“In case it wasn’t obvious that newspapers are struggling, a new report by the Newspaper Association of America shows just how dire the situation has become,” Media Post reports.
“In the first quarter of this year, [newspaper] ad revenues plummeted to $6.62 billion, marking a 28 per cent drop from last year, according to the NAA. And it wasn’t only print ad revenue that fell. Web ad revenue also dropped 13 per cent, to $696 million.”
Sign of the times? The Newspaper Association of America (NAA) in the US is ceasing publication of its print edition to move online-only ‘to adapt our organisation to the realities of today’s newspaper business’.
Heather Brooke, journalist and Freedom of Information specialist, has picked up on the Hansard report from the committee session in April 2009 which heard evidence from Roy Greenslade and Nick Davies. MP Alan Keen used to opportunity to ask who exactly this Heather Brooke was.
From Hansard:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmcumeds/uc275-vi/uc27502.htm
Q484 Alan Keen: There is a woman who has frequently been on television and in the press who appears to me to be a campaigner for freedom of information, an American I think.
Mr Davies: Heather Brooke?
Q485 Alan Keen: Yes. Does she earn a living from this?
Mr Davies: She is a journalist. She is a specialist in freedom of information. I think she is actually British and she worked in America and used their Freedom of Information Act, came back to this country just as ours was about to come into force so wrote a book which is a guide.
Q486 Alan Keen: I have seen her being interviewed.
Mr Davies: You are wondering whether she has some vested interest.
Q487 Alan Keen: Yes, because I have seen her on television being interviewed.
Mr Greenslade: I know her quite well. She teaches the students at City. She is a single interest journalist in the old tradition of having one niche interest and following it to its logical conclusion. She lives, in monetary terms, on the margins.
Heather Brooke now responds:
“It was not without a chuckle at his chutzpah that I saw my detractor was the Member for Feltham & Heston, Alan Keen. With his wife, Ann, the couple are known as ‘Mr and Mrs Expenses'” … Full post at this link…
Another dose of Fry this morning, in an earlier post we reproduced yesterday’s comments to the BBC about journalists and expenses.
Courtesy of Malcolm Coles, here is the full transcript [below video] of Stephen Fry’s presentation at Digital Britain on April 17. Fry’s appearance caused a little stir that day, not least for the way he was introduced onto the stage by the BBC’s Nick Higham:
“Stephen is, one of the organisers told me beforehand, the representative at this conference of the ordinary person, frankly: if that’s what someone thinks the ordinary person is like, then someone needs to take them aside and fill them in…”
Some of Fry’s comments relate to technology more broadly, but some interesting points on media, and keeping the web ‘organic’:
“You talk about the BBC doing a digital switchover, as if that’s the same thing as the world-wide web.”
“We’re moving from a world, in which no-one knew or saw the point of, online world, into something [where] everybody has reserved to themselves some special insight into how it’s to affect us.”
Minnesota’s largest news source, the Star Tribune, was declared bankrupt three months ago and is now in danger of going under. The paper is the largest in the area and the 15th largest in America itself.
Yet another American paper facing closure, it brings to mind the ‘Rocky Road Mountain News’, closed down earlier this year.
Employees have launched an online campaign in the hope of saving the newspaper: “We believe the Star Tribune is an essential community resource that is too valuable to lose,” says the ‘Save the Strib’ site.
On the site, readers are invited to submit business proposals. Also featured are reader testimonials and a petition.
Followthemedia reports on Eric Schmidt’s address to the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) yesterday, in which the Google boss said he believed a mixture of ad-supported free content, micropayments and access-all-areas subscription will have to be included on the newspaper website of the future.
But according to FTM, Schmidt didn’t suggest enough ways for Google and newspaper publishers to work together – but then the publishers in the audience didn’t challenge him enough either.
“He [Schmidt] basically believes a newspaper will have its print and internet numbers right if readership is at least five times higher – preferably 10 times higher – on the web than it is in print,” says FTM.
“But again, he didn’t address, and no one asked him, how print was to stay in business with so much of the advertising spend diverted to the web and how maybe that 5:1 or 10:1 ratio could mean that the print financials were no longer viable.”
Also, a full but unofficial transcript of the Q&A at PoynterOnline (with removal of incomplete sentences, Julie Moos notes): ‘Transcript of Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s Q&A at NAA‘
“In a slumping economy, U.S network news programs are expanding their gaze beyond Wall Street and Washington to mainstream America, heralding projects that give voice to everyday people and their financial woes,” reports Reuters.
Find an injection of cynicism over at Doug Fisher’s blog, at this link.
Yesterday Alan Mutter joined the bloggers dismissing the accuracy of the ‘ten most endangered newspapers in America’ list published on TIME.com.
Many interpreted it as coming from Time magazine, but in fact it was a 247WallSt.com post, reproduced on the TIME.com site, under a syndication deal.
Journalism.co.uk asked its author, 24.7 Wall St’s Douglas A. McIntyre, if he defended his selections for which newspapers would next face the chop:
“The list may be viewed as controversial, but that is not its goal. The newspaper industry which was one of the largest employers in America two decades ago is falling apart. Most big cities have not comes to terms with that. This is an accurate list of which papers are at the most [at] risk and why,” McIntyre told Journalism.co.uk
A spokesperson from Time confirmed that TIME.com has been syndicating content from 24/7 Wall St. since January 2009. “This list was not something written by Time.com editors,” the spokesperson said.
There’s been a lot of interest in this list which appeared on Time.com: ‘The 10 Most Endangered Newspapers in America’ (originally from the 24/7 Wall Street blog, it seems).
Now, this, from Crain’s New York Business.com: a rebuttal from the Daily News chief executive, Marc Kramer. ‘Every so-called fact [in the post] is wrong,’ Crain’s reports Kramer as saying. Full story at this link…
Earlier in the week, a post on Cleveland.com reported the Plain Dealer publisher Terrance Egger’s comments, which also dismiss the predictions.
John Mair, television producer and associate senior lecturer in journalism at Coventry University, shares his thoughts on Charles Wheeler, the legendary BBC journalist who died in July 2008. A memorial service was held in London yesterday.
Yesterday the great and the good of British broadcasting and journalism gathered at Westminster Abbey to honour Sir Charles Wheeler ‘the reporters’ reporter’ who died, aged 85, last year.
Wheeler devoted 60 plus years to great journalism; we all have our personal and professional memories of him. Mine date back to 2004, when I was asked to produce the Media Society dinner at the Savoy Hotel to give him its award and honour him. How do you salute a God?
I’d grown up with his work from America and elsewhere, been a producer in the BBC where he was treated with huge respect, and seen and heard his work.
I can especially remember a ‘so-so’ story on Newsnight in the 1980s about cops beating up a black man in Notting Hill, which was everyday stuff then, unfortunately. It was transformed to a different plane by Wheeler reporting on it: all of a sudden it had ‘bottom’. Charles sprinkled journalistic experience and gold dust on all he touched. That ‘so-so’ became a significant story. Charles Wheeler was like that.
Back to the Savoy Dinner: Charles was modesty itself and happy to go along with whoever came along. Everybody but everybody I approached to speak readily agreed to do so: Helen Boaden, then controller of BBC Radio 4, said no problem; Steve Anderson, then controller for news and current affairs at ITV and a former Wheeler producer at Newsnight, was gagging to be on the cast list; so too the great Peter Taylor, who said he would be ‘honoured’ to be part of such an event. Charles and his work had that sort of influence with even the very best of our trade.
But the icing on the Savoy cake proved to be one Boris Johnson, then a barely known Tory MP, Spectator columnist and part-time clown. Boris is also Wheeler’s son-in-law, and his speech on the night was a tour de force. Scribbled on the back of a Savoy napkin, it had scores of hardened hacks in stitches.
Wheeler was much more measured and contrite when it was his turn: apologising to his many producers for giving them a hard time (the sign of a good reporter – one who in involved enough to get angry); radiating modesty and sheer professionalism at one and the same time. Charles Wheeler was like that – he cared about every single word and every single picture to the bitter end of the film that he was working on – and his life.
Never mind Westminster Abbey, Sir Charles Wheeler’s (Charlie Wheeler to all) work on tape and on screen is his epitaph. That will be with us all for a long, long time to come. Adieu ‘Reporters’ Reporter’. You probably have your notebook out, finding the great stories and telling them.