| Type | Private company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Newspapers |
| Founded | 1940 (As Donrey Media Group) |
| Founder(s) | Donald W. Reynolds |
| Headquarters | Las Vegas, Nevada, United States |
| Products | Newspapers, Magazines, Online |
| Employees | 2000+ |
| Website | www.stephensmedia.com |
Stephens Media LLC is a Las Vegas, Nevada diversified media holding company that publishes over 11 daily and 64 weekly newspapers in 9 states, primarily in Nevada and Arkansas.
The company has been expanding its interactive Internet business, where it operates online sites for its newspapers and portal sites like LasVegas.com, which is licensed to Greenspun Media Group. The company co-owns hawaii.com with Gannett. The company is also a partner in the California Newspapers Partnership with MediaNews and Gannett. The company also formed in November 2009 a joint venture with WEHCO Media, Inc. in Arkansas.
On November 12, 2010, Michael Ferguson, the company's Chief Operating Officer, was promoted to CEO. The previous CEO, Sherman Frederick, will remain with Stephens Media in a consultant role and write a weekly column for Stephens Media newspapers. Mark Hinueber is Vice President, General Counsel and Director of Human Resources.
On November 28, 2010, Stephens Media Iowa, LLC, a subsidiary of Stephens Media, acquired several newspapers including the Ames Tribune, Boone News-Republican, Dallas County News, Nevada Journal, Ames About People & Advertiser, Tri-County Times, and Algona Upper Des Moines from Midlands Newspapers, Inc., a subsidiary of the Omaha World-Herald Company.[1]
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The company was formerly called Donrey Media Group, which was founded by Arkansas media mogul Donald W. Reynolds and based in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Reynolds died in 1993. The company was then sold to the Stephens family of Arkansas, best known for their investment banking business Stephens Inc. in Little Rock. Some of Donrey's properties were sold off, and the company moved its headquarters to Las Vegas, home of its largest newspaper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The company was re-named Stephens Media Group in 2002. In June 2006, the company became known as Stephens Media LLC. The company has no connection with Stephens Media Group, a radio broadcasting company in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
In 2010, Stephens Media contracted with the litigation firm Righthaven LLC, giving it the power to enforce the company's copyrights when online violators go beyond the bounds of fair use. More than 141 lawsuits have been filed in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas since mid-March.
In a column published in the RJ shortly after the lawsuits began, Publisher Sherman Frederick, said the primary goal with the partnership with Righthaven was to deter theft of the company's copyrighted materials. He said if the company was successful, he hoped Righthaven would find other media clients. In late August, WEHCO Media, which owns the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and the Chattanooga Times Free Press, signed on with the firm. MediaNews Group has also used Righthaven to file a copyright infringement suit.
The aggressive enforcement of the Stephens Media copyrights by Righthaven is being closely watched by other publishers, as is the debate it has generated. Critics of the relatively new practice have coined it 'copyright trolling', and argue that the purpose of such enforcement is to make a profit.[2] In the Poynter article, Stephens Media general counsel Mark Hinueber says the goal is to make sure the company's intellectual rights are protected. "We were seeing our entire work product in some stories just being right-clicked and cut and pasted into blogs, where people were selling Google ads around them and making money." The Las Vegas Sun has been thoroughly documenting Righthaven's activities and the response. The Sun's outside law firm, Lewis and Roca, is defending several of the Righthaven suits.
Targets of the Righthaven lawsuits have included bloggers political forums, major political parties, and several of the newspaper's own sources including NORML, DailyPaul.com, Infowars, Free Republic, and others.[3][4] On August 25, 2010, the Electronic Frontier Foundation announced that they will make efforts to assist Righthaven LLC defendants to the best of their ability.[5]
Righthaven's lawsuits are currently coming under increasing judicial scrutiny, and Righthaven has been found, in June 2011, to lack standing to sue for alleged infringement of copyrighted material to which it holds only a limited license, as such a license does not confer the right to sue for infringement. Sanctions against Righthaven and its attorney, Steven A. Gibson, of Nevada law firm Dickinson Wright, are currently being contemplated by one judge. In response to these developments, Righthaven and Stephens Media have attempted to amend their joint venture agreement (it is now called the "Strategic Alliance Agreement") but critics point out that even this new agreement should fail to confer standing on Righthaven in the cases it has filed.
In September 2009, Stephens Media and WEHCO Media Inc., owner of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, announced plans to combine their newspaper operations in Northwest Arkansas and operate as a single company. The venture was approved in November 2009 by the U.S. Justice Department and a new Arkansas Limited Liabilty Company, Northwest Arkansas Newspapers LLC, was formed.
Stephens Media publishes the newspapers of Northwest Arkansas Newspapers and is responsible for editorial content while WEHCO Media controls the advertising, business, production and web operations.
Newspapers in the joint venture include:
The Springdale Morning News The Rogers Morning News Northwest Arkansas Times Benton County Daily Record
Arkansas
Hawaii
Iowa
Nevada
North Carolina
Oklahoma
Texas
Tennessee
Washington
http://righthavenlawsuits.com/
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