One of the speakers at the Journalism Diversity Fund lunch last week was Megan Bramall. Her story demonstrates the difference that the Fund and its media supporters can make to someone who has the determination to break in to journalism.

Here is the speech that she gave:

I’m Megan, I’m 23 and I’ve lived in quite an unlovable little town up north called Wigan since birth.

It’s a working class town through and through and there certainly aren’t many opportunities. The closest I got to journalism growing up was when my mum worked in the canteen at The Wigan Evening Post.

My parents brought my up to be a hard worker and constantly reminded me that I could be anything I wanted to be – there was a whole world out there away from little old Wigan.

What I wanted to be was a journalist, so although the odds were against me I wasn’t about to admit defeat.

After taking all the work experience I could get in between working on my gap year and hitting a brick wall without an NCJT despite a first class degree I decided to apply for a Journalism diversity fund bursary.

After a long and terrifying interview I was awarded the funding.

The fund made a career in journalism a possibility for me and I’m guessing for some of you too. Without it I couldn’t have trained and I wouldn’t be where I am now.

Last year I was standing where you’re standing. I had just started my NCTJ training like you and this week I’m coming to the end of my 4^th week of training on the BBC Journalism Trainee Scheme – which is a year- long paid training scheme allowing trainees to spend time in different newsrooms across The BBC. This year I’ll be spending time at BBC Breakfast, 5 Live and UK online. It really is a precious and completely unique experience.

My whole life changed last year at this lunch when I met someone from the BBC. She’s here today – Cheryl Varley. She handed out her email address and told all of the bursary recipients to email her, so I did, the same day. I wrote about where I come from – the high pregnancy and unemployment rates, how I’d been working non-stop from the age of 14 and became the first in my family to go to university. Cheryl has since told me that it was this quick response, keeping in touch with her and responding quickly when she needed me that impressed her and kept her informing me of opportunities.

All of you here have the opportunity to meet Cheryl today and apply for the BBC Journalism Trainee Scheme next year.

Wherever you go my advice to you will be not to hide your diversity. Big news organisations like the BBC aren’t looking to fill their newsrooms with the same people. Being funded by the Journalism Diversity Fund it is now your responsibility to represent that diversity wherever you go.

You need to speak on behalf of the communities you come from and tell the stories that matter to them. Ensure that journalism represents everyone from the UK.

Finally I’d like to thank both The Journalism Diversity Fund and the BBC for the amazing opportunities presented to me over the past year.

In October 2013 NLA media access increased the range and number of magazine titles we license, giving organisations permission to copy and share content from a wealth of business to business and business to consumer titles.  This year alone, over 3000 clients have benefited from this additional cover - all wrapped up in one comprehensive licence. 

For those clients renewing their NLA licence during the period October-December 2014, you will benefit from an expanded portfolio of over 2000 titles – including those you value and monitor.   You can also search and filter titles relevant to your business sector and select those from which you need internal copying and external re-publishing permission (e.g why not post a positive piece to your corporate Facebook page). By way of example, if you operate in the Music industry we can grant you permission to copy and share articles from everything including BBC Music, to Guitarist to Uncut. 

We are delighted to be able to offer you this additional cover in one licence. For your convenience, the extra cover can be added, simply and efficiently on the anniversary of your existing NLA licence.   My licensing team is on hand to assist you in the selection and assessment of the right level of cover for your organisation.  Please do get in touch to discuss your individual needs.

Finally, I often get asked by clients ‘what happens to the licence fees I pay’?  you will find details in our infographic.  In short, your licence fees support UK journalism and the investment publishers make in generating the content you rely on and value. 

-CopyrightLink.org website unveiled as new online home for information on copyright- 

Frankfurt, Germany, 8 October 2014 - The International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations (IFRRO) has announced the launch of The Value of Copyright, a campaign designed to emphasise the importance of copyright and improve information about the protection of literary and artistic works[i], primarily in the text and image-based sectors.

Inaugurating at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the campaign features a website - CopyrightLink.org - as its focal point, which aims to provide a single online access point for international and local information on copyright. The website includes news and events, relevant legislation, useful facts, details on the value of the protection of literary and artistic works, in addition to its usage and importance. It provides information on copyright issues, showcases best practices, hosts a forum for all involved to explain how copyright affects them while giving links to authoritative sources on copyright matters, including legal issues. 

Copyright is a vital source of income for those who create and invest in the content on which the digital economy depends. In addition to the contribution of the exploitation of primary rights through sales and licensing, a survey by PwC in the UK showed that some 25% of authors derive more than 60% of their income from secondary uses of their works, and that UK educational publishers depend on secondary income for some 12% of their earnings, which equates to around 19% of their investment in new works. Information such as this, which effectively highlights the vital role copyright plays in society, is publicly available, and should find its way into the current copyright debate.

Commenting on the launch, Olav Stokkmo, Chief Executive of IFRRO, stated: “We felt there was a need for a resource to allow people to more easily find accurate information on copyright and to help them better understand why it is so important. This is why we decided to launch this campaign and website; to dramatically improve the overall level of the copyright debate and enhance access to relevant and reliable information and resources.”

He continued: “Only through a clear understanding of the facts about copyright and its importance to society at large, can informed decisions be made on how copyright can be set at the heart of a vibrant, growing digital economy, which is responsive to the needs of both creators and users and beneficial to society as a whole.”

[i] Berne Convention : this covers legislation such as copyright in the Anglo-Saxon countries, droit d’auteur in France …

Press coverage in the form of comment or review remains one of the most important drivers of brand awareness, sales and reputation for any business.

In the internet era such coverage can create longer term benefit. Free publicity generated by the original article is just the first stage in a life cycle of published content.  Articles have a longer shelf life, sitting high up on search rankings, and encouraging sales leads as consumers search for goods or services.  Web links from publishers in articles are equally  valuable, helping to boost the corporate website search rankings of a business and driving traffic via referrals.

It doesn’t stop there.  Some companies want to use positive coverage about their business on their own website, influencing customers thinking about buying their goods or services with an authoritative third-party endorsement from a trusted news brand.  The content can also be shared via social media as an image or as text in online marketing activities. This is where the use of publishers’ copyrighted content falls under copyright law. Businesses should be aware that if they do wish to republish content in this way they need to request permission and pay a small fee; as they are benefiting from it for promotional purposes on their own website, blog or social media channels.

NLA media access has created a simple solution.  Let’s say a business wanted to publish  six pieces of coverage from six newspapers and magazines. Rather than contacting each publisher individually to negotiate a fee, it could contact NLA media access and purchase a blanket licence. The licence NLA media access offers to those looking to make use of published content to promote their business is the Corporate Website Republishing Licence. 

Starting at very affordable rates, as low as £158 for a small business, the licence gives you the permission to post headlines, text extracts and PDF files on yourcompany site without any of the hassle of contacting the individual publishers to gain their approval.

If your business is using publisher content in this way, you can find out more on how to take out a licence and the fees involved here.

Mike Weatherley, Intellectual Property Adviser to the Prime Minister and the Conservative Member of Parliament for Hove and Portslade, has published his third IP related report entitled ‘Copyright Education and Awareness’, which examines IP education and aims to help reinforce on the public the importance of respecting IP and paying a fair price for content.

To read the report in full, click here.

In his capacity as David Cameron’s Intellectual Property Adviser, Mike has previously published two other internationally acclaimed reports. ‘Follow the Money’, which addresses the detrimental impact of illegal websites profiting from advertising. To read the report, click here. Mike has also published a report entitled ‘Search Engines and Piracy’, which outlines the shortcomings of search engine providers in the fight against online piracy. To read the Search Engines and Piracy report, click here.

Recommendations include: A step up in the coordination of IP awareness programmes, led by the IPO; Greater measurement of IP perceptions and behaviours; Incorporating IP education in the school curriculum; The BBC to create a copyright education programme; Emphasis on better, clearer information on IP education; Making better use of technology; Introduction of an IP/Education coordinator; Emphasis on reporting outcomes across Government.

Commenting, Mike said: “Getting education right on Intellectual Property awareness is paramount if, as a country, we are to property respect the value of the creative industries. I have now submitted three reports to the Prime Minister on various aspects of Intellectual Property and I hope that my education report will help shape the future of both IP education and awareness across the country.”

