Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog » business

JEEcamp: Kyle Macrae on Scoopt: We’re all entrepreneurs now

Laura Oliver — Mon, 11 May 2009 18:38:14 +0000

They don’t make ‘em like Kyle Macrae, the founder of citizen journalism photography site Scoopt, any more – but maybe they should?

Speaking at Friday’s journalism and enterprise ‘unconference’, JEEcamp, Macrae posited that the only option for journalists at the moment is to be entreprenuerial.

Macrae sold Scoopt to Getty Images in March 2007, before the photography giant shuttered the site in February this year.

Macrae outlined some of the issues with the idea behind Scoopt:

every mainstream media organisation that bought into the idea of user-generated content e.g. send us your pictures of snow – took away from Scoopt’s business
Scoopt needed a default route to market for all valuable content e.g. a partnership with Flickr was discussed, where users posting potentially valuable images could click to sell
there isn’t an unlimited market for editorial photography
Scoopt wasn’t sticky enough – “People would register on site and then wait the rest of their lives for something to happen”

It was impossible to scale the business on a regional level

But, says, Macrae, selling the site was always his ‘exit strategy’ – something all entrepreneurs should have from the start and there were some very valuable nuggets of advice for budding independents in his presentation:

try to step outside of the journalism sector before starting a journalism business – you’ll spot more opportunities this way
similarly, get someone to sanity check your business – preferably someone outside the industry
pay less attention to what the ‘usual commentators’ are saying when considering if you’re idea is good
in an ideal world, you’d have the funding in place first, but start as you mean to go on – think about where the money is going to come from from the very beginnning

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TimesOnline tells us what we need to know

Laura Oliver — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:34:26 +0000

Not in the Reithian sense… but using the rather nifty feature pictured below:

The Need to Know heatmap gives an overview of current business stories (Monday-Saturday) and indicates their ‘heat’ as generated by reader interest.

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AdAge: News sites can survive with 200m page views a month, says report

Laura Oliver — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 09:40:56 +0000

A report from ContentNext suggests news websites, from independents to newspapers, can turn a profit if they generate more than 200 million monthly page views. According to the research, a site such as NYTimes.com would need to record 1.3 billion page views a month - this could lead to $300 million in quarterly ad revenues.

ThisisMoney.co.uk sees traffic surge in economic downturn

Laura Oliver — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:10:58 +0000

Another site profiting (well, in terms of traffic anyway) from the current economic situation: Northcliffe’s ThisisMoney.co.uk posted record traffic figures last month.

According to a blog post from the site’s assistant editor Adrian Lowery, ThisisMoney recorded a 23 per cent month-on-month rise in unique users to 1.66 million unique users last month.

Page impressions rose by 43 per cent from September to 14.17 million.

While many financial news sites saw traffic spikes during October, TiM’s coverage of the Icesave issue and the UK banking crisis drove users to the site, Lowery added.

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South China Morning Post (via Editors Weblog): Hong Kong business papers launch paid-for websites

Laura Oliver — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 11:14:17 +0000

The Hong Kong Economic Journal and Hong Kong Economic Times have both launched new websites with paid-for access models. Subscribers to the Times' site, who will pay HKD598 (Â£49) a year, will have access to full pages of the newspaper, a three-year archive and real-time markets coverage.

FT.com on Robert Peston: the characters shouldn’t get bigger than the brand

Judith Townend — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:13:00 +0000

Well, although we’re not having a drink in the Long Room we did get to ask FT.com’s Rob Grimshaw about his views on the BBC’s Robert Peston (formerly of the FT). After all, the FT lept to the BBC’s economic editor’s defence last week.

What does Grimshaw, FT.com’s managing director, think of Peston-mania? Journalism.co.uk asked.

“Ah, the all powerful Robert Peston,” Grimshaw laughed. Individual and ‘big’ personalities are important, he said. “The characters matter. It’s not just about the FT brand – it’s about what these individuals think.

