Editors' Blog | Journalism.co.uk » Germany

AFP photographer wins political photography award

Rachel McAthy — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:58:41 +0000

The AFP has issued a release to say its photographer John MacDougall won the Rueckblende (flashback) award in Germany for 2011.

The agency says this is the first time the award, which is for political photography and cartoons, has gone to one of its photographers.

The winning picture of a German female soldier embracing a relative of one of three victims at a military funeral brought home the human aspect of the tragedy of Afghanistan, judges of the Rueckblende award for political photography said.

MacDougall first started work at AFP in 1989 as a photo editor.

According to the AFP release “his photo was chosen from among 247 entries for the Rueckblende, which was created in 1995 and carries a 7,000-euro ($9,200) prize, and which also awards a prize for political cartoonists.”Similar Posts:

Inforrm: European Court of Human Rights privacy case may provide clarity for media

Rachel McAthy — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 10:13:00 +0000

For those following the privacy case of Von Hannover and Springer v Germany, due to be heard by the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in October, the International Forum for Responsible Media blog offers a neat summary and full copy of the submission made by the Media Lawyers Association.

The case, which Inforrm says is likely to result in an important clarification of the relationship between Articles 8 and 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) and the media, is based on two complaints over the publication of information or images relating to an individual. The first – Von Hannover – refers to a complaint by Princess Caroline of Monaco against photographs taken of herself and her husband on holiday, one of which made it into the press before she took out an injunction, while the second – Springer – is a complaint by publishing group Axel Springer over a ban on reporting the arrest and criminal conviction of an actor.

In a useful summary of the MLA Submission, Inforrm provides the following bullet points:

Article 8 does not create or require the creation of an “image right”.

Publication of a person’s photograph (or image) does not, of itself, necessarily engage their Article 8 rights’ whether this is so depends upon all the circumstances; a certain level of seriouness is required before there will be any interference with the right.

The right to reputation is not a Convention right. Publication of a defamatory statement about a person does not, of itself, interfere with their Article 8 rights.

It is vital, in any balance between the Convention rights under Articles 8 and 10, that media reporting upon all matters of public interest or public concern is strongly protected.

The reporting of court proceedings (in particular, criminal proceedings) requires wide and strong protection.

See Inforrm’s background to the case here…Similar Posts:

Axel Springer launches new paid-for multimedia magazine

Laura Oliver — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:21:14 +0000

Monocle has detailed insight into the development of Axel Springer’s eMag – a paid-for, multimedia magazine that will be part of the publisher’s Welt am Sonntag division.

“Twelve stories have been enriched with animation, film and audio. Browsing feels as intuitive as turning pages on paper. But you can also watch the New York correspondent visit a party by artist Terence Koh and sit in the passenger’s seat of the new Ferrari 458 Italia as it roars along the Maranello test track. You can dive into elaborate interactive infographics explaining the Copenhagen Climate Conference or listen to the Bee Gees talk about their 50th anniversary,” writes Markus Albers.

Access to the site will cost €1.50. According to Albers, Axel Springer has been one of Germany’s most vocal supporters of online charging.

“[But] Unlike Murdoch it does not plan to charge for the electronic versions of existing papers. Rather it will launch innovative products, hoping to lure customers into downloading them onto computers and smartphones. In addition to today’s eMag there will be iPhone Apps from its tabloids Bild and BZ later in the year – you will also need to pay for these.”

Also of significance is how the project was developed: according to Charles Apples on Visual Editors, e-magazine was developed in-house in less than eight weeks, starting from an idea from art director Jordis Guzman Bulla.

(hat tip – Robb Montgomery)Similar Posts:

Revolution: Welt Kompakt launches Google Wave to reach readers

Laura Oliver — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:22:12 +0000

Welt Kompakt, sister title of German national newspaper Die Welt, has created a ‘wave’ on Google’s new service in a move to attract younger readers.

I don’t have an invite so if you can access the wave at this link, tell us what Welt is doing and if it works for you.

Full post at this link…Similar Posts:

#Outlook2010: Germany’s WAZ media – learning from bigger players and going open source

Laura Oliver — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:16:08 +0000

Last week Journalism.co.uk attended the INMA and Online Publishers Association (OPA) Europe’s annual conference Outlook 2010 – the event focused on innovation, transformation and making money for media businesses. Follow our coverage at this link.

Regional newspaper WAZ Media has learned to punch above its weight online by looking at what bigger publishers are doing digitally and seeking out free and open source software and platforms to use, explains the outgoing CEO of its new media Katharina Borchert.

Starting with video the group supplied reporters with Flip cameras to capture original video news and began using a bank of freelancers to edit the footage.

The group has also joined forces with another regional publisher to create The Media Lab – a small company that invests at a really early stage in local online start-ups that add something interesting to the market, explains Borchert.

This has already spawned an online-to-print publishing solution for printed user-generated papers in areas not covered by WAZ’s titles – after a year-and-a-half the group expects this project to be in profit by next year.

Listen to Borchert’s talk on video, Twitter and regional media innovation online below:

Similar Posts:

Buzzmachine: Kai Diekmann, Bild editor and brand

Laura Oliver — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:55:43 +0000

Jeff Jarvis reviews the new blog and online shop of Kai Diekmann, head of German newspaper Bild.

Diekmann is a brand in himself and in this respect unmatched in the Anglophone world, suggests Jarvis – and he’s getting attention for his paper.

“There’s a 360-degree tour of his office, starring him. Click on his possessions and learn more – about, for example, a piece of the Berlin Wall signed by Helmut Kohl, Mikhail Gorbachev, and George Bush (41). He has a bio and lots of photos. Diekmann interviews himself (Why are you writing a blog, he asks. ‘I’m just incurably vain,’ he answers). He posts video he shoots himself – ‘ich bin Videoblogger-in-Chief für Bild.de’ – including one in Baghdad and another of him getting a shot. He brags about the commercials for Bild made by Bild’s readers, who understand its brand well. He links gleefully to an interview with a competitive publisher and scion of a German publishing family (founders of Der Spiegel) who says the esteemed Süddeutsche Zeitung won’t be around on paper in 20 years – but Bild will,” writes Jarvis.

Full post at this link…Similar Posts:

James Murdoch speech in full: ‘The only reliable, durable, and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit’

Judith Townend — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:27:37 +0000

James Murdoch’s speech at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival on Friday, titled ‘The Absence of Trust,’ concluded that ‘the only reliable, durable, and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit’. The News Corp (Europe and Asia) chairman and chief executive’s proclamation that the scale and scope of the BBC’s activities and ambitions are ‘chilling’ caused the most comment among the media critics, not least from the BBC’s Robert Peston…

For related content see:

Emily Bell, MediaGuardian: ‘The BBC is not the problem – it’s an inability to let go of the past’

“The BBC’s significant and sprawling web presence in the UK does indeed soak up potential news audience time rather than advertising, but it is highly dubious whether it is in itself the largest obstacle to charging for online content.”

