Staff-written magazine archives can be repackaged and re-sold as "collections"

A new revenue opportunity may be open to magazines which can repackage their archival material into iPad-only collections, according to a story about The New Yorker, published by Reuters. At the Ballpark, a collection of staff-written baseball writing from 1929 to 2011, features John Updike, David Grann and the inimitable Roger Angell. The revenue came from sponsorship by United Airlines. There

When isn't it plagiarism? When it's "promotion" for Men's Health, apparently

Dave Zinczenko, the editor of Men's Health, was accused of plagiarizing his own writers by the blog Gawker for cutting and pasting old Men's Health content, removing the bylines and putting the material in his Yahoo column "Eat This, Not That".  Zincezenko told Gawker We use this material to grow traffic and awareness for the Men's Health and Women's Health brands and a variety of Rodale

Rogers syndication practices called into question by Canadian Writers Group

Derek Finkle who runs the Canadian Writers Group, an agency that represents some of Canada's most successful magazine freelancers, has called into question how one large magazine publisher, Rogers is syndicating articles to third party websites. Essentially it is that magazine articles are being posted on third party websites such as Yahoo and MSN by Rogers despite signed contracts with writers

Photographers tell People magazine "When you put our photos on an iPad, you have to pay"

In a tussle that may have implications for Canadian magazine publishers and their freelance contributors, Time Inc.'s People magazine has apparently had to postpone the launch of its iPad app because photographers want additional payments for use of their images.According to a front page story in the Hollywood Reporter, more than a dozen agencies representing photographers are balking at the

Writer's open letter to Canadian writers urges them to join "a real union"

In the accelerating turmoil of e-rights and relations between editors and publishers and their freelancers, here is an interesting take on the situation, from writer Sarah Sheard. In her blog she has written an open letter counselling Canadian writers to consider joining the U.S.-based National Writers' Union. She met with two officials of the NWU in June, soon after resigning from The Writers'

Why I won't sign the Transcontinental contract, by Kim Pittaway

A post by Kim Pittaway on the site Bad Writing Contracts is both brave and thought-provoking, and by rights should provoke some reconsideration by Transcontinental Media about the master contract it is imposing on freelancers. It's headed "Why I won't sign the Transcontinental contract". Pittaway, former editor-in-chief and managing editor of Chatelaine magazine and past president of the National

National Geographic starts selling entire archive, free of obligations to freelance contributors

National Geographic has just released for sale a complete digital archive of the magazine going back to October 1888, following a pair of federal appeals court rulings in June 2008 that says U.S. magazine and newspaper publishers may transfer their published archives to digital format and sell them without paying further fees to freelancer contributors.
According to a story published by Folio:,