Please vote in our "What do you think about the On Mumsnet This Week column in the Daily Mail?" poll

[JustineMumsnet]

Hello all,
So am back in Blighty and have caught up on everything posted and all the ongoing correspondence with the DM that's gone on while I've been away. (Sorry very poor communications on hols so haven't really been in the loop but Carrie and team have filled me in now.)
Thanks all for the input as ever.

There are a few things you've raised that we need to address and clarify. So, as ever, apologies in advance for the long post.

The first I think is MNHQ's attitude towards this column and why we didn't try and put a stop to it earlier, i.e. the moment we found out about it. (Recap for those who may have missed: we didn't know in advance that it was going to happen, the first we knew about it was when we saw the first column being discussed on MN and initially we didn't think we had any legal grounds to contest the DM's use of MN quotes. We subsequently established some time after column 2 that the DM is, in fact, most likely infringing MN copyright).

As I said early on, a weekly column in the DM is not something we'd have sought. We share many Mumsnetters' misgivings about the views and general tone of the paper - particularly it's attitudes towards working women, immigrants etc. And as I've also said we've as yet detected no noticeable increase in visitors on Thursdays when the column is published (or on any other days for that matter). Nor is it a column that fills us with pride because it adequately represents the joy and wonder that is Mumsnet. So why - as some have understandably wondered - are we not banging our fists about stopping the darned thing and have we not fired off a barrage of legal threats? Why instead do we at HQ seem a bit ambivalent about whether the column exists or not?

The main answer is this. Like it or not, the Daily Mail is a very influential beast, probably one of the most politically influential institutions in the UK. So, irrespective of the content of these columns, the very fact that the Daily Mail have decided that Mumsnet is prominent and interesting enough to base a weekly column around increases our clout. Clout when it comes to asking government ministers to consider things like our miscarriage campaign, clout when we try to persuade Gok Wan's PR that he ought to pay us a visit, or when the Tories are thinking about environment policy or what they're going to do to increase breastfeeding rates.

We also have a distinct reluctance to "go legal" with anyone after our experience of GF going legal with us - the legal system and lawyers (particularly opposing lawyers) have a way of eating up all your resources, not to mention your will to live. And call us lily-livered if you like, we'd rather not be at the top the DM's hit list if there's a way of avoiding it.

Plus, from the correspondence Carrie's had with the mail in the last couple of weeks, it's clear that they would are prepared to take steps to minimise the privacy risks.

That said, we accept many of the reservations argued well here and in previous threads about the imperfect nature of the association.

In short, those of you who've accused us of residing on the fence are probably right - we are a bit and tbh it's not very comfortable!
So where next?

We think perhaps it would be best both to help us get off the fence and, if it comes to it, to lay the column to rest, to put the matter to the vote. We recognise that it's not a perfect solution but there have been a number of objections raised about this and we'd like to see exactly what it is that folks are objecting to - MN in the Daily Mail per se. MN in the Daily Mail without MN control over content. MN in the Daily Mail in its current guise/format - for example would it be OK if it were it a funny weekly column written by someone like MorningPaper (they'd never have she's far too rude of course)? Or perhaps you don't object at all (and you have an aversion to posting on this thread ).

Hopefully they'll be a clear conclusion and we promise to abide by it and to do our darnedest to put it into action as quickly as possible.

We're sorry this has dragged on a bit - it is a bit tricky to conduct this type of negotiation in public, particularly when there's a whiff of the legals about - and as we all know (if we didn't already) MN is a very public board, open for all to see and easily searchable etc. At some points we do sometimes have to just hope that you trust that we are not the bad guys who are trying to manipulate, exploit and mislead you all for our own ends (many thanks to those who have said as much). If you think that we are then there's nowt much we can say I suspect to ever sway you otherwise - but you're welcome on MN all the same because it's not really about us, after all.

It also doesn't help that it all kicked off in holiday season which is how it always is (GF the same) - sod's law and all that. Anyway humble apologies for not being a bit more accessible/on the ball in the last few weeks. We are almost all back at full strength now and generally at your disposal .

