Category Archives: Journalism

Independent: UTV could sell television business to focus on radio

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UTV Media, which owns the Channel 3 television licence in Northern Ireland as well as national radio station TalkSport, could be interested in selling its television arm to focus on radio and online.

The Independent quotes UTV director Scott Taunton as saying: “If that was something they [a buyer, presumably ITV] were interested in, we’d have a conversation. Less than a quarter of profits come from TV now. We’re essentially a radio business.”

UTV’s end-of-year results, published yesterday, revealed the group makes 70 per cent of its profits from radio.

Digital news editor @fieldproducer leaving Sky News

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Sky News’s digital news editor Neal Mann, known to 43,000 people on Twitter as @fieldproducer, has announced he has decided to leave the broadcaster.

Mann announced on Twitter on Friday night:

Another Sky colleague, former social media correspondent Ruth Barnett, is also leaving to become head of communications for Android app producer SwiftKey. She wrote on Friday:

Sky News introduced new guidelines for journalists about the use of Twitter last month, including the line: “Do not retweet information posted by other journalists or people on Twitter. Such information could be wrong and has not been through the Sky News editorial process.”

Reuters’ Anthony de Rosa commented at the time:

These new rules will hamstring Neal and make it difficult, if not impossible, for him to continue to do what he did to garner so much appreciation from people like me. I suspect Sky will come to their senses and realize the error of their ways. If not, they’re going to lose one of their best ambassadors in Neal, and I would suspect many people working at Sky may wonder if they’re working for an organization that is writing policies that will drive them into obsolescence.

The top 10 most-read stories on Journalism.co.uk, 10-16 March

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1. Al Jazeera to broadcast Syria documentary filmed entirely on iPhone

2. BBC: ‘sophisticated cyber-attack’ on London newsroom

3. Ebooks: a new publishing solution to an old business problem?

4. Rebekah Brooks among latest Operation Weeting arrests, reports say

5. Citizen journalism, cyber censorship and the Arab spring

6. Guardian reporter: Police communication being ‘closed down’

7. Shareholders concerned about Sly Bailey pay

8. ‘Cities expect more from newspapers that are ‘local’ in name only’

9. Former NoW reporter: ‘I was instructed to bribe police officers’

10. Syrian citizen journalists win Netizen prize

Journalisted Weekly: Mitt Romney, Lib Dems and Prince Harry

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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.

Mitt Romney, Lib Dems and Prince Harry

for the week ending Sunday 11 March

  • Mitt Romney inches towards the Republican presidential nomination
  • LibDem debates about tax, Prince Harry in the Caribbean, and the issue of same sex marriage covered lots
  • An al-Quaeda linked terror attack in Yemen, Spain’s deficit difficulties, and Sarkozy’s lurch to the right, covered little

Covered Lots

  • Mitt Romney inched towards the Republican presidential nomination with 6 victories in 10 states on Super Tuesday, 165 articles
  • The Liberal Democrats got embroiled in internal debates about tax – particularly around their proposal for a Mansion Tax – at the Lib Dems spring conference, 147 articles
  • The issue of gay marriage became controversial – again – after the intervention of Cardinal O’Brien, 125 articles
  • Prince Harry charmed the citizens of Belize, Brazil, the Bahamas and Jamaica on the Diamond Jubilee Tour, 120 articles

Covered Little

  • Yemen militants, who have links with al-Qaeda, attack Government troops, 185 dead, 12 articles
  • Spain’s new Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, gets in a fight with Brussels as he seeks to stop Spain becoming the next Greece, 12 articles
  • Nicholas Sarkozy threatened to pull out of the Schengen zone in an attempt to woo right wing voters prior to the French election, 6 articles

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

Celebrity vs Serious

  • Rihanna takes a picture of her new hair while semi-naked, and other mischief, 67 articles vs. Ken Clarke reacts to concerns that plans to extend secret courts could threaten open justice, 8 articles
  • The All-American Katy Perry has a new boyfriend 36 articles vs. Steve Hilton – the Prime Minister’s resident ‘guru’ takes a sabbatical from government service to go to America, 30 articles
  • Tulisa, the X-Factor judge, has a tan and a new boyfriend, 26 articles vs. in the Indian elections the ruling party suffered setbacks, damaging the prospects of Rahul Gandhi, 18 articles

Eurozone leaders (top ten by number of articles)

No other Eurozone leaders were mentioned in UK press coverage.

