Tag: Boston Globe

GateHouse complaint now available

Here is the complaint (PDF) that GateHouse Media has filed against the New York Times Co. in U.S. District Court. Nothing startling; more of a fleshing-out of what we already know.

One thing I find interesting is that GateHouse accuses the Times Co. of trademark infringement. The argument is that readers of Boston.com’s “Your Town” pages might not realize that links to GateHouse papers such as the Newton Tab and the Needham Times actually have nothing to do with Boston.com.

The lawsuit, filed on GateHouse’s behalf by the Boston firm of Hiscock & Barclay, charges the Times Co. with copyright infringment; unfair competition and “false designation of origin”; false advertising (allegedly by touting “Your Town” as comprising original content); trademark dilution; trademark infringement; unfair business practices; and breach of contract, pertaining to the Creative Commons license under which GateHouse makes its content available to noncommercial Web sites.

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.

Boston.com unveils Needham site

Boston.com’s hyperlocal site for Needham has debuted. And there are a ton of links to GateHouse’s Needham Times as well as the Hometown Weekly — but not much Boston Globe content. “Wicked Evil Needham” is how a GateHouse source describes it, a play on GateHouse’s “Wicked Local” sites.

Which brings me back to the video I linked to yesterday, in which Boston.com’s Bob Kempf talks about eventually offering 120 hyperlocal sites. I’m kind of scratching my head over that. In a community where Boston.com can put together a page featuring a decent amount of Globe content and links to local, independent bloggers, a few links to other papers’ Web sites strike me as fine. That’s why I think the Newton site is promising.

But what do Kempf and company plan to do in a community like, say, Danvers, worldwide headquarters for Media Nation? We have two papers covering our town: GateHouse’s Danvers Herald and CNHI’s Salem News. Both do quite a nice job. But there are no local bloggers in Danvers whom I’m aware of. And it’s not very often that Globe North does a Danvers-specific story.

Would Boston.com really put together a hyperlocal page consisting of almost nothing but links to the Danvers Herald and the Salem News?

I realize I’m being ridiculously speculative. So let’s wait and see.

Update: Waltham is up, too (via Elana Zak).

120 Boston.com hyperlocal sites?

Someone just called this to my attention. It’s a three-minute promotional video made by the Boston Globe to promote its Boston.com Newton hyperlocal site. In it, you will see Boston.com’s Bob Kempf explain that the plan is eventually to expand the Newton idea to 120 cities and towns.

When it comes to news you can use, though, it looks like Boston.com still has some bugs to work out. (Via Adam Reilly.)

Setting the record straight

My friend Adam Reilly of the Boston Phoenix is having a reading-comprehension problem today.

I have never remotely suggested, as Adam seems to think, that it doesn’t matter how much content the Boston Globe takes from GateHouse’s Newton Tab on its hyperlocal page for Newton. Nor have I said that it’s all right if the majority of Boston.com Newton‘s links come from the Tab.

What I have said is that GateHouse has little to complain about as long as the Globe is taking so little that you have to click through to the Tab’s Wicked Local Newton page in order to get the gist of the story. Which is what the Globe has been doing.

I also agree with Adam that the Globe is going to look silly if its Newton page doesn’t feature a good mix of Globe content, local bloggers and, yes, some links to the Tab.

Although I’m not privy to the details, I do know that Globe and GateHouse executives have been wrangling behind the scenes. For about a week, there was no Tab content at all at Boston.com Newton. Now there is again.

I don’t pretend to know exactly what the right mix is, but it does strike me that Globe editors tried to go about this the right way — and that the folks at GateHouse have, nevertheless, been appropriately prickly about the Globe using their content to boost its own local coverage.

Why the Globe should save “Spiritual Life”

It’s hard to believe the Boston Globe was paying freelancer Rich Barlow so much that it will save more than a pittance by letting him go (via Universal Hub). But these are desperate times, and I’m not going to argue that the Globe should keep paying him the money.

Rather, I’m going to argue that a newspaper has to appeal to many niches in order to survive, and that Barlow’s Saturday column — “Spiritual Life” — is an important niche. In Michael Paulson, the Globe has an outstanding full-time religion reporter. Could Paulson take it over? How about an intern working under his supervision?

I realize there are limits to the do-more-with-less philosophy, but dropping “Spiritual Life” entirely is going to alienate quite a few readers. It already is — just check out the comments.

Boston is still a newspaper town

The latest news about the newspaper business is of the sort that no one ever thought we’d see. Tribune Co., which owns the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, may seek bankrupcty protection. McClatchy has put the Miami Herald up for sale, but no one wants it.

So I thought this would be a good time to pause for a moment and ponder something that we all take for granted around here. How is it that the Boston Globe continues as one of our great daily newspapers? How can our number-two daily, the Boston Herald, keep chugging along in this environment?

First the Globe. The paper and its corporate parent, the New York Times Co., are in dire straits. The Globe may be losing as much as $1 million a week, and company executives are now on a salary-cutting binge. International and national coverage has been largely ceded to the Times and the wire services. And yet this may be the only city in the country other than New York or Washington where our major daily newspaper isn’t the subject of daily, heated rumors about its imminent demise.

No doubt the Times Co. is a more benevolent owner than Sam Zell, the foul-mouthed real-estate tycoon who runs Tribune. But maybe things aren’t as bad at the Globe as they are at most other papers because Boston remains, fundamentally, a newspaper town. Yes, print circulation is way down, but the Globe’s Web site, Boston.com, is thriving (though its ad revenues don’t come anywhere near offsetting print losses).

Surely there’s no explanation but Boston’s special relationship with newspapers to explain the continued existence of the Herald. For several decades, the tabloid has survived as one of the very few number-two dailies in the country. The Herald has gotten awfully small. Earlier this fall, the paper started jobbing out its printing to the Wall Street Journal, which now trucks the paper in from its plant in Chicopee each day. (As with the Globe, the Herald’s Web site is doing quite well.)

Last week, Herald publisher Pat Purcell went back to work for his old boss, Murdoch, who owns the Journal and everything else.

Few people other than Purcell know what the true financial condition of the Herald is, though it’s believed to be right on the edge. And few know what Purcell’s real motivation was in agreeing to run Purcell’s Ottaway community-newspaper division. But it’s possible that it was about finding efficiencies that will shore up the Herald’s position.

This is such a difficult moment for the news business that it would be ridiculous to make any predictions. A month from now — a week from now — these observations might seem pollyannaish and naive.

For the moment, though, with the exception of New York and Washington, there’s no better place in the country to be a newspaper reader.

Kudos for Stockman’s Iran story

I don’t like to state the obvious, but sometimes the obvious needs to be stated. Farah Stockman’s story on how a semi-American company took advantages of loopholes to bring a dangerous technology to Iran shows that the Boston Globe is still capable of competing at a national level — not all the time, not on every story, but when it picks its shots.

According to Stockman, an oil-services company called Schlumberger developed a drilling tool being used in Iran’s oil fields that contains radioactive materials capable of being converted into a so-called dirty bomb. The technology arose out of work in Schlumberger labs in Connecticut and Texas — yet because Schlumberger is not an American company, it was able to avoid U.S. rules prohibiting such technology transfers.

Scary stuff.