As reported by Marc Johnson for Journalism.co.uk, the Guardian editor expressed optimism about the future of the newspaper last Friday, despite reported losses of up to £100,000 per day late last year:
Speaking at this year’s second Coventry Conversation talk, run by the Coventry University journalism department, Rusbridger said that despite significant losses the Guardian had no plans to put up pay walls.
Discussing Rupert Murdoch’s plans to charge for News International’s online content, Rusbridger said: “It would be crazy if we were to all jump behind a pay wall and imagine that would solve things.” He conceded that, whilst pay walls are unlikely to be erected around Guardian.co.uk, it was good that journalism was “trying different things.”
Radio 4 Today follows up on the New York Times’ plan to charge for online news content. In this segment Tim Luckhurst, professor of journalism at the University of Kent and a former editor of the Scotsman, shares his view. “The industry has been waiting for it [charging] to happen,” he says. Newspapers made a “spectacular mistake” in making it free in the first place and “they need to find a new way of paying for that expensive journalism.”
Other sites uncovered by Journalism.co.uk include his blog with its one inaugural post (December 26, 2009), which has earned him only 2 Google Friend Connect followers.
*We weren’t able to get through to David Stephenson yesterday afternoon, or this morning, to confirm that it’s his actual account, but it links to a blog set up in December 2009 and his TV related tweets date back further. Journalisted only lists one David Stephenson at the Sunday Express. If it’s a hoax, we’ll happily wipe the egg off our faces.
As widely reported elsewhere, data.gov.uk is now available in public beta:
Data.gov.uk acts as an online point of access for government-held non-personal data. This is to enable people like you to take it, re-use it and make interesting things with.
From @brettsr”, head of digital and interactive at BBC Radio 5 Live: “5 live now is bringing social media closer to radio news. It also gets us links from News Online, which all helps get new ears.” Tipster: Judith Townend.
Check out plucky 14-year-old journalistic entrepreneur Wynford Grant (click on the picture), sole proprietor of the Billericay Observer (circulation 500), as he interviews firemen and other pillars of the community and operates his home printing press. Imagine what this chap could have done with the resources of the internet.
Incidentally, if anyone knows what happened to the Billericay Observer and young Mr Grant, do please get in touch!
UPDATE: After a quick Google search, It appears a ‘Wynford Grant’ was also the author of some local history books about various villages near Billericay in Essex, one written in 1963. If it is the same person, that would have made him 16 years old at the time.
According to the News Users report, when news consumers need instant news, 57 per cent will go to digital sources. In this situation they are also more likely to go to an aggregator (31 per cent) than a newspaper site (8 per cent) the survey suggested.
When it comes to news sites vs aggregators, the research suggested that local newspapers still had the upper hand on local topics, such as family events, but says in its release that there are “cracks in the house”.
The “will they, won’t they” speculation has ended – the New York Times has confirmed it will bring in a new online charging model for its website from early 2011.
The new system will ape that of the Financial Times’ website and give readers a certain number of articles free each month, after which limit they will be charged a flat fee for unlimited access.
“[E]xecutives of The New York Times Company said they could not yet answer fundamental questions about the plan, like how much it would cost or what the limit would be on free reading. They stressed that the amount of free access could change with time, in response to economic conditions and reader demand,” reports the Times’ own media section.
Print edition subscribers will receive full access to the website.
The system will be created from scratch by the Times, which looked at other charging options before settling on a ‘metered’ system.
According to Nielsen, the Times is the most popular US newspaper website in terms of traffic. Its introduction of a subscription model will be watched by other players with keen interest, particularly as this is not the first time the title has charged for online access. In 2007 it stopped its two-year-old TimesSelect service that charged for viewing editorials and columns.
A week on since a devastating earthquake struck Haiti, how are news websites covering the story? What tools are being used and how are media organisations helping those affected with information on top of news for a wider audience?
Here’s a selection of sites that have made the most of multimedia tools to break and roll reports of the crisis. Please add your own examples in the comment space below or email Journalism.co.uk.
Unsurprisingly, the earthquake took out all the landline and mobile phone lines in Haiti immediately. This obviously disabled the country spectacularly – as well as the pressing issue of not being able to speak to each other, it meant that Haitians were not able to speak to the rest of the world. As a result, the classic ways of gathering information for a rolling news channel – call everyone we know and find out what’s happening – were redundant. We had a map, and that was it.
Twitter, Google Chat, Skype and Facebook were used to contact sources and conduct interviews; while YouTube and searches of TwitPic provided on-the-ground footage. These tools were being picked up by the entire newsroom, Purser tells us, not just the online team. What’s more the geography of the newsroom (the online desk is right next to the studio floor, for example) helped grow the story across platforms, she adds.
Macguire describes how some of the first video footage of the disaster was sent back to London by a Reuters’ videographer thanks to a “friendly embassy” in Port au Prince with an internet connection.
Helping to find the missing
Online news coverage and multimedia from Haiti has been used to locate missing persons by relatives. CNN in particular is using its citizen journalism site iReport to help connect people with family, friends and loved ones in Haiti.
An ‘assignment’ on the iReport site asks users to submit photos of missing people, including their last name, first name, age, city and any other significant details. So far, 6,753 iReports have been sent in for this assignment.
“We are also in the process of integrating incoming e-mails, phone calls to CNN and tweets to the #haitimissing hashtag,” a CNN spokesman said – helping individuals conduct a wider search for information about missing loved ones.
“Since the earthquake hit, the Impact Your World page has had an increase of 7,545 per cent in page views over the previous week. The site lists opportunities to donate via phone, text and website, with special sections devoted to texting and international currencies.”
Social media coverage and real-time tools Digiphile blog has a great round-up of this, but Twitter lists have been used extensively by news organisations to group together twitters and correspondents on-the-ground in Haiti.
Elsewhere the New York Times is bolstering its main news channel coverage of Haiti by using its The Lede blog to provide rolling coverage. The blog is updating with links to reports from other news sources as well as the Times’ own coverage and has posts filed under different days stretching back to when the earthquake occurred. The aggregation of multimedia reports on the disaster available on the site’s homepage has been replicated through a Facebook page posting updates on the situation in Haiti.
In a city without electricity, with no functioning newspapers, no TV signals, no telephone lines, and cellular service so spotty that it is hardly service at all, radio stations in Haiti have become the lifeline of news about the living and dead.
(…) The station operates on two diesel generators and owner Mario Vian’s promise not to stop.
Mitchell is, understandably, highly critical of some of the changes that have already been made:
Now I was out, along with the great Joe Strupp, senior editor and staff writer. That meant that the magazine would lose the two staffers who had been responsible for roughly 80 per cent of the magazine’s news-making and traffic-driving ‘scoops’ over the past several years – at a time when web impact needs to be expanded.
(…) Much of the speculation about the ‘new’ E&P has been on the decision to focus on business and tech/press room issues. Many observers in recent days have warned that the ‘E’ will be largely taken out of E&P.
