Category Archives: Editors’ pick

OJR: Apps v eBooks – are we missing paid content opportunity?

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In an interesting post on the Online Journalism Review website Robert Niles weighs up the opportunities for publishers investing in apps versus eBooks. In his post Niles says he would be surprised to find a newsroom spending “even half of what its devoting to app development on eBooks”.

But with a quick look at the pricing of the top paid apps compared to eBooks, he says it is about time news organisations take “a serious look” at the eBook market.

There have been some recent examples of news outlets entering the eBook market and ultimately enhancing the shelf-life of news content as a result. Last month the Guardian launched its pwm new series of eBooks called Guardian Shorts, which started with Phone Hacking: How the Guardian broke the story.

According to Niles within the News category of the app store, the most expensive paid app in the top 20 was Instapaper at $4.99, compared to the Politics & Current Events category in iBooks, where he recorded that 19 out of the top 20 sell for at least $4.99.

Clearly, the public is willing to – and does – pay more for content in eBooks than it does in apps. That fact should encourage any serious news business to take a serious look at eBooks. But what about volume? That’s where I couldn’t find reliable data comparing sales in the app store versus sales of eBooks. But it’s clear from the pricing that a news organisation would need to sell many times more apps than eBooks for apps to have better sales revenue, given the higher price points routinely supported in eBook stores.

Read more here…

Independent: News International ‘on course to pay any damages against Glenn Mulcaire’

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The Independent reports today that News International could still be obliged to pay any damages awarded against private investigator Glenn Mulcaire to alleged victims in civil phone hacking cases.

According to the Independent it has obtained a previously protected High Court document which shows that News International “has not cut its financial ties” with Mulcaire, despite an announcement by the media company that it would stop paying his legal fees.

Mulcaire lodged a lawsuit against News International last month over the company’s decision to stop paying his fees in a number of ongoing cases in which he is a defendant.

The claim document, lodged in the Chancery Division of the High Court, details the close-knit legal relationship that existed between Mr Mulcaire’s legal team and the Murdoch UK media company.

… But it goes on to state that the letter “did not to purport to withdraw the indemnity in respect of damages” – meaning that a previously unacknowledged undertaking by News International to pay any cash settlements against Mr Mulcaire remains in place.

But News International has responded to say there was “no agreement whatsoever”.

News International announced in July that it would stop paying Mulcaire’s fees, after News International chairman James Murdoch told the culture, media and sport select committee he had been “surprised and shocked” to find out “certain legal fees were paid for”.

10,000 Words: news site screenshots from 9/11, ten years on

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The 10,000 Words blog has created a slideshow of screenshots showing the homepages of 45 newspaper, broadcaster, blog and other online news outlet websites on Sunday, the ten year anniversary of 9/11, showing their coverage between 10am and 11am Pacific Standard Time.

There is also an original gallery of shots which were captured between 12.30am and 1.30am PST (8.30am to 9.30am GMT) here.

Read more on 10,000 Words.

Regional newspaper editor asks for job applications via Twitter

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Could you sell your skills as a journalist to a potential employer in just 140 characters? Because that is exactly what one editor is asking of potential new recruits.

Alan Geere, editor-in-chief of the Essex Chronicle Media Group and editorial director of Northcliffe Media South East, says he is “fed up of wading through turgid ‘letters of application’ and monstrous CVs”, so instead he is inviting applications for the latest journalism role at the title via Twitter.

In a blog post, Geere vents his frustration at receiving CVs from people he considers to be “would-be journalists who were obviously asleep during the class on intro writing”.

So in a bid to change this he is insisting anyone interested in the latest roles available at the publisher to respond via Twitter to his account @alangeere, giving them just 140 characters to explain what they can do and why they should be considered.

I keep getting told there is an over-supply of qualified people wanting to do journalism. Well, maybe there is but there’s definitely not an over-supply of people who are any good.

It’s an interesting tactic and should hopefully spark some creativity from some entrants, but I do wonder how much you can learn about a person in 140 characters? The other question is about those who wish to keep their application a secret, especially from their current employer/colleagues. I would assume direct messages are the answer here, but will of course require Geere to follow any of those recruits before they can demonstrate their abilities.

See his full blog post here and feel free to leave your thoughts below.

MediaGuardian: Les Hinton stands by past phone hacking evidence

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The Guardian reports today that Les Hinton, former executive chairman of News International, has written a letter to MPs to say he stands by evidence given to the culture, media and sport select committee in 2007 and 2009.

According to the Guardian Hinton also “dismissed allegations Goodman was offered his job back” after being convicted of conspiracy to intercept telephone calls.

“I answered all questions truthfully and to the best of my knowledge,” said Hinton. It is his remarks about Goodman’s claims that are most significant and indicate the legal line News International is likely to take in relation to the former royal editor’s sensational claims.

Read more here… The committee had not published the letter at the time of writing.

Hinton resigned from News Corporation in July, at which point he was chief executive officer of Dow Jones and publisher of the Wall Street Journal.

