When you get beat by 'em, join 'em

The Associated Press had prevailed in its lawsuit against sued L.A. artist Shepard Fairey for the latter's use of an AP photo as the basis for his "Hope" posters of then-presidential candidate Barack Obama. Now comes word that the two sides have settled out of court, with Fairey agreeing to work on a series of Hope posters based on AP images. The two parties will share the profits.

Here's the AP announcement (via Nieman Journalism Lab):

In settling the lawsuit, the AP and Mr. Fairey have agreed that neither side surrenders its view of the law. Mr. Fairey has agreed that he will not use another AP photo in his work without obtaining a license from the AP. The two sides have also agreed to work together going forward with the Hope image and share the rights to make the posters and merchandise bearing the Hope image and to collaborate on a series of images that Fairey will create based on AP photographs. The parties have agreed to additional financial terms that will remain confidential.

Belo building walls

The Dallas Morning News plans to put stories written by the staff or about the Dallas Cowboys behind a paywall. Wire service copy and stories less than 150 words would be available for free on the newspaper's website, according to News Tech. From the story:

Seven-day-a-week print subscribers will still be able to see all of dallasnews.com's content free of charge. The Morning News charges new subscribers up to $33.95 per month for home delivery, and $37.95 for mail delivery, among the industry's steepest subscription rates for a general-circulation daily.

The Morning News is owned by Belo, which also owns the Press-Enterprise in Riverside. It would seem logical that if the paywall succeeds in Dallas that something similar would be erected out here.

Pay with your publicity

The rise of social media could make pay walls for news sites unnecessary, according to Felix Salmon, who argues that advertisers will pay more if they can target their ads to consumers with Twitter or Facebook accounts than consumers who merely subscribe to the site.

From his post:

The fact is that if I sign in to a free site using my Twitter login, I’m actually more valuable to advertisers than if I paid to enter that site. That’s because the list of people I follow on Twitter says a huge amount about me, and a smart media-buying organization can target ads at me which are much more narrowly focused than if all they knew about me was that I was paying to read the Times.

He goes on to say news sites would be smarter to let readers register through their existing social-media accounts, rather than use their own registration systems:

At that point, they’re not “useless tourists” any more: they’re highly valuable and targetable news consumers. And the question of whether or not they’re paying for their news becomes much less important to advertisers. And, therefore, to publishers as well.

The success of such a system depends on whether news sites draw a large enough crowd that advertisers actually do find the information useful. The New York Times probably does, but are there enough Twitter users in Pasadena to make this registration system profitable to the Pasadena Star-News?

(Found via Recovering Journalist)

More popups, comments coming to LA Times.com

Readers will soon be able to comment on selected stories and photos at the Los Angeles Times website, according to a memo from Editor Russ Stanton to staff. In addition, the paper plans to embed advertising links (those pesky green links that often bring up a pop-up window for some product or other) in the text of non-news stories as a way to make money. LA Observed has the full here.

Making those dollars

The top 10 businesses on the Fortune 500 list are:

Wal-Mart
Exxon Mobil
Chevron
General Electric
Bank of America Corp.
ConocoPhillips
AT&T
Ford Motor
J.P Morgan Chase & Co.
Hewlett-Packard

As you ponder the billions of dollars they've made during the Great Recession, also consider this:

In 2009, the Fortune 500 shed 821,000 jobs, the biggest loss in its history -- almost 3.2% of its payroll.

And this:

The star of 2009 is undoubtedly health care. The sector's earnings jumped to an all-time high of $92 billion, placing it second behind tech at $94 billion.

The rise of online ad dollars

Internet ads accounted for 8 percent of total ad revenue in in 2005. The number jumped to17 percent in 2009. Ken Doctor reports:

...digital marketing, with better targeting being introduced around the clock, keeps pulling dollars away from traditional media — TV, newspapers, radio, and magazines. TV ($26.2 billion) and newspapers ($24.6 billion) are still ahead of Internet, but cable (at $20.4 billion) and TV networks (at $15.5 billion) are below. Radio pulls in $14 billion, while consumer magazines take in $10 billion and trades $7.5 billion.

