Author Archives: Laura Oliver

Harlow journalism students to hold 40-year anniversary reunion

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This shipshape crew are on the look-out for long-lost comrades from a year-long expedition to Harlow nearly 40 years ago.
The class of 1971/72 on the NCTJ pre-entry journalism course are marking the 40th anniversary with a reunion in the town next autumn.

This picture of Christine, Geraldine, Celia, Pippa and Gill was taken by the Daily Express at the London Boat Show on a course assignment, but never used.

Former Harlow College student Andy McLardy, who is helping classmate Sky News’ Simon Bucks organise the event, told Journalism.co.uk:

I had not seen Simon for many years when, with impeccable timing, he turned up as I was walking out of the front door to go to work. Fortunately we were able to meet up again the next day and discussed holding this reunion. Neither of us had changed a bit! We have both stayed in touch with a few old colleagues and are now hoping to trace others who would be interested in meeting up on a Saturday lunchtime at one of our old drinking haunts.

To get in touch for the reunion contact harlow7172 [at] gmail.com.

Extinction timeline: UK newspapers given nine years to live

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Newspapers in the UK will be “extinct” in their current form by 2019, according to predictions by futurist Ross Dawson.

Earlier this week, Dawson has created a ‘Newspaper extinction timeline’, which suggests that while newspapers worldwide will exist in their current form beyond 2040, the US will be the first country to lose the printed paper in 2017.

Factors driving the pace of newspaper extinction on a global scale, according to Dawson, include: changes in newsprint and production costs; increased cost performance of tablets and e-reader; and the development of high performance digital paper.

On a national level he has taken economic, demographic, political and technological factors into consideration. More explanation is given on Dawson’s blog.

Dawson’s predictions have provoked some strong reaction on his own blog and elsewhere. But there’s a thoughtful response from INMA’s director and CEO Earl Wilkinson:

What I like about Dawson’s nudge is that it reminds us that the clock is ticking. We can’t work fast enough at the corporate level or the industry level to develop digital platforms that connect with readers and advertisers. We can’t work fast enough to build multimedia companies where print, online, mobile, iPad and others each play to their strengths and interact. Just as we were warned in the 1990s that classified advertising could disappear and we need to prepare for that, we need to be preparing today for an all-digital future – whether that comes in 2025, 2050, 2100, or some year beyond the reach of our great-grandchildren.

Here’s an interesting exercise for your management team: pick the date Dawson says your country’s newspapers will be “insignificant” and work backward. What would you need to do between today and that date to transform your business model and generate enough revenue to preserve today’s level of journalism at a sufficiently profitable level? We may all make similar choices, but my guess is the sense of urgency is more intense in the United States than India.

How many US newspaper blogs are edited?

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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.


Nieman Journalism Lab: How Gannett Blog works its niche

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An interesting look at a media “watchdog” blog based in the US – Gannett Blog, run by former Gannett employee Jim Hopkins, is an unrivalled source of information on the newspaper publisher and media group.

Two things are striking about the description of Gannett Blog and Hopkins’ work in this article, firstly the description of working on a specialist subject:

Gannett, with its 80 dailies and 23 TV stations, “is like a small city,” Hopkins says, “and I’m a beat reporter. I can find things going on on a daily basis.”

And secondly, it’s “water cooler”, open comments feature:

An innovation on Gannett Blog, inspired by the fact that comments were getting more pageviews than anything else on the blog, is the open-ended “real-time comments” post that’s always at the top of the page. It simply says, “Can’t find the right spot for your comment? Post it here, in this open forum.” Hopkins refreshes that post once a week; it often garners more than 100 comments – far more than his typical posts do.

Hopkins calls this the “water cooler” – a place to “come and see what other people are thinking about.”

Full story on Nieman Journalism Lab at this link…

paidContent:UK: Telegraaf to buy Dutch social network Hyves

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Telegraaf Media Group, which publishes de Telegraaf newspaper in Holland, is buying social networking site Hyves. The network claims to have more than 10 million users.

TMG isn’t naming its price, but says the money is all from existing resources, and it expects Hyves to turn over €20 million for 2010…

Though the likes of Facebook remain ahead of the international, U.S. and UK social networking packs, copycats have taken hold in many European nations, catering to specific linguistic communities. They remain under pressure by the international incumbents pushing at territorial doors and by the take-off of microblogging networks like Twitter.

Full story on paidContent:UK at this link…

James Harding: Times paywall is a revolution for its journalism

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After months of waiting, News International released figures for its much-discussed Times and Sunday Times paywalls today.

According to a release from the group, the Times and Sunday Times have more than 105,000 “paid-for customers to date”. This figures includes subscribers to the websites and to the Times’ iPad app and Kindle editions. Around half of these are monthly subscribers, News International says, adding that “many of the rest” are either single copy or pay-as-you go sales.

Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, the Times’ editor James Harding said it was “early days” but that he was “hugely encouraged” by the figures so far:

What we’ve seen is for the first time in 225 years we’re selling copies of the Times on something other than paper; we’re seeing that those people who read the digital editions of the Times and the Sunday Times really like them, if they sign up for a trial they tend to stick with us; and most importantly we’re able to say something that very few papers can say which is that we’re growing …

What you get now is you see over a couple of million people who look at the front page of the Times online … we’d engaged in quite a suicidal form of economics which was giving our journalism away for free and we knew that if we continued to do that we couldn’t invest in reporting. So what our concern was was would be cut off from the internet conversation and the truth is that we haven’t been, because a) the media works as a huge echo chamber so our stories get picked up and the other thing we’re seeing is that our readers engage with or stories and comment on our stories in a much deeper way …

What you’re seeing here is something at it’s very early stages, but also a revelation as well as a revolution in journalism. The iPad edition for us has changed the way we are doing our journalism and technology as we all know can be a tricky business.

New Media Age: Mail Online launches paid-for mobile app

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Mail Online has become the latest UK newspaper site to launch an iPhone app. But the title is offering six-monthly or annual subscription packages, at £4.99 and £8.99 respectively, rather than a 30-day or monthly model.

Mail Online MD James Bromley said the title’s mobile strategy would hinge on developing paid apps as an additional revenue stream.

Full story on New Media Age at this link…

What can our jobs board tell us about the market?

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Freelance Unbound has produced a great post looking at the current state of the journalism jobs market, based on data analysis of Journalism.co.uk’s own job listings.

Judging by their analysis, it seems that roles in specialist business journalism for publications based in London are your best bet:

The most telling items in the chart are the tiny slices for lifestyle and celebrity – the most popular media choices for j-students – and for general news reporting. Very few jobs are advertised in these areas (at least here).

Full post on Freelance Unbound at this link…

Journalisted Weekly: Spending review, Rooney and the BBC

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Journalisted is an independent, not-for-profit website built to make it easier for you, the public, to find out more about journalists and what they write about. It is run by the Media Standards Trust, a registered charity set up to foster high standards in news on behalf of the public, and funded by donations from charitable foundations.

Each week Journalisted produces a summary of the most covered news stories, most active journalists and those topics falling off the news agenda, using its database of UK journalists and news sources. From now on we’ll be cross-posting them on Journalism.co.uk.

For the week ending Sunday 24 October

  • The much anticipated comprehensive spending review received lots and lots of coverage;
  • Wayne Rooney’s contract negotiations spilled from the sports sections onto the front pages;
  • There was little press interest in China’s new leader-in-waiting and the Brazilian presidential run-off.

Covered lots

  • The comprehensive spending review, announced in full last week, 1,045 articles;
  • Wayne Rooney, threatening to leave Manchester United, 677 articles;
  • The BBC, which avoided taking on the cost of TV licenses for over-75s by offering to start paying for the World Service BBC Monitoring, and various other bits and pieces, 109 articles.

Covered little

  • Xi Jinping, reported to be the likely successor to President Hu Jintao after his promotion to China’s military commission, 15 articles;
  • The Obama administration announcing the largest US arms deal in history, going to Saudi Arabia, 9 articles;
  • Jose Serra, an increasingly close contender for the Brazilian presidency run-off this weekend, 3 articles.

Political ups and downs (top 10 by number of articles)

  • George Osborne: 801 articles (+153 per cent on previous week);
  • David Cameron: 574 articles (-10 per cent on previous week);
  • Nick Clegg: 239 articles (+20 per cent on previous week);
  • Alan Johnson: 153 articles (+99 per cent on previous week);
  • Ed Miliband: 142 articles (-11 per cent on previous week);
  • Vince Cable: 135 articles (-45 per cent on previous week);
  • Gordon Brown: 120 articles (-16 per cent on previous week);
  • Tony Blair: 98 articles (-19 per cent on previous week);
  • Danny Alexander: 96 articles (+78 per cent on previous week);
  • Liam Fox: 77 articles (-14 per cent on previous week).

Celebrity vs serious

Who wrote a lot about…the ‘Tea Party’

Ed Pilkington – 8 articles (the Guardian), Richard Adams – 7 articles (the Guardian), Alex Spillius – 6 articles (the Telegraph), Anna Fifield – 4 articles (FT), Edward Luce – 4 articles (FT), Lloyd Marcus – 4 articles (the Guardian).

Long form journalism

Free Speech blog: What the UK government’s cuts mean for British journalism?

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Brian Cathcart, professor of journalism at Kingston University London, on what the UK government’s cuts and plans for university fees will mean for journalism:

Of all the professions, journalism is surely among the most vulnerable when it comes to the kind of touch cost-benefit analysis that school leavers and parents will have to do in a world of higher fees. Undeniably, the news industry is in existential crisis: yes, it offers thrilling new possibilities, but it is distinctly short on security.

In this environment, whatever Vince Cable and Nick Clegg may say, poorer students – by which I mean students who are not middle class – are more likely to back away than risk the big debts that will accompany a journalism degree.

The next generation of journalists, therefore, will probably have just the same social profile as the generation currently supplying us with news, even though the country around us will have changed.

Full article on Index on Censorship at this link…