News Corp gives to Republicans, but who’s giving what to Democrats exactly?

Responding to News Corporation’s donation of $1 million to the Republican Governors Association in the US announced earlier this week, the Business Media Institute (BMI) reports on figures released by the OpenSecrets website that show significant political donations to the Democrats from other media organisations.

Delving into the numbers, the BMI looks at who’s donating what and where, including stats on News Corp.’s previous donations to the Democrats – asking if those criticising the corporation for this latest sum are missing out some vital, balancing figures.

Full story on Business and Media Institute website at this link…

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The difficult reality of open council data and journalism

Andy Mabbett has an interesting post on his pigsonthewing blog about the difficulties surrounding open data for councils and subsequent media interpretations and reports.

Giving an example of grant funding and council spending, where conditions may involve money being spent on certain forms of advertising, he adds that often this is misinterpreted by some members of the press, unaware of the attached conditions or other related spending on important projects involved. As a result, the headlines focus on what appears to be unusual spending.

As a supporter of the principles of open public data, he says a solution needs to be found.

What can council’s do to prevent this scenario? Annotate every spend item in their published data? Surely impractical. List such items separately? I don’t know (and don’t get me wrong, I’m an open-data advocate; and this is a relatively minor matter, which shouldn’t stop such data from being published), but do I hope somebody has an answer.

See his full post here…

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BBC presenter faces wasting police time charge after euthanasia confession

BBC presenter and documentary maker Ray Gosling is to be charged with wasting police time following his part in a documentary earlier this year in which he claimed he had killed a former lover suffering from AIDS, according to reports.

The Inside Out programme on mercy killings was broadcast in February and Gosling’s claims in it led to an initial arrest on suspicion of murder and a six-month police investigation.

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paidContent: Hearst Magazines launches ‘App Lab’ in New York

Hearst Magazines is launching an “App Lab” at its New York offices, which, according to paidContent, will act as an an incubator space for the company’s marketers and ad agency workers before being opened up to customers to promote Hearst’s iPhone, iPad and tablet products.

The publisher offers 22 apps so far and has all of its magazines available as digital replicas through the e-edition service Zinio says the report.

Full post on paidContent.org at this link…

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#followjourn: @rungsberry – James Rivington/reviews editor

#followjourn: @rungsberry

Who? James Rivington, reviews editor at TechRadar.com

Where? His writing can be found over on TechRadar.com, and his site profile page at this link.

Contact? @rungsberry

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 laura at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – Data Miner’s tools for data journalism

Data: Great round-up from Data Miner of sites and tools for working with data for stories, from where to get it and how to extract to how to make it beautiful. 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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NPR’s audience, hour-by-hour, platform by platform

NPR has looked at the behaviour of its audiences across all platforms, charting how content is consumed hour-by-hour over the course of an average week.

Radio remains NPR’s strongest distribution platform, with an audience of around 2,500,000 average quarter hour listeners on weekday mornings at 7:00am. Peaks in broadcast figures follow commuter times, with another high of around 2,000,000 at 5:00pm. Online audiences peak in the early afternoon with around 75,000 average unique visitors at 2:00pm, falling off gradually over the course of the rest of the day. Note the dual axes for comparing radio and online audiences.

Metrics for mobile show that NPR readers favour the iPhone over Android, iPad or mobile web, and peak earlier in the day than the online browser figures, with a little more than 8,000 unique visits at around 8:00am.

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#followjourn: mojo90 – Jonathan Morris/news reporter

#followjourn: mojo90

Who? Jonathan Morris, BBC News website/tv/radio reporter.

Where? Jonathan has his own website at this link, where he has archives of his written, video and editing work.

Contact? @mojo90

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 laura at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

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WikiLeaks launches ThaiLeaks following government censorship

WikiLeaks has launched ThaiLeaks, a web page of downloadable ‘magnet links’ to Thailand news items, after authorities blocked citizen access to the main website yesterday.

The whistleblower announced the launch of the new page today on Twitter. It said even if the new page is blocked citizens will still be able to access information through the links which “can be sent in e-mails, instant messages, even printed on paper, in order to keep information flowing”.

According to a report by the Bangkok Post, government officials said access was blocked on “security grounds”.

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Calls for local media to apply for Olympics accreditation

Local news organisations are reminded they can now apply for accreditation to cover the 2012 Olympics in London in a release from the Newspaper Society.

Companies wishing to send journalists and photographers to the games must apply to the British Olympic Association (BOA) by the final deadline of 15 October.

The Society says it has held talks with both the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG) and BOA to remind them how “uniquely placed” local media are to cover the event.

The NS has re-iterated that it is vital that the organisers of the Games should take full account of the particular role and needs of the local and regional press both in terms of those applying for full accreditation and in respect of non-accredited journalists, including as regards access to local venues and facilities to follow and report on particular athletes’ progress. The NS has also raised the issue of balancing broadcast rights against the needs of legitimate reportage on newspapers’ own websites, including blogs.

Applications for accreditation must be made using the downloadable form on the BOA website. According to the NS, accreditation for non rights-holding broadcasters is managed by the International Olympic Committee with application forms available in March next year.

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