Following announcement of its closure earlier this month, Press Gazette has been bought by Progressive Media.
Former owner Wilmington said it will collaborate with Progressive on the British Press Awards.
We bid farewell to our fellow media reporters at Press Gazette, unless, as Roy Greenslade hopes, a buyer comes forward (again).
We haven’t produced our own coverage, as there has been more than plenty – with insider perspective – elsewhere. We would, however, like to wish the editorial team at Press Gazette the very best of luck in the future with whatever they go onto do. We’ve enjoyed meeting Press Gazette team – past and present – at events, and being kept on our toes when we’re covering the same stories.
Here’s a round-up of the coverage in links:
Please do add any others of note in the comments below.
Newly added:
Statement from Wilmington, publishers of Press Gazette:
“Unfortunately Press Gazette, along with much of the profession, has suffered from a declining market during these years and its losses have increased. We have therefore been forced to conclude that the market required to sustain a commercially viable Press Gazette magazine no longer exists. The last hard copy edition of Press Gazette will therefore be the May edition which will be published in April.”
Update: Over at MediaGuardian Roy Greenslade reports that there will be no future news content on the site:
“There will be no journalism on the site,” said Les Kelly, the managing director of Wilmington’s media and entertainment division.
He added: “There will not be news coverage but we will develop the site to offer other services, such as training and freelance referrals.”
A day that saw plenty of job cut announcements. Here’s the roundup for this evening and Journalism.co.uk will update tomorrow.
“The publisher has today entered into a consultation period with staff and said it envisaged 59 editorial jobs would be cut. It said it was committed to voluntary redundancies where possible.
“The bulk of the job losses will come in Liverpool, where the 175-strong editorial team will be cut to 132 and the Liverpool Daily Post will scrap its Saturday edition.”
“It is understood the cuts represent a 13-14 per cent saving to the editorial budget and will be brought into effect by Christmas at the latest,” reports MediaGuardian.
Press Gazette last night presented its 2008 Magazine Design and Journalism Awards. Here’s a run-down of the winners from last night’s ceremony:
Young Designer of the Year: Dominic Bell, Wallpaper
Best Designed Magazine of the Year – Consumer (Over 40k): Meirion Pritchard, Wallpaper
Best Designed Magazine of the Year: Meirion Pritchard, Wallpaper
Best Designed Features Spread: Grant Bowden, Ritz
Best Use of Typography: Grant Bowden, Ritz
Best New Design/Redesign: Marissa Bourke, Elle
Best Designed Front Cover: Marissa Bourke, Elle
Best Use of Illustration: Tan Parmar, Contact
Best Use of Photography: Dan Delaney, Onelife
Reviewer of the year: Andrew Billen, The London Magazine
Digital Journalist of the Year: Paul Grant, Accountancy Age
Business Reporter of the Year: Stuart MacDonald, Building
Exclusive of the year: Jonathan Green, Live
Feature Writer of the Year: Ariel Leve, The Sunday Times Magazine
Magazine Designer of the Year: Jonathan Gregory, Dirt Magazine
Editor of the Year: David Burton, Camouflage
Best-Designed B2B magazine: Dean Dorat, Contagious
Interviewer of the Year: Lesley White, The Sunday Times Magazine
Best-Designed Customer magazine: Dan Delaney, Onelife
Columnist of the Year: Michael Hodges, Time Out
Production Team of the Year: Esquire
Best Designed Magazine of the Year Consumer (Under 40k): Paul Willoughby & Rob Longworth, Little White Lies
News Reporter of the Year: Sally Gainsbury, Health Service Journal
We just heard news that Ian Davies, director of business development at Archant, has died in a plane crash – as reported at the BBC, Press Gazette and in his group’s newspaper, the Norwich Evening News.
Journalism.co.uk is extremely sad to hear of this tragic accident.
On a personal note, I met Ian and some his colleagues for the first time, at the WAN conference in Amsterdam last fortnight.
Despite cornering him after a long conference session to badger him for information about Archant’s hyperlocal news plans, he was only too friendly towards me, happy to help and give suggestions for stories.
I later had opportunity to chat with him more informally and find a bit more out about his views on the media and what he does. He assured me he would always be willing to contribute to related articles.
True to his word, last week he was quick to contribute to an article I was working on at the last minute. I’m very saddened by the premature end to his life.
In an email he told me he was looking forward to working more flexibly at Archant from January, so that he could fit in more time for his passion, flying. His website shows some of his interests. That his life was cut so short, when he had so much enthusiasm for his projects, seems a particularly cruel hand of fate.
Our condolences go out to Ian’s family, friends and colleagues.
Rounding off last night’s discussion panel hosted by New Media Knowledge on the future of the newspaper industry, panelists were asked what or who they would put their money on for success and survival over the next few years.
Martin Stabe, media blogger, former new media editor of Press Gazette and online editor of Retail Week, plumped for niche and expert content:
“I would bet on anyone who can create unique, high quality content. I’d bet on the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal – those corners of more generalist publications that become more expert,” he said.
Newspapers need to have ‘the ability to compete with all the freely produced expert content that is sometimes better than what is produced by the professionals’, he added.
Neil McIntosh, head of editorial development at Guardian.co.uk, agreed that niche coverage could help newspapers compete with the blogosphere.
“In areas where blogs are working really well, mainstream media has two options: to raise its game and start covering those niches better; or it can get out and as Jeff Jarvis says, ‘do what you do best, and link to the rest’,” said McIntosh
“Those are two areas where mainstream media can move forward but it’s about acknowledging that this world exists.”
Assistant editor at Telegraph Media Group, Justin Williams said trusted brands and content areas such as finance, politics and certain sports are best placed to survive.
“Brands that are trusted and valued no matter how they are produced, those brands will still be here in 10 years time. You’re looking at areas like finance, politics, certain kinds of sport, where we still thrive. During the financial crisis most of us have turned to established news outlets,” said Williams.
“We’re positioned in those markets already, if we can hone in on what’s important to our readers and deliver it in a smart way, then we [newspapers] can be here in 10 years time.”
This week saw the launch of a hyperlocal news map for the Liverpool Echo, as announced by Sly Bailey at the AOP Digital Publishing Summit (follow link for report in MediaGuardian).
It geotags news content so each user can search for news by postcode.
Nothing new there, web-savvy newshounds might think, but actually it is:
Though Archant announced plans for geotagged sites last October (it started with Jobs24 – a winner at yesterday’s NS ADM Awards – and Homes24 and has plans to roll out geotagged news content in 2008) to date we’re still waiting for the official launch of geotagged news.
Yesterday we reported that American site outside.in will be launching in the UK, which will link news with local areas (as localised as users specify). Outside.in thinks its opportunity has come about as a result of:
“The demand for personalized information on the web, and the failure of the newspaper industry to capitalize on featuring hyperlocal content” (Nina Grigoriev, outside.in)
Journalism.co.uk thought it was time for a bit of a run-down on the development of geotagging in the UK.
First, what is it?
Journalists record the locations referred to in each story and add their postcodes as metadata when uploading their copy to the web.
In that way, geotagged content allows users to prioritise the news they see online according to postcodes.
Where are we at in the UK?
The Liverpool Echo is the first site (of the large publishing groups) to do so in the UK. Although other sites have incorporated mapping into their sites, no other places has successfully incorporated news content as well.
The BBC plans to invest £68 million across its network of local sites, which will be decided upon by the BBC Trust in February 2009. Online Journalism Blog reported a sneak preview in January 2008, though the BBC have since asked us not to refer to the sites as ‘hyperlocal’.
Critics such as Trinity Mirror’s CEO, Sly Bailey, have voiced concerns over the BBC’s local video proposals, saying they will provide ‘unfair competition’ for the regional media.
