Colin Freeman at the Frontline Club: livestreamed here @7pm GMT

Pop back here at 7pm for a livestream of the Colin Freeman event at the Frontline Club.

From the Frontline website: “Colin Freeman, who was kidnapped in Somalia in November 2008 and held for six weeks, is at the club tonight to discuss his experience and the future for the ‘failed state’ in the Horn of Africa. He’s joined by Mary Harper, a BBC Africa correspondent and Mike Thomson, chief foreign correspondent for the BBC Today programme.”

Similar posts:

• Sean Langan at the Frontline Club: “perhaps I was like Icarus flying too close to the sun’
• WashingtonPost: Abducted French security advisers in Mogadishu posed as journalists
• BBC Radio 4: Why do foreign correspondents capture the imagination?
• Audio: Telegraph journalist Colin Freeman on his release from captivity in Somalia
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – starting out as a freelance foreign correspondent

Project for Excellence in Journalism: The State of the Media report 2009 – ‘the bleakest yet’

Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism has released its State of the Media report and – unsurprisingly – the annual evaluation of the US media scene makes for particularly depressing reading this time around.

As the report points out, the problems created by growing online audiences for legacy news organisations have been excerbated by a simultaneous economic collapse.

“Journalism, deluded by its profitability and fearful of technology, let others outside the industry steal chance after chance online. By 2008, the industry had finally begun to get serious. Now the global recession has made that harder,” reads the report.

The report in full, including individual sections on magazines, newspapers, online, local TV and network TV, can be read at this link, but below are some key findings:

Newspapers

In numbers:

• One in five journalists who were employed by a newspaper in 2001 have gone
• Around 5,000 professional newspaper jobs are suggested to have been lost in 2008
• Last year, publicly traded newspaper stocks lost 83 per cent of their remaining value, having already dropped by 43 per cent between 2005-7

On survival:

• Many US newspapers are planning a geographical retreat in circulation to cut costs
• Plans to go online-only may not save as much money as hoped, the report suggests:

“Papers still make roughly 90% of their revenue from print and, although the numbers vary by paper, the cost of printing and delivering the printed newspaper averages 40% of costs. For now, it doesn’t add up to sacrifice potentially 90% of revenues to save 40% of costs.”

• What newspapers will survive and what structural differences to these survivors have, asks the report. Will print still be a part of these news brands?
• The death of the newspaper industry is not imminent, adds the study, as on the whole US newspapers were profitable in 2008

Hope for the future?

• Alternative news operations and websites have continued to grow in number, BUT the scale of these is still small and they lack profitability
• Newspapers have improved over the last year in adapting to new trends and building partnerships

Online

• Insufficient innovation in online advertising
• When it comes to alternative, online news start-ups and distribution models, ‘[T]here has been little honest assessment of economic sustainability’, says the research
• Yahoo news continues to dominant as main news source online – its newspaper advertising partnership and human-based news editing are particular assets, suggests the report

Special analysis of citizen media and new journalism ventures is also offered in the report. Contributor to the newspaper section of the report, Danna L. Walker, blogs here; while the Columbia Journalism Review has created a ‘guess the year of the report’ quiz game.

Similar posts:

• InPublishing survey: ‘Behind the turnover figures, the industry is essentially still in profit’
• A quarter of Spanish journalists made redundant since recession, suggests report
• Council news round-up: ad revenue shortage for East End Life and plans for new council TV
• Times and Sunday Times reach 79,000 digital subscribers
• US newspaper ad revenue decline slows

Radio 4′s Today programme on Metro’s 10th birthday

To mark the 10th birthday of UK freesheet Metro, Steve Auckland, head of the paper’s free division, and Roy Greenslade, journalism professor and media commentator, discussed the impact of the the free newspaper on news consumption and the print industry on this morning’s Today programme (available at this link until March 23).

Steve Auckland, head of the free division at Associated Newspapers, succinctly explained the paper’s remit as a commuter’s newspaper.

“We’re there for a 20-minute read,” he explained, adding that stories outside of the lifestyle section are kept to around five paragraphs to facilitate this.

“I think we’ve just brought in a fresh group of readers who had been lost to the industry before. Those paid-for papers hadn’t been attracting younger readers,” argued Auckland.

What the paper isn’t doing, however, is helping to encourage these younger, freesheet readers to switch to paid-fors later in life, as Greenslade suggested:

“What is dificult to divine is whether they are converting to paid-fors (…) They are stuck on the idea that all news is free (…) and they are not graduating, as was thought to be the case, from a free newspaper to a paid-for newspaper later.”

While Metro has had a negative effect on sales of regional dailies and tabloid titles, he added, it has helped, but is not the major reason for the long-term decline facing the newspaper industry.

Greenslade said he sees free titles, such as Metro, as part of the news mix for future consumers, with short, sharp news ‘bullets’ in print supplemented by news, opinion and analysis online.

“As far as I’m concerned we will continue to grow Metro (…) many of the [other paid-for] papers are well-resourced operations and they’ll ride out this recession,” added Auckland.

