The Picture Editors Guild presented its awards last night, with Associated Press photographer Matt Dunham named as photographer of the year. Matt captured the widely distributed image of Prince Charles and Camilla inside their car as it was attacked last year.
We have created a slideshow of some of the winning entries for this year’s contest:
The Huffington Post is launching in the UK at the perfect time, says Alastair Campbell.
Speaking at Millbank Tower on a panel for the official launch event, Campbell said the British public are facing up to what newspapers have become – positioning Arianna Huffington’s news website in the perfect place to cause disruption.
Newspapers in this country are going further and further down the barrel until they reach the bottom, like the Sun. We’ll still have newspapers in future, there’ll just be fewer of them.
The panel (moderated by Richard Bacon) comprised of HuffPost founder Arianna Huffington, Kelly Osbourne, Jon Gaunt, Celia Walden and Shami Chakrabarti. Key themes that emerged throughout the debate were phone hacking, superinjunctions, the public perception of journalism and the issue of trust.
Huffington responded to claims from Toby Young that the launch was ill-timed by saying the website has “a phenomenal reach”, and its social nature would set it apart from other more well established UK sites.
Huffington Post is a combination of constant updates. It’s not about sitting on the couch and passively consuming, it’s about constantly passing on information, sharing and liking.
We employ 1,300 journalists, editors and reporters, but ulimately Huffington Post is a platform for our 9,000 bloggers. We promote linking, original reporting and making information available, people blog for us because they can use our huge audience and because they have something to say.
Jon Gaunt agreed with this, saying Huffington endeared herself to her bloggers by making her website very open. But he also criticised many newspapers’ forays into digital journalism.
Lots of newspaper websites are useless, because they’re made and look like newspapers. They’re created by people who’ve worked in newspapers their whole lives, and look terrible.
One thing the panel agreed on was the issue of trust and the role it would play in the future development of journalism. Summing up, Campbell said:
The single most important piece of communication regarding the death of Osama Bin Laden was still Barack Obama’s words, despite the thousands of articles written about the event.
Politicians still have ability to set the agenda, but people don’t trust politicians, journalists or economists – we still trust each other.
That’s why social news works – we talk to people we trust.
Moving to a digital first policy is “symptomatic” of what is going on in the UK market place, according to Guardian Media Group chief executive Andrew Miller.
Speaking today at the Westminster Media Forum Miller said:
The Guardian is a leading creative business in the UK, and we have a great international voice.
But internationally it isn’t a level playing field. Overseas communications competitors may have more freedom if law in the UK is poorly implemented.
He also echoed thoughts shared earlier in the day by Sarah Hunter, Google’s UK head of public policy, saying companies needed to develop a “coding mentality” by employing strong and innovative developers to work alongside creative and editorial employees.
The Communications Bill needs to give enterprises like the Guardian freedom. Freedom to innovate and freedom to carry on what we do best.
It must not compromise enterprises that act in the public interest. Regulators also must have more contact with the public – it’s they who should help decide the future of rights rather than exclusively those in the media industry.
The main theme emerging from today’s discussion at the Westminster Media Forum is the government should embrace the idea of a globally connected internet when considering the Communications Bill.
Sarah Hunter, Google’s head of UK Public Policy, said the green paper should encompass wider policy in the UK, rather than just the Bill itself.
The government cannot make policy for the media industries without considering the wider impact on other industries that need the internet to survive.
It would be very dangerous if they went down that road.
Hunter said the most important thing to bear in mind for the future was to “bring back computer science” – building on the UK’s historical strength of bringing together creative and scientific talent and employing engineers to advise on future policy. Seksualus apatinis trikotažas moterims – chalatai, liemenelės, kelnaitės, naktiniai Cherry24
John Tate, director of policy and strategy at the BBC, spoke of a “competition for quality”, and how broadcasters should meet audience expectations in a converged world.
Tate also referred to Rupert Murdoch’s bid to takeover all of BSkyB, quipping: “BSkyB’s recent announcement is very welcome.”
“If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery – we’re very flattered.”
BSkyB’s director of policy David Wheeldon was also on the panel, he responded to Tate by saying “it’s nice to hear the BBC being complimentary about us for once”, to polite laughter from attendees.
Wheeldon oultined his four major concerns for the Bill as being a flexible copyright regime, online piracy, finding the correct balance between infrastructure and content incentives, and finally recognising emerging platforms.
In particular he earmarked piracy as a significant threat for the broadcast industry to monetise content.
