Tag Archives: Business

J.co.uk ain’t in the old boys’ financial club just yet

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Journalism.co.uk got a long chat with the FT’s Rob Grimshaw last week, as reported over on the main news channel. He’s been ever so busy talking to lots of media reporters about FT.com’s new, and exclusive, Long Room facility.

Sadly, Journalism.co.uk can’t report back on the exact nature of the Long Room … we did try and sneak in this morning but this has just pinged back:

“Thank you for your application to join FT Alphaville’s Long Room. We regret to inform you that your application has been unsuccessful, as you don’t appear to meet our strict criteria for membership.”

We’re told we can try again if our situation changes. Ho hum. Looks like we’ll be gazing in the windows of the old boys’ club for a while, from the cold and snowy outside. We’d chosen a little profile cartoon and everything.

We did know we weren’t exactly qualified, but our multimedia curiousity got the better of us. To be fair, we probably have don’t have much to take to the online financial ‘table’.

We’ll just have to make do with Markets Live for now.

Financial round-up: FT Alphaville on Facebook; headlinemoney.co.uk expands

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The Financial Times’ Alphaville blog is hosting a Q&A session on the world’s credit markets through it’s Facebook group.

Tomorrow between 3-4pm BST (10-11am EST and 7-8am PST) journalists Sam Jones and Stacy-Marie Ishmael issue will be answering questions from users live.

Meanwhile headlinemoney.co.uk, a financial news site, is expanding its free services to general news reporters as they are ‘increasingly covering money-related stories’, a press release from the site says.

Journalists can sign up for special guest passes to the site, which offers a case study request facility, a financial release news wire, background information on financial instutions, and a directory of financial journalists for editors looking to make commissions.

The offer is very much a way to meet the demands of the current economic situation, a spokeswoman for the site told us:

“With no obvious end in sight to the global financial crisis, we are happy to extend the offer for at least a month, or until the end of the year, if the demand for our resource remains high amongst non-financial journalists.

“On the duration front, again, it’s a case of regularly monitoring the situation. Once use of the headlinemoney site by a generalist reporter begins to fall away, then we will be inclined to think it’s a case of job done and will probably switch off access privileges. Those with guest passes can always reapply further down the line if the need should arise again.”

Opportunity for business journalists to visit Bangladesh

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A global consultancy firm is offering the opportunity for senior business journalists and editors to travel to Dhaka to advise Bangladeshi business journalists.

Tahmina Shafique from BMB Mott MacDonald told Journalism.co.uk that they “would essentially want these experts to share their expertise and also provide input to our plan of improving the business sections.”

IFC BICF, who are working with BMB Mott MacDonald, will cover the costs of airfare and accommodation. The workshops and discussion sessions will be tailored to the expertise of the visiting journalists.

The event is part of the ‘Stakeholders Engagement Program’, which aims ‘to build government and non-government stakeholder awareness and advocacy capacity on investment climate issues and the need for reforms for sustainable private sector development in Bangladesh.’

The firms are working with the Dhaka Chamber of Commerce (DCCI) to host a series of events from October 30 – November 3 with the goal of making the country ‘a solid investment location, and establish partnering possibilities with local and foreign investors.’

Business journalists who are interested in the opportunity and would like more information should contact Tahmina Shafique as soon as possible, by emailing tahmina at mottmacbd dot com.

Online media consumption up by seven per cent, as a result of financial strife

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Yesterday, Beet TV flagged up that a record number of users seeking online media information led to a seven per cent spike in traffic for Akamai, the delivery network which carries the internet flow for NBC, the BBC, Reuters and other news sites.

The current economic turmoil, hurricanes and the presidential campaign has helped boost the need for online information. At their peak, Akamai were registering 3.7 million requests per minute.

The spike follows a trend for online news sites doing well in times of financial strife: last month site traffic ‘exploded’ at the FT.com, as a result of the drop in share prices.

The need for information was felt on Wall Street, coinciding with a redesign of the Wall Street Journal Online. “Monday set an all time record of two million visitors”, a Wall Street Journal spokeswoman told Beet.TV.  Traffic on Tuesday was nearly as high.  “These are pretty big numbers, considering monthly unique visitors are 17 million,” she said.

The irony is that financial disaster, hurricanes and presidential elections seem to be a good thing for the world of online media.

Makeover for the Telegraph business pages

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Today sees the launch of the all-new Telegraph.co.uk Finance – a merger of their business and personal finance sections into one channel.

The new format is the result of their new digital publishing and content management system, Escenic. A release from the Telegraph said that Escenic has allowed ‘easier navigation, improved accessibility and allows for contextually relevant data to be embedded in articles and throughout the channel.’

The new finance channel includes:

  • Edmund Conway’s ‘Economic Pulse’ blog
  • Two new platforms for funds and shares, where users can make their own portfolio

The channel is available on their mobile portal, out last month. The group has also developed a new widget for social bookmarking, a financial iPhone application, and a ‘Questor’ tool, which gives share and market tips.

Paul Farrow, digital personal finance editor, Telegraph.co.uk, said in the release: “Financial news has never mattered more. We wanted to strengthen our business coverage by looking at the reasons behind financial developments but also at how they directly affect the consumer.”

The changes are a continuation of their re-design process, started in July, which saw a new look for the news, sport and travel sections.

BBC enjoys bumper web traffic as banks’ fortunes slide

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It might be doom and gloom for Lehman Brothers staff, but at least someone’s gaining from it… Business news sites are reporting excellent traffic over the last few days – not least of all, the Beeb.

According to an article from yesterday’s Ariel, the BBC’s in-house magazine, the bbc.co.uk story from Monday ‘Lehman Bros files for bankruptcy’ was the site’s ‘most popular story’ in its 10-year history with more than 1.7 million page views.

From Ariel:

Boom time for business online as Lehmans goes bust: records fall while Wall Street trembles

Monday saw records tumble at the BBC news website’s business section.
As financial crisis circled the globe, culminating in the closure of Lehman Brothers, the BBC’s business pages enjoyed a record reach with 2.35 million individual readers logging on, double the usual amount.

And it also set a new record for most-read story: ‘Lehman Bros files for bankruptcy’ had more than 1.7m page views, making it the most popular story in the site’s 10-year history.

All told, the section attracted 9.25m page views in a single day.
Tim Weber, the business section’s editor, praised coverage of Lehman Brothers’ demise, which he said was ‘fast, comprehensive and authoritative’.

And he told ariel online: ‘Business and economics stories have always been more popular than most people suspect, but since the start of the credit crunch a year ago our daily reach has soared by about 50%.

‘However, Monday’s meltdown of investment bank Lehman has taken things to a new level.
‘It’s the most fascinating time in my live as a business journalist, but it’s also great to see that our audiences really appreciate our output.

‘Right now, at 1530 UK time on Tuesday, we’ve already reached more than 1.45 million people – it’s bound to be another bumper day.’

Forbes.com opinion channel gets a makeover

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Forbes.com/opinions has had a makeover, as of today. Under the control of new opinions channel editor, Tunku Varadarajan, no time has been wasted in having a bit of an autumn clean. Particularly significant is the introduction of an array of high-profile new columnists.

Here’s a run-down of the changes:

  • Four main topic categories: Business and Economics, Foreign Affairs and Defence, Culture and Society, and Politics.
  • 16 new columnists will be writing weekly columns for the channel, including author Reihan Salam, economists Brian Wesbury and Bob Stein, former Reagan speechwriter Peter Robinson and Quentin Letts (from the UK).
  • Book reviews every Monday and Thursday, on all subjects, as well as daily essays and commentaries.
  • Forbes.com Editor Paul Maidment’s will produce a weekly video “Notes on the News” about international politics and business.
  • Forbes magazine Publisher Rich Karlgaards’s daily blog “Digital Rules” will still run, in addition to a new video blog “Talk Back” about the business world.

Varadarajan was previously contributing editor at the Financial Times, where he wrote opinion pieces, arts and culture essays and book reviews. Before that, he was at the Wall Street Journal for seven years – most recently as Assistant Managing Editor.

He gives fuller run-down of all the changes here.