Lonely Planet to consolidate its digital strategy-share share share

“Our vision is to shift from the 100m books we’ve printed to 100m shared stories,”

That vision is that of Lonely Planet,and comes from Matt Goldberg, who became Lonely Planet’s chief executive in March.

Part of their digital strategy is to

expand Lonely Planet’s audience from young adventurers, who account for about a fifth of all travellers, to the 60 per cent who have “grown up, had kids but not changed their mindset”.

More importantly for the digital age

the company is refreshing its core book and magazine businesses. He will not give details but says a priority is to integrate them more closely with timely digital content.

The share strategy appears high with plans afoot to focus on mobile devices such as Apple’s iPhone, for which it has sold more than 500,000 downloads of city guides and phrasebooks that speak translation outloud, at $9.99 apiece.

The company is already embedding external blogs onto its output to expand the travel information and experience on its content.


Source FT.com

Social media is a tool not a solution

More on the Twitter phenomena reaching into the corporate boardrooms.

In yesterday's Observer John Naughton writes of

CEOs who see all this social media activity going on and are disturbed by it. They read reports in the Financial Times or Wall Street Journal about Facebook having 250 million users, Twitter growing exponentially or the YouTube search engine becoming the prime source of information for teenagers, and think "hey, we're missing out on this". So instructions go out to minions to create a corporate presence in this whirlpool of online activity.

Neville Hobson meanwhile asks whether social media change the rules of old-world business? Finally deciding that the question should actually be

Can changes in society, people’s expectations and behaviours change the rules of old-world business?

I am experiencing some of these problems in the current role that I am doing.People forget that social media is simply another way of communicating.It shouldn't be pigeon holed into a special department,it is part of the strategy of the organisation.

The important thing is the message and the targets.

Social media is a tool not a solution

Fisticuffs in Edinburgh as Peston refutes Murdoch's distorted market

A crashing response to James Murdoch's speech in Edinburgh from the BBC's Robert Peston

The Observer reports that

At an official dinner following the speech, Murdoch and Peston – who were sitting with the Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark and the BBC chairman, Sir Michael Lyons – became involved in a discussion about banking deregulation which progressed to the flashpoint of whether or not the BBC was patrician, according to those who were there.
Murdoch apparently banged the table and shouted: "How dare you?" with Peston shouting back: "If you think you can get fucking angry, I can get fucking angry."

The BBC put together a concerted effort to refute Murdoch's allegations that it was stifling competition including Peston himself who in a speech yesterday afternoon hastily incorporating comment on the previous evening

You can read the speech in full at Peston's blog but this is what he had to say about the competition model

Market-based democracies like ours need two kinds of essential infrastructure: robust financial systems that transmit cash and allocate capital where it will be most useful; and competing independent news groups that distribute impartial information so that people can take control of their lives and rein in the over-mighty. Now we have just seen the near total collapse of our financial infrastructure, to a large extent because of misguided deregulation of banking; so we have to ask whether there is any rational basis for believing that withdrawing all regulation and subsidy from the news market would be any less costly to our way of life.

Murdoch's justifiable attack on the BBC?

It's a topic that has come up here on this blog numerous times.

How can media compete in a free market when the BBC prevents that free market from happening?

There has been a lot of coverage already about James Murdoch's speech at the Edinburgh International Television Festival last night.

I don't agree with everything that he said but think that he was spot on with this section

"Most importantly, in this all-media marketplace, the expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision, which are so important for our democracy.
"Dumping free, state-sponsored news on the market makes it incredibly difficult for journalism to flourish on the internet. Yet it is essential for the future of independent digital journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it."

Message to the magazine industry-focus on storytelling

the media available to people has way outpaced the ability and willingness of publishing to keep up. The possibility of audio and video and motion graphics and Flash design have bypassed or been ignored by most publishing companies. Not that there aren't elements of those on some print publishers' websites, but the art and craft of storytelling hasn't been reinvented to incorporate those media.

It's worth a read of Jim Gaines' interview over at Media Shift as he talks about the changing environment for magazines.

The former reporter at Newsweek and later, managing editor of People, Time and Life magazines at Time Inc gives a range of view on the publishing industry.

He firmly believes that magazines have a part to play in the art of storytelling adding that

The fact that these media all co-exist in a form that's ubiquitous and becoming more mobile all the time suggests that it's manifest destiny, it's not a passing fancy. Life magazine, which I used to edit, started with photography, it started with a media form. Different kinds of storytelling follow available and compelling media. That's how television started, how radio started. I don't pretend to know all the forms it will take because the future will tell us that, and reader reactions will tell us that. As the platforms become ubiquitous, this kind of storytelling will become dominant.

One model of sustainable journalism

Inspired by the Japanese solution to dealing with elderly shoplifters,CJR reports that Matthew Yglesias may have hit on a solution for journalism

Yesterday a friend and I were discussing the case for subsidizing friendship precisely to help people avoid the problem of loneliness. In many developed societies, after all, this form of deprivation is arguably about as severe a problem as any deprivation of material goods. For the elderly, however, the answer may be that they need to learn to use the internet. I also have the idiosyncratic view that the answer to a lot of questions you hear about the future of certain kinds of journalistic activities is going to be “bored old people will do it for free once they all have broadband.” Who will write up the city council meeting? Bored old people! It beats shoplifting.

