Metaboston

Too Bad: Out of Town News to Remain News Stand

Some commentators are pleased that the Out of Town News site will continue to be a news stand.  It's too bad that something more relevant or exciting won't be using the space.

A coffee shop or some third space would be better than the nostalgic fantasy of the news stand in an age of ubiquitous information from newspapers and others online.

It seems likely that there will be a similar "crisis" when the next tenant decides to shut down.

GateHouse Sues Boston.com Over Linking

Gatehouse Media is suing the parent of Boston.com for linking to its articles as Boston.com tries to compete with GateHouse's hyperlocal sites.

GateHouse Media Inc., the owner of 125 local newspapers across Massachusetts, sued the Boston Globe's parent today for linking to GateHouse articles on the Globe's new local websites.

In a lawsuit filed in US District Court in Massachusetts, GateHouse argued that the New York Times Co. violated copyright law by copying "verbatim" headlines and the first sentence from articles in the Newton Tab, Daily News Tribune of Waltham and other GateHouse papers on the Globe's own websites, along with links to the full articles.

The suit raises critical legal issues about what type of linking is permitted on the Internet. Many blogs and media sites routinely post links to stories by other media. Indeed, GateHouse has published links to Globe stories in the past.

GateHouse sites have been more adventurous with social media like YouTube clips but their parent company has been suffering like other newspaper publishers.

Henry Jenkins Leaving MIT

Henry Jenkins, the head of the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT and a prominent academic voice on game culture, fan fiction and other new media, will be moving to USC.  He describes the difficult decision on his blog where it seems a prime cause was MIT being unwilling to invest more in the program.  Given the economic downturn things were unlikely to change anytime soon.

"On the one hand, accepting the USC position means leaving a school which has been my intellectual home for almost two decades. MIT was willing to give me my first academic position, just out of graduate school, and it has provided me with an intellectual context for doing my work. It's a safe bet that none of my digital work would have taken place if I had not landed in Cambridge in time to experience some of the early years of the Media Lab or to live among the ultimate community of early tech adapters or to have a chance to meet with the digerati as they passed through campus.

***

But I have also struggled with the reality that we do not have the level of faculty commitment from MIT to allow us to sustain this kind of activity long term. Despite a decade of arguments, we still have only two dedicated faculty members on whose back all of the activity you've been reading about here has rested. I'm often asked how I manage to do everything I do and now you know the sad answer: I can't -- at least not year after year. Even Green Lantern needs to recharge his ring now and again. When I began this process, I had the body of a 37 year old. I woke up one morning and discovered that aliens has swapped it out for the body of a 50 year old. We had enjoyed dramatic expansion over the past few years, but with it has come dramatic increases in my responsibilities, until I reached a point where it was not humanly possible to continue to work at the pace I have been working.
 

His departure leaves the future of the CMS program up in the air.  It is too bad that this had to happen as CMS has brought a lot of interesting programs to Cambridge and really seemed to compliment the geeky culture of MIT.

Charles River on Radio Boston

In more river news Radio Boston will be checking in on the new and improved Charles this weekend and you can participate by posting and geotagging your photos of the river in the Charles River Flickr pool

Gatehouse's Wicked Local to Add Social Network

Considering recent questions about Gatehouse's viability, is the social network capability from TownConnect too little too late or just the right thing to build an online community?

"Through the co-branded Wicked Local People sites, residents of the 159 eastern Massachusetts communities served by GateHouse newspapers can participate in a free, secure, private network and easily organize online communities of friends, neighbors and extended families; coordinate schedules; share photos and files; and connect families, friends, and neighbors."

Is GateHouse Media in Trouble?

Looks like it based on this interesting post by Dan Kennedy.  He aggregates several sources of information suggesting that the chain, burdened by debt and the generally unfavorable situation for print, could be facing serious challenges:

"GateHouse Media may be in deep trouble. According to the blog 247WallSt.com, the chain — based in suburban Rochester, N.Y. — is doing so badly that you might be able to get some furniture and computers cheap in a few months. After turning itself into a publicly traded company several years ago, the stock price has tanked, falling 80 percent over the past year.

247's Douglas McIntyre writes: "Watch for GHS to be broken up before the end of the year or to enter Chapter 11." (GHS is GateHouse's symbol on the New York Stock Exchange.) Wow.

What's more, the Motley Fool recently listed GateHouse as one of "5 Deathbed Stocks."