Commenting, the Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP, Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport, said: “Intellectual property underpins our creative industries. It’s what our past success was built on and it’s what our future success depends on. We need to get the message across that if people value creativity – and most do – then it has to be paid for.

“Education plays a vitally important role in changing people’s behaviour. By communicating the vital importance of copyright, not just to the success of our creative industries but to the many jobs these sectors will create, we hope to bring about behavioural change.

“Working with Mike Weatherley MP, the Prime Minister’s adviser on intellectual property, we have made important steps forward in tackling intellectual property theft in recent months but we are not complacent. There is more to do and we are determined to work alongside all parties to build a fair and legal online economy.”

For more information, please contact Mike on mike.weatherley.mp@parliament.uk or 020 7219 7216.

Please see www.mikeweatherleymp.com/photos for press photos.

NLA Article Impact Measurement

NLA media access, one of the UK’s media licensing agencies, has launched a new PR evaluation product, Article Impact Measurement.  AIM takes measurement of a PR campaign to a new level of sophistication and value -offering the ability to measure the impact of communications campaigns.

Previewed at an industry roundtable today: ‘Realising the Barcelona Principles, the future of PR measurement’ AIM has been developed in consultation with UK media monitoring agencies and will be available under licence from media monitoring and evaluation agencies.

NLA Article Impact Measurement offers PR and communications professionals access to a rich vein of previously unavailable audience data on the coverage generated on UK national newspaper websites.  It brings together publisher page view data and social media statistics at the article level into a single measure of PR impact.

Data captured by NLA Article Impact Measurement includes:

•       The total number of views of an article, provided by 10 national newspaper publisher websites
•       The count of Tweets and Retweets of an article plus total reach (follower count)
•       The number of times an article is republished, and on which third party websites

AIM offers a solution which improves markedly on previous PR industry benchmarks such as Advertising Value Equivalent.  Evaluation of the impact of campaigns and ROI from PR strategy, effective crisis management and identification of influencers will be far easier due to the new data available and ability to identify readership rates at an article by article level. 

David Pugh, Managing Director of NLA media access, commented:

“Coverage in UK newspapers remains critical to PR success and we know it is highly valued by agencies and their clients. AIM marks a big step forward in assessing the real value of individual articles.”

Barry Leggetter, CEO of the International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC), the global trade body for communications measurement said:

 “The change we are seeing in major acquisitions in the media intelligence sector is being driven not only by the offer of a global footprint, but by the need to deliver the most advanced and comprehensive range of services to the customer. What NLA media access have developed as a new measurement tool to complement and enhance existing services is consistent with our members aim to offer their customers both new products and innovation.”

ENDS

Notes to editors

About NLA media access

Originally called the Newspaper Licensing Agency, 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 of over 200 publishers.

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.

NLA infographic

Contact: Andrew May andrew.may@theopen-road.com / 0203 542 1119

November 2014 sees the introduction of a new measurement service from NLA media access, which takes PR measurement beyond some of the more limited, traditional evaluation metrics such as AVEs or OTS and moves into publisher data driven insights. 

NLA media access, through its relationship with publishers, is providing media monitoring agencies and their public relations industry clients with valuable and previously unavailable new data from newspaper publishers.  NLA Article Impact Measurement (AIM), the tool delivering this data, was demonstrated to media monitoring organisations, PR agencies, membership bodies and publisher representatives at a roundtable last week.

For the first time publisher data on readership and sharing is being broken down on a per article basis. AIM brings together page views, secondary website republishing counts and social media data for each article, allowing clients to see exactly how different stories compare both in terms of baseline audience and wider viral reach. 

At the roundtable we demonstrated the insights available via AIM using the example of Tesco, a brand which has a huge range of both positive and challenging coverage to sift through recently.  Tesco’s new Hudl 2 product drove the vast majority of Twitter activity through a press mention in the Guardian whilst the adverse coverage relating to its accounting practices was outweighed by another negative story in the Evening Standard about guide dogs, which in fact had the greatest page views. Their attempt to counter this with a charitable donation had very few views.  These insights are unique to the AIM service. 

The service is still in its early stages but we expect it to shortly be available to users via licensed media monitoring organisations such as Gorkana, Precise, Prime and Meltwater. The buzz in and around the PR and evaluation industry has been very positive, with coverage appearing on a number of trade blogs, including these from Hotwire PR, PR Moment and AMEC.

If you are a business or PR agency interested in a trial of the product, please contact me on bjohns@nla.co.uk

Bob Johns, Sales and Client Service Manager, NLA media access

It is now just over a year since NLA started licensing magazine content. On Wednesday night we celebrated the anniversary at the RSA with publishers, industry colleagues, and media monitoring service providers. A year in, how are we performing?

Licensing is going well and we are experiencing impressive growth, quarter upon quarter, in both gross revenues and client take up.  We are confident this will continue to improve as we learn more about magazine content and client requirements. 2014 has been a successful transition year for NLA and publishers. The income we generate from licensing now helps fund jobs for journalists in both the newspaper and magazine sector.

The first year highlights have been;-

• £2.6m (gross) collected for magazines in our first year. We are currently on track to deliver £3.7m in 2014.
• Over 3,500 organisations of - which 1,000 are net new - have been licensed – reflecting NLA’s deeper penetration of the business sector. These include the full spectrum of large multinationals through to SMEs.
• Organisations understand and accept the logic of the extension of NLA licensing to magazines. Magazines have been added seamlessly to our existing licence structure.
• NLA have introduced new licences for magazines, including our public use licence (CWRL) which has been a convenience for users and has generated significant new revenue for publishers who have opted into it.

• An additional 75 publishers joined the NLA from April 2014 and NLA now represents over 180 publishers, and over 2,000 print and web titles.

We are now focused on what we can bring publishers and licence users in 2015. Expanding the magazine content in our eClips service to deliver higher quality clippings faster to users earlier is the next target. We already have four magazine publishers on eClips and expect many more in the coming months. We know clients appreciate full colour, high quality clips, especially from the glossier magazines in fashion.  We also hope to continue to add significant new titles to the core licence, and to build the depth of licensed offerings.

So it was a happy anniversary for the magazines NLA partnership, with a lot more to look forward to. 

The wealth of publicly available data accessible online is an increasingly important source for insightful journalism, as readers of The Guardian’s datablog, the Daily Mirror’s Ampp3d and other data led news websites will know.

NLA media access is a contributor to this trend.  Regular readers of this blog will have already heard, for example, about the launch of our Article Impact Measurement (AIM) tool for Media Monitoring Organisations and their PR industry clients last month. 

But if you are a journalist using the NLA research service Clipsearch (www.clipsearch.co.uk) to review our database of national and regional newspaper articles you may not be aware that this tool can be used for data gathering and trend spotting too.  By looking at changes in volume month on month you can spot trends in reportage, the emergence of new buzzwords and coverage of topical issues rising and falling over time all the way back to 2006.

Take this example from Raziye Akkoc at the Daily Telegraph.  She uses NLA Clipshare (the sister service widely used by journalists on national titles) to chart the increase in stories about immigration, demonstrating that it is a hotly debated topic in print media which has doubled in mentions since the same time last year.  Over the coming months NLA media access will be demonstrating on this blog some examples of how data can be used, drawing on our growing repertoire of print and online content from publishers.

The broadsheets and the public couldn’t resist last week’s BBC Question Time Punch and Judy show between the poster boys of left and right. While you can debate who won the argument, NLA’s new Article Impact Measurement can say who scores most points in the coverage debate.

Top of the pops was in the Guardian, with 217,808 page views, followed by the Independent  (author Nigel Farage) with 169,434 for its comment piece. The Telegraph – not perhaps the natural home of the Brand fan – came up third with 105,898 views.

Twitter clearly drove a lot of the traffic, with Independent leading the way with 252 tweets in the first 24 hours, with 169 for the Telegraph piece and just 112 for Guardian. Perhaps this says something about overall site traffic that GDN ‘won’ with least social media activity? Or is it that Guardianistas use Facebook these days?

You can play with figures and it would take someone more expert than us to tell the story. NLA’s AIM is designed to let  the experts do that. We do the data. We can also tell you the most viewed article last week was not Punch or Judy, but the Telegraph’s photo montage for Miss World. Some things never change.

For more about AIM see http://blog.nla.co.uk/about-aim/

Andrew  

Professional journalists working for NLA publishers have access to the NLA ClipShare service – a user-friendly archive of national and regional newspapers in text and PDF formats stretching back to 2007. ClipShare enables journalists to research rapidly the context for an article they are about to write and check previous reporting, but it is also a great tool to discover trends – as you can see from this Telegraph article published earlier this month. 

To further demonstrate its use, we took a look at the biggest charity campaigns of 2014, to see how they performed.

Clipshare and Factiva data

Using ClipShare and Factiva data, you can see that the long-established and much loved Poppy Appeal came out top of this sample in terms of volume of press coverage. 

The power of social media is also evident.  Ice Bucket Challenge was hugely effective in 2014, generating coverage for ALS and a range of other charities through influential print media. 

Clipshare and Factiva data

Clipshare data also suggests that the Royal British Legion deserves a pat on the back as it sought to increase awareness of Remembrance Sunday and charity giving for military veterans.  Press media coverage has increased two years in a row, driven by high volumes of regional coverage of the various fundraising efforts undertaken by the charity and its supporters during the annual Poppy Appeal.  

Clipshare data

As data becomes an ever more valuable resource for media, these are some of the ways in which publisher data store by NLA media access can be used.

Only journalists working for subscribing NLA publishers can access ClipShare, but businesses and members of the public can use the NLA ClipSearch database on a pay as you go basis.

Yesterday NLA media access co-hosted an industry roundtable event looking at what more publishers and organisations representing rights holders can do to tackle the threat of online copyright infringement.

The event brought together representatives from across the creative industries covering music, book, film, TV, magazine and newspaper publishers, with the industry regulator (the IPO) and PIPCU, the City of London Police’s dedicated copyright enforcement team. The roundtable was expertly chaired by Mike Weatherley MP, author of three reports on copyright in this parliament and until earlier this year the Prime Minister’s adviser on intellectual property.

It also provided us with an opportunity to share our own experiences with the wider creative industry, and also learn from the experiences of others. News content abuse is rife online - from a typical sample of five newspapers over a 7 day period, over 13,000 articles were copied across c. 800 domains.  

At the event we exhibited NLA’s Online Article Tracking System (OATS), launched in 2013 to support publishers in tracking and finding pirated content. A year on from its launch, OATS is already proving a valuable resource to publishers. Five national newspaper publishers have contracted us directly to identify and manage communication with the infringing websites on the publisher’s behalf, saving the publisher both time and resource. To date, we have contacted over 500 domains with a 75% success rate of removal of infringed content.

We know that the challenge is huge – most abuse online is by organisations with either no money, no understanding of copyright, no respect for copyright or a combination of all three. But regardless of how great the challenge is, we believe in our responsibility to do what we can to support publishers online. Not only that, our continued work demonstrates to anyone thinking about pirating online content that we will respond to misuse, and that copyright matters.

If you are interested to find out more about our work with OATS, please contact George Shepherd, Publisher Relations Manager at gshepherd@nla.co.uk.

From driverless cars to smart watches, autonmous flying drones and wifi enabled washing machines, the avalanche of products which came out of the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last month was bewildering. For any PR manager planning a product launch  measuring the impact of coverage can be particularly tricky given the number of brands jostling for space.

One thing PR teams traditionally do, other than gathering clippings from their media monitoring service, is collate  either tweet counts or ‘twitter reach’, a measure of the total number of times the article has been shared on a social media platform.

The new article impact measurement (AIM) tool launched by NLA media access lets you go much further, reviewing both publisher page view data and Twitter reach in the same place. For the first time, this allows brands to know whether that twitter buzz translated into deeper engagement in terms of page views on a national newspaper website.

To demonstrate, we took a look at 40 articles across five national newspaper publishers participating in AIM; the Guardian, Daily Mirror, Daily Telegraph, the Independent and the Times.

First we take a look at online article readership, in order of popularity:

The top 5 sampled articles were:

As you can see, the trial of self driving cars really caught people’s attention, although perhaps for the wrong reasons as people were ‘horrified’ at the idea according to a survey covered in The Independent.  The showbiz news around Beats audio was also popular, showing both the value and pitfalls of celebrity brand associations.  Many stories about individual product launches were less popular, although a few such as Intel Sony and Sharp did manage cut through.

