a levy like that could not be distributed through a vehicle like NZ on Air, but with less control being ceded to boadcasters/publishers

    Reckon it needs to be thought through a little better. NZ on Air has been a poor model in many ways.
    And I feel ‘contestable funding’ generally is also a poor model – as pretty much anyone who’s tried to build a science career in NZ based on it will readily concede. Intermittent or project-based payment works ok for some things and some people. But it’s not going to give us reliable daily news- like eg RNZ.

    Whakaraupo • Since Nov 2006 • 2120 posts Report Reply

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