Tag Archives: Rupert Murdoch

NUJ jobs crisis summit round-up – ‘Murdoch and Dacre have brought us into disrepute’

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Saturday saw around 150 gathered for the National Union of Journalists’ (NUJ) job crisis summit, part of a union-wide campaign against job cuts and pay freezes in the industry.

Speaking at the summit, Flat Earth News author and journalist Nick Davies called upon journalists to be ‘whistleblowers on our own newsrooms’:

“We need to tell the public the impact of the job cuts on newsgathering,” he said in a report on the NUJ website.

“The public must know that the corporations have taken over the newsrooms and ransacked them for profit and that is why readers have lost trust in us.

“We need to improve the status of journalists. We are not trusted; we are not liked, because we are misperceived. The best known people in journalism are people like Rupert Murdoch and Paul Dacre, who have brought us into disrepute.”

Exposing flaws in managements’ running of newsrooms and putting state aid into the hands of journalists and not corporations would help provide a practical solution to a financial problem, he added.

The union will launch a campaign of lobbying MPs and local authorities, protests and possible industrial action, legal challenges to staff cuts and workplace issues, and a public debate of the situation.

The meeting called on the NUJ’s general secretary, Jeremy Dear, to meet with employers on a national level, and speak with ministers about media ownership regulation:

“This meeting believes the economic model practised by media employers over recent years – a sub-prime media market – is dead. It is scoops, quality editorial content, strong images and an engaged readership which will see media survive and flourish not retrenchment and soaring executive pay,” a motion ruled by the meeting said.

“This meeting further believes that light touch media regulation and the weakening of media ownership laws has led to an unhealthy consolidation of media ownership.

“Many media owners continue to show they have no coherent strategy that can secure a viable future for media in print, broadcast or online.”

Also discussed: chapels must include freelancers, casuals and contributors in activity and agreements surrounding cutbacks.

The summit also acknowledged the wider global crisis in the industry and pledged to work with both other UK industry unions, such as BECTU and UNITE, and international representatives.

Globeandmail.com: ‘Tempest in a book review’: Black and Wolff’s online run-in

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“As literary feuds go, this one is Grade A,” writes Patricia Best in the Globe and Mail.

She takes a look at the controversial review of Michael Wolff’s biography of Rupert Murdoch – by Conrad Black.

Wolff, in response via a blog post, isn’t impressed by ‘this new sort of web journalism’. He sees it as ‘dramatically discredited people reinvented as web opinionists’.

Journalism.co.uk’s top 10… journo-lists

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It’s the time of year again for reviews of 2008, top tens, gift guides and all the rest.

Not another list post, I hear you cry. Would we do that to you, us, Journalism.co.uk?

Well, yes, we would.

For your listing pleasure here’s our 10 of the best of the journo-related variety:

  1. 1. Regret the Error’s ‘The Year in Media Errors and Corrections’ – as the title suggests.
  2. 2. Google’s Zeitgeist 2008 – the most commonly searched for and ‘fastest rising’ words and phrases of the year.
  3. 3. 10,000 Words blog’s top 10 posts of the year – and the stories behind them. (This list even includes other list posts, so we’re getting into the spirit now)
  4. 4. I Want Media’s Media Person of the Year 2008 – Ariana Huffington beats off competition from Rupert Murdoch and Eric Schmidt of Google.
  5. 5. Journalisted – okay, so it doesn’t include web journos rather mainly UK print writers, but the journalists listed in this searchable directory is growing.
  6. 6. Another one from 10,000 Words – ’30 must have gifts for journalists’ in true festive, gift guide style.
  7. 7. The leaked BNP member’s list – not a list we’d choose to republish, but it certainly sent our blog traffic into overdrive and raised some questions about reporting data leaks.
  8. 8. The Committee to Protect Journalists’ index of imprisoned journalists (CPJ) – another sobering entry, but this year’s list from the CPJ found more online journalists were imprisoned as of December 1 than those working in other media.
  9. 9. Top Twitterers – not just journalists, but a lovely superficial list and good to see @stephenfry in 16th with only 155 days under his belt at time of writing.
  10. 10. This post.

This isn’t the definitive list it could be – online lists can grow – so feel free to add others/plug your own.

UPDATE – some new additions to the pile:

Editor&Publisher (via AP): Murdoch tells ‘cynics’ that newspapers will survive

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It’s widely reported, but worth flagging up for those who haven’t seen coverage. AP reports: Rupert Murdoch has said that doomsayers ‘who are predicting the internet will kill off newspapers are ‘misguided cynics’ who fail to grasp that the online world is potentially a huge new market of information-hungry consumers.’

Reuters: Murdoch’s online operation to miss ambitious targets

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The stressed state of the US economy is causing advertising budgets to shrink – causing News Corp to miss its ambitious online revenue target of one billion dollars by ten per cent, Rupert Murdoch said yesterday.

Reuters reported that the media tycoon claimed Fox Interactive Media – which runs the online part of his US empire, including MySpace – will however have “well over” $1 billion in revenue in the 2009 financial year.

WSJ.com to open up some premium content

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The WSJ.com is removing the paywall to some of its premium paid-for editorials, commentary and opinion pieces.

The OpinionJournal site, which used to offer for free certain cherry-picked editorials and new web-only content, will now be ‘offering all of our editorials and op-eds, video interviews and commentary’.

According to the Guardian, the move could be a precursor to new owner Rupert Murdoch scrapping the subscription funding model that currently exists as it plans to launch a new free access website for all its editorials, op-ed pieces, video interviews and commentary.

@BtPW: 120,000 contributions and 3 million views of single Madeleine McCann story thread

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Danny Dagan, head of online communities with News Group, told the Beyond the Printed Word conference that a single discussion thread about Madeleine McCann overseen by his moderation team has taken over 120,000 contributions and been viewed over three million times.

Attesting to the success of News Group’s reader community areas, Dagan – whose team of seven moderators and one manager oversee the communities for Sun Online, thelondonpaper and the News of the World – told delegates that he had developed a 152-page moderation policy book that his team is tested on every three months (bonuses depend on knowledge of it, he added.)

The policy is to assure the smooth running of the reader discussion area and to lessen the threat of legal action from rouge posts and when discussions turn ugly.

As an example, Dagan said that when the tide of opinion turned against the McCanns his team were removing up to 500 comments a day.

The policy book was developed, he said, from the responses News Group’s team of lawyers to 100 ‘borderline’ pieces of user-generated content (UGC) submitted to its newspaper sites.

Industry norms, he added, of having to remove a piece of unsuitable content within 24 weekday hours were massively surpassed.

He told delegates that his team was committed to removing unsuitable content within 15 minutes. Although, he added, the average time between complaint and removal was two to three minutes.

He added that moderation was made for both inappropriate content and from an editorial perspective, also for ‘brand protection’ (which basically means if the Sun, the moderators or Rupert Murdoch get slagged off too much).

So heavy traffic and a fabulous number of users of MySun then Danny? Oh yes, but he remained steadfastly tight-lipped on just how many people had signed up.