The ghost of Thatcher still reigns over the Beeb

It looks like the 30 year feud between Thatcherism and the BBC is about to erupt again if the report in the Guardian is to be believed this morning.

The paper had managed to see the pre uncut version of the show which contained some leanings towards the less liked character of the former Prime Minister.

It included Elspeth Howe refering to the Prime Minister as a Caligula figure and Denis calling the BBC's John Seargent "a pinko prat."

The BBC had a rocky relationship with the long years of Tory government in which the latter appeared on a mission to deconstruct the funding by license fee.

It culminated in Mrs Thatcher's appointee Marmaduke Hussey,sacking the then Director General Alastair Milne after a series of incidents in which the BBC was accused of pandering to the left of politics.Coverage of the Falkland's war,the American attack on Tripoli and various documentaries on the IRA were amongst the incidents.

Norman Tebbit kept a dossier on what he perceived as bias coverage and Brian Redhead on the Today was seen as a left wing stooge influencing the nation.

Now it seems that the corporation has the old battles in mind as it broadcasts its Thatcher fest

NYT enters the realms of hyper local

so the New York Times is to step into the domain of the local bloggers.

This post over at Tech Crunch seems to confirm it.

the subject matter will include “cultural events, bar and restaurant openings, real estate, arts, fashion, health, social concerns and anything else that goes on in the ‘SoHo of Brooklyn.’”

and according to Jim Schachter, editor for digital initiatives at The New York Times,it will

sell ads to local merchants using our telesales and self-serve ad solution. Our two pilot sites are staffed with full-time NYTimes reporters.

He though stresses that this is not necessarily a viable proposition

Would people pay to be associated with us? Would there be enough revenue that some split between us and a non-NYT blogger would work? I’d love to know what readers here think.

Ht-Nieman Lab

BBC accused of pandering to infotainment in its newspaper review

An interesting point of view about the many paper reviews that the BBC gives during the day.

It comes from Jim Dodd writing at Labour Home and he asks

as the BBC has a responsibility (as set out in its mission statement) to “inform, educate and entertain”.

why does it insist on reviewing the tabloid papers which are according to

are part of the entertainment remit

and that

No reasonable person believes any of those “newspapers” are reasonable, credible or reliable sources of information - certainly insofar as that information is presented to fit a sensationalist, commercial or predetermined agenda.

Incidentally besides the usual culprits he includes the Daily Mail as part of the tabloid family

Pew says online rise is not competing with online growth

This report,from Pew calls it the unmistakable trend for newspapers in the states.

Fewer Americans are reading print newspapers as more turn to the internet for their news. And while the percentage of people who read newspapers online is growing rapidly, especially among younger generations, that growth has not offset the decline in print readership.

The figures-well 39% say they read a paper be it in print or online but the proportion that read a print copy has declined in two years and these tend to be the Baby boomers those born between 1946-1964 with online growth coming from the so called X and Y generations.

When users went online

news consumers were asked what websites they used most often for news and information, Web portals and familiar names dominated

Libraries gave us power

It's 1996, and you're bored. What do you do? If you're one of the lucky people with an AOL account, you probably do the same thing you'd do in 2009: Go online. Crank up your modem, wait 20 seconds as you log in, and there you are—"Welcome." You check your mail, then spend a few minutes chatting with your AOL buddies about which of you has the funniest screen name

So writes Farhad Manjoo over at Slate magazine.

And how times have changed.It is difficult to think back to a period when there was

no YouTube, Digg, Huffington Post, or Gawker. There's no Google, Twitter, Facebook, or Wikipedia. A few newspapers and magazines have begun to put their articles online

The big question is are we better off today than in 1996?

In some ways yes.As the Manic Street preachers sang "Libraries gave us power" and the web's library certainly has.

Have we used it to its best potential.Well that question remains to be answered.

Personally I think that societies digital evolution is a long way from the end and it will be another generation before the full consequences of the digital age will be seen.

A paper charts its own demise.

Thanks to Tom Watson for this link.

The Rocky Mountain news charts its own demise on its weblog

Staffers at the Rocky Mountain News gathered in the newsroom at noon for an announcement on its future. Tomorrow will be the final edition,

And the final goodbye?

Temple outlines Friday’s paper; small business section, very small sports section. Big front section.
All the columnists will write, he said.
We’ll bring in food tonight. Really try to put the polish on this paper so last edition will be something you’re really proud of.

The end for the dinosaur newspapers?

I like the term that Roger Parry uses in the FT this morning for the decline of the local newspaper.

Local newspapers are nearing the end of their Cretaceous era. The asteroids – recession and the internet – have landed and the K-T extinction horizon is imminent.

He makes three predictions for the industry in 5 years

1.total local advertising income will be less than it is today;
2.many local daily titles will have been converted into weeklies;
3.the number of journalists and sales people will be down 50 per cent.

But maybe his biggest critique is for the journalists

Journalists are often busy doing things the audience no longer want. The traditional professional output is no longer valued by readers. Much, but not all, of local news gathering, feature production and photography are better done by enthusiastic amateurs for next to nothing. Want a critique of local rubbish collection policies? Ask a local resident for 500 words. It matters to them and they are more connected than a journalist sent over in a taxi. Want passionate reporting of local sports? Ask the fans. There will remain a vital role for trained journalists in investigations, analysis and quality control. But it will need fewer of them. They will need new skills of assembling user-generated content including video, digital pictures and audio.

Trinity Mirror suffers as does regional advertising

More bad news for the regional newspaper industry as Trinity Mirror reveals a 22 per cent drop in operating profits for last year and says that advertsing revenues are falling buy 30% in the last couple of months.

What makes those figures is that regional ads are falling at a much greater rate than the nationals 37 per cent compared to 16 nationally.

It doesn't bode well for the regional papers if this is being seen over all regional titles

Ft to target the Chinese investor

I blogged yesterday about the theory that paid online content would be viable as long as it provides a differentiated product.

Financial information must be top of the list for that particular type of information and the FT announces this morning that it is to luanch a new subscription only site aimed at Chinese investors.

According to Paid Content

The new publication is in keeping with the UK business paper’s focus on offering more premium digital content. And since world markets are continuing to flail, China still looks like a comparatively solid place to invest.

Slideshow-the most common mistakes

Sometimes in online content it seems that slide shows are used for the sake of slide shows rather than for their real potential.

Over at 10,000 words they look at 5 common mistakes that are made in putting slide shows into a multimedia package.

1.Too many or too few photos

2,Photos having no captions

3.Photos that deviate from their subject.

4.Awkward transitions in that photos change mid narrative stream and my favourite gripe

5.Loud music

Twittering while Barack speaks

This from Dana Milbank writing in the Washington Post

President Obama spoke of economic calamity and war last night in that solemn rite of democracy, the address to the joint session of Congress. And lawmakers watched him with the dignity Americans have come to expect of their leaders: They whipped out their BlackBerrys and began sending text messages like high school kids bored in math class.

