News

With possible layoffs putting The Associated Press on the top of our layoff watch, employees at the newswire are understandably anxious about losing their jobs. Silicon Alley Insider reports that an AP "Town Hall" meeting will be held next month, and that those concerns will probably be on the top of the list of issues addressed by CEO Tom Curley.

Curley says addressing employees via Q&A sessions are business as usual, but there is obviously one question on most workers' minds: Will they have a job come Christmas?

Update: AP spokesperson Paul Colford has notified us that the town hall meeting has been scheduled since October 1, and that it's primary focus will be on "the outcome of the AP's recent management retreat at Lake Placid."

Official memo about the conference after the jump.

AP Bigwigs Host Town Hall To Ease Paranoid Staffers -- Silicon Alley Insider

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Here's a talking point: can the Associated Press charge certain parties who want exclusive access to its content? How would such a model work?

Speaking before the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents' Club on Tuesday, the AP's chief executive Tom Curley mentioned that the international news collective was "considering whether to sell news stories to some online customers exclusively for a certain period, perhaps half an hour."

Although Curley didn't outline how these payments would be enacted or upheld, the thought has caused some discussion among members of the news media.

Yesterday, our sister blog PRNewser asked publicists how they felt about the possible move. "In a 24/7 news cycle where people can get information instantly, the AP idea seems absurd," said Keith Trivitt, account executive at RLM Public Relations.

This is not the first time the AP revealed new methods for protecting their content and monetizing it. Earlier this year, the AP announced the development of a registry that would track and tag the AP's content so the organization can keep track who is using -- or misusing -- its content around the Web.

What do you think about these new developments? Are they necessary?

And while we're on the topic of the AP, our colleagues at Mobile Content Today interviewed the AP's senior VP of global product development Jane Seagrave about its new pricey AP Stylebook iPhone app. The didn't discuss the latest plan to charge for exclusive content, but it's an interesting peek into some of the things the AP is working on and why.

Update: The AP send us this comment on Curley's statements earlier this week:

"The Associated Press is exploring numerous opportunities on many fronts to meet the needs and challenges of the digital media era and to support our global journalism.

As discussed this week by AP President and CEO Tom Curley in Hong Kong, the AP news registry, announced in April and now in development, will greatly improve and quicken the discovery of authoritative news produced by the AP and its member news organizations and empower them to better serve their readers and customers."

Related: AP Creates Registry To Protect Content Online

It's only natural that, in the days following the announcement of four magazine closures at Condé Nast, everyone around the industry would have something to say. (We also had our own thoughts on getting laid off.)

Last night, at the mediabistro.com cocktail party we hosted, the Condé closings were on everyone's mind. We were asked, why didn't the company look to sell longstanding epicurean title Gourmet instead of shuttering it? Our party guests weren't the only ones wondering this. Former New York Sun managing editor Ira Stoll blogged about this very topic on The Future of Capitalism blog, focusing on the antitrust angle of a company closing one title but keeping another in the same category going.

Here are some other things that people are talking about:

- The New York Observer looked at how Condé Nast can look towards a future in digital -- especially in their epicurean and bridal areas. "One source from Condé Nast Digital told The Observer that [Gourmet's] Web projects may be folded into BonAppetit.com, the site of Condé Nast's other magazine about food and cooking, but those plans could not be confirmed."

- The New York Post reports that "at least three Condé Nast titles are said to be considering frequency chops as a way to shave budgets" by the approximately 25 percent mandated by company execs. Those said to be mulling cutting their frequencies include Allure, W and Lucky.

- Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl called The New York Times' Kim Severson, "sounding tired and reflective and sad." Reichl revealed that she is working on new book that will focus on "the Condé Nast years." She will also continue to travel to support the new cookbook Gourmet Today and will debut the public television show "Gourmet's Adventures With Ruth" later this month.

And check out Jon Stewart's solution to Condé Nast's problems in the clip above, Pregnant Gourmet Bride magazine.

Related: Confessions Of A Condé Nast Layoff Victim

Yesterday, when news broke that film director Roman Polanski had been arrested in Switzerland after decades on the lam, the Associated Press' report on the matter was a headline and then a few lines of reporters' and editors' notes:

Swiss arrest Polanski on US request in sex case

Associated Press, 09.27.09, 10:41 AM EDT

OK, can you do some more probing? New York will want to know

frank's out today.

i checked already, and so did zurich. they say the question is irrelevant. he answered me with the quote i used, about we knew when he was coming this time. he's been here many times in the past, we think.

thx brad. aptn is aware, but unfortunately won't make it in time, but is hoping to catch tail end.

i'm pushing out another writethru with some more background details before press conference.

no surprise, new york is really hot on this.

they particularly want to know why now. (has he never set foot in switzerland before?) sheila, theorizes that's because they're under intense pressure over ubs and want to throw the U.S. a bone, but can yo ucheck with justice department sources there?

is frank around too, or are you alone?

u can tell aptn press conf 1700 (15 gmt) in bern at the parliament

i'll watch it live on internet

As The Business Insider noted, other news sites took the story down, but this link on Forbes.com still directed readers to the story as recently as an hour ago. An AP spokesman told us human error and technical issues caused the internal communication to be published yesterday, and noted it has since been taken down from the Forbes.com site.

But the AP's mistake reveals the many questions that Polanski's arrest has raised for journalists and legal experts. And what is this possible UBS connection?

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We've been keeping an eye on Stars & Stripes' coverage of The Rendon Group, a private public relations company that profiled reporters who requested embeds with the military in Afghanistan. Now, they report that the Pentagon has canceled its $1.5 million contract with the company.

