Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, & History

Who is Foundation Press? (Started 1/22/2017, published 3/20/2017) (The WordPress generated, case-sensitive short-link ends “-5yu” and FYI, I include that information for my own help when   quoting one post on another also…).  The post was basically complete in late January, I added mostly just footnote information (two out of three) at the bottom.  Since then, I have been focused deeply on other topics.

The information points out who profits from trademarked information tied into the legal profession case notes, some interesting info about the history of both “West” and LexisNexis, and I hope an appeal to some people I’ve given up attempting to persuade that it actually matters, WHEN they reblog from some funded alternate news (so-called), on-line news (so-called) or Independent Media (so-called) who, really, is behind it.

I’ve also had long and sometimes detailed, and at times impassioned, “communications” with individuals over the issue of whether it’s really helping ANY custody cases, or the overall situation in the family and divorce courts, to “Call attention to” and get some news reporter who has to keep the headlines coming for his (or her) employer, or client (if a freelancer) to produce a dramatic story line over individual cases.  After that, then what?  Who is any better informed about WHAT systems are involved, how they interact, and how they are controlled and financed?

If I get to it (which I intend to, this week), I have two more examples of “storytelling” which do less than help illuminate anything but those who like to engage in story-telling.  THere is ALWAYS a back story and (referring to the two examples upcoming, which tend to show up in my inbox, referenced by tweets, or facebook posts from groups I keep my eye on), you can often learn much more by looking up the organizations associated with the individuals being quoted.  Most of them are, after all, networked.  News reporting gravitates towards the personal quote, but usually it’s not the personal quote, but the person’s connections, one should pay better attention to over time.

Let me put it another way:  If you had three years to spend listening and reading on a major problem to take to a powerful entity (the federal government, or your state government (if that applies), would you rather approach them with their financials relating to the problem, or an anthology of anecdotal evidence (even if true and compelling) and expect that storytelling to apply for the rest of the state (or country) because it has an emotional, heartstring component?

So do many folktales and mythologies.  They have story lines, heroes, antagonists, and at the end usually a moral and an underlying message about “how the world works.”  Generally speaking, if you compile anecdotal evidence from one “cause” and from “another” (to the contrary purpose), they can easily cancel each other out; but the politicians may hear both sides because they are supposed to be “responsive” to all.  You feel heard and get to go tell followers you were heard by a politician as part of building momentum (so do the others).  The politicians or other civil servants get to go tell someone else they listened.  You’ve “bonded” at some level.

All that time, anyone could be, on their own time and individually, looking up the financials and teaching EACH OTHER how to read and analyze them, as it pertains to the cause of interest and at the end of the same few years, you would have something to demand that public attention, more substance and less symbiotic “theater.”

Parts of this story are still located in Minnesota.  If the shoe fits, wear it, on paying attention to active corporations in your home state affecting key issues of interest to some of the “justice” or ‘Injustice” blogs around the family court theme. And on paying attention, given any report, news (breaking or otherwise) as to who published it.  That’s all I did to learn what’s in this post.  It’s just a personal habit.  ANYONE with access to a cell phone or other device accessing the internet can develop that personal habit, but which ones they are (and aren’t) over time make a huge difference.

I looked up the publisher of a single author whose cause I knew about in a summary of a conference I’d written about, and I learned again that the publications are most interested in their profit, and typically that’s advertising revenue not subscriptions, that newspapers in the USA are increasingly consolidated, and not necessarily even run or operated by people with the USA’s best interests at heart.

On the other hand if the material is trademarked or controlled by licensing, and the information flow NEEDED for (say, the legal or financial, health or science) professions to function, subscriptions (with licensing fees) are a VBD (Very Big Deal).

While that shouldn’t be ALL news, it sure does shine some light on the situation about who became the richest man (in Canada) and how (as of year 2000) his family controlled 73% of the stock of an entity which helped him get there.

Other than that intro and the second and third footnotes below, I didn’t do much to this post:  WYSIWYG (What You See (as written two months ago and held as a draft) is What You Get.

Who is “Foundation Press”?

(Whatever it was, now it’s an owned imprint, used by license from a strange corporation registered only Feb. 2013 in Minnesota (Jan. 2013 Delaware legal domicile), from another one, also in Minnesota, which at one point was bought-out by major Canadian publisher Thomson Corporation (despite an antitrust movement by the US Department of Justice), which then bought Reuters as in (later) Thomson Reuters, significant in the financial and news market and “the rest is history,” then and now.   Another corporation, still active (and it says since 1982) in Minnesota seems to be the licensor, the 2013 one the licensee, but my trip to USPTO.gov (U.S. Patents and Trademark Office) seems to say, the 2013 entity owns most of those trademarks. And the one in Minnesota has an assumed name.  What I don’t know yet is, why the assumed name, and what’s with that exact entity in 2017.

Before looking at how my asking Who (and looks like I should’ve added “or what”) is Foundation Press? led to this much broader realization (see post titles):

As of a very well-written 2008 article by Erin Carlyle, writing for a TwinCities (MN)-based weekly, I’ll be quoting below — but not before I take readers through the filing history lookups, trademark lookups which led me eventually to the article, after I had sorted out “who was who” among the entities, publishers, trademarks, and “imprints.” At least I think (and I still have unanswered questions about the current owner — or licensor of the trademarks):

…Competition between the two companies was fierce. In 1995, West’s management decided to put the company up for sale. Thomson Corporation, a Canadian information mega-firm, purchased West for $3.45 billion.[###] Though the Department of Justice antitrust division got involved, Thomson West came out controlling about 40 percent of the legal publishing market.

[Thomson Corporation, later Thomson West, no longer exists.  It’s Thomson Reuters.  From their website company history 2008:  “The Thomson Corporation and Reuters Group PLC combine to form Thomson Reuters.”]

At the time, people said Thomson paid too much. They doubted that Thomson would be able to squeeze more profit out of West, which was already posting 25 percent returns. But since its takeover, Thomson has consistently managed to attain 30 percent or higher profit margins. Legal information seems to be the sponge that won’t dry.

Last year (2007), Thomson acquired Reuters, the financial information and news firm. In its first year as a single entity, the combined company earned $11.7 billion in total revenue—more than any American-held printing and publishing company, including Gannett, McGraw Hill, and the New York Times.

[Yes, Thomson Reuters, as I said just above, from website viewed in 2017]

Westlaw is one of the great successes of the information age. At a time when major newspapers are falling into bankruptcy, it’s worth paying attention to what worked.##

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