Category Archives: Events

Future of regional news: an ongoing discussion

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Last week’s regional journalism panel at City University – in which I took part –  brought out some telling detail: just how many students would be prepared to work for online start-ups (18 out of 70) and the high proportion of income that comes from regional newspaper advertising (73 per cent of the Northern Echo’s revenue comes from advertising, six per cent of that from online). With new local projects arriving on the news scene each day, there are plenty more events at which to discuss and examine the future of regional news:

  • Tonight (Monday 7 December) is probably a bit short notice for the UK Future of News group’s inaugural meeting (Waterloo, 7pm) but keep track of the next date at this link. The group is for anyone interested in the future of journalism: “What it isn’t, is an arena to repeatedly lament the death of print, or the end of quality journalism, or to go around saying ‘paywalls must be the answer, journalists have got to eat,'”says its founder Adam Westbrook.”What it is, is a place where people can think positively, about tangible new ideas to determine the future of journalism. I hope someone will pitch a few ideas which we can all thrash out and stew over.”
  • There’s a good line-up at the AOP microlocal conference on Wednesday 9 December and with Birmingham City University’s Paul Bradshaw, Guardian Local’s Sarah Hartley and Trinity Mirror multimedia head David Higgerson involved there’s likely to be a bit of Twittering on the day: follow #aopforum.  Other speakers include Roger Green, managing director of digital media, Newsquest; Lori Cunningham, digital strategy director, Johnston Press; and James Thornett, executive product manager, BBC Local & Location Services. We’re told some tickets are still available.
  • Journalism.co.uk’s own news:rewired event on 14 January 2010, where independent regional sites will meet traditional brands pursuing new partnerships and community sourcing projects. We’ll be covering social media, data-crunching, citizen collaboration and entrepreneurship, with some of the UK’s leading regional and national online journalists.

Update: Just realised all these regional events are London-based. Any outside the capital to throw in the mix?

#cop15: Fifty-six newspapers run Guardian’s climate change editorial

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“Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency,” opened the editorial in newspapers across the world this morning.

It was an effort co-ordinated by the Guardian marking the beginning of the climate summit in Copenhagen. Participating titles include two Chinese papers, India’s The Hindu, Le Monde, El Pais, Russia’s Novaya Gazeta and the Toronto Star.

“Newspapers have never done anything like this before but they have never had to cover a story like this before,” said Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of the Guardian. “No individual newspaper editorial could hope to influence the outcome of Copenhagen but I hope the combined voice of 56 major papers speaking in 20 languages will remind the politicians and negotiators gathering there what is at stake – and persuade them to rise above the rivalries and inflexibility that have stood in the way of a deal.”

The editorial states:

“Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year’s inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world’s response has been feeble and half-hearted.”

#WANIndia2009: What’s hot and what’s not in the newspaper industry’s world?

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Based on the sessions that Journalism.co.uk attended and the delegates we spoke to there were some clear winners and losers at this year’s World Association of Newspapers (WAN) conference and concurrent World Editors Forum (WEF) congress:

Image of thermometerPrint – somewhat unsurprising that the resilience of print was a clear favourite at a conference of newspaper executives and industry groups…

Social media – not on everyone’s agendas, but global examples of social media being effectively used to newsgather, distribute reports and engage audiences were highlighted in an opening discussion and with news from the AP. Little mention was made at the same event last year.

Mobile – an excellent presentation from the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project’s Martha Stone, but limited examples of how mobile is being used by publishers – though Norway’s VG.no had this to say.

SEO – according to Daily Mirror and Mirror.co.uk’s associate editor Matt Kelly that is…

E-paper – Journalism had an interesting chat with the folk behind PressClick, which will be posting soon, but digital editions and e-paper went largely undiscussed.

All coverage of #WANIndia2009 from Journalism.co.uk can be found at this link.

#WANIndia2009: Audio – Google’s David Drummond on working with publishers

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There was a more peaceful air on stage at yesterday’s closing debate of the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) conference, entitled What do we do about Google?