Top tweeted articles showed some correlation with most viewed, as you would expect. Also in the top three was the brutally honest ‘people are narcissists’ headline quoting founder of virtual reality company Oculus VR.  No doubt here as to the benefits of a snappy soundbite to encourage social sharing.

From this sample at least, Intel looked to be edging it in terms of PR impact amongst brand coverage.  The company and its products featured in all of the most popular round-up articles as well as landing a popular feature piece on their drone technology in the Telegraph.

If you are interested to find out more about how your organisation could benefit from AIM, NLA media access’ new media monitoring tool, please contact bjohns@nla.co.uk.

To facilitate NLA media access licensing, publishers grant rights to license the copying of all content in their newspapers and websites.

Because of the demands of multi-platform publishing, most publishers have developed rights management processes which clear the rights necessary for the purposes of NLA licences at the point of commission. But for those publishers that cannot confirm that they have cleared all necessary rights beyond the rights for initial publication, or who choose to be verified, NLA media access operates a survey to calculate what portion of their NLA licensing revenue is due to  freelance contributors or agencies: “The Special Contributors’ Scheme”. 

The results of the latest survey are published today.

As part of NLA’s client services team I spend most of my working hours helping media monitoring and evaluation organisations get full value from their NLA licences. Web content is a growing focus of our work, and we are often asked by clients how NLA can help businesses work with web content. NLA media access acts as a bridge between the media and the industry, providing rights and unique behind paywall data to allow them to serve clients.

Over the next two months as part of a continued attempt to simplify and discuss content provision in a rapidly changing market, NLA will be running a series of free seminars aimed at keeping media monitoring organisations informed on important recent developments in the complex area of web licensing and how client requirements can be met.  The program is listed below and all are welcome. I hope you can join us.

Nick Shackleford

Session 1 (February 17^th, 9:30am):

What are the Rules for you and your clients?

The long running NLA – Meltwater case finally came to a conclusion in December, with the UK Supreme Court confirming the European ruling about use of website content. The ECJ also ruled on the Retriever case, and Julia Reda MEP (Pirate Party) has also offered her suggestions on copyright reform. Businesses offering services that include web content need to know what this means for their product, services and customers.  NLA media access are offering a free seminar briefing to explain what’s changed to help web monitoring providers understand the new rules, ensure they are licensed and not exposed.

Session 2 (March 17^th, 9:30am):

Telling Your Clients Who Their Coverage Has Reached

Helping clients understand the impact of articles they have been mentioned in has always been hard. The Advertising Value Equivalent approach is discredited, but widely used because of the lack of alternatives. NLA is now helping media evaluation companies build more complete and accurate impact measures by releasing daily page view count from publishers, monthly browsers, daily republishing and hourly tweets and retweets will help brand owners respond appropriately to brand mentions. NLA will demonstrate how this key data can be accessed quickly and easily.

Charlie Hull of Flax (the UK based search specialists who developed NLA's Clipshare search engine) will give a description of their recent project for Infomedia in Denmark, where they have built a powerful, accurate and highly scalable article monitoring and search system based entirely on open source software.

Session 3 (April 14^th, 9:30am):

How to give your Clients Paywall Content

With growing numbers of newspaper and magazine websites going behind a paywall, media monitoring and evaluation faces growing hurdles. How can you get and supply ‘paywalled’ content such as News UK and Telegraph publications? As part of this session, NLA will present eClips Web, a service which takes data directly from newspapers’ production systems, allowing faster and more accurate coverage of what was published. This allows subscribing media monitoring companies and their professional users seamless access to pay-walled material.

The sessions will be held at the NLA offices, located at 16-18 New Bridge Street in Blackfriars. Please let us know if you would like to attend, and we would be very happy to brief you in person if the dates are not convenient.

RSVP clientservices@nla.co.uk

Last week NLA media access hosted an industry roundtable looking at how the creative industries are fighting the rising tide of online copyright infringement. Following that, we felt it would be useful to share our experiences in a bit more detail.

What’s the scale of the problem for newspaper publishers?

