Journos Losing Jobs at Three Times Rate of Average Workers – News media, including newspapers, broadcast and digital, have shed 35,885 jobs since Sept. 15, 2008, according to a study by Unity: Journalists of Color. The great majority of jobs lost — 24,511 — were in newspaper and other print journalism, Unity said.
Newspaper ad revenue expected to be down about 25% in 3Q – New York Times
Analysts predict that the decline will be smaller in the fourth quarter. "If the rate of decline in advertising slows, it will largely be because 2008 grew steadily worse as the year wore on and the recession deepened, making year-to-year comparisons less stark," writes Richard Perez-Pena. [Poynter Romenesko]
He also utters one of the two latest media business model buzzwords, the other being "local."
Google CEO: Publishers will have a hard time charging for general news – Reuters
There’s too much free content online, says Eric Schmidt. "My guess is for niche and specialist markets … it will be possible to [charge], but I think it is unlikely that you will be able to do it for all news." [Poynter Romenesko]
Shield law: House and Senate differ on who’s a journalist –
The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to vote on a federal shield law today that would protect journalists from subpoenas for their confidential sources — that is, if legislators can agree on who counts as a journalist.
A version of the shield law already passed by the House (H.R. 985) casts the issue largely in financial terms (emphasis added):
The term “covered person” means a person who regularly gathers, prepares, collects, photographs, records, writes, edits, reports, or publishes news or information that concerns local, national, or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public for a substantial portion of the person’s livelihood or for substantial financial gain and includes a supervisor, employer, parent, subsidiary, or affiliate of such covered person.
That definition would exclude amateurs of any sort, whether student reporters or bloggers with a day job, not to mention to anyone in the grey area of citizen journalism. [Nieman Journalism Lab]
US Justice Dept wants changes to Google book deal (AFP) –
AFP – The US Justice Department has advised a court to reject a legal settlement between Google and authors and publishers that would allow the Internet giant to scan and sell millions of books online [Yahoo! Books and Publishing News]
New York Library Association on How to Fix the Google Book Settlement –
The Open Book Alliance is made up of a wide coalition of librarians, legal scholars, authors, publishers, and technology companies dedicated to countering the proposed Google Book Settlement. From time to time, we will publish posts from members of our group. This one comes from Michael Borges, Executive Director of the New York Library Association. [Open Book Alliance]
Sure the Google Books settlement is controversial. Critics say it negatively affects authors and marketplace competition. However, some interesting new twists on publishing as a whole have come forward as a result of Google Books—aside from the settlement–and its mission to scan out-of-print books. Take, for instance, the PrintOnDemand Espresso machine recently blogged about at JoeTrippi.com and profiled in Wired. Basically, this device will allow bookstores to print on demand perfect bound books from the Google Books library, in the store, for a very low cost-per-book.
It’s sort of a Red Box for books, although perhaps a ways off from widespread implementation. The potential application is much broader than just for Google Books, however. Publishers could make use of the technology to distribute new titles as well. (ht: @freddieoconnell)
The Open Book Alliance’s Peter Brantley admits that digitizing books is an important step toward the future, but cautions that there are right ways and wrong ways to go about it. The Google Books settlement is the wrong way, he says.
The current settlement proposal is the wrong way. It would stifle innovation and competition in favor of a monopoly over the access, distribution, and pricing of the largest digital database of books in the world.
Literary agent Nathan Bransford wonders whether authors of the future will actually need publishers. The publishing industry is, like many others, in the throes of major transformation.
My guess is that we’ll continue to see the mainstream publishing industry focus on the bestselling titles, and there will be a new crop of e-publishing services available for the rest. Some titles will rise up from the morass of author-published works and receive attention from the mainstream publishers, and some big authors will choose to take on the responsibilities of publishing themselves and bypass the publishers.
In terms of job loss, newspaper biz looks remarkably like manufacturing – BusinessWeek
Michael Mandel has charts to prove it. "This is an industry in decline since the beginning of the 1990s," he writes. [Poynter Romenesko]