Reuters: Supreme Court rules for freelance writers. “Unfortunately, today’s decision means that everyone loses,” New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. said. “The Times has lost this case and will now undertake the difficult and sad process of removing significant portions from its electronic, historical archive. That is a loss for freelance writers because their articles will be removed from the historical record. Historians, scholars and the public lose because of the holes in history created by the removal of these articles from electronic issues of newspapers such as The Times,” Sulzberger said.
Astonishing. The publication that considers itself the nation’s newspaper of record would rather destroy the record than pay a few dollars to the people who created it in the first place.
Granted, it would not be simple to find all those writers and negotiate. But the paper’s stance, to throw up its hands and deliberately throw sand into the gears of scholarship, is the wrong response.
I’m one of the people whose work is likely to disappear. In the 1980s I wrote dozens of stories for the Times as a stringer. I knew the Times was reselling my stuff through Nexis-Lexis, and didn’t like it much because I thought I deserved a cut, but I also figured there wasn’t anything I could do about it. So when the National Writers Union sued, I was interested to see which way it would go.
Here’s a public offer to the Times. You can have and resell all of my freelance work in return for a print subscription. I won’t hold my breath waiting for an answer.
In recent years, the Times and other publications have created freelance contracts that take care of the problem, as the publishers see it. These contracts tend to give all rights to the publisher and none to the writer, and everyone knows who’s in the power position in this relationship. At least it’s explicit now.
The Times’ response to its loss in court reminds me of the kid who brings the bat and ball to the pickup baseball game, gets mad after striking out and goes home, taking the bat and ball. If he can’t win, nobody will play.
A great newspaper is acting like a spoiled brat. That’s disappointing to those of us who admire the Times in so many other ways.