Who owns that?

LONDON Freelance Branch presents a new, experimental service: The Owners. A couple of years ago Freelance editor Mike Holderness started making a note of who owned each title or programme mentioned in the Rate for the Job listing. The result? A database of 3245 titles, and counting.

One thing this shows is how thoroughly globalised media ownership is. Working outward from meeting rooms in London's Euston Road, the list now spand the globe - from the 5 Village Weekly in Alberta, Canada (bought by CanWest from Conrad Black's Hollinger in 2000) via The Listener (not a revenant, but a New Zealand property of Dr O'Reilly's Independent News Media) to something called Zurban in France (Hachette).

There will be mistakes in this list - which is where you come in. The experiment is to see whether we can co-operatively build a comprehensive collaborative database. Visit www.londonfreelance.org/owners and send your corrections. You may even want to "adopt" a publisher...

A lot of work (and work-avoidance) has gone into this. Mike is looking for sponsorship. He thanks the London Freelance Branch Committee for agreeing to be the first sponsor by providing web-hosting.