MediaGuardian: ‘BBC’s Robert Peston in furious face-to-face row with James Murdoch’

“The BBC’s business editor, Robert Peston, was involved in an astonishing slanging match with James Murdoch following the News Corporation chief’s speech to television executives in Edinburgh where he accused the BBC of mounting a ‘land grab’.”

Peston’s Picks: Richard Dunn Memorial Lecture, given at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival by Robert Peston, on Saturday 29 August 2009: What future for media and journalism?, updated in light of Murdoch’s comments.

“Now I wrote all this before hearing James Murdoch’s passionate call in his MacTaggart Lecture for the dismantling of the BBC and the near total liberalisation of the media. But if there is a thread running through my lecture, it is this. Market-based democracies like ours need two kinds of essential infrastructure: robust financial systems that transmit cash and allocate capital where it will be most useful; and competing independent news groups that distribute impartial information so that people can take control of their lives and rein in the over-mighty.”

FT.com: ‘Murdoch divides media and provokes Peston‘

“James Murdoch’s swingeing attack on the BBC divided senior industry executives at the Edinburgh television festival yesterday.”

George Eaton, the New Statesman: ‘A Cameron-Murdoch alliance could devastate the BBC’

“[T]his year with a Tory Party increasingly sceptical of the BBC’s scope and scale on the brink of power, the corporation faces the threat of a powerful alliance between Cameron’s Conservatives and Murdoch’s News Corporation.”

Full speech text below:

2009 Edinburgh International Television Festival
MacTaggart Lecture
James Murdoch
28 August 2009

THE ABSENCE OF TRUST

Good evening and thank you for having me here tonight. Thanks also to Tim for those kind words of welcome.

I think this is the first time that someone who has delivered the alternative MacTaggart has graduated – if that’s the right word – to the real thing.

So I am both proud and honoured to be paving the way for Ant and Dec, who should be standing here tonight in 2018 if this trend continues.

Of course I’m flattered to be asked, but I am also a little worried. Does this finally mark my invitation to join the British broadcasting establishment?

While that thought does terrify me, I am comforted in the knowledge that after my remarks my membership will have been a brief one…

And it also occurred to me that I qualified for the invitation only after I gave up my executive role at Sky. I now spend most of my time engaged in other parts of the world and other parts of the media industry. Perhaps that means I am regarded as being safely at a bit of a distance.

But I do welcome the opportunity to talk to you all about the media in the UK – and a slight distancing might help.

You can be the judges of that.

When we gather as an industry, it’s natural for us to talk about the future. I’d like to do something different tonight: to turn our focus firmly to the present. Because the path we are already on is a dangerous one.

In particular, what I want to discuss is our digital present that is right here – it has been here for a while, in fact. A digital present that ought to compel us to make some urgent choices about where we want to go as an industry and as a society: choices which, I will argue tonight, we are currently either avoiding or mishandling.

It’s easy to lose sight of how digital we already are.

The inescapable thing about the present is that everything in it is already digital. Even if part of the consumption of media remains in the analogue world – opening a newspaper or a book, going to see a film in a cinema – the production of those creative works is already wholly digital, and the proportion that is consumed by digital means is growing all the time.

So talking about a coming digital future, or a digital transformation, is to ignore the evidence that it has already happened.

Why do I think we are getting this wrong? Why do I believe we need to change direction as a matter of urgency? It’s quite simple.

Because we have analogue attitudes in a digital age.

We have business models and a policy framework based on spectrum scarcity.

We have limited choice, and we have central planning.

The result is lost opportunities for enterprise, free choice and commercial investment.

If we recognise that truth and change in the right way, the opportunities and benefits for all of us and – more importantly – for consumers and society are powerful and attractive.

We know we have to change: the digital present is forcing us to make urgent choices.

First, the velocity of the transformation of our industry has radically increased. You know this and I don’t need to dwell on it.

Second, in this rapidly changing world the boundaries between media have broken down.

People consume content in a very fluid way, and that is reflected in the way we provide it. What were once separate forms of communication, or separate media, are now increasingly interconnected and exchangeable. So we no longer have a TV market, a newspaper market, a publishing market. We have, indisputably, an all-media market.

Third, the boundaries of what we mean by media are themselves expanding. In Japan, you can now buy your granny a mobile phone called a ‘raku raku’ – which means ‘easy easy’ – designed specifically for the elderly. It has a built-in pedometer to track how many steps she is taking each day. And you can set that so that it sends a daily e-mail to your inbox, letting you know your granny is still up and about and getting the right amount of exercise. There might be an advertisement attached. Is that media? Or health-care provision? Or is it both?

This all sounds like a dynamic, exciting, thriving sector to be part of. Moving faster, being more interconnected, expanding its scope. And in some ways it is.

But the present is not as great as we tell ourselves.

You don’t need to scratch the surface very hard to see that opportunities for media businesses are limited, investment and innovation are constrained, and creativity is reduced.

This is bad for customers and society.

This year is the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s The Origin of Species.

It argued that the most dramatic evolutionary changes can occur through an entirely natural process. Darwin proved that evolution is unmanaged.

These views were an enormous challenge to Victorian religious orthodoxy.
They remain a provocation to many people today. The number who reject Darwin and cling to the concept of creationism is substantial. And it crops up in some surprising places.

For example, right here in the broadcasting sector in the UK.

The consensus appears to be that creationism – the belief in a managed process with an omniscient authority – is the only way to achieve successful outcomes. There is general agreement that the natural operation of the market is inadequate, and that a better outcome can be achieved through the wisdom and activity of governments and regulators.

This creationist approach is similar to the industrial planning which went out of fashion in other sectors in the 1970s. It failed then. It’s failing now.

When I say this I feel like a crazy relative who everyone is a little embarrassed by and for sure is not to be taken too seriously. But tonight you have invited me to join the party and I am going to have a crack at persuading you that we can’t go on like this.

Tonight I will argue that while creationism may provide a comfortable illusion of certainty in the short-term, its harmful effects are real and they are significant.

Creationism penalises the poorest in our society with regressive taxes and policies – like the licence fee and digital switchover; It promotes inefficient infrastructure in the shape of digital terrestrial television; It creates unaccountable institutions – like the BBC Trust, Channel 4 and Ofcom; And now, in the all-media marketplace,it threatens significant damage to important spheres of human enterprise and endeavour – the provision of independent news, investment in professional journalism, and the innovation and growth of the creative industries.

We are on the wrong path – but we can find the right one.

The right path is all about trusting and empowering consumers. It is about embracing private enterprise and profit as a driver of investment, innovation and independence. And the dramatic reduction of the activities of the state in our sector.

If we do take that better way, then we – all of us in this room and in our wider industry – will make a genuine contribution to a better-informed society; one in which trust in people and their freedom to choose is central to the way we behave.

Often the unique position that the business of ideas enjoys in a free society is used as a justification for greater intrusion and control. On the contrary, its very specialness demands an unusual and vigorous… stillness.

Let’s explore the role of creationism in our sector by asking a few basic
questions.

