|
Univ. of North Carolina Library
Johann Gutenberg, original founder of movable type, upset the media hierarchy of his day. |
Today,
Terry Heaton published a
great post on the news media mindset. He's giving a talk today entitled "A Media Lesson for Today from 15th Century Europe." Gathering his thoughts for this, he writes:
"It's interesting to note that one of the first reactions of the [Catholic] Church [to the advent of printing] was to propose licenses for those who could print the Bible. This sounds vaguely familiar today as the world of the professional press tries to deal with the exploding world of the personal media revolution -- pejoratively dubbed 'user-generated content' by those of us who can’t handle the fact that the 'jewel [of the clergy]' is once again in the hands of the laity."
Amen, Brother Heaton.
...However, Bible-printing licenses reminds me even more directly of current struggles over copyright and intellectual property issues.
A couple of weeks ago I spoke to a German journalism class about citizen journalism and related topics. The discussion ranged more broadly to online media. One of the course's instructors asked me what journalists can do to keep their content from being used without permission online. I answered, "Generally, you can't keep that from happening. The trick, I think, is to find ways to make that distribution work for you, instead of wasting energy trying to shut it down and lock all your content up."
The instructor looked rather shocked when I said that. I understand that reaction, it's a radical idea if you believe that owning content and controlling access to it is the necessary foundation of a viable media business. That used to be the case, but is that still true? Are the tenets of our business "faith" evolving -- or should they?
What do you think? Please comment below.
This topic came up at a panel at the recent...
