Journalism Diversity Fund Update

We reported yesterday on the Journalism Diversity Fund lunch, hosted by the BBC. NLA media access made a donation of £100,000 to continue the great work that the Fund is doing to promote diversity in newsrooms; bringing our total contribution to date to just under £1m (David Pugh is pictured presenting the sponsorship cheque to Kim Fletcher (left), Chairman of the JDF).

One of the speakers at the celebratory lunch was Layth Yousif, now a reporter at the Bedford Times and Citizen. He spoke eloquently about his background as a son of immigrants to the UK, the struggle that he had to get into journalism – and the support that the JDF provided to make it possible.

You can read a full account of Layth’s story in this article from Hold the Front Page.

NLA media access continues significant donations to Journalism Diversity Fund

NLA media access today donated £100,000 to the Journalism Diversity Fund (JDF), bringing its total support for the bursary scheme to nearly £1m.

The Journalism Diversity Fund (JDF) was set up by the newspaper industry in 2005 to support the training of journalists from ethnically and socially diverse backgrounds.  NLA media access is the JDF’s biggest supporter, and has been donating to it since its launch.

In the 2013-14 academic year the scheme supported 23 students from diverse backgrounds who would not otherwise have had the financial means to support themselves on a NCTJ-accredited course.  Since its creation the JDF has provided bursaries for over 150 aspiring journalists who have gone on to work across the industry, from the national and local press to BBC and Sky News.

Managing Director David Pugh said:

“NLA media access contributes to a vibrant UK media market by providing database and licensing solutions to UK businesses on behalf of news publishers.  As part of our commitment to the newspaper industry, we are keen to do what we can to promote diversity in journalism and support students looking for a career in media.  The Journalism Diversity Fund does an excellent job achieving just this.”

Joanne Butcher, chief executive of the National Council for the Training of Journalists, said:

“We are very grateful for the NLA’s consistent support over the years.   This generous contribution to the fund has given so many talented students who are passionate about journalism the financial support they needed to start their careers.”

ENDS

Notes to editors:

For more information, spokespeople or case studies including Khaleda Raham on page 10 of the NLA Annual Review, please contact Tom Denney on Tom.Denney@theopen-road.com or 0207 645 3593

About NLA media access

NLA media access was set up by eight national newspaper companies to protect the industry's copyright through collective licensing.   It now represents the rights 1,400 national, regional and foreign newspapers, over 1300 magazines and over 2000 newspaper and magazine websites.

NLA media access gives permission for organisations to copy from an extensive range of newspapers, magazines and websites and provides database services to both media monitoring agencies and publishers. In 2013 more than 200,000 organisations relied upon NLA media access annual licences.

Eighty per cent of the company’s revenues are returned to the publishers to be invested back into the industry. In 2013 NLA media access revenues equated to the salaries of 1100 journalists.

www.nla.co.uk  

European court ruling on browsing the web – an update

It is now three months since the Court of Justice of the European Union announced its ‘temporary copying’ decision in the long running web licensing case between NLA and Meltwater.

The cries of ‘won’ and ‘lost’ over the narrow point of ‘temporary copying’ are confusing – and a number of our clients have asked for clarification about NLA licensing of web publications.  The key point, which was not under review by the CJEU, is that web published content continues to have copyright protection and commercial use must be paid for.  As decided by the High Court and upheld in the Court of Appeal, headlines and snippets of text can attract copyright protection and their use for commercial purposes requires a licence. As a result, publishers and journalists get a fair return for the content they create if it is used by others in paid-for monitoring services.   

So what was the case about? There is a concise (and independent) summary on the Lexology web site.

From the perspective of NLA licence-holders: what has changed – and what has not? 

Starting with what has not changed, the decision only applies to browsing of web sites; it does not legitimise printing out or downloading works without the permission of copyright owners.  The 2012 Court of Appeal ruling on these points was not challenged, so organisations still require a licence for commercially exploiting web published content in these ways. 

Secondly, as stated, headlines and snippets, (integral to paid-for media monitoring services) continue to attract copyright protection. So any paid-for monitoring service sending e-mail summaries of media coverage also need a licence to provide the service to their clients.

This means that there is no change to the licensing of current services received by clients of media monitoring agencies.  NLA media access customers who have a Web End User Licence will need to retain one.

Turning to what could change, there may be new services developing that will not require an end-user licence, but those are for monitoring agencies to define. NLA media access is ready to create appropriate licences for them, depending on what use of publishers’ content they might propose. We have indicated to service providers and relevant representative bodies that we are open to dialogue on any new services that might take advantage of the CJEU ruling, when they are ready to discuss them.

Where the money goes – NLA infographic outlines what the company does with the revenues it collects

One of the first questions people often ask when speaking to NLA media access staff for the first time is ‘where does your money go?’

The answer is – back to the publishers who employ the journalists creating the content!

In 2013 alone NLA media access collected and distributed over £26m in royalty payments to publishers; a figure that has grown year on year as demand for publisher content has increased.   Who we collect it from and how it helps the industry is outlined in the NLA infographic, published today.

This year, we are on track to deliver a further £25m+ in payments to publishers. National and regional newspaper groups continue to be well served by NLA and, in 2014, over £2.5m of royalties will be paid to magazine publishers, successfully represented by NLA for the first time.

Our money also goes on investing in databases.  As you will see from the infographic, NLA supplies daily and online news to 13 UK and 18 international media monitoring agencies and provides 7000 UK journalists with online access to a comprehensive database of news articles from 2006 to present day.  Around 20% of the revenue NLA media access collects each year goes into investment in new database services and covers operating costs, with the bulk (80%) of the company’s revenue paid directly to represented publishers.

This formula of investment in news services and efficient and regular royalty payments to publishers means an effective service for all; it also ensures the vast majority of the money collected goes back to the content creators  - newspaper and magazine publishers.

Wise words from Lord Grade

House of Lords, 29 July

Extract from the Copyright and Rights in Performances (Personal Copies for Private Use) Regulations 2014 debate

Col. 1571: Lord Grade of Yarmouth (Con): What has been unleashed is a global army of parasites who live off the investment that creative people have made in the UK and throughout the world. I publicly described Google as a parasite. I was picked up by one of its leaders, who asked: “Why did you describe us as parasites?”. I said, “Last week you used a clip of Susan Boyle on ‘Britain’s got Talent’ and had 300 million hits on YouTube. That piece of material cost us a great deal of money, you did not ask permission, and you put it out there to promote YouTube and Google’s fortunes”. He replied, “Well, if you had called us, we would have taken it down”. I replied, “If I go to Harrods and steal a Cartier watch; if they ring me up and say ‘Can we have it back?’, and I give it back it is not shoplifting”. What the Government have failed to understand throughout their deliberations on copyright since the Hargreaves report is that there is a direct correlation between investment and the investor’s ability to control and police its copyright, and to protect that investment to ensure that it gets value for it.

The Government seem to think in all the deliberations that I have heard, read and seen that there should be a free for all, that everything should be made free for the public and that there is a public interest in everything being made available as easily and freely as possible. Yes, there is a public interest in that but it will last about five years because in the end there will be no more investment in original content.

Throughout the creative industries, particularly the film, television and games industries, people are struggling to avoid piracy, and struggling to get value for the risk investment that they have made in the content. Since that wretched Hargreaves report, I have heard nothing from the Government to suggest that they understand that there is a public interest in continued investment in the creative industries.

Today’s Motion is yet another step forward in liberalising the copyright laws and chipping away at one of the great success stories. On the one hand, this Government have been tremendous at supporting the creative industries. I myself, as chairman of Pinewood Studios, have been a beneficiary of that, so I should declare an interest. But at the same time the Government are demonstrating a complete ignorance of the economics of investment in the creative industries. Today’s Motion is yet another example. It is time they tore up the Hargreaves report and listened to the people who make the investments. Then we might get some serious deregulation and some serious thinking about how we can modernise the copyright laws. But if this continues, I have to tell the Government that they are putting the creative industries at risk.