So here's our very quick poll - please fill it in (just the once please). It won't gain you entry in any competitions to win a family holiday outside of school holidays but it will most certainly influence what we do next.

Many thanks.

This is not just DM "talking about us" - it is DM being given the permission to lift whole threads and print them in their newspaper. There is a major difference.

lifting content from a public access site,visible and accessible to many. the other papers do it too

telegraph
independent
guardian

MNHQ have clearly chosen their allegiance to DM and are compliant in the relationship

I notice that there's a comment about her being child free and telling her she shouldn't be commenting

I think that's a bit unfair, she (the journalist) may be using this site to help get info about TTC (As I am) and has happened upon the thread while reading the boards or maybe even read the peice in the DM yesterday? I read the thread and also commented - something along the lines of not understanding the whole school gate fashion parade thing - and I have no children yet.

Or am I being too kind. End of the day she's still someone who has regurgitated a thread from here to make money. Which is, I suppose, not breaking any laws but is just irritating. Even more so if she is using this site for support whie TTC.

What are the chances she is though? Or maybe just another hack with no imagination who trawls the internet for 'good copy'.... sigh!

oh - actually have re-read it and they are commenting on another person's comment

doh!

Damn, I really fancied a long cruise in the company of a load of Daily Mail readers, MP.

Today's article in Femail is very offensive. It works up the old cliche that women hate each other, are in permanent cometition over trivial matters of appearance and status, and are victims of one another who have only themsleves to blame. The same sort of slant on MN would be readily understood as ironic -- or jumped on.

I really do think it is unrealistic to suggest that raising MN's already very high profile by tolerating a presence like this in Femail will do anything at all to increase MN's 'campaigning power'. But clicks through from a women's style and beauty page in the Mail will of course be attractive to advertisers on MN.

There have been lots of harsh claims against MNHQ here, many of them offensive and OTT. I don't for a second think that they have 'connived' or been dishonest, and it is very brave and generous of them to discuss the issue so fully on the boards. But, but, but they post as real people and as representatives of the company that makes their living. There is bound to be a little gloss and spin -- we all do that in professional communications. I feel a bit tainted by the suggestion that any claim that MNHQ are happy with the Mail coverage because of their business interests amounts to calling them venal liars.

Also, do you think that the strategy of saying to the Mail 'Don't do this unless you put certain restrictions in place' has had the effect of saying 'Sure, you have our absolute permission to do this, subject to the restrictions'? That would explain the explosion of coverage in the last couple of days.

If MNHQ wanted to stop the coverage, would it have been better to have written and just said 'no' -- even if they had no capacity/prospect of going to court whatsoever?

"Today's article in Femail is very offensive. It works up the old cliche that women hate each other, are in permanent cometition over trivial matters of appearance and status"

yes, but, where on earth did they get this idea from .... the thread on Mumsnet is very real. Mumsnetters (Some) were talking about it ...

It's not like they made it up.

Arrghh, I am not defending the Daily Mail honestly!

I haven't read the thread it was based on but I certainly don't want to deny that there are plenty of Daily Mailish posts on MN. I don't think the DM has any agenda to distort MN. I never bought the idea that MN is exclusively full of Guardianistas and Mailhaters.

But there is a context here that challenges the slant in that article. Whereas the Femail context probably endorses it.

Thready, I can't read half your post cos it's going all over the ads on my browser for some reason, but the 'venal liars' thing wasn't aimed at you - as you say, some of the posts on these threads have made pretty explicit accusations.

I do think, though that Justine has said quite plainly that MN aren't happy, they are ambivalent. I just don't see any reason to disbelieve that. Ambivalence seems a perfectly reasonable response to me (possibly because it's my response too).

And with that I really am off (to IKEA - even with the train fares, the station car park fee and an IKEA cafe lunch for three, their roman blinds still work out cheaper than John Lewis's).

why don't they go and poach from netmums for example? Why consistently poach from MN and consistently take posts out of the context to which Threadie refers so that we all sound like a bunch of s hallow rivalrous cretins? How many bad journalists can now make a living out of copying and pasting MN?

