“Even for UK-specific sites, the urge to protect margins is forcing more media owners to turn to advertising networks, which gather advertising space from several sites and sell it in bulk to advertisers,” says the FT’s digital media correspondent, Tim Bradshaw.
Targeting international readers and creating subscription-based services online are also strategies being used by publishers, he adds.
ITV correspondent John Ray has been arrested by officials in Beijing, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reports.
Ray was covering a pro-Tibet protest near the main Olympic site and was arrested despite identifying himself as a journalist.
The YouTube video below shows Ray in a police van reasoning with police officers before being driven away.
The camera still rolling, Ray repeatedly shouts ‘I’m a journalist’. “This is press freedom,” he says.
According to reports, four journalists have been killed in Georgia, since the country’s armed conflict with Russia began on Friday.
Dutch television cameraman Stan Storimans, 39, who was working for news channel RTL, was killed during the Russian bombing of Gori, the Associated Press has said. Storiman’s colleague Jeroen Akkermans was also injured by blasts, which killed five.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has also reported the deaths of two journalists in the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali. Grigol Chikhladze, head of Alania TV, and Alexander Klimchuk, head of the Caucasus Press Images agency and a correspondent for Itar-Tas, were shot at a roadblock erected by Ossetian freedom-fighters, RSF said.
US reporter Winston Featherly-Bean and fellow Georgian reporter Teimuraz Kikuradze, who were travelling with Chikladze and Klimchuck, were wounded in the attack and later taken to a field hospital.
An as yet unnamed Georgian journalist has also died in the conflict, after a shell hit his car outside Gori.
The BBC’s Gavin Hewitt also claimed his crew were under fire from Russian forces (thanks to Daniel Bennett for flagging this up):
Global page views of Times Online’s blogs rose past the 2.5 million mark in May this year, according to figures from the publisher – an increase of 500 per cent compared to May 2007.
The graph below shows the overall growth of its top performing blogs. Daniel Finkenstein’s Comment Central and Paris correspondent Charles Bremner’s Le Blogue are shown to perform consistently well, while The Game blog and Money Central (no doubt spurred by the recent economic downturn) have increased in popularity:
The site’s top 10 blogs in terms of global page views in May this year were:
The Game Blog 562,835
Money Central 552,941
Comment Central 541,598
Alpha Mummy 170,862
Fanzine Fanzone 136,760
Charles Bremner 114,884
Formula 1 103,607
Snakes and Ladders 94,202
Mousetrap Technology 88,496
Red Box 85,96
As you can see the top three account for the majority of the blogs’ traffic. Figures for TimesOnline’s page views from May’s Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCe) report suggest the site recorded 117,826,926 page impressions. These stats therefore suggest blogs accounted for roughly 2.12 per cent of the site’s total page views.
Following yesterday’s launch of Guardian.co.uk’s redesigned culture section, chief arts correspondent Charlotte Higgins is now a full-time blogger for the site.
She discusses her plans for the blog and the debate between blogger vs critic.
BBC Technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones muses on Robert Scoble’s claim that Twitter broke the news of the earthquake in China quicker than United States Geological Survey, which provides early warnings of seismic events.
“Let’s see, as this story unfolds, whether this is the moment when Twitter comes of age as a platform which can bring faster coverage of a major news event than traditional media, while allowing participants and onlookers to share their experiences,” suggests Mr Cellan-Jones.
Sky News has produced a multimedia timeline detailing the events and news coverage of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance over the last year.
The timeline incorporates videos, pictures and analysis from Sky’s crime correspondent Martin Brunt. Users can scroll through the timeline, which offers over 100 screens of multimedia.
The Telegraph has moved further towards its vision of a fully integrated newsroom with a raft of promotions, new arrivals and a newly integrated Science team.
Integrated desks contribute to both titles and the web site, The Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph and Telegraph.co.uk, and so far business, sport, foreign and comment desks have been reshaped to fit the new mould.
The integrated science team will be headed up by Daily Telegraph science editor Roger Highfield and Sunday Telegraph science correspondent Richard Gray, with Professor Steve Jones continuing to contribute. The team will be assisted by Kate Devlin.
The changes follow the abrupt departure of Nic Fleming, Daily Telegraph science correspondent, two weeks ago.
Following the significant number of departures from the Telegraph sports desk last month, former Times sports feature writer Alison Kervin is joining as chief sports interviewer. She replaces star interviewer Sue Mott.
Other changes include Stephen Adams’ promotion to arts correspondent, replacing Nigel Reynolds who was axed last month.
The Daily Telegraph has also appointed former Press Association chief reporter John Bingham to take a senior reporting role.
Further changes are expected as the integration policy continues to roll out.
There has been talk of strike action over management decisions to axe staff members, which included the Telegraph Media Group’s decision to remove the entire reader relations desk as well as individual journalists over the last few months.
Sunday Telegraph editor Patience Wheatcroft resigned in September 2007, reportedly over the integration strategy.
Sites has used his own blog to break new ground in war reporting – the platform has freed him from the limitations placed on him as a freelance or correspondent.
The investigative journalist is a pioneer of multimedia reporting in the field, having led his own online video news show on Yahoo armed with only a laptop, satellite phone and video camera.
The BBC has been experimenting with filing video reports from mobile phones as part of its coverage of Mobile World Congress 2008, in Barcelona this week.
Technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones explained the approach in a video post the BBC’s dot.life technology blog before the event:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2SR-0WDQC0]Then while in Barcelona he moblogged several interviews, including one with Isabella Rossellini about making movies available for viewing on mobile phones, using the footage to augment a text story by embedding a flash player in the head of the story for a nice piece of additional story telling.
The MoJo approach is finding increasing favour with large news organisations. Reuters put mobiles in the hands of delegates at last month’s World Economic Forum in Davos.
How long will it take to trickle down into the regional press though? My guess would be 18-24 months before we see the first serious use.