Berlusconi looks to the courts for satisfaction

One way of silencing your critics is to sue them and Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is doing just that.

In his sights is the left leaning Italian paper La Repubblica which has been scrutinising his seemingly sleazy private life starting this spring when it emerged that he had attended the 18th birthday party of a model in Naples, giving her with an diamond necklace.

There has been much speculation about his relationship with this girl,not helped by his wife asking for a divorce and reports of prostitutes and sex parties.

Of course Berlusconi's right wing media empire in Italy may be trying to discredit a rival organisation.

However the Italian PM was particularly irked by the paper's 10 questions which it has been asking him to answer since mid May.

La Repubblica’s editor, Ezio Mauro, said: ‘This is the first time in the memory of a free country that a newspaper has been taken to court for simply asking questions.’

First rule of journalism-check your sources.

Though it seems that some of our top outfits failed to do this very thing as they were drawn into the Chris Grayling speech about parts of Britain being like Wired.

Blogger Alex Hilton launched a bogus site claiming to be that of the Major of Baltimore who was not particularly happy about the Conservative spokesman's comments.

(For those already confused-Baltimore is the setting of the fictional drama)

Amongst those falling for the ruse,despite as I understand some rather gigantic clues were the Guardian and the BBC,though the content has now been taken down.

Set for a micropayments platform

It looks like UK content owners could have a working national micropayment network by next summer.

According to this report by Paid Content,

A testbed network is already being planned out, after Digital Britain allocated the government’s Technology Strategy Board (TSB) £30 million in June.

It follows this week's announcement of a £6m fund for those with interesting ideas for applications and platforms.

The fall of Johnston Press continues unabated

Regular readers of this blog will note that I take a great interest in the fortunes of Johnston Press.

The reason is that from the start of my journalism degree at Uclan back in September 2006,their association with that university and the fact that their decline and fall has almost mirrored that of journalism.

They were held up as pioneers of the direction that the local newspaper industry was going,that it would survive only by the intervention of conglomerates and the rapid introduction of technology.

Well three years later a lot has happened,the departure of its chief executive,renegotiation of debt,speculation about selling titles and redundancies.

Today the group has released its interim results for 2009 which has seen its pre tax profits fall by 56.1 per cent to £27.5 million in the first six months of 2009.

During the same period revenues fell by 25.4 per cent while advertising revenues fell 32.7 per cent.

The debt ridden company has also announced a new three-year £485m financing deal.

Its chief executive officer,John Fry said:

"The timing of the economic upturn remains uncertain but advertising revenues are demonstrating greater stability and we expect the cyclical improvement when it comes to more than compensate any ongoing structural change. We will maintain our focus on costs and look to secure additional operating efficiencies during the second half of the year."

The folly of some of its acquisitions is also very apparent.These latest results showing a write down of £126m on its titles,that means that since January 2008 it has written off a massive £543.5 million.

Speculation is rife that the group will need to be slimmed down and over the last few days it has been rumoured that the group is looking to sell the Scotsman group.

So far it has reduced overheads through headcounts and what it describes as a centralisation of functions.

It will be interesting to see where this group goes from here

In praise of the ball point pen

Apparently the ball point pen comes top of the necessary items in a journalists kit bag.

ballpoint pens are as valuable as a reporter's notebooks and press passes.It is for this reason that journalists latch onto ballpoint pens like squirrels onto nuts.
Without their ballpoint pens, reporters are rendered useless and feel as vulnerable as they do without fedoras.

writes Christopher Ortiz,adding that

At any given time, a journalist will have anywhere from two to 20 of ballpoint pens on their person, as well as another hundred or so squirreled away in various drawers, glove boxes, purses and brief cases.This isn’t so much because journalists are afraid of being caught without their trusty writing instrument so much as it is because such pens are becoming a rare commodity in the modern day newsroom..

TV advertising no longer sustainble

The head of one of Europe's biggest TV stations believes that advertising will no longer sustain television's revenues.

Gerhard Zeiler, chief executive of RTL will tell delegates at Edinburgh’s International Television Festival that

Free broadcasters need to look into paid alternatives and consolidate. reports the FT this morning and adds that

Free television remains important for advertisers; millions of viewers still tune in to watch hit shows. But there is a need to explore alternatives. Paid channels focused on sport or film, and micropayments for video on demand, are two possibilities.

How the invading army of twitter is killing comment on blogs

There has been a lot of comment recently about the death of comment particularly on blogs.

It is worth reading this article at Tech Crunch which puts the blame squarely on the bells and whistles which we attached to our blogs.

It describes an invading

army of snippets from Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, Digg and Delicious. It may be nice for the article’s author to conveniently track every last mention of his or her article, but for the reader it just means hundreds more comments to not-read.

Lots of comments amounts to an enormous long list of entirely unstructured text. There are no dividers or subheadings, no logical progression of arguments or groupings of opinion and no distinction between unique, intelligent insights and throwaway expressions of approval and opposition. Because nobody can be bothered to read through such a mess before they add their own comment, there isn’t even the structure of a coherent conversation

Making people smarter whilst saving them time-the online concept

Transfering content from a magazine to online is not always as easy as one might think.

