NLA Media Access is pleased to announce the appointment of Clive Marshall as non-executive Chairman. Clive joins the Board and will take over as Chairman with effect from 19^th October 2020.

Brian McCarthy will retire from the Board after eight years, including serving as interim Chairman for the past 12-months.

Marshall is currently CEO of PA Media Group, the parent company of PA, the national news agency for the UK and Ireland. Since taking up the role in February 2010, Clive has implemented a successful diversification strategy to reduce the Group’s reliance on the traditional media sector. This has enabled the PA Media Group to consolidate its position as the preeminent supplier of multimedia content and services to customers in the UK and overseas, across media, business and government. 

He was previously Chief Executive of the Australian Associated Press (AAP). With over 30 years of experience in the international media industry, he has held senior positions at several news organisations, including Canada’s CNW Group, Reed Elsevier Plc and Trinity Newspapers Limited.

Managing Director, Henry Jones said: “I’m delighted that Clive is taking on the Chairmanship of NLA. His knowledge of the industry, digital focus and track record will be of huge benefit to NLA at such an important time for the business”.

Clive Marshall commented: “I am looking forward to joining the team as the NLA continues to explore growth opportunities, driving value for publishers and supporting journalism.”

Biography

Chief Executive, PA Media Group

Clive Marshall is Chief Executive of the PA Media Group, the parent company of PA, the UK’s leading multimedia news agency and provider of digital content & services.

Since taking up the role in February 2010, Clive has implemented a successful diversification strategy to reduce the Group’s reliance on the traditional media sector. This has enabled the PA Media Group to consolidate its position as the preeminent supplier of multimedia content and services to customers in the UK and overseas, across media, business and government. 

Under his leadership, the PA Media Group has grown to incorporate a range of specialist media companies. These are Alamy, a stock imagery business; EBS, a tv metadata business; Globelynx, a broadcast technology company; Sticky, a specialist marketing consultancy; and StreamAMG, a video streaming business. PA Media Group also owns stakes in the financial news provider, Alliance News, the automotive content business, Baize Group and the social video creation platform, Wochit.

Clive was previously Chief Executive of the Australian Associated Press (AAP). In the nine years that he led the company, AAP achieved strong and consistent growth in both revenues and profits. The business also built several successful subsidiaries, including Pagemasters, AAP Newscentre, and AAP Media Net.

With over 30 years of experience in the international media industry, Clive has held senior positions at several news organisations, including Canada’s CNW Group, Reed Elsevier Plc and Trinity Newspapers Limited.

In addition to his management and board responsibilities at PA Media Group, Clive chairs the board of Baize Group. He is a member of the advisory board at Sheffield University’s Department of Journalism and a committee member at the Thomson Reuters Trust. Away from the media industry, he is a Trustee of the Royal National Children’s Springboard Foundation.

In a nutshell, the Simplified Licence provides the same cover as the current Business Licence and Web End User Licence combined.  It allows you to make and receive web, digital (e.g. scan, email, PDF) and paper copies from all the newspaper, magazine, and website titles we represent.  Plus, copying limits and user numbers are much simpler to understand.

The Simplified Licence is optional, but you may find the new licence gives you greater freedom and flexibility.  Just three factors determine the fee; level (bronze, silver, silver plus or gold), quantity (the number of unique articles copied) and staff size. 

The bronze level gives you the right to copy anything occasionally, and to receive a limited web media monitoring service.  The silver level covers you for any type of regular or frequent copying practices for up to 1% of staff, and to send content to an external recipient.  Silver plus and gold levels allow for increased numbers of recipients both internally and externally.  It’s very straightforward.

To find out more visit the relevant licensing section of our website here.

Whether you are looking for your first licence or you’re about to renew, we’ll give you costs to compare, and answer any questions.  Then you can choose the licence that works best for you.

NLA Media Access is pleased to announce the appointment of Brian McCarthy as Chairman, with immediate effect. He succeeds Tim Brooks, who retired as Chairman in September.

Managing Director, Henry Jones said:

“I’m delighted that Brian is taking on the Chairmanship of NLA at an exciting time for the business. He brings with him a wealth of experience from the industry, including direct experience of the NLA Board, which will be invaluable in hitting the ground running.”

