Prepared for Purdue Entrepreneurship
Certificate Program
Team Analysis & Discussion
Spring 2007 © Hank Feeser
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Brill Media Holdings and
Partners to Launch Contentville.com
by Paula J. Hane From: http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb000214-3.htm
February 14, 2000 — Brill Media Holdings, LP, the company that
publishes Brill’s Content magazine, has announced the formation of a
partnership that will launch Contentville.com, an e-commerce site that will
sell all kinds of content, including magazines, books and e-books, transcripts,
speeches, and archived articles from magazines. Customers will be able to
search across these categories for items of interest and refer to
recommendations provided by a participating group of paid experts.
The partnership pulls
together an interesting and unusual mix of companies, including some major
industry players that the magazine covers in its self-proclaimed media-watchdog
role. Partners include CBS and NBC, normally seen as unlikely allies; PRIMEDIA,
Inc., the very large specialty magazine publisher; EBSCO, a magazine
subscription service and provider of magazine archives to libraries; Ingram
Book Group, the wholesale book and magazine distributor, and its affiliate
Lightning Print, a provider of books on demand; and James Cramer, a Wall Street
investment manager and founder of TheStreet.com.
Under the terms of the
deal, CBS will gain a 35-percent equity position in the partnership in exchange
for $40 million in advertising and promotion, over a period of 3 years, across
CBS’s media properties including television, radio, and outdoor. With 35-percent
ownership, CBS becomes the largest shareholder in the partnership. An affiliate
of Brill Media Holdings will own 34 percent of the new venture and be the
managing general partner. Together, Contentville’s partners are investing more
than $100 million in cash and advertising inventory.
The recommendations and
candid advice about what to buy, not buy, or read are supposed to come from a
hired group that Brill Media says will be “from the nation’s leading experts in
these subject areas.” The press release said these would be “people active in a
particular field or who work at the country’s most respected independent
bookstores or libraries.” A company spokesperson said that no additional
details about hiring are available at this time. The New York Times
reported that contributors would include former New York magazine editor
Clay Felker, playwright Wendy Wasserstein, and writer George Plimpton.
Some 60 leading
independent bookstores reportedly will be affiliates of Contentville. They will
be compensated by Contentville, but not based on how many magazines, books, or
other forms of content are sold as a result of their recommendations or
criticisms. A sample list of the 12 who have already signed on as affiliates
includes booksellers like Fact & Fiction in Missoula, Montana, R.J. Julia
in Madison, Connecticut, and That Bookstore in Blytheville, Arkansas.
While some might
question why a bookstore would participate, since Contentville will actually be
competing with the stores, Roxanne Coady, the owner of R.J. Julia, said that
she and others “are joining this venture because this kind of alliance with
Contentville represents another way for independent bookstores to strengthen
our individual businesses at the same time that we play an important role in
creating an Internet business that reflects the ethos of the stores that we
love.”
Looking to set
Contentville apart from sites like Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com (which
undoubtedly will take notice of the newcomer with its media backers), CEO
Steven Brill stressed that informed, disinterested recommendations would be its
hallmark, not marketing. “In a world where everything is marketed and hyped, we
want to create a place online that is like an old-time magazine stand,
bookstore, or library, where everybody there reveres quality work and wants to
share it with others,” he said.
The other partners
expressed enthusiasm and great hopes for the possibilities of the venture, each
seeing ways to leverage their existing content or services. Fred Reynolds,
executive vice president, CBS Corp., said, “Contentville.com is a terrific
complement to CBS’s Internet strategy of building a strong foundation of
vertical channels which are rich in news, entertainment, sports, and
informational content.”
“Contentville plays to a
key PRIMEDIA strength—content—and enables us to exchange advertising pages in
our enthusiast magazines for equity in this exciting new venture,” said
PRIMEDIA chairman and CEO Tom Rogers. “It also presents an opportunity for us
to sell our magazines using the Internet in a way that promises to be far more
effective than many of the traditional ways magazines use to find subscribers.”
EBSCO president and CEO
J.T. Stephens said, “Marrying our market-leading archives and magazine
subscription services businesses to Contentville’s innovative new plan makes
great sense for us and will help us as we use our proven assets and
longstanding relationships with the world’s magazine publishers to build a new
company for the new century.”
Brill’s Content magazine was launched in mid-1998, with Steven
Brill leading the charge to “hold journalists accountable.” Brill had
previously founded Court TV and American Lawyer Magazine. While the
companies in the partnership emphasize that the agreement for the Contentville
venture explicitly provides that the limited partners in Contentville will have
no influence on or involvement in the magazine, other media covering the news
were quick to bring up the issue of a conflict of interest, or more
specifically, the appearance of a conflict of interest, that would be
very difficult to counter. The article in The New York Times covering
the news included several cautionary comments from high-profile journalism
professors and was titled “Role of Media Journal in Web Site Partnership is
Questioned” (http://www.nytimes.com/00/02/02/news/financial/brill-partnership.html).
