NAA Legal Advice to E-Mail Publishers

On the Newspaper Association of America’s Digital Edge Web site, Attorney William Baker offers some basic advice to e-mail publishers about U.S. anti-spam laws.

In our experience, the Editorial departments at newspaper, magazines, and broadcasters generally obey anti-spam laws.However, we’ve seen (and stopped) some tabloids from forcibly opting in (an oxymoron) potential subscribers, and we’ve often seen print publications’ Circulation or Advertising departments send unsolicited commercial marketing e-mail (which can include subscription solicitations).

All should e-mail only to people who have expressly opted-in to receive those e-mails from that specific publication.

What We Do

Since 1996, the media business consulting firm of Digital Deliverance has provided publishers and broadcasters on four continents with strategic reviews and advice about how to profitably adapt to the epochal changes that computer-mediated technologies have wrought on the media environment and their industries.

Over the years, the firm’s clients have include The New York Times, News Corporation, The Irish Times of Dublin, Dagbladet of Oslo, The Mail & Guardian of Johannesburg, Advance Publications, Critical Mention, MediaNews Group, New Century Network, the Media Development Investment Fund, the National Cancer Institutes, and scores of other media firms that need to adapt to computer-mediated technologies and the rise of Individuated Media.

The managing partner of Digital Deliverance is Vin Crosbie, Adjunct Professor of postgraduate New Media Management at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication, in upstate New York. From 2007 through 2020, he wrote and was the sole instructor of the school’s New Media Business course, a course required for students in the New Media Management master’s degree curriculuum, an elective course for Ph.D. students, and a permission-only course for selected undergraduates and graduate students.

Digital Deliverance is incorporated as a limited liability company in the U.S. state of Connecticut, where it is based in the city of Norwich, Connecticut.