Brian McCarthy commented:

“I am looking forward to working with Henry and the team as the NLA continues to build on its strategy, driving value for publishers and supporting journalism.”

Brian has served on the NLA Board since 2012, representing regional newspaper publishers.

Brian McCarthy Biography

A qualified Chartered Accountant, Brian spent his early career with Arthur Andersen and Pearson Education, moving to Archant Regional newspaper division in 2004. In 2008 he joined the Archant  Group Board as Finance Director and was later appointed COO, a role he stepped down from this year. 

Brian has been a trustee and governor at Transforming Education in Norfolk, sat on the East of England Council of the CBI and has carried out a number of roles in the newspaper industry including the Regulatory Funding Company, and a number of committees at the News Media Association. He is also a non-Executive director of Norse Group, a services company owned by Norfolk County Council.

Step 1/3: Visit NLA's new Title Search webpage

Title Search is a new tool from NLA media access that allows users to check which titles (print and online) are available under NLA licences. The search function provides all the information you need during a licence purchase to make sure you get the copyright permissions you require for your business.

NLA is pleased to debut this new service as part of our ongoing efforts to simplify the licence purchase and renewal process. To use, all you need to do is to enter a title in the search bar and select the relevant publication from the results. Step 2/3: Enter a title in the search bar to produce a shortlist of publications to choose from

You will then be shown further details about the publisher of this title, which licences cover this title, and the type of usage available (such as creating digital copies).

 Step 3/3: Licensing details for the chosen publication can then be viewed

NLA media access covers an extensive range of publications, including:

●      Print newspapers: National, plus more than 1,400 regional and foreign titles

●      Many print magazines, including specialist titles

●      Digital newspaper and magazine websites

By purchasing an NLA licence, not only are you complying with copyright law, but you are also supporting journalism. Since its inception in 1996, NLA has returned over £196million to publishers from licensing.

To try out the Title Search Tool for yourself and check you have the right licence for your most read and copied publications please visit: hhttps://www.nlamediaaccess.com/title-search/

As children around the UK prepare to go back to school, the summer break is also over for NLA’s News Library. Our online database of more than 150 national and regional newspapers is a free service that allows thousands of teachers to search, filter and access pdf news articles (dating back as far as 2006) for use in lessons.

From English lessons on writing the perfect exposé to science classes discussing the latest medical breakthroughs; newspapers play a key role in education.

Understanding the importance of news media and its role in democracy can also be the inspiration for the next generation of journalists.  Something NLA supports though the training of new journalists through the Journalism Diversity Fund.

 NLA has also developed the NLA Schools Licence which allows the photocopying, printing, scanning and use of newspapers and online news extracts for teaching purposes. These licences are purchased centrally by the Department for Education, for state funded schools in England, and at regional authority level for most state funded schools in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

This combination of access to and the necessary rights  to access newspapers allows young minds to be exposed to and inspired by the high quality journalism the UK media is famous for.

NLA Media Access has announced that Tim Brooks is to step down as Chairman after six years at the helm.

Tim joined the company in 2014 and has overseen the transformation of the business, inducting a new Managing Director, Commercial Director, Chief Digital Officer and General Counsel/Company Secretary, while delivering 50% growth in revenues. 

Tim commented: “I am proud of what NLA has achieved over the last six years. It has been a pleasure to work with the team, and I leave happy knowing that my successor inherits a highly professional and successful management.”

Managing Director, Henry Jones said:

“Tim has been instrumental in guiding the business through times of change and rapid growth. I am personally grateful to Tim for his support in my first three years with NLA and we all wish him well for the future.”

Tim steps down in September 2019, having served two three-year terms. 

Appointment of the new Chair will be announced in the Autumn.

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Tim Brooks Biography

Tim Brooks began life as a journalist, launching Media Week magazine when in his twenties. He has been MD/CEO of major UK media brands, including the Guardian, the British Medical Journal, the NME and Ideal Home. He has been chair of the Newspaper Publishers Association, and a director of the Professional Publishers Association. He serves on several company boards, and is chair of the Advisory Council of the British Library.

NLA’s roundtable focused on one of the major issues facing the magazine industry today: monetisation. In an increasingly digital world, publishers have been grappling with new ways to profit from their content while ensuring they are protecting this content from copyright infringement.

