NowPublic Media : Under Fire

July 28, 2010 - PRLog -- Allegations have surfaced that news network Examiner.com, which is controlled by Philip Anschutz's Clarity Digital Group, have breached its contract with Citizen-J site NowPublic producers.

The allegations stem from a contract entered into by NowPublic producers in February of this year with Vancouver-based NowPublic, purchased by Examiner in September 2009. According to the contract, the payment model allowed for 20% of ad revenue earned from the producer's content, reaching 30% with quality and quantity, but NowPublic was short developers until May 2010 and couldn't implement Google Adsense revenue-share API until then. In the meantime, NowPublic was offering the equivalent of Google Adsense revenue-share API in a $/1000 page view rate. The contract also called for statistical reports in an excel file at the end of each month showing total and per article page views and the corresponding earnings.Once the Google Adsense application was implemented, producers were to be paid via AdSense and would have access to detailed reports in Analytics with AdSense login.

It began when a  written communication to Now Public Media producers from former Now Public VP Publishing, Content & Partner Acquisitions, Joy Gugeler, led producers to question why payment had not been made for their postings,  as per their contract.  

Now Public Media founder and CEO,   Michael Tippett, intially claimed  that this contract  -  gone over in earnest, and signed,  by all "paid producers",  was,  "not really a contract, but it's helpful", then offered producers $1.00 per 1000 page views.

Furthermore,  Clarity Digital Group VP Business Development & General Counsel, Deborah Shinbein, claims  AdSense has never been in effect for the content provided by the NowPublic Producers, and "we are not committing to do that at this time".  That is why Michael Tippett stated that Now Public Media is paying the Producers $1 per 1000 page views.   " If we do later decide to launch AdSense, we will let you know the applicable AdSense rate at that time.  However, due to changes in our site and company structure, we may or may not choose to implement AdSense in the future."  Those were her words.  

Sources indicate at least one producer has filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau in Denver, Colorado. Examiner has until August 5th to respond to the complaint.

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