Clarity Digital Group (Examiner/NowPublic) And It’s Uncivil Corporate Culture

As part of homework creating an advert for TV, Cinema, Radio or in poster format, one of my students produced this! I think this is fantastic and is especially useful for countries in Asia where this sort of artwork is popular! Image Credit: edu4drr.org

Clarity Digital Group (Examiner/NowPublic) And It’s Uncivil Corporate Culture

Embedded in this posting is an article that notes an earthquake of a different nature (On March 17th, LA was hit with a 4.4 earthquake which jolted this author out of bed) and it exposes the corporate culture of a journalistic enterprise run by J-School graduates over the closure of a New Media hallmark after its purchase and mismanagement through to its process of “Going Dark”.

The issue centers on the process of how Clarity Digital Group (Examiner) out of Denver, CO decided to cease the operations of NowPublic – Crowd-Powered News at the end of 2013 and the defense of the process they employed.

This excerpted and edited from Politisite -

NowPublic – Were Intellectual Property Rights ignored?
Karl Gotthardt - March 17, 2014

NowPublic was a crowd-sourced citizen journalism site based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, founded by Michael Tippett, Leonard Brody and Michael E. Meyers in 2005.

In addition to its contributors, NowPublic also had a content-sharing agreement with the Associated Press. The crowd-sourced site was so successful that Time Magazine called NowPublic one of the 50 Best Websites of 2007.

Maryanne Murray Buechner of Time Magazine stated:

NowPublic was a successful crowd sourced media site.

Mainstream media types may gripe about the absence of safeguards ensuring the validity of news reported by the blogosphere, but nowhere are the merits of citizen journalism more apparent than at NowPublic. At this "participatory news network," a.k.a. bastion of "crowd-powered media," anyone can write a story, or upload images, audio or video.

Whatever gets the most votes from the reading masses—the site gets about 1 million unique visitors per month—ends up as the lead story. (NowPublic has "guest editors," "wranglers" and an "actual news guy" who keep an eye on things, giving advice to contributing reporters and shepherding the best, most timely stuff through, but nobody on staff makes actual editing changes to the content.)

NowPublic now counts nearly 97,000 contributing reporters in more than 140 countries around the world. During Hurricane Katrina, NowPublic was there; eight contributors filed on-the-scene reports from London's Heathrow Airport during the August 2006 terrorism lockdown—while the regular press was forced to wait outside. On June 6 NowPublic's coverage of a storm in Oman made it to the top of the AOL and Yahoo news sites.

In September 2009 NowPublic was acquired by Clarity Digital Group. Clarity is solely owned by the Anschutz company, an investment company located in Denver, Colorado. According to reports, Leonard Brody assumed the position of President of the Clarity Digital Group and Michael Tippet became the CEO of NowPublic after the sale.

In December 2013 Clarity closed the NowPublic site and redirected it to www.examiner.com.

On 27 December 2013, Clarity Digital Group took NowPublic, a successful crowd-sourced citizen journalism site, off the web and failed to give notice to contributors to permit them to recover their intellectual property. While Clarity is within their right to remove any of its sites off the web, NowPublic contributors maintain that they should have received notice in order to recover their intellectual property.

NowPublic's Terms of Service stated in part:

"Unless otherwise stated for specific Services, You will retain ownership and all related rights in any original information or other content that you publish on the Site or through the Services. In the event of any inconsistency between the provisions of these Terms of Service and the applicable license terms, these Terms of Service shall prevail to the extent of such inconsistency and such license terms shall be deemed to have been modified, in writing, by NowPublic and You."

However, unlike other crowd-sourced sites, Clarity claims that it has no obligation to permit access to the NowPublic content.

In a reply to Rhonda Mangus, a former NowPublic Advisory Council Member/Producer, Clarity Digital Group stated through its attorney, Deborah Shinbein:

Although we understand that the shut-down of NowPublic.com may have come as a surprise to you, we are baffled by your assertion that NowPublic or its parent company may owe you (or any other contributor to the site) any sort of reports, opportunity to access content, or anything else with regard to the site.

You have not been under a contract through which you were eligible to receive payments for your contributions since 2010, and any reporting obligations NowPublic previously had with regard to your contributions (if any) would have ended at the time your status as a paid contributor to NowPublic.com was terminated. We did provide notice to the individuals who were current (or recent) paid contributors to NowPublic.com, however you were clearly not among that group of individuals.

Attorney Shinbein's response speaks for itself and, among other matters, clearly raises the question as to why intellectual property rights were ignored by Clarity Digital Group. Additionally, none of the major NowPublic contributors we contacted were notified of NowPublic's intention to go off-line.

According to the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, intellectual property is defined as follows:

Intellectual property (IP) refers to the creations of the mind, such as inventions, literary and artistic works, as well as symbols, names, pictures, designs and models used in business. Patents, trade-marks, copyright, industrial designs, integrated circuit topographies and plant breeders' rights are referred to as "IP rights." Just as rights are acquired when a building or land is purchased, IP rights are "property" in the sense that they are based on the legal right to exclude others from using the property. Ownership of the rights can also be transferred.

Source: Intellectual Property Office

It should not come as a surprise to Clarity Digital Group that those who contributed to NowPublic would want to recover the content they contributed.

Current Industry Practice

It has been common industry practice for crowd-sourced sites to give notification to contributors and archive contributed material. As an example one can highlight Vizify's notification to its contributors which, unlike NowPublic, warned its contributors of its purchase by Yahoo and its impending closure.

While Vizify gave its contributors an opportunity to recover their material, no such notification was given to NowPublic contributors, nor was a sunset period granted to retrieve their intellectual property as was highlighted in the NowPublic Terms of Service.

As a consequence, references are gone, bios disappeared and personal footage and videos are unavailable and the tens-of-thousands of back-links to NowPublic content placed on sites over the World Wide Web.

Maireid Sullivan, a former NowPublic economics guest editor, noted that the Vizify notification to its supporters and contributors should be held up as an example of how to do business in the digital age.

To that, Edmund Jenks former NowPublic feature manager related:

When I first woke up and read the attached notice I thought to myself "Who the heck is Vizify?" than I realized that it was forwarded as a minimum example on how to close down an ongoing News Media web and portal.

Yes! This should be held up as an appropriate and civil way on a way a company treats those they provided a service for and had a relationship with.

NowPublic did not provide this opportunity to its contributors, nor was there ever any appreciation for the contributed material and its contribution to the success of the company. Those contributors, who have moved on to other sites, can no longer use the links to their articles, nor do they have the ability to republish them elsewhere. Nowpublic's blog syndication caused thousands of 'dead links' as Nowpublic linked each key word and a link to the story back to their personal sites. This action was beneficial as long as the links were live. Now that those links are 'dead', Google ranks such stories lower in search engines.

Aside from any legal considerations, Clarity Digital Group should do the right thing and make the material available to its former contributors.

Says Mangus:

"It's unfortunate that Clarity Digital Group has taken such a position. It should serve as a warning to present writers for Examiner that they could find themselves in the same situation if the Examiner decides to 'go dark' in the future."
[Reference Here]

To be direct, the corporate culture at Examiner is at the very least uncivil … and at worst vindictive. It is as if Examiner was being dragged into New Media against the wishes of the J-School trained management that conceptually implements and runs the joint.

If one were able to compare the internet savvy tools offered between the two sites – NowPublic versus Examiner – even though Examiner has improved over the years since 2009 through the purchase of NowPublic … the publishing portal and contributing community the site was constructed to serve at NowPublic would still outshine anything offered up by Examiner, Clarity Digital Group, LLC.

Of Note: Edmund Jenks (The EDJE) served as a Feature Page Manager and Editor/Contributor to NowPublic through to the time the site was shut down at the end of 2013. He was continually in the top 20 (most often in the top 10 before appointment to Feature Page Manager – Motorsports) of a cast tens of thousands of contributors and his work was seen by about 1.75 Million viewers. He currently has been a multiple title Examiner in good standing since November, 2009 and has 27 Trophies in his Clarity Digital Group participation case located on his Dashboard.

(I should have noted my viewers as 17.5 million ’cause who would know after how the site was shut down and re-directed … okay, 175 million … and so on, and so on, and so on …)

… notes from The EDJE

NY Times & McCain – Secures Expected "Flatline" Response

John McCain and his wife Cindy refute a critical story in The New York Times at a press conference in Toledo, Ohio, Thursday. Image Credit: AP Photo

NY Times & McCain – Secures Expected "Flatline" Response

Nobody really thinks that the New York Times … or any mainstream newspaper … actually pursues reporting (just the facts) or working in a professional journalistic manner any more. Especially on topics that involve the Government and Politics. What the MSM has trouble doing is separating the liberal, socialist agenda biases and activism with the job of providing useful information based upon true investigative and written journalistic ethics.

John McCain is a target for the New York Times because he holds his attitude and character out to be hallmarks of un-impeachable behavior.

The New York Times sat on this “story” until now because John McCain, for the first time just this last week, took off after the Democrats in their bid to become the preferred candidate for the office of President of the United States.

It is the opinion here, at MAXINE, that the New York Times wanted to place the first “brush back” move on John McCain in order to have him shrink back into his familiar “Maverick” territory and move back to his more liberal center positions.

Again, this week, on the campaign stump, John McCain began to position himself with a little more of the conservative base perspective when he spoke against the prospects of a Democrat controlled Presidency. What better way to have John McCain become more beatable than to have him become more supporting of liberal policies of the Democrat Party? By hitting McCain and smearing his character, McCain will go back to being more McCain like! If all we have is liberal policies and agendas to vote for … WHY NOT JUST VOTE FOR A DEMOCRAT – or not vote at all.

When John McCain came out for his first news conference in front of reporters to answer questions, what we were treated to was a flatline response from John McCain. It was DEAD and without passion … one word responses without a clear indignation of the tactics of the New York Times. He was agitated, but without edge.

It is just this motive and response from John McCain we think the New York Times has moved this week with this smear story against John McCain.

The NYT got exactly what they wanted without much of a mark on them because this is what WE, the reading public, come to expect.

John McCain, left, and Vicki Iseman. Published reports later suggested a possible relationship between Ms. Iseman and John McCain. Both have denied it. Image Credit: Getty Images

This excerpted from CBS Broadcasting –

McCain: Reports Of Relationship 'Not True'
Reports Question His Relationship With Lobbyist Vicki Iseman
TOLEDO, Ohio (CBS)

John McCain denied a romantic relationship with a female telecommunications lobbyist and said a report by The New York Times suggesting favoritism for her clients is "not true."

"I'm very disappointed in the article. It's not true," the likely Republican presidential nominee said as his wife, Cindy, stood alongside him during a news conference called to address the matter.

McCain described the woman in question, lobbyist Vicki Iseman, as a friend.

The newspaper quoted anonymous aides as saying they had urged McCain and Iseman to stay away from each other before to his failed presidential campaign in 2000. In its own follow-up story, The Washington Post quoted longtime aide John Weaver, who split with McCain last year, as saying he met with lobbyist Iseman and urged her to stay away from McCain.

Weaver told the Times he arranged the meeting after "a discussion among the campaign leadership" about Iseman.

McCain said he was unaware of any such conversation.

The Arizona senator said he won't allow the report to distract him from his presidential campaign.

"I will focus my attention in this campaign on the big issues and on the challenges that face this country," he said.
----
"This is like the worst kind of tabloid journalism," McCain campaign manager Rick Davis told CBS' The Early Show. "We think it's unfair, unjust and inaccurate."

The published reports said McCain and Iseman each denied having a romantic relationship, and the paper offered no evidence that they had, saying only that aides worried about the appearance of McCain having close ties to a lobbyist with business before the Senate Commerce Committee on which McCain served.

The story alleges that McCain wrote letters and pushed legislation involving television station ownership that would have benefited Iseman's clients.
----
McCain defended his integrity last December, after he was questioned about reports that the Times was investigating allegations of legislative favoritism by the Arizona Republican and that his aides had been trying to dissuade the newspaper from publishing a story.

"I've never done any favors for anybody - lobbyist or special-interest group. That's a clear, 24-year record," he told reporters in Detroit.
Reference Here>>

This updated information from Bill Bradley at PJM's New West Notes -

** A MCCAIN STORY IRONY, AND A BIG CALIFORNIA CONNECTION**

The New Republic has a brand new story on the back story of the New York Times’ publication of the story. Some say the planned New Republic publication prompted the New York Times to publish late yesterday.

The New Republic reports that the Washington bureau chief of the Times, Dean Baquet, played the key managerial role in pushing the story forward, against the skepticism of Times editor Bill Keller.

What the New Republic piece doesn’t say, since it’s written by an Easterner, is that, prior to becoming the Washington bureau chief of the New York Times, Dean Baquet was the managing editor of the Los Angeles Times. And in his role at the LA Times, Baquet was deeply involved with and a key internal advocate of the late-breaking LA Times story during the 2003 California recall slamming Arnold Schwarzenegger.

That story proved to be a major backfire, as Schwarzenegger not only survived but went on to a landslide victory, with most not buying the convenient late timing of the story and its prior awareness by top Democrats. The LA Times and its influence has been on a steep downslope ever since.

I wonder if the McCain story will have a similar effect on the New York Times.
Reference Here>>

You know, when one has a chance to reflect:

That since it is well known that the New York Times editorial staff was “sitting” on this story for several months now (according to the New Republic) and that the paper had just given their formal endorsement as their choice as the Republican Party candidate they would like to see as President (if it had to be a Republican, presumably) just before the Super Tuesday primaries …

… This whole episode of a smear story about John McCain, of eight (8) years ago, published by the New York Times says a lot more about the character of the New York Times than it does about the character of John McCain.

Fairness Doctrine vs Citizen Journalism

Recognizing the threat of China's growing online community, Chinese President Hu Jintao called in January for the Internet to be "purified", and the government has since launched a number of online crackdowns. Image Credit: AFP

Fairness Doctrine vs Citizen Journalism

Here in the good ol’ USA, we have members of our congress walking the halls complaining about the success of “Talk Radio” and how it needs to be regulated. A recent account observed that senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Hillary Clinton (D-CA) were conversing about how the “Fairness Doctrine” needs to re-implemented in order to curb the free market influences that rule the popularity of this broadcast and communications medium.

This doctrine grew out of concern back in 1949 because of the large number of applications for radio station being submitted and the limited number of frequencies available. Broadcasters had to make sure they did not use their stations simply as advocates with a singular perspective. Rather, they had to allow all points of view. That requirement was to be enforced by FCC mandate. With the deregulation sweep of the Reagan Administration during the 1980s, the Federal Communications Commission dissolved the fairness doctrine.

It is funny how our currently elected leadership waxes philosophical regarding the limitation of free speech in the face of the communications landscape that exists today. The focus on the success of Talk Radio and the Fairness Doctrine leaves behind the rest of the singularly liberal forces that exist with mainstream broadcast television, newspaper print media, and the educator class that run our universities.

Oh!, And let us not forget the freedom of speech and communication that has become the “Wild West” landscape of the internet. How will our elected leaders like Boxer and Clinton address the internet in light of this concept of the “Fairness Doctrine”? … Maybe they can draw on the experience the political leaders in China.

Excerpts from Agence France-Presse via Breitbart -

'Citizen journalism' battles the Chinese censors
AFP - Jun 24 11:44 PM US/Eastern

In the strictly controlled media world of communist China, "citizen journalism" is beating a way through censorship, breaking taboos and offering a pressure valve for social tensions.

In one striking example this month, the Internet was largely responsible for breaking open a slave scandal in two Chinese provinces that some local authorities had been complicit in.

A letter posted on the Internet by 400 parents of children working as slaves in brickyards was the trigger for the national press to finally report on the scandal that some rights groups say had been going on for years.

The parents' Internet posting was part of a growing phenomenon for marginalised people in China who can not otherwise have their complaints addressed by the traditional, government-controlled press.

"The phenomenon of 'citizen journalism' suddenly arrived several years ago," said Beijing-based dissident Liu Xiaobo, who was one of the student leaders of the 1989 Tiananmen democracy protests.

"Since the appearance of blogs in particular, every blog is a new platform for the spread of information."

He cited the example of a couple in the southwestern city of Chongqing who became known as the "Stubborn Nails" in April because they refused to leave their home until they received adequate compensation from the property developer who wanted them out.
----
"That case was first revealed through blogs," Liu said.

Also in Chongqing, parts of the city were this month set on fire following the beating of flower sellers by the "chengguan", city police charged with "cleaning up" the city's roads.

Witnesses to the beatings had appealed to local television journalists, but nothing was broadcast.

The incident only became known outside the city thanks to photos and stories published on the Internet, sparking anger among China's netizens.

"It's fascism," said one, while another mocked: "The inhabitants of Chongqing are truly naive, the Chinese media is all controlled by the Communist Party, they decide what people know."
----
Recognising the threat of China's growing online community, Chinese President Hu Jintao called in January for the Internet to be "purified", and the government has since launched a number of online crackdowns.

"The department of propaganda has sent out regulations to try and control the opinions being spread on the Internet, but every citizen has the right to criticise or to take part in public affairs on the Internet," said Zhu Dake, a professor at Shanghai Tongji University.

"The government has to accept the criticisms of the people, it can no longer react crudely like in the past."

Julien Pain, who monitors Internet freedom issues for Reporters Without Borders, is less optimistic.

"One cannot truly say that the Internet in China is becoming more and more free, because at the same time as the development of citizen journalists, the government finds ways of blocking or censoring content," Pain said.

Reporters Without Borders, which labels the Chinese government an "enemy of the Internet," says about 50 cyber dissidents are currently behind bars in China.
Reference Here>>

At least here in America, we have the First Amendment in our Constitution.

Even Senators John Kerry, Dick Durbin, and Diane Feinstein and their wishes to stop the "hyperbole" coming from a free and open media with a fairness doctrine ... will not be able to "purify" the American communications landscape.
(ht: The Museum of Broadcast Communications and Fox News)