Is the Canada Periodical Fund helping TC Media squeeze freelancers?
By Katherine Lapointe The Canadian Media Guild has sent a letter to Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore asking him to review the funding TC Media receives from Heritage Canada’s Periodical Fund in the wake of the new contract it tried to impose on freelancers this year. TC Media has received between $7.5 and $8.5 [...]
A bright spot in the TC Media affair?
There may be some room for optimism in the ongoing dispute over the new Transcontinental Media contributors agreement. The CMG has heard from freelancers in Québec and elsewhere that TC Media is making amendments to the contract. Freelancers for some TC Media titles have been told that they can continue to provide content for the magazines [...]
I Am Not Anonymous
By Amber Nasrulla I’d like to sit down with the person or people at TC Media who penned the new freelance contract. As Story Board reported last week, they’ve refused to negotiate improvements or meet with anyone from the Canadian Media Guild (CMG) saying they prefer to meet with freelancers individually. If I met them [...]
TC Media refuses meeting request
Last week, a group of associations and unions representing Canadian media professionals sent a letter to TC Media requesting a meeting to discuss the terms in their new contributors agreement. The group — which includes the Canadian Media Guild, CWA/SCA Canada, the Canadian Writers Group, the Canadian Freelance Union, the Professional Writers Association of Canada, the [...]
Intellectual property lawyer responds to TC Media agreement
The new Transcontinental Media contributor agreement has raised a furor among freelancers over the past few weeks. TC Media, which publishes a variety of magazines including Canadian Living, Elle Canada, and The Hockey News, has increased the copyright demands in its new agreement and requires contributors to waive their moral rights. This week Story Board contacted Warren Sheffer – [...]
An Open Letter to Transcontinental by Jay Teitel
Dear Transcontinental Media: In the past decade or so online theft of intellectual property has become not just a problem, but a cause celebre, with a lot of people who should know better claiming that all information belongs to everyone, gratis, and that appropriating a piece of writing a professional writer has executed, and [...]
Transcontinental Media responds
Last month we told you about the new Transcontinental Media contributor agreement, an agreement that demands full copyright from freelancers as well as a waiver of moral rights. Story Board requested an interview with TC Media Senior Vice President Pierre Marcoux to ask about the reasons behind the changes to their agreement. We were granted [...]
From the Toronto Star to Transcon…freelancers unite!
Yesterday, magazine writer and author Ann Douglas wrote a post for Story Board explaining why she quit her column for the Toronto Star. The tremendous response to her post – in the blog comments, on Facebook and on Twitter – proves how fed up freelancers are with the unfair contracts being imposed by publishers. Yes, publishers are [...]
Why I Am No Longer Writing The Column I Loved for The Toronto Star
By Ann Douglas Three weeks ago, I was confronted with one of the most difficult decisions I have had to make in my career as a freelance writer: sign a highly objectionable freelance writing agreement or stop writing a column I loved. In mid-February, I was presented with a copy of The Toronto Star’s [...]
Transcontinental Media agreement expands copyright demands
There’s a new Transcontinental Media contributor agreement and it’s not going to bring writers any joy. The publisher, whose most popular titles include Elle Canada, Canadian Living, Style at Home, The Hockey News and Vancouver Magazine, has made significant changes to the 2009 version of their agreement – an agreement that led to a boycott [...]
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