Publisher representatives from leading brands and industry experts joined the session, to learn more about NLA’s growing suite of ‘publisher services’, with discussions taking place on paywalls, text aggregators, online article tracking and crawler management. Attendees left the session with plenty of new opportunities and ideas to consider.

The discussion on paywalls – something an increasing number of magazines are exploring – focussed on how NLA can ensure media monitoring organisations can still carry out their vital work and maximise licensing royalties through its database product ‘eClips Web Specialist’ – generating new revenues for Incisive Media, Faversham House and William Reed amongst others. Considering the impact on the media monitoring industry is important for any magazine publisher when deciding on how to implement at paywall.

Text aggregators can provide a useful additional revenue stream for magazines, and this provoked the most discussion during the session. Under commercial agreement, one of the ways in which text aggregators can use publisher’s content is to store such content in a searchable archive and pay royalties on access. In order to improve transparency and visibility over how publishers’ content is being used in the text aggregator market, NLA has set up a new initiative following publisher demand: Agent for Publishers. This provides NLA the mandate to effectively manage the text aggregators on a publisher’s behalf and ensure their content distribution is adequately controlled, with transparency given over content usage. Some attendees’ spoke of the unwanted overheads in managing text aggregators directly, and others spoke about historic deals they had since lost track of, so the option of utilising NLA’s expertise in this area was appealing. Through this service, NLA have also been able to distribute magazine content to new aggregators that they had not previously been working with, thus increasing revenues.

As we’ve discussed on the blog before, through its online article tracking tool ‘OATS’, NLA are able to track where magazine content has been lifted from publisher websites and re-purposed across the internet, detect copyright abuse, and have the infringing content removed. This technology helped remove over 89,400 infringing articles in 2018; protecting publishers content online and preventing further loss of revenue. Few publishers are able, or have the bandwidth, to track this in house and there is an increasing number of publishers using NLA for this service.

NLA closed the roundtable by introducing a new and developing service, ‘Crawler Management’. Across the internet, web crawlers (also known as spiders, bots or crawlers) are being used to systematically browse the web and monetise publishers content. NLA are offering to work with magazine publishers to help build ‘whitelists’ and ‘blacklists’ of good/bad bots – and hopefully turn a ‘good’ bot into a revenue opportunity through NLA’s licensing scheme and make sure ‘bad’ bots are blocked from magazine websites. Initial studies have already exposed new revenues for publishers.

Owen Meredith, Managing Director of PPA, said: “We were delighted NLA media access could support PPA Festival and share vital knowledge of how their publisher services can help boost the bottom line.”

NLA media access is continuously striving to support journalism by helping publishers expand their revenues and protect their content. As such we are delighted to have been shortlisted for ‘Industry Partner of the Year’ at the 2019 PPA Awards. See the full shortlist here

Matt Aspinall- Head of Publisher Services

Lynne Anderson- News Media Association deputy chief executive

The past few months have seen the industry forge ahead with several successful joint initiatives.

On the commercial side, the Ozone Project has seen a number of national titles come together to bring a powerful new joint digital sales package into the marketplace.

For the local sector, the Local News Partnership with the BBC has been widely acknowledged as an example of how different sections of the industry can work together to produce genuine benefit for the public.

There is undoubtedly a growing sense of the importance of collaboration, particularly following the NMA’s new Journalism Matters campaign (13 – 19 May) which saw the industry unite to celebrate the power of news media journalism.

 On 24 May, we will embark upon a new partnership when we move from our current headquarters on Vauxhall Bridge Road into NLA media access’ premises on New Bridge Street.

The move will symbolise a coming together between two organisations who share very similar values.

We both believe passionately in the value of journalism and the importance of finding a sustainable business model to enable commercial providers to continue to invest in it.

When the call for evidence for the Cairncross Review was published, we worked together on a series of proposals designed to help the content creators reap the awards of their investment. 

The issue of the tech giants siphoning off digital advertising revenue from the creators of original journalism looms large over the industry.

Government and regulators acknowledge the problem, but action is urgently needed to help news media publishers reap the rightful rewards from their investment in news.

Despite the challenges, the industry can be encouraged that news media journalism is more sought after by the public than ever before.

Forty-eight million people in Great Britain consume news media in print or digital every month.

The value and importance of journalism to our democratic society is a key theme of the Journalism Matters campaign which highlighted the considerable economic, cultural and social benefits created by news media journalism. 

