Sucking the Marrow out of Dead Man’s Bones

Well, it used to be that you could tell the spring by the condom ads which came plastered on the ad stands in Helsinki…

Nowadays, you can tell it is the holiday season when the publishers start sending their “we want everything: past, present and the future — and we will not pay for it. Take it or leave it. You have 48 hours” — deals/threats in your email.

To be fair: technically, the latest case was I guess 72 hours, as the Sanoma News started mailing their “agree­ments” around 3 pm on Friday and gave all the way to Tuesday to think about or “we would not call you anymore”. So compared to what Aller did last summer, this was kind of very civilized and good manners.

Well, everything is relative.

This “terms of agreement” is three pages of legal mumbo-jambo. On the other hand, it is very clear and straight forward — if you are a lawyer.

But as it is addressed to photo­graphers they should have written it in plain Finnish. Kind of nicer to sign when you understand what you are signing…? And to make things a bit more challenging, e.g. HS was distri­buting different versions of this deal to its freelancers — so the poor souls would be totally lost.

Anyway: the core of this “agreement” — damn, I have hard time calling it that as it looks more like a threat letter to me — in plain English this time is:

“We we take the rights of first publication — as well as exclusive publishing rights, including all the financial rights now and in the future, including the right to alter, change and distribute your work”

Maybe that’s still too complicated? Maybe I trans­lated it incorrectly?

So, in laymans terms:

“You want to work for us, you sign this. Otherwise it is a no go. After that, we own your shit. We can do whatever we want to do with it — now or in the future. We can publish it — or hide it so nobody can see it. We can sell it. We can put it on an iPad. We can make books with it. Whatever we come up with to make profit with it.
Most important: we don’t owe you a dime. ”

Should You Sign?

Well, depends on you. If you have all your eggs in one basket (i.e. your only client is making you this irresis­tible offer or something like it.…), then you are basically screwed. They know that there are hundreds of students who want to work for them (2000 “media profes­sionals” graduate every year in this country) so it’s no real threat to them if you do not sign. In Finnish it’s called “management by oven-takana-on-kyllä-tulijoita”.

BTW: kinda stupid to let all your eggs in that one basket, don’t you think? If you’ve made that mistake once, are you going to do it now again?

You might get couple of euros doing this for the next couple of years. You will also earn the scorn of all your colleagues, you will never amount to anybody or anything worth mentioning as a photo­grapher, because basically: you will be shoveling bulk. You are treated that way, you are paid that way.

And you get the extra bonus that you might have hard time seeing yourself in the eye in the mirror.

If you’ve read my blog before you know how I feel about our legacy print. That much sooner than you think it will not be with us in its present form. It’s moving to other platforms…very, very fast — and these will become primary platforms. Very, very soon.

Pause. Think about it. I’m dead serious about this.

These are platforms on which you are about to sign all your work now to be used freely. No, I correct that: it won’t be used freely. It will be sold and traded — it’s just that you don’t get any of that.

Another BTW: do you think you will be among the ones creating high quality visual journalism needed for these platforms when the time comes and for doing that, are you getting yourself the necessary skill sets?

Or are you just too busy shoveling the bulk… which will be less paid in the future as the margins get thinner?

Journalism?

Unders­tan­dably, this has nothing to do with journalism, let alone visual journalism. This is business. This is getting the maximum revenue for the euro spent for the share­holders. With circu­lation levels dropping and the adver­tizing moving to the web, the legacy print is still making consi­de­rable profit presently and for some years to come. Ge’ez, I wonder how? Doesn’t take that much skill in math to figure this one out…

The Print says that this is just a precaution for the future as they don’t know what the future entails. Well, yes and no.

Yes: they don’t know what the future will be — exactly. But they have a pretty good hunch: it will be on multiple platforms, most notably on touch screens. It will travel over geographic borders. It’ll be visually driven. On 2015 it is estimated there will be c. 15 billion mobile devices hooked to the net — all able to see your content. Oh sorry, not yours anymore.

“Precaution?”. Oh that’s total bullshit. They know the publishing rights for these platforms are a valuable commodity. Why do you think otherwise this — should I call it aggressive — “we take it and you just shut the f*** up” — attitude? Why the hurry? Because it is valuable, that’s why. Get it before nobody else does or before the people producing it realize it.

In a way it is scary that presently in this country the content of visual journalism is decided by guys wearing suits hacking together legal documents — which leads into a selection of indivi­duals they manage to scare into signing their agree­ments — and not by editors nor editors-in-chief having some kind of vision of what journalism should be and how it should be practiced.

But maybe that’s just me seeing trouble where it does not really exist…?

Conclusion

Let me be honest here. You might have heard me saying this before — then again, you might have not. So I say it again: I write to challenge my own assump­tions. Not to attack anybody, not to ridicule anybody either. I hope we are clear on this? I am sort of thinking aloud, that’s it. No other agenda.

Also, I don’t want to be a besserwisser of any kind. I hear already the murmur of somebody saying “well, easy for you to say, because you don’t have to sign…” True (as I practically do not work for e.g. Sanoma News). But if Sanoma News has their way in this, everybody will be faced with this dilemma. And I say what I’ve said before: eventually, the death of quality journalism is just colla­teral damage.

Also, I am literally appalled by the fact that there is so little reaction from the profes­sional ranks of our journa­lists, meaning staffers. Is it still the old school division into “real people” and “those freelancers”?That these freelancers are seen as a compulsory nuisance — as you cannot hire “real photo­graphers” — and they are thus treated like a chewing gum: chewed, chewed, chewed and spit away?

Or is it just the times we are living — meaning “me, myself and I — and screw the rest”. Alienation from all things human and civilized, let alone common courtesy?

I simply do not know.

Let me conclude with the words of a friend, a former student of mine, now a colleague and good photo­grapher who said the other day:

“I honestly wonder on which century did these people get their education, if they assume that the best business strategy is to get rid of all the best, most seasoned talent producing quality journalism. Because, at the end of the day, that’s all media has”.

I wonder it too.