Tag Archives: News International

paidContent:UK: Times Online blocks news aggregator Meltwater

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Following its decision in January to block the NewsNow news monitoring site, Times Online has blocked fellow news aggregator Meltwater.

Meltwater is the only aggregation service that has not complied with a new system introduced by the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) at the start of 2010, which includes charging sites that crawl newspaper websites and use this information as part of a commercial service to clients.

Meltwater is taking the NLA to a copyright tribunal and on Monday was told its challenge would go ahead with a procedural hearing in June 2010 and a trial in February 2011.

Full story at this link…

Independent.co.uk: Solicitor general to look into phone hacking concerns

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MP Tom Watson has speculated that his question in the House of Commons last Thursday, like many other phone hacking concerns, will receive scant attention by the press.

Linking to an Independent on Sunday report, he tweeted: “yet another phone hacking story that won’t be reported anywhere else”.

And Google News shows us Watson is right so far – only the IoS appears to have picked up the solicitor general’s response to his question about the investigation of the News of the World phone hacking case.

[From Hansard: PDF at this link]

Mr. Tom Watson (West Bromwich, East) (Lab): Will my hon. and learned Friend satisfy herself that the Crown Prosecution Service has not successfully prosecuted cases on the basis of police files that were compiled using evidence illegally obtained by News of the World phone hacking?

The Solicitor-General: Yes – I am not sure that any connection has been made, but I am very well aware of the issue, and it is an issue well raised.

Further to that, the Independent on Sunday reports:

Whitehall sources said that there would not, at this stage, be a full-blown investigation into any concerns, but that the issue would be examined. A more detailed investigation would take place if substantial evidence was put forward, sources said.

According to the paper: “a spokesman for the Met said it would not be commenting on the parliamentary exchange. A News International spokesman declined to comment.”

MediaGuardian: Clifford drops phone hacking case following £1m deal

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News International is to pay out around £1 million in legal costs and personal payments in the latest phone hacking case, the Guardian reports. Publicist Max Clifford will now drop his legal action concerning the alleged interception of his voicemail.

The settlement means that there will now be no disclosure of court-ordered evidence which threatened to expose the involvement of the newspaper’s journalists in a range of illegal information-gathering by private investigators.

Full story at this link…

Guardian’s phone hacking interactive: ‘The growing web’

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The Guardian’s Steve Busfield and Paddy Allen have produced a rather nice click-through interactive, showing how figures at News International fit into the phone hacking / blagging scandal.

Or as Steve Busfiled (@busfield) says on Twitter: “How the #phonehacking players are connected. And what they DON’T know.”

As noted on this blog this morning, the Guardian reported that Conservative director of communications Andy Coulson (former News of the World editor) is under pressure to defend “his knowledge about the illegal activities of his journalists amid new allegations about the paper’s involvement with private detectives who broke the law”.

For those interested in producing news interactive and visualisation features, please see my post from last week: ‘Data visualisations that tell the news’ – packed with links suggested by the FT’s deputy interactive editor, Cynthia O’Murchu.

News International steps up blocking of aggregators

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Last week Journalism.co.uk reported that Times Online had blocked news aggregator NewsNow from crawling its website.

And now News International has followed suit with its other UK sites, News of the World and The Sun (hat tip to Malcolm Coles for alerting us to this development). Both are now blocking NewsNow’s crawlers.

Last month NewsNow dropped links to the sites of 18 newspapers publishers from its subscription service ahead of the introduction of new charges by the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) for aggregators and media monitoring services using newspaper website links in their paid-for services. Links to the Times’ site were not dropped however.

The aggregator also claimed it was facing legal pressure from newspaper groups to remove links.

