Not So Quick Link: Transcript of RIAA (president and general counsel) chat with college newspapers

hastings | 3/06/2007 12:13 pm | Emcees Without Voices

Hannah Young's most recent RIAArticle in the Daily Cardinal alluded to a chat conducted with RIAA president Cary Sherman, and RIAA General Counsel and Exec VP Steven Marks. As of yesterday, a transcript wasn't available online. So I emailed Hannah to ask about the chat (logistics/moderation, etc.) and see if she had a full transcript. I didn't hear back from her*, but stopped by the Daily Cardinal office. Her editor didn't think a transcript had circulated yet, and mentioned that Hannah hadn't been able to copy/paste text out of the chat room--so it seemed unlikely that she had her own home-brew transcript.

Last night, I requested a transcript from CPNewsLink!. I received one this morning. It also appeared on the web--and you can check it out here.

Among the fine silk spun [latter portion]:

• Cary Sherman: Since we first began suing individuals for illegal file-trafficking, we have witnessed immense growth in national awareness of this problem. There isn't a college student in America today who doesn't know that the online 'sharing' of copyrighted music is illegal. Yet file-trafficking on college campuses remains extensive and disproportionately problematic.
• Cary Sherman: That, in turn, compromises our ability to invest in new music. Many of you probably have a favorite local band on your campus. If music theft is allowed to continue at such unacceptably high levels, the chances of those bands getting signed to a record label deal will continue to diminish.

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Without really getting into the content of the chat: One thing I noticed while initially reading the transcript was that the sources of individual questions generally went unidentified.

So I emailed Lisa Bannerot, Collegiate Presswire's Director of Media Services, who had responded to my initial inquiry:

• After scanning quickly--i noticed only one questioner directly identified by university/publication (Southern Maine Free Press). Would it be possible to identify who was asking what?

She replied:

• With regard to your question, to protect the source of the question, and to prevent rival papers from "scooping" one another, we have made every effort to remove specifics such as names and newspaper affiliations in the universal transcript. (The Free Press must have escaped such edits).

The idea of "protecting" sources in this context--journalists posting questions in a semi-open forum--struck me as particularly bizarre. The concern re: "scooping" also seemed a bit off, but I assumed it had something to do with the mention of College Publisher on the CPNewsLink! sit [for background re: College Publisher, see this November Baltimore Sun story on the profitability of college papers in the face of ad-revenue declines @ their "professional" counterparts. More on that in a later post]

I followed up with Lisa via email:

• does the concern re: "scooping each other" stem from the fact that some of the participating papers share the College Publisher affiliation? I know the Daily Cardinal isn't CP-affiliated, but assume others were.

She replied:

• With response to your first question about "scooping", I am not sure. It is a company policy.

By phone, Lisa reiterated that "that's traditionally how they've always been done. Since we started the Newslink, we've never really put up the schools and all the names of the participants--that's just sort of how we agreed to do it with College Publisher and that's been the policy."

Presumably this is because these chat sessions lose value to certain participants--and as wire copy in general--if it were clearer who was asking what.

In any case, I don't begrudge college papers taking whatever access they're given to figures like Sherman, in however hyper-mediated/moderated a format, but I'm curious to check out all the coverage stemming from this single chat--and to what extent the articles draw on other sources... i.e. ones who don't introduce themselves like this: "I am becoming a veteran of these online chats, which I very much enjoy. But just to keep things fresh, I have our general counsel, Steve Marks, here with me today. Make sure you save all the tough questions for him."
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Since Collegiate Presswire seemed to be a PR wire service tailored to campus publications (the Herald and Cardinal are both subscribers)--and Viacom-owned College Publisher handles the online publishing and business interests of a bunch of college papers, I also asked Lisa to clarify the relationship between the two CPs. She said they're distinct entities, and that"We [Collegiate Presswire have a partnership with College Publisher to run the Newslink conferences--it's just a joint venture with them". She followed up via email with this overview:

• Collegiate Presswire and College Publisher are two separate and distinct companies with brands in the college media space.
• Collegiate Presswire is an electronic distributor of press releases to the print and broadcast college media across the country.
• College Publisher is an online publishing technology and content management solution designed specifically for college newspapers and the needs of the campus newsroom. Their technology is Web-based and allows multiple users to control all facets of digital publishing, including content management, multimedia administration and online newspaper advertising.
• Collegiate Presswire and College Publisher are joint-venture partners on CPNewsLink, the online press conference product you're interested in. College Publisher utilizes its expertise in technology and server expertise to make the platform work, while Collegiate Presswire utilizes our editor and media connections -- as well as our newswire distribution -- to promote the online chats with newsmakers.

NOTE:

* Hannah's editor passed along her cell#, and whenever I find it in my bag, I'll follow-up with her that-a-way.

blog entry tag reference

"interviews" | blogs & media | culture | dilettantish media criticism | media consolidation: collegiate edition | music | RIAA

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