Inflection Point: Pay per performance for online journos

Journalism.co.uk wrote a story last week about comments RBI managing director Jim Muttram made to the PPA conference about performance related pay for journalists.

Back on his own blog Jim has posted about the hubbub surrounding the issue.

“If any pay for performance scheme were ever to be implemented in a blanket fashion that very well might be the result - which, for the record, would be a bad thing!

“However, in an online world where attention is firstly more valued and more difficult to get, and secondly increasingly measurable it surely comes as no surprise that questions about how to maximise it arise from time to time.”

I recommend a click through to read the whole post.

Tags: Jim Muttram, Journalism.co.uk, online world, RBI

Happy birthday WWW!

Today is the 15th birthday of the World Wide Web, marked by the CERN announcement on April 30 1993 that the web would be free to all.

It’s a cue to sit back and marvel at how much has changed in a relatively small amount of time and post screen shots that may induce the same feeling as mum fetching the baby photos.

After the WWW age was born, online news and journalism was swift to follow: The Tech - an online version of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology newspaper, went live in May 1993; closely followed by the first journalism site from the University of Florida that October.

By 1994 there were already more than 20 online newspaper and journalism services. The Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph were the first British papers to enter the online world in 1994 with the Beeb taking slightly longer to catch up, launching its news website in 1997.

1999 saw the launch of Journalism.co.uk in its first form and my haven’t we grown…

With web technology advancing daily, the slick news sites of today will surely be drawing fond smiles in another 15 years.

Happy birthday Web, here’s to many more…

Tags: birthday Web, Florida, Journalism.co.uk, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, online news, online newspaper, online version, online world, Sunday Times, the Daily Telegraph, University of Florida, web technology, web technology advancing

French court finds website guilty of privacy breach for linking

Last week a French court found a website guilty of breach the privacy of actor Olivier Martinez because it linked to a story about him (hat tip Cybersoc).

The site, Fuzz.fr, had linked to a gossip website which was carrying a story about the actor’s relationship with Australian singer Kylie Minogue.

In landmark ruling for the French online world, the court decided that Fuzz.fr has taken ‘an editorial decision’ to link to the other site and was therefore responsible for the content.

The site, which allows users to post their own links, was taken offline shortly after the ruling.

“It’s a black day for French participatory websites, because it opens the door to all kinds of (court) procedures,” Fuzz’s creator Eric Dupin told AFP.

According to a report on Yahoo News, Dupin was ordered to pay 2,500 euros in damages and legal costs.

Tags: Eric Dupin, EUR, French court, Kylie Minogue, Olivier Martinez, online world, Yahoo