This fascinating interview with Josh Tyrangiel, Managing Editor of TIME.com, explains some of the pitfalls.

He explains that it isnt just a question of replicating the content online and ignoring the unique selling points of the web.

"We need to be cautious about the medium he says adding that "we tell our journalists that their goal is making people smarter whilst saving them time."

Time tries to differentiate itself from other news sites by recognising this time constarint on the reader and getting to the point quickly.

"We prioritise what is important and recognise where and who the reader is."

A complete community connection-maybe I have seen the future

I have been reading a fascinating piece (Ht Sarah Hartley) from Steve Buttry which he describes as a

vision for transformation of our media company and of media companies in general.

Strong words indeed and Steve wants his company to become the " Complete Community Connection."

How well it will

1. provide an interactive, well-organized, easily searched, ever-growing, always updated wealth of community news, information and opportunities on multiple platforms. We need to become the connection to everything people and businesses need to know and do to live and do business in Eastern Iowa.

2.For businesses, we will be their essential connection to customers, often making the sale and collecting the money.

The C3,as he dubs the project will retain news as being essential to mission and identity,but acknowledges that it

needs to be a portal through which you can easily reach any information or activities in the community. We need to provide a conveniently organized, easily searchable treasure chest of information that feeds multiple products that consumers reach in a variety of ways:

The important point is that the content will be driven by the marketplace and will reach some people who never read the paper

by doing important jobs such as connecting them with people of common interests or helping them find the products and services that help them live their lives.

I fully recommend a complete read of the article-it may well be the future

First WiFi now MiFI

Not that I want this blog to become a technology blog but I was interested in the latest WiFI development,the MiFi.

Being technically challenged I will let Lidija Davis explain.

a portable wireless router that will deliver wireless 3G data network access to multiple users in a small area. Much the same size as a credit card, the sleek looking MiFi will let users select access to EVDO or HSPA high speed data networks.

The demise of the free paper may be premature

Last week's announcement of the closure of the London Free sheet the Lite brought the gloom and doomongers to the fore over the future of the concept.

Maybe though the obituaries shouldn't be dusted down just yet.

What is happening in London, and in other countries like Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy, is that more than two free dailies - in this case, two evening papers, one morning paper and one financial paper - competing in a crowded market (almost a dozen paid papers, including the part-free Evening Standard) in a recession will not lead to profits for all titles. Especially free evening papers, a model proved to be very difficult in other parts of world, will suffer. In all markets mentioned above, free dailies have closed down already.

writes Dr. Piet Bakker over at Paid Content.

Quite simply he adds

there certainly is room for a free paper as the young urban non-paid audience is growing and still valuable for advertisers. Room for one at least and two perhaps, but not for three or four.

Social media and newspapers

It's worth reading Editor and Publisher's special report into the use of social media by newspapers.

Two of the challenges that they identify are

1. deciding which to focus on, how to juggle what to put where, and how to still keep people coming to your Web site and print product. Readers can end up using Twitter or Facebook as the only means of following news; goodbye, newspaper sites.

2.the ongoing debate over how to limit or regulate what journalists put on these sites — how far is too far with opinion or personal information?

They are questions that are not solely for newspapers and the media but for most organisations.It will take time for its place to evolve,there will be mistakes and there will be opportunities.

One other main point that comes up is the issue of fatigue

Along with writing for print, which most journalists at newspapers still do, they are updating Web stories and often blogging. Add in Twitter updates of stories and observations, maintaining Facebook or MySpace pages, and checking those of others they are "following" or "friending" and the task-juggling only increases — all as newsrooms continue to cut staff.

as well as the perennial question of writing a social media policy,ranging from.

Don't discuss articles that haven't been published, meetings you've attended or plan to attend with staff or sources, or interviews that you've conducted"

to

"we don't use new media to get into verbal fisticuffs with rivals or critics, or to advance personal agendas."

As I have written many times we are in the early stages of social media.Organisations are taking early steps and are still experimenting with the medium.

Your organisation has to get behind social media

I just love this opening paragraph from Kate Harrison Whiteside

Many people (read: bosses, organisations) still think the web delivers virtually – without needing an investment in resources. But, you get what you pay for. If you don’t invest time and human resources into social media, you won’t get a measurable return on your investment. Organisations wouldn’t design a brochure without a designer. Build a website without a website developer. Put on an event without a venue and entertainment. So we must get them to move beyond the virtual to the reality about social media.

How true

A pulse on the feelings of the web

Welcome to the world of sentiment analysis.

As the New York Times reports

The rise of blogs and social networks has fueled a bull market in personal opinion: reviews, ratings, recommendations and other forms of online expression.

adding that

online opinion has turned into a kind of virtual currency that can make or break a product in the marketplace.

As with many practices in the world of social media,the art is at an early stage but services are starting to appear including Scout Labs and Jodange

Both seek to provide services to enable decision makers to better understand who and what is influencing their customers, competitors, marketplace and therefore their company.

The FT has set up Newssift that

that tracks sentiments about business topics in the news, coupled with a specialized search engine that allows users to organize their queries by topic, organization, place, person and theme.

