Category Archives: Magazines

Economist launches World in 2012 iPad app

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The Economist has today announced the release of an iPad version of “The World in 2012 from the Economist: Editor’s Highlights”, based on the annual magazine which features predictions, graphs and charts for the coming year.

In a release, the Economist said the app, which is sponsored by BMW, features “select articles from this year’s edition, videos from around the world and specially curated snapshots of people, events, landmarks and data are all included in the first-ever World in…highlights application.”

The featured articles focus on a variety of topics ranging from the areas of technology still up for grabs, the power of sharing and the change in China’s leadership.  The videos include an extract of an interview with Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg, as well as interviews with people from New York, Beijing and London on the coming year.  The application also contains a feature on 12 people to watch in 2012, a month-by-month selection of events in 2012, a snapshot of 12 titbits to look out for in the year ahead and a collection of charts, graphs and data.

Daniel Franklin, editor of The World in 2012 said in the release:

This digital introduction makes it clear to new readers why the publication has become so popular over the past quarter century.

The Week magazine gets a ‘companion site’ to the print edition

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The Week now has a “companion site” to its weekly magazine, which carries a round-up of news, comment and analysis, with the re-branding of the First Post, a news site already owned by the the magazine’s publisher, Dennis Publishing Ltd.

The re-branded site has a “golden rule” that copy published in the print edition will not appear on the Week’s website, Nigel Horne, editor of the First Post and now of the Week online told Journalism.co.uk

We provide a daily news service that is not unlike the stuff we used to do at the First Post but nuanced and massaged into the Week daily.

The re-branded site, which launched yesterday (26 October), plans to publish around 25 stories a day and aims to provide readers of the weekly title a chance to “dip in during the week” to read their style of content and “original reporting”.

Apple’s Newsstand results in 2m downloads for Future Publishing

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Apple’s new Newsstand app resulted in two million digital downloads of Future Publishing titles in the first four days, resulting in consumer spending well in excess of normal monthly revenues, the magazine publisher has said in a release.

Newsstand, which provides iPhone and iPad users who have updated their devices to iOS 5, released last week (12 October), with a dedicated portal to download magazines from the App Store, “creates an amazing opportunity for publishers”, Future UK’s CEO Mark Wood said.

Future Publishing, which has titles including .net, Procycling and Digital Camera, released 55 digital magazines to Newsstand on the day of launch. It has since released more and now has 65 UK and US digital magazines available, some free and some paid-for.

Wood added:

We plan to include more sampler issues in every magazine container in coming weeks, as well as uploading high price-point bookazines and premium one-shot titles.

 

Paperboy app: Take a photo of newspaper article to find the digital edition

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An app which uses image recognition technology to allow a reader to take a photo of a newspaper or magazine story on an iPhone or Android phone and use it to search for the digital article will be launched for UK titles next month.

Kooaba, the company behind the Paperboy app, has partnered with NewspaperDirect to enable print to digital linking for 2,000 titles worldwide. Around 50 UK titles are available digitally via NewspaperDirect and are therefore likely to be the publications available via the app. The full list includes the Daily Telegraph, Financial Times and Daily Mail, plus regional newspapers such as the Kentish Gazette, Birmingham Mail and Evening Standard.

In addition to taking a photo on a phone and using image recognition on the text to find the digital article, newspapers can also print a link which app users can snap to lead them to additional multimedia content, such as video.

The roll-out of the ability to find digital from print using the Paperboy app has started with this list of newspapers based in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and is planning add UK titles in November.

The Kooaba blog explains how the technology works.

Paperboy connects printed media to the digital world with one click: All the application’s powerful image recognition technology needs is a photo taken by a smartphone camera of an article or page in a newspaper or magazine. Paperboy then matches the photo to the images in Kooaba’s sizeable library of printed media or identifies that page or article from NewspaperDirect’s inventory of over 2,000 same-day, digital newspapers replicas. Users can then share, email or archive the electronic version on the go, anywhere, anytime or explore related information like videos, images or links to selected topics. Paperboy automatically finds URLs on pages of print publications. In some publications, exclusive Paperboy content is for pages with the Shutter icon.

This video gives examples of how readers could find it useful, such as taking a photo of a recipe to locate the digital version, which could then be saved to Evernote or shared via Twitter.

Future PLC ‘considering options’ for US division

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Magazine publisher Future has said it is “considering a wider range of strategic options” for its US division in light of “challenging” conditions for the business.

In pre-close trading update the publisher said its position in the US “is significantly more challenging” than the UK. In July Future announced plans to “accelerate the transition of Future US into a primarily digital business”.

But this week, in a report preceding full-year earnings in November, the group said trading conditions in the US “reflecting ongoing weakness and decreasing visibility at newsstand” means the board is now considering a wider range of strategic options. PaidContent reports that the language used suggests the company “now may look to sell its business there”.

The publisher also confirmed that 10 per cent of its workforce has been cut in the UK and worldwide, which equals around 100 jobs, as part of its restructure to focus on digital and print efficiencies.

The company also claims in the latest report that the trends identified in its Interim Management Statement, published in July, have continued.

Revenues for the twelve months ending 30 September 2011 are expected to be down 6 per cent on last year, in constant currency.  The Board remains comfortable with market expectations of results for 2011, subject only to any period-end adjustment required in relation to US newsstand returns, beyond those already announced and incorporated into fourth quarter estimates.

Journalist’s quest to find the man behind the world’s most expensive everything

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The deputy editor of Motor Boat and Yachting has written an entertaining blog post on his quest to get to the story behind a press release announcing the sale of a £3 billion yacht to an unnamed Malaysian business man.

Stewart Campbell writes about his search for Stuart Hughes, who sent the release, which was picked up and run as a story by the Sun, Daily Mail, Metro, the Independent before being uncovered by Campbell as examples of churnalism.

It is worth reading the full post to get the full tale of the yacht, the Photoshopped image and what led Campbell to put out his first story: The £3 billion golden superyacht: real or fake? And a second, published a day later: £3 billion superyacht story confirmed as fake.

I’m proud to say that as the second story above went live, Motor Boat and Yachting was the only news source on the planet disputing Mr Hughes’ claims. Everyone had bought it – from UK nationals, to blogs, to foreign media taking the story as fact from the British papers (MSNBC, Toronto Sun, Ireland’s The Journal, Australia’s Daily Telegraph & news.com.au). It was big news in Malaysia, I understand – as it would be here if a Brit had dropped a few billion on a superyacht (Malaysia Star, Malaysian Insider). Abramovich’s massive Eclipse only cost a few hundred million, after all. Big, big news. But a complete fabrication. A couple of news outlets around the world picked up our story, reporting the reporting – the same practice that led to so much of the media printing falsehoods in the first place (Asia One, MSN Malaysia, Business Insider, Malaysian Insider). It was all too late, though – the genie was out of the bottle and to many people around the world, the established truth was that there was a Malaysian businessman out there who’d just picked up the keys to his new £3 billion, golden toy.

The story gets increasingly entertaining as Campbell receives another release from Hughes on the world’s most expensive house.

At a secret location in Switzerland, this house apparently contains 200,000kg – yes, 200 metric tons – of gold and platinum. This guy can apparently source more gold than most central banks – 0.18% of all the gold ever mined, to be exact, and that’s just for his yacht and house projects. The story didn’t hit the UK nationals, but did make its fair share of blogs and overseas papers (the Pakistan Times; Wall Street Journal, which is a reblog of a reblog).

So Campbell’s quest continues and though a boat and yachting specialist, he finds himself researching the story behind the house.

The full post on Campbell’s blog Cricket, and things that make me angry is at this link.

There’s some advice on how not to fall for hoax press releases here.

Economist launches app into Android Market

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The Economist officially launches its app for Android phones and tablets today (2 August).

The app was released to the Android Market last week and, according to the market, has been downloaded between 10,000 and 50,000 times in one week and rated more than 230 times averaging 3.6 stars. A press spokesperson for the Economist was unable to confirm or release download figures.

The new app follows in the footsteps of the magazine’s iPhone and iPad apps, which have seen 2.4 million downloads since they were launched in November.

“We now have almost 700,000 unique devices accessing the apps each month,” Oscar Grut, managing director, digital editions said in a release.

Speaking in June, Tom Standage, digital editor, said around half of those accessing content were paying subscribers.

As with all digital content, Android users will be able to read some articles for free but will need to pay for a subscription to receive all content. A weekly subscription allows users to receive the magazine by post, plus read content via the app and paywalled website, which is available from 9pm on a Thursday evening (5pm New York time), 12 hours before it is delivered through a subscriber’s letter box.

A single issue can be bought via the app for £3.99. The magazine cover price is £4.

Once downloaded, issues are stored on the user’s device and can be read when not connected to the internet. Every issue also includes a full audio edition.

The Android app, which operates on all Android phones and small and medium tablets running OS 2.x, was built by TigerSpike, which built iPad apps for the Economist, the Telegraph and Time Out.

Voluntary redundancies as Future Publishing focuses on digital

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Magazine publisher Future PLC is to cut around 100 jobs based in the UK and worldwide – in a move favouring digital over print.

The job losses are expected due to “restructuring” in the company, following a 5 per cent circulation revenue fall in the past nine months.

In a statement, it said the websites were performing well and the main problems were in America.

In an email to staff, Future Publishing UK CEO, Mark Wood, said restructure would be likely to result in about 10 per cent of the firm’s workforce being made redundant. This however, would mostly be through voluntary redundancies.

The company – which publishes around 80 magazines and has 1,000 staff in Bath – said advertising revenue from its websites has offset a decline in print-related income.

The business is executing its operational review of geography and function, to accelerate the move of the US business to one that is a primarily digital business model, simultaneously reducing volatility associated with print data flows, and to reorganise the UK business, re-calibrating it to ensure faster adaptation to digital and more efficient execution of print.

The benefit of these steps will be to improve efficiency, reduce headcount, reduce property requirements, and help accelerate the most promising areas of digital product development.

New Scientist leads print categories for ABSW science journalism award

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The New Scientist leads the shortlist for this year’s Association of Science Writers’ Awards.

The awards, organised by the Association of British Science Writers, are divided into four categories: Best news item; best feature, best scripted/edited television programme or online video; best investigative journalism, and best newcomer.

The ABSW has also added a new radio or podcast prize this year, sponsored by the Royal Society.

New Scientist holds two out of the three nominations in both the news and feature categories. Freelancer Shaoni Bhattacharya is nominated for ‘Tracking the Rhino Killers’ and New Scientist staff reporter Jessica Hamzelou is nominated for ‘Too Young to Know Better’. They will compete against the Independent’s science editor Steve Connor, who is nominated for ‘Fabricated Quote Used to Discredit Climate Scientist’.

Bhattacharya is also nominated in the feature category for ‘Murder in the Bat Cave’, published in New Scientist. She will go up against the magazine’s Brussels correspondent Debora McKenzie, nominated for ‘Living in Denial: Why sensible people reject the truth’, and David Adam for ‘The Hottest Year’, published in Nature magazine.

Another New Scientist reporter, Linda Geddes is nominated in the investigative category for ‘Between Prison and Freedom’, and the magazine’s careers editor Jessica Griggs is nominated for best newcomer.

Geddes will compete for the investigative prize against a team entry from freelancer Philip Carter and British Medical Journal assistant editor Deborah Cohen, and freelancer Fred Pearce for a climate change article in the Guardian.

See the full shortlist at this link.

Related content:

Bastiat prize fund increases to £42,000

British journalists take joint win in European cancer reporting awards

Journalism awards currently open for entries

Rowan Williams to guest edit New Statesman

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams is guest editor of this week’s New Statesman.

The edition, which focuses on David Cameron’s “big society” policy, features contributions from Philip Pullman, A S Byatt, Gordon Brown, and Richard Curtis, as well as analysis and commentary from the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, Maurice Glasman and Iain Duncan Smith.

Willliams’ guest editorship has also resulted in a focus on faith: Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials trilogy, explains why he is a “Church of England atheist” and author Terry Eagleton writes about secularism. There are contributions from two vicars as well as actor Tom Hollander, who plays a vicar in television series Rev.

Film director Richard Curtis writes about the scourge of malaria; and poker player and columnist Victoria Coren addresses “the vexed question of faith versus poker”. Novelist Byatt contributes a short story written especially for the edition.

New Statesman editor Jason Cowley said: “I have long admired Rowan Williams as a thinker and public intellectual. His previous contributions to the magazine under my editorship have been both thoughtful and thought-provoking. We agreed that he would guest-edit the magazine over lunch at Lambeth Palace in January; we have been working on the issue ever since.

“Although the New Statesman is a secular magazine, we recognise Dr Williams’s contribution to public and political debate, and this is an important intervention from him. I’m delighted with the issue.”

Williams said: “This is not a platform for the establishment to explain itself – any more than the New Statesman ever is. The hope is that it may be possible to spark some livelier debate about where we are going, perhaps even to discover what the left’s big idea currently is.”

Williams is the magazine’s fifth guest editor, following Alastair Campbell, Ken Livingstone, Melvyn Bragg and Jemima Khan.

Image by Steve Punter on Flickr. Some rights reserved.