In an article on Monday, the military publication reported that U.S. public affairs specialists in Afghanistan revealed that all reporters were profiled by Rendon prior to being embedded. But there were mixed reports all week as to whether or not journalists had been denied an embed based on their previous coverage.

On Friday, Stars & Stripes reported that the background reports were "used by military officials to deny disfavored reporters access to American fighting units or otherwise influence their coverage as recently as 2008." But other military officials are still denying that report.

As PRNewser reports even after news of the contract cancellation came out, one military spokesperson said in NPR interview that the practice of denying reporters embed positions based on their background reports was "flat out incorrect."

Update: New York public radio station WNYC points us to an August 7 interview on its "On The Media" program. During the interview, Matt Mabe, a journalist and soldier in the U.S. Army, revealed the military's use of background checks:

"The military is now commissioning private companies to research, profile and make assessments about reporters' previous military coverage. They rate it using pie charts and graphs...and finish it off with a summary evaluation, which to me carries an almost Orwellian overtone.

"For example, we have a reporter on the ground right now, and his assessment reads like this: 'Given his neutral to positive sentiment typical in his narrative reporting, as well as the characterization of his media outlet, which is politically center right, one may expect this reporter to produce coverage that is, at the least, neutral in sentiment and representative of the military point of view of events, if not neutral to positive.'

"Now, the idea here is to figure out the best place to put them or prevent them from embedding at all. And, in my opinion, this just counters the ideals that we who wear the uniform are expected to represent."

Listen to the whole interview here:

PRNewser: Pentagon Cancels Rendon Contract Over Profiling Flap

Earlier: An Embedded Reporters' Thoughts On His Own Background Report

The New York Times magazine this Sunday will feature a 13,000-word article that reveals the findings of a two-year investigation that was a joint venture between the Times and non-profit investigative organization ProPublica.

The piece's author, Sheri Fink, details the stories of what happened to patients who died at New Orlean's Memorial Medial Center after Hurricane Katrina. The lengthy story is something that we're seeing less and less of in newspapers and consumer magazines (outside of the New Yorker, that is): long form journalism.

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Over the weekend, a blog post on Mashable.com opened up a fresh wound for the Associated Press, forcing the news collective to put out a statement denying claims it was planning to charge as much as $2.50 a word for bloggers to quote its content.

According to AP spokesman Paul Colford, these worries are more than a year old, stemming from the company's partnership with iCopyright, which dates back to April 2008, not this April, as the Mashable blog reported.

"AP partners with iCopyright to automate fulfillment of routine requests for rights to republish AP material, either from AP-hosted sites or member and customer sites carrying AP content," the AP said in a statement. "The licensing options vary greatly, from an array of uses -- such as e-mail, print and save -- through paid options up to and including large-scale corporate reprints of excerpts, full articles or photos."

The latest claims that the AP plans to charge for use of its content seem to have sprung up in light of the news collective's announcement late last month that it is launching a registry to tag and track its content so that it won't be plagiarized or misused. We're eager to see how this registry will be implemented and who will be affected, but Colford assured us that it has nothing to do with the iCopyright deal.

"As the AP stated more than a year ago, the form is not aimed at bloggers," the company said of the iCopyright deal. "It is intended to make it easy for people who want to license AP content to do so."

This week, the weekly Jewish newspaper the Forward announced that will now host Zeek: A Journal of Jewish Thought and Culture on its Web site, TheJewishDailyForward.com.

Forward Editor Jane Eisner spoke with FishbowlNY this week to explain why her pub decided to partner with the cultural publication Zeek and how she feels about competition from other Jewish magazines like the recently launched online magazine Tablet.

"This partnership is something that has been in the works for several months," Eisner said. "It didn't come in response to anything else that any other publication was doing."

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NBC is reporting that New York appellate court judge Sonia Sotomayor will be President Barack Obama's first nominee for the Supreme Court of the United States. If the nomination is approved, she will be the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, making Sotomayor's nomination a number of firsts.

The president is set to formally announce his nomination later this morning.

Since it seems like almost everyone is heading out to the Hamptons this weekend, we thought we would give you a little Long Island media news.

Earlier this week, a federal judge said he will consider whether Long Island paper Newsday and TV station News 12 (both owned by Cablevision) can publish or broadcast photos or video of Nassau County Legislator Roger Corbin in handcuffs.

Corbin was arrested for tax evasion after failing to report income over $225,000 and lying about it, according to news reports. His lawyer, Thomas Liotti, filed a request with the court banning photos of Corbin in handcuffs after Newsday published eight pictures of the lawmaker with his hands behind his back as part of their coverage of his case, the paper reported. Newsday and News 12 argue that under the First Amendment they are free to publish any photos they wish.

But on Wednesday, Judge Arthur Spatt ruled that such images of Corbin might violate his right to a fair trial, so he scheduled a hearing on the matter. However, Judge Spatt refused to grant Liotti's requests banning Newsday and News 12 from publishing the photos before the hearing and ordering Long Island authorities to stop walking Corbin around -- in the aptly-titled "perp walk" -- in front of cameras.

It's an interesting case that raises questions of freedom of the press and public figures' right to privacy. If he wasn't a legislator, would Corbin still be getting the same treatment from the judge? Papers and local television stations publish and broadcast photos of suspects in handcuffs all the time. And, if every citizen has access to the same photos, why is Corbin's right to a fair trial in danger more than others? Do you think its fair for a federal judge to tell the media what to publish?