Diversity in journalism celebrated at The Sun

This week NLA media access gave the Journalism Diversity Fund a further £100,000 donation, helping to fund the bursary scheme over the next year.

The Journalism Diversity Fund, which supports the training of journalists from ethnically and socially diverse backgrounds, is an excellent initiative and one the NLA has been pleased to support since launch.  It has led to over 150 bursaries being awarded to talented young journalists since inception.

The latest donation brings the NLA's total support to £880,000 since the JDF's launch in 2005. As with our royalty payments to publishers, the donation is funded from NLA licence fees. NLA licence fees support the equivalent of 1,000 jobs for journalists, many at hard pressed regional publishers.

You can get a flavour of how this scheme is helping the careers of young journalists by reading their own blogs on the JDF website.  We also spoke to one of the recipients ourselves recently, Victoria Bull, who appeared in the NLA annual review earlier this year.

So, good luck to this year's bursary recipients, we hope to see their by-lines in a newspaper in the not too distant future.

David Pugh

Barry McIlheney, CEO of the PPA, discusses how publishers can generate licensing revenues from their copyrighted content

Published on the PPA blog today the CEO of the PPA explains how PPA members can generate licensing revenue from their copyrighted content.  See the full article for details and contact information.

NLA media access partners with CLA to simplify copyright licensing in education.

NLA media access and the Copyright Licensing Agency have this morning issued the following joint announcement.

Commenting on the news, Richard Hooper, author of the Copyright Works  report and Chair of the Copyright Hub said “This is exactly the sort of initiative that Ros Lynch and I were looking for from the education  sector.  It removes another layer of complexity to educational licensing.  Bravo!' 

London, 4 September - NLA media access and the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) announce a partnership designed to streamline and simplify copyright licensing for UK schools and higher education.

NLA media access has appointed CLA as its exclusive agent for all UK education licensing. From 2014, schools, higher and further education establishments will be able to manage their news content copyright licence through CLA. 

This single point of contact and centralised administration is expected to save licensees effort. The partnership will begin with the CLA selling NLA media access licences alongside its own, but both parties will work towards a closer harmonisation of licence terms to make copyright licensing easier for clients in the education sector.   

The agreement will include the transfer to CLA of existing NLA media access licences for higher education institutions from August 2014. Also transferring will be the Newspapers for Schools data service and the implementation of a recent decision by NLA media access to start charges for schools licensing from 2014.

David Pugh, Managing Director NLA media access, said

 “Newspapers are putting users first and trying to simplify copyright administration by giving educational establishments a single point of contact for licensing news and other text. The industry-led Copyright Hub project has underlined the importance of making compliance easy. By working in partnership with CLA we aim to reduce the time and effort spent on paperwork and allow licence users more time to teach. We are delighted that CLA is supporting the Newspaper for Schools service as part of this agreement”.

 CLA Chief Executive Kevin Fitzgerald CMG added

 “This partnership with NLA media access acknowledges CLA’s experience and expertise in licensing the education sector and is the latest in a series of collaborations that will help to streamline the process of copyright licensing. In particular, the arrangement will draw on the advantages of CLA’s well developed networks for licensing higher education to deliver real benefits for users and rights holders alike.”  

Are proposals to create exceptions to copyright answering problems or creating them?

Ever since the publication of the Hargreaves Review, NLA media access and other agencies representing publishers in the creative sector have been responding to UK Government consultations on various aspects of copyright law. Despite no obvious benefits to the wider economy – and potential damage to revenues in the creative sector – a series of ‘exceptions’ to copyright are being proposed, ranging from Quotation and Parody to Data Access (FKA Text and Data Mining).

Most of the proposed exceptions seem to be seeking answers to non-existent problems. The NLA media access view is that licensing use of content is the best solution for both consumers and creators of content, as licences can be tailored precisely to the user (business, academic, personal) and priced accordingly, whereas exceptions to copyright are likely to be ‘blunt instruments’ that lead to loss of reward for creators – and potentially an ultimate loss of access for businesses that could use or re-use content: the very opposite of what the government intends. 

All of this is expressed very eloquently by Richard Mollett, the CEO of the Publishers Association in a blog for The Bookseller. Leaving aside his use of a slightly dodgy quotation from George Michael, Richard makes the point that “those politicians who agree with both the premises and conclusions of the Hargreaves Review could comfortably fit into a London phone box”, but goes on to suggest that “there are encouraging signs that the government is listening” to a sector that delivers 9% of GDP. That is good news, if true. 

Beyond the technical aspects of the legislation, what it really boils down to is a choice for the Government.  Either support UK creative industries with fair remuneration for their content; or risk losing jobs and wealth to the many cross-border technology companies who would exploit this content to their own benefit if copyright rules are relaxed. 

David Pugh

Managing Director, NLA media access

Follow the NLA on Twitter - @NLA_ltd

The future of content? A publisher’s dilemma

News UK chief executive Mike Darcey has been clocking up column inches of his own, with his speech at the Institute of Directors containing some pointed comments on paywalls. Discussing The Times business model, he revealed the paper now has nearly 535,000 subscribers, and argued that total paid sales was what really mattered for online content – not online audience.

The dilemma for publishers of all shapes and sizes is whether to sacrifice readership for paying subscribers, or plough efforts into building a much larger but non-paying audience. This relies of course upon free content being sufficiently monetised by a diverse range of advertising revenue streams. It is a discussion popping up everywhere as publishers continue to feel the squeeze, including the recent PDLN conference in Stockholm. Moves to paywalls by The Sun, Daily Telegraph, and most recently the Washington Post were a hot topic, as were price points. The Washington post joins over 400 US dailies now operating this model.

Not all are sold on the idea; publishers like the Guardian News and Media and the Daily Mail and General Trust have become hugely influential by following the free model, with staggeringly large audiences. However the question remains as to whether they can monetise the high quality content they produce to a commercially profitable level. Mailonline looks most likely to, but is still a small scale business. The differences in editorial approach between that and their new iPad edition are interesting illustrations of an important dimension of free v paid.

The decision to charge or not is a matter for individual publishers. NLA media access licensing and eClips web technology platforms are neutral tools designed to give publishers choices supportive of either approach. Whatever the publisher decision, we at NLA media access will continue to work with those who want to supply or use newspaper content for commercial purposes, to ensure they get access and an appropriate licence, and that publishers enjoy a fair return.

Andrew Hughes

Commercial Director, NLA media access

Follow the NLA on Twitter - @NLA_ltd