PRC tours university journalism programs

              PUBLICATION RIGHTS CLEARINGHOUSE,
              NWU COLLECTIVE-LICENSING AGENCY,
          TOURS BAY AREA JOURNALISM SCHOOL PROGRAMS 

Publication Rights Clearinghouse, the collective-licensing agency of the National Writers Union, has announced a spring semester tour of San Francisco Bay Area university journalism programs.

On Tuesday, March 4, NWU director of licensing Irvin Muchnick will be the featured speaker for a program,
"CyberRights and Wrongs," sponsored by the San Francisco
State University student chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). This free public event will be held in Room 304 of the new Humanities building on the SFSU campus.

Members of SPJ are eligible to enroll in PRC for the same $20 one-time enrollment fee charged to NWU members. In addition, the SFSU journalism department has become an associate sponsor of PRC, enabling all students, faculty and staff of the department to enroll in the agency at the low rate.

On Wednesday, March 5, Muchnick will speak on writers' rights in new technologies in a program at 12:30 p.m. at the library of the University of California's Graduate School of Journalism in Berkeley. That event is also free and open to the public. The Journalism School library is in North Gate Hall on the Berkeley campus.

On Monday, March 10, Muchnick will discuss copyright issues with students in the communications studies department at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park. Adviser and lecturer Benet Leigh said students in both the Writing and Editing and the Production classes will attend the session, at 4 p.m. in Darwin Hall, Room 139, and the public is invited.

"The information superhighway is a marvelous new tool for
investigative journalists, but it's also the setting for publishers' abuses of creators' rights," said Jonathan Tasini, president of the NWU and lead plaintiff in the pending landmark NWU-backed federal copyright suit, *Tasini et al. v. The New York Times et al.* "We are happy to have the opportunity to explain this issue to young journalists and to encourage them also to investigate and reflect on -- and do something about -- the conditions of their own future livelihoods."

Tasini noted that PRC's thousands of enrollees include three former heads of Bay Area journalism programs: Ben Bagdikian, dean emeritus of the UC-Berkeley Journalism School; Betty Medsger, former chair of the San Francisco State journalism department; and Tom Goldstein, the former UC-Berkeley Journalism School dean who next fall will become dean at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

Bagdikian, a member of the NWU Advisory Board and author of *The Media Monopoly*, is among the PRC charter enrollees who have already received royalties through the agency's first license with the CARL Corporation's UnCover, the world's largest database of magazine and journal articles. CARL and UnCover are wholly-owned affiliates of Knight- Ridder Information, Inc.

The National Writers Union, an affiliate of United Auto Workers, represents 4,500 freelance journalists, book authors, technical writers and others. For more information about the NWU or PRC, visit <http://www.nwu.org/nwu/>.

             
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              PUBLICATION RIGHTS CLEARINGHOUSE
                  Sponsoring Organizations

National Writers Union

Canadian Science Writers' Association
Garden Writers Association of America
Independent Writers of Southern California International Association of Art Critics   (United States Section)
Media Alliance
The Newspaper Guild
National Writers Association
Periodical Writers Association of Canada San Francisco State University Journalism Department Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators Writers Guild of America, East Received on Wed Feb 26 1997 - 20:54:50 GMT