Last week’s Radio 4 In Business programme looked at business newspapers and how some of the world’s best known-brands are struggling to compete with online rivals and in the face of the economic downturn.
Well worth a listen at this link, it includes interview with representatives from the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Bloomberg and Bloomberg Business Week.
Journalism lecturer Andy Dickinson (@digidickinson) has now updated his recent SlideShare and blog post on how to find editorial jobs online, which we featured on this blog last week, to include a more detailed transcript of his talk.
His blog post this week contains lots of handy tips for the dedicated journalism jobseeker, so if you are in the market for a new job, check it out.
Meanwhile, here at Journalism.co.uk, we have produced a new page explaining how to get the most out of our own jobs board, including six step-by-step videos taking you through the jobseeker registration process and various alert systems. Here are the benefits, all of which are free:
I would urge you to take a few minutes to sign up, even if you are not necessarily looking to make a move now. You never know what opportunity might coming knocking on your door.
Finally, if you are on the other side of the fence and looking to recruit editorial staff, please read why you should advertise your vacancies on Journalism.co.uk here, and register to post your jobs here.
Recruitment advertising helps fund our free content, so if you like what we do this is one great way to support us!
Useful reading:
The Times hosted a live Q&A this afternoon with editor James Harding about its new plans for paid content, details of which were announced today. While there were a few interesting comments in there (he’ll “hide under the desk” if it all goes wrong, he says) it felt like a lot of questions went unanswered and unpublished. For example, as Adam Tinworth pointed out on Twitter, no questions about linking were addressed.
I’ll do as @times_live recommends and email them in, but in the meantime, here are a few of my own, and some from our Twitter followers too.
Mine:
I once heard that pre-moderation of comments posted on Times Online costs a six figure sum (I wasn’t able to clarify over what time period). With a paywalled site, do you hope to reduce this cost? How will the staffing of your website change with the paywall?
What kind of market research did you do to establish the price point? What different kinds of models did you consider?
How different will the new sites be? Do you think people would have paid for the existing content on Times Online?
Can you share any details of the additional digital applications that will be included in the package?
Then because none of my questions were getting answered, I threw this in:
How much involvement did NI CEO Rupert Murdoch have with paywall plans? Last week his biographer Michael Wolff suggested that up until last year he hadn’t been on the internet ‘unaccompanied’; do you think execs are best placed to judge the willingness of people to pay?
And here are a few I thought of afterwards:
You joked that you’ll hide under the desk if it all goes wrong, but what’s the real risk? If you reverted to a free model later, do you think it would be easy to regain all the lost unique users? Or will they be lost forever?
Journalists are often recognised and given opportunities and leads because of their Google ranking. How have your journalists reacted? Are they worried about their professional profile lowering, with restricted access to their content? Will you stop journalists posting their own articles on their own blogs?
And from Twitter:
@substuff asks: “I wanted to ask what The Times would do to attract promiscuous browsers such as me – as I’d probably only subscribe to one site.”
@neilblake73 asks: “Why would anyone pay for news when you can get it 24hrs via the BBC, CNN, Sky, radio and online etc? What on earth would be so good we’d pay?
“Also, with Evening Standard, and Metro free (& possibly the Indy in future?), why are roles reversing, ie. free papers / paid for web?”
@HooklineBooks asks: “What if they [the Times] charge and no-one visits? Is there a plan B?”
@gregorhunter: “What’s stopping the rest of the blogosphere from mirroring TimesOnline’s articles and continuing as usual?”
@gpcrc: “Will this change how journalists interact with PRs (if all consumers will be building relationships with online journalists)?”
@sarah_booker: “Will the Times link through social bookmarks and RSS functions outside the paywall?
“Will Times journalists be able to tweet?”
@JunkkMale: “If paywall is to ‘preserve quality reporting’, may we be assured that future coverage will be factually accurate, indeed more so than now?”
If you’ve got others, please tweet them in, or leave in the comments below. I’ll email James Harding the link to this post now.
Also, for background, here’s the News International press release in full:
News International today announces that The Times and The Sunday Times will start charging for access to their digital journalism in June using a pricing model that is simple and affordable.
Both titles will launch new websites in early May, separating their digital presence for the first time and replacing the existing, combined site, Times Online. The two new sites will be available for a free trial period to registered customers.
From June, the new sites, www.thetimes.co.uk and www.thesundaytimes.co.uk, will be available for a charge of £1 for a day’s access or £2 for a week’s subscription. Payment will give customers access to both sites. The weekly subscription will also give access to the e- paper and certain new applications.
Access to the digital services will be included in the seven-day subscriptions of print customers to The Times and The Sunday Times.
Rebekah Brooks, chief executive, News International, said: “These new sites, and the apps that will enhance the experience, reflect the identity of our titles and deliver a terrific experience for readers. We expect to attract a growing base of loyal customers that are committed and engaged with our titles.
We are building on the excellence of our newspapers and offering digital access to our journalism at a price that everyone can afford.
“At a defining moment for journalism, this is a crucial step towards making the business of news an economically exciting proposition. We are proud of our journalism and unashamed to say that we believe it has value.
“This is just the start. The Times and The Sunday Times are the first of our four titles in the UK to move to this new approach. We will continue to develop our digital products and to invest and innovate for our customers.”
John Witherow, editor of The Sunday Times, said: “The launch of a dedicated Sunday Times website is a hugely significant moment for the paper.
It will enable us to showcase our strengths in areas such as news, sport, business, style, travel and culture and display the breadth of Britain’s biggest-selling quality newspaper.
“For the first time, readers will have access to all their favourite sections and writers. We will be introducing new digital features to enhance our coverage and encourage interactivity. Every day, readers will be able to talk to our writers and experts and view stunning photographs and graphics. Subscribers will be able to get this brand new site, plus the enhanced Times site, seven days of the week, all for the price of a cup of coffee.”
James Harding, editor of The Times, said: “The Times was founded to take advantage of new technology. Now, we are leading the way again. Our new website – with a strong, clean design – will have all the values of the printed paper and all the versatility of digital media. We want people to do more than just read it – to be part of it.
“We continue to invest in frontline journalism. We have more foreign correspondents than our rivals and continue to put reporters on new beats – last year we added an Ocean Correspondent and we just became the only British paper to have a Pentagon Correspondent. And we want to match that with investment in innovation.
“TheTimes.co.uk will make the most of moving images, dynamic infographics, interactive comment and personalised news feeds. The coming editions of The Times on phones, e- readers, tablets and mobile devices will tell the most important and interesting stories in the newest ways. Our aim is to keep delivering The Times, but better.”
More advice for newspapers on the day of News International’s paywall announcement. How to save newspapers, by Ted Rall. First spotted on Reportr.net. ‘Breakthrough in denture technology’ headlines will keep that older demographic…
Redundancies across the group and a pay freeze for all staff haven’t stopped the Johnston Press bosses taking home rather juicy bonuses for 2009. As reported by the Times earlier this month, Johnston Press closed five papers last year, and 768 staff left the group in 2009. Pre-tax profits for 2009 were £43 million, a drop of 56 per cent.
But as reported by Johnston Press’ own paper, the Scotsman, John Fry, the group’s chief executive, took home £959,000 in pay, benefits and bonuses in 2009.
The package, reported in the group’s annual report this week, included: £210,000 cash bonus; a £210,000 performance-related bonus paid in shares (deferred for three years); and a basic salary of £525,000.
The Scotsman reports that his predecessor, Tim Bowdler, who retired in early 2009, was awarded £573,000 in basic pay in 2008. “All executive directors waived their right to a performance-related bonus that year,” it says.
Basic salary for the group’s two other executive directors, chief financial officer Stuart Paterson and chief operating officer Danny Cammiade, did not increase but they took home total packages of £655,000 and £590,000 respectively. In 2008 they took home £363,000 and £342,000 in total, respectively.
Here’s the comparison visualised in a chart. This shows the % change in £ from 2008 figures to 2009 figures (we’ve compared Fry’s pay package with Bowdler’s). The middle column at 0 represents the basic salary pay freeze across the group.
Blue: JP CEO pay package / Red: JP chief financial officer pay package / Yellow: chief operating officer pay package / Green: basic pay rise across group / Grey: total group revenue / Dark blue: advertising revenue / Magenta: JP pre-tax profit
The two publishing groups will combine their operations in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Serbia and create a new business with headquarters in Switzerland.
Between them Ringier and Axel Springer have 100 print and 70 online publications in these markets, including tabloid newspapers Fakt in Poland and Blesk in the Czech Republic.
A proper bit of digging, by the people at online-only news site Business Insider (read about its background here), has led to Nicholas Carlson’s revelations about Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook and as the site says, “startling new information”, about the company’s early days.
But as BI’s Silicon Valley Insider team revealed, this type of work doesn’t make for a sustainable online publication business model. In a flurry of tweets Business Insider editor-in-chief and CEO Henry Blodget explains why (you can view them in a gallery at this link).
It’s important. It’s great. But it is also fantastically expensive and time-consuming.
But the truth is, if we tried to do 3 a day, with our staff, we would DROP DEAD. We’d also go bust. Neither being a happy outcome.
(Hat-tip: The Editorialiste.)
Alastair Bruce (@ajbruce), content manager for MSN UK, has studied over 30 organisations to produce this detailed presentation on pay wall and subscription models. He examines bundling, micropayments, metered systems, freemium and 100 per cent subscription models, across consumer/specialist titles and national/local newspapers. Who is doing what, and what comes next?
How publishers are charging for online content or consumption and implementing paywalls and subscription services
Could you spare 10p for a news report? Maybe 5p for the sports results? Many in the news industry would like us to pay to see news articles that we’ve previously enjoyed for free, whether it’s via websites or hand-held devices.
But one of the problems of this brave, new paid-content world is that the news publishing industry has yet to move on from long-held assumptions about the value of content, inspired by centuries of physical, print distribution.
For example, just look at the sheer size of national newspapers: they are huge products, especially on weekends. Big is better, goes the saying – and mass reach gives you more circulation and advertising revenue.
But in the global, decentralised, just-Google-it content economy, it doesn’t work like that: the publishers that will win through will have the most relevant, findable, highest quality content – not just lots of it.
To illustrate the mismatch between offline and online economics, I’ve gone through Wednesday’s edition of the Times to find out just how much is in it…
So our grand total for today’s Times is more than 100 articles. The quality of writing, pictures and editing is, as you would expect, consistently high.
But if these articles were available via a pay-per-view offer, how much would you pay? If they were priced 10p each, that means to buy everything in today’s paper, you would have to pay £10; at 5p per article, that’s £5 per issue. But my copy of the paper only cost £1.
News International boss Rupert Murdoch will more likely opt for a subscription model for the Times and Sunday Times websites – just as he’s succeeded in selling long-term pay TV packages around the the world.
But to reach a competitive pricepoint, he and other publishers will have to massively realign the value of each piece of news and comment from its current-day, paper value of one or two pence to fractions of pence.
In reality, the real market value of news is what people will pay and the danger is that for an entire generation of readers weaned on the free-to-air internet, that price is nothing at all…
[See also: What’s the average cost of a news article?]
Patrick Smith is a freelance journalist and event organiser, and formerly a correspondent for paidContent:UK and Press Gazette. He blogs at psmithjournalist.com and is @psmith on twitter.
Thomson Reuters in the US has been referred to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) by the Newspaper Guild of New York for planned cutbacks to the pay packages of journalists and other workers that are members of the union.
The reduced payments work out at roughly 10 per cent per worker, says the Guild, which has been in contract negotiations with the agency for more than a year, in a release.
In June 2009, Boston’s Newspaper Guild made a similar charge and challenged a pending 23 per cent pay cut proposed by The New York Times. The two parties reached an agreement in July with the pay cut reduced, but Guild members were left fearful for their jobs after the elimination of lifetime job guarantees for approximately 170 employees was also agreed.
But in this instance Reuters isn’t only facing charges by the Guild over changes to pay: the agency has also been brought to task by the Guild for its social media policy, which bans employees from updating personal Twitter accounts with posts which, in the words of the company, ‘would damage the reputation of Reuters News or Thomas Reuters’.
As the statement from the Guild points out:
A union activist was “reminded” of the policy after responding to a senior manager’s call to “join the (Twitter) conversation on making Reuters the best place to work” with a tweet that said: “One way to make this the best place to work is to deal honestly with Guild members.”