David Drummond, senior vice president and chief legal counsel of Google, suggested the search giant hadn’t done enough to ‘engage with newspapers’.

According to WAN-IFRA president Gavin O’Reilly, Google is missing the point: this is an issue of copyright (‘a deceptively simple legal principle’) and a lack of control options for publishers when it comes to search engines and aggregators indexing there content.

Vested interest on both sides, here’s the full audio of Drummond’s speech:

And O’Reilly’s thoughts:

WAN-IFRA president Gavin O’Reilly on Google and newspapers

What did the crowd want? Calls for evidence, from both parties, of what conversations are going on between newspaper groups, representative bodies and Google; and progress, so the debate might be different next year…

Follow #localmedia hearing online – live

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The House of Commons culture, media and sport committee will hear evidence from Matt Brittin, managing director, Google UK and Paul Bradshaw, lecturer in journalism, Birmingham City University this morning (scheduled for 10.30am but there was a problem with the live feed, which is now working). Caroline Beavon (@carolinebeavon) is liveblogging for the Online Journalism Blog.

Follow the live-blog here…

Watch it at this link…

#WANIndia2009: Re-inventing the newspaper – Portugal’s i

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Over on the main site we’re reporting on how a recently launched Portuguese newspaper, i, is innovating across platforms – targeting breaking news online at social networks; redesigning the traditional print format to four section; and redesigning its newsroom.

The seven-month-old title has shown circulation growth and is attracting previously non-newspaper consumers as readers, says publisher and editor Martim Figueiredo.

Read the full piece on i at this link – here are some photos of a special edition of the paper prepared for the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) conference, to give you an idea of what it looks like:

image of Portuguese newspaper i

Portuguese newspaper i

Portuguese newspaper i

All coverage of #WANIndia2009 from Journalism.co.uk can be found at this link.

#WANIndia2009: Women editors-in-chief and women readers – should we be having this discussion?

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“When I walk into an editorial meeting, I am an editor, just an editor – that’s it.”

So said Champika Liyanaarachchi, editor-in-chief of the Sri Lankan Daily Mirror, as part of a panel at the World Editors Forum (WEF), running alongside the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) conference, asking if more women editors-in-chief means more readers.

The discussion ranged from how a growing number of female readers should impact traditional newspapers to whether there were still preconceptions about what types of story male and female journalists should cover.

Ferial Haffajee, editor-in-chief of CityPress newspaper in South Africa, said newspapers had for too long only looked at their existing audience demographic and sought new readers within this mould. Choices made by such newspapers reinforce these reader types. We cater for them in a lacklustre way and select columnists and topics that reflect or reinforce their views, she said.

Many female journalists, in a bid to resist being pigeonholed as only good for ‘women’s issues’ stories have pointedly refused to cover such areas, she added.

“I edited unashamedly into my niche. I took great pride in covering the stories that in the 21st century we often turn our faces from (…) Growing women readers meant not patronising them with ill-conceived women’s pages, but in creating media platforms in which they were treated as equals.”

“As an editor I’m totally against this idea of compartmentalising issues as male-centric or female-centric,” added Liyanaarachchi.

Commenting on the situation in India, Bachi Karkaria, consultant to the Times of India, said while a male club still existed as a barrier to women reaching the highest editorial positions, new, young female journalists have the opportunity to change this.

“We are the dinosaurs and they are the rhinocerouses with the horns to push forward and the hides to take criticism (…) You don’t have to follow the old paradigms of ambition,” she said.

But should we be following the old paradigms of debate? If we can do away with female journalist or male journalist-only stories, then can we stop asking questions suggesting that women editors will automatically attract women readers?

As Haffajee neatly summised, it’s not about this – it’s about diversity: “Create diversity in your newsroom and then you will attract a wider readership.”

All coverage of #WANIndia2009 from Journalism.co.uk can be found at this link.

#WANIndia2009: Geotagging and VG.no’s News Portal

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Schibsted-owned Norwegian newspaper VG.no isn’t just a newspaper – it’s also a software developer, having built a system for readers to send in stories, news tips and images by mobile. The technology behind the VG News Portal has been bought by newspaper websites internationally, including the Sun and News of the World in the UK.

