An e-paper reader, similar to Amazon’s Kindle, is being trialled by seven French newspapers.
The technology has been developed in partnership with France Telecom, which will deliver the paper’s content through its wireless network.
Tags: e-paper, France TelecomThe European Journalism Centre’s aggregation of EU newspaper feeds now features over 500 titles.
eufeeds, which includes feeds from papers in 28 European nations and European Union publications, is updated every 20 minutes.
The 45 titles representing the UK are a mixed bag from The Maidenhead Advertiser and Isle of Wight County Press to The Spectator and nationals.
Any others you’d like to see added? Contact the project’s blog.
Belgian newspaper group Copiepresse – yes, the one that’s in that legal wrangle with Google – is about to re-enter a copyright battle with a second online publisher – this time it’s the European Commission.
Copiepresse will attempt to sue the EC for a second time after it had its copyright infringement case against the EC’s news aggregation services NewsBrief and NewsExplorer thrown out by a Belgian court.
The group took the case on the same grounds as its Google case, that the use of the material without newspapers’ permission was an infringement of their copyright.
According to Out-Law.com, Belgian press reports said the case was thrown out of the Court of Seizures in Belgium after a report produced for the court backed the Commission and because there was a jurisdictional problem with the case. Iy added that the group would not appeal against the throwing out of the case but would re-submit it to Belgium’s civil court.
Tags: Copiepresse, European Commission, google
Once so controversial as the boss of The Mirror, over the last few years David Montgomery has reinvented himself as a European media mogul.
As head of the pan-European media company Mecom, Montgomery has emerged as an internet evangelist and one of the most optimistic advocates of a multimedia future.
This is good news for Lisbeth Knudsen, CEO and editor-in-chief of Mecom’s worst performing subsidiary.
Denmark’s Berlingske Media is the biggest publisher of daily newspapers in one of Europe’s toughest newspaper markets. Revenues of paid for dailies in Denmark have been ravaged by a costly two-year-long freesheet war.
When Montgomery bought the Danish company in 2006, it had a paltry 3.5 per cent profit margin - miles away from the 15 - 20 per cent Montgomery was promising his investors.
But it’s all grist to the mill for Knudsen, who rumour has it secured her job last spring by submitting the longest list of potential cost cuts.
Montgomery’s toughest general has been charged with justifying his professed faith in the profits to be made from the new media world.
“It is my task to deliver what I have promised, but also to tell Berlingske’s journalists that we have exciting times ahead of us. It is necessary for our survival that we start using new work processes, develop our journalism and launch new digital products. Old traditions are no longer enough,” Knudsen told Journalism.co.uk
Her first act as head of Berlingske was to publicly denounce Mecom’s profit demands as unrealistic.
Simultaneously, she made it crystal clear that the financial situation required radical changes, skilfully lowering the expectations of both her boss and the unions.
Integrate everything
Central to those changes is integration. Not only converging media platforms, but also altering most of the company’s titles into ‘verticals’ that deliver copy across platforms and titles be they broadsheet, tabloid or regional newspapers.
Berlingske may have created one of the most integrated media operations in Europe, but it has also caused great concern among the company’s journalists about work flow, work culture and how it may erode the different media brands.
“Everyone has to be able to work and plan to all media platforms. Journalists get more resources to cover events in this way. Instead of sending three journalists from three different platforms or titles, we will now have one journalist cover the results of a football match, one live blogging it, and one writing the portrait of the game’s top scorer,” said Knudsen.
To ensure editorial standards, she added, each title will have a brand manager to makes sure it runs only content that is appropriate and in line with its specific values.
Discontent
These assurances have not been enough, however, to assure the domestic journalists union. It has voiced continuous concern about merging titles, job cuts and the new ‘integrated’ work environment where journalists are confined to hot desks to create a paperless environment.
Knudsen says that new technology is necessary. Adding that the increase in the number of tools at the disposal of her reporters has also created many exciting new opportunities for journalists.
“This integration is necessary to survive. Journalists today have to accept that they have to fight for every pair of eyeballs. I accepted this job because I believe, both as a journalist and as CEO, we can create something great in this company,” she said.
Not here to please
As for her proprietor, she said: “It is my impression that you can have a discussion. If I am to be in charge of this, I have to believe in it. I have made it very clear that I’m not here to please. I have a very open and direct dialogue with the management about our goals and progress. During my thirty-something years in the newspaper industry I’ve encountered a lot of unprofessional owners. Mecom is a very professional owner, the company imposes certain demands to our revenues, but that is the way it has to be.”
David Montgomery may have got himself a straight shooter, but what impression is she likely to have made on her newsroom staff? It seems she is a journalististic champion who is both admired and feared.
“If anyone can stand up to Montgomery it is she. She is completely ruthless and resembles Montgomery in many ways. I cannot think of anyone in Danish media who dares to pick a fight with her,” said a journalist who has worked with Knudsen but did not wish to be named.
“But her journalistic integrity is above reproach. She is a journalistic champion.”
Tags: Berlingske Media, daily newspapers, David Montgomery, Denmark, digital products, Europe, integrated media operations, internet evangelist, Journalism.co.uk, Lisbeth Knudsen, Mecom, media, media brands, media platforms, media world, worst performing subsidiarySwedes are getting so hooked on social media that for many web-crazy young things reality-TV has all but moved online.
Last night Twingly, the Swedish web company that supplies a blog trackback functionality to newspapers world-wide and last week launched its international spam free blog search engine Twingly.com, aired the first programme of its new reality-series on YouTube: The Summer of Code.
