Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog » Online Journalism

FT.com: Journalism could be sold ‘direct to customers’ in new market, says Murdoch

Laura Oliver — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:38:09 +0000

Addressing a conference in Barcelona, James Murdoch suggested a shift in the business model of the industry [what gives him that idea? - Ed] but perhaps more interestingly the emergence of a new market where journalism could be sold direct to customers at wholesale prices, particularly for digital journalism, the FT reports.

Paid-for content and copyright protection, echoing his father’s sentiments, would be crucial parts of this, he added.

Full post at this link…

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PDA: ‘Is local the new social now?’

Laura Oliver — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:05:17 +0000

Good round-up from PDA of a growing buzz surrounding local media and news projects with a look at AOL, Patch and eBay’s moves in the area – as well as how social media is getting in on the local act too.

Full post at this link…

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STL Social Media Guy: Web comment on newspaper site loses man his job

Laura Oliver — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:26:44 +0000

A ‘vulgar’ comment from a man on the St Louis-Post’s Dispatch website, STLtoday.com, resulted in him resigning from his job.

Kurt Greenbaum, online news director and director of social media at the paper, explains how he twice deleted the comment.

“[I then] noticed in the WordPress e-mail that his comment had come from an IP address at a local school. So I called the school. They were happy to have me forward the e-mail, though I wasn’t sure what they’d be able to do with the meager information it included,” explains Greenbaum.

“About six hours later, I heard from the school’s headmaster. The school’s IT director took a shine to the challenge. Long story short: Using the time-frame of the comments, our website location and the IP addresses in the WordPress e-mail, he tracked it back to a specific computer. The headmaster confronted the employee, who resigned on the spot.”

Full post at this link…

But as the site Awful Marketing asks, is this a violation of trust or a newspaper’s privacy policy?

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Biscuitgate myth revived as Cameron gets ready for Mumsnet

Judith Townend — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:54:56 +0000

Any crumbs of truth in the so-called Biscuitgate episode, when Gordon Brown allegedly refused to reveal his cuppa accompaniment of choice? Short answer: no. (myth at this link)

Unless Mumsnet founder Justine Roberts was engaged in some bizarre get-on-the-good-side of Downing Street cover-up exercise.

It was quite some ago (22 October) that Roberts clarified:

“Now I can’t say I often find myself feeling sorry for politicians but I have to admit to feeling more than a pang of sympathy for the PM over the past few days. Because the truth is that Gordon Brown didn’t follow the live chat on the screen directly – he answered the questions grouped and fed to him by MNHQ and his advisors. He didn’t avoid the biscuit question because it didn’t cross his path (as I said on Radio 5 on the day, in fact).

“Why did we do it that way? Well, there were so many questions and they were coming in thick and fast on every subject under the sun, so we reasoned that the most effective way of getting as much ground covered as possible was to group them together for him, rather than him answering random ones that he happened to notice.”

But as David Cameron gets ready to step up to the mumsnet challenge, the truth hasn’t stopped people bleating on about blimmin’ biscuits.

For more pertinent comment, visit POLIS director Charlie Beckett’s blog:

“Mumsnet, in particular, has become the destination of choice for politicians who see it as the way to reach a large and significant section of the electorate. But are there other online forums who do a similar job?

(…)

“[I]s Mumsnet the exception or, as I keep saying, the new rule? And if so, are there forums for teachers, medics or even just men?”

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Why the Guardian is killing technology print supplement

Judith Townend — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:33:46 +0000

As confirmed by Alan Rusbridger last week, the Guardian’s technology supplement is to cease print publication in December (its closure was first reported by paidContent:UK in June 2009).

Today, Guardian Technology editor Charles Arthur reflects on the supplement’s 26 years in print, and outlines part of the economic reason for going online-only:

“In part it has been the internet that has hastened the end of the physical version of this section, as more classified job adverts have migrated to online job sites such as Guardian Jobs (jobs.guardian.co.uk, in case you’re looking); there have also been the arctic winds of the recession, which seems to be hitting the UK harder than many other countries around the world.”

Arthur’s article at this link…

Are other Guardian supplements at risk?

Journalism.co.uk recently reported comments by the Guardian sports columnist Martin Kelner that the paper could make its Monday media section online-only, a suggestion flatly denied by the paper’s press office:

“Monday’s Media Guardian is a must read for everyone in the industry. It is highly valued editorially and commercially – we have no plans to transfer it to online only.”

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Almighty Link: What would it look like if news organisations blocked Google?

Laura Oliver — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:27:05 +0000

A timely post from the Almighty Link blog, following comments from both Rupert Murdoch and Google’s UK director Matt Brittin about removing news sites from Google’s indexing.

Does Google need news content? Kevin Sablan has some screenshots illustrating how the search engine relies on news items for its best results.

Full post at this link…

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MediaWeek to go online-only; 18 Brand Media editorial jobs cut

Judith Townend — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:31:49 +0000

Due to a restructure at Haymarket, MediaWeek is to end its print edition and publish online-only, as part of a BrandRepublic.com team.

Today’s issue (November 17) is the last, the publication has reported. Monthly digital marketing magazine Revolution is to become a quarterly supplement.