Who wrote a lot about… Syria

Long form journalism

Journalists who have updated their profile

Rob Davies is a city correspondent at the Daily Mail. After he achieved a 2.1 in his MA in English and German Literature, Rob went to the Cardiff Journalism School where he completed the Newspaper Journalism course. He was awarded the MHP Communications ’30 to watch’ award earlier this year. Follow him on twitter @ByRobDavies

Lennox Morrison is a freelance journalist who writes for the Guardian, Independent on Sunday, Wall Street Journal Europe, Metropolitan and the Reader’s Digest. She was an assistant editor for the Scottish Daily Mail as well as being a celebrity interviewer for the Scottish on Sunday. Lennox has also had three books published, Second Chance Tuesday (2004), Scottish Girls About Town (2003) and Re-inventing Tara (2002). Follow her on twitter @LENNOXinFRANCE

All information taken from journalisted profiles as updated (2012-03-13)

If you have a profile on journalisted you can now claim it and start adding articles, links and contact details

Do email team@journalisted.com if you spot any mistakes or have suggestions for other journalisted weekly analyses. You can also follow us on Twitter @journalisted

All Journalisted weekly newsletter statistics are calculated based on articles published on national news websites, BBC News online and Sky News online

The Media Standards Trust, which runs journalisted, won the ‘One to Watch’ category at the Prospect Think Tank Awards

Hacked Off is reporting live from the Leveson inquiry again this week via twitter @hackinginquiry and hackinginquiry.org

Visit the Media Standards Trust’s Churnalism.com – a public service for distinguishing journalism from churnalism

For the latest instalment of Tobias Grubbe, journalisted’s 18th century jobbing journalist, go to journalisted.com/tobias-grubbe

Leveson inquiry has cost £2m so far

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The Leveson inquiry into press standards has cost £2 million to run so far, figures made public on the inquiry website reveal.

By 31 January, the inquiry, which was set up last July, had spent £1,992,600 and had sat for 35 days. About a third of the spending (£682,100) goes on the secretariat, and another quarter (£536,100) on counsel to the inquiry.

£82,000 has been spent on deputy judges to cover the Court of Appeal while Lord Justice Leveson chairs the inquiry. IT and broadcasting costs add up to £214,700 so far.

The full details can be found on the Leveson inquiry website.

Archant London restructures its senior editorial team

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Archant London has restructured its senior editorial team following the merger of its newspaper and magazine divisions.

Geoff Martin has been appointed editor-in-chief for Archant London’s newspapers published out of its Swiss Cottage office in Camden.

Malcolm Starbrook is the now editor-in-chief of newspapers published from its Ilford office, in east London.

Archant London’s editorial director Bob Crawley said the changes would provide one point of senior management contact at each office.

Chris Carter, editor of the Ilford Recorder, will continue to lead CMS editorial development as well as working on new projects such as the roll-out of its citizen journalism website iWitness24 for the whole of Archant London’s newspaper division.Laura Adams will continue to edit Archant’s bridal publications as well as editing the Barking and Dagenham Post, while Colin Grainger continues as editor of the Newham Recorder.

Peter Le Riche has been appointed to the newly-created role of commercial features editor.

Peter Le Riche, who previously worked as an editor with Archant South West before joining Richmond Council as head of communications, will rejoin Archant as their commercial features editor from 12 March.

New German law may impose fees on aggregated content use

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Germany’s governing centre-right coalition has proposed a new copyright law which would see content aggregators such as Google News paying royalties every time they index search results from news websites.

The proposal, which is available (in German) on the German Press Agency’s website states:

Commercial traders out there, such as search engines and news aggregators, should pay a fee to the publishers in the future for the distribution of press products (such as newspaper articles) on the internet.

Citing the German government’s original agreement, which states that online publishers “are not meant to be worse off” than other industries, the legislators suggest that the fee period should last for one year.

The fee proposals do not cover individuals using the material for private purposes and private users “will not be affected” by the proposal to charge for access.

Google has previously been sued for copyright infringement by French publishing houses Albin Michel, Flammarion and Gallimard, after the search giant scanned nearly 10,000 books for its Google Books site without permission.

The publishers later dropped their case against Google, saying they wanted to seek an “amicable solution to the litigation”.

In a similar copyright dispute in the UK, the Court of Appeal rejected arguments from the Public Relationships Consultants Association and news clippings service Meltwater that exemptions to copyright law could be applied to the content of newspaper websites, according to law firm Pinsent Masons.

In the UK, users of a clipping service must now have a licence from publishers to click on links taking them to a news website to avoid infringing the publishers’ copyrights, says Pinsent Masons.

A copyright tribunal said:

We reject the argument that requiring end user licensing under the WEUL (the Web End User Licence issued by the NLA), and at the same rates as the WEUL, is unreasonable.”

If Meltwater want to offer a headline only service to their end users they are free to do so but the service must be licensed in the same way as the headline plus text extract service.”

#ftmedia12: FT content revenues could overtake advertising in 2012

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Image copyright Chris Young/PA

This year “could well be” the first year in its history that content revenues, including print and digital, overtake advertising revenues at the Financial Times, its chief executive, John Ridding, told the news organisation’s Digital Media Conference today.

The latest figures show content revenues for the FT accounted for 41 per cent in 2011, while advertising revenues accounted for the majority.

Speaking on a panel debating “the future of digital journalism and news”, Ridding said the FT’s relationship with its readers has helped to “sustain” quality journalism.

Having that understanding about what readers want is very helpful in continuing to improve the quality of journalism we provide.

We are confident in the business model and confident it will not just sustain quality journalism but enable us to further build quality journalism.

The site currently offers free registration which gives users access to eight articles a month, after which they would need to pay a subscription to access further content.

During the panel Ridding also spoke about mobile, which he said has been “a complete game-changer” for the FT.

One of my issues to start with was will the kind of content we do work on mobile? The answer is yes.

He added that one question to consider is whether there are ways publishers can reach out to “large continental economies” via mobile and tablet devices, such as by using “incentives … to stimulate that demand”.

Last month the FT’s parent company Pearson reported in its end-of-year results that FT Group revenues increased by six per cent to £427m in 2011.

Digital subscriptions to the FT were said to be up 29 per cent year-on-year to 267,000 and registered users on FT.com had risen by 33 per cent.

Last week paidContent reported that “in the US, to where its online chief recently relocated, digital subscriptions have now overtaken print subscriptions”.

The interview with Riddings also revealed that content revenues are expected to overtake ad revenue in 2012.

#ftmedia12: Jimmy Wales’s advice for journalists on using Wikipedia

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Picture by Lane Hartwell [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

I caught up with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales at the Financial Times’ digital media conference to find out more about his views on how journalists should – or shouldn’t – be using Wikipedia.

He said while “generally speaking we always recommend journalists shouldn’t necessarily cite Wikipedia”, he advised reporters to use it as a “starting point” and then search out community discussions and what they “want to know”.

He added that he is pleased with the “stamp of approval” when news outlets link to Wikipedia.

Listen to the audio below in which he also explains the licences used by Wikipedia, such as for the use of images.

Evening Standard: Suicide fears at News International

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The ongoing investigations and recent arrests at News International have prompted two senior journalists there to consider suicide, the Evening Standard reported last night.

The paper says the reporters “were checked into hospital at the expense of News International on the orders of Rupert Murdoch”.

It says:

Sources said other journalists inside the Wapping HQ look “terribly stressed and many are on the edge”. It is understood the company’s offer of psychiatric help is available to any journalist who feels under pressure.

The tragic developments happened after News Corp’s Management and Standards Commitee, a branch of the empire that reports directly to independent board directors in New York, passed evidence to Scotland Yard.

The MSC is co-operating with the Metropolitan police investigations into allegations of phone hacking, computer hacking and payments to police and other public officials. Eleven people from the Sun have been arrested in recent weeks as part of Operation Elveden and released on police bail without charge.