The magazine has had its
share of criticism in the last year and a half from the media it has covered.
It has also suffered negative publicity about staff defections and subscription
numbers that did not meet expectations, and it has already paid for a redesign
of its print version. One day after the Contentville announcement, Steven Brill
stepped down as editor in chief of the magazine, turning those duties over to
David Kuhn, who had joined the company in the fall as editorial director of the
Internet business. Even this caused a stir, since Kuhn had supposedly left Talk
magazine with an agreement not to join another magazine. Brill will remain
chairman and CEO of Brill Media Holdings.
Brill has some fairly
ambitious plans for influencing consumer content choices: “The magazine is the
guide to the who and the how and the why behind what they read, watch, and log
on to; and Contentville is the place where they can come to buy the broadest
range of what they want to buy at a good price and with honest guidance.” The
key here will be to maintain that honest guidance, for there’s often a fine
line between influence and control. One information industry colleague of mine
said the name and description of the venture (dare we say “hype”?) reminded her
of the controlled environment in the movie Pleasantville. Another
colleague called Contentville “a most appalling choice of name,” based on her
conviction that “content” may be important to publishers but as a label means
nothing to end-users. The new site is expected to launch in the second half of
this year. The media will be watching closely.
Paula J. Hane, co-editor
with Barbara Quint for NewsBreaks, is contributing editor of Information
Today, a former reference librarian, and a longtime online searcher. Her
e-mail address is phane@infotoday.com.
Site Screencapture:
And
then: Discontent at
Contentville.com
By M.J. Rose
| From: http://www.wired.com/news/business/1,37804-0.html
Professional
writers and scholars were shocked this week to find their work for sale,
without their knowledge, on a prominent new e-publishing site.
None of the writers, including
reporters for the Village Voice and a number of academic scholars,
had been contacted by Contentville.com,
recently launched by Content magazine publisher Steven Brill,
before their work went on the site.
In each case, independent
clearinghouses sold the articles to Contentville, claiming they owned the
rights to the work.
The National Writers Union met
with Brill on Tuesday and reached a tentative agreement for all independent
articles to be processed through the Publications Rights Clearing House --
which is run by the NWU -- before being posted on Contentville.
"It doesn't surprise me that
writers are upset," Brill said in a phone interview. "If my articles
were up there and I didn't know it, I'd be really pissed off, too."
Contentville.com sells books,
magazine subscriptions, and collected news articles from over 1,800 magazines,
journals, and newspapers including The New York Times.
Followed by: From http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-bold-0007/msg00033.html
Steve Brill, President
Contentville.com
1230 Avenue of the Americas
16th Floor
New York, New York
July 17, 2000
Dear Mr. Brill:
I am writing to you on behalf of National Writers Union members who have
contacted us regarding what could be serious copyright infringement by
Contentville.com.
Contentville.com's copyright policy states that "Except for materials in
the public domain, all of the content of Contentville.com is the property
of Contentville.com or its content suppliers and is protected by copyright
laws." Contentville.com claims that it "will block access to and/or
remove
any material that it believes in good faith to be copyrighted." Yet
several NWU members who retain copyright to their work have reported to us
that Contentville.com is using their work without permission. At least one
of our members has contacted you directly and alerted you to this fact; to
date, she has not received any response and her work has not been removed
from your site.
As you probably know, under Tasini v. New York Times, a creator's work
cannot be used in another medium (i.e., electronically or on a database)
without that creator?s permission. We would prefer to resolve this matter
without relying on legal action. Indeed, the Union has a solution that
allows publishers and aggregators to use authors? work legally: the
Publishing Rights ClearingHouse (PRC). Similar to ASCAP and BMI which
ensure songwriters get royalties, the PRC obtains permission from writers
to license their content and then makes payment to them when their work is
sold.
To make use of the PRC, Contentville.com would simply enter into a
collective licensing agreement with the Clearinghouse, negotiate a royalty
split, send us a check on a quarterly basis, and we would then distribute
payment to the writers.
The National Writers Union represents more than six thousand members.
Of these, there could literally be thousands whose work is being used
illegally at your website, not to mention thousands of other writers. I
very much hope that we can talk soon and work out an agreement whereby
Contentville.com will be protected from liability and writers will be
fairly compensated for their work.
Please feel free to contact me or Dian Killian, the Journalism Division
Organizer, to discuss this matter further.
Sincerely yours,
Jonathan Tasini
President,
National Writers Union (UAW Local 1981)
cc.: Catherine Seda
Copyright Agent of Contentville.com
And Finally:
