Open Forum

​​Would anyone be willing to share their policy/fee structure for use of images in your collection by the media?

Specifically, I am interested in relationships between your local museum and local newspaper.  We are flooded with requests from our local paper for historical images from our collection that they want to run with community history articles they write.  They are crying foul that we wish to now charge them for use.  We are looking to treat them as any other commercial entity.

Thanks!


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Harry Klinkhamer
Historical Resources Manager
Venice Museum and Archives
Venice FL
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Harry,

In my experience, working with local media to develop a partnership for use is your best bet. It's much more likely to be productive in the long run than trying to insist on media paying reproduction fees, which in general is not a common practice of theirs.

Is the paper's staff open to having the museum not just given photo credit, but perhaps being mentioned in these articles as a community resource? If you get your community to recognize the collections you have via positive publicity, you stand to recoup much more in terms of visits and memberships and potentially, reproduction fees from individuals.

Keep in mind that you may rely on the same media outlet for positive publicity for other activities and exhibits and fundraisers your organization is undertaking. Thinking in terms of partnerships is much more likely to keep all your avenues open for those times when you want and need the media to be one of your supporters. Good luck!

Paul

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Paul Hammond
Executive Director
Colorado Railroad Museum
Golden, Colorado
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Harry,

I agree with Paul. When I first started working with rights and reproductions, I charged our local newspaper a fee for images. They got a bit upset so we scrapped it. Our Director of Marketing explained to me then that she couldn't buy the exposure and, essentially, advertising that the use of our images and credit line in the newspaper provides. We did, and still do, have a pretty thin marketing budget. It is well worth it to maintain goodwill with local media by allowing them use your images for free, especially when you consider that it is the same media that you want to cover your events, exhibits, and other good news. I am attaching our fee schedule. It is more of a guide than a hard and fast rule. I try to work with folks, especially academics and writers who don't make much money off of their books or projects. 

Best,
Chris

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Chris Godbold
Chief Curator of Collections
Fort Bend History Association
Richmond TX
------------------------------

------Original Message------

Harry,

I agree with Paul. When I first started working with rights and reproductions, I charged our local newspaper a fee for images. They got a bit upset so we scrapped it. Our Director of Marketing explained to me then that she couldn't buy the exposure and, essentially, advertising that the use of our images and credit line in the newspaper provides. We did, and still do, have a pretty thin marketing budget. It is well worth it to maintain goodwill with local media by allowing them use your images for free, especially when you consider that it is the same media that you want to cover your events, exhibits, and other good news. I am attaching our fee schedule. It is more of a guide than a hard and fast rule. I try to work with folks, especially academics and writers who don't make much money off of their books or projects. 

Best,
Chris

------------------------------
Chris Godbold
Chief Curator of Collections
Fort Bend History Association
Richmond TX
------------------------------

Hi Harry,
I can relate to your challenges with providing images to the media. Our museum receives multiple requests each month from a wide variety of digital outlets and print publications. Many of these media outlets have unreasonable deadline requests and expectations that we will find the exact image to match their story upon short notice. We currently require a $15 fee to be paid to us for each digital image that is requested, which we feel is quite reasonable. We still get tons of beef about it though, and we try our best to explain to the media the time and expense in fulfilling their requests, especially as a non-profit with a limited staff (one archivist).

Personally, I get frustrated with media outlets who are unwilling to pay our small fee. When we requested from the local paper (McClatchy publication) an image of a docent tour to use for internal purposes, they charged us a $250 rights/reproduction fee. Yet they expect courtesy photos from us on a regular basis, both from our collection and from our publicity images. If paying for image rights are part of the cost of doing business for their organization, I don't see why we can't also expect to have a cost of doing business. It takes our archivist time to find images, digitally touch them up, and then send them with the correct captions and credit information. Sometimes if the image takes a while to find, it's more than our $15 fee can cover. So, again, we try to explain this to each person requesting so they can be informed and understand where we are coming from.

However, we do regularly partner with local media outlets and provide images for free as part of a partnership. Those partnerships are more intentional, and both parties take time to think about what would be beneficial to share to that specific audience. We have a very successful partnership with a local magazine that runs a half page archive image each month with an extended caption relating to the neighborhood it serves, and we appreciate the give and take in that relationship. There is plenty of time for us to submit the content, and we provide content that is meaningful to the readers/community. The "story" is well branded and keep us front and center each month. It is definitely important to maintain positive relationships, and just as the others have mentioned, we don't want to burn any bridges and ensure that our events and exhibitions receive coverage in the future.

Hope this is helpful to you. Best of luck!

------------------------------
Christina Claassen
Marketing & PR Manager
Whatcom Museum
Bellingham WA
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 11-22-2019 10:34 AM
From: Chris Godbold
Subject: Rep-roduction Fees for Commercial/News Media

Harry,

I agree with Paul. When I first started working with rights and reproductions, I charged our local newspaper a fee for images. They got a bit upset so we scrapped it. Our Director of Marketing explained to me then that she couldn't buy the exposure and, essentially, advertising that the use of our images and credit line in the newspaper provides. We did, and still do, have a pretty thin marketing budget. It is well worth it to maintain goodwill with local media by allowing them use your images for free, especially when you consider that it is the same media that you want to cover your events, exhibits, and other good news. I am attaching our fee schedule. It is more of a guide than a hard and fast rule. I try to work with folks, especially academics and writers who don't make much money off of their books or projects.

Best,
Chris

------------------------------
Chris Godbold
Chief Curator of Collections
Fort Bend History Association
Richmond TX
------------------------------

------Original Message------

Hi Harry,
I can relate to your challenges with providing images to the media. Our museum receives multiple requests each month from a wide variety of digital outlets and print publications. Many of these media outlets have unreasonable deadline requests and expectations that we will find the exact image to match their story upon short notice. We currently require a $15 fee to be paid to us for each digital image that is requested, which we feel is quite reasonable. We still get tons of beef about it though, and we try our best to explain to the media the time and expense in fulfilling their requests, especially as a non-profit with a limited staff (one archivist).

Personally, I get frustrated with media outlets who are unwilling to pay our small fee. When we requested from the local paper (McClatchy publication) an image of a docent tour to use for internal purposes, they charged us a $250 rights/reproduction fee. Yet they expect courtesy photos from us on a regular basis, both from our collection and from our publicity images. If paying for image rights are part of the cost of doing business for their organization, I don't see why we can't also expect to have a cost of doing business. It takes our archivist time to find images, digitally touch them up, and then send them with the correct captions and credit information. Sometimes if the image takes a while to find, it's more than our $15 fee can cover. So, again, we try to explain this to each person requesting so they can be informed and understand where we are coming from.

However, we do regularly partner with local media outlets and provide images for free as part of a partnership. Those partnerships are more intentional, and both parties take time to think about what would be beneficial to share to that specific audience. We have a very successful partnership with a local magazine that runs a half page archive image each month with an extended caption relating to the neighborhood it serves, and we appreciate the give and take in that relationship. There is plenty of time for us to submit the content, and we provide content that is meaningful to the readers/community. The "story" is well branded and keep us front and center each month. It is definitely important to maintain positive relationships, and just as the others have mentioned, we don't want to burn any bridges and ensure that our events and exhibitions receive coverage in the future.

Hope this is helpful to you. Best of luck!

------------------------------
Christina Claassen
Marketing & PR Manager
Whatcom Museum
Bellingham WA
------------------------------

Part of the problem with these kinds of historical requests is that they generally require research. They are not saying: "May we have an image of this particular painting or sculpture, or a list of such." They just say--"What do you have about parks in Yonkers?" For me, that is the main issue: The local magazine wants free research, not just free images, and we have very limited staff time for that. This is more of a commiseration than an answer. The PR department cannot provide what they need without involving curatorial.

If the photo collection was online, we could ask them to do their own research--in fact we are hoping to move in that direction and even let people take the images as open access. For the moment, what has evolved, over time, is that I have some checklists of Yonkers photos, some organized by subject, which are not at all everything there might be, but have captions and I know there are good images. In other words, I have saved research I had to do other times (because Yonkers photos are often requested for lots of reasons). I have these lists in an easily accessible place.

Now, at least much of the time, if we get a request like this, I can send one of the lists and ask them to pick what they want from that list. Then we do send images for free and of course expect credit. I try to limit our research time to scholarly requests. One special instance I am likely to make an exception to this is when the inquiry piques my interest, and I want to do the research for our own sake. Then the new research is useful to the Museum and will also be easily accessible the next time someone asks.

------------------------------
Laura Vookles
Chair, Curatorial Department
Hudson River Museum
Yonkers NY
------------------------------

------Original Message------

Part of the problem with these kinds of historical requests is that they generally require research. They are not saying: "May we have an image of this particular painting or sculpture, or a list of such." They just say--"What do you have about parks in Yonkers?" For me, that is the main issue: The local magazine wants free research, not just free images, and we have very limited staff time for that. This is more of a commiseration than an answer. The PR department cannot provide what they need without involving curatorial.

If the photo collection was online, we could ask them to do their own research--in fact we are hoping to move in that direction and even let people take the images as open access. For the moment, what has evolved, over time, is that I have some checklists of Yonkers photos, some organized by subject, which are not at all everything there might be, but have captions and I know there are good images. In other words, I have saved research I had to do other times (because Yonkers photos are often requested for lots of reasons). I have these lists in an easily accessible place.

Now, at least much of the time, if we get a request like this, I can send one of the lists and ask them to pick what they want from that list. Then we do send images for free and of course expect credit. I try to limit our research time to scholarly requests. One special instance I am likely to make an exception to this is when the inquiry piques my interest, and I want to do the research for our own sake. Then the new research is useful to the Museum and will also be easily accessible the next time someone asks.

------------------------------
Laura Vookles
Chair, Curatorial Department
Hudson River Museum
Yonkers NY
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 11-21-2019 09:11 AM
From: Harry Klinkhamer
Subject: Rep-roduction Fees for Commercial/News Media

​​Would anyone be willing to share their policy/fee structure for use of images in your collection by the media?

Specifically, I am interested in relationships between your local museum and local newspaper.  We are flooded with requests from our local paper for historical images from our collection that they want to run with community history articles they write.  They are crying foul that we wish to now charge them for use.  We are looking to treat them as any other commercial entity.

Thanks!


------------------------------
Harry Klinkhamer
Historical Resources Manager
Venice Museum and Archives
Venice FL
------------------------------

We are very popular with media, and get a lot of requests for images. The way we look at it is that if the image pertains to our collection that is on-view, or it we can take a new photo, we try to provide them for free. Historical image requests are forwarded to the photo archivist (and request forms are online) to handle the request and charge their department's fees. This usually keeps most people happy, and our Museum in the news. Of course media is on a quick deadline, that's the nature of the business, and the smaller outlets have tight budgets just like the rest of us. I try to be as generous as possible with the images (credit is almost always observed) when the stories pertain to the Museum and keep it in the consciousness of the public, who might later decide to come here, and that it crucial to our bottom line.

I hope that helps!

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Theodore Huetter
Sr. Mgr PR.Promo Mktg
Museum of Flight
Seattle WA
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