Copyright or Wrong?

Mike Rodman, who worked for about a year on contract as a freelance reporter for the Northwest Arkansas Times, has billed the Fayetteville newspaper $9,000 for providing stories he wrote to the Benton County Daily Record and The Associated Press wire service.

Rodman claims the Times provided his articles to the other news entities without his permission and without paying him.

Lamar Pettus, a Fayetteville lawyer representing Rodman, says he will file suit against the Times if the bill isn’t paid by early August. Pettus says Rodman’s contract with the Times specified that he would write articles for the Times, not for any wire services or other publications. The $9,000 figure is an estimate based on the number of times Rodman’s articles for the Times were also used in other publications.

But John Lisle, a Springdale attorney representing the Times, says “The Times violated no part of that agreement.”

Rodman’s contract was terminated via mail in May a day before it was announced that the Times was being sold to Community Publishers Inc., which owns the Daily Record. Before the sale, the Times and Daily Record had a news sharing agreement, and Rodman’s stories were apparently provided to the Bentonville newspaper as part of that agreement.

Rodman began working in late July as a reporter for The Union, a daily newspaper in Grass Valley, Calif.