Americans will soon be able to read the Mail on their Kindle's

Interesting story via Paid Content.

The Daily Mail is to subject users of the Kindle electronic reader to the wonders of Middle England.

James Bromley, MD of Daily Mail's website Mail Online, said, "We're in talks with Amazon to launch in the US in the near future and we're also talking about the UK version. The advantages are quite simply the quality and size of the screen."

via new media age

The easy way to make money-make the content valuable

What is the best way to charge for online content? Simple make it so valuable that people want to pay for it.

In the latest contribution to the paywall,micropayment etc etc debate,Gordon Crowvitz writes that

People are happy to pay for news and information however it's delivered, but only if it has real, differentiated value. Traders must have their Bloomberg or Thomson Reuters terminal. Lawyers wouldn't go to court without accessing the Lexis or West online service.

Simple until someone sets up the same operation and gives it away for free.

Ht-Martin Stabe

Ad revenues falling at B2B's

Some worrying news for the B2B market coming out of America where according to B2B Media business

B-to-b magazine advertising revenue declined 7.3% last year, according to the latest Business Information Network data compiled for American Business Media. Revenue fell more precipitously as the year progressed, dropping 13.1% in the fourth quarter.

Advertising pages have fallen away at a much quicker rate than revenue says the report with other media platforms dclining at less of a rate

Watch out Cyburbia has arrived

A good review of James Harkin's book Cyburbia appears on the register-Ht-Alfie Dennen in which the author has according to the review

produced the first proper full-length critique of Web 2.0 - tracing the daftness back to the cybernetics pioneers of the 1940s.

The piece contains a question and answer piece with Harkin who tells us that

The central image of the book is Cyburbia, this strange alternate world where we watch each other and the minutiae of each others' lives.

and

You might have stared out of your window in suburbia in the 1950s and seen a few people across the street, but now you can stare at millions of other people. The danger is that when you spend all your time deciphering what other people are up to, you never get around to doing something original on your own, because you're so swamped by opportunities to go onto other people's lives on blogs, social networks and Twitter.

shades of the front of yesterday's Daily Mail front page perhaps.

Steven Poole reviewed the book in the Guardian on Saturday and began by saying that

When you're just a node on the network, no one can hear you scream. James Harkin's dystopian essay portrays users of Facebook et al as people staring out of their windows on a suburban street, signalling to one another by flashing lamps on and off. The only winner is the disembodied "system", which passes information around itself to no scrutable purpose, using us as its automata.

Vocational or wise-the choice for student journalists

I am torn by the comments of Nick Davies which have been reported by Press Gazette today.

The author of Flat Earth News has caused a stir in his comments at City University

there is a danger with the courses: there are now hundreds of them which claim to teach these skills, but a great many of them are genuine crap, taught by people who haven't the faintest idea of how to do the job."

and

dismissed suggestions made recently by Eastern Daily Press deputy editor Paul Durrant that vocational training was more important than a degree for aspiring journalists.

Coming to the end of three years of a journalism degree,I have certainly been taught the vocational skills required for a journalism degree.

Being a mature student I have an advantage in coming into the university with world wise skills and deep knowledge of certain subjects.I do not have to reach for google every time that I want to write about something.

Where the system fails and this is not necessarily the fault of the university is that a lot of students don't come with that knowledge.I would put that down to a general failing of the education system which is geared to results and not to acquiring knowledge.

From the point of view of potential employers,surely they would prefer new journalists to come equipped with the vocational skills rather than have to invest in teaching those themselves.

However they would also want to see that potential applicants have a knowledge of the topics that they are going to be writing about.

A balance is required?

Hansard report-but no mention of twitter

Just had a quick flick through the Hansard report into how MP's are using digital media to keep in touch with their consitituents.


Here are some highlights.

1.The internet is now part of an MP's daily life.

2.They see digital media as a positive way of communicationg with their constituents.

3.Adoption is down to a members personal attitude to technology and the precariousness of the majourity in the seat.

Interestingly the report concludes that one area blogging is not as popular due in part to time constraints but also as members don't beleive taht they target their audience sufficiently.

But perhaps tucked down in the recomendations is the cautionary tale that the internet does not exist in isolation.In fact it must not be divorced from the non digital approach

Why have magazines not embraced the web

Interesting piece from CJR who are being given a $230,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation to investigate why magazines have not made the most of an online presence.

It is a good point and I wonder whether part of the reason is that a unlike a newspaper,mgazines still cherish the relationship between the reader and the turning of pages.

For the magazine industry the whole process of browsing, purchasing and reading is an integral part of the experience.The web may well be seen as an ad hoc process.

Still let's wait for the results.

Ht-journalism.co.uk

How the BBC may benefit from the recession.

One effect of the recession may be to tighten the BBC's grip on public service broadcasting.

That is according to Philip Stephen's who writes in the FT.

As the recession wreaks havoc on the finances of ITV and other big commercial broadcasters, the licence-fee-cushioned BBC is set fair to secure a monopoly over public service broadcasting.

What the downturn will create is a concentration of service propped up by the move to digital platforms and the need to maintain a state funded quality news service.

Interesting though he talks of Mark Thompson's trick

which has been subtly to recast the licence fee bargain. The tax, he has argued, is justified not so much by quality of programming but by the BBC’s “reach” into every household in the land. What the corporation has aimed for, in other words, has been ubiquity ahead of quality.

How do you value a blog?

Well WallSt 24/7 attempts to do it as it publishes a list of 25 of the world's most valuable blogs.

Maybe the list itself isn't important though topped by Gawker Properties but some of the criteria that is used.

To determine value, 24/7 Wall St. looked at unique visitor and pageviews information from several public sources including Alexa, Quantcast, Compete, and comScore. These services are often criticized for estimating website traffic too low and we have taken that into account to the extent possible. We also looked at audience measurements provided by the blogs themselves when it seemed credible. Our estimated CPMs for ads are based on the current display and text ad environment, the quality of ads at each blog, and the number of ads that it runs on the average pages. The CPM value assigned to each blog is based on all of the ads it runs on its typical pages. To determine margins, 24/7 looked at headcount when available, and estimated costs of operating and maintaining websites. More complex content platforms where assigned higher monthly costs. Current audience growth rates were taken into account. A site which has traffic doubling year-over-year was given a higher multiple than one which is losing traffic. Because not all blogs make money, multiples of revenue and operating income were used to assess value.

But of course not all blogs are there to make money.The BBC blogs for example are simply a public service and the report itself mentions the Daily Beast which doesn't take advertising.

Nevertheless it comes up with some figures.Gawker's value is estimated at $170m,the Huffington Post comes in second at $90m and Drudge is third at $48.

