Three weeks after Nicholson Baker's stimulating New York Times op-ed
essay on journalists' electronic rights, Times magazine industry beat
reporter Deirdre Carmody has a news story about the issue in today's
business section. We urge everyone in this forum to read and discuss
it. Two corrections to the story:
- The National Writers Union has almost exactly 4,000 members, not 3,300.
- Notwithstanding the second paragraph of the Times report, "the heart of
the matter" is not "whether writers should get a share of the proceeds,"
but how much *publishers* deserve of ancillary revenues that rightfully
belong to writers. In the same vein, the phrase "first North American
serial rights" most emphatically does not mean "exclusive domestic rights
to publication," but *first* rights -- the writer historically has
retained things like syndication and anthology rights. Our point in the
battle over electronic rights is that it's the other guys, not us, who
are trying to change the rules.
- Irvin Muchnick
Assistant Director
National Writers Union
irvmuch[_at_]netcom.com
Received on Mon Nov 07 1994 - 20:40:54 GMT