Tag Archives: Guardian.co.uk

Media140: Are tweets journalism?

FT’s Gapper’s response to Guardian’s Emily Bell’s response to John Gapper’s ‘cut-and-pasting’ (or aggregating) comment

John Gapper’s column on FT.com asks whether it is time for the Ochs-Sulzberger family to sell the New York Times. No, Gapper says: “They would be crazy to cap their run of poorly timed transactions by selling in the trough of the recession, amid mayhem in the industry.”

As part of the commentary he also makes this claim:

“Meanwhile, it [the New York Times] produces more original stories than most rivals put together. The UK’s Guardian is another paper that has built a global brand from what was a regional paper, but it relies more on cut-and-pasting (or aggregating) from others.”

Emily Bell, director of digital content at Guardian.co.uk responds in the comments: “It is a pity an interesting piece was spoiled by such a sloppy and inaccurate piece of reporting,” she says. We have reproduced an extract from her lengthy comment below (yes, cut and pasted):

“John, in your column you asset [sic] that the Guardian has grown its online audience primarily by aggregating and cutting and pasting other people’s stories. This is demonstrably not true. If you look at our site on any given day (www.guardian.co.uk), you will I am sure find stories which are either from a wire feed (rather as the FT uses) or which reporters have picked up from other sources, again as does the BBC, FT, Times , even sometime the hallowed NYT. But this is not the core of what we do and it is certainly not how we have grown our audience…”

“(…)We have built our traffic on a higher investment in original multimedia journalism than most if not all of our peers. We have an active policy NOT to routinely aggregate high-grossing showbusiness, celebrity or ‘weird’ stories from elsewhere, which is common practice among some newspaper websites.”

And Gapper quickly responds (Journalism.co.uk wonders what is happening to journalism: shouldn’t they be in the pub by now on a Friday evening?):

“In fact, I don’t assert that. What I wrote was:

“”Meanwhile, it [the NYT] produces more original stories than most rivals put together. The UK’s Guardian is another paper that has built a global brand from what was a regional paper, but it relies more on cut-and-pasting (or aggregating) from others.”

“So I am comparing the Guardian’s ratio with that of the NYT, not claiming that the Guardian contains more aggregated than original content. I do not believe the latter, and would not write it.”

FT.com: Murdoch considers charging for online news, developing e-reader

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News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch is now convinced that ‘it is possible to charge for content’ online given the success of paid-for business news on the Wall Street Journal, he said last night.

Any pay model would be tested on one of the group’s stronger titles, he added.

Murdoch also described Newsgroup’s interest in developing its own e-reading or digital paper device.

At the FIPP World Magazine Congress this week Guardian Media Group’s Carolyn McCall suggested Guardian.co.uk could also start charging for specialist areas of the site.

Full post at this link…

FIPP 09: Charging for content or e-commerce – how will mags make money?

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“I insist that we are going to have to end up charging for our content wherever we can,” said Roberto Civita, CEO and chairman of Brazilian magazine publisher Abril, today.

“The more segmented the more we’ll be able to do this, the less segmented the less.”

Civita wasn’t the first publisher at this year’s FIPP World Magazine Congress: yesterday Guardian Media Group’s Carolyn McCall said charging for specific sections of Guardian.co.uk was a consideration.

He also echoed comments made earlier in the day by Google’s UK MD, Matt Brittin, who said publishers could learn from the e-commerce industry.

Magazine brands should be ideally placed to do this, for example, by placing direct links to buy on advertisements, he said.

Civita was adamant that magazines will continue and that the industry shouldn’t get hung up on what platform this happens on (“I really don’t think it makes any difference if we’re talking about paper or the new e-papers”) – it’s the quality of the product that matters

Fellow panellist Cathie Black, president of Hearst Magazines in the US, added to her Conde Nast’s counterpart’s remarks about the importance of brand.

“Strong brands will be brands going out into the future. Strong brand, strong advertising, strong editorial,” she said, adding that Hearst brands should be at the centre with spokes from them crossing into e-commerce, merchandising, and other media revenues, like TV spin-off ‘Running in Heels’.

So – print’s going to survive and while online will grow (and e-readers too) – where does that leave digital content?

Both Black and Civita agree: magazines’ digital offerings should be differentiated from what else is available in their sector online.

“We must continue to emphasise the things that have made our magazines what they are today: remained tuned to interests and characteristics of our readers (…) maintain our integrity and ethical principles which are the cornerstone of our greatest asset, our credibility,” said Civita.

And – one parting thought from panel chair Lord Heseltine, chairman of Haymarket – the two platforms must work together:

“The pure-play people have got to keep promoting their product. If we have a brand we have a natural promotion vehicle. I’ve seen examples where pure-play people have launched very successful sites, much more successful than ours, but it’s only been a matter of time before we caught them.”

Guardian.co.uk: Rusbridger on open-source journalism

Guardian.co.uk: Marc Vallée on journalists on the front line at G20

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A piece on the treatment of journalists at G20 from photojournalist Marc Vallee, over at the Guardian’s Comment is Free:

“Who needs section 76 when you have a baton? Back in February I wrote how terror legislation had been increasingly used by this government, and brutally enforced by the police, to criminalise not only those who protest but also those who dare to give the oxygen of publicity to such dissent.”

Full post at this link…

Newspaper Awards announces nominees

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UK regional titles will compete against nationals for this year’s electronic news site and best use of new media prizes at the 2009 Newspaper Awards, according to the full listings on HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk.

Websites for the Belfast Telegraph and Kent Messenger’s Kent Online will go head-head-head with BBC.co.uk, FT.com, Guardian.co.uk, Telegraph.co.uk and Times Online in the news site category.

Candidates for best use of new media include Exeter’s Express&Echo for Kellow’s Bootlaces, FT.com’s Alphaville and the Henley Standard website.

Also of note – the award dedicated to: ‘Most Significant Contribution to Future Newspaper Success’, for which the nominees are:

Cambridge News – Video content
Crain’s Manchester Business
FT Weekend – Re-design
Guardian & Observer – Subscriber project
ncjmedia – Northumberland strategy
ncjmedia – Rising Stars

Elsewhere the International Newspaper Award is dominated by German representatives, with the Augsburger Allgemeine, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung and the Nordkurier all nominated.

The awards are run in cooperation with Fujifilm and the Production Journal celebrating the crème de la crème in newspaper and news media production. The winners will be announced at ceremony on April 22 in London Hilton.

Audio additions at Guardian.co.uk – The Business / video features for football podcast

#DataJourn part 3: Useful and recent links looking at use of data in journalism

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Perhaps we’ll expand this to a Dipity timeline at some point (other ideas?), but for the meantime, here’s a list of a few recent and relevant links relating to CAR and use of data in journalism to get the conversation on Twitter – via #datajourn – going. NB: These are not necessarily in chronological order. Then, the next logical step would be to start looking at examples of where data has been used for specific journalism projects.