Those would all be categorised as news and information but coming up fourth is the celeb blog PerezHilton which brings in $8m a year and has an estimated worth of $32m

Glover hates the mass worshipping of the ordinary

It is worth reading Stephen Glover's piece in this morning's Indy as he discusses the blanket Jade Goody coverage over the weekend.

Yes it is a sad story and yes the media have done an about turn on the Big Brother star but Glover whilst recognising the sad personal circumstances make the following observation.

I am happy to accept that she is not a monster, and I even rather admire her expert manipulation, or that of her advisers, of the media. But I hate this mass worship of the ordinary. And it seems to me that intelligent columnists who romanticise her life and invest her death with heroic significance are writing sentimental nonsense. What has already happened is bad enough, but I fear it may be only the beginning, and that it may all end with even the supposedly serious media forcing us to witness her death.

Enough said

New Zealand government backs down on internet copyright law

A good story coming out of New Zealand where the online community has rallied against government plans to introduce a copyright law.

If you had noticed that a number of twitter users have blacked out their profiles,it was to protest against the proposed move which

Protesters say Section 92A of the Copyright Amendment Act could force the closure of any internet account following any accusation of breach of copyright, even if it was not proven.

Now the New Zaland government has backed down after PM John Key

told journalists that Cabinet had discussed the issue today and decided to delay the implementation for one month until March 27.

The hope is that the sector will come to a voluntary agreement on the proposals

Fairfax the latest in a long line of write downs

Australia's Fairfax corporation has posted record half year losses.

According to FT.com the group which owns 350 titles down under

After reporting a net loss after tax of A$365m for the period ended December,warned that trading conditions in the opening months of 2009 had weakened.

The losses are a result of the group writing down the values of its titles and incurring restructuring costs in relation to the media downturn as well as a slump in advertising.

Excluding the one off items profits were down 23 per cent

Don't question the psychology but examine the medium for debate

There was a great deal of comment about the Times' article questioning the psychology of the users of twitter as there was after the Mail decided that the users of social media have a greater risk of cancer.

Jackie Ashley joins the debate in the Guardian this morning quoting the words of Baroness Susan Greenfield, the cross-bench peer and distinguished neuroscientist,who says

is the new way of social interaction actually changing the brains, and indeed the minds of a generation, and if so, what might that mean?

It is an important point and before the defenders of the digital revolution jump on the bandwagon,it is worth pointing out that

Greenfield's argument begins with an acknowledgement of the virtues of Facebook and similar sites, particularly for children and teenagers who have been confined to their homes because of their parents' fear of letting them roam outside

But there are downsides,a lack of social interaction,a reliance on speed reading.As Ashley says

When it comes to complicated issues, we also need time and space. Not everything can be whittled down to text messages. We are living in a world of fact boxes, ever shorter sentences and flatter, simpler statements; and I wonder if we can begin to resolve some of these complex challenges this way

What I would and what I see regularly is that the art of interpretation has been lost because quite simply the context in which a comment is said is lost if it is conveyed electronically.

How an editor's death stimulates journalism

The New York Times reports that

When Chauncey Bailey, the editor of The Oakland Post, in California, was gunned down in broad daylight on a city street 18 months ago, it was not the end of his journalism. In some ways, it was a new beginning.

Bailey was investigating a local business at the time called Your Black Muslim Bakery and there were suspicions that it may have been related to his murder.

After his death, a group of reporters — some retired, some out of work — with support from foundations and the University of California, Berkeley, banded together to continue his investigation

The culmination of the investigation was that the group acquired a tape

secretly recorded by the police, showed Yusuf Bey IV sitting with associates in a jailhouse room, bragging about being a part of Mr. Bailey’s murder. It raised critical questions — still unanswered — about why the police had not charged Mr. Bey in the murder.

Tv advertising may be in better health than we think

Television has been seen as a dying medium when it comes to advertising and in particular with regard to young people.

This report from advertising age though appears to buck the trend.

A seven-figure ethnographic study due to be released next month by the Nielsen Co.-funded Council for Research Excellence from research firm Sequent and the Center for Media Design at Ball State University appears set to punctuate that point, finding that TV remains the dominant medium even for reaching youth, despite the inroads of digital and social media, according to a person familiar with the research.

Ht-Morgan Warstler

Serious journalism has never been profitable so why change?

Business models are the talk of the journp blogosphere at the moment and Newsweek look at the former explaining why they are no models for new journalism.

Essentially it argues that journalism has never been profitable

The great newspaper companies got away with not maximizing their profits either by being privately held or by setting up two classes of stock, which insulated them from shareholder pressure.

Today there are three opposing corners of the ring

In one corner are editors who believe news organizations committed a fatal mistake by giving their content away for free on the Internet

whilst in the another

Another camp favors philanthropic support. whilst in the third corner a faction

looks to online advertising for sole support:

The organisations that don't create profit are termed "creative capitalism" the term coined by Bill Gates for companies

attempt to advance social goals while also attempting to make money.

The problem is that something has to fund these models.

Community is the future for journalism

A conundrum from Robert Niles who asks

Can democratic communities survive without a newspaper to provide them the civic information they need?

before turniong the question around and asking

Can newspapers survive without the communities they need to sustain them?

For Robert this is the problem with the media industry

where so many news organizations have failed over the past generation. In a drive to professionalize the journalism industry (and, then, to cut costs), we've cut our publications off from the communities they are supposed to represent.

So what is the solution-well it is the internet

Our websites are our livelihoods now-The most important thing that we've built is the two communities of individuals who read and communicate through the sites. That is our product. And that is what we must hold on to, to nurture and to cultivate, if media preferences change and Web publishing become the next newsprint.

The digital future?

In these days of ultra digital technology it is nice to see this picture of how one house's internet connection is kept alive




Courtesy of an Englishman's Castle

Memo to PR

Good story in the Press Gazette showing how journalists are adapting to twitter

Owen Amos reports that

A business journalist bored of "poorly targeted press releases" from PRs has said he is to only accept pitches via Twitter, the social network.
Dan Martin, editor of businesszone.co.uk, said irrelevant press releases were "clogging up his inbox".
So, next Monday and Tuesday, he will only accept PRs' pitches via Twitter – the microblogging and messaging service which limits messages to 140 characters.

Media In Burma

Check out the excellent Democratic voice of Burma for a good synopsis of the current situation in the country and the media's role in bringing about democratic transition.

It is written by Htet Aung Kyaw who writes in exile is a senior journalist for the Oslo-based organisation

Every day in Burma, state-controlled TV just shows the generals and government officials visiting some development projects while the government radio airs the generals' speeches. The next day in the newspapers, print journalists repeat the same stories with some pictures added and harsh words to attack opposition and western countries who sanction them. So the audiences lose interest on government media but they turn on the TV to watch Korean movies and also buy the newspapers to read the obituaries and skip straight to the back page where they are found.