First question. How do the authorities currently approach intervening in and regulating the media industries?

With relish, is the answer.

In the past five years Ofcom launched nearly 450 consultations – nearly two every week. It has produced three Public Service Broadcasting annual reports, and two Public Service Broadcasting reviews in five phases. These alone have in total – including appendices, special reports and other related material – amounted to over five thousand pages and spawned another 18,000 pages of responses. And those reports have been only a small proportion of the total activity by the regulator. For any of you who missed them this has included science fiction – a report on ‘Entertainment in the UK in 2028′, and the no doubt vital guide on ‘How to Download’, which teenagers across the land could barely have survived without.

Second question. Is it rational for the authorities to try to manage the media industry in this way? Not at all.

The study of evolution reminds us that it is very difficult to predict the outcomes of events. Interventions can have unforeseen consequences, even when dealing with organisations or marketplaces which seem very easy to understand.

Witness the international banana market. In the 1950s the banana export industry faced a problem: the then dominant Gros Michel – or ‘Big Mike’ – variety was being wiped out by a fungus called Panama Disease. The industry took the decision to replace the entire world export crop with a supposedly disease-resistant variety called the Cavendish banana – the one we eat today. Unfortunately it now appears that these bananas may themselves be vulnerable to a different kind of Panama Disease. Since Cavendish bananas are genetically identical sterile clones, they cannot build up any resistance.

There are important lessons here: attempts to manage natural diversity have unpredictable consequences and are more likely than not to fail over the long-term.

Talking of bananas brings me neatly to our own authorities and their interventions in the all-media marketplace. Some of these looked, even without the benefit of hindsight, pretty difficult to justify at the time.

To use an example I am familiar with, take the decision of the European Commission to require the broadcasting rights to Premier League football to be divided up so that no one company could buy all the rights. The consequences of that move were predictable enough: customers having to pay more for the same thing because they’d need two subscriptions. However, in defiance of common sense, the Commission apparently believed that prices would instead fall.

Here, the repeated assertion by Ofcom of its bias against intervention is becoming impossible to believe in the face of so much evidence of the exact opposite.

A radical reorientation of the regulatory approach is necessary if dynamism and innovation is going to be central to the UK media industry.

The discipline required is to contemplate intervention only on the evidence of actual and serious harm to the interests of consumers: not merely because a regulator armed with a set of prejudices and a spreadsheet believes that a bit of tinkering here and there could make the world a better place.

Third question. What do the results of these interventions actually look like? Let’s judge by results.

According to the authorities – and I paraphrase – we should have a diverse broadcasting ecology with many PSB providers; a BBC that is not too dominant; growing investment in content of high quality; and high levels of UK production.

Now I invite you to take a look around you. Decades of ever-increasing planning and intervention have produced very different outcomes.

The BBC is dominant. Other organisations might rise and fall but the BBC’s income is guaranteed and growing.

In stark contrast, the other terrestrial networks are struggling.

Channel 4 has cut its programme budget by 10%, Five by 25%. Spending on original British children’s programming has fallen by nearly 40% since 2004, including, inexplicably, a 21% fall at the BBC at a time when the Corporation has been able to spend £100m a year out-bidding commercial channels for US programming – a figure which has increased by a quarter in the past two years.

The problems of the terrestrial broadcasters are not about the economic downturn, although it has thrown the issue into sharp relief.

It is not a coincidence that Google has a higher percentage of advertising spending in the UK than anywhere else in the world: it is a consequence of a tightly restricted commercial television sector.

That money will not come back. It is not that ad-funded television is dead: it is just a permanently smaller fish in a bigger pond.

Fourth question. Is this creationism good for investment? No. A heavily regulated environment with a large public sector crowds out the opportunity for profit, hinders the creation of new jobs, and dampens innovation in our sector.

We don’t even have the basics in place to protect creative work. Whether it’s shoplifting at HMV or pirating the same movie online, theft is theft. They are both crimes and should be treated accordingly. The government dithers – dimly aware of what it has to do but afraid to do it.

The investment climate in media in the UK reminds me of Tolstoy’s dictum that all happy families resemble one another, while each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. True, none of the markets I have experience of is completely happy, but there are things to welcome – the regulatory professionalism of Germany, the growth opportunities of India – even France outdoes us in its robust defence of intellectual property. The problem with the
UK is that it is unhappy in every way: it’s the Addams family of world media.

If such determined efforts to manage the marketplace are failing, it might be useful to look at alternative approaches.

One such approach might be to trust people.

Consider Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman – who discovered that reducing the amount of signs and traffic markings in towns and villages does not make roads more dangerous, as you might imagine. On the contrary, people drive more safely and there are fewer accidents. As Monderman said: “If you treat drivers like idiots, they act as idiots. Never treat anyone in the
public realm as an idiot, always assume they have intelligence.”

In contrast, the authorities in the UK and their clients: those dependent agencies, entities and enterprises, which one way or the other have been made to rely on the largesse of the state – have refused to trust the people who matter – the people who pay the bills as customers and as tax-payers.

Indeed, the defining characteristic of the UK broadcasting consensus is the absence of trust.

Yet there is an example right on our doorstep of the positive developments that come about when we encourage a world of trust and free choice.

Within the next few months, the number of homes in the UK that enjoy some form of television that they freely choose to pay for will top fifty percent. This steady growth of choice-driven television has nothing to do with public policy.

In fact, the authorities have consistently favoured so called free-to-air broadcasting. Yet, as you might expect, people who are used to paying for films, books, internet access and other quality content, do not see anything strange in paying for quality television too.

When pay-television began in this country, it did so largely by providing programmes in genres which public service broadcasting served inadequately: such as 24-hour news, and a broad choice of sport and the latest films.

As originally with news and sport, so now with the arts and drama. Sky now offers four dedicated arts channels. Original commissioning by channels that customers choose to pay for is expanding and will continue to do so, not just from Sky but from the likes of National Geographic, History, MTV and the Disney Channel, to name a few. Sky alone now invests over £1 billion a year in UK content.

And it is this sector which has delivered so many innovations: from multichannel television in the first place, to the launch of digital, personal video recorders, high definition and soon 3D TV in the home.

All this – despite the dampening effect of a massive state-funded intervention which reduces the scope for programme investment and commissioning from independent production companies by private broadcasters. That is a major missed opportunity for the creative industries. And yet the authorities in the UK continue to seek more control and greater intervention.

There are many examples. First, the amount of detailed content regulation in UK broadcasting is astonishing.

Two or three times a month, Ofcom publishes a Broadcasting Bulletin – a recent version weighed in at 119 pages. Adjudications included judgments on whether it is fair to describe Middlesbrough as the worst place to live in the UK; and 20 pages on whether a BBC documentary on climate change was fair to two of the participants. Every year, roughly half-a-million words are being devoted to telling broadcasters what they can and cannot say.

Next, the UK and EU regulatory system also tightly controls advertising: the amount of advertising per hour, the availability of product placement, the distinction between advertising and editorial and so forth.