Northcliffe is also developing geotagged content on its revamped thisis sites, and told Press Gazette in June the process has been difficult: “Because not all stories affect only one specific point, the company is finding geocoding challenging,” Hardie said.
According to the article: “The localisation functions will remain hidden until journalists have built up enough stories with postcode data.”
Back in July 2007 we saw reports of Sky geotagging its news, but it hasn’t developed at the same speed or as widely as in the US.
What’s happening in the US?
Everyblock is developing fast across the US. It’s a new experiment in journalism and data, offering feeds of local information and data for every city block in Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, DC, with more cities to come. Not in the UK yet, but watch this space.
Elsewhere, the Washington Post has used outside.in’s maps for their own site, while the New York Times’ Boston.com (the online Boston Globe) uses MetaCarta’s geographic search technology for maps.
So, what does this mean for UK based geotagging?
With the arrival of highly efficient US based sites such as outside.in (who said an UK based office is a possibility) maybe it’s time for Archant, Trinity Mirror and Northcliffe to get their skates on before it’s too late.
Please send us your examples of UK based geotagged content, from formal publications or otherwise, as we want to track it as it expands in the UK.
(Then we can make a geotagged feed and map of geotagging in journalism. Then our heads might explode)
Kristine Lowe asks, is there a business model in covering the media for the media?:
(Disclaimer: Kristine works part-time for the Norwegian journalism magazine and website Journalisten and has previously contributed to Press Gazette and NA24 Propaganda)
Recording the miserable state of our industry, and listening to experts predicting its imminent death, is a daily plight for media hacks in the western hemisphere.
Newspaper readership for one seems to be in perpetual decline, a fact often bemoaned by the media columnist.
However, a recent article in MediaGuardian by former Press Gazette editor Ian Reeves suggests that the UK’s journalism trade titles, such as the National Union of Journalists’ (NUJ) The Journalist magazine and Press Gazette, are faced with an audience of hacks, who have lost the appetite for news about their own.
“You’ll never make money out of journalists,” Reeves quotes Haymarket’s Michael Heseltine as saying.
Yet that is exactly what the Norwegian equivalent of The Journalist does.
Journalisten.no recorded £1.4 million in revenues in 2007, despite competition from Kampanje (Campaign) – a trade magazine that also covers PR and marketing; NA24 Propaganda – a dedicated media news site; and the media sections of national and regional newspapers.
Roughly £800,000 of this came from advertising and £300,000 from subscriptions, leaving the magazine and news site, which are published by The Norwegian Union of Journalists (NJ), with a post-tax profit of £104,000.
Hardly enough for the hardened business world, but more than enough to justify the existence and further expansion of a ‘local newspaper’ for the country’s journalists.
The news site had 11,000 unique Norwegian-based visitors last week, while the main benefactors of the bi-weekly magazine are around 10,000 union members, who receive it as part of their union membership.
Other than union members, the magazine does have about 1,000 subscribers in the corporate and NGO sector, but not much has been done to market it to a broader audience recently.
The key to Journalisten’s revenues has been capturing the job classifieds market for media jobs, which is easier said than done in a more fragmented market such as the UK. Another minor stream of revenue for Journalisten is a database of PR contacts.
But Journalisten is hardly an isolated example: US-based media site Mediabistro, which also earns money from freelance listings, membership fees and training, must have had a decent turnover to have made it a worthwhile acquisition for Jupiter Media.
Swedish Résumé, owned by Swedish media giant Bonnier, is another contender with 15,000 unique visitors per day online and 29,000 readers per week for its magazine.
These are just two examples which spring to mind here and now, does anybody have other suggestions?
In a letter to Press Gazette, the creator of magazine sharing website Mygazines has defended the venture against criticism from publishers and the PPA, who are concerned about copyright infringements on the site.
“John Smith” – the name under which the website is registered – has said he wants to work with the industry to find new revenue models for magazines.