With elections coming up next year he believes that

Many observers say that foreign-based Burmese language short wave radio stations and satellite TV will play a key role in the upcoming election, in contrast to the 1990 election.

Twitter-how fake celebs create a credibilty problem

My big moan at the moment is the seemingly monopolisation of twitter by the so called celebs.

Well over at Media Shift Simon Owens look at how celeb impostors are threatening to hurt the credibility of the network.

Simon relates the story of the Dalai Lama

By the time the news spread that the Dalai Lama had opened a Twitter account it no longer seemed such a novelty that a high profile individual would join the micro-blogging service, even if he was a divine being. The account gathered nearly 20,000 followers before Twitter pulled the plug two days later when representatives of the Tibetan leader informed the company that the profile had been created by an impersonator, an action that violates Twitter's Terms of Service. Site administrators then turned the handle over to the Dalai Lama and as of this writing it has remained unused, with not a single tweet issued.

It is a major problem for Twitter as it has been for other social networking sites.

And also a problem for journalists who

When the news broke that the Dalai Lama had opened a Twitter account, quickly filed stories reporting the debut, only to have to issue corrections when it was revealed to be fake. The incident highlighted the often difficult balance journalists must strike when trying to verify these accounts while still remaining timely.

Atlantis does not live after all

The Sun claimed this morning that it has discovered the Lost City of Atlantis by using Google earth in its edition this morning.

Nice try but unfortunately this is not the case according to Helen Bidd who explains that

It turns out the Sun was tipped off on this world exclusive by a man called Bernie Bamford, an aeronautical engineer who stumbled across the suspicious-looking gridlines while playing with a new version of Google Earth, which allows the browser to explore under the oceans.

However

Google piled in to spoil the party. It turns out the criss-crossing lines, located 600 miles west of the Canary Islands, are just sonar data collected as boats mapped the ocean floor.

20 things the Mail says will cause cancer

The Daily Mail's revelations that twitter can cause you cancer brought much hilarity yesterday.

So much so that the Daily Dust drew up a list that found 20 things that the Mail has said will lead to you developing the disease.

Besides the usual suspects the paper has come up with some strange items including,

PRINGLES, HULA-HOOPS & PRINCE CHARLES’ ORGANIC CRISPS

and

TALCUM POWDER

Readers turn to the money supplements

Yesterday's figures from the national readership survey seem to confirm that these tough economic times have resulted in a move top grasp the output of the quality media.

The FT reports that

In the last six months of the year, which also included coverage of the US election, the National Readership Survey estimated that the readership of The Times rose 10 per cent and The Guardian 13 per cent.

As if to emphasize the crisis the report adds that for financial supplements

FT Money saw a 43 per cent rise in the year, while The Guardian’s Money supplement increased 22 per cent and the similar addition to The Times rose 8 per cent. But the Your Money supplement in The Daily Telegraph’s Saturday edition fell 10 per cent over the year. There was a similar pattern for the business sections of the Sunday papers.

Advice for journos-live likes rats

That is at least according to Michael Miner who according to CJR was worried

he’d have nothing to tell the young, aspiring journalists at an upcoming panel discussion. After talking to a fellow journalism vet, he’s come up with this advice:

Live like rats, I’ll tell the kids, and in time there’ll be some cheese.

"It's not the skills that will get you that job."

Charlie Beckett has brought my attention to a piece in the American Online journalism review.

Written by Nikki Usher,it argues that skills training is not enough for the digital journalist.

Instead

As one news executive said, "We need to take staff to Web 2.0 and beyond – to make learning more nimble and flexible." This executive, after putting staff through training pilots, realized that multimedia literacy and a basic understanding of what it meant to work in a Web environment was what people needed – before they could go about learning the hardware.

So according to Nikki there are a number of areas which need developing

1. Journalists need to understand how the Web and multimedia goals will work within their own organizations. News organizations need to clearly communicate how these Web goals will influence the work production cycle.

2. Journalists at all levels of the news organization should believe that they can contribute to the multimedia vision of their organization. The future of the newsroom is also in your hands, and thinking like this forces journalists to think multi-dimensionally.

3. Journalists are not alone in the newsroom. Even if journalists themselves cannot think about how to make their work relevant to multiplatform content, someone else in the news organization can. Most of your organizations have people on staff that can help you brainstorm, even if you can't. Multimedia training is also about making new connections across your organization.

4. Silos, departmental rivalries, and departments that don't communicate with each other cannot exist if multimedia initiatives are to succeed.

5. Journalists no longer control the distribution of the content they produce. This is a very scary thought for many journalists, but the reality is that once something is published (usually on Web sites), it belongs to the audience of readers and becomes part of a conversation about the news.

6. Journalists need to rethink and reposition themselves the leader of this new conversation, which includes everyone from the traditional water cooler chat to bloggers.

CFA's may be in defiance of European convention

Guardian media reports that the high cost of the so called conditional fee agreements is reducing newspapers ability to uphold their position as the fourth estate.

The paper cites the verdict of an Oxford University study that

the use of conditional fee agreements – which enable lawyers to take libel cases against newspapers on a no win, no fee basis – is leaving newspapers "shackled" and unable to act as public watchdogs.

Apart from that the study commissioned by the Daily Mail believes that

use of CFAs potentially contravened articles 6 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights in defamation and privacy cases.

Indian dreams

India has been on the radar as one of the developing markets that journalists may find work in.

After reading this piece in the Hindustan Times (ht-Sans Serif) I am not so sure.Entitled Why media suffers while movies, IPL prosper? the writer argues that

In India, the media survive not on subscriptions and viewer-driven revenue, but on advertising. If fewer people are buying goods and if there is a country-wide recession, then companies will slash their advertising budgets.

and adds that

Many publishing houses ventured into businesses and products they had no understanding of, believing that the revenue from their existing cash cows would increase so dramatically that they could subsidize losses in the new businesses.
That dream is now dead. That’s why some publications are closing down and others are certain to follow.

As for the IPL it seems to go from strength to strength although as it too survives on commercial sponsorship maybe it will too be facing difficult times ahead

Multiplying web pages mean diminishing returns

Another wake up call for the media industry in the Wall Street journal which asks the question

What does the Internet display-ad market have in common with Zimbabwe?

The answer?

Both are printing nearly-limitless amounts of their main currency, vastly diminishing its value and undermining their future.

A damning rebuff for the internet business model? Quite possibly.The piece argues that as the volume of web pages expand so does the need for carrying ads and more ads mean falling prices.

The cost per thousand views of display ads on big Web sites sold through ad networks -- rather than sales forces of individual sites, which usually handle premium inventory -- fell 54% in the fourth quarter compared with the year earlier, estimates PubMatic, which offers online services to publishers.

It is a worrying trend and is no doubt being magnified by the recession but it may be worth focusing on basic economics if the problem is to be fixed.