Time to invest in the media? Well at least the niche media

for media entrepreneurs there has never been a better time to be taking risks and investing money as today, when the whole media landscape is about to change. In the next two years, "premium" paid-for online content will become the normal business model for media brands. Those leading the way will be niche titles, exactly like Spear's, that provide invaluable specialist information readers cannot get elsewhere.

The words of William Cash who has just bought back the majority holding that he sold two years ago in Spears magazine

In this morning's Independent Cash argues that his magazine will fill a niche market attracting premium subscribers,who are high-net-worth entrepreneurs,

The idea behind Spear's is to turn ourselves into the Michelin guide of wealth management. This is a media sector that has been curiously ignored by the UK for many years but which now, with the credit crunch making many wealthy individuals desperate for independent and objective advice as to how to hang on to their cash, is suddenly booming.

Extroversion on the web

I also understand that many people will never twitter about their golf exploits or check into restaurants via foursquare. Not everyone wants to "life stream" like I do.

The words of Fred Wilson VC and principal of Union Square Ventures.

In the week when we found out that 40 per cent of tweets are utter ramblings,Fred examines the concept of Extroversion

Extroversion on the web is a growing phenomenon. I see it with my kids who were trained in social media by Facebook and they were reluctant to embrace public social media like blogs, twitter, and the like. But they are coming around and public sharing of information is becoming much more accepted in their generation.

Ht-Kevin Anderson

Making money from online journalism is, thus, not just a matter of saying "Let's all start charging."

One of the problems associated with introducing a micropayments system is balancing the transaction cost against the sums collected.

Thus as Robert Pickard says

To create the best industry wide effects, a micropayment payment system would need to include as many papers as possible

but adds that

The fact that a consortium is currently being sought only among the major players illustrates, however, that such a system would be cost inefficient because content from smaller papers would attract fewer transactions and be more expensive to service.

This is one problem with any system but another is picking the correct model.As Robert continues

The biggest pricing challenge, however, is that some articles will be more valuable than others and will be most sought after by consumers. This means newspapers will have to figure out BEFOREHAND which stories fall into those categories and they will have to decide what prices to charge for them.

These are not necessarily skills that media organisations have and

It will require fundamental rethinking of the value chain, what content is offered, and how it is produced. It will also require significant thought about what's in it for consumers--something that is glaringly missing from current discussions of starting online payments.

Moves afoot to rescue the Scotsman

The Sunday Times is reporting attempt by a business consortium to rescue the Scotsman from the grip of Johnston Press.

According to the paper

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.

adding that

Johnston’s acquisition of The Scotsman was seen as the crowning glory of a buying spree that had taken the company from a family-run player to one of the country’s largest regional publishers in barely a decade.
In reality, it was one of several deals too far for the group, which is locked in talks with lenders to reset the borrowing terms on £450m of debt by August 31.

Italian news written for a cultural elite

Not much has changed in the 50 years since the political journalist Enzo Forcella declared that the Italian newspaper was written for just 1,500 readers: ministers, parliamentarians, party leaders, union bosses and industrialists. News is reported, he wrote, in an "atmosphere of family discussion, with protagonists who have known each other since childhood, exchanging jokes, speaking a language of allusions."

Italian media takes a bashing in Time magazine this week as the country is portrayed as one where the news is not important to the average person in the street.

The reasons though seem to be as much about the content as the population themselves and according to Paolo Mancini, a professor of the sociology of communications at the University of Perugia

Italy's press has always been written by and for the intellectual élite

The culture pages of the major dailies have the air of an academic journal. Graphics and layout are dense and often confusing. Photos are usually portraits of the same tired faces. When political news breaks, the front pages can feature as many as five articles on the subject by leading journalists providing individual takes. Yet context or background is rarely provided. The reader of the printed press already knows what's going on, They have the news. What they want is gossip.

Ht-Adrian Monck

Sky closes its unproductive web pages

An interesting decision from Sky yesterday as it revealed that it would be shutting down part of its web site after a review of its online presence.

As Media Guardian reports

The axed websites – money & property, dating, careers, stars, life & style, MyKindaPlace and Monkeyslum – have been hit by the advertising downturn. They account for less than 0.5% of the total inventory on Sky.com, according to the company.

The company says that it will focus instead on its more profitable sites

Print revenue worth more than 15 times that of online?

Some interesting stats from across the Atlantic

Print newspapers took in $34.7 billion in advertising revenue last year and had 49 million subscribers. That works out to $709 per subscriber

whereas

Newspapers online had $3.1 billion in ad revenue last year and averaged 67.3 million unique visitors per month. That’s $46 per reader.

That means a print subscriber is worth more than 15 times the revenue an online reader is.

Perhaps though not quite as bad-

Not all online newspaper readers are made equal. The top, say 10 percent of readers, who visit the home page twice a day are worth exponentially more than the bottom 10 percent, junk traffic that bounces in off Digg or some blog and which sees a page or two and spends maybe 10 seconds on the site. I wish I could quantify how much the top 10 percent are worth, but I’ve never been able to find data on that. Still, remove the junk traffic, and the online revenue per reader would rise.

Location Location Twitter

Tweets are going to add location tags so that you will know exactly where a tweet is coming from.Good idea?

Well Martin Bryant doesn't think so.

