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Future PLC ‘considering options’ for US division

Rachel McAthy — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 14:40:09 +0000

Magazine publisher Future has said it is “considering a wider range of strategic options” for its US division in light of “challenging” conditions for the business.

In pre-close trading update the publisher said its position in the US “is significantly more challenging” than the UK. In July Future announced plans to “accelerate the transition of Future US into a primarily digital business”.

But this week, in a report preceding full-year earnings in November, the group said trading conditions in the US “reflecting ongoing weakness and decreasing visibility at newsstand” means the board is now considering a wider range of strategic options. PaidContent reports that the language used suggests the company “now may look to sell its business there”.

The publisher also confirmed that 10 per cent of its workforce has been cut in the UK and worldwide, which equals around 100 jobs, as part of its restructure to focus on digital and print efficiencies.

The company also claims in the latest report that the trends identified in its Interim Management Statement, published in July, have continued.

Revenues for the twelve months ending 30 September 2011 are expected to be down 6 per cent on last year, in constant currency. The Board remains comfortable with market expectations of results for 2011, subject only to any period-end adjustment required in relation to US newsstand returns, beyond those already announced and incorporated into fourth quarter estimates.

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paidContent: Guardian News & Media director of international leaving later this year

Rachel McAthy — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 12:28:43 +0000

The director of international at Guardian News & Media, Stella Beaumont, is to leave later this year, it was announced this week. Beaumont has worked at the news group for 28 years and will depart after helping to launch and oversee the company’s new digital operation in the US.

In a report paidContent quotes Guardian Media Group CEO Andrew Miller as telling staff that reporting lines for ContentNext, publisher of GNM-owned paidContent, following Beaumont’s departure, “will be determined as part of the wider planning for our American operation”.

The Cutline: Guardian working on ‘significant US expansion’

Rachel McAthy — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 09:27:36 +0000

Yahoo media blog the Cutline reports that the Guardian is busy building a new US digital operation which “will be significantly larger” than the Guardian’s previous work in the US.

Vague details around the plans were revealed in a Cutline interview with Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger.

He said the liberal English broadsheet is building a new US digital operation that will be based in New York rather than Washington, D.C. (The paper’s roughly 10 stateside reporters are currently based in both cities.) Pressed for additional details, Rusbridger demurred, but said the venture “will be significantly larger than anything we’ve done in the states before.” He was presumably referring to the Guardian’s previous attempts to crack the American news market, the most recent being GuardianAmerica.com, which had a short run between 2007 and 2009.

The Guardian began laying the groundwork for this expansion of its American shop last week with the addition of a New York-based chief revenue officer, whose job will be “to plot a fresh course in the US,” according to paidContent’s Robert Andrews.

A spokesperson for the Guardian had no further comment.Similar Posts:

Guardian: Republicans seek congressional inquiry into WikiLeaks

Rachel McAthy — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 12:38:18 +0000

The Republican party is planning on holding a congressional inquiry into WikiLeaks as well as its founder Julian Assange following the recent release of diplomatic cables, the Guardian has reported.

WikiLeaks appears in a list of priorities for investigation by the House of Representatives’ oversight committee, published here by Politico. The Republican party reportedly takes control of the House this week.

The move is partly political, aimed at the attorney general, Eric Holder, who the Republicans claim has been too slow and too weak in reacting to the leaks.

He said last month that the justice department was looking at what action can be taken against Assange but that lawyers are struggling to find legislation under which the Australian national can be prosecuted.

Full story on MediaGuardian at this link.Similar Posts:

Bloomberg: Interview with Arianna Huffington as HuffPost eyes first profits

Laura Oliver — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 11:24:45 +0000

The Huffington Post will post its first profit this year, according to a Bloomberg interview with founder Ariana Huffington, which also looks at the site’s plans for growth.

The Huffington Post aims to more than triple its sales to $100 million in 2012 from $30 million this year, according to a person close to the company who declined to be identified.