These rules often seem to have little connection with protecting people from real harm. As an example, Star Plus – one of News Corp’s Hindi language entertainment channels – has been unable to show in the UK the Indian version of ‘Are you smarter than a ten-year old?’ because the logo of an Indian mobile phone company, which does not even operate in this country, appears on the set. What exactly are they afraid of?

Excessive regulation can also have more serious consequences. The latest EU-inspired rules on scheduling of advertising restrict the number of ad breaks permitted in news programming. Television news is already a tough enough business. If implemented, these proposals could undermine the commercial viability of news broadcasting even further.

In addition, the system is concerned with imposing what it calls impartiality in broadcast news. It should hardly be necessary to point out that the mere selection of stories and their place in the running order is itself a process full of unacknowledged partiality.

The effect of the system is not to curb bias – bias is present in all news media – but simply to disguise it.

We should be honest about this: it is an impingement on freedom of speech and on the right of people to choose what kind of news to watch. How in an all-media marketplace can we justify this degree of control in one place and not in others?

Content control, advertising regulation and restrictions on freedom of speech. We have been brought up in this system. It probably seems as natural and inevitable as rainfall. But is it really necessary? Is there no alternative?

Other areas of the media have been able to get by without it. There is a strong alternative tradition with at least four centuries behind it – first of pamphlets and books, later of magazines and newspapers. From the broadsides of the Levellers, to the thundering 19th century Times, to The Sun fighting for the rights of veterans today – it is a tradition of free comment, of investigative reporting, of satirizing and exposing the behaviour of one’s betters.

Yes, the free press is fairly near the knuckle on occasion – it is noisy, disrespectful, raucous and quite capable of affronting people – it is frequently the despair of judges and it gets up the noses of politicians on a regular basis. But it is driven by the daily demand and choices of millions of people. It has had the profits to enable it to be fearless and independent. Great journalism does not get enough credit in our society, but it holds the powerful to account and plays a vital part in a functioning democracy.

Would we welcome a world in which The Times was told by the government how much religious coverage it had to carry?

In which there were a state newspaper with more money than the rest of the sector put together and 50% of the market?

In which cinemas were instructed how many ads they were allowed to put before the main feature?

In which Bloomsbury had to publish an equal number of pro-capitalist and pro- socialist books?

And, of course, we had to pay for an Ofpress to make sure all these rules were observed?

No, of course we would not. So why do we continue to assume that this approach is appropriate for broadcasting: especially as one communications medium is now barely distinguishable from another?

There is a word for this.

It’s not one that the system likes to hear, but let’s be honest: the right word is authoritarianism and it has always been part of our system.

It is hardly a secret that the early years of British broadcasting were dominated by concern about the potential of the new technology for creating social disruption. To deal with that perceived threat, there were two responses: to nationalise broadcasting through the BBC, and to ensure that any other provider was closely controlled and appropriately incentivised.

The greatest divergence between the rest of the media and broadcasting is the unspoken approach to the customer. In the regulated world of Public Service Broadcasting the customer does not exist: he or she is a passive creature – a viewer – in need of protection. In other parts of the media world – including pay television and newspapers – the customer is just that: someone whose very freedom to choose makes them important. And because they have power they are treated with great seriousness and respect, as people who are perfectly capable of making informed judgements about what to buy, read, and go and see.

The all-media world offers great opportunities for our society. We could take the approach of trust and freedom and apply it through the whole of the media, broadcasting included. But we are doing the opposite. We are using the interconnectedness of the media as a way of opening the door to the expansion of control.

This is already happening. There is a land-grab, pure and simple, going on – and in the interests of a free society it should be sternly resisted.

The land grab is spear-headed by the BBC. The scale and scope of its current activities and future ambitions is chilling.

Being funded by a universal hypothecated tax, the BBC feels empowered and obliged to try and offer something for everyone, even in areas well served by the market.

This whole approach is based on a mistaken view of the rationale behind state intervention and it produces bizarre and perverse outcomes. Rather than concentrating on areas where the market is not delivering, the BBC seeks to compete head-on for audiences with commercial providers to try and shore up support – or more accurately dampen opposition – to a compulsory licence fee.

Take Radio 2 as an example. A few years back, the BBC observed that it was losing share of listening among the 25-45 age-group, who were well served by commercial stations. Instead of stepping back and allowing the market to do its job, the BBC decided to reposition Radio 2 to go after this same group. Performers like Jonathan Ross were recruited on salaries no commercial competitor could afford, and audiences for Radio 2 have grown steadily as a result.

No doubt the BBC celebrates the fact that it now has well over half of all radio listening. But the consequent impoverishment of the once-successful commercial sector is testament to the Corporation’s inability to distinguish between what is good for it, and what is good for the country.

Of course, this problem is compounded by the fact that there is no real oversight of this £4.6 billion intervention in the market, as the abysmal record of the BBC Trust demonstrates. So the breadth of intervention is striking and it is continuing to expand unchecked.

The negative consequences of this expansion for innovation and development in the creative industries are serious.

The nationalisation of the Lonely Planet travel guide business was a particularly egregious example of the expansion of the state into providing magazines and websites on a commercial basis. It stood out for its overt recklessness and for the total failure of the BBC Trust to ask tough questions about what management was up to.

Others in other sectors can tell similar stories: and they observe that if the BBC suffers any setback in expansion, it is merely temporary: there will soon be another initiative requiring yet more management time to fight off.

As new entrants like Joost discovered, operating alongside the BBC, without access to its content or cross-promotional power, is not a task for the faint hearted. You need deep pockets, sheer bloody-mindedness and an army of lawyers just to make the BBC Trust sit up and pay attention.

Most importantly, in this all-media marketplace, the expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision, which are so important for our democracy.

Dumping free, state-sponsored news on the market makes it incredibly
difficult for journalism to flourish on the internet.

Yet it is essential for the future of independent digital journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it.

We seem to have decided as a society to let independence and plurality wither. To let the BBC throttle the news market and then get bigger to compensate.

Most policy-making is however pre-occupied with the supposed malign intervention of capitalists focused on profit, and is blind to the growth of the state.

Nearly all local authorities already publish their own newspapers with flattering accounts of their doings. Over 60% of these pocket-Pravdas carry advertising, weakening the local presence of more critical voices. I saw recently an article in which the editor of the Guardian suggested that the government should fund local news coverage of court proceedings and council meetings, a profoundly undemocratic and ruinous idea.

Just ask yourself whether Camilla Cavendish’s award-winning campaign to open up the family courts would have occurred in a state-funded newspaper? The investigation would never have been allowed to take place.

For hundreds of years people have fought for the right to publish what they think.

Yet today the threat to independent news provision is serious and imminent.

More broadly, it must serve as a warning of what happens when state intervention and regulatory micro-management are allowed to go unchecked in the all-media marketplace. For the future health of our industry and our society, we must not allow these creationist tendencies to go on limiting the opportunities for independent commercial businesses, whether in journalism or any other form of content.

The private sector is a source of investment, talent, creativity and innovation in UK media.

But it will never fulfil its full potential unless we adopt a policy framework that recognises the centrality of commercial incentives.

This means accepting the simple truth that the ability to generate a profitable return is fundamental to the continuation of the quality, plurality and independence that we value so highly.

For that to happen our politicians and regulators need to have the courage to leave behind their analogue attitudes and choose a path for the digital present. So far, they have shown little inclination to do so.

Thanks to Darwin we understand that the evolution of a successful species is an unmanaged process. I have tried to show tonight that interventionist management of what is sometimes called the broadcasting ecology is not helping it – it is exhausting it.

Broadcasting is now part of a single all-media market. It brings two very different stories to that bigger market. On the one hand authoritarianism: endless intervention, regulation and control. On the other, the free part of the market where success has been achieved by a determined resistance to the constant efforts of the authorities to interfere.

I have argued tonight that this success is based on a very simple principle: trust people.

People are very good at making choices: choices about what media to consume; whether to pay for it and how much; what they think is acceptable to watch, read and hear; and the result of their billions of choices is that good companies survive, prosper, and proliferate.

That is a great story and it has been powerfully positive for our society.

But we are not learning from that. Governments and regulators are wonderfully crafted machines for mission creep. For them, the abolition of media boundaries is a trumpet call to expansion: to do more, regulate more, control more.

Sixty years ago George Orwell published 1984. Its message is more relevant now than ever.

As Orwell foretold, to let the state enjoy a near-monopoly of information is to
guarantee manipulation and distortion.

We must have a plurality of voices and they must be independent. Yet we have a system in which state-sponsored media – the BBC in particular – grow ever more dominant.

That process has to be reversed.

If we are to have that state sponsorship at all, then it is fundamental to the health of the creative industries, independent production, and professional journalism that it exists on a far, far smaller scale.

Above all we must have genuine independence in news media. Genuine independence is a rare thing. No amount of governance in the form of committees, regulators, trusts or advisory bodies is truly sufficient as a guarantor of independence. In fact, they curb speech.

On the contrary, independence is characterised by the absence of the apparatus of supervision and dependency.

Independence of faction, industrial or political.

Independence of subsidy, gift and patronage.

Independence is sustained by true accountability – the accountability owed to customers. People who buy the newspapers, open the application, decide to take out the television subscription – people who deliberately and willingly choose a service which they value.

And people value honest, fearless, and above all independent news coverage that challenges the consensus.

There is an inescapable conclusion that we must reach if we are to have a better society.

The only reliable, durable, and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit.Similar Posts:

Media Release: Attributor partners DPA for online copyright protection

Laura Oliver — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 07:45:16 +0000

Attributor has teamed up with German agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur to monitor online copyright infringements against its content distributed in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

The agency has been trialling the service for eight months, but will now make it available to its clients.

Full release at this link…Similar Posts:

MorningStar.com: Readers will pay for online within five years, says Axel Springer exec

Laura Oliver — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 09:22:15 +0000

In an interview with Dow Jones, reproduced by the Morning Star, Axel Springer chief executive Mathias Doepfner says customers will be willing to pay for ‘online quality content’ within the next five years.

Significantly, Doepfner adds: “However, our business cases aren’t based on a breakthrough of paid content but will work anyhow.”

The chief exec plans to generate 50 per cent of Axel Springer’s sales from online operations within the next 10 years, according to the report.

Full interview at this link…Similar Posts:

‘Breaking News’: a play by a company that’s not a company

Judith Townend — Thu, 14 May 2009 11:24:11 +0000

“Breaking News might be documentary theatre. It might be more technically absorbing than (strictly speaking) poetically engaging or playful. It might, in truth be a very long way from Aeschylus. But Aeschylus was an inventor, a radical maker, two and a half thousand years ago, of a new thing called drama. In all their work, and most ambitiously to date in Breaking News, Rimini Protokoll have created live spectacles that are similarly new for the media-orientated 21st century.” (James Woodall, Breaking News programme, 2009)

A friend recently went on holiday and emailed another of our friends an update: she had redefined the trip as ‘educational visit’ and now was enjoying it much better.

I undertook a similar exercise at the theatre at the weekend: once I’d redefined ‘Breaking News’ as two hours (without an interval) of informative, rather than necessarily entertaining, activity, I was much more settled in my seat at the Theatre Royal in Brighton last Saturday.

Rimini Protokoll is the German company (‘the sort of outfit that probably could come only from Germany’), except they don’t call themselves a ‘company’, which produces Breaking News, their latest ‘documentary’ theatre endeavour – visiting Brighton for its UK premiere.

“[G]enerally, they use neither actors nor published texts; and because they do not really consider themselves a company. So what is left? What are they? What do they make?”

Good question from theatre critic, James Woodall, in his introductory notes in the programme. On this occasion, Rimini Protokoll have brought together eight international ‘news people’, all based in Germany, onto one stage, to live-interpret the news from their variously angled satellite dishes. The ninth contributor is an exception: Ray, from Ship Street in Brighton. Perhaps they found him in the Cricketers.

The company improvises in a ‘arrangement of stage spontaneity’ – and this is the first time it has been done in English – their reactions to, and interpretations of, the news on various international news channels that they consume at their individual televisions, or computer (in the Icelander’s case). Intermittently, they take turns to ascend a podium to read extracts from Aeschylus’ The Persions.

So, what did I learn from my educational excursion to the theatre? These are some of the nuggets gleaned:

Iceland likes a giggle during its news: The Icelanders take the end of the news bulletin ‘lollypop’ very seriously: for Saturday’s performance, we caught an item on the success of the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra’s Maximus the Musical Mouse. It’s very important that ‘you don’t leave your news audience depressed’, explains Simon Birgisson, who was once an investigative journalist for the DV newspaper. I was also tickled by Iceland’s TV channel history: its first ever station, Sjónvarpið, translated directly as ‘television’. Its second was called 2.

Al Jazeera has its critics: Djengizkhan Hasso, a Kurdish interpreter, and president of the Executive Committee of the Kurdish National Congress, criticised the channel for its emotive use of language in some of its reports. He also added that it would be very difficult to perform a play like Breaking News in an Arab country. Hasso’s performance was particularly memorable for the role-play of the time he met George Bush. He told the other actors what they had to say, and they solemnly repeated it back, so the audience got each segment of the conversation twice.

What counts as a high ‘alarm’ story for press agencies is very subjective. Andreas Osterhaus, a news editor at Agence France Presse (AFP) in Berlin said he raised such an alarm on the day of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, but his colleagues thought he had acted a little hastily. Previous alerts included the Princess Diana car crash, the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, and the capture of Saddam Hussein.

We also learnt that Sushila Sharma-Haque, who watches various Indian and Pakistani, as well as German, news channels, goes to bed at 10pm promptly. She did just this on the night of the performance, making at an early exit from the stage at around 9.30pm. She did, however, pop back to take a bow.

