We’ve received quite a few complimentary comments that VentnorBlog has forced the County Press to up it’s online game *blush*.
We see that the CP has now followed our lead on using photos from photo sharing site, Flickr, to illustrate their stories. But is it right for such a profitable company, like the CP, to do that?
Early Web Pioneers
We lift our hat to Maurice Bower of the CP who took them publicly online back in 1999 when the CP’s Website launched – a pioneering move for its day. Since then many have commented that the pace of innovation appeared to drop to a crawl.
Over the time that VB has been operating, it’s the last 9 – 12 months that the CP has really had to up their game.
They’ve radically changed the number of stories that they put out on a daily basis on the Web. It used to be one or two, now it’s considerably more.
If you look at the printed CP now and you cut out the adverts, and the stories that have appeared online, we suspect that it’s getting close to the point where it’s almost not worth paying for the paper.
They’ve put a few (shaky) videos up and they’ve even – shock horror – put out some audio on the site.
You’ve got to roll with it
The latest change arrived on Friday last week.
We know that they must be sore at VentnorBlog having beaten them to publishing the story about the likelihood of Oasis playing the Isle of Wight Festival – after all VB has only been around for five minutes and they’ve been established for over a one hundred years, with a substantial staff – there’s only a few of us here, but we’re beating them to stories.
We thought that Alan Mariott, the CP Editor, would have a little more imagination though than just blindly following VB.
To illustrate their catch-up article on Oasis, not only have they copied VB‘s idea on using Flickr photos, but they’ve also gone and used a photograph from the same photographer!
Free-loading?
We, as a tiny organisation, made the choice to use copyright-free images – we don’t have any budget for photographs … but also wanted to expose budding photographers to a wider audience.
Whenever we use a Flickr photographer’s shot, we link back to their online portfolio, so readers can see the photographer’s other work. All parties benefit.
The Isle of Wight County Press, on the other hand, brings in tens of thousands of pounds in advertising revenue every week from their paper. They have more than enough money to pay for photos of Oasis from a picture library – the time-tested route of newspapers.
Not only do they not pay for photos, but they don’t even bother linking back the photographers site.
It’s bad form isn’t it?
Creative Commons – It’s about sharing, not taking
Many of the photographs on Flickr are under what’s called a
Creative Commons (CC) license. It’s the opposite of copyright – far more about sharing than keeping everything to yourself.
For sharing to continue to work, it’s got to be a two-way process. It isn’t just about taking out of the pot, you’ve got to put back in.
We publish plenty of our content, including photos and videos under a liberal CC license.
How much of the County Press content is available under CC? Given that they make a business out of selling photographs of people, back to the people they’re taking the photos of – we suspect none of their stuff is under CC.
Come on CP – stick you hands in your pockets and buy your photos from a photo library, or open all of your photo libraries under a Creative Commons license. You can’t have it both ways.
