Tag Archives: United Kingdom

Northcliffe’s operating profits drop 81 per cent

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Regional newspaper publisher Northcliffe posted an 81 per cent drop in operating profits in the six months up to March 29 2009, according to figures released today.

Operating profits for the group, which publishes the Bristol Evening Post and Hull Daily Mail, fell by £33 million to £3.2 million over the period. Advertising revenues also fell by 31 per cent to £103 million.

The publisher has reduced operating costs, however, by 11 per cent compared to the last period – including a reduction of its headcount by 500.

On the digital front, revenues were reportedly in line with the same period last year. Unique ‘visitors’ to the network of ‘thisis’ sites rose by 42 per cent year-on-year to 4.2 million.

Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT)

According to the figures, DMGT’s revenue fell by 7 per cent year-on-year – from £1,168 million to £1,085 million.

The group’s outlook:

“Within our UK local media operations, revenues continue to be stable which is encouraging, when combined with increasing cost reductions. Within our national consumer media operations, the positive impact will be felt of the cost reductions made to date and of the sale of the Evening Standard at the end of February. As a consequence, DMGT’s operating profits will be weighted more than last year towards the second half of the year.”

FT’s Gapper’s response to Guardian’s Emily Bell’s response to John Gapper’s ‘cut-and-pasting’ (or aggregating) comment

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John Gapper’s column on FT.com asks whether it is time for the Ochs-Sulzberger family to sell the New York Times. No, Gapper says: “They would be crazy to cap their run of poorly timed transactions by selling in the trough of the recession, amid mayhem in the industry.”

As part of the commentary he also makes this claim:

“Meanwhile, it [the New York Times] produces more original stories than most rivals put together. The UK’s Guardian is another paper that has built a global brand from what was a regional paper, but it relies more on cut-and-pasting (or aggregating) from others.”

Emily Bell, director of digital content at Guardian.co.uk responds in the comments: “It is a pity an interesting piece was spoiled by such a sloppy and inaccurate piece of reporting,” she says. We have reproduced an extract from her lengthy comment below (yes, cut and pasted):

“John, in your column you asset [sic] that the Guardian has grown its online audience primarily by aggregating and cutting and pasting other people’s stories. This is demonstrably not true. If you look at our site on any given day (www.guardian.co.uk), you will I am sure find stories which are either from a wire feed (rather as the FT uses) or which reporters have picked up from other sources, again as does the BBC, FT, Times , even sometime the hallowed NYT. But this is not the core of what we do and it is certainly not how we have grown our audience…”

“(…)We have built our traffic on a higher investment in original multimedia journalism than most if not all of our peers. We have an active policy NOT to routinely aggregate high-grossing showbusiness, celebrity or ‘weird’ stories from elsewhere, which is common practice among some newspaper websites.”

And Gapper quickly responds (Journalism.co.uk wonders what is happening to journalism: shouldn’t they be in the pub by now on a Friday evening?):

“In fact, I don’t assert that. What I wrote was:

“”Meanwhile, it [the NYT] produces more original stories than most rivals put together. The UK’s Guardian is another paper that has built a global brand from what was a regional paper, but it relies more on cut-and-pasting (or aggregating) from others.”

“So I am comparing the Guardian’s ratio with that of the NYT, not claiming that the Guardian contains more aggregated than original content. I do not believe the latter, and would not write it.”

BeatBlogging.Org: ‘UK news regulation stands in the way of newsroom convergence’

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I’ve provided a guest post for BeatBlogging.org, the US-based site that looks at how to use social networks and other web tools to improve beat reporting. Using examples from various Journalism.co.uk pieces, I argue that it is very difficult to look towards coverged newsroom, under the hybrid regulatory systems with which we operate as UK-based publishers. Thoughts welcomed.

Read it in full over at the site. Here’s an extract:

We talk about converging newsrooms of the future that transcend boundaries between online, print and broadcast, but at a very fundamental level that process is impossible in the United Kingdom.

Martin Belam, information architect for the Guardian, recently emphasized that point in an interview with Journalism.co.uk:

“In a converged media landscape, it seems odd that [BBC’s] Robert Peston’s blog is regulated by the BBC Trust, [Channel 4’s] Jon Snow’s blog is regulated by Ofcom, and [the Guardian’s] Roy Greenslade’s blog is regulated by the PCC.”

