#FollowJourn: @catherine_mayer / magazine journalist

#FollowJourn: Catherine Mayer

Who? London bureau chief for Time Magazine.

What? Started her career at the Economist in the 1980s; frequent speaker at events (eg. at the LSE).

Where? On Twitter / Time Magazine.

Contact? On Twitter or via Time Magazine.

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.

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – feeding tweets into presentations

Twitter: TweetBubbles lets you feed live tweets into presentations, but also has potential for online news reporting and feeding in reaction from your Twitter following. Tipster: Laura Oliver.

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

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Sky News launches breaking news Twitter channel

Following the deal between breaking news Twitter channel @BreakingNews and MSNBC.com, Sky News has launched a new Twitter account for its own breaking news tweets – @SkyNewsBreak.

“The latest breaking news, as we get it, direct from the Sky News studio,” says the account’s tagline.

According to various tweets from the team involved, the account will tweet breaking news updates before they appear on the Sky News site.

Journalism.co.uk is following up for more info.

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Staff strike at Le Parisien and Aujourd’hui as cuts announced

Thanks to some crowdsourced translating (hat tip @malkinbister, @jwatson1 and others) French media reports suggest that Paris daily newspaper Le Parisien and its national sister title Aujourd’hui en France did not make it to the newsstands this morning as staff went on strike last night.

In one report from NouvelObs.com the group’s director Marie-Odile Amaury says 35 voluntary departures are being sought from the two papers, out of 350 staff.

Twenty-five of these are being looked for in editorial, which employs a total 200 journalists, according to NouvelObs – though the numbers of redundancies vary from report to report.

The company lost nearly €10 million last year with a reported 10 per cent drop in ad revenue in the first half of 2009.

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Networking group for writers spreads to London

WriteClub, a friendly networking group for all kinds of writers, is planning its first London meet-up after some successful get-togethers in Brighton.

“So far (in our Brighton meetings) we’ve had journalists, copywriters, editors, authors, fiction writers and poets get together for gentle networking,” says Leif Kendall, one of the founders.

“The main purpose is to help working writers meet other working writers, and so learn from each other and expand our networks.”

The group’s London meeting will take place on Tuesday 1 December at 19:30 in the Yorkshire Grey pub: Yorkshire Grey pub, 46 Langham Street, London, W1W 7AX

There’s no formal agenda – just a place to swap tips and advice.

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#FollowJourn: @davanac/editor and developer

#FollowJourn: Damien Van Achter

Who? Editor, developer and social media manager.

What? Works for Belgian broadcaster RTBF.be with a penchant for multimedia experimentation – see Rory Cellan-Jones’ recent article on Van Achter.

Where? Writes French-language blog ‘Blogging the News’.

Contact? On Twitter he’s @davanac.

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.

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Independent.co.uk: Quick-thinking newsreader uses iPhone for radio headlines

Something lighthearted for a Friday: BBC newsreader Alison Rooper used her iPhone earlier today to avoid dead air after the corporation’s telephone and computer system crashed.

Rooper had the script for the 7am bulletin sent to her iPhone where she deftly scrolled through creating her own autocue.

Full story at this link…

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – tax advice for freelancers

Freelance: If you are a freelance journalist and have any questions about tax, you can get some free advice at this link. Tipster: Judith Townend.

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Headlines and Deadlines: Public service reporting, court coverage and charging online

Alison Gow brings together two current areas of debate for local media groups: charging for online content and their supposed role in local democracy by scrutinising local authorities in their coverage.

Gow, who is involved in Trinity Mirror’s work with the Press Association regarding a potential ‘public service reporting’ initiative in Merseyside, has audited the TM titles in her region to assess the number of public authority reports carried by the papers on a weekly basis.

Where the gaps in coverage lie makes for interesting reading, but addition Gow asks:

“Readers may pay to access other services alongside news, but I just don’t see news itself as a big enough lure.

“Also, just to take this argument to the extreme, if newspapers are going to hold themselves up as the moral guardians of what’s right, scrutinising public bodies and holding them to account, is it ethical that they charge for this benevolent service at all?”

Full post at this link…

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MediaGuardian: Charging for online news won’t work, says Future’s Spring

Introducing a pay wall around general news content hasn’t got ‘a cat in hell’s chance’ of working, Stevie Spring, chief executive of magazine group Future, said yesterday.

Spring discussed Future’s approach to paid content online and said the group is experimenting with a mixture of business models.

Full story at this link…

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