Reed Elsevier has sold another piece of trade magazine arm Reed Business Information (RBI). The group’s Nordic arm has acquired by private equity firm GMT for around €10 million, the FT reports.
Reed failed to sell RBI as a whole unit last year.
It has since sold its travel publishing division TWgroup and announced it will offload some of its US controlled circulation titles.
Tags: RBI, Reed Business Information
The Associated Press (AP) is considering whether it could sell news items to online clients for a short, exclusive period.
Stories could be sold to web outlets half-an-hour ahead of other customers, Tom Curley, AP chief executive, suggested at an industry event.
‘Premium priced information on certain topics’ and associated metadata and multimedia could be sold ahead of more general release, he explained.
Curley’s comments came in reaction to publishers’ ongoing concerns about the use of the content by search engines and aggregators.
The agency is also developing a new system for tracking its content online and monitoring copyright infringements.
Tags: Associated Press
#FollowJourn: Ashley Norris
Who? Co-founder and executive director of Shiny Media, PR agency Shiny Red and website publisher Anorak.
What? Also contributes to TechDigest.tv. His Twitter updates are a great source of interesting links to social media, journalism and digital industry news.
Where? Visit his website.
Contact? @shinyashley.
Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips every day, we’re recommending journalists to follow online too. They might be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to judith or laura [at] journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.
Tags: #followjourn, Ashley Norris
Social media: An inspiring presentation from Marta Kagan on why social media matters – good back-up for prompting co-workers and bosses to get involved at your website. Tipster: Laura Oliver.
To submit a tip to Journalism.co.uk, use this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.
Tags: Marta Kagan
Seetha Kumar, BBC Online controller, sets the record straight and sheds a little more light on recent reports about a social media overhaul of the BBC’s websites.
As Journalism.co.uk reported last week the corporation denied it was planning to ‘radically overhaul’ its websites with a new social media strategy, as reported elsewhere.
Instead, the not-quite-so-dramatic changes could include commenting on BBC articles or more social media microsites for programmes, such as that recently launched for Strictly Come Dancing.
“However, those ideas are aimed at allowing us to keep pace with what users have come to expect – they do not add up to a radical ‘social’ overhaul,” writes Kumar.
“[I]n addition to asking what our users want we also need to be aware of the impact anything we do might have on other UK sites and services. Our aim is to be part of the much more joined up internet that is emerging; not compete with other service providers.”
The corporation is also continuing to develop ways to share its expertise and technology, says Kumar – read our report on the BBC’s efforts to develop a common industry standard for metadata.
Tags: BBC, Seetha Kumar
According to local news agencies, newspapers Farhang Ashdi, Arman and Tahlil Rooz have been closed down by Iran’s press supervisory body.
No reason has been given, according to head of Tahlil Rooz, Bahman Hagatnian.
Since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election in June the country’s media has faced severe restirctions.
Tags: Iran
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reports that two of its representatives were denied entry to Moscow on the eve of the third anniversary of Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya’s death.
The press freedom group was planning a news conference and film screening in the city – and will push ahead with these plans.
“We are shocked by this decision, especially as we have always acted openly with the Russian authorities. They decided to prevent us from expressing our solidarity with Russian journalists and human rights activists. Moscow does not want us to address the Russians directly. But we will not give up,” said RSF secretary-general Jean-Francois Julliard, one of the pair denied entry.
The Guardian reports on other meetings being held to mark the anniversary of the murder of Politkovskaya.
Tags: Anna Politkovskaya, Russia
Journalism.co.uk will be covering today’s Association of Online Publishers (AOP) one-day conference in London.
Topics on the agenda include social media for publishers, the paid content debate and mobile applications, with speakers including Reuters multimedia chief Chris Cramer, Demand Media’s Shawn Colo and Mecom’s David Montgomery.
A full line-up and programme for the day is available on the AOP website.
You can follow our coverage on this blog and our main news channel.
To follow tweets from the event, use the #aop3c hashtag or see the stream below:
Tags: aop3c, Association of Online Publishers
As reported by HoldTheFrontPage last week, two students from the Journalist Works fast-track course based in Brighton, were recently awarded top marks in the NCTJ Public Affairs examinations, scooping them £250 prizes.
Journalism.co.uk is keeping an eye on the type of jobs newly trained journalists are going onto: Nicky Newson, who came top in the central government exam, is about to start work as a researcher at the House of Lords.
“One of the topics I was asked about at my interview was reform of the House of Lords, which we had covered as part of the syllabus, so studying at Journalist Works definitely helped me to land a great new job, even though I haven’t gone down the route of becoming a news reporter,” Newson said.
If you’ve just finished your NCTJ examinations, drop us a line and let us know what you’re going on to do. Is it a traditional journalism job, or something a little different? What benefit was the journalism training? You can email judith or laura [at] journalism.co.uk, or send us a tweet via @journalismnews.
The presentation, from left: Nicola Newson, Paula O’Shea, Nicola Corfield
Tags: brighton, Events, journalist works, nicky newson, Nicola Corfield, Training
Last week at the WAN-IFRA ‘Managing the Crisis’ conference, Anna Kirah, design anthropologist and vice-president of CPH Design, argued that reader/user habit surveys were useless (unsurprisingly, she advocated an ethnographic approach) and suggested that every newspaper exec get themselves a young mentor, aged 18-22…
Here she is talking to Journalism.co.uk:
“I think we are living in a revolution gap; it’s not a generation gap. We’ve always had generation gaps where the older people think differently from the younger people and there are all sorts of tensions there.
“This is a revolution gap: it’s between the industrial revolution way of thinking, and a new way of thinking that has developed through interconnectivity.
“Whether we call them the net generation, or digital natives, or Gen Y, it doesn’t matter. But these people think differently, act differently, behave differently, experience the world in completely different ways and newspapers have taken far too long to realise the potential there.
“I think the best way to do that as a CEO is hiring a mentor who is between the ages of 18 and 22, who sits with them and explains what they are doing.
“It will require the CEO to be humble and not put value judgement on it. But learn what the excitement is about; what it gives to these people. What it gives them has filtered into other generations now.”
Tags: anna kirah, managing the crisis 2009, mtc09, WAN-IFRA
Download our free iPhone app for the latest news, jobs and releases.
