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The Media Equation: Magazine Writing on the Web, for Film

August 11, 2013 by

To many writers, to almost anyone for that matter, Joshuah Bearman and Joshua Davis are living the dream. As accomplished practitioners of big, nonfiction magazine writing, they regularly publish articles in Wired, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone and many other A-list titles. Perhaps more important, they have, between them, optioned 18 of their articles for films, with two more in negotiation.

Most notably, Mr. Bearman’s 2007 story in Wired about the mission to free hostages in Iran from the Canadian ambassador’s residence was turned into “Argo,” which won Best Picture honors at this year’s Oscars. More recently, Mr. Bearman scored similar success with a tale about a group of 20-something surfers who joined with a former high school Spanish teacher to form a successful pot-smuggling operation. The article, “Coronado High,” appeared in GQ and Atavist, an online publisher, and was optioned even before it was published.

Mr. Davis, who has a contract with Wired as a contributing editor, sold his article about the flight of the software pioneer John McAfee to Warner Brothers, and an article he wrote about the world’s largest diamond heist is being adapted into a movie for Paramount by J. J. Abrams.

In Hollywood, options on magazine articles represent a long shot — most never get made into films — but the money for the rights can range into six figures for a highly coveted article.

The two men have found a way to make magazine writing work for them. But for most writers it can be a perilous existence at a time when the publishing industry is under significant pressure.

Now the Joshes — “we take turns being ‘good’ Josh and ‘evil’ Josh,” Mr. Davis said — say they believe it is time to try another way, especially with some publishers like Condé Nast offering contracts to writers that require sharing the money from film options.

On Monday, Mr. Bearman and Mr. Davis are introducing Epic, a kind of online literary platform that will commission and publish big, nonfiction narratives that might also make good movies.

They are trying to build a model for long-form journalism where the revenue generated over the entire life of a story — magazine fees, sales on Audible.com and Amazon Kindle Singles, ancillary film and television rights — can be used to finance the costs of reporting.

Writers, even ones with custody of a great story, can get lost in a thicket of pitches, edits and reselling. Mr. Bearman and Mr. Davis have cracked the code a bit and have the skills to help authors exercise some control in a changed marketplace. Whether or not it can work as a business is yet to be determined, but it could begin to change the way business is done and authors are treated.

Mr. Davis and Mr. Bearman were in Los Angeles last week talking about Epic with film executives and said they found that the appetite for great nonfiction in the wake of “Argo” — and several big sci-fi flops this summer — seems to be growing.

The story got more interesting when Mr. Bearman and Mr. Davis told me that the partner and backer in the effort will be Medium, a content platform that is just getting started as well.

You may not have heard of Medium, but it was co-founded by Evan Williams and Biz Stone, two of the creators of Twitter, and Jason Goldman, formerly of Twitter, so it may not be off your radar for long. And at a time when charging for content is all the rage, the stories on Medium will be there for the scrolling, gratis, on whatever device a reader happens to be using.

Mr. Williams isn’t talking about his involvement with Epic for the time being. But sitting in Bryant Park on a July afternoon, Mr. Bearman suggested that Medium was underwriting magazinelike projects because for a relatively small investment, the site can bring attention to a Web-based platform for content.

“My sense is that what they are looking for is high-quality content from us that will show what the platform can do,” he said, munching on lamb pita from a cart up the street.

“I think that in a lot of ways that the revolution that has taken place in film and Web production is just now coming to nonfiction,” he said. “Now writers have all these amazing digital options like Byliner, the Atavist and Kindle Singles. People are beginning to take production into their own hands.”

Epic is joining that fray. At the park, Mr. Bearman swiveled around a MacBook and showed off a working prototype of the kind of story that will wind up on Epic. It is Mr. Davis’s account of a troubled American mercenary who was hired to investigate a double homicide at a gold mine in the Peruvian Andes and falls in love with his translator along the way. The visual narrative is gorgeous, with big photos and artfully arranged text that would look good on almost any device.

Mr. Bearman and Mr. Davis see Epic as a vehicle for writers, including themselves, that frees them from the narrow needs of a specific magazine. The writers will retain movie rights, but if they want help in setting up projects for Hollywood, Epic will function as a producer.

