Tag Archives: Regional newspapers

Delayed Kindle edition for Herald set to launch soon

The Herald in Glasgow is expecting to launch an edition for the Amazon Kindle within the next few weeks, following a disagreement with Amazon about delays in the approval process.

The publisher says on its site:

We will be launching a Kindle edition of The Herald soon and are currently going through the approval process with Amazon.

You may have seen our previous notice on this page where we said that Amazon had told us they were putting on hold the launch of any further newspaper publications on the Kindle. We’re delighted to say though that they have now agreed to get The Herald edition up and running as soon as they can.

The Herald previously said that Amazon had stopped approving newspapers for the Kindle – but this claim was denied in a statement to PaidContent:

We are not always able to immediately launch every publisher who contacts us using our more heavyweight integration method. For publishers that want to add their newspaper onto Kindle in self-service fashion, they can also do so via the Amazon Appstore for Android.

Grey Cardigan: Notes from a regional newspaper focus group

Press Gazette’s Grey Cardigan shares a sorry tale from his regional newspaper’s focus group – held in a Travelodge conference room. The off-the-wall complaints leave him pretty irate, but it’s the ‘normal’ who leaves him quietly crying into his cup of warm white wine. Full post at this link…

Dan Mason: The ‘pathetic tirade’ over council newspapers

An alternative perspective on the council publication debate from Dan Mason, a former managing editor for 12 London weeklies. He is fed up with the ‘pathetic tirade’ over local council publications, and argues that time should be spent talking, rather than warring.

(…) “[T]he fact is, if we’d [regional newspapers] done our job right and maintained a constructive, consistent, high-level relationship with council chiefs in years gone by, Cllr LGA chairman Margaret Eaton wouldn’t have been in a position to make this astonishing remark to the OFT: ‘The local media cannot provide the same amount of information about how to access services as a dedicated council publication can.'”

Full post at this link…

Henry Porter: ‘The crisis in local news is not just about the business model’

Henry Porter used his own regional newspaper experience in his piece in the Observer yesterday, to mourn the death of local newspapers. He concludes:

(…)”The crisis in local news is not just about ‘the business model’, a phrase I am coming to loathe. It is about the fabric of a society and the careers that grew out of local journalism and have made so many contributions both to journalism and national life.

“This is something that new companies such as Google, with all their wealth and lack of obligation to anything beyond their own exhilarated sense of entitlement, will never understand. Why would they when they can sell advertising around journalism that has been provided for free by increasingly desperate newspapers?”

Full article at this link…

7pm GMT @Frontline Club: ‘Is it too late for local papers?’

Journalism.co.uk is off to the Frontline Club tonight – in person, and everything. Tweet @journalismnews with questions for the panel which consists of:

Roy Greenslade, Commentator and Columnist, Jon Slattery, Freelance journalist, William Yarker, Director in Deloitte’s Media Consulting Practice and others.

“What is the importance of local newspapers and how bad is the crisis? Following in the footsteps of GMG and The Manchester Evening news, the Daily Mail group cut 1000 jobs from their regional arm this week. Could regional news soon be a thing of the past or can the industry find ways to survive?”

Update 15/04/09: final video and news items from Journalism.co.uk below:

Independent.co.uk: Does it matter that UK regional papers are in crisis?

A big question indeed from the Independent’s Ian Burrell. He takes a look at issues affecting the performance of UK regional press and presents the ‘for’ and ‘against’ views on whether the ‘crisis’ matters.

Have regionals ‘had their day’? “Not at all,” the article says, at one point. “An impressive 82 per cent of UK adults read local newspapers, a level of penetration matched by no other medium except television.”

Full story at this link…

Are the new police crime maps any use for UK journalists? Some doubts raised

Yesterday saw the launch of police crime maps in the UK. The Guardian reported:

“Crime maps detailing the number of offences committed in every neighbourhood have been published online by all 43 police forces in England and Wales, the Home Office said today.

“The colour-coded maps show the levels of burglary, car crime, robbery and other offences, and include charts showing whether crime is rising or falling.”

The maps were announced in July 2008, and had already provoked some discussion amongst journalists. This J.co.uk Editors’ Blog post all the way back in January 2008 looked at some existing regional newspaper mapping projects, including an LA Times homicide map and a murder map from the Manchester Evening News.

So are the new UK police maps all that new or useful for journalists? The Croydon Advertiser’s news editor, Jo Wadsworth, had this to say. She told Journalism.co.uk that they have had the maps in London for some months now.

“To be honest, my opinion of them hasn’t changed that much,” she said.

“The types of crime they cover are fairly restrictive, so they don’t give a particularly accurate reflection of true crime statistics in any one area. For instance, they don’t include sexual assaults, which would certainly be one type of crime I personally would be very interested in learning what the rates are in my local area.

“In terms of influencing and aiding local reporting, the Advertiser has run stories based on them, but they haven’t been that different to the standard crime figures stories which are a staple of local reporting, except in allowing us to drill down further than ward level,” she said.

“And I find it’s best to be wary of these types of stories in any case. For one thing, the police are well known for hailing any rises in crime as testament to their success in persuading people to report crime. And in terms of the micro-levels the maps drill down to, rises and falls are going to be fairly meaningless in any case.”

But, she added, ‘it’s good that the police are embracing this kind of technology, and transparency’.

“And hopefully in time it will be expanded to include more crimes – and more details for individual crimes,” she said.

Add your own thoughts below…

Baldy blogger’s posts published in charity book

Adrian Sudbury, the journalist-turned-blogger who sadly passed away this week, is to have his blog posts published in a book for charity.

Adrian, who chronicled his battle against leukaemia on Baldy’s Blog, set-up a campaign to make education about bone marrow donation compulsory in UK schools and colleges.

The volume will feature posts from the blog and a selection of comments from its readers, as well as photos of Adrian and a foreword by Gordon Brown, whom Adrian met as part of his campaign.

All proceeds from Baldy’s Book will go to leukaemia charity The Anthony Nolan Trust.

Star-Ledger launches video newscast – ‘This is not local TV news’

The Star-Ledger, based in Newark, New Jersey, debuted its new daily online news show yesterday – the first stage in creating an interactive video news experience on the paper’s website.

“Let’s make one thing perfectly clear from the outset: This is not local TV news,” says John Hassell, the Ledger’s deputy managing editor (online), in a blog post.

“This is local video news for the web. It’ll be conversational, interactive and draw constantly on the community of users at NJ.com [the paper’s website] and bloggers, vloggers and podcasters across New Jersey.”

Presented by news reporter Brian Donohue, the newscast will be broadcast live and later made available to embed and divided into sections by news item.

The final test version of Ledger Live is below (and yes, the phone will be unplugged next time):

In developing the newscast, the paper participated in a video ‘boot camp’ lead by Michael Rosenblum and opened up discussion on video blogging site Seesmic.