PR without newspapers… gets newspaper coverage

Earlier this week we blogged about Adam Vincenzini, a PR consultant with Paratus Communications, who is conducting a personal experiment and giving up reading and buying print newspapers for a year.

Vincenzini, who describes himself as a news junkie and avid consumer of newspapers, wants to see what effect this withdrawal will have on him personally, but more significantly on his work.

His experiment has attracted a great deal of interest – not least from the very medium he’s giving up. Spanish newspaper El Mundo has picked up on the story and used one of his video updates. Vincenzini says the French press have also been in touch. Not that he’s really allowed to be reading them mind…

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SFN Blog: French news sites to erect pay walls

French news sites L’Express and Le Figaro will follow in the footsteps of the New York Times and erect pay walls for their websites.

A report from Le Monde suggests the new models could be introduced next month for Le Figaro and late this year for L’Express.

Full post at this link…

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Brand Republic: BBC will not launch new local web plans, says Boaden

The BBC is not planning more local expansion online and is not in competition with regional publishers websites, Helen Boaden, director of BBC News, told the Oxford Media Convention yesterday.

According to Brand Republic, the corporation is seeking partnerships online and will not encroach on regional news group’s territory, whether its regional, local or hyperlocal.

In 2008 the corporation had its plans for investment in local video on BBC websites rejected by the BBC Trust.

Full story at this link…

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Rory Brown: Is the PPA too focused on print?

Rory Brown asks whether the appointment of Barry McIlheney a chief executive of the PPA, the UK’s industry body for the magazine and business media industry, means a return to a periodicals/print focus for the group.

While print magazines are still hugely important in the overall mix would you really want to be part of an association with that as its sole focus?

The root cause of the PPA’s problems was an inability to adapt to a changing media landscape. The PPA had a position as the association for the business of media. This position was lost through its dogged concentration on one channel as their member firms’ businesses diversified.

Full post at this link…

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Felix Salmon: ‘Online subscription revenues won’t make newspapers profitable again’

Felix Salmon responds to John Gapper’s Financial Times column Charge for news or bleed red ink, in which Gapper suggests that while only a small number of New York Times readers may sign up for subscriptions under its forthcoming charging model, this would provide a significant revenue boost.

Salmon goes ‘through the numbers’ and writes:

With the New York Times Company making the best part of $300 million a year from online advertising, it’s hard to see that the extra revenue boost would really be worth it.

The point here is that with the powerhouse NYTimes.com site front and center, the New York Times Company as a whole is a major online media player, serving up billions of high-prestige page views and building strong relationships with every major online advertiser and media buyer in the country. Even under the most optimistic scenario, a majority of the NYT’s loyal readers will desert it when it moves to a paywall. And with those readers gone, media buyers are by no means guaranteed to stick around.

Full story at this link….

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#FollowJourn: @zerochamp/digital director

#FollowJourn: Phil Clark

Who? Phil Clark, digital director at UBM Built Environment.

What? Has been a construction journalist for eight years and previously worked for Building, Building Design and Property Week, launching their sustainability sections.

Where? Phil also blogs regularly about construction and sustainability on this blog or you can check out his LinkedIn profile.

Contact? Follow @zerochamp or email phil.clark [at] ubm.com.

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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The Media Consortium: Media organisations should share more metadata

Great post here looking at the semantic web and how it will influence the future of  online journalism.

The next phase of the semantic web will be “a step beyond aggregation that aims to makes information more meaningful and useful” and journalists and media organisations can aid this development by sharing metadata more broadly and focus more on users’ long-term experiences of their websites.

Together, such data may be more valuable than if media organisations reserved data for their own purposes. Pooling metadata can help improve artificial intelligence, which drives the automated aspects of discovering new information on the semantic web.

The benefits for media organisations? Better websites for users, the capacity for news to challenge readers and bottom-up rather than top-down approaches to journalism and making meaning, suggests the post.

via The Media Consortium » Radical New Ways of Meaning-Making and Filtering.

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#FollowJourn: @DirDigEng/digital engagement director

Who? Andrew Stott, UK government director of digital engagement.

What? Behind today’s public beta launch of data.gov.uk.

Where? Everything’s at data.gov.uk/blog here: http://blogs.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/digitalengagement/

Contact? Follow him at @dirdigeng /contact page here.

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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‘Greater media scrutiny’ needed for family courts, says MoJ

New legislative proposals in the Children, Schools and Families Bill should “encourage” media attendance at family court cases, the Ministry of Justice has announced.

In a release, the MoJ cites evidence that media attendance has been limited since access to family courts was first granted in April 2009.

The study shows that, from a survey of court staff:

• 25 per cent said journalists had attended hearings at their court since the rule change

• 15 per cent said journalists had attended hearings only once and did not come back

• 11 per cent said that media attendance had led directly to an article being published

• Other issues highlighted by respondents included the importance of clear guidelines for staff and media, accessible court lists and extra seats in courts.

Full release at this link…

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Press Gazette: French journalists’ five day social media experiment

Five journalists from French speaking radio stations – France Inter, France Info, RTS and RTBF radio -  are to restrict their sources to Twitter and Facebook for five days “in an effort to determine the value of information received through social media,” reports Press Gazette, via Le Parisien.

Le Parisien reports that under a project called “Behind closed doors on the net”, which will take place between the 1 and 5 February, the journalists will have no access to TV, radio or print media and will have to get a view of world events through social media alone.

Full story at this link…

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