It’s worth saying again, given that about 30,000 newspaper layoffs have occurred in the past three years, how much a community loses when a veteran journalist loses her job.

For example, someone like me has to spend hours poring over Nexis to discover that former Gov. Dick Lamm and former GOP chair Bo Callaway secretly agreed in 1980 that Colorado should have competitive congressional districts.

But Post reporter Lynn Bartels simply has to check her brain, not Nexis. She was a Rocky reporter when it published the story back in the year 2000. After having asserted that Bartels failed to report the Lamm/Callaway story Friday, I regret to report today that, in fact, Bartels wrote a piece about it in December.

“I didn’t need to pore over LexisNexis,” Bartels points out. “I worked with Michele Ames and read her story at the time.”

And not only that, she quoted the current Colorado GOP chair, Dick Wadhams, openly saying he supports competitive districts, like Callaway did scretly:

“I think you get better elected officials that way, but I’ve never figured out how we get there,” [Wadhams] said. “You’d have to split El Paso County and Denver County, and I’m not sure either side would go for that.”

So my assertion that The Post, and other local media, had not reported what Colorado Republicans think about competitive districts was also wrong.

We’re fortunate we’ve still got Bartels and other veteran journalists in town. I wish we had more.

I’m a volunteer blogger for the Huffington Post.

I’m paid to write elsewhere, but I submit my work to Huffpo for free to push out my writing.

HuffPo relies on volunteers. It has a core staff of about 150 paid journalists, but much of the site’s content comes from volunteers like me, for free.

But some of the volunteers aren’t happy. Last month, a group of them told Arianna Huffington that they want to be paid, or at least talk about being paid.

Their demand came after AOL purchased the Huffington Post for $315 million.

These bloggers called on the rest of HuffPo’s volunteer bloggers to stop submitting their work.

They asked bloggers like me not to cross their “virtual picket line.” In other words, they asked me to stop volunteering.

The virtual picket-line organizers didn’t ask volunteer writers who submit content to other blogs and online publications to stop submitting their writing to those outlets too. Just Huffpo.

But others could have been targeted, like Yourhub.com or even ColoradoPols.com. One way “new media” entities are surviving, whether they make money or not, is to solicit content, like articles, photos, and columns, from you, the public.

Sometimes this work is edited, as it is cursorily on Huffpo, and sometimes it’s not, as you can see on many blogs that happily accept some of the worst and most vitriolic commentaries you can imagine. (A bad combination, I know, but it works for some blogs.)

The question raised by Huffpo strike is, if an online entity makes money, should it share some of that revenue with its volunteer writers?

Well, many volunteers would love to be paid, but you have to think they’re happy to give up their time freely, seeing as how they’re volunteers, as a Huffington Post spokesman pointed out in a response to the strike.  Look at all the volunteers for the United Way, whose staff makes decent money. Or for political campaigns.

In fact, it sounds crazy for volunteers to demand payment and call a strike, especially if the volunteers didn’t first organize their fellow volunteers, take a vote, and then collectively demand wages.

I certainly thought so, after first not knowing what to think.  Then I found out that the virtual picket line at the Huffington Post was endorsed by the Newspaper Guild, the union that represents journalists nationwide. It’s a union I respect a lot.

Why would it support a “strike” like this?

“We think we’re in a critical phase of reinvention in journalism,” Guild President Bernie Lunzer told me. “We want to tackle the question of the value of our work before there’s an assumption that writers take a vow of poverty to do their craft. It really has more to do with a critical moment than anything. That’s really the point of this.”

It’s a desperate time for journalism, as big-city newspapers bleed jobs and revenue, serious news outlets offer more mayhem and fluff, and a model to support journalism on the web has not materialized.

Journalism is dying and few people seem to care. Even fewer are doing anything about it.

So, yes, you can make a case that the Huffington Post, with its influx of AOL money, should hire more journalists and pay more of its contributors.

And you can also make a really good case that Arianna Huffington herself should meet with the organizers of the virtual picket line. That’s one of their central goals. But she has refused, Lunzer told me. Most recently she called a class action lawsuit filed filed by bloggers “frivolous.”  The suit demands a cut of the AOL money.

Huffington’s bunker-style response made me want to join the bloggers and support their cause. I thought about not posting anything for a month as a symbolic show of support for the Newspaper Guild and for paid journalism.

But I couldn’t convince myself that my volunteerism was in fact hurting journalism.

The Huffington Post isn’t the problem. In fact, a hybrid of professional journalists and volunteer writers may be part of the solution. I mean, Huffpo has a staff of professional journalists, and appears to have a bright future, while other for-profit journalistic outfits are in free fall.

Still, it’s true that writers need not only a platform–but cash as well.

I hope Arianna Huffington gets the message. I hope Republicans attacking National Public Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting get the message. I hope anyone who hires a freelance writer gets the message.

A version of this blog post was distributed last week by the OtherWords syndicate.

Follow Jason Salzman on Twitter @BigMediaBlog

There’s a feast raging on the Internet. Websites and bloggers are helping themselves to huge servings of whatever newspapers offer online.

People who run content-starved outlets steal articles from newspapers’ websites and post them on their own sites, without payment.

Who cares, you might say. Most newspapers post all their articles on their websites, free for anyone to read, whether they’ve got a subscription or not.

But many newspapers definitely care, because they make money when people visit their websites to read articles. Web advertisements are an increasingly important part of newspapers’ shrinking revenue stream.

When an entire article is copied from a newspaper’s website and posted on another website, fewer people go to the newspaper’s website to view the original article, and the paper makes less money.

Some newspapers are trying to protect their articles from being stolen. They’re trying to develop clearer “fair-use” policies, specifying for example how much of an article can be copied by a blog or website without violating the newspaper’s copyright.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal has gone further. Its parent company, Stephens Media, has helped grubstake a law firm called Righthaven, which is suing Internet entities that post articles from the paper without proper authorization.

Righthaven buys the copyright to a specific newspaper article and then sues the website or blog that posts all or even part of it, typically for $150,000 and the rights to the domain name of website that allegedly commits the offense. Most of the approximately 200 lawsuits filed against organizations, ranging from the Democratic Party of Nevada to GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle, have been settled out of court.

In December, on behalf of MediaNews, owner of The Denver Post, Righthaven sued the Drudge Report for allegedly publishing The Post’s content in violation of copyright law.

Critics, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, say Righthaven is abusing copyright law by buying copyrights to articles it will never use and by demanding excessive damages, particularly from small-time bloggers who can’t afford to defend themselves.

Critics also don’t like Righthaven’s tactic of filing lawsuits without sending a warning letter first. These warnings, referred to as “takedown” or “cease-and-desist” letters, would give a website owner the chance to remove the offending content to avoid a lawsuit.

Courts in Nevada are sorting out the complexities of whether a website’s copying of a newspaper article–even if it’s used in its entirety and deprives a newspaper of potential revenue–can be justified under “fair-use” doctrine. Critics say the doctrine is more complicated than the Righthaven legal briefs would have you believe.

These critics have a point, but in the bigger picture, the newspaper industry’s cause is just.

The Righthaven approach, imperfect as it is, gets to the heart of one of the most important questions in journalism: How do newspapers protect online content?

Organizations shouldn’t post entire news stories on their websites, and bloggers shouldn’t reproduce newspaper articles in their online diaries.

Here’s why: News articles are written by journalists, who need to be paid. And most of their salaries come from advertisements. (There are exceptions of course, including OtherWords, the non-profit editorial service that happens to be distributing my op-ed to newspapers and new media.)

Newspapers’ advertising revenue has tanked in recent years. For journalism to survive, newspaper websites must sell more ads.

The routine looting and scattering of a publication’s website content across the blogosphere, where newspapers have no prayer reaping any profit, amounts to one more nail in the coffin of journalism. Advertising dollars will then flow to any online outfit that posts stolen news stories.

That’s not only unfair, but it’s bad for our democracy. We need journalists to play a watchdog role now more than ever.

Sure, Righthaven is unseemly in the way it’s suing people, including “little” people. But if you have a better idea on how newspapers should safeguard their online content, lay it on me.

A former media critic for the Rocky Mountain News, Jason Salzman is board chair of Rocky Mountain Media Watch and author of Making the News: A Guide for Activists and Nonprofits. www.bigmedia.org

This column was originally distributed by the OtherWords syndicate.

UPDATE: This post was corrected Dec. 16 after a reader pointed out that Stephens Media, which is connected to Righthaven, does not own the Las Vegas Sun, which has been reporting extensively on the Righthaven lawsuits. Since March, Righthaven has been suing entities that post content from Las Vegas Review-Journal, not the Las Vegas Sun. But the Review-Journal, like the Denver Post, did not report a peep about this, until September, when it published a story about Righthaven suing Senate candidate Sharron Angle for alleged illegal use of Review-Journal articles.  The Review Journal ran a second article last week when Righthaven began suing to stop alleged illegal use of Denver Post content. Last week, the Review-Journal ran this and this blog post. Still nothing in The Denver Post on this topic. I’m sorry for my error.

——-
You may have heard about a Las Vegas law firm, called Righthaven, that’s buying the copyright to Denver Post content that is allegedly being used illegally, in violation of The Post’s fair-use policy, and then suing the alleged violators, typically for $150,000 plus the rights to the offender’s domain name.

Or, more likely, you haven’t heard about the firm, because shamefully, as far as I can tell, neither it nor its activities have been mentioned at all in The Post. (Please correct me if I’m wrong here.)

But the legal strategy to stop alleged copyright infringement has been comprehensively reported in Las Vegas Sun, and locally Westword picked it up, as did The Colordo Independent, among others.

On Monday, The Denver Daily News weighed in with the most comprehensive local coverage so far, interviewing the co-founder of Righthaven as well as representatives of some of the blogs and websites that have been sued. Righthaven, with the apparent blessing of The Post, is suing entities large (Drudge Report) and small (lowcountry912.wordpress.com).

I’m glad The Post is trying to protect its content, because I don’t buy the argument, nicely summarized today in the Sun, that newspapers are giving away their articles on their websites for free to anyone who wants them.

Still, you have to wonder about the Righthaven approach when you read a quote like this, in the Denver Daily News piece, from Steven Gibson, founder of Righthaven and reflecting comments he’s made elsewhere:

“It does not appear that an approach to addressing the infringement of copyrights that is based upon merely sending out takedown letters is a very effective way of dealing with that issue,” said Gibson. “There are literally millions, if not billions of infringements out there.”

“If a newspaper were to add the requisite staff to identify the infringements, to properly identify the infringers, and spend the time drafting appropriately worded letters, and kindly ask each one of those infringers to stop infringing, it would cost a newspaper an unmanageable amount of money to do that,” continued Gibson.

So Righthaven is suing without warning.

I called Righthaven founder Gibson, and he confirmed cease-and-desist letters are not sent because they do not work and the process is too expensive. He said:

Gibson: Think about it a minute, Jason. You are managing a newspaper’s legal department, and you have to go to management to say I need to fund the effort to staff enough people who will have notice of an infringement, then do due diligence to make sure you’re sending the letter to the right place, and then draft an appropriate letter, and follow up to make sure that the infringer received the letter because more likely than not you might not receive a response. How long do you wait in order to receive a response? That’s a lot more than one minute.

Then let’s assume that the receiver [of the letter] takes down their infringement, and says you take it down if you don’t sue me. And let’s assume there are tens of thousands of infringements out there.  And how long does it take you to develop a story? And how much are you being compensated? The newspapers are already financially strapped, and adding the capacity to write people gentle letter to say would you please take down the infringement.

And the other thing is that then the other people who know you are doing it say, ok well, they have another 9,999 letters to go before they get to me, and if all they are going to do is send me a letter saying take it down then there is no real risk to me for posting the infringing content. All they are going to do is ask me to take it down. So, you know, whoop-tee-doo, I’ll just post the infringing content and see if they ever get around to writing me a letter.

Well, our experience here in Colorado shows Gibson to be wrong about the deterrent effect of a takedown letter. One measly letter was sent to ColoradoPols, and now you rarely see any of the Post’s content in Pols, and there’s been nothing close to a violation of The Post’s fair-use policy since the letter was sent.

But Gibson has a point, no doubt, that the prospect of a no-warning lawsuit is much more frightening  than the prospect of receiving a takedown letter. I am ashamed to admit to having used copyrighted content in past lives knowing that a cease-and-desist letter would probably arrive before a lawsuit. Had I expected a lawsuit first, I may not have done broken the law.

He’s less convincing about the resources required to send warning letters. I mean, interns could do it. It just doesn’t seem that complicated to me, even if it takes a little longer than you might think at first blush. In any case, the fact that Righthaven has reportedly taken in a quarter million dollars from these lawsuits makes you wonder if there’s a better way to fund copyright enforcement.

Actually, I’m hoping that the no-warning lawsuits are part of an initial PR strategy that will be abandoned once the word gets out that newspapers are serius about protecting their content. 

I thanked Gibson for making himself available to me, and I asked if this was part of a PR strategy to let scare the world to stop stealing content. He denied this, saying:

I believe that Righthaven is going to ultimately be recognized as doing the right thing. Money is not everything. And we believe that we are advancing a social purpose, independent of whether there is a deterrent value. We believe that protecting the ownership interest in copyright is an appropriate thing to do and is forward looking, irrespective of the deterrent. And while we are running a for-profit business, we like to believe that the propriety of Righthaven’s approach will be proven over time, as issues are more fully addressed by the courts, in both Righthaven cases and otherwise that we will create a greater and broader understanding. That’s why I try to make myself available to member of the press….

Let’s go back to the basics. Copyright law is in the Constitution. It comes from the Constitution where our forefathers said, we’re going to protect inventors and artists, effectively. It’s important that at the very founding years of our country that we are going to advance the protection of the people who engage in the creative capacity, such as you. You’re going to write this article, and people should respect that. And so all of these folks out there saying, we’re attacking people, that’s very strange.

Gibson goes further:

Jason: I just think in the spirit of public discourse, which actually a newspaper tries to promote, you try to solve things without this kind of harsh—

Gibson: What’s harsh?

Jason: Filing a lawsuit when you could send a letter first.

Gibson: First of all, that presupposes that that’s harsh…-who is it harsh on? You don’t factor in the fact that we have $350 filing fees, we have $100 more of service and process fees on these defendants. So, you know, the plaintiff in these cases, Righthaven, has to expend hundreds of dollars, and arguably thousands of dollars, there are copyright registration fees and application fees. We put our money where our mouth is, if you will. This isn’t easy or inexpensive.

And, again, the question is have takedown letters succeeded in addressing the infringements. Can anyone argue in all of these blogospheres that the takedown approach will ever be successful in stemming the tide in infringement?

Jason, here’s a fantastic story for you, because your approach to this has been a bit more balanced and objective and you’re generally asking some good questions. Think about the future of the American economy. Think about 20 or 30 years from now. Think about the evolution of the American economy. Think about where value is going to be created in the future. And that is, more likely than not, our society to continue to advance, and the creation of intangible assets, content, will continue to be much more important in the future. You follow me?

Jason: Hmm mmm.

Gibson: And we continue to migrate from a post-industrial economy, whereby a vast part of the American economy is the management of information and the development of content. If you think it’s important today, look at how important it is going to be decades from now. And as such, isn’t Righthaven recognizing today what is going to be readily apparent 20 to 30 years from now, and that is, when a good part of our economy is relying on people respecting that which drives our economy, i.e., the creation of intangible assets in the information economy.

So what to do if you’re in The Post’s shoes?

Obviously, the Post should milk the PR value of this exercise by having their execs talk about it! Explain to the masses why you’re trying to protect your stories, and give people the basics about fair use.

The Las Vegas Sun is reporting on it extensively. But the Las Vegas Review-Journal, whose parent company is associated with Righthaven, has only published two articles, as far as I can tell and at least one blog post. (See the Update above.) The Post should start reporting and commenting on the Righthaven lawsuits.

The Post should take responsibility for its own lawsuits, and divulge its apparent relationship with Righthaven. Righthaven is actually kind of like one of those 527 political groups, acting “secretly” for the newspaper. And the Post’s editorial page seems to hate 527s.

The Post should also instruct Righthaven to go after the larger entities first, the ones who are more likely to know better. That’s basic kindness.

And also, The Post should insist that for every no-warning lawsuit that’s filed by Righthaven, ten cease-and-desist letters are put in the mail. This approach is more humane, while recognizing the real-life deterrent value of the no-warning lawsuit. How much time could it possibly take to write boiler-plate warning letters to copyright violators and track the responses.

In any case, if the current approach by Righthaven continues indefinitely, The Post will look seriously bad, and it looks pretty bad already, which is unfortunate because in the big picture, its cause is just.

Here’s an exchange on Colorado Pols about The Denver Post’s decision to threaten legal action against Pols:

Jason Salzman:  free content

You can understand why The Post would want to try to protect its news content, even if it’s being offered for free.

Dear Denver Post —

Don’t mess with us, because you’re irrelevant, and getting more so by the day.

So you can take your bizarre threat to sue us if we quote any Denver Post article and wrap a dead editor in it.

We won’t quote your articles. We won’t link to your articles. And it won’t matter, as far as we’re concerned. There’s plenty of other news out there for us to discuss, much of it duplicating what The Post reports. We’ll continue to get our 617,661 page views each month without you.

But, please understand that by attacking us like you’ve done you’re actually digging your own grave–and we’ll help push you there by never linking to your little articles–even though you’re happy to let us link to you, you hypocrite.

Thanks, and good luck.

Colorado Pols

That’s a summary of a letter from Colorado Pols, the great Colorado political blog, to a letter from The Denver Post and other media companies asking Pols to stop quoting news articles or face a lawsuit. The Post letter claimed that any unauthorized quotation by Pols amounted to theft.

In its response, Pols claims that The Post never really tried to work things out–before dropping the legal bomb. That’s a shame for The Post, which needs web traffic and buzz from Pols, and for Pols’ readers, who won’t have the convenience of a quick click to a Post article. That’s an inconvenience that could add up because The Post is still the biggest journalism game in the state by far, reporting lots of political news that’s not found anywhere else.

How great would it have been if somehow, some way The Post (old media) and Pols (new media) could have announced today a deal to support each other. And maybe this could have served as a national model. Maybe such a deal could have been struck.

But instead, the battle lines are drawn, despite the “respect” that Pols rightfully has for “print newsrooms,” as acknoledged in its letter. As it is, Pols’ response could serve as a national model for how blogs will battle cranky old media, like The Post.

The Pols letter is a must-read for journalism observers. It’s funny and spot-on for the most part, but like a good blog, it goes over the top as well.

Anyway, it’s a sad day for journalism in Denver, but it probably won’t matter in one, two, three years from now, when the political reporting at The Post will probably be much much weaker than it is today, if it exists at all.

In recent years, journalists have had an unfortunate tendency to be on our kitchen tables one day and to vanish the next. Ignoring the impact this has on the journalists themselves, it’s disorienting to those of us who follow the news and the writing of specific working stiffs who produce it.
 

So I’d thought I’d add an occasional “What happened to them?” post on this blog for anyone who cares about where the disappeared journos have landed.
 

One such journalist who vanished abruptly after 36 years at The Denver Post is Bob Ewegen. He left without explanation in November of 2008. ColoradoPols readers may have noticed his reappearance on Pols (as “voyageur”) in January.

Here’s what he has to say (via an email) about the state of Colorado journalism and his current situation:
 

On the one hand, my one-year noncompete clause has now expired.  But the non-disclosure parts of my separation package are probably still in place.  In any event, I want to stay away from the posture of “everything was great on my watch but it all went to hell when I left.”
 

Charles de Gaulle liked to say “The graveyards are full of indispensable men.”
 

On the health front, I’m definitely better.  My blood sugar is down due primarily to less stress and more exercise.  I am continuing my paralegal classes at Community College of Denver, where I currently have a 4.0 average, and am on track to certify as a paralegal in May, just a few weeks before my 65th birthday.
 

When not attending classes, I work part-time at The Law Office of Misty Ewegen as Director of Research and Communication. My work there has focused primarily on writing, legal research and editing.  Our practice is picking up and the flexible hours can accommodate outside activities.
 

In Colorado, anyone can call himself a paralegal but you can’t call yourself a certified paralegal unless you’ve been certified.  I find the classes stimulating and figured why not get the certificate?  Of course, I also have my B.S. in Journalism and my M.S. in Labor Relations.  Given the parlous state of both the news business and trade unions, that proves my mastery of lost causes. Perhaps I can now pursue a Ph. D. in Building the Titanic. 😉
 

Seriously, I still entertain thoughts of attending law school in 2011.  Meanwhile, I serve pro bono on the Board of Directors of the Colorado Judicial Institute and am also Journalist in Residence at CJI. We work to preserve fair and impartial courts in Colorado and promote excellence in our legal system, avoiding the kind of horrors that the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Caperton case revealed.  John Grisham’s novel “The Appeal” is admittedly modeled after that case.
 

The reason I am not even thinking about law school until 2011 is that 2010 is an election year.  I remain passionately committed to the goal of restoring the state budget to solvency and have told state Treasury Cary Kennedy I’d like to do what I can for her campaign on a volunteer basis.

Now that I am no longer a journalist, I am free to do such radical things as going to a caucus (effectively banned at The Denver Post). It is possible the election may lead to other opportunities.
 

You find people on both the far left and right of the political spectrum who couldn’t care less about the health of mainstream journalism or its coverage of stuff like elections.

But most political junkies agree with what Bob Moore, editor of the Coloradoan, told me: “My concern is whether the traditional media is in a position to do the election justice. There just aren’t enough eyeballs on these races to do the critical analysis.”
 

So how are the local journalists who still have jobs going innovate to cover the elections with fewer resources?

Moore, who’s assigned himself to the 4^th Congressional District Race, said he’s had preliminary discussions with Adam Schrager at 9News about working with the University of Colorado and Colorado State University to do quick fact-checks of political advertisements.
 

“We expect a lot of sketchy ads this fall,” Moore said, “and there just aren’t enough bodies to get this basic political journalism done.”
Many of the bodies still practicing journalism can be found at The Denver Post. What kind of coverage can we expect from the state’s number-one newspaper?
 

“For print, for the mother ship, if you will, I really think the way we covered the Udall-Schaffer campaign in 2008 is the kind of model that I would like to continue this time around,” Political Editor Curtis Hubbard at The Post told me.  “By that I mean, really trying to take …bigger picture’ looks and give readers a sense of where the candidates are on the issues and profiling them in that capacity and trying not to get distracted by the miscellaneous objects campaigns will throw up every day.”
 

Hubbard said he’s also considering finding citizen journalists to illuminate political events in new ways. One possibility is to “tap into people who might have access to events that we don’t have access to.”
 

Denver Post PoliticsWest blogger John Andrews invited me and the Independence Institute’s Dave Kopel to his newly minted Centennial Institute on the campus of Colorado Christian Univeristy Friday to discuss the demise of newspapers in America.