NewsBeat

December 2015 NewsBeat 17 Are Facebook, Twitter really interested in partnering with news media companies? T Tours of Facebook and Twitter on INMA's recent Silicon Valley Study Tour left participants with as many questions as answers. What are the revenue sharing prospects? How does the Instant Articles feature benefit publishers? How do digital subscription models work with these platforms? Executives from News Corp and ABP weigh in. Editor's note: The INMA Silicon Valley Study Tour spent five days touring 14 companies with 34 news media executives from around the world. "They were looking at us more like clients ... rather than as equal partners," says tour participant Aritra Sarkar, vice president of strategy at India's ABP. Troubling, to be sure, as are the sketchy details on revenue sharing. "What those platforms need to do is be a lot clearer about how their revenue share is going to work," says Nathaniel Bane, head of digital at News Corp Australia. "They need to demonstrate very quickly to publishers that they can actually create new revenue streams for publishers around their content." Are there pros to the news media industry? Or do Facebook and Twitter take the biggest share of the engagement and revenue gains? — Reprinted from INMA By DAWN McCullan Cuomo vetoes newspaper carrier measure; Teamsters cheer T eamsters Joint Council 16 on Monday praised Gov. Andrew Cuomo's veto of a measure that would have excluded some newspaper carriers from certain aspects of the state's labor laws such as unemployment, minimum wage and workers' compensation. "Governor Cuomo is once again standing up for New York's working families. This veto protects New York's best-in-the-nation safeguards for commercial drivers against being misclassified as independent contractors," said Teamsters Joint Council 16 President George Miranda. The measure, backed by Assembly Majority Leader Joe Morelle and Republican Sen. George Amedore, would have codified Department of Labor regulations for independent contractors at newspapers, as long as they meet a multi-faceted test. "This bill sets forth a common sense test, consistent with the current guidelines and with federal standards, by which newspapers, delivery persons and agency staff will be able to easily determine an individual's employment status," the bills sponsors wrote in a memo. "Codifying the guidelines issued by the Department of Labor will foster the distribution of news to New York State residents widely, easily, and affordably while providing delivery persons with the freedom to engage in a form of small business or self- employment that affords them the freedom from constraints of traditional employment requirements." The bill was backed by the publisher of the Rochester newspaper, the Democrat and Chronicle, who wrote to Cuomo earlier in the year urging him to back the measure. "Preserving the affordable distribution of printed newspapers saves Teamster jobs in pressrooms, as many Pressrooms are represented by the Graphic Communications Conference of the Teamsters," publisher Michael Kane wrote. But the teamsters argued the measure was a way around adhering to the state's labor laws. "The ink was barely dry on Commercial Goods Transportation Fair Play Act before anti- worker forces began trying to add loopholes," Miranda said. "Employee misclassification is a growing problem across the country, but New York continues to set the standard for protecting workers from this practice. Governor Cuomo has sent a clear message to the business community and the legislature that no industry will get an exemption from these protections for commercial drivers." "A good newspaper is a nation talking to itself." — Arthur Miller (1915-2005) 1915, American Dramatist

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