He gives six reasons why it will have negative effects including the obvious one

Remember the man who tweeted that he was out of town and came back to discover his house had been burgled? In the near future that could be you even if you don’t mention you’re away from home. The geocriminals of the future will simply monitor tweeting location patterns. Most of your tweets will be likely to be sent from in, or close to, your home. When you’re tweeting from out of area they’ll swoop in and swipe your stuff.

Though before we all get too hung up about this potential,this will be an opt in rather than opt out feature but as Martin points out this

certainly devalue any analysis of Twitter location data. “200 tweets a minute are coming in from the disaster zone” is much more useful that what we’ll get – “We’re seeing 4 tweets a minute from the disaster zone; there might be more but they’re not sharing their location”.

More arguments on the Paid model

The arguments about paid or unpaid have not gone away.

Alan Mutter argues that there are two reasons why we are not paying for news:

1.Publishers can’t figure out how to charge for content without throttling their web traffic and the online advertising that comes along with it.

2.Individual publishers are afraid to move unilaterally to begin charging for content but also unable to coalesce as a group around a common philosophy and platform for doing so

That's one side of the coin but Paul Farhi reflects that

Since there’s no indication that online ad revenue will ever be robust enough to support newspapers, maybe they’d be better off charging steep fees for online content or keeping material off the Web entirely and putting their emphasis on—gasp—that retro old print product.

Another shift in the Murdoch stable?

So does the decision by the Murdoch empire to close the London paper mark a radical shift in Rupert Murdoch's attitude to free news?

Last night his son James announced that the experiment in shoving free papers in the faces of London commuters had "fallen short of expectations.

The project which employs over 60 people lost £12.9m in the year to June 2008.

According to Patrick Smith writing at Paid Content

Murdoch’s decision to axe that paper today shows just how much the axis of publishing has shifted: just as proprietors are growing weary of readers enjoying their online news for free, there is not nearly the same confidence in the free print model there was three years ago and publishers are reverting to ways of maximising user revenue in all media instead of giving it away for nothing.

No doubt the other London freebies,Lite and the Metro will be watching developments and maybe up here in Manchester the MEN's free experiment will also be coming under scrutiny

The Content bubble and how to build your brand

David Murray over at the Biving's report writes that it is all very well having an online profile such as Twitter of Facebook but

You would be doing yourself a disservice by simply posting content without taking some time to think about the community you want to build. With the wealth of information available on just about every niche, you can create a valuable social network that people will want to follow.

He gives the example of an Italian restaurant building up a brand and here are some examples

* Italian food has a rich and incredible history. Share this in your feed.
* What region of Italy does your restaurant represent? Are there stories and facts which you can talk about?
* Highlight specialty dishes.
* Share some links about all the different grades of olive oil.
* Who doesn’t want to know more about Italian desserts?
* Go on YouTube and find some relative videos to post.
* Talk about how certain ingredients became known. How is ricotta cheese made?
* What about Italian songs or music?
* Spotlight some famous Italian chefs.
* Explain how all the different types of pasta come about.

Facebook to the rescue over International terrorism

The latest use of social media gets the attention of the Independent this morning.

The paper reports that

Intelligence agencies are building up a Facebook-style databank of international terrorists in order to sift through it with complex computer programs aimed at identifying key figures and predicting terrorist attacks before they happen.

adding that

By analysing the social networks that exist between known terrorists, suspects and even innocent bystanders arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, military intelligence chiefs hope to open a new front in their "war on terror"

Nearly a newspaper success story?

Kristine Lowe reports a quite remarkable phenomena from Denmark where in her own words

Danish local paper Randers Amtsavis is unable to deal with the rush of new subscribers,

Almost 2000 new subscribers since mid-July is forcing the paper to meet subscription requests with the following message: "We're sorry, we can't give you the newspaper straight away, but we can put you on a waiting list".

But here is the catch

, the comments reveal that these are not really new subscribers, but rather old subscribers who left the paper in droves when it changed from being a morning to evening paper five months ago, and are now returning after the paper swapped back to being a morning newspaper

Nearly a newspaper success story?

Well meaning but dangerous-how press freedom campaigns can undermine freedom

Western pressures for freedom of the press in the Middle East may be undermining journalism in the region.

That's the opinion of Lawrence Pintak and Yosri Fouda writing in the CJR who argue that

well-meaning Western journalism rights groups have been invoking “freedom of the press” to defend Arab and Iranian online activists who have been jailed or harassed by the authorities.

Just because you put words on paper—or a computer screen—does not make you a journalist. they argue adding that

For journalism rights groups to defend anyone with a keyboard or cell phone camera on the basis of press freedom dangerously muddies the waters.

Readers Digest files for chapter 11

A staple of the publishing business indicated the severity of the advertising recession lats night as Reader's Digest announced plans for voluntary bankruptcy in New York.

The FT reports that

Equity investors led by Ripplewood Holdings, who announced the $2.4bn acquisition in November 2006, will lose their entire $600m investment.

adding that

advertising revenue from the flagship magazine fell 18.4 per cent last year, and is down another 7.2 per cent in the first six months of this year, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.

The magazine says that the move will not be noticed by its readers,does not expect to lay off any employees or close any of its publications.

