Category: Journalism

You’ve got to feel sorry for Press Gazette. A bunch of journalists all subjecting your work to analysis and thinking they could do better? Horrific.

Yet, all the same, you know there’s something wrong when one article on desk lamps gets the headline “Light fanastic” (I don’t think there’s supposed to be a pun in the second word, but let me know if you can spot one), a quote in a house ad on the appointments page gets an attribution twice and, on the same page, this collection of little beauties slips through in 18 point:

Journlsim Training supplement FREE in next weeks issue.

Featuring Jon Snow, Adrian Monck and Vin Ray. Includs information on how to choose the right course, surviving your first year and ‘Tips of the Trade’.

Let he who is without error cast the first stone.

Doug Coupland, author of Generation X and Microserfs, decided to interview Morrissey. Although the interview isn’t fantastic, descending as it does into Coupland’s usual broken style, he does make some interesting and valid points about interviews and interviewing in the age of Google. Worth a look.

In case you haven’t paid them a visit yet (and most of them are US sites so why should you have?), here’s a few handy bookmarks for your browser:

• Journalism.org – Plenty of resources from the Project for Excellence in Journalism
• Journalismnet – A weekly mailing of resources for journalists
• How to find original documents on the web – The clue is in the title
• Gorkana – A daily email telling you who’s just got what job at which magazine

After consulting with a number of copyright experts, including the very kind Andy Sivell of Working Titles Publishing, it turns out that I’ve little chance of doing anything about Mac OS X: The Essential Manual. I could get an injunction out against Smith’s at best, but all that would do is stop Smith’s from selling the ‘book’, not get me any money.

Oh well. Figured the chances of cash were small.

Interestingly though, during the course of the consultations, I turfed out the old Paragon Publishing freelance contract that I signed all those years ago when I started writing for iCreate. As well as being self-contradictory, etc, it had one noticeable clause: if Paragon were to ever reuse my work, they would tell me about it in advance (although not pay me, of course). Which they didn’t. Twice.

I’ve signed a few freelance contracts in my time, but the thing that’s struck me about almost all of them (amongst a few other things…) is that so much work goes into them, yet it’s always the publishing company that breaks them first. Why do they bother?

I’m sure a lawyer could tell me if I asked nicely.

Here’s one for the lawyers and the copyright experts.

I’m in W H Smith’s today and I notice a ‘book’ in the magazine section called Mac OS X: The Essential Manual. It’s familiar in style to another ‘book’ Highbury put out in 2004 called Creative Computing Series: Mac OS X, which was basically a compilation of articles from iCreate – quite a few of which I wrote.

So I flick through it to see if I’m right, and whaddayouknow, it’s exactly the same: a load of iCreate articles bundled together into a £10+ book. What’s more annoying than the previous book, for which I saw not a penny of thanks out of Highbury, is the fact that the articles have actually been rewritten so that all author credits have been removed. (Yet they didn’t bother correcting any of the obvious subbing mistakes. Huh.). I’m not even in the contributors section of this one, despite having written most of the main features.

I uttered some swear words to myself and put it back on the shelf. This is exactly the reason freelances are warned never to hand over copyright on their articles – publishing companies can file the serial numbers off the articles, re-use them wherever and whenever they like, and we never get so much as a thank you, let alone a cash payment – in this case, as with the Creative Computing Series volume, I didn’t even get told they were doing it. Still, beggars can’t be choosers and if you want to work for consumer IT magazines, you have to sign some pretty strict contracts.

However, it occurred to me on the way home that because of the Highbury fallout, I never got paid for most of the articles featured in the book. That means the copyright in the text of the articles still belongs to me.

Which brings me to my questions to the lawyers and copyright experts out there (and probably the NUJ’s legal branch next week):

1. Since Mac OS X: The Essential Manual is ‘exclusive to WH Smith’s’ and they’re still selling it, are they infringing my copyright? Or is it still a Highbury matter?
2. Can I (and any of the other unpaid iCreate freelances) sue Smith’s?
3. If I/we were to do so, how much could we expect – the original fee of the article, or something greater or lesser?

Anyway, the tiny cockles of my heart are warming to the thought of getting paid for something that tried its hardest to disavow me. Once I’ve heard from the NUJ legal department (which past experience tells me can take a very, very long time and usually results in nothing but disappointment), I’ll let you – and the iCreate freelances know what I found out.

Spotted PDA Essentials on the shelves again. Unlike games™, I’d had experience of the Highbury version of the mag so I can compare and contrast. On the whole, I’d have to save pretty similar, although I don’t recall GPS Advisor having been a bound insert in the previous issues. It looks good, reads well and had a good range of software on the covermount. In fact, it looks almost identical to the Highbury version, but with a bit more polish.

So that’s good news for the readers of both PDA Essentials and the other mags that should be arriving from Imagine soon. I hope.

One for the designers: a video showing how Microsoft would adapt the iPod’s minimalist packaging if they were given the chance.

Life at The Economist it seems, according to this Guardian profile. Sounds almost like paradise there. Sigh. It’s no wonder it’s such a good read.

We all know that most of the time, the journalist who writes an article rarely writes its headline. Now sometimes the headline can differ from a story because the sub didn’t really understand the piece. Sometimes it can be downright misleading.

But how about this from journalism.co.uk? The article is about Ricky Gervais’ decision to charge for his record-breaking podcast. Now look at the RSS feed details

Gervais smells the money and abandons Guardian

“I was a fool” to give record-breaking podcast away for free, says British comedian.

I don’t think he says that anywhere in the article. How worrying, given that’s quite an explosive quote if it’s true.

So it looks like there’s something else web subs are going to have to pay attention to in future.