According to a FleetStreetBlues source, the Sunday Times’ recent advertisement for a news reporter for its forthcoming website received more than 1,200 applicants.
“We hope it won’t discourage the Times- uniquely among the nationals – from continuing to advertise its jobs. It probably will. Who wants to sort through a small forest of CVs?” asks FSB.
Yesterday, the Sunday Times reported that a ‘consortium of Scottish businessmen is trying to buy The Scotsman newspaper from the debt-laden Johnston Press’. It claimed:
“Martin Gilbert, the chief executive of Aberdeen Asset Management, has joined forces with Edinburgh financier Ben Thomson and property developer Mark Shaw to acquire the daily.
“Talks have taken place in recent weeks but the two sides are believed to be a long way apart on price. Industry sources say Johnston is holding out for about £40m for The Scotsman, which it bought from the Barclay brothers for £160m in 2005.
(…)
“Sources close to Johnston confirmed an informal approach for the division, which includes Scotland on Sunday and the Edinburgh Evening News, but said there were no plans for a formal sale.”
Also of note is the claim that JP is in discussions with Newsquest, publisher of rival The Herald, ‘about a joint venture to pool resources. Previous attempts to merge the titles were blocked by politicians’.
AllMediaScotland links to the claims here and Shaun Milne comments here.
Like allmediascotland, Journalism.co.uk has received this statement from Johnston Press:
“Johnston Press notes the press speculation regarding the potential disposal of the Scotsman.
“Whilst Company policy is not to comment on such speculation, Johnston Press can confirm that the board does not have any disposal process underway in this regard.”
The Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) has today brought out its revised figures for national newspaper circulation in the UK, reducing the headline circulations of titles including the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and Financial Times in the light of an investigation into ‘bulk copies’ distributed by Dawson Media Direct, for the London Evening Standard, Mail on Sunday and Sunday Telegraph.
The UK newspaper circulation body revised the figures because audit trails for ‘bulks’ did not comply with ABC rules.
A brief summary of today’s ABC results:
A more in-depth analysis of these results is available on Guardian.co.uk.
Liz Jones, a confessional journalist who needs little introduction, got to plug her book and share the most recent of her woes and pets in an Observer Woman feature yesterday.
Rachel Cooke, who once worked with her, took a shrewd and not exactly flattering look at Jones and the ‘Faustian pact’ the former Marie Claire editor seems to have with her personal columns (eg. an account of her single life in the Sunday Times, the ‘Wedding Planner’ series in the Guardian, and currently in the Sunday Mail.)
Confessional journalism as a trade has generated some criticism lately (Hadley Freeman here, for example; Jill Parkin here, for example); here was our latest chance to find out just why columnists do it. Cooke wrote:
“(…)The trouble is that the kind of writing she does leaves her marooned on a sad little island of self from which there is, apparently, no way back to shore. “I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone,” she [Jones] says. Well, why not stop, then? No one is forcing her to skin herself in public. “I could stop now, but I’ve destroyed lots of things already, so what would be the point? But if I was given the choice again, I probably wouldn’t have written about myself. It’s so difficult!” Difficult? “You have to be very brutal: you have to talk about your failings.”(…)”
In a related aside, that other doyenne of confess all to all, Tanya Gold, took part in BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions last week. Her final comment: “I despise Twitter – I would like to talk to a real person.” Funny that. Maybe the bride berated by Gold for compiling a wedding list might have liked to receive criticism in person too, rather than via Guardian.co.uk.
What do you think of female-orientated journalism in the UK? Are sections like Observer Woman and Femail necessary or relevant in 2009? Where are the best places to find representative portrayals of female subject matter? The best blogs? Or is there even such a thing as ‘female subject matter’? Journalism.co.uk is pulling together some thoughts for a forthcoming feature. Please do get in touch with yours.
Interesting poll currently running (well, at 2:54pm on July 24 at least) on Times Online asking if and how much listeners would be willing to pay to listen to its podcast The Bugle.
Of course this means nothing more than the podcast’s producer’s curiosity over whether its audience would be willing to pay. So far, 41 per cent of respondents have suggested they would pay something; though 59 per cent say they wouldn’t cough up at all.
It’s also quite refreshing to see a newspaper site ask its users outright – whether this means there are any plans to charge or not.
According to a Bloomberg report today, Jonathan Miller, chief digital officer with News Corp, whose News International arm owns the Times, has suggested the group could start charging for news and entertainment online.