Last week Struan Bartlett, managing director of NewsNow, made his feelings on NI’s decision clear:

NewsNow and other aggregation businesses will ride the wave, but I am concerned that key freedoms people enjoy, to access publicly available information on the internet using an independent search engine of their choice, are being eroded

But in a statement given to Journalism.co.uk, News International’s reasons for blocking the aggregator hinge on the use of links to its websites within NewsNow’s paid-for service:

NewsNow has been using Times Online content as part of its paid-for, commercial as well as free services. They have continued to do so despite our direct requests for them to stop. As a result, we have taken the decision to disallow their indexing of our content. News International makes a significant investment in journalism and we believe that it is entirely appropriate for us to ask that our rights are respected. NewsNow has acknowledged that they require our permission to use our content and, in the absence of our permission, has ceased to do so.

#WANIndia2009: Les Hinton tells newspapers – ‘Beware geeks bearing gifts’

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Unsurprisingly Les Hinton, CEO of Dow Jones and part of the Murdoch empire, launched an impassioned attack on free content and Google yesterday as part of his speech to the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) conference.

Hinton criticised the promise of the internet (‘the false gospel of the web’) and while describing Google as an everyday wonder, said the search engine is at the heart of the crisis faced by newspapers:

“We were promised that eyeballs meant advertising, clicks meant cash. Free costs too much. News is a business and we should not be afraid to say it,” said Hinton.

“These digital visionaries tell people like me that we just don’t understand them. They talk about the wonders of the interconnected world, about the democratization of journalism. The news, they say, is viral now – that we should be grateful. Well, I think all of us need to beware of geeks bearing gifts.Here we are in 2009 – more viral, less profitable.”

Hinton was previously responsible for News International’s newspapers including the Sunday Times, which will introduce charging online next year. He said the industry itself was ‘the principal architect of its greatest difficulty’ for surrendering its content to aggregators and search engines for free – sentiments echoing Murdoch in Beijing only months ago.

Speech reproduced courtesy of WAN and Scribd.

All coverage of #WANIndia2009 from Journalism.co.uk can be found at this link.

Channel 4 News: @robertandrews and @ciaranj debate News International, Bing and Google

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Further to yesterday’s news from the Financial Times that Microsoft is considering paying for news content to appear on its search engine Bing (in a ‘web pact’ with News International), Channel 4 News last night debated the potential impact this could have on the market.

Krishnan Guru-Murphy discussed with paidContent:UK editor, Robert Andrews, and head of social media at global media agency Mindshare, Ciarán Norris.

NMA: Times pay wall from next spring?

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NMA has more details on News International’s pay wall plans – Times Online is reportedly set to introduce the system in Q1 next year, while dates for The Sun and News of the World are undecided.

The Times website will also have a redesign next year as part of the changes.

“A source close to News International said because users will be charged to access the title, the site won’t focus on generating page impressions. It will be overhauled with a focus on a rich user experience, with content easier to find, and building greater user interaction. It’s also planning to run more live debates across the site, such as a recent discussion about the BNP,” writes NMA.

Full post at this link…

What’s Murdoch’s ‘cool new toy’ for accessing media content?

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Australian media is busy speculating over Rupert Murdoch’s new idea for content access.

Margaret Simons of the Content Makers, reports how Caroline Overington, senior writer and columnist with The Australian (part of Murdoch’s News Limited) let slip that Rupert Murdoch’s pay wall plans might include a ‘cool new toy’ for accessing media content.

Simons reports from the Media140 conference:

“Overington said that News Limited had many wonderful plans of which they were very proud, and they could not be unveiled yet, but she believed they would lead people to pay for content.

“Then in the closing stages of the session, she referred to iTunes, and how people had turned to paying for music that they could get elsewhere for free because of the entry of a ‘cool new toy’ in the iPhone.

“She added: ‘That’s kind of what we are thinking about.’

“So what is it, I wonder? Some kind of deal with Apple, soon to release its new electronic reader? A competing product? Very intriguing.”

An update, pointing to coverage of the Apple Tablet negotiations, with more speculation on the ‘iRupert’ at this link.

And Overington at Media140 courtesy of SlowTV.