Associated Press CEO Tom Curley has gone on the offensive against Meltwater, a digital news-clipping service that he claims is ripping off copyrighted AP material and reselling it without paying a licensing fee.
“Meltwater News is a parasitic distribution service that competes directly with traditional news sources without paying license fees to cover the costs of creating those stories,” Curley, AP’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “It has a significant negative impact on the ability of AP to continue providing the high-quality news reports on which the public relies.”
The 166-year-old news cooperative filed suit in Manhattan federal court yesterday against the 11-year-old Meltwater, a San Francisco-based clipping service that helps clients monitor press coverage.
Meltwater CEO Jorn Lyseggen, the Korean-born entrepreneur who started the service in Norway and brought it to the US in 2007, professed surprise that the AP had reacted so harshly and wondered if it was connected to some recent court rulings in the UK before the Newspaper Licensing Commission.
“This is the first we have heard of the AP’s concerns and we are surprised,” Lyseggen said in a statement. “From their press release, it appears that the AP misunderstands how our service works in many key respects. It is unfortunate that the AP did not seek to discuss this with us prior to taking this wholly unnecessary step.”
The AP insists that Meltwater borrows heavily from AP clips and offers no new reporting on its own.
AP had threatened to sue Google at one point before hammering out a major licensing deal with that search engine to feature AP content. The AP also has licensing deals with Yahoo!, AOL and others.
Here Kitty
Sunset, the Time Inc. West Coast magazine that is one of the biggest regional magazine in the country, has just landed a new editor-in-chief.
Kitty Morgan, who was most recently executive editor of Better Homes & Gardens, will take over from Charla Lawhon, the former editor of Time Inc.-owned In Style. Lawhon was eased out of the company a few years ago but was brought back inside in December as the interim editor at Sunset.
Lawhon was never expected to be a candidate for the permanent job. She was tapped as interim after Katie Tamony was given the old heave-ho from the top editor’s position last November after 10 years in the spot and 17 at the magazine. She was the longest-serving top editor at a Time Inc. title at the time.
While the magazine’s circulation held steady for the most recent six-month period at 1,260,862, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, Sunset suffered a bigger drop in ad pages than the industry at large, falling 10 percent to 601 ad pages in 2011.
Morgan, who had worked at Sunset early in her career, reports to Sid Evans, the head of Time Inc.’s Lifestyle Group.
Fashion forward
Well, so much for that talk about starting his own company. Tom Florio, an ex-publisher of Vogue, is the new CEO of the fashion group at business-to-business publisher Advanstar.
His exit from Condé Nast in 2010 when he was a senior vice president took many by surprise. The company was going through a period of downsizing and the only avenue up appeared to be through the executive suite — but the president’s job was destined for another executive, Bob Sauerberg. Florio resigned when he realized he was not getting a call to the corner office.
He became a consultant to sports-and-entertainment powerhouse IMG, but when that gig ended Florio was back on the prowl. Earlier this week, he turned up as the CEO of the fashion group for Advanstar, which includes the popular Las Vegas MAGIC fashion shows aimed squarely at the business side of the fashion world.
“This is entrepreneurial,” Florio insisted during his second day on the job, adding that his goal is to grow MAGIC beyond a twice-a-year business experience, introduce more digital components and make it more consumer friendly.
In 2007, Veronis Suhler Stevenson paid $1.14 billion for the company and put it through a restructuring in 2009 to eliminate $385 million of debt. Current CEO Joe Loggia, who had sold his MAGIC trade shows to Advanstar in 2004, ended up running the company by 2007.
Sad memo
It is probably inevitable that when a new regime comes to power, one of the first casualties is the p.r. director. Monie Begley, the director of communications through 12-plus tumultuous years at Forbes Media, told employees she was exiting yesterday.
“For over 25 years in communications I have written these kinds of memos — hundreds and hundreds of them for others, and decided today to try my hand at writing one for myself. So here goes,” she wrote.
“After twelve and a half years, I am leaving Forbes. It has been a fabulous time — interesting, fun, challenging and yes, at times exhausting. But what an enviable job.”
“To my closest colleagues (you know who you are) I will miss all of you terribly. To all of you good luck and I hope to run into you during this next adventure. And always remember to have fun.”