Case Studies/The Pundit
The Pundit is designed to give young people their first shot at being published, in an open field with little barriers. Licensing The Pundit under Creative Commons enables us to utilise their work without needing to take all creative rights away from the individual author. — Tim Norton, Editor, A New Leaf Media
Overview
The Pundit is a free publication released to cover Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) 2006 by A New Leaf Media, an independent Australian publisher and ‘word pedlar’. Produced by Tim Norton & Lefa Singleton, with support from Jane Watkins and Paul D’Agostino, The Pundit included reviews, news and interviews contributed by an extensive and enthusiastic writing team sourced from local student media outlets, such as SYN FM, Is Not Magazine, Express Media, Vibewire.net, The Big Issue, Arts Hub and other youth media. The publication was designed to not only be insightful, entertaining and informative, but to be an opportunity for young and emerging writers to publish work in a professional capacity.
The Pundit in 2006 was released as a 56-page, A4 portrait format with a print run of 10,000 copies and distributed around Melbourne outside the five main MIFF cinemas in addition to official venues. It was also available in pdf format from the website, with the articles and reviews available individually in html.
The publication was produced with the support of The Foundation for Young Australians, Crumpler Bags Australia, RMIT Union Arts, the Melbourne International Film Festival, and the Melbourne City Mission Slingshot.
Based in North Fitzroy, A New Leaf Media operates as a niche media company which strives to create alternative independent media produced by emerging media-makers. It focuses on publishing review magazines for a variety of Melbourne’s arts and cultural festivals, including The Pun for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, and The Pundit for the Melbourne International Film Festival. In the future, more titles will be released to coincide with various Australian arts and cultural festivals offering comprehensive guides.
License Usage
A New Leaf Media decided to license both the print magazine and the pdf digital version of The Pundit under a Creative Commons licence that allows content published in the magazine to be republished so long as the articles are not changed and the republication is for non-commercial purposes: i.e. under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia licence. This licensing facilitated the republishing of much of the magazine’s content on blogs during the festival, giving the writers far more exposure than A New Leaf Media on their own could provide.
Motivations
Tim Norton from A New Leaf Media spoke at the 2006 Creative Commons Australia Industry Forum, in the session for Creative Industries. Tim’s own blog, Stop the world Mummy, I want to get off… is also licensed under Creative Commons.
Media
Cover shot: File:Http://wiki.creativecommons.org/images/b/b5/PunditCover.jpg Website: A New Leaf Media