In a typical week, over 13,000 articles from 5 major UK newspapers are cut and copied into other sites. These are often professionally-run sites supported by advertising and ecommerce services. One site alone took 488 articles in one week.

Who copies newspaper content?

NLA has established that the majority of sites infringing copyright were news and sport sites. Specialist sector, travel and tourism, academic, entertainment, blog/forum, independent/non-commercial sites were also infringing although at a lower volume.

We have also found that focusing on one nominally located domain type (e.g. ‘.uk’) fails to capture the whole problem. Of the 100 sites we recently reviewed that were infringing UK content, only 16 % were ‘.UK’ domains, 67% ‘.com’ and the remaining 17% other types (e.g. ‘.org’, ‘.net’ etc.).

What protections do publishers currently have?

In addition to brokering a deal in infringement between ISPs and the film industry, the UK government has funded a police unit (PICPU) to track and enforce copyright. The EC is also looking to provide support for anti-piracy initiatives. The creative industries have direct initiatives including the Publishers Association Copyright Infringement Portal and the long established PAFCT programme amongst many others.

Our response – OATS

NLA has developed a copyright infringement management service for publishers, which we call OATS (Online Article Tracking System). OATS uses web search technology to identify where newspaper articles are republished online, wrapped in a managed service where NLA also acts to enforce publisher rights on behalf of newspapers.

At the first stage sites identified as re-using content from the publishers are encouraged to link legitimately or to seek a licence from the content owner. If there is no response to the initial approach cease and desist letters are sent where appropriate.

More information on OATS can be read here

Why publishers invest in OATS

Direct returns from copyright infringement monitoring may be limited but publishers who invest in content realise compliance is necessary to protect their business. There is also a ‘hygiene’ benefit, letting the market know the owner is watching their activity and encouraging legitimate use.

At a wider level simply knowing what is happening to content on the web creates insights that allow publishers to better target compliance efforts.

Our success to date

A year on from the launch of OATS, it is already proving a valuable resource. Five national newspaper publishers are now paying NLA to identify and manage communication with infringing websites on their behalf, saving both time and resource.

To date, NLA has contacted in excess of 500 domains with a 75% success rate of removal of infringed content.

Industry response

Sophie Hanbury – Content Partnership Director, The Telegraph

“Working with OATS reiterates The Telegraph's commitment to protecting the copyright of our valuable news content whilst reinforcing a consistent strategic approach to our metered digital products and paid services. OATS has been highly effective in the drive to police large-scale systematic infringements and works in tandem with our Legal and Syndication teams to reassure our commercial partners that the contracted products and services they pay for are valuable, of a high quality and worth protecting.”

Helen Wilson – Content Sales Manager, Syndication, The Guardian

“Using OATS has enabled Guardian News & Media Ltd to contact a much higher number of sites who are currently misusing our content online. The weekly report provides rich metadata as to the type of site misusing content, the type of content which they are taking, in addition to the frequency of the misuse. Being a member of OATS has significantly reduced the time spent by the Sales team contacting copyright infringers, enabling them to focus their energies on new sources of revenue generation.”

More information

For more information on NLAs work with OATS, please contact George Shepherd at gshepherd@nla.co.uk or 0207 332 9367

It’s not unusual for NLA media access to get a ‘huh?’(or indeed less polite) response from businesses when we ask: ‘do you have permission from the copyright owner to re-publish articles on your company’s website and social media pages?’

Because it’s so easy to do and because the content is often accessible without cost, you could be mistaken in believing you are free to use it.

In this blog post, I’ll attempt to clarify the position with respect to business use.

The basic principles are straightforward and there are three common forms of business use, which I cover in turn.

1.  Re-publishing a complete article

Unless a publisher website provides permission in its terms of service, or you otherwise gain permission (via a licence) it is not legal to republish a complete work (e.g. an entire news article) that is protected by copyright.  Just because the content was accessible without cost, does not mean you are free to use it.

 If you want to copy an article on your business’s web and social media pages, you can obtain permission from the relevant publisher or licensing body representing them.  NLA represents 1430 news and 1406 magazine titles and grants permission to businesses for the re-use of anything from one article from a single publication (£154.00) to tens of articles from multiple publications. 

