SoloJourno

Via Boing Boing:

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has signed up with iCopyright, the American copyright bounty hunters used by the Associated Press, to offer ridiculous licenses for the quotation of CBC articles on the web (these are the same jokers who sell you a “license” to quote 5 words from the AP).

iCopyright offers “licenses” to use taxpayer-funded CBC articles on terms that read like a bizarre joke. You have to pay by the month to include the article on your website (apparently no partial quotation is offered, only the whole thing, which makes traditional Internet commentary very difficult!). And you have to agree not to criticize the CBC, the subject of the article, or its author. Thanks for fostering a dialogue, CBC!

The cherry on the cake? iCopyright offers a reward of up to $1,000,000 for snitching on bloggers who don’t pay Danegeld to Canada’s public broadcaster to quote the works they funded.

Some of the comments are priceless!

Via TechCrunch:

Research firm Outsell has published its third annual News Users’ report, which is based on a survey about the online and offline news preferences of 2,787 US news consumers.

The Outsell report unsurprisingly predicts ongoing, steep drops in US newspapers’ print circulation as consumers continue to head online for news consumption and sharing, forecasting 3.5 percent annual declines in both daily and Sunday circulation by 2012.

Interestingly enough, the research also talks of what is referred to as the “dramatic effect” aggregators like Google and Yahoo have had on print and online readership.

Says analyst Ken Doctor: “Though Google is driving some traffic to newspapers, it’s also taking a significant share away. A full 44 percent of visitors to Google News scan headlines without accessing newspapers’ individual sites.”

Read the full article.

Google News is “a computer-generated news site that aggregates headlines from more than 4,500 English-language news sources worldwide, groups similar stories together and displays them according to each reader’s personalized interests.” (source: CrunchBase)

photo credit: Bill Erickson (via Flickr)

I’ve been in a lot of classrooms and this is how I’ve always thought the learning demographics shook out: 1/4 of students want to learn, 1/4 don’t care and will probably fail (or close enough) and the remaining 1/2 just want to get a good grade and move on without really retaining anything. Maybe that’s way off base. Adjust the numbers however you like, but every classroom has some mix of those three groups of people—newsrooms are no different.

My job requires me to do a fair amount of teaching (which is sometimes forced) and I don’t think I’m alone in saying that it often leads to a good deal of frustration. If we’re going by my quarter/quarter/half rule, the problem is that the majority of your “students” either don’t care or just want to pacify you enough to stop bugging them. I think a lot of us on the New Media side respond by lecturing or throwing our hands up, but I think there’s a better way.

Read the full article.

I love Tina Dupuy (teen-a doo-pwee), she’s a ballsy chick, and I mean that in the BEST way possible. Awhile ago, a Google alert informed the award-winning writer and stand-up comic that one of her witty little pieces had been published in the Tampa Tribune. Quite a little coup. Except that 1. they didn’t ask her permission, and they 2. they didn’t pay her. Rude, cheap bastards that they are. Yeah, yeah, I know, probably shouldn’t say call them that, but it’s not like I’m ever going to work for them, and I’m tired of being screwed over by assholes who don’t pay, or who pay super-late which means trouble for me when it comes to mundane stuff like paying my rent and bills. I had this one gig for a year where I was supposed get paid every month, and only got paid 4x. Yeah, I finally got all the money, but not in a timely or convenient fashion. Still, this isn’t about me, it’s about Tina. And what she did to get her money.

From her blog:

They never contacted me prior to publishing it. I sent them an email telling them I was never asked for my permission. The editor Jeff Stidham, responded explaining my unsolicited submission didn’t ask for payment or permission. Which is not how copyright works.

Anyway, I wrote them back, sending them an invoice for $75, which is the amount newspapers of their size and circulation normally pay guest columnists. I have not heard back from them.

Read the full post. The second video is her follow-up: