NLA showcased our Article Impact Measurement (AIM) tool to an audience of PR professionals at a News UK hosted event last week. On the day, we demonstrated the insights available via AIM and also worked with our own retained agency, Blue Rubicon, to showcase its importance to the evaluation metrics of the PR industry.  

Through our relationship with publishers, NLA is now able to provide media monitoring agencies and their PR clients with valuable and previously unavailable data from newspaper publishers. First launched in October last year, AIM uniquely captures the number of views of articles on ten national newspaper websites and the number of times an article is republished on third party websites. This new layer of data greatly improves the accuracy of measurement for the PR industry and can help solve once and for all that burning client question – “How many people have read this story?”

From the discussion, expertly chaired by Helen Dunne of CorpComms, it was clear that the PR industry is open to new measurement metrics and that AIM is an important step in the right direction. There was an almost universal view that the measure of advertising value equivalent (AVEs) has had its day, and a similar story emerged in the use of online Opportunities to See (OTS) measurements too. As Mark from Blue Rubicon pointed out, just 60 comments on the Guardian website means an OTS equal to the world’s population!  

As the event closed there was a clear buzz in the room about the potential for AIM as an importance piece in the PR measurement jigsaw. Barry Leggetter, CEO of the International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC), the global trade body for communications measurement, was again supportive of the development of AIM and its ability to complement and enhance existing services.

The NLA team are now following up with all attendees and a number of other warm leads to ensure that AIM can deliver on its potential to greatly improve impact measurement for the PR industry.

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

This morning NLA media access co-hosted an two hour session event with the Publishers Licensing Society (PLS) and Professional Publishers Association looking at how appropriate rights can be secured in an efficient, transparent and fair manner.

As the PPA set out in their event brief, the diversification of publishing from print editions into a mix of online, tablet, mobile and other media means that acquiring the most appropriate rights can be a complex endeavour. For publishers, capturing additional revenue streams from new platforms can be hampered where appropriate agreements with contributors do not clearly and fairly allow re-use of content.

From the NLA Lis Ribbans, former Managing Editor of The Guardian, was an expert guest speaker sharing her views on how rights management has evolved and best practice for the future.

She was joined by Michael Pocock, Head of Licensing & Syndication at the Independent and Andrew Horton, Director, Content & Brand Licensing, Time Inc.

For further information on NLA’s work in this area please contact publisherservices@nla.co.uk. 

It is probably true that few people entering the public relations industry think that copyright law will play an important role in their working lives. Yet from the very moment that just one press cutting or an online article is reproduced (either in print or digitally) and distributed to a client or colleague, copyright is involved. Understanding basic copyright law is therefore fundamental to working in public relations, and in particular media relations, where success is often measured by media coverage.

In association with CorpComms magazine, NLA media access has developed a handy guide for the PR industry to help ensure practitioners are aware of the copyright landscape and able to share content from a publisher with the appropriate permissions in place.

At its heart copyright retains a simple guiding principle – it’s right to ask permission before using someone else’s property. After all, without the investment that publishers make in quality journalism, there would be no coverage for PRs to show their clients.

In practice it’s a little more complicated than that, which is where the Guide comes in. The Guide will help you understand what licence is suitable for your use and also includes details of new services, licences and content now represented by NLA media access. It also explains what happens to the licence fees you pay and how the royalties are used to support journalism and the publishing industry.

We hope you find the guide informative. For more information contact sdowley@nla.co.uk or call our licensing team on 01892 525273.

We are pleased to report that Faversham House has chosen to switch their licensing to NLA media access, bringing the total of magazine publishers covered by the NLA licence to 200.  Since NLA first started licensing magazine content in October 2013, following the PPA recommendation to members, publishers have been deciding on an individual basis  whether or not to use the NLA service. The fact so many have decided to transfer to NLA in such as short space of time shows the growing industry confidence in our ability to deliver, underpinned by the positive experience of those who transferred from the start. Some of the comments from leading brands include:  

‘We are delighted with the monthly royalties we have been receiving from PLS since NLA media access started licensing our content less than a year ago.’ Paul Hunt, Deputy Finance Director, Euromoney Institutional Investor

‘As a small publisher we value all our revenue streams, so I was surprised and delighted to receive a significant rise in secondary licensing revenues following our switch to NLA’ Rob Chambers, Managing Director, Total Telecom

‘For Time Inc, the switching decision was straightforward and our royalties have grown over the last year as a result.’ Andrew Horton, Director, Content & Brand Licensing, Time Inc. (UK) Ltd.

In 2014 NLA generated over £3m for magazines, and the expectation for 2015 is over £4m, and as we continue to add more publishers, revenue will continue to grow. 

The Publishers Association is celebrating a significant legal victory today. It has forced reluctant internet service providers to block access to a number of sites containing huge volumes of copyright material.  The courts ruled that freedom of the internet does not mean freedom to steal other peoples’ work and make money selling it or selling advertising based on access to illegal copies.

Why it takes court action to force ISPs to co-operate is one of the enduring mysteries of modern life. The argument that technology and search is a neutral platform and operating these money making businesses does not carry a responsibility to intervene against criminality was rapidly undermined when Google and others were forced in the court of public opinion to act against child pornography. The principles – or lack thereof - became very clear in the public gaze at that point, but the fact that ISPs continue to drag their heels is not very edifying. Hopefully this High Court ruling will help common sense prevail.

NLA media access watches with more than passing interest. Our anti-piracy initiative, OATS, is now used by most national newspapers and achieves a take-down rate on infringing material of over 80%. We applaud the Publishers Association for taking action to reduce the volume of illegal use of published content. 

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. Since its creation nearly 10 years ago, the JDF has provided bursaries for 176 aspiring journalists. In 2014 the fund supported 15 students from diverse backgrounds who would not otherwise have had the financial means to support themselves on a NCTJ-accredited course.

Last year NLA media access donated £100,000 to the fund, bringing its total support for the bursary scheme to £981k since it launched in 2005. Encouraging new talent from a range of backgrounds is vital to the future of the publishing industry, but difficult economic circumstances can put off talented young applicants who cannot afford course fees. Earlier this year Guardian leader writer and columnist Hugh Muir wrote a piece about his positive experience of the work of JDF and the challenges that remain for the industry here.

This year we have also heard from one of the former bursary recipients who is well on the way to becoming a stellar reporter thanks to the support of the JDF, recently moving from a regional publisher to work for BBC online.

Sophie Mai-Lan

"I had always wanted to work in the media but I assumed journalism wasn't an industry for people from my background. It was a distant dream to be able to afford actual training in journalism which is what I needed to get

my foot properly in the door. I started freelancing with no training: just a pure drive for stories. I won a few awards for my digital reporting but paid work was difficult to secure. Not to mention the fact I was pregnant with my first child, so I was slowly giving up on ever getting a job in journalism.

Thankfully, once I had my baby I read about the Journalism Diversity Fund via the NCTJ’s website and I knew I had to apply. With their help I was able to study for a post-graduate diploma and NCTJ diploma in journalism at the University of Salford. During my studies I won a scoop of the year award at the NCTJ Awards for Excellence, I was runner-up and shortlisted for two Guardian Student Media Awards and shortlisted for an IRN national commercial radio award.

I was then able to get my first job covering titles at Johnston Press Yorkshire. I also freelanced for the Mirror Online and Bauer Radio. Finally I landed my dream job at the BBC, where I am today working on national current affairs output. If it hadn't have been for the support and funding of the JDF I know I wouldn't have been able to train and afford to continue pursuing a job in the industry.

It is vital that our newsrooms are diverse because the more perspectives we have, the better journalists we are. And, as I work across BBC online, The One Show and national radio, I know how important it is to strive to get the best content and most relevant stories to serve all of our audiences.

We are seeing great changes, but there's still a way to go. But at least thanks to the JDF and NLA newsrooms are becoming more diverse."

NLA media access has put a premium on developing international licensing. UK press is widely used abroad and our UK clients are increasingly interested in global content. Serving these needs makes strategic and commercial sense. Which is why I drove 1500 miles in an open top car last week. Let me explain.

NLA is a member of the International Federation of Reproductive Rights Organisation – IFRRO http://www.ifrro.org/ .  Through IFRRO agreements we are able to offer UK users rights to copy thousands of international titles. The full list is here. But looking closely you will see too many of these are restricted to paper rights. So – leaving the car in Zurich - first stop was Vienna by overnight train, where IFRRO the conference gave us the chance to negotiate wider rights. One agreement – allowing Irish education sector to copy UK material – was signed and others were worked on.

 On to Stockholm – this time by plane – to present NLA’s new Article Impact Measurement service to 180 plus media monitoring and evaluation experts, gathering for their annual AMEC event (http://amecinternationalsummit.org/programme/ ). AIM was well received, as was the opportunity to participate in the discussion on EU copyright reform. NLA were encouraged by Eric Mamer (head of policy for EC Commissioner Oettinger), who recognises that copyright is essential to supporting the growth of content businesses. We also had many international and UK users and prospects for our eClips service at the event, so it was a great chance to catch up with them. The Abba tribute band at the awards ceremony did their bit to ensure we lightened up later in the evening.

Then another flight to Zurich for the Press Database and Licensing Network conference. PDLN (www.pdln.info) is a network of 25 international press licensing and service companies, and sponsors international licensing deals to support better cross border access and rights. Through the network publisher groups have engineered agreements like the delivery of UK content to German clients through our sister organisation PMG. PDLN is smaller, and there was less music, but it’s a group focused directly on press issues and so lots got done that will benefit users. We also welcomed a new Korean member - who we discovered has many of the same challenges as the rest of us. Major MMO groups were invited to present to ensure we listen to user needs. The PDLN events are as much about learning from each other as doing direct deals, and there was a lot of knowledge sharing.

So then it was time for the drive home.  Another 700m through the Vosges and Ardennes. My transport choices were personal, but the reasons for the trip were all about improving the flow of information and revenue as press monitoring goes global.       

In his Press gazette blog last week David Benigson of Signal suggested newspapers and NLA media access were missing a trick by not adopting a Spotify-style model – low cost, high volume - for news aggregators. A challenge is always welcome, and new ideas ditto, but I’m afraid David is not on a winner here.

A little bit of context might help first. NLA fought a four year battle with Meltwater through the courts to establish the principle that paid for use of newspaper web content is protected by copyright and the fees we proposed were reasonable. We won, and have established one of the very few licensing systems for web content. Without that win, the debate could not even start.

Now, over 30 media monitoring companies (but not, incidentally, Signal itself) are licensed and we hold around 9500 direct licences covering 200,000 businesses for use of web material. Over 1,000 newspaper websites and a further 1,000 magazine sites are covered. Publishers get 80% of the revenue, which is a low seven figure sum, about 3% of the £30m+ we paid publishers last year.  David wants to boost publisher revenue: we plead guilty to doing just that!

We very strongly doubt whether the situation for publishers would be improved if we changed our business model as David proposes. Professional media monitoring is a very well established business requirement typically of larger companies and their PR advisers – a niche service bought by about 25,000 users. There isn’t an obvious pent up demand for lower priced services from a wider audience.

If you have to monitor media for references to a specialist subject, you do it. Unlike the consumer demand for hard to get music, press monitoring is a professional requirement for a smallish group of business users. It’s not for fun. I haven’t seen my daughter – a Spotify user – claim she needs press cuttings and wants to pay £10 pm for them.

Perhaps the best proof is that Google News and many other free aggregator services have been around for years (13 in Google’s case) without any discernible impact on the core paid-for media monitoring market and with limited consumer impact. Google News is not a major traffic driver to newspaper sites; search, Twitter and Facebook are more relevant. Would applying charges make Google News more attractive? Not when I last went to business school. NLA has – with the newspapers wider advertising interests in mind, steered well clear of consumer services.

The assumption is that Google would sign up to a paid model is itself unlikely. If you haven’t been following their approach in Germany and Spain (along the lines of ‘make your content free or we drop you from search’) you will realise how unlikely that is.

Licensing web content has challenges and we welcome constructive ideas. We certainly are aware that digital pennies can in some markets be greater than analogue pounds. But – as most publishers know to their cost – pennies are sometimes just pennies.  We look forward to Signal applying for a licence and seeing how the system really can work for the publishers that David wants to help.

Getting publisher permissions for the 1,000 plus newspaper and magazine websites media monitoring businesses wish to include in their online products would be a nightmare, but NLA offers a simple solution. For a fixed annual fee of less than £5 per publisher per year these businesses can scrape publisher sites and provide a wide range of services to clients.  Unsurprisingly the licence is increasingly popular and in June NLA signed the 30^th media monitoring licence for web content. Through them we license several thousand businesses to use web material to support their PR and marketing activity. 

Effective licensing solutions can create bridges between users, service suppliers and publishers that benefit everyone. Licensing creates a common interest between publishers and providers to ensure a good user experience, and when that works it encourages investment. The fact NLA now delivers paywall content to many users through its eClips service is a very relevant example, as is the further investment NLA and publishers have made in providing page view data through our innovative new AIM (Article Impact Measurement) service.

The growing number and range of professional web content services is proof that the licensed market is healthy. The variety of new partners that web licensing has generated is also broadening our view of the market. While many are in the core media monitoring business (who said what about my company), there are many addressing other niche and new areas. The challenge of responding to these and to developments in the core services means we can’t sit still and need to innovate.

The list of licensees is here. We confidently expect the number of licences – and revenue to publishers - to grow.   

We wrote on this blog several months ago about our ambition to expand magazine content on the NLA’s eClips database, and today we report that Centaur’s Money Marketing has become the 100^th magazine to sign up. Money Marketing is one of the most demanded magazines for NLA licensees.

In May 2015, we presented eClips database offering at the PPA to 20 magazine publishers. It was a confident message from NLA – we’ve seen how the 1,000+ newspapers who are already signed up to eClips have benefited through the licensing revenue uplift it provides, and the options available to publishers  – for example inbound text feeds back to publishers and outbound text feeds to aggregators, online and searchable archives for journalists, and our soon to be released syndication portal for use by magazine syndication teams. The great thing about eClips is that it’s easy for publishers. The only commitment is a PDF feed, which is already being supplied to the print sites so publishers can simply extend that process to NLA.

Publishers can still grow steady licensing revenue without eClips but they are reliant on media monitoring organisations (MMOs) finding their content through more manual efforts. An MMOs job is to find content for their clients (and quickly!) but relying on newsstand availability, scanning and searching scanned data has drawbacks – not least the fact that client keywords can be missed. eClips technology sources magazine content straight from publisher’s production systems the night before publication and offers rich searchable text for keyword searching & serves up high quality press cuttings (full colour with higher quality images) to end users. We find more content, and charge per article that’s provided to clients. More content means more royalties for participating publishers.

In the past 12 months we have been busy talking to many magazine publishers about eClips. Immediate Media, Haymarket, William Reed, Archant Life, Thomson Reuters now Centaur are just some of the brands that have joined in 2015. Discussions continue with other magazine publishing groups.

We’d love to talk to others who may be interested and present the options available. Do get in touch at publisherservices@nla.co.uk

Matt Aspinall

Production Services Manager

NLA explained on this blog in 2014 how ClipShare is a vital resource for publishers and journalists and outlined our plans to revamp the service for our (7,000 and growing) users. As a first step, we improved the search engine later that year, allowing users to poll results from over 45 million articles in sub-second times.

For those unfamiliar with ClipShare, it is a unique and invaluable desktop research tool for newspaper journalists and librarians. Simply add the relevant details for the search you are looking for – subject, keyword, a specific publication, a date range –  and all the stories that are found will be listed for you. The articles are made available as text or PDF, so that you view them in context.

There are other tools in the market that enable you to make historical and current searches of newspapers but none of these give you the added value of seeing the context of the articles in the same way as a ClipShare-generated PDF.

Now ClipShare has had a major facelift – an all new design. As well as being able to access the 10-year print archive of newspaper content, new benefits include:

-    Searchable web content dating back to 2010
-    Easier searching functionality
-    Cleaner search results
-    Reading list feature

Watch our tutorial videos below or on YouTube

We welcome new users as long as you work for a subscribing publisher. Email the team to find out more at publisherservices@nla.co.uk. If you are a journalist who would like to explore the NLA media access database, but doesn’t work for a subscribing publisher, you can use our public-access portal – www.clipsearch.co.uk

I have announced today to NLA staff that I have decided to retire from my role as Managing Director and will be leaving the company in the spring of 2016.

NLA media access is a great business, with a highly talented management team and dedicated staff, which has evolved rapidly in the last 8 years. The company has achieved its core mission of supporting journalism, by increasing the revenues paid to publishers every year - doubling them since 2007 – and through developing innovative licensing and database services for our media monitoring clients.

I have decided that 2016 will be a good time for me to retire, which I do with a great sense of pride in the business and the people who drive it forward, knowing that NLA media access has a clear strategy and is in great shape to grow and meet the challenges of the future.

A search for my successor is now in progress and I expect that an appointment will be made later this year or early in 2016.

A one stop shop is probably never going to emerge for content rights, but NLA is working hard to simplify licensing for UK media monitoring agencies and users by getting more content in one place and covered by one licence. In the last two years this approach has served us well. We have recruited over 200 magazine publishers, added most of the few UK newspapers we hadn’t already recruited, and significantly expanded our international coverage, adding digital rights for Spain, Switzerland, Russia and other countries.

In continued recognition of the broadening appeal of our licensing, we can also now add to that list  global news organisation Reuters. In what we hope will be the first of many digital content brands to sign agreements with the NLA, from December 1st copies of content published by Reuters and widely used by many MMOs and end users in the UK will be covered by the relevant licences. Reuters is one of the biggest brands in media, and NLA are very pleased to be working with them to streamline the rights clearance for providers and users of media monitoring services.

This new agreement is, in our view, the beginning of continued growth for the NLA. We see significant need and opportunity in international coverage, and in the diversity of new media. Born digital, broadcast and overseas material and rights are all potential additions to the umbrella. Ensuring the proposition works for users and publishers so the industry can expand its horizons without running into copyright issues is what we do. We call ourselves NLA media access and – while newspapers remain at the core of our content coverage – the Reuters agreement shows we now have a broader view of where we sit in the media landscape.

NLA media access finished a busy July by launching an upgraded version of ClipShare, our news archive for journalists and librarians – available at www.nla-clipshare.com.

This upgrade included new content (from 17 newspaper websites), new features (dynamic search filtering, today’s front pages on the home screen, grouped versions of articles, and the Reading List), and new design (a complete visual overhaul with simpler navigation).

Usage of ClipShare has grown over the period since the launch, with over 2000 active users in August alone. That’s 11% more than in July, and 13% more than in August 2014.

The number of archive articles accessed through ClipShare also grew to a massive 55,000, a 45% increase over July and a 30% increase over August 2014.

In response to the positive developments and the increased usage, we have received numerous messages and verbal reports from users indicating that the site is now faster, easier to use, and more visually appealing than ever.

However, we are aware that there were some bugs in the version of ClipShare that we launched with. We know that a couple of these caused significant inconvenience to the users who contacted us, and likely impacted others as well. For not detecting these bugs earlier, and for the delays in addressing them, we apologise.

We have released a new version of ClipShare today which addresses several of these bugs as well as other small changes that were needed. The major issues fixed are as follows:

• A cookie conflict, which has caused some users to be unable to log in or to be recurrently logged out of the site
• A drop-down box failure in the PDF viewer, which prevented users from viewing regional and later editions of print content
• Incorrect delivery of saved search alert emails
• Backwards compatibility with OS X Leopard  for 1^st Editions and Browse features

There are a few outstanding bugs for which we have implemented fixes but are continuing to monitor, as we have not yet gathered enough information to be able to confirm that the issues are fixed. These are:

• Intermittent errors in the Browse functionality
• A ‘PDF is null’ error on opening the PDF viewer

If users are still experiencing either of these issues, we urge them to contact PublisherServices@nla.co.uk with details of the date and time they experienced the issue, the URL they were attempting to reach, and their user details.

We hope that the ClipShare user experience will be much smoother following this updated version, but it doesn’t end there. Over the coming months, we intend to continue improving the site with some additional features that have been requested by users.

Our goal is always to ensure that all ClipShare users get the best possible experience with the site. Many thanks to all the users who provided feedback throughout the development and launch process for helping us work towards this goal. 

Newspaper page view data available for first time

NLA Media Access has today announced the sale of the first licence for its new PR evaluation product, NLA Article Impact Measurement (AIM). The PR agency in question is major international communications agency Golin.

Launched at a recent roundtable hosted at NewsUK, AIM is unique in bringing together precise internet page view data directly from the newspaper publisher’s site analytics platforms, combining this with social media statistics into a single tool for the measurement of PR impact.  

In an industry first, from today research and analytics staff at Golin will use AIM to gather vital intelligence from all 10 national newspaper publisher websites currently covered by the tool, on client coverage.

David Pugh, Managing Director of NLA Media Access said:

“We are delighted to be supplying AIM to an agency as well known as Golin. Coverage in UK newspapers remains critical to PR success and we know it is highly valued by agencies and their clients. This deal is proof of the value AIM can deliver to PR agencies in planning and evaluating their work.”

Daniel Stauber, Director Research & Analytics, from Golin said:

“AIM provides our clients with more accurate data on the visibility of coverage in national newspapers online. The unprecedented levels of intelligence on the exposure of online articles is a great tool for helping to devise successful media strategies”.

For more information, please contact: Bob Johns bjohns@nla.co.uk – 0207 332 9350

NLA is pleased to announce its first US agency client for its content delivery service eClips. BurrellesLuce, the world leading US MMO, is the twentieth agency outside the UK to work with the NLA’s eClips platform.  

In reaching the agreement BurrellesLuce is the first fully licensed US supplier of NLA material to the US market, enabling same day delivery of UK national newspaper content including The Guardian, Times, Telegraph and Independent to US clients. The company’s US corporate users will have the option to take timely, high quality cuttings direct from UK newspaper production systems, together with rich meta-data enabling advanced evaluation and analysis.

NLA commercial director Andrew Hughes said: ‘Better services for communications professionals come from publishers and agencies working together to improve the flow of news to users. We respect both user and agency requirements, and have invested in the technology needed to improve delivery. We are delighted to be working with BurrellesLuce to offer NLA material to US users’.  

About BL http://www.burrellesluce.com/company/about_us

About NLA http://www.nlamediaaccess.com/default.aspx?tabid=46

For more than a decade now the newspaper industry has been portrayed as a diminishing light, its once-powerful voice muted by the social and new-media economy. The current environment was thrown into relief last week as stark new figures published in Press Gazette suggest that nearly 300 newspaper titles have closed in 10 years. There are now only 6,500 employed journalists compared to double that in 2005.

Despite this news, the report also contained a small ray of light for journalists, editors, and publishers large and small. 100 new titles were launched in that same time period and overall, 1,100 local newspapers are still published in the UK, according to News Media Association. This year, for instance, Newsquest has launched four new newspapers or newspaper editions, and Tindle has launched five titles in London.
 
While we don’t claim responsibility for these nascent publications, the revenue NLA media access collects on behalf of publishers through licensing equates to the employment of around 1,100 journalists in the UK. A small but not insignificant contribution to the industry that supports our licensees, helping them to get their messages heard by 46 million people per year .

We strive to support journalism in everything we do and look forward to continuing to support the newspaper industry as it continues to deliver an invaluable service in the digital world.

What do Cecil the lion, the Pope and Adele have in common? No, the answer isn’t a bizarre chance encounter, but they are the Top 3 most viewed national newspaper articles online in the past 12 months.

The data is compiled from NLA’s powerful new tool AIM (Article Impact Measurement). AIM brings together precise internet page view data directly from the newspaper publisher’s site analytics platforms.

In first place was the Telegraph, with plaudits going to journalists Harriet Alexander, Peta Thornycroft and Aislinn Laing. Their exposé on Cecil the lion’s plight moved the world to condemnation and generated almost seven million hits on The Telegraph’s website. In second and third place were Adam Withnall of The Independent and Bryony Gordon of The Telegraph for their stories on Pope Francis’ support of the theory of evolution and Adele’s snub of Bob Geldof’s project Band Aid respectively.

In total these three stories generated over 16 million views between them, highlighting the astonishing reach of high quality journalism online. While the stories may be different in character, colour and content, they all demonstrate the public’s appetite for reading about diverse issues from trusted sources of information.

So while the commonality between a lion, a religious leader and a pop star may remain unclear to most, AIM allows media and communication professionals to read between the lines.

Yesterday, NLA media access co-hosted a seminar with the PPA on tackling online piracy of publisher content. Copyright Infringement is happening on a global scale across many different types of content and there are a number of industry wide initiatives which have been set up to deal with this problem. A wide range of publishers attended including EMAP and Euromonitor.

We heard from PIPCU, the City of London Police’s dedicated copyright enforcement team. PIPCU work with a number of partners in their ‘Operation Creative’ which aims to stop advertising on illegal sites. They have seen much success recently with a 73% drop in UK advertising on these infringing websites. We also heard from Publisher’s Association, a membership organisation who represent the rights of books, journals and audio publishers. Currently, the Publishers Association are tackling the large scale infringement problem using their Copyright Infringement Portal which aims to streamline the takedown submission process for publishers.

Finally, the NLA spoke about Online Article Tracking System (OATS) which tracks online infringement of publisher content. Currently 6 of the national newspaper publishers take part collectively in the service and it currently runs at 83% take down rate. Much of the success is down to educating infringers on what can or can’t be copied and the correct use of publisher content on websites. In this way, we see there is an opportunity for magazine publishers to benefit from this service. For more information, email publisherservices@nla.co.uk

In order for NLA media access licences to operate smoothly for its licensees, publishers grant a mandate which covers all editorial content in their publications, so that  monitoring agencies and their clients can copy articles knowing that they can rely on the rights granted in NLA licences.

In fact, the copying rights for a percentage of the content may be owned by the contributor (an agency or a freelance commissioned by the publisher). Most publishers operate highly sophisticated rights management processes, which mean that they either own content or a have a licence to publish, copy, or syndicate third party content – which is essential in a fast-moving, multi-platform publishing world.

Although the percentage of content that is not ‘owned’ by the publisher in this way is small and diminishing, it is important that any contributor that has retained rights should receive their share of revenue that has been earned through NLA’s media monitoring licences. NLA therefore conducts a Survey to determine the percentage that a publisher should pay to individual contributors or (if the amount due is less than £100 per individual) to the Journalists Charity .

The latest survey was conducted in 2014 and the headline results were published earlier this year; but now that all publisher payments have been made, we are able to report in much greater depth, giving details of the extent of the survey and the number of recipients paid. Full details on the Special Contributors Scheme can be found here