Tag Archives: George Brock

XCity: George Brock’s 10 predictions for journalism in 25 years

City University’s student magazine includes a forecast from head of journalism at City and former Times journalist George Brock.

His 10 predictions include: more newspapers going bust, particularly dailies and those outside of the M25; a WikiLeaks effect; and greater transparency.

6. The next 25 years will be a period of extraordinary innovation and creativity in platforms, techniques and the wholesale rethinking of journalism. Data journalism and the creation of online communities are only just the start.

XCity’s full article is at this link.

See City professor Paul Bradshaw’s predictions here.

Can writers take their own brick out of the paywall?

Putting up the paywall has seen the Times lose the odd blogger along the way, but what about writers who are still commissioned, but make their content available elsewhere?

The Guardian’s Martin Belam flags up a post by George Brock, who today republished in full a review he wrote for the Times, which fell behind the paywall online.

Wanting to link to his work in a post, without directing his users to a paywall, he posts the full review as he submitted it to the paper.

As an experiment, I’ve pasted the text I filed to the Times at the foot of this post. You can read it for free as long as the Times doesn’t object.

Let’s be clear why I doing this test. I’m not against charging for editorial content, just as I’m not against paying cash for a printed paper. Copyright belongs to the paper since the review was commissioned and submitted normally.

But, he adds, this should not apply to the “unbundled” journalism.

While a newspaper has a legal right to restrict access to all of that material as one whole bundle, this can’t be the best way to go in the future. If charging is going to be part of the survival of quality journalism, something more flexible and agile is required. Digital technology allows journalism which was packaged together in print to be “unbundled”. Once unbundled, it can be copied, distributed, swapped, commented on and its message can multiply.

But Belam is curious as to what the Times will have to say.

One wonders what that will do to his chances of future commissions from the paper.

See Brock’s full post here…

George Brock: ‘The judgement about The Times wall can’t be made for months’

Professor and head of journalism at City University London (and former Times international editor) George Brock muses on the implications of the Times’ forthcoming paywall, following the departure of the blogger BabyBarista. Despite the departure, the judgement about the Times paywall “can’t be made for months,” he warns.

…I still believe that that a way not yet invented will be found round the central dilemma of finding a financial base for journalism while allowing writers to connect to as wide a community as possible. But unless and until that happens, the outcome of the experiment just starting will turn on the reactions of a group of writers who are about to communicate with a smaller fan base.

Full post at this link…

Is ‘news’ over?

City University London’s head of journalism, Professor George Brock, is to ask whether ‘news’ is over, in a lecture on March 17:

We think we know what the word means, but news is changing before our eyes. With a quarter of the planet’s population connected to the broadband internet and three quarters with a mobile phone, the media, journalism and ‘news’ are being turned upside down. What comes next and what happens to journalism?

Brock is a former international editor of the Times and former president of the World Editors’ Forum. He is also due to give the introductory speech at Journalism.co.uk’s news:rewired event on Thursday 14 January 2010.

WAN 2008: Publish everything you have in Chinese for press freedom, urges persecuted journalist

“Put all of the material you have onto the web in Chinese” – this was the plea of former Golden Pen of Freedom winner Gao Yu, as relayed by World Editors Forum president George Brock to delegates.

According to Brock, freelance Chinese journalist Yu, who won the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) accolade in 1995, said this was the single most useful thing the international media could do to improve freedom of speech and the press in China.

This year’s Golden Pen was awarded to another Chinese journalist: deputy news editor of the Fuzhou Daily Li Chongqing – the second in two years following 2007 winner Shi Tao.

Chongqing was denied a passport to attend the ceremony, while Tao remains in prison serving a ten year sentence on charges of ‘leaking state secrets’.

According to WAN, China remains the biggest jailer of journalists with 30 journalists and 50 cyber-dissidents currently imprisoned.