1. Summarising the article and linking back to the original on the publishers website

As long as the summary and link are attributed correctly and they simply act as a sign-post to the original online article, your business does not need publisher permission, or a licence to do this.  However, be mindful that reproduction of even a few words from the article in the summary or link could constitute infringement.  To limit this risk you should not reproduce any part of the article.

1. Re-using part of or quoting from an article

If you simply want to use an excerpt from the article, what’s the copyright position?

Even if the work is protected by copyright, there are certain circumstances under which you can use quotations without having to get the permission of the copyright owner – as set out in S30 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. The key points are that: (a) you can only quote as much as is required for the specific purpose; (b) you give sufficient acknowledgement to the source of the quotation; (c) the use of the quotation is fair dealing.   ‘Fair dealing’ is not a defined term so whether or not your use of a quotation falls under the exception is subjective.  If in doubt as to whether the exception applies to your use, then please seek advice from our licensing team or consult your company lawyer.

In short, if your business wants to re-use someone else property it’s both polite and legally prudent to get permission!

Further independent advice can also be found on the Intellectual Property Office website

So who dug the biggest PR hole and jumped into it;- the car crash Green leader who couldn’t price a housebuilding pledge or the venerable foreign secretaries seeking a nice little earner? Our PR team at Open Road – Blue Rubicon have been using the NLA AIM service to measure reaction to the two major political stories last week, which they have posted on their blog here. It’s well worth a read in itself, and shows how smart PRCs could be using the new service to derive unique insights from the unique page view data AIM now offers.

NLA are delighted with market reaction to AIM. We are planning a round table for leading PRCs at News UK’s fabulous new Baby Shard HQ. Watch this space.

Newsprint decline, particularly regional, is a popular topic by industry commentators (“Regional newspaper titles suffer yet more substantial sales declines”, here), and while we have no opinion on the broader debate,  NLA media access does have a unique position to assess pagination and article trends across a vast number of UK newspapers due to the hosting of content in our eClips database.

The results might be surprising. As this chart below shows, while national news pages are declining, the regional press is on the up, and 2013 versus 2014 was no exception. Take a couple of examples:  the Halifax Evening Courier pagination was up 32%, and article counts up 11%, while the Islington Gazette had pagination up 16% and article counts up 14%. Impressive stuff.

Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising to some avid readers of local news. Brits spend 85% of their life within 10 miles of where they live – interest in local news is bound to be there.

Many local papers have great brand strength and are investing in new ways to tie in readers. 2014 saw the launch of London Live TV, possibly helping out its print partner the London Evening Standard - daily readership of the ES recently grew by more than a third in  the past 12 months (Source: National Readership Survey).

My local paper, the Gravesend Messenger (part of the KM Group) ties me in across multiple platforms. I can engage directly with its journalists and other readers through social media, and follow breaking news on its website before enjoying full stories in the weekly print edition. KM Group’s investment in their brands seems to be transitioning to their collective licensing revenues. In the last five years, NLA royalties paid back to KM Group have doubled.

The NLA media access annual report, published today provides an overview of activity and financial results for the financial year ending December 2014 and a preview of new projects and services for 2015.

In 2014, publisher revenues increased significantly. The major contributor to that growth came from magazine licensing, as 2014 was the first full year of licensing the print and web edition content for ‘magazine’ publishers, but revenues earned for publishers of national and regional newspapers also grew in the year.

New database services for publishers and media monitoring agencies will be rolled out or expanded during the course of 2015. Media monitoring agencies and their clients will benefit from the new Article Impact Measurement service, enabling them to track readership and social media discussion of web-published articles on news sites. An increasing number of publishers are now using the Online Article Tracking Service, which identifies copyright infringement on the web and publishers will also benefit from the launch of a new version of the ClipShare service for journalists, which is due to be launched in the second quarter of 2015.

Royalties paid to publishers in 2014 equated to the cost of employing 1,300 journalists.

In 2015 we will continue our commitment to supporting journalism, not only by striving to increase revenue, but through our support of the Journalism Diversity Fund – where our total contribution will break through the £1m level this year as we celebrate the Fund’s 10-year anniversary.

 All of these points and a great many more are covered in the report.