GMG is to make a series of cutbacks in the Manchester area with six newspaper branch offices set to close.
The papers affected will be: the Heywood Advertiser, the Middleton Guardian, the South Manchester Reporter, the Manchester Metro News, the Macclesfield Express and the Wilmslow Express.
The Manchester Evening News has used free online tool Dipity to create an interactive timeline of the paper’s coverage of a proposed congestion charge for Greater Manchester.
The timeline features text and images from key dates in the ongoing story, dating back to January 10 2005.
The information can also be displayed and browsed by text-only, images-only or on a map.
The Liverpool Daily Post recently used the same online tool to create an interactive timeline for its diary of a day in Liverpool.
US digital publishing firm NXTBOOK Media is planning to launch an online business magazine later this year.
How Do reported tht new digital publication would be “covering topics such as media, business development, property, hospitality and investment” and that it “will be distributed to the cities [sic] thriving business community.”
Manchester has recently seen the launch of the first UK edition of US local business newspaper Crains.
The Guardian may be adopting strategies to make itself more Facebook-friendly but the lack of truly local geographical networks on the social networking site makes it more difficult for smaller papers to make great use of it.
The UK currently has 17 regional networks that users can become part of, here they are:
The regional networks, which unsurprisingly centre on larger towns and cities, offer reporters a great ‘in’ to the online community on their patch. A reporter working for the Manchester Evening News, for instance, or one of its smaller titles in the Greater Manchester area is at a distinct advantage over a reporter working on a paper in a smaller town:
Just a brief, cursory glance at the Manchester group throws up leads for several potential stories amongst its 500,000 plus members. The ‘See what’s popular’ feature and the discussion board make it a simple place to seed stories as well as one in which to ask for information and pick up leads. But where would you go if you lived in Burton on Trent?
Burton is a town in Staffordshire that – if you’ve defining it in terms of Facebook regions – is slap bang between Nottingham and West Midlands. Not much use then if you’re a reporter on the Burton Mail.
Burton has 103 groups related to it on Facebook – a lot of ground to cover for any hack – but like many other towns across the UK it has no network and Facebook doesn’t allow users to establish there own networks. Users have to make that request to the site:
If Facebook gave it’s users the ability to create these networks themselves it would solve a lot of headaches, but don’t expect that to happen in a hurry. So come on reporters on papers in Burton, Derby, Reading, Cardiff, Norwich and the like. Get a campaign going to get your town recognised as a network on Facebook. It can make the day job a hell of a lot simpler.
Here’s a little moment of mirth from the closing session of the Society of Editors conference in Manchester.
During the Q&A session, Media Guardian reporter Jemima Kiss asked Telegraph editor Will Lewis about the transparency of ABCe ‘benchmarking’ monthly web traffic figures and if he was planning to again use Hitwise metric results in Telegraph advertising.
The website had previously run an ad on the homepage quoting Hitwise and proclaiming its position as the top quality UK newspaper online.
The Hitwise metric is considered by some to be an inferior measurement of a websites’ traffic than the figures supplied by Nielsen/NetRatings, comScore or the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCE).
A visibly riled Lewis told her that Telegraph marketing campaigns were ‘none of her business’ and that the Telegraph site stats were open for all to see on the site.
But what was it that riled him?
Was it the Guardian’s quest to have ABCEs recognised across the industry as the sole measure of websites metrics?
Having it rubbed in that according to this metric the Telegraph trails the Guardian by quite some way, almost in a polar opposite of the print edition?
Or was he tired of the puritanical zeal on this issue that encourages Guardian employees, it seems, to ask him a similar question every time he appears in public?
Listen here to the exchange:
[audio:http://www.journalism.co.uk/sounds/kisslewis.mp3]Adam Boulton, political editor of Sky News, and Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti both told the Society of Editors conference, in Manchester today, that self-regulation on the internet was a vital part of maintaining trust in major news brands.
Boulton told delegates that he believed the standards online of Sky, the BBC or any other major news provider should be as high as through its more traditional channels, and that this would help maintain audience trust.
Listen to him and Chakrabarti here:
[audio:http://www.journalism.co.uk/sounds/boultonandshami.mp3]Boulton wasn’t so keen on reader interaction though:
“Although there is a great deal of emphasis on interactivity now I would say that in my own experience not just on my own blog, but elsewhere, the comments by and large are not worth the paper they are printed on, or not printed on.
“They are extremely vicious and unpleasant, where they are useful is that they keep us honest in that they quickly pick up on our mistakes.”
[audio:http://www.journalism.co.uk/sounds/Adamboultonone.mp3]The WAN president doesn’t seem smitten with the idea of multi-tasking journalists given this response to a question about converged journalism posed to him by Paul Horrocks, president of the SoE, during the Q&A on the opening night of the Society of Editors conference in Manchester.
“I don’t think that’s the core competency of writers… we are wordsmiths, not video and cameramen…”
Full Extract:
[audio:http://www.journalism.co.uk/sounds/convergence.mp3]Gavin O’Reilly, chief operating officer of Independent News and Media and president of WAN, launched a stinging attack on senior media commentators in the UK while speaking at the Society of Editors meeting in Manchester.
Listen here to some of his concerns and other points of his speech:
Failings of media commentators: too much rhetoric, overly simplistic digital vs print approach…
[audio:http://www.journalism.co.uk/sounds/oreillyone.mp3]Failures of US print papers, threat of reader apathy biggest threat not internet, real reasons for state of UK market – freesheets and enticements, search engines and ACAP…
[audio:http://www.journalism.co.uk/sounds/oreillytwo.mp3]