Tag Archives: uk

Good news for media journalists – clearer Ofcom reports

Campbell Cowie, director of policy development for Ofcom, admitted today that even he doesn’t always understand Ofcom policy documents and joked that a limit to the number of acronyms allowed should be introduced.

Speaking at the Westminster Media Forum event on the UK government’s ‘Digital Britain’ plans:

“We need to think about the way we write our reports. We need to understand that we are writing for a much broader audience when we are consulting and writing about policy.

“When we bring people from the value chain together the kind of conversations you have are very different. I think we need to be very conscious of that when we are developing policy.”

Almost there Campbell – if you hadn’t used the phrase ‘value chain’ we’d have given you extra marks. Good news for those journalists lumbered with reading report after Ofcom policy report.

NUJ Release – New Statesman doesn’t recognise union

The National Union of Journalists reports that the New Statesman is refusing to enter negotiations with the union:

“The union wrote to the company in May last year asking for a voluntary recognition agreement to cover pay and working conditions.

“But journalists on the magazine – who are almost all NUJ members – have been told by their boss that the company won’t play ball.”

Full release…

Manchester Evening News mojo captures Ronaldo crash

The Manchester Evening News‘ decision to equip some journalists with Nokia N95 handsets has started to bear fruit, as mojo (mobile journalist) Nicola Dowling captured Manchester United footballer Cristiano Ronaldo’s recent fender bender.

Dowling’s mobile pics from the scene were supplemented with some video footage, which shows just how high quality the N95 cameras are:

According to a report on HoldtheFrontPage, Dowling’s footage and images were picked up by the Sun, BBC and Sky News.

MediaGuardian: Government could relax local media ownership rules

As part of his Digital Britain report to be released later this month, Lord Carter, minister for communications, technology and broadcasting, is expected to recommend relaxing ownership regulations in local media to aid struggling newspaper publishers.

Breaking news of the UK Earthquake online and off

News of an earthquake that struck the UK in the early hours of Wednesday morning caused a surge in traffic to Sky.com/news with more page impressions recorded on the site at 1am than 9am, the site’s executive producer Julian March writes on the Editors’ Blog.

A similar effect was experienced by the Nottingham Evening Post’s site, HoldtheFrontPage reports, after it posted news of the quake within 30 minutes.

The site saw 1,821 readers visit between 1am and 2am – increasing this to 6,000 by 9am, 20,000 page views and 60 comments on the story – though it’s a shame they appear to have only opened this feature from 6am.

Both great examples of why it’s crucial to break news online – whether a local or national title – and get ‘ownership’ of the story to keep drawing those viewers back.

The BBC’s online and radio coverage was hot on the heels of the incident, though the video below – courtesy of student journalism blogger Dave Lee – suggests their TV news had to play catch up.

(I like the idea of competitive news watching between channels)

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foD0YXHIknQ]

Sky News claims 58 per cent traffic increase from last year

Sky News has claimed it recorded a 58% increase of traffic in July, from last year’s 3 million monthly unique users to 4.8 million this year, as a result of people looking at its reporting of the UK’s floods.

Sky claimed that features, such as an interactive map, gave key regional information on the flooded areas. Sky News’ web visitors also sent in more than a thousand flood pictures for its online galleries helping – says Sky – to build up a detailed, interactive picture of the unfolding news event.

According to the Murdoch owned site the amount of time users spent on the site increased by 15%. In total there were 16.5 million visits to the site last month, up 85% from 8.9 million visits recorded in July 2006.

On Monday 23 July the site claims to have received 7.5 million page impressions; the highest figures since the 7/7 London Bombings two years ago – still the site’s highest figures with 35 million page impressions (126.6 million for July 2005).

The Sky.com portal is ABCe audited, however, the figures are not broken down to give specific results for its news portal.