Bild reaches out to blogosphere with Twingly

Laura Oliver — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 18:32:58 +0000

We’ve seen it picked up by newspapers elsewhere in Europe, but this week Germany’s Bild announced it will improve its connections with bloggers by introducing Twingly to its sport, entertainment, German premier league football and English-language site, Bild.com.

The Blogstream widget links back to bloggers who are linking to Bild content in an attempt to share some link love and let the paper see where its content is being picked up and talked about.Similar Posts:

Rebekah Wade’s first public speech in full

Judith Townend — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:47:56 +0000

If the Wordle and other coverage isn’t enough, here’s the Hugh Cudlipp speech by the editor of the Sun, Rebekah Wade, in full [note: may have differed very slightly in actual delivery]:

The challenging future of national and regional newspapers is now the staple diet of media commentators.

If you have been reading the press writing about the press you’d all be forgiven for questioning your choice of career.

I’m not denying we’re in a tough place – we are.

But I don’t want to use this speech to make grand statements on the future of our industry.

I want to talk to you about journalism.

As students, you will be very familiar with the academic analysis.

So tonight I thought I could share some of my own experiences in this often infuriating but always fascinating profession.

I started out as Eddie Shah’s tea girl and went on to attend this college before starting work at The News of The World.

This educational video, produced in the 1940s by a Professor Twogood, reminded me of my early years.

[shows video]

Fortunately the majority of my colleagues did NOT share Twogood’s view on women in the newsroom.

But there were a few!

When, at the age of 27, I was made deputy editor of the News of the World, some struggled with the concept.

At the corporate golf day, a senior male executive lost the buttons off his shirt.

The editor and I were busy meeting and greeting our high profile guests when suddenly a golf shirt and some buttons were thrust into my hand.

“When you’ve gotta minute darlin’ – sew ‘em back on for me, I’m teeing off in twenty minutes.”

Despite needlework not being my strong point, I did have the shirt ready in time.

And we were all sorry to hear what happened to him.

But trust me, no amount of studying you do here will prepare you for the sheer exhilaration of working in a newsroom.

It’s intoxicating. Because as a journalist, you can make a difference.

And today I hope you will leave this lecture hall more convinced than ever that journalism is the career for you.

I think it’s important that we start by dealing with the doom mongering.

Firstly – newspaper pessimism is age old.

Nearly as old as some of our media commentators I can see in the audience.

In ancient Rome, Julius Caesar produced the Acta Diurna. A daily gazette described by historians as:

‘Hand written journals posted in Rome and the provinces with the intention of feeding the populace information.’

As well as political decisions and military campaigns, I smiled when I read that these newsletters were said to record:

‘Gladiatorial contests, astrological omens, scandals, notable births, deaths and marriages, trials and executions.’

If you think about it not much has changed.

Our newspapers are still full of:

Gladiatorial contests.

We just call it Prime Minister’s Question Time.

Astrological Omens

Our own Mystic Meg

Scandals

Well they did until Justice Eady came along.

Notable Deaths

Obituary pages are still a must read.

Notable births

And trials and executions….well, we do have the Daily Mail.

Even in 59 BC these newsletters caused great debate and later rulers banned them, feeling they had no future.

The first modern newspaper was published to general scepticism in 1609.

But four hundred years later we are still here.

I believe for one reason only:

Journalism.

We shouldn’t fool ourselves.

I am not alone in thinking 2009 will see a seismic change to our national newspapers.

And to understand some of the issues, it’s worth a quick analysis of our industry in 2008.

The ABCs of our national daily newspapers show that last year 382,000 people stopped buying a daily paper.

And if you look at this chart – is it a coincidence that the biggest losses are where we’ve seen the biggest cuts in journalism?

Of course, the answers to our industry problems are more complex than that.

Last year, we gave away over 163 million copies in bulks to maintain these levels.

We listed 270 million foreign sales.

We gave away 120 million free CD’s and DVDs – of questionable quality and at enormous cost – just to rent readers.

We paid our retailers and wholesalers over 800 million pounds in margins that have outstripped RPI.

And while 1,400 corner shops closed, it’s been years since we developed alternative new routes to market.

We saw another increase in the number of free newspapers. In 2008 we distributed 639 million copies.

The huge growth in digital still doesn’t pay for high quality journalism.

We give away our expensive editorial content free online without an economic model that compensates for the loss in traditional revenues.

The rising cost of news and magazine print is in double figures and there is the small matter of the recession.

But despite all these challenges, there are huge positives. Especially if you compare our industry to television.

Despite the credit crunch, 3.5 billion daily newspapers were sold last year with an estimated 1.8 billion pounds in advertising revenue.

Of course like any business in a recession, we have to cut costs and drive revenue to survive.

But cost cutting in this business only works if the savings are reinvested in journalism.

The death knell is already ringing for publishers who have forgotten our reason for being.

And leaving aside state funded and trust supported journalism, those of us struggling to survive in a free market have seen our competitors in the business change dramatically.

At The Sun, our scale means we now view prime time ITV as more of a competitor for advertising revenue than other newspapers.

Ten years ago, 30 TV programmes delivered a larger audience than The Sun. Now there are only three or four on commercial channels that can consistently deliver that scale:

Paid for media undersells itself. So even with our reach and demographics, national newspaper advertising revenues are predicted to be down 12 per cent this year.

As an industry we have perfected the art of beating ourselves up.

Sometimes I think we need a PR.

With these market forces, it’s even more important to remember why we exist:

Journalism.

Newspapers do not have the monopoly.

Matt Drudge and Perez Hilton regularly break stories that we would kill for at The Sun. Sky News, ITN, compete for buy ups and investigations.

And with the growth of citizen journalism the public are competing with news agencies.

In Germany, Bild are even selling their readers digital cameras complete with USB so they can upload their video content directly to the newsdesk. Which I think is very exciting.

Hugh Cudlipp is remembered for his belief in campaigning journalism.

Great press campaigns can change history and shape new laws. They can build a bridge between public opinion and public policy.

But they also require monetary investment and long term commitment.

The Times under Thomas Barnes campaigned brilliantly and relentlessly for the introduction of the Reform Act of 1832 which set this country on the road to universal suffrage.

The Sunday Times uncovered the scandal of Thalidomide victims in the 70s and five years later provided thousands of children with much needed compensation.

The Daily Mail’s Stephen Lawrence campaign for justice pioneered brave and uncharted waters for newspapers as did the Daily Mirrorr’s fight for the ‘Bridgewater Four’.

All these campaigns and hundreds more have made a huge difference to the lives of ordinary people in this country.

Whether it is The Guardian’s call to Free Our Data or The Telegraphs fight for savers, The Independent’s battle for Fair Pay or The Mail’s ban on plastic bags.

They are all valuable ways of connecting with your readership above and beyond any marketing or promotional strategy.

Every newspaper, has in its history, causes for pride.

However, to make this point, I will have to use my own experiences to demonstrate how this connection, this collective power between a newspaper and it’s readers can be a force for good.