Full story at this link…Similar Posts:

Editor & Publisher takes down its paywall

Laura Oliver — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 16:50:19 +0000

US industry news website Editor & Publisher has removed the paywall from its website. Says its publisher:

Paywalls in name alone connote a psychological negative, which is one reason we have never been big believers. [Former owner] Nielsen had been using one for a number of years, but nothing during the past year has changed our opinion about them. We have removed it to build more traffic and make more of our original content available to our visitors.

Full story at this link…Similar Posts:

Don’t direct students to file FOI requests to universities, Texas lecturers told

Laura Oliver — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 15:16:47 +0000

From the US last week, but worth reading – a curious situation for journalism academics:

Journalism teachers sometimes instruct students to file such requests under the Texas Public Information Act to gain experience using an important tool for reporters.

But in response to an inquiry from Tarleton State University in Stephenville, an A&M [Texas A&M University] campus about 155 miles north of Austin, the system’s general counsel warned that a faculty member could be disciplined and even fired for directing students to file requests with any of the system’s 12 universities and seven agencies. Faculty members are free to direct students to file requests with other state universities and agencies.

Full story on Statesman.com at this link…Similar Posts:

Press+ paid content system targets US college media

Laura Oliver — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 13:05:49 +0000

Press+, the paywall and micropayment system launched by US venture Journalism Online, has added new features to its technology aimed at signing up student media partners in the US and attracting payments from off-campus users, such as parents and alumni.

In 2011 the Daily O’Collegian at Oklahoma State University will launch the system on its website, ocolly.com, a release states.

The paper will collect a small fee from online readers who are outside the school’s immediate geographic area and who do not use an email address with an .edu affiliation and who read the paper online more than three times a month. This is achieved by deploying two aspects of the Press+ platform in tandem: the “meter” technology combined with “geo-targeting” technology.

Full release via Smudged Newsprint at this link…

Journalism Online was launched in April 2009, and won investment from News Corp in June 2010. Its first client was LancasterOnline.com, which began using the Press+ system in July to charge for its access to its obituary pages. Last month non-profit investigative journalism organisation ProPublica signed up to the system.Similar Posts:

Yahoo News: WikiLeaks embassy cables release prompts new ‘whistleblower bill’

Laura Oliver — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 11:42:28 +0000

The leak of the US embassy cables by WikiLeaks is prompting new legislation in the US that would give employees in sensitive government jobs a way to report corruption or mismanagement.

The “whistleblower bill” will discourage leaks of classified information say its supporters. The bill is likely to pass through the approval process quickly, Yahoo News reports

Following WikiLeaks’ pulibcation of the Afghanistan war logs in July US senators Charles Schumer and Dianne Feinstein began hastily drafting an amendment to a current piece of legislation designed to protect journalists’ sources to ensure that WikiLeaks could not be included. The amendement declared that the bill would “only extend only to traditional news-gathering activities and not to websites that serve as a conduit for the mass dissemination of secret documents”.

Full story on Yahoo News at this link.Similar Posts:

How Conde Nast is dealing with iPad advertisers

Laura Oliver — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 11:33:45 +0000

An interesting post on Rob O’Regan’s blog looking at how Conde Nast has developed best practice guidelines for advertisers who want to work on its iPad apps. To create the guidance for clients, the magazine publisher has been conducting extensive research on how readers are using and rating the apps:

To learn more about these early adopters, Conde Nast is combining its in-app and in-person research with usage software built into its apps. Results from the in-app survey showed that 80 per cent of users who downloaded a Conde Nast digital magazine app said the content and experience “met or surpassed their expectations”, and 83 per cent said they were likely to purchase the next month’s edition.

Full story on emediavitals at this link…Similar Posts:

New York Observer: Daily Beast and Newsweek to merge

Laura Oliver — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 09:47:04 +0000

Last night the New York Observer’s Media Mob broke the news that Newsweek and the Daily Beast will merge.

According to the report, the editorial staffs of the two titles will combine in a 50-50 merger of the two companies.