Eighteen editorial positions (out of 58) will be lost from Brand Media, the group reported.

“We will do everything we can to keep job losses to a minimum, and we are looking to redeploy affected staff in other parts of the group,” said Jane Macken, managing director of Haymarket Brand Media.

“I would like to place on record my appreciation of the efforts of all our editorial staff. Throughout a very difficult time they have continued to produce editorial content of exceptionally high quality.”

It’s the latest of the media industry titles to feel the pinch: in April 2009, Press Gazette’s closure was announced, before it was bought by Progressive Media and re-opened.

#soe09: Hyperlocal, mobile and experimentation for newspapers, say Brittin and Newland

Laura Oliver — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:13:59 +0000

“We must try any way possible to keep what we do alive so that in the end when the advertisers come back for quality we’re still here,” Martin Newland, editorial director of Abu Dhabi paper The National, told the Society of Editors conference today.

Newland said state subsidy, paid-for content online and new forms of advertising should all be considered – but in a vein of experimentation.

“Is there a model in what you are doing?” asked fellow panellist and Evening Standard editor, Geordie Greig.

“No,” said Newland, who had earlier apologised for ‘moving East’ when his industry in the UK descended into crisis. “But we’re experimenting.”

As such The National is developing a website with verticals, on of which will be news, and all of which can be separately branded and advertised around, Newland said. This is to cater to the more promiscuous habits of online news consumers and serve different people’s different tastes, he added.

Mobile
Newland’s plea for experimentation was subtly back by fellow panellist Matt Brittin, UK director of Google, who stressed the potential of mobile for newspaper publishers and local media.

“What could be most useful to the UK newspaper industry is the mobile internet (…) We’re seeing the beginning of people paying for news applications and using micropayments,” he said.

The geotagging capabilities of mobile also provides ‘a major opportunity for local media’ in particular for serving up targeted ads and building relationships with local businesses, he added.

“We will see subscription-based content, micropayments primarily mobile-based, and subscriptions through mobile (…) But there will also be a significant proportion of content remaining free.”

Hyperlocal
Newland also stressed the importance of hyperlocal as a future model for regional newspapers: “Going down, down, down is the way to go.”

“If you are in the local market, going even more local is probably the way to go (…) Could advertising that has fled be brought back with hyperlocal sites?” he asked, citing the potential for reverse publication of hyperlocal online content in a print product, which could carry advertising.

Times editor James Harding, who spoke to the conference about the paper’s plans to charge for content online, added his own support for hyperlocal or ultra-local news coverage by the local press.

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#soe09: Online newspaper business models – where else is the money?

Laura Oliver — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:52:11 +0000

Where are newspaper websites making money and where are the new opportunities? These are the questions asked by Francois Nel, director of the journalism leaders programme at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN), in a study, the highlights of which he presented to the Society of Editors conference today in the slides below:

View more presentations from Francois Nel.

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#soe09: Live coverage online – opportunities for audience and money?

Laura Oliver — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:35:17 +0000

The benefits of using social media sites, predominantly Twitter, to cover live news events, newsgather and let the readers in were stressed by speakers from Sky News, Trinity Mirror, NWN Media and Northcliffe in a session at the Society of Editors conference today.

Sky’s social media correspondent (once titled ‘Twitter correspondent’) Ruth Barnett explained what had been learned since her role was created:

“We’d be very foolish as journalists not to be part of this interaction (…) I use it as a newswire – not one as valuable verifiable and reliable as PA, but as a good source of leads, eye witnesses and trends.

“If we can tweet our own breaking news it allows us to be proud of it, own it and direct traffic back to us.”

But there’s more to come: Trinity Mirror multimedia head David Higgerson emphasised the need to work with the audience to improve the use of tools such as CoveritLive.

“The big lesson that we need to learn is that we need to involve the audience more. If people want more passive coverage we’ve got the BBC, which is not to be critical of the BBC, but it can be hard to interact with it,” said Higgerson.

There needs to be experiments with livestreaming video into liveblogs, he added, and newspapers should start looking at the potential of tools like Audioboo. There’s no reason Audioboo, for example, couldn’t be used for more in-depth reporting, such as livecasting election results, he explained.

But the biggest challenge is finding a way to work with the ‘army of citizen journalists’:

“We need to go to them and our reporters need to be building relationships with them. If we can engage with them on local terms we can create a potent force for live news.”

But it was Hull Daily Mail editor John Meehan who suggested that liveblogging and live-tweeting could be a revenue opportunity for news groups:

“If paid content on the web is part of our salvation we have an obligation to develop services that go far beyond news and traditional reporting (…) It used to be paid-for live coverage in print (…) Covering it live on the web, real-time and interactive, may be one of the keys to earning revenue from content published online,” said Meehan, who used the Mail’s coverage of transfer deadline day in September as an example (500 posts on CoveritLive by journalists; 6,200 comments received on all-day liveblog).

“We’ve got no plans to make them pay for it, but I think we as an industry should have an eye on where we can make money from. If that many people are going to spend that much time on a service, they really value that service (…) Mainstream news is a commodity; we need to find the things that aren’t commoditised.”

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