In 10 years all Tv will be on the net

The name Barbara Walters may not be known to many on this side of the Atlantic but she anchored the Evening News programme on ABC as well as various news magazines and the breakfast show.

Her views on the future of television should be listened to so that when she says that the only progammes left on the mainstream channels will be the morning shows,maybe we should take notice.

Of the other changes in this media age,Walters says that

Everyone is now press-savvy, Interview subjects now ask how many minutes they'll get on air and other questions that used to be left unsaid.

But back to the future of Tv.All other programmes

you can TiVo or see on the Internet."

Thoughts anyone and is she correct

Source Reuters

This is no time for Internet triumphalism-Democracy is at stake

Adrian Monck has brought my attention to a good article in this months New Republic.

Entitled Goodbye to the Age of Newspapers (Hello to a New Era of Corruption) Paul Starr, argues that with newspapers seemingly in terminal decline should we actually care

regardless of whether newspapers successfully adapt to the Internet, new and better sources of news will continue developing online, and they will fill whatever void newspapers leave.

But care we should

This is no time for Internet triumphalism: the stakes are too high. Nearly all other news media, except for online news, are also retrenching, and--particularly at the metropolitan, regional, and state levels--the online growth is not close to offsetting the decline elsewhere. Despite all the development of other media, the fact is that newspapers in recent years have continued to field the majority of reporters and to produce most of the original news stories in cities across the country.

The internet in Paul's view contains little reporting

and still less of it subject to any rigorous fact-checking or editorial scrutiny

This then raises the old question of the fourth estate and who will put the establishment under scrutiny

The reality is that resources for journalism are now disappearing from the old media faster than new media can develop them. The financial crisis of the press may thereby compound the media's crisis of legitimacy.

Belarus in the spotlight

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has stepped behind the campiagn for reform of the media in the former Soviet Republic of Belarus.

Acording to its secretary

"Belarus media requires invigorating reform, not a new media law that merely turns the screw ever tighter on the independent media,

It follows a new law which was passed earlier this month which according to the IFJ

regulates online media and calls for the registration of media outlets. It also speeds up procedures for closing down media and says journalists can be prosecuted for reporting statements, whether from political parties or NGOs if they ‘discredit the Republic of Belarus'.

Under the rule of President Alexander Lukashenko opposition is tightly monitored and in 2005 the country was listed by the US as Europe's only remaining "outpost of tyranny"

The opposition have been denied access to much of the government controlled media which has benefited from huge government subsidies.

Twitter and fried rice please

Sarah Hartley shows how a Manchester Chinese restaurant has picked up on the twitter craze.

She writes that

Sweet Mandarin's Lisa Tse has started tweeting tips about Chinese food as well as offers and invites for the Northern Quarter eaterie after being persuaded to give it a go by a friends.

Despite already using other social networking tools such as Facebook and MySpace and maintains that

it's not all advice and whimsy, Lisa also takes part in conversations with interested participants around the world and is even planning to do some live tweets from the cookery classes she runs.

Sri Lanka-the final remnants of the conflict

The Huffington Post has a good piece on the the Sri Lankan government's attempts to suppress journalistic freedoms in its final push to finish off the Tamil Tigers.

As it reports

At what is expected to be a gruesome conclusion, the world largely looks elsewhere. This can be blamed on the lack of what we call ground truth coming out of the country. The government has suppressed journalists, some of whom have been killed and others have disappeared. In the country's capital, Colombo, there is silence about the fighting and the tens of thousands of civilians trapped in the northeast part of the island.

It publishes in particular this chilling piece from a citizen journalist

Motorcycles that follow close behind are fear. The letter box at the junction is fear. The ringing of a telephone is fear. Each email is fear. We channel surf fear. We listen to it on jingles. In the nervous laughter of journalists. Words which no longer appear, people who have disappeared. The firecrackers lit celebrate terror against terror. Editors culled by sharp instruments jabbed to their necks. A vicious defense secretary who goes for the jugular. A racist Army Commander who believes Sri Lanka belongs to his people. Everything, everyone consumed by war. An economy crumbling, rendering grotesque the nightlife bling in Colombo.

Adopting a twitter student.

I like many other responded to Paul Bradshaw's request to adopt a twiiterer from his online journalism course.

He has written a post about here.

Paul has christened it tweetermentoring and believes that the idea

makes two very strong points about Twitter: firstly, how it can be used as a source of support; and secondly, how easy it is to make professional contacts.

I have adopted Philip Gordon who you can follow here.

Last night he put up his first blog posting which you can see here.

Twitter is the new social networking,pick up any media and you can guarantee that on the back of much celeb endorsement,the topic is being discussed to death.

The company itself is going from strength to strength announcing over the weekend another $35m of venture capital.It seems that even in these tough times investors have seen it as the new medium.

Why did reporters miss the crunch? A US take from an ex reporter

I'll attest that business journalists as a rule are as smart, sophisticated, and plugged-in as they seem. And yet that army of professional business reporters—an estimated 9,000 or so nationwide in print alone—for all practical purposes missed the biggest story on the beat. Why?

writes former Wall Street Journal staff writer Dean Starkman.

Much has already been written on the subject and more no doubt still will be.

According to Dean in a long and detailed piece

There was a handful of heroes at the major publications who tried to get the word out. But the good, hard-hitting, arm's-length stories will have to be compared to what else was gushing out of the 30-inch business-news drainpipe—those Citigroup earnings stories, those edgy-yet-flattering profiles of Merrill Lynch's Stan O'Neal, Lehman Brothers' Dick Fuld, et al., the pieces noting how Countrywide Financial's Angelo Mozilo liked to dress well, etc., not to mention the Home Depot marketing stories, the personal finance columns, and all the cheerleading and Flip That House fluff that diverted resources from the real task at hand.

One reason that Dean identifies is the newsroom cuts which he says coincided with the first warning signs of the end of the bull market.

But that wasn't the only reason

Jesse Eisinger, a former financial columnist for the Journal and now a senior writer for Portfolio, says the paper, like business journalism generally, clung to outdated formulas. Wall Street coverage tilted toward personality-driven stories, not deconstructing balance sheets or figuring out risks. Stocks were the focus, when the problems were brewing in derivatives.

Will the Kindle take over? I think not

I have never been totally convinced of the market for the electronic reader and the end of books and the printed word.

There has been much talk in the media about the latest Kindle product but it is worth reading Rob Horning's take on the matter

The preference consumers have shown for digitized music and iPods doesn’t seem to translate to books. The usefulness of the iPod derives from its ability to shuffle songs that many people enjoy as background, more or less passively. On the subway I hear about a dozen songs each morning, and it pleases me that they are randomly selected from a list of several thousand. But I wouldn’t want my reading material served up that way. Generally I’m reading one thing at a time, and I benefit from the finality of that decision, when I leave home with one book. Books have the great built-in advantage of preventing me from surfing away elsewhere when the reading becomes arduous or requires an effort of concentration.

Friends Reunited up for sale

The news that ITV is considering selling the website Friends Reunited may tell us two things.

Firstly the dire financial situation of the broadcaster which is being forced to sell a business proposition that it bought in a blaze of glory just three years ago.

Secondly that since buying the site,the broadcaster has found that its popularity has declined.As Paidcontent reports

Friends Reunited has withered on the vine - holding on to its core audience of subscription payers, rather than innovating to take on the likes of Facebook, cost Friends nearly half its user traffic between 2007 and 2008.

The fault of ITV? Quite possibly according to the same report which says that

Friends Reunited had been the star performer in what has been a lucklustre ITV web portfolio, making up two thirds of online sales (£22 million in 2007). That was before ITV decided to kill its cash cow by axing the subs, making Friends ad-supported last April - just in time for the advertising recession.

The sale will no doubt help the broadcasters debt position which stood at £663m last June.How much it would get for the site is less clear but surely in the current climate the £120m that it spent will be unattainable.

Media freedom seriously curtailed in Gaza according to Reporters without Borders

Reporters without borders have just published its initial analysis of press freedoms during the recent conflict in Gaza.

According to the report, six journalists ho were killed, two of them while doing their job. Around 15 were wounded. And at least three buildings housing media were hit by Israeli fire.

Both sides in the conflict come in for criticism.For Hamas

Contrary to what its leaders say, journalists are not free to criticise the Islamist movement, to communicate the stance of other factions or simply to set forth divergent opinions.

whilst on the Israeli side

he sealing off of the Gaza Strip, which was the full responsibility of the Israeli authorities, is unacceptable and disturbing. Beyond this conflict, control of news in time of war has become a military objective throughout the world.

Signs that point to a non web strategy

Thanks to Martin Stabe for this link to Web Publishist which has identified five recognisable things that show a newspaper doesn't have a web strategy.

1.If more than 25% of the content comes from the Associated Press.

2.If web content only starts appearing as the print edition is put to bed.

3.A lack of evidence of blogging.

4.Little sign of multimedia

5.All text and no photographs

What a difference 2 years can make

There has been much in the papers this morning about Jade Goody.

Whatever you may feel about her past activities you have to feel dreadfully sorry for her and and family.

I hope that she can find some comfort in her remaining time on this earth.

However the case once again shows the hypocrisy of some of our papers.

As this blog shows,the Sun must surely be reminded of some of its past pronouncements on Miss Goody.This piece from January 2007 for example after the end of celeb big brother(Ht-Martin Belam)

SANITY has prevailed. Thank Heaven for that. Jade Goody went into the Big Brother house appearing to be simply a fun-loving working-class girl canny enough to have made millions from her 15 minutes of fame. It was all a meticulously manufactured lie. She has left the house with her true personality laid bare: A vile, pig-ignorant, racist bully consumed by envy of a woman of superior intelligence, beauty and class. Incredible as it may seem, last night’s vote was the most important in Britain since the last General Election. OK, it’s just a reality TV show. But it became a referendum on whether our nation, with the eyes of the world on us, was prepared to back a home-grown yob over a dignified Indian actress. We weren’t and the result has restored faith in the British public. Hopefully Jade will now slither back under the rock from where she crawled before her debut on Big Brother in 2002. As for her two spineless, sniggering sidekicks ... let’s hope they join her.

As the title of the blog suggests this is the Diana effect all over again.One vilified in the press,tragedy seems to simply wash away the past.

Ofcom to tackle local media

Ofcom is to reconsider the regulatory framework surrounding local and regional newspapers.

According to FT.com

The investigation will focus on whether the markets that newspapers serve should still be considered “self-contained” in relation to advertisers or readership and the extent to which other entities that provide news are in competition with local media companies

I can here collective sighs of relieve from the local industry but also the collective gasps from those that believe the market should be left to hasten the death of local print operations

Guardian media reports that

David Newell, director of the Newspaper Society, the body that represents regional publishers, said: "The NS welcomes today's announcement that the OFT is reviewing the local and regional merger regime within the time frame of the Digital Britain report. It is helpful that the government has specifically asked for the review to examine a number of the main issues which the NS has been asking the government to address as a matter of urgency."

Alfie-is the media culpable?

Whilst the papers this morning are full of reaction to the Sun's lead story yesterday about the 13 year old father,it is worth reading Deborah Orr in this morning's Indy.

She suggests that the role of the media in this story should be examined.

A parent or guardian must sign a release form before children's photographs can be used by the media. Who signed off Maisie? Alfie? Chantelle? Who signed off Alfie and Chantelle? Dennis? Nicola? Penny? Steve? The very fact that this story is in the public domain is cause for concern. The concern should not be only about the wisdom of the families involved, but about a media culture that is no better at preserving the innocence of childhood than the individuals it seeks to criticise.

I wrote yesterday that the Sun had done well in publicising the story and had no doubt seen it as in the public interest.The debate was quickly stirred yesterday by both political parties and there is much reaction to it in this morning's papers.

But as Deborah points out

As for the argument that the story is in the public interest and will provoke essential debate, well, we have been having this debate for many years now, and it gets us nowhere.

and she adds that

It takes an entire society to create an environment in which children can enjoy their childhoods. A society that stands aside while journalists and parents collude in making a freak show out of children's serious troubles, inviting widespread criticism, anger and disgust, but little more, has collectively lost the moral plot.

World Press Photo 2008

Via the Indy

A picture of an armed sheriff moving through an American home after an eviction due to a mortgage foreclosure

It was taken by American Anthony Suau for Time magazine and maybe sums up the mood of 2008

How effective is online advertising?

An interesting survey on web advertising from via Apq Paid Content

The survey polled the views of a representative sample of 2,013 UK adults exploring their attitudes towards advertising online and its results may make those who think the web will lead us make to profits turn away:

* Fifty-seven per cent of consumers rarely or never pay attention to the advertising on major portal sites.

Not the best of news then for the online industry as it reports that only 12 per cent of consumers claim to often pay attention advertising on portal sites

Information overload-not necessarily

Is there simply too much information in this digital age.

It is a subject that has aroused the attentions of many but Tom Stafford dismisses the argument over at Mind Hacks (Ht-Richard Sambrook)

Tom writes that

The 'modern technology is hurting our brain' argument is widespread but it seems so short-sighted. It's based on the idea that before digital communication technology came along, people spent their time focusing on single tasks for hours on end and were rarely distracted.

Tom is replying to an article in Wired where Maggie Jackson who has written a book on the subject says that modern life

It's not a pretty picture: a never-ending stream of phone calls, e-mails, instant messages, text messages and tweets is part of an institutionalized culture of interruption, and makes it hard to concentrate and think creatively.

I have a lot of sympathy with Maggie's opinion as many people will testify that the information revolution has not led to an increase in leisure time but instead to making us slaves of production.

But back to Tom who believes that

the ability to focus on a single task, relatively uninterrupted, is the strange anomaly in the history of our psychological development.

The last 50 years have been a blip in human development for technology has let us concentrate on single tasking.Now the digital explosion means that human kind is back on track

A shocking front page

But hat's off to the Sun for this picture.

The boy is 13 but looks no more than 10 and I am sure that this will get the agenda moving once again on under age sex

Read the full story here

How the news wire model is benefiting from churnalism

This week's Economist has an interesting article on the opportunities that the news wires are taking as newspapers face crisis management.

Reminding us that much news comes the news wire and that Christoph Pleitgen, a senior Reuters executive,has told them that

the big news wires have been staffing up in the past year.

and whereas Bloomberg have been cutting back on staffing recently

its recent announcement of around 190 job cuts at a foreign-language television venture got more attention than its promise to create 1,000 jobs elsewhere, including in its news bureaus

The reason of course is quite simple.As newsrooms cut back on journalists they rely more and more on the news wire as more people crave for content.

micropayments won’t work for online journalism-we are all media outlets now

Clay Shirky has entered the debate on micro payments (Ht-Jay Rosen)

Writing on his blog he says that micro payments won’t work for online journalism.

His reasoning?

The essential thing to understand about small payments is that users don’t like being nickel-and-dimed.

he says essentially

small payment systems don’t survive contact with online markets, because we express our hatred of small payments by switching to alternatives, whether supported by subscription or subsidy.

Secondly he reasons that

Such systems solve no problem the user has, and offer no service we want.

This is an important point as Shirky points out that the word ‘micro payment’

is a trope for desperation, entering the vernacular of a given media market only after threats to older models become visibly dire

Payment systems need to be focused on what the user wants rather than what the distributor wants

We’re not customers and we’re certainly not consumers. We’re users. We don’t consume content, we use it, and mostly what we use it for is to support our conversations with one another, because we’re media outlets now too.

Coming to blows on twitter

It makes the spat between Iain Dale and Derek Draper pale into insignificance.

Mediastyle reports on a savage twitter fight David George-Cosh a reporter on the National Post and a marketing consultant from Toronto

This is just some of the twittering but it will give you a flavour

sirdavid: @aprildunford what the fuck. I called you for comment two days ago. What did you expect when you called me back? Don’t post that shit online

sirdavid: @aprildunford furthermore, I called you several times in the afternoon. Don’t be condescending to me when I actually wanted to talk to you

sirdavid: @aprildunford how about you stop blasting personal conversations on twitter and call me back. what the hell is wrong with you.

You get the gist

Goodbye yellow pages?

One sector that is seeing changing times is the global directory network.

The mainstay of most homes and business' a report on Ft.com suggests that they are

facing a crisis due to collapsing valuations, a worsening economic and competitive environment, and concerns that its business model is no longer viable in the internet age.

The internet is the main culprit and as the report goes on to say

The sector is experiencing revenue downgrades due to a steady migration of advertisers from print to online, where margins are often lower. Small to medium-sized businesses, their core client base, are also being badly hit by the economic downturn

The challenge of the digital news room

Karl Schneider from Reed Business information writes a very good piece on his blog about the transformation to the digital newsroom mentality.

Whilst we've done a lot of work with our writers over the past couple of years, helping them to transform themselves into digital journalists, so far we haven't talked very much about the future for the people who work on our production desks.

he writes

One of the challenges he continues

is to help today's magazine production staff to make the transition to these new online roles.

1.For publishers, it will take a commitment to providing the training and the space to lean these new skills.

2.For production desk staff it will take a genuine willingness to re-learn their craft, sometimes giving up cherished roles and practices.

Green shoots from Ernst & Young for the media

Journalism.co.uk brought my attention to the latest business survey of the media.

This time it comes from Ernst and Young who conclude that

Migration online by publishers and media organisations before the current economic downturn will help them respond more quickly to the crisis,

However there are many structural changes that may have to happen

1.Cutting costs may not suffice-instead companies will need to rethink their undderlying business models

2.The profit forecasts from many media companies do not fully reflect the challenges ahead for them.

3.Unlike the previous downturns,this one doesn't follow an advertising boom.Thus when GDP starts to grow advertsing will recover a lot quicker.

A picture tells a story and sells a magazine

A magazine feel to today's posts definately.

I wrote earlier about how a magazine cover can sell or not sell the magazine and the news that Cheryl Cole's appearance on the cover of Feb's Vogue has put nearly 20,000 on its circulation reiterates the point.

There is another magazine cover story that caught my eye though courtesy of CJR which comments on the cover of Fortune magazine

Sometimes it’s better just to keep it simple, and in that spirit I give Fortune credit for profiling several unemployed people and illustrating the story on its cover with a photo of a downsized training-firm executive and his wife.

It is a case of the cover selling the story

The photograph is quite arresting. The colors are all grays and browns; the husband is in sharp focus andhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif closer to the camera, with the wife a few feet behind him and slightly out of focus, a bit like a specter. Yes, the symbolism relies on traditional gender roles (she depends on him, get it?), but the point is made. The expressions more or less tell the entire story—his is a combination of determination tempered by depression and worry. She’s just worried.

You can sell a magazine on a cover photo but you can always sell it on a coverline

This cover on the front of Rolling Stone magazine was taken by photographer Annie Leibovitz just hours before the ex Beatle was shot dead in Dec 1980.

It has become one of the most iconic magazine covers of our time and formed the beginning of Mel Nichols' second presentation to Uclan magazine students yesterday

Mel reminded the audience of the words of David Hepworth that magazine covers are

about ingenuity and are the art of the possible

Covers he continued to say are the clear communication that are critical for getting the impulsive buy.

Magazines have to sell themselves for every issue and the poor cover can lose you a lot of readers.

Yet his presentation showed just how often bad covers get to the new stands and lack some of the attributes of what a cover should convey.

Most importantly they should convey the brand of the magazine.

Surprisingly it is the cover line rather than the image that Mel thinks is the most important

if you can only have one thing on a cover it is the cover line.You may sell a cover on an image but you can always sell it on a cover line

For a successful cover strategy, three crucial things are required.

1.Visibility
2.Stories and
3.Ideas.

and perhaps the most important.........deliver what it says on the tin

Mel Nichols the relationship between the editor and the art editor is the most important relationship in magazines

We were very lucky to receive a visit from Mel Nichols from Haymarket magazine yesterday at Uclan

Mel is editorial director of the magazine group responsible for the editorial direction, quality and development for all Haymarket Consumer Media magazines and websites.

He gave two talks to undergraduate and post graduate magazine students,one on magazine craft and one on the art of covers.

The first on magazine craft is a presentation that he gives to senior management across the Haymarket group.

Magazines

he reminds us

are a great format.If they weren’t around they would be invented next week

Yet one of the most important relationships on a magazine is between the design or art editor and the editor.The images and the layout are the way that the magazine is communicated to the reader.

He quipped that many designers are dyslexic.This gives them an advantage for their skills are visual and graphic.However they wont have read the story,therefore it is up to the writer to communicate his vision of the story to the designer.

He adds that the editor must learn the tricks of the trade such as lining up pictures,getting used to filling the line,sitting the content on a base line grid,allowing for the gutter,,lining up headlines,and the readability of type

One of the most difficult of tasks he maintained is the flat plan.There are certain rules to follow especially when it comes to positioning of adverts.

Put ads in places which seem logical to the reader and let them flow.But also bear in mind the advertisers reasoning that right sided adverts are more dominant.

But most of all always think visually.

One picture is worth a thousand words

To sum up according to Mel to make a good magazine you need to

1.Work together

2.think visually

3.Plan and have ideas

4,Produce thoughtful design that works and

5.think multi platform

Part 2 on cover design will follow

Blogs don't make money but bloggers can

Two arguments have been dominating the blogosphere in the past few days.

How to get people to pay for news and whether blogging can earn you a living.

David Winer responds to the second question after seeing Daniel Lyons piece in Newsweek which I blogged about earlier in the week.

Dave says that

Blogs don't make money. But people with blogs can.

and says that he has made $2m from his.

Don't rush to find out how however but consider how the blog is used.In Dave case it was a marketing tool for his software company,it was a platform for getting consultancy

the posts I've written here have served as a calling card, a way of keeping my name and ideas on people's minds

Yet another model for paid content

The debate over pay models continues.

Today it is Steve Outing who writes over in Editor and Publisher that the micropayment model wont work.

His repsonse follows Walter Issacson's piece in Time and according to Steve

If the newspaper industry takes Isaacson's advice, then anyone who still works at newspapers should panic

He comes up with another model though from a model that he learned about recently from a California start-up venture called Kachingle.

Publishers, he says, have to get over the idea that they are going to get paid directly by the user. Instead

Newspapers probably can charge for some multi-platform personalized news and information services, if they're good enough and useful enough. But that's not charging for the content (the news), it's charging for the valuable service of individual customization.

So here is the concept

Just as online users currently pay an Internet provider $30 or more a month for their computers to access the Internet, and perhaps a monthly fee for all the music they want from a service like Rhapsody, they'll also pay a monthly fee for all the news and blog content on the Web. Only the last fee is voluntary, and it will be up to publishers to educate the public on the importance of paying for content online

A new free magazine for Manchester

The city will get a new free business and lifestyle magazine.

Worklife magazine will launch this week in a bi monthly format and according to How Do News will

will have a circulation of 10,000 print copies across Manchester, bolstered by a further 20,000 digital e-zines, which will be circulated with each new edition.

The rejunenate group is behind the venture and they describe themselves as a

community of ambitious professionals who understand the value of networking and mutually beneficial relationships in the business world.

The first new media President calls the first blogger

Described as a bookend moment by the New York Times,President Obama's first White House news conference saw the calling of Sam Stein, a reporter for The Huffington Post.

It marks an important breakthrough for the political blogging fraternity in the States as acceptance at the highest level for a non old media journalist.

It is difficult to see the same thing happening here.Imagine Gordon Brown calling the next question from Iain Dale as an example of how far things have gone across the water.

Obama of course can be described as the first new media president.Whilst his twitter account probably wasn't the difference in the margin over John McCain,it certainly helped to create awareness of his campaign.

Interestly continues the paper

The White House decided in advance which reporters would be selected. And on Monday night, correspondents for The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, Time and Newsweek were not on the list.

Twitter to charge commercial users

News this morning that twitter is considering charging for commercial use of the service.(Ht-Matt Randall)

Not before time I say and probably a good move in terms of the microblogging service moving towards a profitable business model.

According to a report on Brand Republic,co founder

'We are noticing more companies using Twitter and individuals following them. We can identify ways to make this experience even more valuable and charge for commercial accounts.' He would not be drawn on the level of charges.

The latest initiative-the printed blog

Over at Media Shift Mark Glaser takes a look at the latest business initiative, the printed blog

The enterprise claims to be the world's first printed newspaper entirely comprising blog postings.

The selection of content in The Printed Blog is based solely on the votes of readers and their geographic location. In such a way, The Printed Blog revolts against the top-down, 'one size fits all' model of newsprint, as we know it. Instead of one paper serving hundreds of thousands of people, as is often the case, The Printed Blog publishes hundreds or even thousands of highly-localized editions based on what a community declares is important to them. The papers are distributed to neighborhood pickup points in A.M. and P.M. editions, and will incorporate rapid turnaround reader comments.

The idea is for two editions to be published per day and that the issues will have a hyper local content chosen by the customer.

Will it work? Well its founder Joshua Karp believes that

here are principles in the online world that work really well and can be applied to the offline world,

adding that

"If we look at a newspaper from the early 20th century compared to one published yesterday they look largely the same. One size fits all, quarter page ads, the half page ads are really expensive. The content is selected by a bunch of editors and journalists that cover beats. Their model hasn't changed, and my position is that the print newspaper doesn't need to go away simply because it's on paper.

The problem with the print newspaper business...[is] that nobody has taken a hard look [at] how newspapers are pulled together and laid out and published, and how the power of community tools that we have now can enhance this."

Ethical Journalism Initiative

The International federation of journalists has launched the Ethical Journalism Initiative(EJI)

This has been launched to

restore values and mission to their profession and aims to strengthen press freedom, reinforce quality journalism and consolidate editorial independence.

It has the following values


* To Respect the Truth
* To be Independent and impartial
* To Seek to do no Harm
* To be Open, Transparent and Accountable to Peers
* To act in the Public Interest

How the New York Times could profit for selling online for $1 a month

Over at Poynter Online, Jim Romenesko is looking at the business model for the New York Times a paper which he describes as

daily miracle of fresh, smart, crucially important content.

which is worth saving beacause

saving it can become a model for saving other quality journalism.

And now he adds

the Times has done so much so well to build its online offerings it's time to turn the dynamics around -- by getting paid for that content, while using the Internet to eliminate the huge costs of producing and delivering it. The Internet should be a publisher's dream, not nightmare.

So here is the model

Charge its 20m unique monthly visitors a $1 a month which would produce $240m in new annual income.

Of course it misses a point that a payroll not matter how samll would probably turn away many of those unique visitors but he gets around this by planning the following

1.To help preserve the Times' search results, the headline and first paragraph of each article will appear online (and on mobile and other electronic devices) for free.

2.All online articles will cost 10 cents each to read in full, with simple, one-step purchases powered by an I-Tunes-like Journalism infrastructure.

Would it work.Well read the full content for a more detailed explaination but I wonder how much a paywall would put the barriers up for the general browser.

Nevertheless an interesting proposition?