Getty, Shutterstock merging; And?

I saw this a week ago via LinkedIn News. Per one commenter there, it's pretty much a nothingburger unless other things change at the merged company.

Smartphone improvements and easier to use DSLRs (which have gotten cheaper with the rise of mirrorless) all put as much pressure on both Getty and Shutterstock as do AI.

The press release says that the merged company will be "cutting edge" on its own image search and use of AI. But? I've used one of the photo-generative AI programs twice. Even in a small town, I had enough internet to create Woody Allen in a cowboy hat in less than 5 minutes. Something else, not "real world" in that sense but more dynamic, took a little longer but not that much. And, when I had Substack do me an AI image for a post? Something "acceptable," which gets back to a commenter, took 2 minutes or so.

The only real hope for this merged company is a mixture of totally redefining itself and the hope for massive copyright lawsuits against AI scraping.

So, the "and," as usual with me in such situations, is ultimately rhetorical.

There is a sidebar to all of this.

It's arguable that many photos now copyrighted should be in the public domain, not because they're photos, or photos of a certain type, but that copyright law gives way too many years of protection with its various lengthenings over the last couple of decades, and that this doesn't benefit individuals nearly as much as rich corporations ... like Getty. "Who Owns This Sentence" is a GREAT book on the history of copyright.

Yeah, Getty will stick it to the people it pays for images that are new images. It's still part of the problem.

Wrong on the Associated Press, Matt Pearce

Pearce is generally a very good guy on journalism stuff. I've followed him on Shitter for years.

But this piece at his Substack, bemoaning Evil Craphouse (Gannett) shivving the AP is wrong.

First, let's do the obligatory perusing of Gannett's lie. Any money saved will not be used to improve Gannett journalism; it will instead pay off vulture capitalists and/or line CEO pockets.

OK, that said, the deal itself?

Had a, say, pre-vulture capitalism McClatchey made such a deal with Reuters, or maybe a Lee Enterprises, or some other middling to large newspaper chain with half a sense of real journalism and not in the clutches of vulture capitalism? I'd applaud it.

To expand on what I told Matt in comments?

First, the AP has been just as much behind the curve on all things internet as any individual newspaper chain.

Remember that it was Deano Singleton as chairman of the board of AP who proposed the "TV model" for internet newspapers even though pay cable channels and pay-per-view CCTV etc existed well before the early 1990s. Remember that the rest of AP's board signed off on that.

Since then? AP has hosted internet spam by Taboola for years, and followed that up last year by officially deciding to enter e-commerce with ... Taboola! This ignores the ethics issue of trying to report on shit you're selling. (It was doing other content-shady things besides its Taboola partnership 15 years ago.)

It also "misstated, then adjusted" how much of its revenue still comes from US print.

And, I mistrust how much money-laundering may be behind its community journalism support.

Feel free to report on any or all of that, Matt. Rather than Wall Street having long knives out for the AP, the AP has been hopping more and more in bed with Wall Street for years.

And, while we're at it, speaking of Deano from the past? Hell, Matt, let's take a look at the Associated Press' current board of directors. The odious Will Lewis is on it. (Update: David Folkenflik has dropped a massive thread on Shitter referencing a petition by WaPost staff, much of which directly references Lewis.) The dude who replaced Mary Junck (so hated and roasted by Bill McClellan at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch) at Lee Enterprises is there. (In fact, Junck was a former AP board chair.) Maia Abouelenein, before starting her own company, Digital and Savvy, was a bigwig at Google. Michael Newhouse, scion of the family that was one of the first larger chains to gut print newspapers, and in places like Cleveland, use webistes to do union-busting, is on it. In addition to the newspapers, Advance has a 30 percent chunk of Reddit, a slice of cable giant Charter and more. And, in NOLA, it was a fuck-up. That's a bunch of capitalist verschnizzle on a company that you claim Wall Street hates.

