Universal Hub won’t link to GateHouse

Adam Gaffin, co-founder and editor of the indispensable Universal Hub, writes:

I make money from ads on pages with links to GateHouse articles, so effective immediately, I won’t be linking to any more articles on GateHouse sites. It’s a shame, GateHouse papers do some good work and they seemed to understand how the Web is built, but the last thing I need is to defend myself from a lawsuit over hyperlinks.

The lawsuit is barely a few hours old, and already there’s collateral damage.

GateHouse sues over “Your Town” sites

GateHouse Media will file a lawsuit against the New York Times Co. in U.S. District Court, claiming that links to GateHouse content on Boston.com’s “Your Town” sites constitute copyright infringement, according to an e-mail sent out internally by Kirk Davis, president of GateHouse Media New England.

The case could settle some legal questions about how much one news organization can use of another news org’s content. The Boston.com sites — currently in Newton, Needham and Waltham — take just a line or a brief summary from GateHouse papers such as the Newton Tab, the Needham Times and the Daily News Tribune of Waltham. (“Your Town” also links to local blogs and other news sites.) Boston.com’s Bob Kempf, himself a former GateHouse official, has said the goal is to roll out “Your Town” in 120 cities and towns.

Since Boston.com is selling advertising on its “Your Town” pages, the argument is that the New York Times Co., which owns Boston.com, is profiting from GateHouse’s journalism. And even if Boston.com is driving traffic to individual GateHouse stories, there’s an argument to be made that “Your Town” is diminishing the value of GateHouse’s “Wicked Local” home pages in those communities.

The full text of Davis’ e-mail is as follows:

To Staff:

As many of you know, there has been considerable discussion within our organization about developments surrounding our local web sites, particularly Newton, as we have followed The Boston Globe’s announced plans for community web sites and how they have executed their strategy.

After being unable to resolve the matter informally, GateHouse has commenced legal action in federal district court in Boston today against the New York Times Company in order to prevent the continuing infringement by Boston.com of GateHouse’s valuable intellectual property, created through the effort, experience and expertise of GateHouse personnel. GateHouse has taken this step to enforce its rights under the law and protect the integrity of its trademarks and original news content, in furtherance of its ability to provide hyperlocal news coverage to its newspaper readers and website viewers in the communities throughout the greater Boston region which it has served over many years.

As a matter of policy, I won’t be commenting further on this matter. Instead, it is appropriate that we let this matter take its natural legal course. Simply put, I hope you derive from this development that we value greatly your efforts, commitment and talent.

When appropriate I will update you further on this matter.

I sincerely hope you enjoy the holidays. It’s unfortunate that the economic backdrop is so unsettling, but we’ll work through it. As I have shared with you many times, we occupy an important niche in the media mix. Local news and relationships are our strength and we will safeguard both.

On behalf of the senior management team, we deeply appreciate your commitment!

Sincerely,

Kirk Davis
President
GateHouse Media New England

This is one of the most important stories in the newspaper business right now. It will be fascinating to see how it plays out.

The wrong solution to the wrong problem

No doubt David Carr’s column in today’s New York Times is going to get a lot of attention. Carr takes a look at the triCityNews of Monmouth, N.J., a small alternative weekly that is thriving, supposedly because it doesn’t put any of its content online.

I don’t have a fully formed reaction, but I do have some observations that should provide some context.

  • It’s hardly a secret that small newspapers are still making money, especially if they haven’t been burdered with the crushing debt that chain ownership often brings. Nor does putting content online have much of an effect on the print circulation of small papers. The triCityNews would probably be doing fine even if it had a robust Web site — especially since the print edition is free.
  • Large papers aren’t doing as badly as you think, either. Tribune Co.’s headline-grabbing bankruptcy was due entirely to the $13.6 billion in debt it’s carrying, the result of two ill-conceived mergers. In fact, the company’s newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, would be operating at a profit were it not for the debt.
  • The most lucrative part of any newspaper, large or small, used to be its classified-ad section. That’s gone forever, mainly because of Craigslist, which will continue to thrive regardless of the triCityNews’ online strategy.
  • Even so, free online editions may slowly be moving toward profitability. Jeff Jarvis reports that the LA Times’ Web site revenue is greater than the cost of its news-gathering operation, suggesting that the print edition could be scrapped at some point. I suspect it’s not quite that simple. But it’s not hopeless, either.