In a statement Hinton said he had watched the events at the News of the World unfold “with sorrow” from New York.

That I was ignorant of what apparently happened is irrelevant and in the circumstances I feel it is proper for me to resign from News Corporation and apologise to those hurt by the actions of News of the World.

BBC: Nurse accused of saline contamination in PR bid to clear name after release

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The BBC reports today that Rebecca Leighton, the nurse who was arrested in relation to the alleged contamination of saline at Stepping Hill Hospital in Stockport, has asked publicist Max Clifford to help repair her reputation after she was released last week with the charges against her dropped.

Clifford told the BBC she felt she had been “poisoned by sections of the media” and wanted help to clear her name.

She has been very badly criticised and written about by the media so I suppose it’s natural that you would go to someone who understands the media to get that put right.

All she said to me is I suppose it boils down to I’ve been poisoned by sections of the media and I hope that you can provide the antidote to get rid of all that poison because you know, mud sticks and a lot of the things that have been written have been absolutely awful.

Read more here.

BBC College of Journalism posts memories of 9/11 coverage

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The BBC College of Journalism website is publishing a series of posts offering personal memories of coverage of the 9/11 attacks. The first, published this week, is by Stephen Evans, now Berlin correspondent for the BBC, who was in the World Trade Centre when the first plane hit.

I can remember looking out and seeing a line of neat fire trucks and thinking everything was OK because the authorities had arrived. I was on the air – I think to News 24 – when the North Tower collapsed, cutting the line off. I can remember ranting at this. The hotel alarm went off and we evacuated down a back stairs in an orderly fashion.

Evans was on the air when the South tower, the first of the two to collapse, began to fall:

Finalists of Online Journalism Awards announced

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The Online News Association has this week announced the finalists of its Online Journalism Awards for this year. There are more than 100 finalists across 28 categories which produced shortlists.

You can see the full list here. The results will be announced at the 2011 ONA Conference and Online Journalism Awards Banquet on 24 September in Boston.

This year, ONA introduced changes to acknowledge the explosion of journalistic innovation on new digital platforms. Entries for all awards were open to news produced for any digital device. Eight awards come with a total of $33,000 in prize money, courtesy of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Gannett Foundation, which also is supporting innovative investigative work with two $2,500 awards.

paidContent: Apple drops Financial Times apps from store

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Apple has pulled the Financial Times’ native iPad and iPhone apps from the iTunes App Store after updating its terms which state in-app subscriptions must be paid through the store, reports paidContent.

The FT launched a web-based app in June which allows the publisher to avoid paying Apple a 30 per cent cut of it’s app revenue and to gather its own audience data.

This article on paidContent states:

It is a blow to the FT, whose apps had processed subscription transactions independently. Last year, 10 percent of its new digital subscriptions were taken out on iPads. But the publisher says its model is premised on owning data about customers that goes through along with transactions. This was more important to it than Apple’s 30 percent take, CEO John Ridding told [Robert Andrews] recently.

The FT’s web app, which was described as a ‘wake-up call’ to publishers, saw 150,000 uses in the first 10 days before the part-paywall went up, in line with the FT’s other digital platforms.

 

 

 

FT study exposes problems in finding media information on corporate websites

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A study by the Financial Times and web effectiveness experts Bowen Craggs has found many corporate websites fail to provide journalists with information and serve the media in a useful and effective way – which is often not in the company’s favour in terms of generating positive press coverage.

The study finds “many press offices simply do not see the online medium as an important” and this article (part paywall) in the FT theorises that this could be as many press officers are former journalists who left the industry before the advent of online and social media.

The FT Bowen Craggs Index looks at:

How well a site caters to four areas of journalistic enquiry: the news release service and archiving; the ready availability of good quality contact information; the range of background about the company and its industry; and the provision of publication quality imagery.

News release service

The FT article states journalists “do not want to be spoon fed”:

Give them a ready-made story, and they will either ignore it, or look for a way to put a different twist on it (not necessarily in the company’s favour). The last thing they want is to write the same story as other people. What they do want is leads, which explains the keenness with which they have taken to Twitter. Companies need to understand Twitter – both to feed journalists leads and to get early warning that a nasty news storm is about to blow in.

Contact information and background about the company and its industry

The FT article states:

[Journalists] tend to be in a hurry, and impatient. Their inclination is often to pick up the phone rather than trawl a site. Companies can make themselves unpopular by failing to make press contacts easy to find.

Provision of images

The study found that “one of the most significant trends this year comes from the image library metric”:

The big move forward is the increasing use of Flickr as a complementary library: see for example Nestlé and Novartis.

A remarkable number of companies do not provide an image library at all – almost a quarter of the companies in the Index, including most of the Chinese companies but also a slew of banks – Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Santander, Westpac and more. Why? If you do not provide images yourselves, media organisations will surely go to your rivals or to a library.

German company Siemans comes out on top and is heralded as an example of best practice of serving the media. It has an index of 28. An example of a lower score is Johnson and Johnson with an index of nine.