Right To Free Press Doesn't Mean The Press Gets Unfettered Access

from the free-press-means-something-different dept

Late last year, we found it silly that three journalists were suing the NY Police Department, claiming their First Amendment rights were violated because the police refused to give them press passes. As we noted, freedom of the press doesn't mean that anyone has to give those journalists access. If I remember correctly, that case was eventually settled with the journalists being given press passes again, but a similar case in California has gone all the way to a ruling, with the court finding that the First Amendment does not automatically grant journalists access (via Romenesko). In this case, a photojournalist was trying to photograph a car accident scene, and police barred him from the scene and eventually handcuffed him. The judge found that while the press should be allowed to have the same access as the public had, the public isn't granted access to crime scenes, so it's entirely reasonable for the police to order the press away from a crime scene. Of course, there are separate issues here which weren't addressed, including that the police didn't just ask him to leave, but at one point said "You don't need to take these kind of photos." One could make an argument that statements like that could go over the line.

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One Benefit To Participatory Media: They Don't Care About Access

from the it's-about-the-story dept

Before getting to the meat of this post, let me start out by saying that I don't believe that there's some sort of "competition" between professional journalists and community-driven journalism. I think they need to work well together. That said, I find it silly when the professional journalists insist that "citizen journalism" can't do certain things well. The same could be said for professional journalists as well. In fact, we've noted how professional journalists often fall into a form of journalistic capture, in that they know they need access and quotes in the future from certain sources, and thus reporters will often self-censor stories to maintain relationships with their sources.

However, as some are noticing, that isn't necessarily the case with community-driven journalism where the story is more important than the access. It's discussed in this writeup of how Condoleeza Rice was asked a series of detailed questions that the big name newspaper journalists had avoided (found via Jay Rose):

Why is citizen journalism like this so powerful? I think one answer is that citizen journalists don't have to worry about their future careers as journalists nearly as much as the professional journalists do. In other words, professional journalists frequently have to worry about access. They don't want to anger public officials and powerful people too much by being too aggressive, because they know that if they cross certain lines these people will stop talking to them. For instance, I saw Andrea Mitchell on Hardball the other night, and she was making a very implausible argument that Rice's statement was not a "Frost/Nixon" moment. It seemed pretty clear to me that Mitchell was trying to stay on Rice's good side. But citizen journalists don't have this problem because we're not worried about future access. We have the opportunity to be as aggressive as we want. After all, there probably isn't going to be any possibility of future access anyway.

Now, it's fair to say that the opposite point may be true too. I'm sure professional journalists will point out that "amateurs" who are given access for the first time may be so in awe that they are tamed and fail to follow through on a story. And, that's possible as well. But the idea that the "amateurs" can't chase down a story is being proven untrue over and over and over again.

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There May Be Hope For The Recording Industry, Yet

from the let's-wait-and-see... dept

As noted, I'm at the Leadership Music Digital Summit to give a keynote talk tomorrow. Today's keynote is from Rio Caraeff, the executive VP of the eLabs group of Universal Music Group. Listening to his talk, it's impressive to see that it appears someone within Universal Music Group actually seems to understand what's going on. That may seem a bit dismissive of Universal Music Group, but it's not my assessment, but what the CEO of Universal Music Group flat out said just a couple of years ago, in noting that he had absolutely no clue about digital music and didn't even know how to hire the right people.

Caraeff, however, seems focused on all the right things. He talked about how access to music is more important than possession. He talks about how it's the experience that has always made music valuable, noting "you can't steal experience." In fact, he points out that the concept of the album is dead, but that UMG (and others) need to build a true "living album" that goes beyond the music: adding a full experience that can update over time, that allows fans to access the music however they want, and that enables interaction with that music -- including fan participation and user-generated content associated with the music. And he wants it all built on open standards, to avoid a situation like the Blu-ray consortium where only a few companies have control of the system.

"How do we compete with piracy? It's creating a unique experience that can't be easily replicated through file sharing."

He then goes on to say that the business of "licensing music" is a dead end because it's just not scalable (whoo hoo!) noting that it's killing innovation. Even saying that they need to acknowledge that they need to enable letting a thousand innovators bloom.

He did admit that the team at UMG is still struggling to figure out the best way to make money in this new world -- but he recognizes this is where things are going:

"I'd rather have access to all my music, tv shows and movies anywhere on any device, rather than "own" 100 files. This is going to be a swift transition. It's taken us less than 10 years to go from plastic discs to digital files. It will take 5 years or less to go from digital files to cloud-based services, which will make the music even more valuable."

This is all good news. It's someone who clearly recognizes the shift that needs to be made by a major record label. But, the real question is how much influence he actually has at Universal Music Group. We've seen similar recognition among employees at other record labels, including Warner Music and EMI -- but the "top management" at both of those firms has continued to go in the opposite direction, focusing on stomping out innovation, rather than encouraging it.

Unfortunately, this may be a real issue. He did admit:

"Universal Music is a big company and not everyone there is on the same page, but I was put into this job to make these changes. Turning a big ship around is slow. It's not a lack of desire, but it's a question of when not if. A lot of what I do is talk and evangelize to others within UMG to try to raise the consciousness level about where our business is going, to bring us to a path to growth again. It's not about how do we stop the decline of our business, but to find another billion dollar business for us. I'm not interested in how to I sell more MP3s on Amazon or to create new competitors to iTunes. That's important, but that's not going to transform our business. It's difficult in the day-to-day grind to turn a big company around, but it starts with passion. Passion sells. This is how it works."

It's great to see some optimism coming from within one of the major labels, recognizing all of the opportunities out there. Hopefully, it actually leads to something useful.

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Access Is A Scarce Good

from the a-reminder dept

While some of our critics like to falsely claim that the business model we describe for leveraging "free" is simply about selling "t-shirts" since they're the only scarce good that our critics can think of, it's important to point out that scarce goods are not just tangible goods, and "access" is often one of the most valuable scarce goods out there. In fact, we've definitely seen some musicians embrace this as something worth selling, but haven't seen it as much in other contexts. That's why it's interesting to see journalist/blogger Ana Marie Cox trying out a version of that business model herself. Cox, famous initially for being the original editor of the Wonkette political blog has been working for The Radar lately, but apparently it just went out of business. Cox wants to keep covering the election, and has set up a tiered sponsorship rate card:

• Anything: Good karma, knowledge that sometimes merit is rewarded. If not in this particular case.
• Over $10: A personal thank-you email (please include your email in "instructions for seller")
• Over $50: A personal thank-you phone call (please include your phone number in "instructions for seller")
• Over $100: My instant message screen name, regular personal updates via email and/or instant messages on election night
• Over $250: I will ask a senior McCain adviser the question of your choosing and send you the MP3 audio of the exchange
• Over $500: Phone call from McCain headquarters on election night, detailing hilarious antics sure to ensue
• Over $1000: One-on-one post-election dinner debrief

I have no idea if this plan will work, but it is fascinating that it basically works on a system of charging more for greater access. It will be interesting to see if Cox reports back on how well this experiment goes.

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