Carr wants that newspaper executives to rethink the whole notion of putting their content online for free. Carr’s a sharp guy, but in this case I think he’s proposing the wrong solution to the wrong problem.

David Gregory grooves one for Rice

Could David Gregory have possibly done a worse job in his interview with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on “Meet the Press” Sunday? More than anything, what stood out was the moment when he made her own false point for her, sparing her the trouble of having to do it herself:

GREGORY: Let’s talk about Iraq. The president’s final visit there as president happening just a week ago today, and what became, obviously, the most noticed image of that trip was this press conference with the prime minister and a member of the press throwing his shoes. As the president pointed out, as you’ve pointed out, certainly a sign of freedom in Iraq.

RICE: Yes.

GREGORY: You got a press corps that can speak its mind and act the way it wants to act.

Notice that the Gregory quotes contain several English-like phrases, but that he is not actually speaking English. But to my point: Gregory cites the shoe-throwing incident as “a sign of freedom in Iraq,” following up with: “You got [sic] a press corps that can speak its mind and act the way it wants to act.”

Well, yes, for those members of the press who are willing to pay the consequences. The reporter who threw his shoes at Bush, Muntadhar al-Zeidi, was reportedly beaten so badly after the incident that there was blood on the floor.

Al-Zeidi was then hauled off to jail, where he sits to this day. He is scheduled to go on trial on Dec. 31, and could face as much as 15 years in prison, although such a harsh sentence is reportedly not likely.

Now, please don’t misunderstand me. You can’t assault the head of state from another country, standing next to your prime minister, and face no consequences. For that matter, if an American reporter had stood up at a White House news conference and thrown his shoes at the president, he’d be in trouble, too.

But Gregory, rather than make those common-sense observations, chose instead to say something completely untrue, making the interview even easier for Rice than it otherwise would have been.

Then again, Gregory had scored the first major interview with the secretary of state since Vice President Dick Cheney publicly bragged about his role in promoting torture and in going to war regardless of whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. And Gregory didn’t ask Rice about Cheney’s statements, either.

Gregory is not off to a good start in his new role.

Obama shouldn’t have waited

Barack Obama’s transition is of considerably more importance to the nation than U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

So if it’s true that the Obama team has found nothing improper in Rahm Emanuel’s contacts with Blago, then it should have released the news last week rather than giving in to Fitzgerald’s request for a delay.

Fake Rahm Emanuel has his say.

Just say no

The New York Times should have refused to run this crapola — written answers from someone working for Caroline Kennedy, responding to a series of questions about where she stands on the issues. Let her sit down for an interview.

Between Kennedy’s impending coronation in New York and the Rod Blagojevich fiasco in Illinois, I’d say it’s time to get rid of gubernatorial appointments for vacant Senate seats, wouldn’t you?

Jim Boyd retires from Channel 5

How on earth could Jim Boyd be 66 years old? The WCVB-TV (Channel 5) anchor is retiring, according to the Boston Herald’s Jessica Heslam.

“I see this less as a retirement and more as a transition,” Boyd says in a Channel 5 press release. “I plan to remain intimately involved in the local community and explore interests that the demands of a full-time career didn’t allow.”

Boyd harks back to a different, better era for local television news. He and his quiet competence will be missed.

Patrick’s snowstorm appointment

Gov. Deval Patrick must be extremely proud of appointing Joseph Aloisi as secretary of transportation. Otherwise, why would he have announced it in the midst of a snowstorm on the Friday before Christmas?

Patrick manages to work in the words “reforming” and “reform” in discussing Aloisi, which is exactly the first thought that springs to my mind upon learning that Aloisi collected $3 million in legal fees from the Big Dig.

At Blue Mass Group, David Kravitz writes:

[W]hen it’s the bottom of the ninth, two outs, two on, and the home team down by two (which strikes me as a fair description of where we are right now), who do you want at bat? Do you want a .205 hitter with a record of not many extra-base hits and a lot of strikeouts? ‘Cause that’s how Aloisi strikes me, based on his history with Kerasiotes, Amorello, and all the rest of it.

I think Kravitz is being kind, but we’ll see. What worries me is that House Speaker Sal DiMasi may be too weakened by the ongoing corruption investgation to act as a counterbalance.

DiMasi saved Patrick (and us) from casinos, and he’s intent on saving us from massive toll hikes as well. But he’s not going to be able to do that if he’s forced to spend most of his time huddled with lawyers.