Branding for journalists

Tips for the new breed of online journalist come from Adam Westbrook who kicks off a series of 6 blog postings by reminding us of Andrew Neil's comments from back in 2006

The journalist of the future…will have more than one employer and become a brand in his own right” he wrote. With full time jobs in well staffed newsrooms becoming more sparse, but opportunities outside traditional/mainstream journalism becoming more plenty, this prediction is coming true. So, what can you do to boost your brand?

So to boost your brand you must

1. try and own your domain name (www.yourname.com or www.yourname.net or www.yourname.co.uk).

2.define your own niche-you need to be able to give someone the elevator pitch about yourself too. A niche will give you a vital advantage over general-news journalists.

3.have a great website and blog

4.have a fresh CV and showreel

5.spread yourself across as many social networks as possible but make sure that the message is consistent

6.promote yourself at networking events, conferences and other shindigs.

I look forward to Adam's next installment

Cuny unveils its news business models

The Cuny graduate school of journalism has come up with four business models for a new news ecosystem.

You can go to their site and download the models incorporting them into google docs or an excel spreadsheet and test out the assumptions

The first two models are

hyperlocal and the sales, support, and technology framework that we believe is necessary to optimize businesses in the ecosystem. We believe an organization that enables advertising networks and other services to support the local news ecosystem is both a sustainable business and will make individual hyperlocal news organizations more profitable. We divided a sample metro market of 5 million people into many smaller markets (20k, 35k, and 60k) to reflect the towns and neighborhoods that comprise a large metropolitan market

The third model is

a new, metro-wide news organization serving a market of five million people that operates on a smaller scale and performs a wide variety of tasks. It will produce original unique beat and investigative reporting and it will also work collaboratively with the other members of the ecosystem and its readers to add value. Advertising will remain the key business driver, but to maximize profits the new organization will diversify its revenues

and the fourth is a not for profit model

We want to show the level of resources that might be available in a given market to augment local news gathering efforts. Researching the available charitable money in a market, we picked a hypothetical bottom line of $3 million and built one possible organization to augment journalism in the market

Blogger turns a police investigation

The power of the blogger?

Rick Outzen was determined that the official version of the killing of Byrd and Melanie Billings, the parents of 13 adopted children with special needs, who were murdered in their nine-bedroom house just a few miles from here because they were rich was simply not the case.

Rick had heard that it may have been relating to a contract killing due to Byrd Billing's former ownership of a strip club and set out to prove that was indeed the case using a blog post to put forward his theory.

The New York Times reports that

six weeks after the killings, Mr. Outzen has not had to retract anything he has written. The Escambia County sheriff, David Morgan, said in an interview that Mr. Outzen had helped the investigation and that his anonymous sources were largely right: about a safe the killers appear to have overlooked inside the Billings home, with $164,000 in cash; about Mr. Billings’s dubious reputation; and about Leonard Gonzalez Jr., whom the police have identified as the intruders’ ringleader, and whom Mr. Outzen identified as a self-defense instructor, who once worked for Mr. Tice.

Public interest after all?

A rip roaring attack on Heydon Prowse who secretly filmed Alan Duncan on the House of Common's terrace by the Independent's Stephen Glover.

He describes him as not a journalist but a self-styled campaigner who posts clips on YouTube

He asks whether

Prowse had delivered such a public service after all. I started to wonder whether his secret filming was really in the public interest. Was it possible he had abused an important trust that must exist between journalists and politicians in a democratic society? Might it be that his underhand techniques, if repeated on a wider scale, would paradoxically have the effect of making politicians less prepared to speak frankly to journalists, and even, in the long-run, less accountable?

Threats for journalists covering the Afghan elections

For those that don't know this week sees elections in Afghanistan

The spotlight will be on them even more with the deaths of Britih troops now having hit the 200 mark overnight.

Current President Hamid Karzai is seeking a second term.However for reporters who want to bring the news of the campaiign to a wider audience,there is much danger.

Reporters without Frontiers says that

The violence that threatens journalists working for Afghanistan’s news media has created a climate that does not favour free and impartial coverage of the 20 August crucial presidential election,

adding that

“One of the consequences of the failure to adopt the new press law has been unequal air-time for the candidates,” the press freedom organisation said. “Voters have also been denied independent coverage on national television throughout the campaign. Even if the monitoring carried out by the Electoral Media Commission is a big step forward, it is not enough. Journalists need laws that guarantee their safety and freedom, at least in principle.”

Still think that social media is a fad?

Ht-In the Mode

Some thoughts on the online community

A couple of posts on community took my eye.

This from jeremiah Owyang (ht-Dom Rodwell) who lists what he believes to be the 9 ways to kick start your community

1. Create compelling content on a recurring basis.
2. Reward users who fill out their profile.
3. Invite community influencers and advocates to the community first
4. Encourage interaction through conversations.
5. Reward top contributors:
6. Centralize your community around your real world events.
7. Use virtual events tp integrate community:
8. Integrate with your website –and other customer touchpoints.
9. Encourage employees to get active.

Stuart Glendinning Hall looks at the various tools that a community manager has to bring an online community together.

One thing that he does advocate is the 90/9/1 rule

every 90 readers the remaining ten per cent will contribute to a lesser or greater extent, of that the top 1 per cent the most active.

which despite having come in for

criticism recently, and been described as a myth rather than reality, but I believe it still has value for community managers, especially when used as a heuristic 'rule of thumb'.

Social community can be money but it needs to be private and socially exclusive

Is this the magical formula for making an online community pay its way?

The Huffington Post reports that ASMALLWORLD

has reported an 11% increase in ad revenue from Q1 to Q2 and plans to be profitable by Q4. This remarkable turnaround — the site laid off 40% of its staff last fall — is all the more surprising given the downturn in the advertising market and the debate lingering over the profitably of social networking sites as a whole.

But before we all rush out and copy the model,one thing to bear it mind,

It describes itself as a private international community of culturally influential people who are connected by three degrees

All you need to know about newspaper circulation is that it’s dropping rapidly

Yesterday's ABC's will have been poured over in minute detail to look for trends but I think that Patrick Smith sums them up in one paragraph

All you need to know about newspaper circulation is that it’s dropping rapidly, and the decline shows no sign of slowing. According to the July ABC figures, the UK’s 13 national newspapers collectively saw sales drop 4.1 percent year on year to a daily average of 10.9 million sales (and giveaways)—a loss of 465,895 copies a day compared to July of last year. For the Sunday papers, it’s worse: they suffered a 6.2 percent year-on-year drop to a weekly average of 11.17 million, a drop of 742,719 a week.

New York Times looks to the grape to create revenue

In an attempt to search for new sources of revenue the New York Times is going down the route of starting a wine club.

The paper reports that

The new venture, called The New York Times Wine Club, will offer members a selection of wines at two price levels, $90 or $180 per six-bottle shipment, and customers can choose to have wine delivered every one, two or three months.

Thomas K. Carley, the senior vice president of strategic planning for the Times Company is quoted as saying that

The Times is looking at a lot of different ideas for engaging our audience,” he said, “to make statements about what are our strengths, what are the ways that we can delve further into our audience and bring them products and services that basically enhance the bond with The New York Times.”

Battle of the county magazines

An interesting story from How Do over the circulation battle between the two main Lancashire lifestyle magazines which reports

Lancashire Life magazine and its younger rival Lancashire magazine has now required the intervention of the Audit Bureau of Circulation.

The conflict broke out on the cover of July's Lancashire magazine which claimed that it was the fastest growing county magazine.

It was then forced to carry the following disclaimer in its next edition after complaints from its rival

Circulation. The front cover of the July issue of Lancashire Magazine carried the statement ‘The fastest-growing county magazine: 109,139 extra sales’. We would like to point out that this statement is not supported by ABC circulation figures when compared on a like for like basis and that the quoted extra sales figure of 109, 139 is our own data including the period before we were ABC certified. The latest ABC certified circulation figure for Lancashire Magazine is 20,013 for the period July to December 2008.”

Capital Ideas to buy the Observer?

Rumour's abound about the Observer which according to some sources is now about to be sold to investment group Capital Ideas.

Not a particually good idea thinks the Indy's Ian Burrell

Capital Ideas consultant Renwick Haddow has told City AM that its plans would involve cutting down the number of staff and turning the 'Obs' into a weekend review in the style of The Week, a publication that is not known for doing original journalism. What a sad fate that would be for a maverick paper with a fine tradition of investigations, breaking stories and publishing the criticism and analysis of writers as famous as George Orwell, Conor Cruise O'Brien and Clive James.

The 10-20 twitter rule

I think that on reflection,I probably tweet a little too much,but how much is too much?

Twitterati tries to quantify it or not as may be the case

The answer, however, is far from straightforward because people use Twitter in different ways for different purposes. Companies offering news/content may updates more than 30 times a day to highlight new stories, while individuals building personal/digital brands may also be active.
That said, I think the sweet spot for tweets/day is between 10 and 20.
It’s enough to let people “talk” a lot without being too verbose. At the same time, it provides followers with a steady flow of content without being overwhelming.
It’s like going to a party, and meeting new people. Most of the conversations are pleasant and interesting but then you run into the person who talks, talks and talks – while you desperately search for a way to escape.
Of course, the “10 to 20 Rule” is not set in stone but if you’re tweeting more than 20 times a day, you’ve either got too much time on your hands, providing tweets that aren’t interesting (e.g. going to have coffee at Starbucks; stayed up way too late last night, etc.), or just creating noise.

Any clearer?

The seven laws of journalism

Welcome to the seven laws of journalism,at least according to Danna Walker,Associate Professor in Residence for Journalism in the USA

Here are her tips for budding journalism students

1.Journalism isn’t dead. Yes, journalism as we knew it once is gone,but we can’t live without cars, and we can’t live without news and information.

2.Money counts. If you’re going into journalism, learn the basics of business. Yes, news sites are giving away content for free, but that is changing and your time is worth cold, hard cash.

3.Grow a pair. think of yourself as a first responder. You walk toward the danger, even if the danger at the time is simply approaching a big-name politician in a Capitol hallway.

4.Life is hard (so deal with it)if you want to get a story, you’ve got to be able to keep appointments, dog people, and spend time developing and writing it.

5.You’re a story factory. Care about your audience. Your world is your assembly line.

6.Use technology as a means to an end.