Last November on a visit to Afghanistan I found myself wandering around camp Bastian in search of a missing page three girl, (as you do) when I was apprehended by an angry sergeant major.

With clear contempt for my blue press flak jacket and out of bounds location, he sneered as he demanded to know what media outlet I was from.

The Sun, I said. Hoping this was the right answer.

Well, it was as if I had told him he was coming back home to Brise Norton with us that night.

A broad smile. A big handshake. A thank you for all the Sun readers support. A shout to his colleagues, more thanks, everyone wearing our Help for Heroes band.

Their pride in our pride for them.

And Becky, 22, from Bromley was safely returned.

But the serious aspect of my trip was to see for myself the result and the importance of our Help For Heroes campaign.

Travelling from Kabul to the farthest forward operating bases in Helmand I discovered that their gratitude for any support is overwhelming.

The hostile public opinion to the war in Iraq had led to creeping anti troop sentiment throughout the UK.

This meant desolate parades for homecoming regiments, uniformed soldiers being jeered at in the streets, a lack of support, understanding and sympathy for all they were going through in theatre and a feeling of neglect on their return.

When Bryn and Emma parry set up this charity for the war wounded in 2007 they approached us for help.

Our campaign began with this page one splash and eighteen months later Sun readers have raised millions for state of the art rehabilitation facilities.

We’ve had a number one song from X-Factor.

Prince Charles hosted the first ever Royal Military Awards.

The Prime Minister committed to more funding and the opposition agreed to do the same.

But most importantly the campaign moved the dial on the public’s attitude to the military.

Right now in Helmand, British troops are engaged in some of the fiercest fighting they’ve encountered so far.

Many of our young soldiers have died in this latest push into Taliban strongholds. Others will return physically or psychologically damaged for life.

But if you look at some of the newspapers you’d be forgiven for being totally unaware of this latest battle.

There is now great public awareness and support for the daily heroism displayed by our Armed Forces.

It is up to all of us to report it.

Sarah’s law was one of the more controversial campaigns of my career.

I’ve never really talked about it but in some ways it represents one of my points about campaigning journalism.

Listening to your readers.

The entire nation grieved over the abduction and murder of eight-year-old Sarah Payne and like everyone else I was deeply moved by this terrible tragedy.

I had just joined the News of the World as editor and after the daily pace of The Sun, I was frustrated by the waiting room atmosphere of a Sunday paper newsroom on a Tuesday.

So I took a chance and drove down to see Mike and Sara Payne who were still staying with Sarah’s grandparents. The press pack who were outside waiting for the next police conference, were more than a little surprised when I turned up on the doorstep.

I introduced myself to the Family Liaison officer and I told him I was the editor of the News of the World and I would like to offer my help and support to the Payne family.

Inexplicably Mike and Sara agreed to see me and repercussions of that meeting started the campaign you now know as Sarah’s Law.

It was immediately evident that Sara Payne was an incredible woman. Despite being racked with grief she was determined to get justice for daughter.

She told me that the police already had a suspect. He was a local convicted paedophile whose modus operandi fitted the crime.

He had previous of abusing and abducting and yet he was living near Sarah’s grandparents, unmonitored by any authorities, left ready to strike again.

Roy Whiting it turned out, was one of 110,000 convicted paedophiles living in the community.

The huge inconsistencies and loop holes in the 1997 Sex Offenders Act meant that there were tragedies like Sarah waiting to happen and that all the relevant agencies including the NSPCC had fought for three years to correct this legislation.

But nothing had been done.

From that first meeting, Sara and I spoke nearly every day. We were determined to change the law in Sarah’s memory.

Since then, Sara has lobbied at least five home secretaries and debated the rights and wrongs of the campaign up and down the country with great success.

Naming and shaming was my responsibility.

It was a blunt and contentious way of informing the public of these gaps in policy.

Hard lessons were learnt but I don’t regret the campaign for one minute:

Because in the end it was a simple truth.

As a parent, would you like to know if there was a convicted paedophile living next door?

The answer was always yes.

Parts of the media went on the attack with a blatant disregard for the facts of the campaign or more importantly their readers’ opinions on the matter.

After we published the first list, a group of mothers from an impoverished housing estate in Portsmouth, took to the streets to protest.

The BBC described them as ‘an angry lynch mob’.

What the BBC did not report was that the mothers had just discovered that Victor Burnett, a paedophile with 14 convictions for raping and abusing young boys between the ages of four and nine, had been re-housed amongst them unmonitored by the authorities.

Totally unaware of his background, the residents had complained for years about Burnett’s inappropriate behaviour towards their children but their voices, until then, had remained unheard.

This lack of control and supervision outraged the public. Weak sentencing, the incredible high rate of recidivism and the lack of clear and strong legislation meant there were predators all over the country.

Eight years later, just last month, Sara Payne was awarded a well deserved MBE for her tireless work and for the fourteen new pieces of legislation that form part of Sarah’s Law.

She rightly thanked the general public, in particular the News of the World readers, as without their collective power, nothing would have changed.

But campaigns can also be a lot of fun.

Years ago, an agency filed a story that villagers in a remote corner of Spain were going to celebrate a festival by pushing a donkey off a cliff to it’s death.

Blackie, was to be the sacrificial ass.

The affinity the population have with animals meant they were up in arms at this barbaric cruelty.

In turn, this reaction sparked a Fleet street dash to rescue Blackie and return him to a donkey sanctuary back in England. The victor would surely gain the publics gratitude and lets not forget – an uplift in sales.

The Sun, first on the scene, convinced the farmer to sell us Blackie and with the deal done, went off to celebrate their scoop.

Fatal error.

The Daily Star, arrived, kidnapped Blackie and drove him a hundred miles away to a ‘safe field’ and reaped all the glory.

Similarly, the Tamworth Two – five month old piglets who escaped from a lorry as they were being unloaded at a slaughterhouse – captured the publics imagination.

The search was on for the missing pair Butch and Sundance and once located, the pigs found themselves at the centre of a media auction to save their bacon.

£15,000 later, making them the most expensive pork in history, the Daily Mail had their scoop.

The fight between The Sun and The Mirror to return the 1966 football to Geoff Hurst is legendry newspaper tale.

The story broke that one of the German players, Helmut Haller had kept the winning ball after our world cup victory and thirty years later was now trying to sell it.

Our football loving nation demanded it back.

And Fleet Street was happy to oblige.

At least ten reporters and almost as many photographers descended on some sleepy German village all determined to get the ball which was not much more than a deflated bit of old leather.

£120,000 later, Helmut looked like he’d actually won the world cup and The Mirror were victorious.

These light hearted campaigns are often dismissed by ‘worthy’ sorts. They clearly forget that the readership have a whole gamut of emotions including a sense of humour.

Campaigns provide a unique connection to the public especially when the subject matter is of a serious nature.

For me, nothing can illustrate this connection better than our recent Baby P campaign.

The public outcry was deafening. And we began our fight for justice with a determination to expose the lack of accountability and responsibility for Baby P’s brutal death.