“This business model is an experiment,” Mr. Davis said by phone from San Francisco. “I think that Josh and I have demonstrated that we know what a good page-turner looks like. Those kinds of stories, the kind that gives you goose bumps, is what we both love about nonfiction, and the partnership with Medium is one way more of those stories might be seen by more people.”

There are other players in the mix. Condé Nast has formed Condé Nast Entertainment, a division intent on using the company’s editorial properties to create or be a partner in television and film projects. In fact, the tip for the article about Mr. McAfee came from that division, and after Mr. Davis wrote the story, he worked with Condé Nast to sell it to Warner Brothers. “They did an amazing job,” he said.

There was some strife at the company as some writers signed contracts that surrendered any movie rights, while others, including Mr. Davis, declined to do so. But that seems to have quieted down.

The business model, both for Medium and Epic, is a bit murky, but it would not be hard to envision a case in which Epic becomes a hothouse for a certain kind of story with cinematic elements, and a studio or a production house cuts a first-look deal for it. Medium’s approach is tougher to game out, but Mr. Williams demonstrated at Twitter that if you build a compelling platform for content, a business will eventually emerge.

In his more optimistic — or grandiose — moments, Mr. Bearman sees Epic as a journalistic version of the original United Artists, which was formed in 1919 by Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith as a way of using their leverage as artists to cut a better deal in the marketplace.

“Maybe this is a moment, with all of these different platforms opening up, with new tools and new ways of telling big stories, when writers can get some control in the kind of work they do,” he said.

E-mail: carr@nytimes.com; twitter.com/carr2n

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/12/business/media/magazine-writing-on-the-web-for-film.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business Tagged With: , ,

Murdoch Company Settles Hacking Victim Suits

January 20, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The High Court hearing on Thursday at which the settlements were detailed was a humiliating occasion for Mr. Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers, which published the now-defunct tabloid at the heart of the hacking scandal, The News of the World. In a courtroom so jammed with lawyers, victims and members of the news media that some people had to sit on the floor, News Group’s lawyer, Michael Silverleaf, repeatedly expressed the company’s “sincere apologies” for “the damage, as well as the distress” caused to victim after victim.

The list of 37 victims settling with the company included politicians, celebrities, actors and sports figures, as well as people in their inner circles — employees, spouses, lovers. It is unclear how much News Group will end up having to pay after all the cases are finally settled, but the total bill for the 18 victims whose settlement details were disclosed Thursday reaches well above $1 million.

According to the police, there may be as many as 800 victims.

Perhaps two dozen suits are pending. News Group says it is eager to settle all the cases, but it was not clear, during extensive discussions in court, that it was able to placate all those who have brought claims.

The settlements disclosed include those of the actor Jude Law, who received £130,000, about $200,000; Sadie Frost, his ex-wife, who received $77,000; Ben Jackson, his assistant, who received $61,000; Gavin Henson, a Welsh rugby star, who also received $61,000; and Denis MacShane, a member of Parliament, who received $50,000.

In each case, News Group also agreed to pay the complainant’s legal costs, any of which could easily have run into six figures. One complainant, speaking on the condition on anonymity, said that his came to more than $300,000 — an amount that does not include News International’s fees.

But perhaps more damaging to the company than the financial penalties was a statement from lawyers for the hacking victims.

“News Group has agreed to compensation being assessed on the basis that senior employees and directors of N.G.N. knew about the wrongdoing and sought to conceal it by deliberately deceiving investigators and destroying evidence,” the statement said, referring to News Group Newspapers.

The lawyers also said they had obtained, through nine disclosure orders from the court, “documents relating to the nature and scale of the conspiracy, a cover-up and the destruction of evidence/e-mail archives by News Group.”

In a statement, News International, the British newspaper arm of Mr. Murdoch’s global empire and the parent company of News Group, said it had “made no admission as part of these settlements that directors or senior employees knew about the wrongdoing by N.G.N. or sought to conceal it.” It added, “However, for the purpose of reaching these settlements only, N.G.N. agreed that the damages to be paid to claimants should be assessed as if this was the case.”

Lawyers said, however, that it was unlikely that the company would have agreed to calculate settlements on the basis that there was a cover-up if there were in fact no cover-up.

Until the end of 2010, News International denied that The News of the World engaged in any phone hacking and vehemently vowed to fight any legal claims. After that, it admitted that some of its reporters and editors knew about the hacking. Now it has acknowledged that hacking was pervasive, and with hundreds of potential victims still left to deal with, it recently set up a Web page where people who believe their phones were hacked can file claims electronically.

More than 20 people have been arrested on suspicion of phone hacking or illegally paying the police for information. No criminal charges have been filed yet.

Alan Cowell contributed reporting.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/world/europe/murdoch-company-settles-with-36-hacking-victims.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

Your Money: A New Type of Student Loan, but Still a Risk

July 2, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The first is to cheer. Borrowers now have a choice similar to people buying homes. Those who want certainty can pay extra for it, while those who wish to roll the dice and hope interest rates don’t rise too much can do that, too.

The second response is to rail against the fact that these loans are even necessary. After all, the federal government will lend most undergraduates up to $31,000. That this is not nearly enough for many families to cover the bills at all sorts of colleges is some kind of national disgrace, right?

Both reactions, it turns out, are valid. So let’s consider them one at a time.

But first, a review (and a semiofficial renaming of the loan at issue here). Not so long ago, federal student loans were variable and you could get them from a bank. Now, they are fixed at as little as 3.4 percent for this coming school year, and you borrow directly from the government.

The federal loans are a good deal, but they are often not enough make up the difference between what a family has saved or can spend out of current income and what the student gets in grants and scholarship money.

This is where private student loans come in — and proceed to send some undergraduates’ total debts spiraling into the six figures by the time they manage to earn a bachelor’s degree. While the government recently introduced lower federal loan payments for graduates with limited income and loan forgiveness for people in public service jobs, the banks don’t have similar programs for their private loan borrowers.

And about this name — private student loans. It’s factually inaccurate. To get the lowest rates, a teenager with limited credit history will need a co-applicant, which usually ends up being a parent.

The vast majority of these loans end up being a joint effort, so let’s call them what they are: private family loans. Yes, banks will often absolve the co-signer of responsibility after a couple of years if every payment has arrived on time, but forgetful young adults don’t always do that. (This, by the way, creates black marks on everyone’s credit history, not just the student’s.)

So here come U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo with their new fixed-rate family loans. Both last for 15 years. The crucial difference is that U.S. Bank offers only one rate: an annual percentage rate of 7.8 percent. An upfront fee can raise the actual annual percentage rate on the loan to as high as 8.46 percent.

Wells Fargo’s fixed-rate loans have no origination fee and are as low as 7.29 percent (or as much as another percentage point lower if you’re a current Wells Fargo banking or education loan customer). But if you don’t have excellent credit, the fixed rate could be high as 14.21 percent for community colleges or trade schools.

The current variable rate ranges from an annual percentage rate of 3.39 to 10.22 percent at U.S. Bank and 3.4 to 11.74 percent at Wells Fargo. Given the size of the gap and no signs that rate increases are imminent, why introduce this option now?

“We think that students and parents are looking for some level of certainty in the long run,” said Lucille Conley, senior vice president of consumer lending for U.S. Bank. “They’ve seen things happen in the housing market that may cause them more concern than they might have had four or five years ago.”

The bankers aren’t suggesting that borrowers actually try to do the math. In fact, it’s nearly impossible. The banks haven’t created calculators that allow you to input a series of interest rate spikes and declines at various points along a 15-year timeline and then compare it with a fixed rate. And since the professionals have no idea themselves what interest rates may do, it makes little sense for them to encourage their customers to guess.

Instead, this is a product for people who sleep better at night knowing what their payment is. Turns out there are lots of people like this. Kirk Bare, Wells Fargo’s business head of education financial services, said the bank was expecting a fairly low adoption of the fixed-rate loan and has been surprised by how many families have chosen it so far.

This is a fine thing, as far as it goes. Fine, that is, until you stop to think about what the mere existence of the private family loan actually means.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=0a98ba38b0c1fe82ff70cbf3008b7d6f

Filed Under: Your Money Tagged With: , ,