Ofcom considers removal of regional media ownership restriction

Ofcom is considering a government proposal for further relaxation of regional media ownership rules, which could see the one remaining restriction removed.

According to a report by the Press Association, the regulator is considering a request by the Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport Secretary Jeremy Hunt to look at the effect of removing the last restriction, which prohibits any one body from owning all of the following: local newspapers with more than a 50 per cent market share, a local radio station and the ITV licence for the area.

In its response, Ofcom said local media was facing “significant economic pressure” and removing the remaining restriction “could allow local media greater options to consolidate to respond to these pressures”.

But it added that a “serious consideration” remained that combined ownership could give too much control over the local news agenda to one person or company.

The regulator admitted “it is also worth noting that there is probably a reasonably low risk of the kind of consolidation that the remaining rule protects against actually occurring even if the rule was removed.”

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Houston broadcaster trying to do things that ‘only the web can do’

According to a post from Lost Remote, Houston’s Tribune Broadcasting was reported to be planning a pilot change to the format of some of its local newscasts, taking presenters off-screen in order to apparently produce a more modern programme which follows the structure of online news.

This has prompted some concerns over on ReadWriteWeb, where writer Adrianne Jeffries questions the logic behind the proposed “Newsfix” format.

It’s sort of like consuming news and information on the Web, except without the interactiveness that is sort of, well, central to consuming news and information on the Web (…) The newscast will include a segment for user-generated video. But is that enough to engage Web-savvy viewers, who are used to – at the least – being able to comment on news stories? It’s the things that only the Web can do that make getting news from it such a pleasure.

See the full post here…

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NYTimes: US startup to launch weekly niche magazine for mobile

A new US-based digital magazine will feature the work of freelance journalists in mini-editions, produced and designed for mobile phones, reports the New York Times.

Subscribers to Nomad Editions, produced by a startup company of the same name, will receive a weekly edition focused on their area of interest and delivered via a mobile application. Each issue will take between 20 and 30 minutes to read. Writers will earn up to 30 per cent of revenue subscription from each edition with different shares for editors.

A niche, mobile, and freelance model? A new launch worth watching when it goes live in October.

Full post on NYTimes.com at this link…

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‘We will not be held to ransom’, Bournemouth Echo warns Southampton FC

Bournemouth Echo sports editor Neil Meldrum says the paper “will not be held to ransom” by Southampton Football Club, which recently announced plans to ban press photographers and syndicate the club’s own photographs of the team’s home matches.

Mr Cortese [executive chairman] clearly thinks his club will make a buck or two by syndicating pictures taken by their own man. I’ve got news for you, Nicola: You won’t.

If newspapers hate one thing, it is the greed of people like you and we press people tend to stick together in defiance of arrogance.

Yes, the Echo has let its readers down today by not printing pictures of last night’s match.

But we will not be held to ransom by the likes of Nicola Cortese.

Full post on the Bournemouth Echo blog at this link…

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Subs’ Standards: A sub-editor’s defence of Wanky Balls

Following yesterday’s post on the perils of wikipedia as source material, Fiona Cullinan takes a look at sub-editing errors from a sub’s perspective and takes issue with those who simply brand it “lazy journalism”.

There’s such a thing as “lazy commenting” too, she says, and plenty of reasons other than laziness that can cause such errors, funny as they may be.

Full post on Subs’ Standards at this link…

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Announcing the 50th member of the j-list…

In response to recent media lists that took an executive-led view on the movers and shakers in the media and journalism industries, Journalism.co.uk decided to compile its own list of digital media innovators and pioneers – the j-list.

As with all lists, it’s incredibly subjective and open to debate. To provoke discussion further we asked for nominations for the 50th member of the j-list and opened the selection process up with a poll.

More than 600 votes later, the winner is…

Tomáš Bella

Tomáš Bella was longtime editor-in-chief and deputy director of Sme.sk, the most popular news site in Slovak republic. He was the author of projects such as the first European newspaper-owned blogportal  (blog.sme.sk, 2004) and the first digg-like service (vybrali.sme.sk, 2006) that put the links to the competitors’ articles directly on the frontpage of major newspaper web.

In April 2010 he co-founded Prague-based new media consulting company NextBig.cz and is working on a payment system that will allow the access to all the premium content of major newspapers and TV stations with one payment – it will be launched in Central Europe in January 2011.

Tomáš, who received 15.78 per cent of the vote, was surprised and delighted to make the list, he told Journalism.co.uk.

Here’s how the rest of the voting went:

Those who received nominations and votes in the “other” category were: TechChuff, FleetStreetBlues, Kelly Fiveash, not on the wires, Niall Nash, Chris Lake/Econsultancy, Malcolm Coles, Patrick Smith, Dan Chung, John Paton, Nick MacGowan-Lowe, Keely Stocker, Turi Munthe, Nicolas Voisin, Steve O’Hear, Paul Waugh, Christian Payne and Oben Ozaydin.

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OJR: Revenue is the only metric that truly matters

Revenue: how to build it, how to maintain it and how to increase it – this is the challenge facing every online news outlet owner or director looking to secure a future in the industry.

But according to a post by Robert Niles on the Online Journalism Review, some sites are getting caught up in the latest ‘metrics’ craze based on the perceived successes of others, whether it be page-views, unique visitors or time spent by browsers on the site. But none of this means anything if it doesn’t make you money, he says.

I’ve seen sites post phenomenal numbers for each of those categories, and fail. There’s one metric, and only one, that truly matters in determining your websites’s commercial success. Revenue.

Your visitors can spend hours per month on your website, but a huge “time on site” value by itself won’t entitle you to a dime (see Twitter). I suspect that one reason why various web metrics fall into and out of favor over the years is that managers talk up or down those metrics based on their website’s individual performance. Someone notices that people are spending more time, on average, on the website, then he or she gets on a panel at a news industry conference and – boom – “time on site” becomes the metric everyone needs to consider.

He advises instead that organisations do not look at these categories in isolation, instead with an eye to how they can be used to boost revenues through advertising and other means.

Of course, you need data in order to analyze it. That’s why smart news publishers ought to be experimenting, constantly. Try new topics, new writing forms, new functionality – then create new tracking channels to monitor those experiments, to build a database of information that can help guide you in making smarter decisions about the growth and maintenance of your website.

See his full post here…

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Mashable: Are social networks becoming personal news wires?

To celebrate its five-year anniversary, Mashable is producing a series of posts on developments in social media. The latest looks at the impact of social networking on news consumption and the idea that social networks have become personal news wires.

Following a discussion of online “friends” evolving into our news editors, writer Vadim Lavrusik rounds-up some interesting ideas about ways to measure source credibility in the future for greater transparency online.

Though news is increasingly social and user-generated, the persistent fear is one of credibility and a flaw in measuring a curator’s knowledge on or interest in a topic. This problem could be improved by enabling users to develop more targeted news feeds on personalized topics of interest, but also by identifying specific sources and curators of information as more or less credible than others.

One idea he discusses, put forward by Andy Carvin a senior strategist at NPR,  would be to measure “who is knowledgeable” about a topic being shared.

This could also include sifting sources based on whether they are eye-witness to an event or are experts on the topic, both of which add value in their own way, he said. Such a model could then help establish a credibility index among users as sources, helping consumers better decide what information is credible.

See the full post here…

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#followjourn: @christiandunn – Christian Dunn/freelance

#followjourn: @christiandunn

Who? Christian Dunn, former digital editor at NWN Media and now freelance journalist, SEO consultant, web site manager, mutli-media producer, and, er, geo-engineering PhD student.

Where? Christian publishes a blog on Science, web, SEO and journalism. He also has a Flickr page. Christian wrote a two part feature for Journalism.co.uk in 2008 on writing for the web: Part 1 / Part 2.

On Twitter: @christiandunn

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 – original story ideas

Be original: Media Helping Media has a long list of tips on how to find that original news story, without relying on press releases. Tipster: Rachel McAthy.

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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