This afternoon the forum will hear from Ivan Lewis MP, who earlier this year wrote to Jeremy Hunt regarding News Corporation’s acquisition of BSkyB.
The Huffington Post has announced full details of tomorrow’s UK launch event, which will consist of a panel discussion moderated by Richard Bacon.
Speakers on the night include Alastair Campbell, Kelly Osbourne, Celia Walden, Kelvin MacKenzie, Shami Chakrabarti and Arianna Huffington.
The panel will debate the media’s impact on the Self-Expression Revolution.
Today Huffington Post UK told journalism.co.uk it has more than 300 bloggers signed up for the site, with more expected to sign up after launch.
UK editor-in-chief Carla Buzasi said today: “It’s a really interesting mix of people. Alastair Campbell is blogging for us on day one, and hopefully the others on the panel will be following suit shortly afterwards.”
The event is taking place at the Curzon Millbank, with the panel debate beginning at 7pm. An open invitation has been sent to the site’s bloggers-to-be to attend the launch.
Currently the url huffingtonpost.co.uk is password protected, but will be unveiled and made public this week.
A new era of online publishing where readers are served ‘hyperpersonal’ news directly linked to their interests is taking shape, according to a consultant for world publishing body WAN-IFRA.
Stephan Minard told the organisation’s summer university in Paris, that personalisation would be the key element that will make modern news websites successful in the coming years.
Publishers needed to learn more about their readers, build up data on them and then serve an experience that is unique to them. Algorithms, not editors, were the new gatekeepers, he said.
Minard said news organisations could learn a lot from the world of marketing and e-commerce: “Personalisation is not science-fiction. It’s everywhere on the web – Google, Facebook, Amazon.”
Combining subscriber data, behavioural research and other data on a reader’s interests and habits, sites should be able to build a reliable picture of a user and serve content that is personalised to them.
Minard gave the example of the Washington Post, which launched personalised social news site Trove in April, which relies on a user’s Facebook interests to define their profile.
However, he issued a warning about offering content that was too personalised. There was a risk of isolating users in a “web of one” by only serving them material about a very tightly defined subject and cutting them off from the wider world.
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#mobilemedia11: Over 55s with iPads are sweet spot for the Telegraph
The number of subscribers who pay to use the Telegraph’s iPad app are “hugely encouraging”, said Tim Rowell, director of mobile development at the Telegraph Media Group.
The app has received a boost as there are more over 55s with iPads than under 35s, Rowell explained, “which is a sweet spot for us as they are our readers”.
Research shows the average age of the Telegraph iPad reader is 47, about half way between average age of print and web reader.
Speaking at the Media Briefing’s Mobile Media Strategies event today, Rowell refused to go further and reveal how many people had signed up since the launch of the subscriber app on 5 May.
The Telegraph’s paid for app launched just over a month ago with readers paying £1.19 a day (which is 19 pence more than the print edition due to the limited rates set by Apple) or £9.99 a month. The Telegraph’s 340,000 print subscribers are able to access the content via the app without paying extra.
The fact readers are willing to pay is “incredibly reassuring”, Rowell explained, as feedback before the launch of the subscriber app suggested the reverse.
The research was carried out by “rushing out” a free iPad app and gathering audience data. Approximately 60,000 people agreed to have their browsing information analysed. The inclusion of web trends showed what people were reading, when and whether they were using 3G or a wifi network.
The free app research showed weekend reading was twice as popular as week-day reading on the app, with two daily peaks, at 7am and 9pm. As the app was updated just once a day readers were accessing content that was almost 12 hours old. “But that was not important”, Rowell said.
In edition to wider audience data, around 1,800 people submitted a feedback form to give the Telegraph an even more detailed picture of what readers wanted, which included the crossword.
The biggest surprise in the research findings was the worldwide spread of iPad Telegraph readers, Rowell said.
Another key lesson is that the app is “not a substitution for print”, Rowell said, and it requires spend. The annual running costs of an app are around six times the cost of building the iPad app.
The release of the Financial Times’ web-based HTML5 app has provided “a big wake up call” to publishers , said Andrew Grill, keynote speaker at the today’s Mobile Media Strategies day.
Earlier this month the FT released an HTML5-based iPad and iPhone app which circumvents the 30 per cent charges levied on app sales by Apple by allowing users to update content through the FT website and thus allowing the newspaper to take the full revenue.
The Economist is “watching closely” and Tom Standage, digital editor of the title, signalled it may follow suit.