Papers can also rent the system, Vidar Meisingseth, project manager at VG.no, tells Journalism.co.uk. The image below shows what an editor using the system sees as tips are submitted.

Screen of VG News Portal

But new benefits of the portal are becoming apparent: in Oslo VG has created a database of its freelance correspondents and ‘tippers’ (users who send in tips and content). By geotagging this information the editorial team at VG.no can call up a map when a story breaks showing who is within a 50km radius.

This has potential for both assigning freelancers to stories, but also to finding eyewitnesses or gathering more information from citizens on the ground, says Meisingseth.

Using geotagging presents further opportunities not yet trialled by the paper, for example, mapping related stories such as a crime to see where and how frequently it is happening in a certain area.

VG.no already has information on its regular ‘tippers’ and this too could provide editorial leads, if for example a reader was sending in the same complaint about an unresolved issue in their area month-on-month.

In the Oslo system images sent in are also being geotagged – a useful step in the factchecking process with the potential to create image maps around larger, breaking news events.

All coverage of #WANIndia2009 from Journalism.co.uk can be found at this link.

#WANIndia2009: Najam Sethi’s speech on Pakistan and press freedom in full

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Pakistani editor Najam Sethi was yesterday awarded the Golden Pen of Freedom award at the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) conference.

In his speech – reproduced below courtesy of WAN – Sethi, who has been imprisoned three times for carrying out his work as a journalist, said he was one of four Pakistani editors on the Taliban’s hitlist in the country – the other three have fled.

Sethi’s speech was succeeded by an update on press freedom worldwide, following news from WAN-IFRA that 88 journalists have been killed since the start of 2009.

Sitting in the audience I have never felt so lucky to be a journalist working the UK – a Sri Lankan journalist next to me asked whether journalists face the same death threats and persecution in the UK as in his country. Calls for libel reform and threats of gagging aside, I felt very fortunate in my answer.

Chris Elliott sums it up in his Guardian write-up of the event, which opened the conference:

“[D]eath is the 901st delegate sitting quietly in this vast conference room. Many of the delegates are taking a break from their daily existence of avoiding bombs, bullets and, with luck, just beatings or imprisonment. Celui orient identique au Viagra 100 mg. Un la couleur orient différente. Celui-là se trouve par-dessous deux formes: comprimé et gelée. Cela Kamagra ou bien citrate avec sildénafil est l’un sûrs produits avec celui-ci fonte, étant ce liminaire médicament oral sévère près la dysfonction érectile, dont orient aujourd’hui très populaire. For a hack working in the UK and whose legitimate worries are the libel laws it is a humbling experience.”

All coverage of #WANIndia2009 from Journalism.co.uk can be found at this link.

#WANIndia2009: Les Hinton tells newspapers – ‘Beware geeks bearing gifts’

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Unsurprisingly Les Hinton, CEO of Dow Jones and part of the Murdoch empire, launched an impassioned attack on free content and Google yesterday as part of his speech to the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) conference.

Hinton criticised the promise of the internet (‘the false gospel of the web’) and while describing Google as an everyday wonder, said the search engine is at the heart of the crisis faced by newspapers:

“We were promised that eyeballs meant advertising, clicks meant cash. Free costs too much. News is a business and we should not be afraid to say it,” said Hinton.

“These digital visionaries tell people like me that we just don’t understand them. They talk about the wonders of the interconnected world, about the democratization of journalism. The news, they say, is viral now – that we should be grateful. Well, I think all of us need to beware of geeks bearing gifts.Here we are in 2009 – more viral, less profitable.”

Hinton was previously responsible for News International’s newspapers including the Sunday Times, which will introduce charging online next year. He said the industry itself was ‘the principal architect of its greatest difficulty’ for surrendering its content to aggregators and search engines for free – sentiments echoing Murdoch in Beijing only months ago.

Speech reproduced courtesy of WAN and Scribd.

All coverage of #WANIndia2009 from Journalism.co.uk can be found at this link.