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"The Short Version of Copyright Principles for Publishers" (available to members here) is a five-page document covering the copyright issues that newspaper staffers most frequently face. Alice Neff Lucan, AAN's legal hotline attorney, penned the document, which covers recent changes in copyright law and common-sense guidelines on when it is lawful to use others' work.

"It may literally bankrupt some publications. Some may survive, but it's doubtful," Dan Siefken told local ABC affiliate KSFY in a story that aired March 2. Siefkin, the publisher of a small real-estate shopper, was talking about News Center Distribution, a service started late last year by Gannett's local daily, the Argus Leader. Like similar Gannett programs in Greenville, SC and Jackson, Miss., NCD signs exclusive distribution contracts with local businesses in South Dakota's largest city, and then charges a fee for competing publishers to reserve space in its racks. In an e-mail sent to KSFY, the Argus Leader claimed it was "facilitating competition through NCD. The mess that free publications can make in retailers' stores by distributing their own products will, eventually, drive these retailers to ban them or to institute service fees that are far in excess of NCD fees. That would hurt all of the publishers and the small ones more than the Argus Leader."