ASJA Contracts Watch

ASJA CONTRACTS WATCH CW951002 Issued October 2, 1995

[The American Society of Journalists and Authors encourages reproduction
and distribution of this document for the benefit of freelance writers. Reprint or post as many items as you wish, but please credit ASJA for the information and don't change the content.]

+ + + + + + + + + + +

Faced with freelance reviewers' protests, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY has revised its drastic new contract, cutting the warranty to where it belongs, dropping indemnification and making its claim of rights nonexclusive. Still, owner CAHNERS PUBLISHING (part of REED ELSEVIER) wants a bundle of extras for nothing, as well as forgiveness for past absconding with electronic rights. Writers who balk at signing are being offered tiny one-time payments for each past work appearing in databases without permission, and a similar tiny increase in future fees to cover the bundle of rights demanded. Pressed further by freelancers who won't sign on, editors are discussing more changes with the company.

At HEARST MAGAZINES (ESQUIRE, GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, REDBOOK et al.), editors have been instructed to refer rights inquiries from reporters to Gloria Ricks, a public affairs officer. Scouting for details on the publisher's contracts and its Home Arts service (COUNTRY LIVING, GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, POPULAR MECHANICS, REDBOOK), new on the Internet, Contracts Watch dutifully phoned Ricks, who promised to find answers. A month later, she explained her long silence this way: "I didn't have anything to talk about." The rest of the conversation: "Will you check into it?" "I just don't have any answers." "Is there anyone in the company who does?" "I don't know." "Are you going to ask anyone?" "I can't tell you."

Hearst's anchor newspaper, the SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER, is reportedly in enough trouble that the company is considering shutting it down. (Official denial noted.) Meantime, the Examiner figures to improve its bottom line by keeping all proceeds of syndication, electronic distribution and various other reuses. New printed guidelines from at least one section editor say only, "Please be advised that we are now buying electronic distribution rights to your work." But buried in the avalanche of words in the new three-page Examiner contract is a grab of far more than e-rights. Writers who take the time to read the contract have reason to hesitate. And some are intrigued by that editor's statement about the paper "now buying" e-rights, thus admitting that it didn't have the rights before, and raising the question of how and why years of Examiner articles are already online.

Word continues to spread, especially among travel writers, about moves by the Examiner, LOS ANGELES TIMES, CHICAGO TRIBUNE and others that would render freelancing for newspapers profitless. Ann Purcell, new president of the 900-member Society of American Travel Writers, explains: "Any freelance travel writer who writes for newspapers knows that making simultaneous sales to papers in different regions is the only way the business can be profitable. It's how we've all operated for years. If travel writers are forced to let newspaper publishers make various aftermarket sales themselves and keep the proceeds, interfering with writers' ability to reuse their stories, the best writers will stop dealing with newspapers and find other ways to do business. Readers will be the poorer for it."

An example of how newspapers milk writers' work for their sole profit even without permission is seen in America Online's News Library, which boasts fulltext archives of 18 papers back to the 1980s, including the AKRON BEACON JOURNAL, BOSTON GLOBE, DETROIT FREE PRESS, LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS, MIAMI HERALD, PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS, ST. PAUL PIONEER PRESS, SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS and others. Although freelance newspaper pieces are normally sold for area rights only, this reuse of articles by the original publishers and third parties is worldwide. The words "infringement" and "breach" leap to mind.

Even some freelancers who've never written for the newspapers archived on AOL have been ripped off. One freelancer reports being astonished to find a NEW YORK TIMES piece of hers in the online archive of the San Jose Mercury News. The Times, she surmises, syndicated the work (with neither permission nor payment) to the Mercury News, which put it online.

Durant Imboden, manager of the Microsoft Network's Writing Forum, has invited New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. and executive editor Joseph Lelyveld to a live guest chat to discuss freelance issues and the continuing protest Times policies have triggered. At this writing, neither has replied.

PARENTING and HEALTH (both from TIME INC.) have begun asking writers to hand over electronic rights for free until January 1998, at which time, the publisher says, "we plan to pay for any material on our electronic services...on a `pay-per-hit' royalty basis." Meantime, newly online Parenting continues to offer writers of just-published articles a one-time payment of $15 or $25 (depending on length) for a super-broad electronic license; whatever the price, the deal should be narrowed to cover AOL only, and for a limited time. Because of writers' gripes about the two-year freebies and other contract excesses, the whole issue is reportedly up for discussion in-house.

Some publishers continue to fish: Such magazines as COUNTRY JOURNAL (COWLES), LEGAL ASSISTANT TODAY (JAMES) and SAVEUR (MEIGHER) send out work-made-for-hire or all-rights contracts, particularly to newcomers, in hopes that writers will accept them as offered. But for those who reject the offer, editors discover a less onerous form. Typically, even second-try contracts are substantially amended by the savvy.

Writers have recently reported: negotiating the removal of "electronic databases, CD-ROM, and any similar system now existing or hereafter developed" from the contract at NEW WOMAN (a K-III title) ... limiting e-rights at BSA's BOYS' LIFE to nonprofit CD-ROMs, and specifying additional compensation for other rights... reducing the many-part rights clause in a HOME contract to "exclusive First North American Print Serial rights" only; Home (one of the HACHETTE FILIPACCHI group) will separately license online rights for its America Online edition, paying a fee amounting to 10% of the initial price, and deal with anthology and other secondary uses as they arise.

+ + + + + + + + + + +

[The American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) is the national
organization of leading freelance writers. Inquiries from all are welcome: Contracts Committee, ASJA, 1501 Broadway, New York, NY 10036, tel 212-997-0947, fax 212-768-7414, e-mail 75227.1650[_at_]compuserve.com

[To receive each edition of ASJA Contracts Watch automatically by e-mail, send
the following command:

       TO:  MAJORDOMO[_at_]ESKIMO.COM
       TEXT:  SUBSCRIBE ASJACW-L

[Many ASJA members and others send a steady stream of contracts, information
and scuttlebutt so that these ASJA Contracts Watch dispatches can be as informative as possible. To thank all contributors individually would be impossible. You know who you are. So do we.]

Alexandra Owens/ASJA
<75227.1650[_at_]compuserve.com> Received on Mon Oct 02 1995 - 13:31:12 GMT