Back in June, MediaGuardian reports suggested the Times’ sister title, the Sunday Times, was considering setting up a paid-for standalone webiste.
The Times and Sunday Times were jointly ranked highest out of UK newspaper brands in this year’s Superbrands report, which looks at media ‘brand recognition’.
AT 131st, however, the papers were beaten into submission by BBC (5) and Sky (60). Google came 2nd to Microsoft in the report, which polls more than 2,000 adults.
Graduates jobs have plummeted by 24.9 per cent, and of the jobs that were available 25 per cent received between 1,001 and 2,500 applications, according to a survey released by the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) this week.
Nearly half of employers received more than 50 applications for every graduate job, and the fiercest competition was in banking or financial services, investment banking, retail, engineering and the industrial sector.
The number of jobs cut was far worse than anticipated by recruiters, who had predicted just a 5.4 per cent drop in a February survey by the AGR.
More employers than ever are insisting on online-only applications this year (81 per cent) and the competition seems to have brought out the best in many graduates – 40 per cent of employers reported an improvement in the quality of applications.
According to the AGR, graduate recruitment in the media industry was not covered by the survey, because it is too small.
Indeed in April we reported that the Press Association had cancelled its graduate training scheme for the year.
The Telegraph Media Group and the Guardian have both suspended their training schemes for 2009 too.
Last year Trinity Mirror, once one of biggest recruiters of trainee journalists, imposed a recruitment freeze and suspended its training scheme for its national Mirror Group titles.
Other national titles are taking on smaller numbers of trainees, including the Daily Mail, the Times, the Sunday Times and the Sun.
The BBC is still running its annual journalism training scheme which launched in 2007.
But it would be interesting to compare the application rates to journalism graduate schemes with other sectors.
Particularly in light of the fact that applications to journalism degree courses were up 24 per cent this year, UCAS data released in February suggested, despite a scarcity of media jobs and experienced, out-of-work journalists are ramping up the competition.
What kind of response to entry-level/graduate jobs are you getting?
Yesterday afternoon in a powerful Guardian exclusive, investigative journalist Nick Davies reported that the Murdoch News Group papers paid £1m to ‘gag’ phone-hacking victims.
Rupert Murdoch, who owns News Group, recently argued he had little influence on his publications’ editorial content; it would be interesting to see how his other UK papers would treat the story about their sister title today.
Let’s see how each of the UK news websites is running the story [as around 9.30 – 10 am]. [News organisations owned by Murdoch are labelled (M).]
Note: Observations correct at time of writing; subject to updates.
The Murdoch empire (source: BBC website / News Corp)
NEWS CORP BUSINESSES
Australasia:
Daily Telegraph
Fiji Times
Gold Coast Bulletin
Herald Sun
Newsphotos
Newspix
Newstext
NT News
Post-Courier
Sunday Herald Sun
Sunday Mail
Sunday Tasmanian
Sunday Territorian
Sunday Times
The Advertiser
The Australian
The Courier-Mail
The Mercury
The Sunday Mail
The Sunday Telegraph
Weekly Times
The Tom Walker Trust has a great opportunity to journalism students looking to break into foreign affairs.
The Trust, which was founded in honour of the former Times journalist, is offering a £1,000 prize and four weeks of work experience on the Sunday Times’ foreign desk as part of a new award.
Entrants are asked to submit their idea for a foreign news story for the chance to work with a senior correspondent and complete their assignment.
The deadline is July 1 and the winner will be announced later in the month.
To enter, please send an email to Val.Harper [at] sunday-times.co.uk and attach your CV with your entry.
(via University of Sunderland’s Journalism and Public Relations blog)
An apt subject, given newspaper editors’ current preoccupation with where and how our MPs are living in London. Press Gazette’s Peter Kirwan notes that he is increasingly convinced that a national newspaper editor has moved into his street, in an ‘untidy’ corner of the city.
Kirwan takes a look at other journalists’ choice of location:
“When he edited the Sunday Times, Andrew Neil lived in snooty Onslow Gardens off the Fulham Road. Today, Simon Kelner of the Independent scrapes by in Belgravia. As everyone knows, Polly Toynbee occupies a small castle next to Clapham Common (when she’s not living in Italy).
“Not so The Editor.”
‘Most of the editorial executives who run the nationals could do with a blast of Real Life,’ Kirwan comments; he reckons his street might give ‘The Editor’ just that.