As for papers leaving it? The AP was slow to react, in and after the Great Recession, to members' needs and not offering more tiers of membership services, like say, half a dozen.

As for bashing Reuters? Reuters started just like AP, as a membership news aggregation and collection service, but in the UK not the US. It's no more evil than AP getting in bed with Taboola, if even that evil. Maybe Agence France-Presse will do something similar.

As for the fact that AP is a cooperative? Could be good, could be bad. As for the fact it's a nonprofit? The NFL is a 501(c)6 nonprofit. Catholic hospitals denying all women's reproductive services are nonprofits. The NRA is a nonprofit. Means nothing.

Non-responsive newspaper publishers

 I'm going to name two, both of whose positions — ME or similar — I saw on Journalism Jobs.

First, the Marysville (California) Appeal-Democrat. I noticed the opening about 10 days after they said "looking to fill immediately" but thought I would apply anyway, with a query as part of that. Marysville not the ideal place due to climate change; the Central Valley is going to get even more roasting in the future, and I don't know what Marysville's particular wildfire susceptibility is.

Flip side? Near Sacto, and not that pricey for California.

My query? That was a multi-part one, all related to pay being hourly, not salaried. I first wanted to know if this was due to some California state wage and hour law. I secondly wanted to know how they handled OT for the position.

Never heard back.

Second? The Emporia Gazette, home of William Allen White, and still owned by the White family, was looking for a "news and online" editor. Seemed to walk, talk and quack like an ME, but, the parent company, owning half a dozen or so papers in northeast and north central Kansas, may have consolidated management levels, and so, it's only one ME over the group, which would raise salary questions.

Anyway, this paper also said "looking to hire immediately," and wanted references as part of initial application. I generally don't do that, and per above, Marysville didn't ask. Without mentioning them by name, I mentioned "another newspaper" not wanting that, and told the Emporia publisher I wasn't attaching them.

No response. That said, the current news/online editor looked like they might also be adjunct faculty at Emporia State. Her LinkedIn and other items indicate she is there in some capacity, whether adjunct or graduate teaching assistant, after getting an MA, possibly as a second-career grad student, seven years ago.

Also, an old e-edition has two other county newspapers, from other counties, bundled with the Gazette. Also per that e-edition, they don't charge extra for out-of-county print subs; only out of state.

==

Update, Jan. 4, 2025: I have a backdoor answer on a third job — readvertised. AND? The original posting said "$80-100,000" on pay versus $75-$85K on this. (JournalismJobs deletes original postings when a position is readvertised, so I'm going by memory.) Yikes. Is Swift in that much trouble as a corporation, even with all that high-end real estate having been advertised in many of its papers? That said, Steamboat's e-edition, at least compared to what I remember 18 months ago on print issues of Vail, Aspen and even Glenwood, didn't have THAT many ads. Also, for allegedly being in such a hurry to fill the position, they're not, if they readvertised. And, from what I've heard, two weeks after that readvertisement, gotten an internal candidate to accept. Whether the paper set out to do that or not, it comes off as "resume skimming," something I've been a targeted part of before.

Always remember that the newspaper biz remains very capitalistic.

So, what does Muck Rack do to verify journos who don't have Twitter?

 I have a Muck Rack account. And, the Twitter account currently associated it was permabanned, i.e. "suspended," back in the Ice Balls Jack Dorsey days.

Well, what was my primary Twitter account until a month ago was originally locked until I delete six tweets in the Elmo Musk vs Ken Klippenstein world.

Ain't doing that, and two tertiary accounts of mine may just whither on the vine, since TweetDeck is no longer free.

Elmo's minions eventually unlocked my Twitter again, but the idea still stands?

So, that's more than just rhetorical. And, doesn't it show how behind the times Muck Rack is?

A new newspaper giant in the making?

 The Wall Street Journal has an interesting story on the dreams of David Hoffmann.