I bought a lovely rug there just yesterday wonk. [considers pitching an IKEA vs John Lewis article to DM]

the thing is, there ARE plenty of people on here who can make us look like "a bunch of shallow rivalrous cretins" anyway - The Daily mail is just highlighting that, no?

Arrgghhh - I really am not defending the Daily Mail!

but here beanieb you are always going to get other people who deflate pretentions and point out hypocrisies/bigotry/vanity etc. In the DM you don't get that balance.

Ach, I don't know - so many issues here.

I tend to think that privacy is dying if not already cold, and that circumspection is required both here and elsewhere. Copyright and IP - important and v much issue of the day in terms of tech and culture etc - but realistically not a hot potato for many MNers.

Which leaves us with the impact of the association between MN and DM - a difficult thing to nail.

I loathe the DM - would never read it myslef and would attempt to dissuade others from doing so. But, as it stands, are we really appearing to condone the DM-ness of it? Not sure. It is they who are writing about us, and I think that most people would see this as their attempt to ally themselves with MN, rather than the reverse. In some respects, an MN-approved roundup would indicate a less neutral, more cosy association between Us and Them.

The people who read LH's column are already DM readers: it's too late for them, poor souls. So we are not, I don't think, bumping the DM's circulation by our presence; nor are we being asked to read it ourselves.

And there is the possibility that we might exert some influence in the opposite direction. We should remember that the simple idea of women talking to one another unsupervised edges revolutionary for many DM readers - weekly exposure to that fact alone, regardless of the content, might conceivably broaden some horizons in a, you know, empowering kinda way.

I agree that there is, potentially, a huge amount of real good to be done with MN clout, and the more of it we are perceived to have (including but not limited to media profile), the better for those whose lives might be improved by that clout being wielded.

As PW says, the DM wields huge heft of its own - we don't like that, but it's true. It would be grim indeed to snuggle up - but it might not be a bad thing if there is not the perception in Westminster that if one placates MN, one necessarily alienates the DM demographic.

Christ, I've got splinters in me Janet Regers.

As an aside, I'm v late to this and haven't combed all the threads, but the OP seems completely clear to me - not coy in any way. And I don't share the feeling which has been expressed, in these threads and others, that there is an ongoing and cynical elision of the community and business aims of the enterprise. Of course MNHQ don't continually remind us 'we're a business and we need as much traffic as poss' - that would be both rude and self-sabotaging. But it doesn't follow therefore that we are all being manipulated. All elements - the community, he business, the profile, the ad revenue, the clout - are interconnected and impossible to unravel, and if one element were removed there would be negative consequences for the others. It seems - sorry - churlish and rather undergrad to be always detecting the hand of The Man in MN. It just is what it is: complicated.

scottishmummy - regarding DM (and any other online newspaper)

I don't think there are (m)any which are confident in their online versions making money.

From a recent Media Show (discussing the plans by News Corp to make their content chargeable) pretty much every paper is subsidising their electronic versions from income on the printed copies, and that income is dropping (See this article about cover price increases on printed papers.

When Mr Murdock indicated that NewsCorp online sites would be charging for content, the rest of the online papers sat up, only because they've all been thinking about it, but none wants to be first.

Partly that's because it is (mostly) untried on a daily (archives of financial papers are not uncommon, where an annual subscription gives access) and the 'how to' is another aspect.

Do they charge a flat fee for a day's access, or some micro-payment system to charge per page viewed ?

Some sites like the Guardian and Sun get around 25 million unique visitors, so maybe the Sun might be able to charge a few pence a day, but my guess is the income that keeps the trashy page3.com site going is from gullible fools younger men paying silly high prices for dubious "get a sexy girl video on your mobile" services (WebDude has an old mobile, so cannot enjoy view soft porn at high cost)

Back to the DM and "visitors equating to income"

Also, it looks to me (viewing the source code for that article mentioned a few posts back) as if the DM is (a) linking to its own 'store' as much as anything, to make a profit as a retailer (ie 20-40% margin on goods) and (b) uses Google ads

I haven't gone through all their javascript code yet, and as I use Firefox with advert-blocking add-on, I only saw one 'advert' to their fashion store, but there was a link using DoubleClick, which is part of Google to track someone clicking a link.

Now, "per click" ads can be very costly to the advertiser (eg 15 quid a click), but I don't think the website displaying those clicks get much. As for the 'adverts by Gooooooogle' type lists, again, doubt the website owner gets much - the cost for advertisers can be as low as 10p per thousand displays, so even with 10 adverts shown, it takes thousands of displays for Google to charge a pound, let alone pay out a pound!

(I don't run any websites using Google display ads, but do have clients that pay Google for advertising, some with low bills, some spending hundreds a month.)

If the DM is using Google, then it may not have a system to link to advertisers which pay the DM directly. Seems like many other sites, they offload the sourcing of the ads to another (Google) and will therefore only get a slice of the income Google is making.

It's less risky, as Google will be responsible for providing ads, and takes away need for staff (while small radio stations and papers are probably hassling every firm in their locality about paid ads, at about the worst time to be trying to get new advertisers).

Churlish and undergrad to think that a business whose (presumably?)main source of revenue is advertising might be preoccupied with increasing advertising revenue? Not sure I get that.

onebatmother - while MN isn't constantly saying it wants hits etc etc, in the current situation it is far from clear what contact has been made (if any), whether there's even been a "hey, this material is copyright, stop copying chunks now, please" type letter, or anything to say (to the DM) that MN is less than happy with the situation, as far as I can tell.

That's poor, if the situation of a column being produced, from MN quotes, hasn't been challenged. It's interesting that someone did ask about the fact the DM 'pulled' the article a while ago, and got a (daft) reply, yet we're still not being told what discussion (if any) there has been over the copyright issue.

Sure, can understand MN not wanting a costly legal fight, but if no 'concern' is even expressed, they may as well scrub the T+C saying they own copyright, so everyone knows (and MN users can extract from whatever threads they want and publish their own books if they want, without challenge from MNHQ).

It seems pretty clear that if MNHQ cannot stick up for themselves over them holding copyright, and requiring media and others to get permission then the DM and anyone else is free to do what they want with "copy and paste" of content.

That's not in MN's commercial interest, and makes a mockery of stating copyright passes to MN when someone makes a post, if they are unwilling to challenge multiple infringements, "because the DM has lots of clout". Sounds like a case of "DM says 'jump' and MN would say 'how high?'"

So, MNHQ, has anyone made formal contact with the DM saying something on the lines of "you are infringing copyright by publishing, in print and online, large sections from threads that have appeared on the Mumsnet.com website" ?

If not, why not ? (Agreed, holidays get in the way, but getting legal advice and writing a letter isn't going to take a week, let alone a month, is it!)

I object because the column in no way represents MN imo. It doesn't show it's funny, clever or caring side and just makes us look vapid at times.

No of course not, Threadie, that's simple realism - and that's my point. Presumably the only way MN can survive is ad revenue, but there is sometimes the implication that there is something intrinsically sinister in that, and I don't believe there is.

Plus, even if this very extensive presence in Femail does improve a campaigning position (which is really an arguable claim), it does so at the cost of to some degree compromising the site's primary social role as a source of parenting support. We are all accustomed to everything said here being in the public domain and useable (and used) by the press. But three threads cannibalised in two days? Plus one a week hereafter? It is too much; it does undermine the forum.

Whether MNHQ can do anything about it is another matter it may well be that they can't in the end. It is just another of the many sides of the whole issue copyright on the net, which is terrorising the music industry and (today of all days) book authorship last day to opt out of Google owning your sorry asses all you authors out there.

I agree, WebDude and Threadie, that the copyright question is crucial - both in this, and more broadly.

Are there really three MN threads in the DM? I'd thoguht the plan was one a week? How odd.

It was okay, StripeySuit, but I still don't like it and the names she uses are stupid too imo.

There was an article yesterday on the school run uniform for mums too.