YouTube reality-show
“We have recruited four ambitious interns and given them six weeks to develop a visual search engine for blogs; Twingly Blogoscope,” said Martin Källström, CEO of Twingly.
“Everyone can follow what happens in the project via daily episodes on YouTube.”
The episodes will be uploaded Monday to Friday at 6 PM GMT (10 AM in San Francisco, 19:00 in Stockholm) and the first programme aired last night.
“Openness in this project is a way to show the daily life in the office,” said Källström.
“Generally people are not familiar with the stimulating working atmosphere in a start-up. Hopefully Twingly Summer of Code will inspire more people to join Twingly or other start-ups.”
Media increasingly about conversation
Last week, Twingly launched its search engine Twingly.com to track 30 million blogs all over the world.
Despite this global scope, Källström said Twingly will concentrate on being number one in Europe, working with several different European languages.
“Google has not improved its blog search for more than two years,” he told Journalism.co.uk.
The company has teamed up with newspapers in Spain, Portugal, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and South Africa, to show blog links to the news sites’ articles.
Källström added that his hope was for Twingly to be able to take on both Google and Technorati by providing more functionality and driving traffic to bloggers via its media partnerships.
“Media is more and more about the conversation between media and its readers. We see a very strong synergy between mainstream media and bloggers and try to provide a bridge that can improve this synergy,” he said.
Blogs have replaced docusoaps
Twingly’s target group for The Summer of Code will no doubt draw an audience of uber-geeks but a young Swedish reporter recently admitted she was addicted to a very different sort of ‘web docusoap’.
Madeleine Östlund, a reporter with the Swedish equivalent of Press Gazette, Dagens Media, claimed the country’s fashion blogs had replaced docusoaps (link in Swedish).
She confessed she found it increasingly difficult to live without her daily fix of intimate everyday details and gossip from the country’s high-profile fashion bloggers, a phenomenon Journalism.co.uk has described here.
“It is not their blogging about clothes that draws me in, rather it is the surprise and fascination with which I read about these young girls’ private lives. Surprise and fascination about how much they often reveal,” she wrote, citing posts about broken hearts, hospital stays, what they had for breakfast and descriptions of a caesarian birth.
Roll on the Web 2.0 docusoap about dashing media journalists, I say.
Tags: blog search, Denmark, Europe, Finland, google, Journalism.co.uk, Madeleine Östlund, mainstream media, Martin Källström, media journalists, media partnerships, Norway, Portugal, San Francisco, search engine, social media, South Africa, Spain, spam free blog search engine, Stockholm, Sweden, target group, The Netherlands, Twingly, visual search engine, web, web docusoap, YouTubeTelegraph.co.uk has published a Polish version of a report on Poland’s progress in Euro 2008 - thanks to Jon Buscall for the email.
The article by Kat Mochlinski is available in both English and Polish with a link between the articles.
With The Sun running a print edition in Polish for Euro 2008 and having already trialled a Polish version of its website, this Telegraph tactic could attract more than just football fans.
Tags: EUR, Jon Buscall, Poland, Telegraph.co.ukAccording to Tomas Brunegård, chairman of the Swedish Newspaper Publishers Association, Sweden is enjoying an online advertising market of 15 per cent of overall spend - the “highest percentage in the world” (do you know better?)
Despite its small population, Sweden has a healthy and innovative news publishing industry, online and in print. Hear more from Tomas in his speech during the opening ceremony of the 61st World Newspaper Congress in Gothenberg, Sweden today:
Tags: Congress, Gothenberg, online advertising market, Sweden, Swedish Newspaper Publishers Association, Tomas Brunegård, WANA group of Belgian newspapers are seeking up to £39m (€49m) in damages from Google for the search giant publishing and storing their content without permission or offering payment.
Last year Google lost a case brought against it by the Copiepresse group - an organisation that represents the French language press in Belgium - forcing it to remove cached versions of newspaper articles and take down content from its Google News service
The organisation’s secretary-general told Bloomberg yesterday it had summoned Google to appear again before a Brussels court so that it could decide on the damages. Copiepresse is seeking between €32.8 and 49.1m.
The damages would be in addition to the €25,000 (£20,000) daily fine imposed on Google by the court for each day it kept Copiepresse material on its site.
Google appealed the original court decision of February 2007, which ruled that it could not claim ‘fair use’ - acceptable under copyright law – for using a lines of text and linking to the original article.
A Google spokesperson told Bloomberg that it was still awaiting the results of its appeal and that it had not received notification from Copiepresse of any new court dates.
Tags: Belgium, Bloomberg, Brussels, Brussels court, copyright law, EUR, GBP, google, search giant publishingWriting at Poynter Ernst Poulsen highlights research conducted by Analyse Danmark, which asked 2800 Danes about attitudes to newspapers.
The survey asked: If you could only access daily news through one type of media, which would you prefer to keep?
It wasn’t newspapers.
Half of respondents voted to keep TV, and 27 per cent voted for online.
Only 23 per cent would keep their daily newspaper.
The survey also asked:
Today it’s possible to stay informed without subscription to a daily paper?
The response ‘agree/mostly agree’ received 79 per cent of the vote. ‘Disagree/mostly disagree’ got 16 per cent, and ‘neither/don’t know’ polled 5 per cent.
Tags: Ernst PoulsenSwedish newspaper Aftonbladet has soft launched a new community for users called Snack, Media Culpa reports.
It is hoped the site, which lets users share comments, images and videos, will be populated by readers acting under their own names rather than anonymous pseudonyms.
According to Media Culpa, the newspaper will soon open up commenting facilities across its online articles to encourage even more user interaction with the site.
Tags: Aftonbladet, Media Culpa, online articles, social network