It notes he's the founder of Hoffmann Media. It adds that he owns 8.7 percent of Lee Enterprises, whose flagship is the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and which also owns a number of medium and larger dailies/former print dailies. That includes the Waco Tribune and the Bryan-College Station Eagle here in Texas. He also, just disclosed by him, has 5 percent of the Dallas Morning News' parent.

And, he wants to get this all combined.

He's already bought one small regional cluster off Lee, and said he's had some friendly talks with them. He's not yet talked with Belo. I think they'd be hesitant, but who knows?

On Lee, the story continues that he's only No. 2, apparently. An Indian investor last year acquired more than 10 percent, and the company adopted a poison pill in response.

Hoffmann said he thinks the American newspaper industry is undervalued. He also said any acquisition attempts would be non-hostile.

Beyond that, it looks audacious. Hoffmann Media is a bunch of nondaily and small daily papers, as in stuff primarily nondaily in print before COVID.

Besides the Post-Dispatch, Lee's papers include the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, Sioux City, Council Bluffs and Davenport in Iowa, the Omaha Herald and Lincoln Journal Star in Nebraska, Buffalo News, Tulsa World, etc, etc. Unless Hoffmann has a LOT of money elsewhere, or some VERY friendly banksters, how does he pull this off? Per Forbes, he's got a real estate mini-empire, and he's from near St. Louis, so a personal interest in Lee's top newspapers. I think he'd have to do some liquidation of his real estate assets as part of such a move.

Schizophrenia at the Texas Trib: Creating local newsrooms after previous layoffs

 The Trib has announced it will:

(C)reate, partner or merge with local, community-based newrooms that inform residents more deeply about their communities. We’ll start this effort in Waco by creating a new local newsroom, which we anticipate will launch in early 2025, followed by an Austin newsroom. The models for these newsrooms won’t be the same, because the needs of our different communities aren’t the same. In some places, we’ll create new newsrooms. In others, we will build newsrooms based on strategic partnerships with other outlets to leverage existing resources that can provide a broader and stronger news product. If there’s an opportunity to acquire a news outlet in transition and build on its work in support of a community, we will do that.

Interesting.

We know the Austin Stateless under Craphouse sucks. Why don't you just buy it instead?

Waco? The Trib under Lee Enterprises, after Warren Buffett's handoff, is struggling but not totally crap.

That said, this later part:

We are excited that the American Journalism Project has made a $2.75 million investment to support the transformation of our business model, as well as our revenue generation capabilities in both Waco and Austin.

Why isn't the AJP working directly in those cities? How much of a cut does the Trib and its Goddam Sachs backgrounded CEO get?

And, didn't you lay off people just a year ago?

Another fail at the Gainesville Register

 This time, it's the Gainesville (Texas) Register actually having local news of importance, but burying it in print.

The town of 16,000 had a shooting late last week. They had a story about it in the Tuesday, Nov. 5, print edition — and buried it on page 3. On the top spread in front, they ran something about local polling places and the election. That's fine. On a two-column, or wide one-colum, rail at the right? They ran something either from CNHI Texas-wide, or else the Texas Trib, about election security. And ran it all the way down the page. (An oversized football photo from one of the smaller schools in the county, not Gainesville, and a brief blurb about the end of the regular season in high school football coming up filled the four left columns of the rest of the front page).

That's NOT fine. The shooting had the additional angle of being a dispute between two brothers that boiled over. I'm not totally of the "if it bleeds, it leads," but that should have been on the front page.

It's also buried on the website. As of Thursday afternoon, when I was writing this, it was in the "most popular" tab at bottom right. But, not on the top half of the website at all. The only local "article" is raw numbers from local voting and it's not clearly identified as local.

CNHI sucks. It sucks so much it has one editor over this paper, Weatherford and Cleburne (maybe Greenville will fire its current editor eventually and expand this) who made that decision. Yeah, they're stretched thin, but it was still a dumb decision.