184th best, 17th worst

As we start the year off, let's look at where "newspaper reporter" ranks on Careercast.com's list of the 200 best and worst jobs to have in 2010...

Snuggled between "sailor" and "stevedore," the job of reporter is the 184th best job to have and, conversely, the 17th worst.

Some jobs that rank better than newspaper reporter: archaeologist (#50), janitor (#83), sewage plant operator (#117), and nuclear plant decontamination technician (#165).

Photojournalist ranks 189th. Public relations executive ranks 79th.

Careercast.com offers a complicated methodology for how the jobs were ranked, but the basic criteria were environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands and stress. Reporters did particularly bad on stress and employment outlook (ranked "very poor").

The average starting salary for a newspaper reporter is an astoundingly low $22,000, according to the study. The average jumps to $35,000 for a mid-level reporter, and tops out $77,000 - that's $28,000 less than a top-level philosopher.

What ZevPost costs

So how much does Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky spend to run the county news website his office launched last month? According to Chief Deputy Supervisor Alisa Belinkoff Katz, $113,400 a year.

She broke it all down in an email:

The website is paid for utilizing funds from Supervisor Yaroslavsky's office budget. We have two part-time Web News Writers who are paid $3,000 a month each. We currently have a contract with a web developer for $3,000 a month. We also have a contract for hosting of the website that costs $450 a month (it would have cost us $1200 a month had we used the County's servers for this purpose). Special Project's Deputy Joel Sappell edits the site in addition to his many other duties. Finally, each of our staff members contributes ideas and, occasionally, copy and photos for the site.

The end of downward trend lines?

The absence of bad news counts as good news for newspapers these days. Which is the proper context to consider this report from Borrell Associates, showing newspapers enjoying a "modest bounce" in ad sales over the next five years.

All the news you find fit to print

Los Angeles Daily News subscribers will be the first to test drive an electronic news-delivery system called "I-News" that Dean Singleton's MediaNews Group claims will turn readers into their own editors and publishers.

The "I" stands for "individuated" and the system purports to let subscribes choose which news stories they want to receive - and which ones they don't - via a stand-alone printer hooked up to a phone line or through a web-enabled device. The Daily News plans to test the "I-News" service sometime this summer.

From the Denver Post:

"You'll be able to choose the news you want about anything, whether you're a Detroit Red Wings fan or if you're green-oriented," said Mark Winkler, executive vice president of sales and marketing for MediaNews Group. "You become your own editor and publisher."

I-News gathers content not just from The Denver Post and other MediaNews papers but also from The Associated Press and other "scrapers of media," Wink ler said.

"We want to give the consumer exactly what they want," he said.

Time will tell whether this will be more useful to readers than Google Alerts and RSS feeds, and the story does not mention anything about subscription prices or delivery options. Will existing newspaper subscribers get the service for free? Can they dump the print edition and go with the e-edition only? Can new subscribers sign up for the e-edition without getting the printed newspaper? Will MediaNews offer these stand-alone printers for sale?

Then there's the moral hazard of turning newsrooms into buffet lines. If more subscribers want sports than City Hall coverage, will the paper cut resources to the latter? Or will revenues be shared equally? Is there a chance traditional beats will disappear if their numbers don't perform? Will subscribers have to pay more the more news topics they choose to receive?

Maybe more important in the short run, however, is a proposal mentioned toward the bottom of the Post's piece to cut the number of days the newspaper's print edition is published, as MediaNews has already done in Detroit:

One proposal, based on how well testing in Los Angeles goes, would be to print the newspaper only three days a week. That will already be the case with the two papers in Detroit, including MediaNews Group's Detroit News, starting March 31.

"Our greatest expense is printing and delivering a newspaper," Winkler said. "Eliminating it four days a week would be significant."

It pays to win

Ever wonder what the Obama campaign is going to do with all that money leftover from it's fund-raising? So did Simon Owens and here's what he found:

An Obama staffer I’ve spoken to just received this email:

"our contributor’s incredible outpouring of support has allowed us to offer all full time salaried staff hired on or before September 6th four additional weeks of severance pay."