Media release: Mirror launching personalised web content

Trinity Mirror is to deliver personalised web content across its national news and entertainment sites using “recommendation engine technology” by Rummble Labs, a London-based technology start-up.

In a release, Rummble Labs said it will integrate its technology across the Mirror’s website, 3am and the Mirror’s football site to “provide better targeted and personalised content to users”.

The technology will deliver personalised content by combining real-time analysis of social data with site activity, the release states.

Rummble Labs said that the technology will allow Trinity Mirror to take activity data and combine it with meaningful social data insights from Facebook, to provide powerful recommendations on content or products.

In the release, Chris Ellis, Trinity Mirror’s managing director, digital, nationals division, said:

The recommendation engine will provide highly-personalised content for our users and will drive engagement and page views across our news, entertainment and sports sites.

Alex Housley, chief operating officer, Rummble Labs said:

We will be helping Trinity Mirror make sense of a huge amount of social data and enabling them to unlock the real value of that data.

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Community Newswire service to close due to funding cuts

Community Newswire, a news service which works in partnership with the Press Association to assist community groups in getting stories in the media, will close tomorrow due to a cut in funding.

The Cabinet Office has withdrawn funding from the group following October’s government spending review.

The service, which is run by the Media Trust, encourages community groups to contact the organisation and stories are then written up by PA journalists and sent via a PA feed to newsrooms.

In a statement on its website, the Media Trust said it is seeking new funding and hopes to reinstate the service.

hatip: HoldtheFrontPage

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Media Release: Ongo adds Reuters to news feeds

News aggregation service Ongo is adding Reuters to its news feeds on offer to subscribers to its service.

Ongo launched earlier this year and offers content from news outlets including the Guardian and the Associated Press and provides a single web interface where full articles are delivered alongside customisation features, as well as curated content by an editorial team.

According to a release, the addition of Reuters brings the total number of daily stories for subscribers to more than 600.

Ongo’s base package consists of AP, Financial Times, New York Times picks, USA Today and Washington Post articles.

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Media Release: IPC Media unveils 24 mobile-optimised sites

IPC Media, which owns Marie Claire, NME and Nuts magazines, has unveiled 24 new mobile-optimised sites.

In a release, IPC said consumers can now browse content on the following sites: Country Life, Cycling Weekly, Decanter, Golf Monthly, GoodToKnow, House to Home, Marie Claire , Motor Boats Monthly, MotorBoat & Yachting, NME, Nuts, Now, Practical Boat Owner, Shooting Gazette, Shooting Times, Shooting UK, Sporting Gun, The Field, Volksworld, What Digital Camera, Woman & Home, YBW, Yachting Monthly and Yachting World.

IPC Media head of mobile Miles Ross said: “The mobile platform is a vital channel through which consumers can discover and consume our titles and content. The launch of 24 new mobile-optimised sites illustrates both the level of commitment and the speed with which IPC is moving into the mobile space, thanks to some great work from our technology group, IPC Digital. Mobile advertising is growing rapidly and these new sites will enable IPC to offer a unique audience across this medium.”

IPC Digital programme director Tara Hamilton-Whitaker added: “Consumption of IPC websites through smart phones is already significant, but through an optimised web experience, targeted at a 3.5″ screen, engagement levels sky rocket.

“This means IPC brands are closer than ever in ensuring consumers can choose where and when they enjoy our content. You can expect more content, more mobile sites, more great mobile functionality and more mobile-related announcements over the coming months.”

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New whistleblowers’ site UniLeaks writes open letter to US college presidents

UniLeaks, which calls itself  ’a version of Wikileaks aimed at universities’ has published an open letter to US college presidents informing them of the existence of the site.

UniLeaks, which started in Australia, says it aims to have a global reach and wants to expose corruption and mismanagement in academic institutions.

The whistleblowing site has published a media release.

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Media Release: BBC axes deputy director general post and Mark Byford

The BBC has announced it will cut the role of deputy director general, making current incumbent Mark Byford redundant. Byford took up the post in 2004 and has been at the BBC for 32 years.

Speaking in a release, BBC director general Mark Thompson says:

We have concluded – and Mark fully accepts – that the work he has done to develop our journalism and editorial standards across the BBC has achieved the goals we set to such an extent that the role of deputy director-general can now end, that the post should close at the end of the current financial year, and that Mark himself should be made redundant.

Byford will step down from the corporation’s executive board at the end of March and depart from the BBC in early summer. Helen Boaden. director, BBC News, will join the executive board to represent BBC Journalism in April.

Full BBC press release at this link…

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ONA wins grant to overhaul website

Industry group the Online News Association (ONA) has received a $75,000 grant to redesign its website. The funding comes from the Excellence & Ethics in Journalism Foundation (EEJF) and will be used to create an open-source site containing resources and training materials for digital journalists.

Full release from the ONA at this link…

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Media Release: Birmingham Post launches sister title Birmingham Post Lite

As reported by The Business Desk West Midlands earlier this week, Trinity Mirror is launching a new freesheet as a sister paper to the paid-for Birmingham Post, which changed from a daily to weekly publication last year.