Similar posts:

• MediaGuardian: New Northcliffe Media chief to review regional newspaper division
• Online Journalism Scandinavia: Metro Sweden’s deal with Schibsted part of its ‘Freesheets 2.0′ strategy
• paidContent: Metro launches new app business
• Media Release: London Lite to publish last edition on Friday
• London Lite could close following consultation

Globeandmail.com: Future of newspapers debate at 1pm ET on Tuesday

The Globe and Mail’s ‘Future of Media: Is democracy written in disappearing ink?’ article has provoked a fair amount of comment (226 beneath the article alone, at the time of writing)

So, this should be fun, a debate on the Globe and Mail’s site, tomorrow:

“…reporter Grant Robertson and deputy editor Sylvia Stead will join us on Tuesday at 1 p.m. ET to debate these topics and take your questions on the future of the newspaper industry.”

“Can journalism truly be saved if newspapers are not? Can citizen journalists in the blogosphere fill the void? What are the social costs of the industry’s decline? How has the Globe and Mail dealt with the fundamental shift in the way people want to consume information?”

That’s 5pm GMT.

Full story at this link…

Similar posts:

• WashingtonPost: Michael Kinsley on life after newspapers
• Innovation in College Media: ‘Newspaper industry woes deconstructed 2.0′
• Denying press cards to citizen journalists a ‘disservice to news consumers’
• NYTimes.com: Politico and Reuters begin news distribution alliance
• Globe and Mail: ‘The model, the blogger and the web giant’

Independent.co.uk: Guardian’s executive bonuses challenged

According to the Indy’s Feral Beast, questions raised about executive bonuses at a Guardian News & Media meeting last week ‘were given short shrift’ by editor Alan Rusbridger.

Full post at this link…

Similar posts:

• Announcement of pay cut for Rusbridger and no bonus for McCall following NUJ comments
• Reuters: Guardian journalist freed in Afghanistan
• ‘Why Journalism Matters’ by Alan Rusbridger (@arusbridger): the video
• Beehive City: Alan Rusbridger vs John Witherow on BBC Radio 4
• Press Gazette: Rusbridger says integration of Guardian and Observer will ‘unlock creativity’ of staff

Hitwise: ‘Guardian receives more traffic from Twitter than competitors’

This bit of the post is buried right down, but Hitwise’s latest analysis indicates that:

“…the Guardian currently receives more traffic [via Twitter] than any of its competitors. And not only is its homepage the top recipient of Twitter traffic, but three of its sections (Technology, Comment is Free, and Media) also appear in the top 10.”

The data Hitwise has collected also shows “last week Twitter received more UK internet visits than the homepages of the Guardian, Times, Sun and Telegraph. It also over took Google News UK.”

There are a couple of caveats, however. Robin Goad reports:

• that traffic refers to “newspapers’ main homepages; although in every case these do receive the majority [of] each title’s visits”.
• they are “only measuring traffic to the Twitter homepage and not hits via third party applications such as Tweetdeck or Twitterrific”.

Full post and explanation at this link…

Similar posts:

• First peek at traffic stats for Times’ new site
• Hitwise: More traffic going to content websites than transactional sites
• Hitwise: How the Sun capitalised on the Alfie Patten story
• Hitwise: How news sites can pick up Digg traffic
• Newspapers: Turn off your RSS feeds

ABC News to ‘Twitterview’ John McCain

From AllThingsD comes news that presidential runner-up John McCain will be interviewed by ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos using Twitter.

ABC is calling it a Twitterview, but we like to think Journalism.co.uk’s own Twinterviews on @journalism_live may have provided some inspiration…

Similar posts:

• Tweeted debate: does it have any significance for democracy?
• TG Daily: McCain Twitterview – attempting the impossible
• Dazed&Confused: The magazine on interviewing by Twitter
• E&P: US media ‘unabashedly biased’ toward Barack Obama
• So was it the ‘Blogs Wot Won It’ for Barack?

Jon Slattery: UK regional press crisis: interviews with an ex-editor, reporter and manager

Following his piece on the regional press on MediaGuardian.co.uk, Jon Slattery has published a series of full interviews with industry representatives from the UK’s regional press.

Speaking about the impact of job losses on journalists, an ex-editor says:

“There’s simply nothing out there. Six weeks ago they were an editor, a man of significant substance in their community; today they’re signing on.”

Full post at this link…

Similar posts:

• #jpod: How Apple’s Newsstand is revolutionising the publishing industry
• Nieman Journalism Lab: MinnPost editor on new audience building strategy
• NYT: What would Daniel Ellsberg have done with Pentagon Papers if Wikileaks had existed?
• Jon Slattery: Corrections of corrections of corrections
• Scoopland: Alternative NUJ Regional Press Award Winners

Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – Yahoo Pipes group for journalists

Yahoo Pipes: Are you a journalist using Yahoo Pipes? Join this group on Twitter to swap tips and ideas. Tipster: Judith Townend.

To submit a tip to Journalism.co.uk, use this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

Similar posts:

• Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – build a Yahoo pipe
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – tracking stories with Yahoo pipes
• Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – using Group Tweet to share ideas
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – Groups for female journalists
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – promoting your ‘brand’ via Twitter

Journalism.org: PEJ’s State of the News Media 2009 report

Journalism.co.uk will give you the full low down on the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s annual ‘State of the News Media’ report later today, but for those who want to read the assessment of the ‘state and health of American journalism’ in 2009 in full, follow the link below.

Full report at this link…

Similar posts:

• Project for Excellence in Journalism: The State of the Media report 2009 – ‘the bleakest yet’
• Must-read: PEJ’s annual State of the News Media report goes live
• US journalism groups join forces on global health reporting
• Technorati: State of the Blogosphere 2009 released
• Blogs make money and live long lives: Technorati’s 2008 report