Full story on the New York Observer at this link…

The Daily Beast’s editor-in-chief Tina Brown confirmed the deal in a statement on the site late last night:

It’s a wonderful new opportunity for all the brilliant editors and writers at the Daily Beast who have worked so hard to create the site’s success. Working at the warp-speed of a 24/7 news operation, we now add the versatility of being able to develop ideas and investigations that require a different narrative pace suited to the medium of print. And for Newsweek, the Daily Beast is a thriving frontline of breaking news and commentary that will raise the profile of the magazine’s bylines and quicken the pace of a great magazine’s revival.

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US student journalism awards open for entries

Rachel McAthy — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 18:11:39 +0000

Entries can now be submitted to the Society of Professional Journalists’ annual Mark of Excellence Awards for 2011 which recognise the best student journalism in the US.

The awards – which include 39 categories across print, radio, television and online journalism – will first be judged by region, with the winners then put forward for the national competition.

The contest is open to anyone enrolled in a college or university in the US studying for an academic degree in 2010. Students who have had full-time, professional journalism experience, outside of internships, are not eligible. Entries must have been published or broadcast during the 2010 calendar year.

The deadline for entries is 26 January. There are more details on the competition website.Similar Posts:

CJR: The US newsrooms doing interactivity on a budget

Laura Oliver — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 11:21:03 +0000

The Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) takes a look at some US news organisations who are producing data visualisations and interactives for their websites with limited budgets and staff resources.

I believe the Times’ [New York Times] newsroom has at least two dozen people working full time on interactive projects; many smaller papers might be lucky to have a handful of people who know Flash. Even if newsrooms have graphic artists working on election-result maps for the papers’ print versions, many do not necessarily allocate the same level of staff time to online displays.

Full article on the CJR’s website at this link…Similar Posts:

Washington Post buys #election hashtag for midterms

Laura Oliver — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 10:10:31 +0000

The Washington Post sponsored the Twitter hashtag #election as part of its coverage of the US midterm elections this week.

Explains Poynter:

The Post’s sponsorship of the term #Election means that it will appear at the top of the list of Trending Topics on Tuesday. When users click on that topic, one of the Post’s tweets will appear above other tweets with the #Election hashtag – giving the Post prime real estate to promote its coverage and updates.

There were rumours flying around as to how much the Post had spent on the ‘promoted tweet’ service from Twitter, but a spokeswoman for the title said it would not comment on the cost.

Chloe Sladden, Twitter’s director of media partnerships, told Poynter that this was the first time a news organisation had used Twitter in this way.

Using new Twitter, the Post also hosted a live video stream, which it called an Election Day Twittercast, on the @washingtonpost handle.

“The Post will solicit questions from Twitter users as it simultaneously airs on the platform. The Post is among the first news organisations to be able to embed live and taped video on the new Twitter platform,” a release from the Post says.Similar Posts:

How many US newspaper blogs are edited?

Laura Oliver — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 09:45:39 +0000

US media ethics project StinkyJournalism has done some digging into the issue of blogs on newspaper websites and whether these posts fall under the same editing process as other items on the site.

During the recent financial downturn, some US newspapers, including the Seattle Post Intelligencer and the Christian Science Monitor, have stopped publishing print editions altogether, opting for online-only editions. All major US newspapers have a representative internet presence and publish much more content online than they could fit into their print editions. Along with this change, social media as an integrated tool plays a role in the news landscape now more than ever. However, these changes also raise questions about ethics, legal issues and journalistic standards.

Therefore, StinkyJournalism thought it would be worthwhile to learn more about how newspapers manage blogs published on their websites. We looked at 10 major US newspapers and their 591 published blogs. We categorized the blogs based on their content and took notice of the blogs’ authors. Some of the results were unexpected, even surprising.

You can read the full results of the study at this link on the StinkyJournalism site, but some key findings were:

404 of 591 (68 per cent) blogs published by newspapers were edited, according to the newspapers themselves;
Only eight of the 591 blogs – 1 per cent – dealt with traditional news;
Seven of the 10 newspapers studied said they edit all blogs.

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