Tag Archives: Latin America

The Latin America news gap: what do you think?

Nuria Leon, a journalist and postgraduate student at the University of Westminster, recently demanded an explanation from BBC director-general Mark Thompson regarding the lack of varied BBC news content from Latin America. You can listen to the encounter here.

Now she needs journalists’ help: for her MA dissertation in media management she wants to find out what journalists think about coverage of Latin America in the UK. [NB: Latin American countries listed here, and UN information on the Americas here.]

So, if you think there is a hole in English-language reportage from that part of the world, please help her out. Here are her questions. Please leave your thoughts below, or email her directly: n.leon at my.westminster.ac.uk.

  • 1. Given your own experiences:
  • a. What do you think causes a gap between between Latin America and the UK in regards to the distribution and production of news?
  • b. What would help create a direct link between both markets for the production and distribution of news?
  • 2. What do you think about international news agencies and their service from Latin America?
  • 3. Do you think there is a demand for customised news services, rather than homogeneous news packages offered by international news agencies?
  • 4. What benefits would you see if both markets started to conduct direct, continuous and permanent business?
  • 5.  Do you think the UK would be receptive to more Latin American news content?
  • 6. Do you believe there is a niche for such a service? A need?
  • 7. More generally, what could help reduce the gap between Latin America and the UK news industry?

Where does the BBC have bureaux and why?

Journalism.co.uk had been surprised to learn at last month’s Journalism in Crisis event that the BBC used only stringers to cover South America, according to director of news Helen Boaden.

The location of global bureaux ‘is something to do with your colonial past’ she said, adding to comments by BBC director-general Mark Thompson, when he was questioned by an irate audience member on the corporation’s lack of coverage in that part of the world (specifically Latin America).

Audio here:

Does the BBC really have no bureaux in Central and South America? Well, the BBC press office later told Journalism.co.uk, it depends how you define stringers and bureaux.

There is a distinction between ‘newsgathering hub’ bureaux and ‘non-hub’ regional bureaux the BBC spokesperson said. While there are no ‘newsgathering hub bureaux’ in South and Central Americas, there are four regional offices, located in Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Mexico City and Havana. How many in each, Journalism.co.uk asked.

Two in each of the four cities: one producer and one local fixer, both on sponsored stringer contracts with retainers. Other individual stringers cover the rest of the continent other parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, with freelancers working from Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Chile and Jamaica.

It’s an interesting question: where are international news organisations’ bureaux and why? A particularly pertinent one to raise, given the difficulties in accessing material from Iran at the moment. The BBC office in Tehran remains open, but permanent correspondent Jon Leyne has been ordered to leave the country, the corporation reported yesterday.

While the BBC had two producers inside a Gaza office in 2008, it did not have any permanent crew on the ground and this affected its coverage of the crisis at the end of that year, and the early part of 2009.

It was helpful for Al Jazeera to have people already based in Gaza, as its two correspondents told Journalism.co.uk in a live-blog interview in April.

NB: Whether Al Jazeera were the ‘only’ English-language international broadcaster in the area for the 12-day media block is still a bone of contention: a journalist later reminded Journalism.co.uk that his employer, Iranian government-funded Press TV, was also reporting from the region during that period.

FIPP 09: E-readers and digital editions: what’s the future for magazines online?

Yesterday, the first panel at the 37th FIPP World Magazine Congress, which looked at the economic situation for the magazine market, had acknowledged e-readers as significant, but not as a direct threat and a show of hands from the audience indicated their limited uptake.

In fact, despite gloomy advertising revenue predictions, time was devoted to preserving and celebrating print, and pointing out that magazines did not necessarily face the same catastrophic fate as their newspaper counterparts. Much was made of the ‘feel’ of the printed product by several of the speakers, for instance.

But magazines are investing in digital editions – so what do they look like?

In yesterday’s session entitled ‘Digital Editions: Opportunity or Blind Alley?’ President (Europe and Latin America) of Zinio Global, Joan Solà, emphasised the importance of structural change, ‘a major change, moving from analogue into digital’: “If the publishing industry adopts the right measures to make structural change to industry, it will avoid getting caught in the middle of the ropes,” he said.

We’re moving from a system with a big ‘logistic cost,’ he said. “We all know that paper, printing and distribution has an impact, an environmental impact. In the US 35 million trees have to be cut down each year.”

We ‘move to a new scheme in which content can be delivered in new forms,’ Solà said.

Kevin Madden, publishing director for digital publishing at Dennis Publishing, is not convinced a digital product will replace the role of magazines:

“Ultimately the web is a dipping medium, but I don’t ascribe any loyalty to the sites I visit.”

Publishers should cater for this ‘dipping audience’, whilst also providing a ‘feast’ for those who want it, he said.

Managing director at Menzies Digital, Sarah Clegg outlined her vision for the digital product, in her case, as she has told Journalism.co.uk in the past – includes digital editions of 140 magazine titles, with a look to e-paper developments for the future.

“Slowly the tide is turning,” she began. “In a lot of cases we [the digital product] are still the outcast,” she said. But, she emphasised, ‘the media landscape has changed, and it’s changing at the rights of knots’.

‘How are you tapping into that child of today – who is reading electronic media?’ she asked, using as an example her 13 year old niece, who picks up a range of digital tools on a daily basis.

“We know consumer habits are changing, people are choosing when they want to consume and when they want to consume. Everybody is after their instant fix,” she said.

“These aren’t questions anymore: there’s a market to take advantage of,” she added.

“They present an opportunity, along with economic necessity. We must find a place in the digital publishing model – I don’t think we’ve had our day,” she said.

Clegg wants to see lower prices for the digital product and more cooperation from publishers. She was aggrieved she said, to discover that having negotiated a 25 per cent discount for digital subscriptions, the publisher had offered a 60 per cent reduction on the print edition.

Another annoyance is that on one of their publications, it takes eight clicks to get through to digital edition, she said.

“Publishers should adapt and cater for the consumer – it [the digital edition] is not for everyone but it’s for someone,” she said.

“I think we’re heading towards a golden era for publishing,” she added, optimistically.

Following Clegg, Mark Payton, digital editorial director for Haymarket Consumer Media, described how his company has a contract with Menzies Digital and he’s ‘very keen for it to work.’

Recent digital innovations at Haymarket include:

  • Autosport launched a tiny flash page turner, which received ten per cent of the site’s traffic during the weeks that it ran.

“I no longer have colleagues around talking about web 2.0 – it has become the web,” Payton said.

Online Journalism Scandinavia: Metro International betting on newspaper growth in emerging markets

Metro International shares have plummeted on news of increased losses and a prospective bid falling through, but CEO, Per Mikael Jensen, remains optimistic.

“It was not a good quarter, but we could have done much worse,” Jensen told me, after the company posted grim financial news this morning.

Its net losses for the first quarter (Q1) of 2009 more than doubled compared to the same period last year, from 6.4 million euros to 15.3 million euros, and year-on-year net revenues decreased 24 per cent to 55.6 million euros from 73.4 million euros in Q1 2008.

The freesheet giant also announced that a mystery bid, which led the company to postpone seeking a rights issue to raise more capital earlier this year, had been stranded on the bidder’s inadequate financing arrangements.

The news caused Metro shares to fall sharply, but when I talked to Jensen, he professed to take comfort in the share doing better than before the bid emerged in February.

“I think people were calculating on a divestment,” he said, adding that he was not sure if the timing of the rights issue, which will now go ahead, would be any worse than two or three months ago.

In January, Metro shocked the market by closing its fully owned operation in Spain, which published the free daily newspaper Metro in seven Spanish cities, with immediate effect. However, in the last few months the company, which has 81 editions in 22 countries, has launched titles in Moscow and Mexico’s second city, Monterrey.

“It’s been our expressed strategy to grow in Russia, Asia and Latin America, markets that are not as mature as the European, for some time now,” Jensen said.

Read more about the consequences of the recession for free newspapers here.

WAN 2008: Print and online newspapers on the rise

The online consumption of newspapers has risen by 20% in the last year and by 100% over the last three years, according to stats released at the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) conference.

The World Digital Media Trends report – collected by 71 research companies and covering 232 countries – also suggested a 13.77% rise in the number of newspaper websites in the world bringing the total to 4,500.

52% of readers who view newspaper websites spend the same amount of time reading newspapers, according to the stats; while 35% say the time they spend with either print or online newspapers has increased.

Figures presented for print circulation worldwide presented an equally positive picture.

The circulation of paid for print dailies rose by 2.98% last year with the total number of titles increasing by 27.22%.

573,235,00 paid and free newspapers are distributed every day and 1.75 billion people read a print edition a day.

Print circulation in China, India and Latin America also showed growth.

Presenting the figures, WAN chairman Timothy Balding said these were just the facts, without sentiment or analysis.

And while figures pointing out that revenue in the advertising industry is still dominated by the print went hand in hand with the positivity of the circulation figures, follow-up sessions at the conference on integration and the challenges of web 2.0 to newspapers will perhaps paint a more cautious picture.

As Christophe Pleitgen, head of news for Reuters UK, told delegates in a later session:

“We are living on borrowed time. In a sense, some of us may have more time, while colleagues in the US would say it is high time. It’s great that newspaper editors are optimistic about the future. They have gotten on with integrating their newsrooms – doing that is more urgent than most of us think.”

Editor and Publisher: Press freedom remains under serious threat, WAN Says

It’s been another bad six months for press freedom around the globe, the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) concludes in a grim report released Saturday – writes E&P.

“Press freedom is under serious threat from many sources — gangs and corrupt officials in Latin America, autocratic regimes in the Middle East, conflicts in Africa, hostile governments in Asia, and from death threats and prosecutions in central Asia and Europe,” WAN said in its semi-annual review of press freedom.