New appointment: Ayers is made regional web publishing director at Trinity Mirror Regionals

A week with particularly brutal cuts across UK regional media, but news of a new digital appointment comes from Trinity Mirror this morning:

Richard Ayers has been appointed regional web publishing director for Trinity Mirror Regionals.

“In this key position Richard will work closely with the regional teams across the division to implement digital best practice and develop content and online services to drive usage, audience and online revenues across the regional network,” a release from the group said.

“Richard has a first class background in online publishing and I am delighted to welcome him to the team,” said Chris Bunyan, digital director of Trinity Mirror Regionals.

“The audience for our regional sites has increased by over 30 per cent year-on-year to around 5.5 milllon users a month. Richard’s experience and expertise will strengthen our digital team and will ensure we continue to deliver and drive compelling online user experiences for this growing audience across our regional websites,” Bunyan said, in the release.

Ayers career includes ten years at BBC News online, in ‘a number of senior digital roles;’ he was ‘portal director’ for Tiscali.co.uk, and more recently he was the managing director of a digital production agency, Magic Lantern.

The Trinity Mirror release also announced that Shaun Collins has been appointed as digital recruitment director, a role which sees him focus on ‘driving digital recruitment products and their performance’.

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Eat Sleep Publish: Why the future of news brands hinges on net neutrality

Jason Preston compares online and print publishing models and concludes that the only way the old model will work online is if the cost structure of online publishing is changed, so that technology no longer allows free or cheap means for publishing to all.

“There are two ways to adapt to the situation: you can accept the new economics, or you can try to re-work the technology so that it conforms to the old rules of economics: scarcity… Fighting progress is a fool’s game,” Preston writes. Full story…

See also NiemanJournalismLab: “Why it’s so hard to move print revenue online: The loss of scarcity“

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García Interactive: ‘Death to the free’ – John Duncan on why people should pay

Inspired by three online news items (David Carr on NYTimes.com; Gawker’s Nick Denton / Jonah Bloom of AdAge), John Duncan argues on Garcia International that the ‘recession is (ultimately) good for online publishing.’

“There comes a time for most orthodoxies when they just plain run out of doxy,” he writes…”The biggest mistake newspapers made in the internet era was to devalue content by dishing it out for free.”

His point is perhaps clearest in his final paragraph:

“What we are learning now is that a user of a free product does not have remotely the same value as a customer of a paying one.”

Full story…

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Gary Andrews: Will any newspapers be bold enough to go online-only?

“Even if it is a desperate last throw of the dice, what does a paper have to lose if it tries it? Not that I’d want to see papers disappear from their communities, but if it’s a choice between online-only news and no news at all,” writes Andrews.

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Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – optimise urls for search engines

Online publishing: When choosing a content management system or blogging software, make sure it can include headlines in the article page’s URL. It is more memorable than strings of numbers and good for search engine optimisation too. Tipster: Laura Oliver

To submit a tip to Journalism.co.uk, use this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – use Twiigs for polls

Online publishing: Want to run quick and easy polls on your website or blog? Use Twiigs to set your own questions, choose multiple choice answers and cut and paste the code it provides onto your site – easy. Tipster: Oliver Luft

To submit a tip to Journalism.co.uk, use this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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Information Clearing House publisher receives threats

The publisher of a US website that aims to ‘correct the distorted perceptions provided by commercial media’ has been threatened with violence, according to reports from a friend and fellow independent publisher.

Tom Feeley, who runs Information Clearing House, and his family have received a string of threats relating to his work online, Mike Whitney reports.

Most recently Feeley’s wife was threatened in her home by three men with a gun, who demanded he stopped his online publishing. Feeley himself has also received death threats, according to Whitney.

At the time of writing the website is still active.

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Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – publishing Twitter feeds

Online publishing: Want to use Twitter to push out your website’s feeds? Check out Shawn Smith’s video on how to create an auto-update Twitter account. Tipster: Laura Oliver

To submit a tip to Journalism.co.uk, use this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk: Do you know what your readers are searching for?

Online publishing: Do you know what people are searching for on your website? Check the logs for the most common search terms and see if what you are writing about matches what users want – you could be surprised. Tipster: Oliver Luft

Got a tip? Submit it here – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk

Online publishing: Is your web framework hampering your storytelling? Then set up a blog alongside your existing site and add your videos/audio/slideshows/interactive maps to that. You can link from your existing news site and, if it’s a success, your bosses will take note. Tipster: Oliver Luft

Got a tip? Submit it here – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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