“But I don’t think they can ever be bigger than the brand,” he said. Although, ‘ultimately they are part of core FT message,’ he said.

You can listen to his comments here:

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J.co.uk ain’t in the old boys’ financial club just yet

Judith Townend — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:56:45 +0000

Journalism.co.uk got a long chat with the FT’s Rob Grimshaw last week, as reported over on the main news channel. He’s been ever so busy talking to lots of media reporters about FT.com’s new, and exclusive, Long Room facility.

Sadly, Journalism.co.uk can’t report back on the exact nature of the Long Room … we did try and sneak in this morning but this has just pinged back:

“Thank you for your application to join FT Alphaville’s Long Room. We regret to inform you that your application has been unsuccessful, as you don’t appear to meet our strict criteria for membership.”

We’re told we can try again if our situation changes. Ho hum. Looks like we’ll be gazing in the windows of the old boys’ club for a while, from the cold and snowy outside. We’d chosen a little profile cartoon and everything.

We did know we weren’t exactly qualified, but our multimedia curiousity got the better of us. To be fair, we probably have don’t have much to take to the online financial ‘table’.

We’ll just have to make do with Markets Live for now.

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Financial round-up: FT Alphaville on Facebook; headlinemoney.co.uk expands

Laura Oliver — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 15:03:35 +0000

The Financial Times’ Alphaville blog is hosting a Q&A session on the world’s credit markets through it’s Facebook group.

Tomorrow between 3-4pm BST (10-11am EST and 7-8am PST) journalists Sam Jones and Stacy-Marie Ishmael issue will be answering questions from users live.

Meanwhile headlinemoney.co.uk, a financial news site, is expanding its free services to general news reporters as they are ‘increasingly covering money-related stories’, a press release from the site says.

Journalists can sign up for special guest passes to the site, which offers a case study request facility, a financial release news wire, background information on financial instutions, and a directory of financial journalists for editors looking to make commissions.

The offer is very much a way to meet the demands of the current economic situation, a spokeswoman for the site told us:

“With no obvious end in sight to the global financial crisis, we are happy to extend the offer for at least a month, or until the end of the year, if the demand for our resource remains high amongst non-financial journalists.

“On the duration front, again, it’s a case of regularly monitoring the situation. Once use of the headlinemoney site by a generalist reporter begins to fall away, then we will be inclined to think it’s a case of job done and will probably switch off access privileges. Those with guest passes can always reapply further down the line if the need should arise again.”

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Press Gazette: FT.com gaining European business readers, says survey

Laura Oliver — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 12:26:59 +0000

The number of readers of FT.com among the respondents to the survey, which questioned 'senior decision makers' in 17 European countries, rose from 9.2 per cent in 2006 to 10.3 per cent.

Opportunity for business journalists to visit Bangladesh

Judith Townend — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:34:39 +0000

A global consultancy firm is offering the opportunity for senior business journalists and editors to travel to Dhaka to advise Bangladeshi business journalists.

Tahmina Shafique from BMB Mott MacDonald told Journalism.co.uk that they “would essentially want these experts to share their expertise and also provide input to our plan of improving the business sections.”

IFC BICF, who are working with BMB Mott MacDonald, will cover the costs of airfare and accommodation. The workshops and discussion sessions will be tailored to the expertise of the visiting journalists.

The event is part of the ‘Stakeholders Engagement Program’, which aims ‘to build government and non-government stakeholder awareness and advocacy capacity on investment climate issues and the need for reforms for sustainable private sector development in Bangladesh.’

The firms are working with the Dhaka Chamber of Commerce (DCCI) to host a series of events from October 30 – November 3 with the goal of making the country ‘a solid investment location, and establish partnering possibilities with local and foreign investors.’

Business journalists who are interested in the opportunity and would like more information should contact Tahmina Shafique as soon as possible, by emailing tahmina at mottmacbd dot com.

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