Birmingham Post Lite will be delivered to around 18,000 homes in the south Birmingham areas of Harborne and Moseley and will contain a selection of the Birmingham Post’s editorial content and material from its Post Property magazine, says a release.

The new newspaper will not carry the paid-for Post’s specialised business
and financial news. Instead it will combine south Birmingham news with the features and leisure content from the Post’s award-winning team.

The BusinessDesk (TBD) had the date pegged as April 22, but suggests the launch is a direct response to plans for a new rival title, the Birmingham Press, from newspaper entrepreneur Chris Bullivant.

“The title (…) is intended to go head-to-head with the Press in the battle to secure advertising from the city’s mid-market estate agents,” says TBD’s report.

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Your guide to the CMS Report on the Future for Local and Regional Media

The UK parliament’s cross-party Culture, Media and Sport Committee published the results of its year-long inquiry into the state and future of local and regional UK media today, calling for greater investigation of and stronger rules for council-run newspapers.

“We endorse the sentiment that it is local journalism, rather than local newspapers, that needs saving,” says the report.

“The two are far from mutually exclusive, but newspapers need to be innovative in the way they train their journalists to work in a multiplatform world.”

The full report is embedded below, courtesy of Scribd, and you can read previous Journalism.co.uk reports on the committee’s evidence sessions at this link. But for your perusing pleasure, here’s our breakdown of some of the key sections and quotes:

• p4 – “the broadcast pool”: “We take note of the Press Association’s concerns about the exclusivity of the ‘broadcast pool’ (video content of news events that are only allowed to be covered by a single camera, and is then shared between the BBC, ITN and Sky) and conclude that it is no longer appropriate to distinguish between broadcast and non-broadcast media when newspapers are increasingly using video on their websites.”
• p9 – breakdown of local media operators and owners;
• p11 – the role of local and regional newspapers in “the news pyramid”;
• p16 – “We welcome the BBC’s proposals to increase the number of external links on its websites. We recommend that every local BBC website should link to the local newspaper websites for that area.”
• p17 – Committee’s views on state subsidies for local and regional media.
• p17-21 – recommendations for changes to cross-media ownership rules and regulations;
• p24-5 – recommendations regarding local authority newspapers and council publications;
• p28 – “For a long time local newspapers have made relatively little change to their business models. Now, along with the other traditional media platforms of television and radio, they face a vast array of digital and internet services, providing relatively easy market entry, all vying for advertising revenue and readerships. While some economic factors are cyclical, other changes of a structural nature are likely to be permanent. As is clear from the evidence we have heard from local newspapers themselves, local newspapers must innovate and re-evaluate the traditional model of local print media in order to survive in the new digital era.”
• p33 – “the PSB obligations and other regulatory burdens on ITV need to be reduced, if not removed”;
• p38 – recommendations regarding the Independently Funded News Consortia (IFNC) plans – though these are a little out of date given that the winning bids for the pilots have now been announced;
• p51 – Local radio and localness and the importance of community radio.
• p60-4 – On Google’s impact on local newspapers.

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PCC upholds complaint over Rod Liddle’s Spectator post; first ever blog censure

Just in from the Press Complaints Commission: its first ever magazine/newspaper blog censure – for Rod Liddle’s 92 word Spectator post on 5 December 2009, that claimed an “overwhelming majority of street crime, knife crime, gun crime, robbery and crimes of sexual violence in London is carried out by young men from the African-Caribbean community”. A reader’s complaint of inaccuracy was upheld.

“This is a significant ruling because it shows that the PCC expects the same standards in newspaper and magazine blogs that it would expect in comment pieces that appear in print editions,” said PCC director, Stephen Abell.

“There is plenty of room for robust opinions, views and commentary but statements of fact must still be substantiated if and when they are disputed.  And if substantiation isn’t possible, there should be proper correction by the newspaper or magazine in question.”

[Update: Listen to PCC director Stephen Abell discuss the ruling on the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme at this link]

Here’s the PCC’s statement:

The Press Complaints Commission has upheld a complaint about an entry by Rod Liddle in his blog for the Spectator.  This is the first time that the PCC has censured a newspaper or magazine over the content of a journalistic blog.

The piece in question was published on 5 December 2009 and claimed that ”the overwhelming majority of street crime, knife crime, gun crime, robbery and crimes of sexual violence in London is carried out by young men from the African-Caribbean community”.  A reader complained that the statement was incorrect.

In concluding that the article was indeed in breach of Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice, the PCC recognised the magazine’s argument that the nature of a blog post is often provocative and conducive to discussion.  It was certainly true in this case, for example, that a number of readers had taken issue with Mr Liddle’s claim and had commented on the blog.

However, the Commission did not agree that the magazine could rely on publishing critical reaction as a way of abrogating its responsibilities under the Code.  While it had provided some evidence to back up Mr Liddle’s position, it had not been able to demonstrate that the ‘overwhelming majority’ of crime in all the stated categories had been carried out by members of the African-Caribbean community.

Nor could it successfully argue that the claim was purely the columnist’s opinion – rather, it was a statement of fact.  As such, the Commission believed that ”the onus was on the magazine to ensure that it was corrected authoritatively online”.  In the absence of such remedial action the Commission upheld the complaint.

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