Start the clock…
This morning, The New York Times ran a sweetheart profile of H. Rodgin Cohen, the ‘trauma surgeon’ of Wall Street.
Cohen is actually the Chairman of Sullivan & Cromwell, one of the most powerful law firms in the world. Â Cohen is also, apparently, 5’2″, which makes me like him even more.
Make no mistake, Cohen is smart and makes a lot of money. Â But he is also part of a professional partnership, Sullivan and Cromwell. Â It is The Firm, the partnership of lawyers, all contributing their skills, that has made both Cohen and Sullivan&Cromwell so successful.
Lawyers forming partnerships to better leverage off their collective talents is the way many, but not all lawyers organize their professional lives. To be sure there are lawyers who go to work for major corporations as employees – in the in-house counsels, and there are those who simply hang out a shingle and become sole practitioners. Â But for the vast majority of really successful lawyers, there is the LLP, the partnership.
It got me to thinking about journalism.
We journalists are in the business of managing content and information. Â And we are living in the very nexus of the Information Revolution.
It should be a revolution that we control and we benefit from. But we don’t. Â At least not now. Â We suffer instead from the vagaries of the Internet Revolution and its impact on the institutions that used to employ us.
Perhaps it is time to reconsider how we organize the very profession of journalism.
What if instead of aspiring to become salaried employees of private companies we instead formed our own partnerships. Partnerships of journalists.
Suppose that high flying and powerful journalists, journalists like Maureen Dowd, Jeremy Paxman and Mark Bittman got together and pooled their talents. Â And then suppose they offered partnership to others of equal talent – and then extended that to associates who were not partners, but one day might be.
Sullivan & Cromwell has 700 lawyers in 12 offices around the world.
Why not Dowd, Paxman & Bittman?
And H Rodgin Cohen does not become an employee of General Dynamics when he takes them on as a client. Â He charges the client for his time and talents and those of his partners and associates. Â So why does not DP&B do the same with The New York Times or The BBC or any number of other possible clients?
And DP&B would then hold onto the intellectual property that they produced. They would simply license it to the client. Â And so DP&B would be motivated (highly) to create movies and books and web sites and other spin-offs of their work. Benefits in which all the partners would share.
And what a powerhouse a place like that would be!
Because their work would not just be limited to writing for papers or reporting for TV. Â Oh no. Because the information revolution is far wider. So DP&B would also do PR, and charge a lot for it. And political consulting, and charge a lot for that too. Of course, some partners would have to recuse themselves from other work that the firm did.
But so what? Â Sullivan & Cromwell has a very wide range of clients – and from time to time they even do pro bono work for socially important yet non-paying clients. Â So too with DP&B.
Would this work?
Why not?
Nowhere is it written in stone that journalists must be perpetually poor. Â The world of journalism has been overturned by the Internet Revolution. Â There’s an opportunity here to reorganize the way our world works.
Let’s seize it.
Time to own the product and take care of ourselves.
7 Comments
digger November 16, 2009
Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson founded Magnum Photo co-op over 50 years ago. News organizations essentially outsource the bulk, or in many cases all, of their foreign news coverage. The likes of David Pogue, Walt Mossberg, Seymour Hersch have no trouble retaining rights to their work.
So the idea is not new, and its expansion would meet no resistance from employers.
What is lacking is the infrastructure. You can’t join Magnum straight out of art school. You won’t get accredited as a White House correspondent without some affiliation with an established news organization.
Elizabeth Bales November 16, 2009
Fantastic concept! I’ve often wondered if the VII Photo Agency (viiphoto.com) holds the keys to a successful model for independent journalists. The photographers of VII – Ron Haviv, James Nachtwey, John Stanmeyer, to name a few – are among the best around. My understanding is that the agency was formed as a way for these photographers to own and control their work — and to keep the profits that third parties used to make off it. Huzzah!
Michael Rosenblum November 16, 2009
Nino
I am obviously not talking about the way that the world works now, but suggesting a new construct for journalists that would work in a different way. There are no firms like DP&B. This is all theoretical. Not that you can’t change the way things are done. Nothing is cast in stone (at least not in this business).
Once things go on the web I think they are pretty much de-facto free. That’s a consequence of the digital world, whether we like it or not. And many don’t. I don’t even think your friend Rupert will be able to change that one.
What I am talking about with the theoretical DP&B is a way of recasting the relationship between the content creator and the broadcaster or publisher… not between the broadcaster and the public. Very different place in the order of events.
Cliff Etzel November 15, 2009
I agree with Mark & Kevin – Great post Michael.
Nino November 15, 2009
Michael, you know that it’s not like me to start a controversy, right?
You just wrote this above
“And DP&B would then hold onto the intellectual property that they produced. They would simply license it to the client.â€
But on June 24 you had this post
https://www.rosenblumtv.com/?p=3373 and in it you wrote this:
“So I emailed the news director at CBS4 in Doral, Florida, and asked where I could get hold of an embeddable version of the story. Surely they had uploaded it to Vimeo or Youtube or something.
The ND wrote back to me and told me that ‘footage’ from the station can’t be downloaded or embedded, but that they ’sold and licensed footage’ from the station for use in documentaries, if I was interested in buying it.â€
And then as a consequence you started a big stink both here and on B-Roll because they had the balls to charge for their intellectual properties and according to you they should give it away for free.
What’s the difference?
Mark Joyella November 15, 2009
Michael,
Owning our own work? And attempting to make a profit? Now that sounds like change I can believe in.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last year or so, it’s this: being a devoted and dependable employee of a newspaper or television station will neither ensure that you remain employed, nor will it ensure you a good living. In fact, the fortunate few make less, and the rest get a cardboard box and a security escort to the parking lot. So much for responding to that call at 2 a.m. and rushing to work.
Your idea turns all of that on its head…in a good way.
Mark
Kevin November 15, 2009
Mark,
Great comment, we should talk.