Tag: New York Times

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.

Look out below

For the newspaper business, it suddenly feels like September, when huge chunks of the financial services industry collapsed after many months of teetering on the brink.

Since this morning, bankruptcy for Tribune Co. has moved from theory to reality. The New York Times Co. is borrowing against the ill-timed monument the Sulzbergers built to themselves several years ago.

And a post I wrote this morning already seems out of date.

You have the sense right now that anything is possible. Anything bad, that is.

O, the injustice of it all

From today’s New York Times story on the town of Mountain View, House, Calif., which has the highest percentage of underwater mortgages in the nation:

He has cut his DVD buying from 50 a month to perhaps one, and is waiting until the Christmas sales to buy a high-definition television. He does not indulge much anymore in his hobbies of scuba diving and flying. “Best to wait for a better price, or do without,” Mr. Rogers, 52, said.

I’m sure there is real pain in Mountain House. Let’s just say this is not a compelling example of that pain.

Explaining an unexplained dip

The New York Times’ Steve Lohr today writes about the growing furor over executive pay, and the widening disparity between what top company officials make as compared to average workers.

But the story is accompanied by a chart, based on statistics from the Economic Policy Institute, that shows a huge dip in the disparity earlier in this decade. Today, according to the chart, the disparity is rising once again, though it has not yet reached the heights of 2000.

Nowhere in Lohr’s story is the blip explained. (Not that I’m blaming him — he probably had no idea that particular chart would be used to accompany his reporting.)

What’s the explanation? According to an Economic Policy Institute report from June 21, 2006:

The ratio surged in the 1990s and hit 300 at the end of the recovery in 2000. The fall in the stock market reduced CEO stock-related pay (e.g., options) causing CEO pay to moderate to 143 times that of an average worker in 2002. Since then, however, CEO pay has exploded and by 2005 the average CEO was paid $10,982,000 a year, or 262 times that of an average worker ($41,861).

OK, I suppose we could have figured that out. But someone at the Times should have seen that the chart did not perfectly match Lohr’s reporting that chief-executive compensation has risen from 35 times to 275 times that of the average worker since the 1970s. It’s true, but stuff happened in between, too.

On (not) building for the future

What a strange sentence Richard Pérez-Peña wrote in describing the problems faced by the Chicago Sun-Times in finding a buyer. From tomorrow’s New York Times:

The Chicago Sun-Times is the kind of trophy that once appealed to deep-pocketed buyers. It has a big audience in a big market, a storied name, and stars like Roger Ebert and Robert Novak.

Ebert, as you probably know, has been battling brain [sorry; that was his on-air reviewing partner the late Gene Siskel] cancer for many years, and can no longer speak, though he continues to write. Novak, who’s 76, just announced that he has a brain tumor.

It’s not disrespectful to point out that no newspaper executive would buy the Sun-Times thinking he’d have Ebert and Novak in his stable for any length of time. Pérez-Peña knows this. What were he — and his editors — thinking?

How stupid can the Times get?*

Very. Walter Brooks explains. And the New York Times, in what may have been a misguided attempt to give Barack Obama some cover, has managed to turn his innocent wave to the Berlin crowd into a Nazi salute. Good grief.

*Correction: I take it back. The front of the Boston Globe shows Obama waving with his right hand, but the “Angola” sign is still backwards. Clearly it was just turned around. How stupid can I get?