We delivered 1.5 million signatures to Downing Street and the collective power worked.

Children’s Secretary Ed Balls was forced to use emergency legislation to ensure that those responsible were held to account.

We received many many thousands of letters at The Sun about our Baby P coverage. I’d like to read you one:

‘I have never been a huge fan of The Sun, however I thank you for the coverage of Baby P. I am so grateful for the campaign. This is not a modern day witch-hunt but a petition for justice. Please, please do not relent.

In contrast, I’d like to quote from an article in…. ‘The Guardian.’

“Full of fury and repellent hysteria isn’t that part of the game? This is less about the creation of public emotion and more about its manipulation.

This knee-jerk tabloid kicking reaction is just dull.

But total disregard and respect for public opinion never ceases to amaze me.

They demanded accountability.

And as a result of the campaign, some, just some, of those responsible were removed from office without compensation.

Or as this Sun reader wrote:

‘The tabloid press, which the arty-farty press like to look down on so much, has shown that it prides morality over political correctness.’

There is nothing more rewarding than setting the news agenda with your own story.

Every newspaper editor, every journalist, lives for a great scoop.

The newsroom needs journalists who have great contacts, the reporters who can break the news not just report it, the photographers that can bring in the exclusives.

Great investigations, like yesterdays Sunday Times expose of The Labour Lords are lifeblood to newsapers.

I read an article a few weeks ago about The Penny Trumpet that began in 1841. The slogan for this single sheet, one penny publication was ‘quality not quantity’.

A phrase now over used but still a lesson to us all.

The quality of our journalism will make or break our industry not the recession.

Our ancient craft is to tell many people what few people know.

The sheer thrill of disclosure motivates the best journalists.

And as an industry, we should use our collective power to campaign for the freedom to do so.

This country is full of regulators, lawyers and politicians eager to frame and implement legislation that would constrain freedoms hard won over centuries.

We are already losing those freedoms. Privacy legislation is being created by the drip, drip of case law in the High Court without any reference to parliament.

Sometimes I suspect most of the media commentariat are suffering from Munchausen syndrome.

They are certainly making us suffer unnecessarily!

Only journalism allows us to exist. Yet they often decry it’s existence.

And it’s the epitome of self-flagellation when The Guardian publishes Max Mosley’s views on press freedom.

The relentless negativity, this almost morbid fascination with our own demise, must stop.

News International, Associated Newspapers and The Telegraph Group are battling to change the restrictive and prohibitively expensive Conditional Fee Arrangements.

But we need the rest of the industry to win this fight.

The silence is sometimes deafening.

The new distinguished chair of the Press Complaints Commission, Peta Buscombe certainly has her work cut out.

You would understand if the public were interested in our naval gazing. But they are not.

No one really lives in the bubble world of media-metroville.

And every successful business needs to know it’s customer.

Every year, my editorial team go on vacation with Sun readers either at a caravan park or holiday camp.

This year we are off to Sunny Blackpool for four nights as part of our £9.50 holiday promotion .

In 2008 nearly 2.5 million people took up the offer. It makes The Sun the biggest short haul travel firm in the UK.

The holiday is invaluable time with our readership and there are often some surreal moments.

On one such weekend at Butlins in Bognor – we were in the Sun and Moon pub having a few drinks, when one reader decided to make a speech.

‘I love The Sun’, he said, ‘it’s the best. But the editor should be fired.’

Much laughter from my merry team,

He went on to explain the reason for my demise:

‘I couldn’t believe it the other day, I picked up the paper to find that Yasser Arafat’s death got less coverage than Wayne Rooney’s car crash. I mean what’s the world come to?

My political editor George Pascoe Watson was thrilled. Clearly in vino veritas, George stands up and announces: ‘old chap, I’d just like to say on behalf of the political team at The Sun, I totally agree with your sentiments.

‘To be honest mate’ replied the reader. ‘I’m not sure why they employ you either. No one’s interested in that Westminster claptrap you write.’

But the upside of really knowing who your readers are is worth it.

And knowing who your future readers are – is the holy grail.

Tesco’s boss Sir Terry Leahy regularly operates the check out in one of his stores and he even gets his executives to live with Tesco customers for a week to really understand their wants.

As an industry our data collection is traditionally poor. New media has made that more effective but we still trail behind companies like Tesco.

Obama’s election campaign can teach us a lot. The data he already has on his supporters is immense.

We need new ways of engagement – to find out everything about our supporters.

So we can understand their buying habits and provided them with the relevant content, promotions, offers and services they require.

I said, at the beginning, I wasn’t here to give an obituary on our industry, far from it.

Despite our ‘internal’ disagreements, the depth of quality and diversity in our national newspapers will be our salvation.

But it’s important to be prepared for the challenges ahead.

Investment in journalism is the key to long term prosperity yet cost cutting is inevitable.

Journalism needs a free press to thrive yet under the threat of censorship the industry remains divided.

We’ve been masters of the written word for centuries yet we fear a future beyond print.

An independent media is imperative to a democracy yet the recession will hurt all but state funded journalism.

Our traditional business model is still profitable yet we need new ways to connect with our readers to stop the decline.

These contradictions are subject to deep thought in most newspaper companies.

I am optimistic.

And as an industry, we owe it to you, students of our trade, to rise to these challenges.

We need to ask ourselves:

Can we unite to fight against a privacy law that has no place in a democracy ?

Can we agree that self-regulation is the best way to deal with the occasional excesses of a free press?

Can we have a press that has the courage and commitment to listen to and fight for its readers?

Can we survive this economic climate if we keep investment in journalism at the heart of what we do?

I suggest to you tonight: in the words of Bob The Builder, plagiarised by Barak Obama.

Yes. We. Can.

Thank you.Similar Posts:

Successful German blog Basicthinking.de sold on eBay

Alexander de Vivie — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 13:35:36 +0000

Basicthinking.de, one of the most-visited German blogs discussing IT and hardware topics, was sold on eBay last week for nearly €47,000, Medienlese has reported.

Robert Basic, IT expert, owner and only author of the popular forum, said in a post that he had put the blog on eBay, because it was ‘time for a change and to build up something new’. At time of writing, Basic’s last entry had received 444 comments.

Some critics accused Basic of linkbaiting, suggesting that he would not go through with the sale of the blog.

He will continue to write for multi-language blog buzzriders, but not basicthinking. The blog is now in the hands of serverloft, a German server company.Similar Posts:

AP: Germany’s Bild looking for citizen photographers

Judith Townend — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 12:34:19 +0000

The German newspaper Bild is hoping to find new citizen journalists – by partnering with the budget price supermarket Lidl to sell a basic-function digital camera. The newspaper hopes it will encourage more people to upload content to the Bild website.Similar Posts:

Bloomberg: Google loses copyright cases in Germany

Laura Oliver — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 12:28:59 +0000

The search giant has lost two cases involving thumbnail images included in the previews of search results.

The rulings can be appealed.Similar Posts: