Paying for podcasts? A Times Online poll

Interesting poll currently running (well, at 2:54pm on July 24 at least) on Times Online asking if and how much listeners would be willing to pay to listen to its podcast The Bugle.

Of course this means nothing more than the podcast’s producer’s curiosity over whether its audience would be willing to pay. So far, 41 per cent of respondents have suggested they would pay something; though 59 per cent say they wouldn’t cough up at all.

It’s also quite refreshing to see a newspaper site ask its users outright – whether this means there are any plans to charge or not.

According to a Bloomberg report today, Jonathan Miller, chief digital officer with News Corp, whose News International arm owns the Times, has suggested the group could start charging for news and entertainment online.

Back in June, MediaGuardian reports suggested the Times’ sister title, the Sunday Times, was considering setting up a paid-for standalone webiste.

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Comment Central: New commenting system for Times Online

The Times has introduced a new commenting system for its website lifting the upper word limit for comments from 300 to 2,000 and introducing a registration system.

“This will enable us to highlight and reward our best commenters, and weed out our least constructive,” writes online editor, Tom Whitwell – though no fixed reward system is mentioned, as yet.

Commenting systems differ between the paper’s blogs and the rest of its editorial content, but there are plans to switch the blogs over to the new platform.

Full post at this link…

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paidContent:UK: No plans for pay wall at Times Online

There are no plans to introduce a pay wall at Times Online – despite recent suggestions by newspaper rivals, paidContent:UK has learned.

Full story at this link…

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Malcolm Coles: Times Online finds success with StumbleUpon

Some quick analysis over at Malcolm Coles’ blog, suggests that Times Online is the most popular UK national newspaper when it comes to article-sharing/bookmarking on StumbleUpon.

Full post at this link…

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Press Gazette: Wired UK names website team

The UK edition of Conde Nast technology magazine Wired has named the editorial team for its website – set to launch in April to coincide with the print title.

Former online technology editor for Times Online, Holden Frith, takes up the reins as editor of Wired.co.uk; while the site’s news editor will be Katie Scott from Pocket-Lint.

Full story at this link…

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Developers get bylines too in the Times

Thanks to Tom Whitwell, assistant editor for Times Online, for bringing this to our attention: today’s print edition of the Times complete with joint byline for developer Julian Burgess.

The graphic printed was a visualisation of answers to a blog post on the Times’ Comment Central, which asked readers what their biggest hope for President elect Barack Obama was.

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Times are changing: an online jobs shuffle at Times Online

So, it’s all change at the Times and Times Online.

Anne Spackman, as reported last week, is now the comment editor of the main paper, after a spell as editor-in-chief at Times Online since 2006.

That role is not being replaced. Instead:

• Tom Whitwell, who is currently communities editor at Times Online, will be assistant editor of Times Online.

• Hector Arthur, who was previously the head of content development for Times Online, is the new head of digital development for the website.

Speaking in a press release, the Times’ editor, James Harding said:  “Anne Spackman has done an extraordinary job at Times Online bringing our journalism to more people than at any time in our history.

“She has expanded the nature of what we do as a news organisation, introducing a 24/7 newsroom, launching The Times Archive and developing our podcasts, video and reader comments online”, he said.

Praising the new online assistant editor, Harding said that Tom Whitwell had “been one of the driving forces behind the phenomenal growth of Times journalism online and our audiences worldwide.”

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How did the national newspaper online sites report the August ABCes?

This post has backfired a little: the original idea was to look at how the national broadsheets reported the ABCes because it’s always interesting when a publication or website has to report on itself – on its good or bad performance.

Here’s how the Guardian did it today:

That obsession [Team GB] most obviously helped the Guardian, which took advantage of the Beijing effect. That meant that guardian.co.uk remained the UK’s biggest online newspaper for August, attracting 23.11 million global unique users last month, a 46% increase from August 2007 and up 12% on July this year. The Guardian added 2.5 million unique users last month and still has the largest number of UK-based online readers: 8.77 million or 38% of its total audience.

And on the day itself like this.

And Telegraph.co.uk?

It looks like they didn’t.

Times Online?

It appears not.

Independent.co.uk?

Nope.

FT.com

No.

Please correct us if we’re wrong.

Looks like there was only one national newspaper who gave the August stats so much online space. But you could read about the ABCes at Brand Republic, Press Gazette, NMA and here at Journalism.co.uk. Or find the data for yourself here.

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Guardian: Times website seeks Sky News link-up

The Times website wants to carry more video content from Sky News.

Times Online editor-in-chief, Anne Spackman, told MediaGuardian.co.uk that negotiations to make this happen were at an early stage on the newspaper website carrying breaking news videos from Sky.

Any deal is likely to improve the online video offering from the Times.

Despite being one of the first national newspapers to adopt a TV service the Times offering has fallen behind other nationals – in terms of quality – and seems to be due an overhaul.

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