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I love the Madison Daily Leader: that's why I keep doing all this free promotional work for them.
Last week the Madison Daily Leader announced it's opening a new website, DailyLeaderPhotos.com, where readers can view and purchase reprints of photos by MDL staff. Current stock: 3925 photos, both the printed gems and a big stock of unprinted photos from this year. Note that right now, 182 of those photos are in the "Published 2008" category, 76 are in the "Unpublished News" gallery, and 3668 are in the "Unpublished Sports" gallery. O.K., I know athletes in the full flower of physical glory are more photogenic than city commission meetings, but is there really that little else going on that's worth a picture?
Alas, no photos from previous years yet, but let's hope publisher Jon Hunter can get someone to start scanning in those old photos. A century-spanning archive of photos would be a service of immense community value.
Wait a minute—MDL is my mainstream media competition! Why should I be giving them such free press? Well, in part because I worry that the very web-savvy audience the Leader is targeting with this new service may not hear about it, since as of 3 p.m. this afternoon, there's no story about it or link to it anywhere on MDL's website.
Note: no free downloads. You can order photos in a range of formats, from a typical $4 4"x6" print to a $480 30"x40" mounted canvas.
Of course, the web-savvy audience may be so satisfied with taking and sharing their own photos online for free that a link to DailyLeaderPhotos.com on the MDL website might be superfluous. We'll see....
Hide Fido (by Andy Horowitz)
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I coined Noem as the ‘Palin of South Dakota’ when she ran for the state
house, seems I nailed it; America: meet your new Secretary of Homeland
Security. Sh...
1 day ago
They are charging? Wow. They have learned nothing.
ReplyDeleteThey should put anadvertisement on the page and run off add revenue. They are already making money off the photos by publishing them in the paper. Double dipping just pisses people off.
Newspapers are all charging for the talent of their photographers with no reimbursement to the subjects of the photos. Is it right for a group of boy's basketball players or football players, maybe even young gymnasts to have their photos taken by a newspaper at a public event while most of them are juveniles, then have the newspaper profit from the photos, which are being sold without permission from the subjects?
ReplyDeleteNewspapers are all fighting the same thing. They can't figure out how to stop the trend of less subscribers, which hurts revenue. They try to develop a profit center through their website, but that only adds to the feeling that readers can get what they need online for free.
Selling photos of juvenile subjects who have not given permission to sell their images may not even be legal, other than selling the actual printing cost of the photos. Media are all treading new ground in search of revenue and to reach younger consumers who do not subscribe to newspaper or listen to terrestrial radio.