“HTML5 will be the answer to all of our problems; even if it’s not yet,” predicted Ilicco Elia, a mobile product expert, who until yesterday worked for Reuters and is yet to announce where he will be working next.
Elia warned that “you can’t do everything in HTML5” and said it was a sensible option for the FT to launch in HTML5 compared with an unknown title. “It’s okay of you’re the FT because people know the brand in will go in search of it,” he explained.
Many publishers are now looking at the HTML5 hybrid: not a pure app, not a pure browser experience, said John Barnes, managing director digital strategy and development at Incisive Media, which works with B2B publishers. He explained the dilemma between developing apps when working with very different titles.
Barnes gave the example of two titles he works with: Legal Week, where 10.5 per cent of web visits are mobile, most of them accessing the site via a BlackBerry device. He urged the audience to compare this with Photography magazine which is mostly read on the iPad and iPhone.
During a session on how to make money with mobile media, Paul Lynette, head of mobile advertising at EMEA, Microsoft Advertising, showed the potential for in app ads using HTML5.
Thinking of developing an app, an mobile site or a HTML5 hybrid?
Considering the advantages of mobile editions (m.editions) versus apps versus the HTML5 hybrid, Barnes said the advantage of m.editions is they are browser-based and, therefore, provide full integration with a CMS, have the same domain name, integration with analytics and web trends.
And for news sites without an m.edition Elia gave a word of warning to the delegates of the event: “You should not be here if you don’t have an m.edition, you should be in the office coding.”
He warned there is “not a lot of margin in mobile” but it should be central to any online strategy.
Elia warned of the importance of listening to your audience. “You don’t have to be first when it comes to apps,” he said and suggesting it was better to spend more time developing a better app.
Barnes had a different suggestion to those thinking of creating an app: “Write the press release on the launch of an app before you build it. You’ll often realise it’s a crapp (crap app),” he said.
TheMediaBriefing’s latest conference Mobile Media Strategies kicked off this morning. Our technology correspondent Sarah Marshall is reporting from the event on Journalism.co.uk and via Twitter @journalism_live.
You can also fill up on the day’s events so far with the Storify below which curates content from the morning panels and discussions.
The Information Commissioner’s Office has received complaints about websites dropping cookies less that a fortnight after new rules were introduced. The ICO will now write to the websites concerned to issue a warning.
An EU directive became law in the UK on 26 May and states that websites can only drop cookies – small text files left by websites on a user’s computer – if a person has given prior consent.
Before the new rules came into force users had to be given the option to opt out of receiving cookies and similar files which are used to gather data, but now users must opt in unless a website deems that it is “strictly necessary” to drop a cookie.
The ICO has the power to fine websites, including news sites, up to £500,000 for non-compliance. Speaking at the ABC Interaction conference yesterday Katherine Vander from the ICO said financial penalties would only by levied on “persistent offenders”.
New rules were introduced last month but websites were given a year to demonstrate how they plan comply with the new rules.
Internet users have already complained to the ICO, an independent public body based in Cheshire whose role it is to enforce the data protection act and the freedom of information act, which receives 30,000 complaints a year about data protection.
The UK is said to be leading the way in being early to adopt the EU cookie directive but there has been much backlash by the online industry against the new rules as cookies gather valuable audience data.
The ICO has received negative comments about how it has handled publicity around the new rules. “We’ve been criticised for not being more prescriptive. But we’re not best-placed to tell you,” Vander said.
“We fully recognise the challenges of implementing these requirements.
“You can be very clever how you get consent,” she told the conference, which included news organisations, suggesting the industry should seek to find ways to ask users to opt in to receive cookies. “It doesn’t have to involve ticking a box but it has to involve someone taking a positive action in some way,” she said.
Zuzanna Gierlinska from Microsoft Media Network, which handles display advertising, proposed the industry encourages transparency in the collection of consumers’ data.
“We operate in a Wild West environment when it comes to data. It’s bought and sold and it’s mostly misunderstood by the user.
“Lack of transparency breeds mistrust and threatens the online industry.”
Zuzanna Gierlinska suggests self-regulation of the advertising industry though companies adopting the so-called Online Behavioural Advertising Framework, adding an icon to sit beside advertising to tell the consumer if data is being collected.
Referring to the fact that the government is working with browser manufacturers to develop in-browser solutions, Ashley Friedlein, CEO and founder of Econsultancy, who also spoke at the event, said: “Personally, I’ve always felt doing this at a browser level is the only sensible solution.”
He added: “I can’t see what is currently being asked is practical so I think everyone is going to ignore it until something bad happens.”