Now, Martin was actually wrong on the Jon Snow point: Ofcom does not regulate any television Web sites at all. That is to say, the brands which must adhere to a strict code for television content are completely unregulated online. Ofcom advises consumers to make complaints about online content to their Internet service provider.

The BBC Trust regulates the BBC online; the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) regulates newspapers, magazines and their online content.

And Stephen Fry, who – at the time of writing — is nearing half a million followers on Twitter? Or Guido Fawkes (aka Paul Staines) who has a loyal readership to rival most newspaper commentators? Well, they govern themselves – unless the law gets involved.

When the traditional media sectors go online, they’re regulated by their various bodies, and the ‘online-onlys’ only have the courts to worry about. Press publications have a less strict code than broadcasters, but online, broadcasters have more freedom than the press – though they don’t seem to be exercising it.

In a nutshell, a financial commentator from a newspaper has greater freedom than a financial commentator from a broadcaster, and an independent online-only financial commentator has the greatest freedom of all.

What happens when a bank crashes? Channel 4 and ITV can theoretically report how they like – online. The BBC must always answer to the BBC Trust. The newspapers must comply with the PCC code. Martin Lewis, of the MoneySaving Expert can, if he so chooses, be a law unto himself.

Same news and it’s all online but in very different guises. We might think people know the difference, but do they?

Full post at this link…

Country Life makes 100-year picture archive available online

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Country Life Magazine has launched a new online picture library featuring more than 100 years of images.

The selection of images includes architectural and garden photography; as well as interior design images from houses across the UK and Europe.

“Until now we’ve only been able to offer a limited service to researchers, but the new site allows unprecedented access to our unique record of British life over the years,” said Country Life picture library manager, Justin Hobson, in a release from publisher IPC Media.

The archive is fully searchable and new images will be added each week as pictures are scanned from past editions of the magazine.

It’s free to use, though registration is encouraged. Images can be ordered for a charge.

‘Breaking News’: a play by a company that’s not a company

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“Breaking News might be documentary theatre. It might be more technically absorbing than (strictly speaking) poetically engaging or playful. It might, in truth be a very long way from Aeschylus. But Aeschylus was an inventor, a radical maker, two and a half thousand years ago, of a new thing called drama. In all their work, and most ambitiously to date in Breaking News, Rimini Protokoll have created live spectacles that are similarly new for the media-orientated 21st century.” (James Woodall, Breaking News programme, 2009)

A friend recently went on holiday and emailed another of our friends an update: she had redefined the trip as ‘educational visit’ and now was enjoying it much better.

I undertook a similar exercise at the theatre at the weekend: once I’d redefined ‘Breaking News’ as two hours (without an interval) of informative, rather than necessarily entertaining, activity, I was much more settled in my seat at the Theatre Royal in Brighton last Saturday.

Rimini Protokoll is the German company (‘the sort of outfit that probably could come only from Germany’), except they don’t call themselves a ‘company’, which produces Breaking News, their latest ‘documentary’ theatre endeavour – visiting Brighton for its UK premiere.

“[G]enerally, they use neither actors nor published texts; and because they do not really consider themselves a company. So what is left? What are they? What do they make?”

Good question from theatre critic, James Woodall, in his introductory notes in the programme. On this occasion, Rimini Protokoll have brought together eight international ‘news people’, all based in Germany, onto one stage, to live-interpret the news from their variously angled satellite dishes. The ninth contributor is an exception: Ray, from Ship Street in Brighton. Perhaps they found him in the Cricketers.

The company improvises in a ‘arrangement of stage spontaneity’ – and this is the first time it has been done in English – their reactions to, and interpretations of, the news on various international news channels that they consume at their individual televisions, or computer (in the Icelander’s case). Intermittently, they take turns to ascend a podium to read extracts from Aeschylus’ The Persions.

breakingnews

So, what did I learn from my educational excursion to the theatre? These are some of the nuggets gleaned:

  • Iceland likes a giggle during its news: The Icelanders take the end of the news bulletin ‘lollypop’ very seriously: for Saturday’s performance, we caught an item on the success of the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra’s Maximus the Musical Mouse. It’s very important that ‘you don’t leave your news audience depressed’, explains Simon Birgisson, who was once an investigative journalist for the DV newspaper. I was also tickled by Iceland’s TV channel history: its first ever station, Sjónvarpið, translated directly as ‘television’. Its second was called 2.
  • Al Jazeera has its critics: Djengizkhan Hasso, a Kurdish interpreter, and president of the Executive Committee of the Kurdish National Congress, criticised the channel for its emotive use of language in some of its reports. He also added that it would be very difficult to perform a play like Breaking News in an Arab country. Hasso’s performance was particularly memorable for the role-play of the time he met George Bush. He told the other actors what they had to say, and they solemnly repeated it back, so the audience got each segment of the conversation twice.
  • What counts as a high ‘alarm’ story for press agencies is very subjective. Andreas Osterhaus, a news editor at Agence France Presse (AFP) in Berlin said he raised such an alarm on the day of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, but his colleagues thought he had acted a little hastily. Previous alerts included the Princess Diana car crash, the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, and the capture of Saddam Hussein.
  • We also learnt that Sushila Sharma-Haque, who watches various Indian and Pakistani, as well as German, news channels, goes to bed at 10pm promptly. She did just this on the night of the performance, making at an early exit from the stage at around 9.30pm. She did, however, pop back to take a bow.

Related links:

Event: Liveblogging with CoverItLive’s Keith McSpurren

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UPDATE (May 12) – The session with Keith McSpurren will kick off at 1pm tomorrow – if you’re attending it’s in Room AG03 ground floor, College Building, City university – that’s 280 St John St, London EC1 (map here)

Liveblogging – the format of choice for news sites to cover events it would seem given recent examples.

Times Online did some great work during the G20 protests; the Financial Times’ Alphaville blog has long used a real-time approach for reporting the markets; while Trinity Mirror’s regional titles have joined forces to produce group-wide liveblogs in the past – to name but a view.

Liveblogging tool CoverItLive was first profiled by Journalism.co.uk in April 2008.

Next week its founder Keith McSpurren is in the UK and will be coming to City University in London to talk about the good, the bad and the potential for liveblogging and news.

This is an informal and free event, from 1pm next this Wednesday (May 13).

Leave a comment below if you’re interested or email laura [at] journalism.co.uk and I’ll send you more details.

Spread the liveblogging word.

paidContent:UK: Is raising the pay wall an ‘impossible dream?’

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Robert Andrews gives a rundown of the problems newspaper companies face when trying to ‘get the genie back in the bottle’ – charging for online content that has been free for 15 years. Also be aware of gorillas and white elephants, he says.

Full post at this link…

FIPP 09: Charging for content or e-commerce – how will mags make money?

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“I insist that we are going to have to end up charging for our content wherever we can,” said Roberto Civita, CEO and chairman of Brazilian magazine publisher Abril, today.

“The more segmented the more we’ll be able to do this, the less segmented the less.”

Civita wasn’t the first publisher at this year’s FIPP World Magazine Congress: yesterday Guardian Media Group’s Carolyn McCall said charging for specific sections of Guardian.co.uk was a consideration.

He also echoed comments made earlier in the day by Google’s UK MD, Matt Brittin, who said publishers could learn from the e-commerce industry.

Magazine brands should be ideally placed to do this, for example, by placing direct links to buy on advertisements, he said.

Civita was adamant that magazines will continue and that the industry shouldn’t get hung up on what platform this happens on (“I really don’t think it makes any difference if we’re talking about paper or the new e-papers”) – it’s the quality of the product that matters

Fellow panellist Cathie Black, president of Hearst Magazines in the US, added to her Conde Nast’s counterpart’s remarks about the importance of brand.

“Strong brands will be brands going out into the future. Strong brand, strong advertising, strong editorial,” she said, adding that Hearst brands should be at the centre with spokes from them crossing into e-commerce, merchandising, and other media revenues, like TV spin-off ‘Running in Heels’.

So – print’s going to survive and while online will grow (and e-readers too) – where does that leave digital content?

Both Black and Civita agree: magazines’ digital offerings should be differentiated from what else is available in their sector online.

“We must continue to emphasise the things that have made our magazines what they are today: remained tuned to interests and characteristics of our readers (…) maintain our integrity and ethical principles which are the cornerstone of our greatest asset, our credibility,” said Civita.

And – one parting thought from panel chair Lord Heseltine, chairman of Haymarket – the two platforms must work together:

“The pure-play people have got to keep promoting their product. If we have a brand we have a natural promotion vehicle. I’ve seen examples where pure-play people have launched very successful sites, much more successful than ours, but it’s only been a matter of time before we caught them.”