True to the words of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s robot assassin in the Terminator, I am back and I’m blogging again. (I had complaints that I had stopped blogging – thanks for those.)
I have been busy. Most recently I have been paid to blog. I am now lead blogger on a new AOL-owned website called Daily Finance (my RSS feed right). Before that I was (unpaid) running a blog at the National Union of Journalists’ (NUJ) annual delegate meeting (ADM). It has been hectic.
So much has happened. News Now has ceased using national newspapers on its new aggregator service because of demands for payment from the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA). A company called Meltwater is now challenging the basis of that in the courts.
Links for free
I have not had time to get to the basis of the NUJ’s argument that aggregators should pay. But my gut reaction is to back the Meltwater. If you provide links to the source articles and don’t copy the articles themselves then that should be free.
News Now was a much more sophisticated search engine than the newspapers’ own websites. It found stories related to insurance that never appeared when searching each paper individually. And whoever designed the Telegraph’s search engine, for example, should be taken out and shot.
A Right to Link campaign has started. I am minded to back it.
Elinor and Kat
Elinor and Kat
NUJ ADM
Covering the NUJ’s ADM was a great, if knackering experience. The next issue of the journalist will include a fair chunk of the students’ work but the website itself is worth a look.
My full report on it says all I need to say, but I’d repeat here how great both Kat and Elinor are. I know Kat has spoken to a few editors I have recommended and I hope she gets a job out of teaching NCTJ law and into a newsroom where she belongs.
Elinor would be a good poach if anyone is interested in a reporter with a nose for news.
And finally
I was Jon Slattery’s third journalist to review the year and make predictions for 2009. This does not suggest I am the third most important. I think I was the third to reply.
In fact, quite possibly, I was the first to reply but he managed to convince two more interesting and important people to answer his questions before he had to use my answers.
Aggregator site News Now has revealed a few more details of the legal battle it faces against the major daily and local UK newspapers over its linking.
