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Re: Contract dilemma

It looks as though you have stumbled into the same pit that many of us who 
write for newspapers have. I am part of the group on the west coast who have 
lost several newspapers when they asked for "all rights, now and forever, 
back to the time of Moses, in this universe and any yet to be discovered, in 
this medium and any yet to be discovered." Not exact wording as regards to 
Moses, but the rest of it has appeared in various contracts that were 
presented to us, which most of us would not sign. I lost two newspapers, may 
lose a third, on my gaardening column and my travel column because I would 
not sign.

The stumbling block in this particular instance arises from the same problem 
that the National Writers Union fought with the New York Times, the Boston 
Globe, etc. The newspapers, because they had already been putting our work on 
their archives and selling it eslewhere, without any compensation to us (and 
often we didn't even know about it)  when the stuff hit the fan they tried 
valiantly to get us to sign such contracts to protect themsleves from their 
past sins.

None of the ones I lost were presenting "work for hire" contracts, but they 
both had taken my weekly and monthly columns, places them in their archives, 
and resold them to others, despite the fact that most of us had given them 
nothing more than one time print rights. In the cse of several of us in 
Southern California we self-syndicated, and our material appeared in other 
papers, so it was impossible to sign such contracts. In my case, and that of 
some of the other writers in SoCal the papers involved were the San Diego 
Union-Tribune, and the Riverside Press-Enterprise (which was purchased in the 
last few years by Belo, the Dallas Morning News).

As you probably kinow, the NWU fought the New York Times and eventually won 
with the handing down of a favorable decision from the Supreme Court.

I would hestitate to advise you, since each writer has different situations, 
but an all rights and forever contract or a work for hire contract certainly 
wasn't suitable for many of us.

Gerald Burke, Columnist
Flower Power
The Weekend Camper

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