At the NMA, our mission is to champion the industry’s strengths but also to defend it from the many threats it faces. 

Globally, press freedom is under threat with journalists facing serious physical violence or threat of imprisonment just for daring to speak the truth to power.

In the UK, we should be a beacon for freedom of speech across the world yet, sadly, we languish in 33^rd place in Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index.   

Our rise from number 40 last year is due in no small part to the NMA-led fightback against the draconian Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013 which would have punished local and national newspapers simply for telling the truth.

But, despite this success, there is more work to be done and we will continue to fight the threats to press freedom wherever we find them.

We offer a range of services to our members including monitoring a wide variety of public policy and regulatory areas which may impact upon news media publishers.

When appropriate, we make representations on behalf of our members and put across the case for the news media industry. 

Through Newsworks and Local Media Works, the marketing bodies for the national and local news media sectors respectively, we continue to present the industry’s commercial offering to agencies and advertisers.

In addition to lobbying and representational work, we offer a range of media facilities services including press cards for journalists and administering the Royal Rota system for pooling video, pictures and copy from Royal events.

We are delighted to be embarking on this new chapter in our history by moving into new premises with NLA media access.

By collaborating and working more closely together, it will be the start of a new partnership which will benefit our two organisations and the industry we both serve.

To date over 950 companies hold a CWRL, with over 23,000 articles featured. The licence also allows posting of media content onto social platforms.

Following a recent review NLA has launched a new “Micro” size banding for companies with a turnover of less than £2million. This alongside the existing three bands; small, medium and large, better reflects the uptake of the licence and creates an improved pricing structure for customers.

Henry Pettit, Head of Licensing for NLA, said of the new band: “Listening to feedback from clients, many small or start-up businesses really want to use the press coverage they receive by posting it on their website.  The new banding for “micro” companies is about 13% cheaper than the “small” price point and will benefit well over 300 existing clients and many new ones in the future.”

The new ‘micro’ band was introduced on 1^st April 2019.

The new price is listed online at https://www.nlamediaaccess.com/apply-for-a-licence/corporate-website-republishing-licence/

Copyright abuse is a major issue that affects all publishers and creators of original content. It’s easier now, more than ever, for content to be taken, copied and plagiarised without permission of the original copyright owner. This can present a significant issue for newspaper and magazine publishers as they rely on their unique, quality content to distinguish them in a world of fake news.

In 2014, NLA media access (NLA) created the Online Article Tracking System (OATS), which uses our unique database to search for, and detect, thousands of instances of copyright abuse across vast quantities of online article data.

OATS can analyse every article that’s produced by an online newspaper over a two-month period, and then detect where these articles have been copied by other domains. Once identified, the OATS team can then remove infringing content. With vast volumes of content to analyse, this has been a huge success and has revolutionised copyright detection for many NLA publishers.

These copyright abuses range from parts-of, to full articles, as well as photographs and captions that have been copied and posted without permission. The most common types of copyright abuse are:

• Copying or lifting text from an online article and adding a credit to the name of the original publisher. This usually occurs because there is a lack of understanding about copyright law and terms and conditions. In our experience, once the infringing domain is notified, they remove the content.
• Copying or lifting parts of (or all of) the text from an online article and not adding credit or linking to the original publisher. These sites tend to design the layout to look as though it's their own original work by their own reporters.
• Occasionally, websites that replicate a major news site in terms of design and URL. Sometimes the content is kept the same, however on occasion, we’ve seen the content changed or altered slightly, which gives the article a new tone or message. These instances of slightly-altered content contribute to the issue of ‘fake news’

Since its inception in 2014, the OATS system has helped remove over 400,000 articles from over 3,400 different websites that were taking publisher content without permission. In 2018, OATS removed over 89,400 articles from 802 sources with a 90 percent success rate of removing content. 

In most instances, we contact the site hosting the copyrighted content directly, inform them that they are in breach of copyright and ask them to remove the content. This process reduces the chance of the same person or domain repeating the offence. However, if after multiple attempts we're unable to contact the owner of the website, we contact the domains hosting provider and issue a takedown notice to remove the content.

To find out more and see OATS in action, please see our white sheet: (https://www.nlamediaaccess.com/wp-content/archive/News%20OATS%20document%20%20-%20final%20draft.pdf )