7.people fought and died so you could do what you do, and a lot of people all over the world would kill to be able to do it, You have rights in order to “do” journalism, so flaunt them.

An Iraqi journalist in Tuscon Arizona

A casr of turning the tables as an Iraqi journalist makes his home in the United States.

Mudhafar al-Husseini has been in the country for more than three months but as he says

I first realized that life in America was not as easy and smooth as it appeared in Hollywood movies.

noting that he was

astonished by several things I never imagined about life in America. Life is very serious and practical here, and people don't have much time to talk on the street, in markets, or even in public places. It seems everyone is busy with his or her own business and daily concerns.

And on the war

I was also surprised that most Americans know nothing about the reality of the war in Iraq. I sometimes find it hard to explain, because Iraq is a complicated place. I think it's the history, the civilization, and the old sand of that country that makes it harder than others to be understood. These aspects were not considered at all before the war. You have to study Iraqi history well and get to know the culture more before dealing with the people on a long-term basis.

Source-CJR

Customers will pay for services but not for features

The debate will long continue about whether social media can transform itself into a valuable business model for some time to come.

Facebook's $50m acquisition of Friend's feed shows that at least the industry is still operating on a business model rational.

According though to Rich Karpinski the philosophy of social media will restrict its business potential.

He argues that

it’s extremely difficult, if not impossible, to build a real business around these things. Advertisers don’t really want to sit alongside social media content and social media users have proven they don’t really want to pay for these features. Why? Well once the free genie is out of the bottle, it’s hard to shove it back in and start charging even small fees.

To Rich social media is a faeture and not a service for which users can see an intrinsic value.Customers will pay for service but not for features.

The economics makes socially responsible journalism a public good — the kind of thing that we value as a society, but none of us is willing to pay for

According to Nieman's what once was an anomaly in the world of media is becoming a business model in its own right.

They are talking about not for profit journalism which

with new nonprofit newsrooms launching every month. Many are doing the kind of difficult work that for-profit newspapers are shirking — investigative, enterprise, watchdog and explanatory journalism. It’s the good stuff we need to keep democracy working.

Driven by the current economic circumstances in the industry

The economics makes socially responsible journalism a public good — the kind of thing that we value as a society, but none of us is willing to pay for individually.

How medical science and journalism cross over

It seems that swine flu isn't the only infectious disease going around.

Whwn it comes to the web,the way that certain images, videos or concepts can suddenly spread like wildfire across the web, using email and social websites to propagate, is one of online culture's most unique phenomena.

The New Scientist reports that

Spanish researchers claim to have found a way to accurately predict how quickly and widely new pieces of information, or "memes" as they are called, will spread. The ability to forecast this "viral" behaviour would be of great interest to sociologists and marketeers, among others.

And yes it involves medical science which maps an infection's R0, or basic reproductive number, which describes how many other people someone with the virus can be expected to infect.

models that apply the idea to online information can only indicate whether an internet meme is likely to be successful or to die out quickly, says Esteban Moro at the Carlos III University of Madrid, Spain.

Ht-Martin Stabe

Press casualties in Afghanistan

Military casualties in Afghanistan have been in the news for the last couple of months but the nature of the conflict has meant that casualties in the media have been light.

Now however AP reports that

A roadside bombing has wounded two Associated Press journalists embedded with the U.S. military in southern Afghanistan.
Photographer Emilio Morenatti and AP Television News videographer Andi Jatmiko were traveling with the military when their vehicle was struck by the bomb Tuesday.
Both were immediately taken to a military hospital in Kandahar. Jatmiko suffered leg injuries and two broken ribs. Morenatti, badly wounded in the leg, underwent an operation that resulted in the loss of his foot.

via CJR

Martin Belam illustrates the economics of pay walls

The relationship between scarcity and Price is a standard economic principle and can be related to the charging for online news.

Martin Belam seeks to illustrate this principle to demonstrate why Rupert Murdoch's paywall won't work and provides this image where newspapers from the UK, US, Australia, Germany, Hong Kong and India are all covering the same story.



And concludes that

when we think about asking the market to pay for newspaper content online, I think we have to look honestly at that content, and ask, what have we got that is unique and desired by consumers?

NUJ will debate new ownership models

Members of the the National Union of Journalists' Birmingham and Coventry branch are looking at whether new ownership models can help slow the decline of the regional press.

Hold the Front page reports that

the branch has tabled a motion calling on the union's national executive committee to carry out research into different forms of newspaper ownership, including using public funds to sustain loss-making papers for community benefit.

The motion will be debated at the union's annual delegate meeting (ADM) in Southport on 20-22 November.

Get yourself an online brand

Getting that personal brand is a must for journalism students in today's ultra competitive world.

Mindy McAdams gives a 10 pointer score card to see whether you have passed the test over on her blog

1. People in your field should know who you are.

2. Someone who Googles your first and last name should be able to find out who you are.

3. Your online self-representation should demonstrate that you are a serious, ethical journalist.

4. Samples of your best work should be linked to your home page or online (HTML) resume.

5. Your real work experience should be easy to find and easy to scan quickly. People will want to check this for verification, so dates should be clear, not obfuscated.

6. Make sure your online pages can be read easily on various cell phones, including the iPhone.

7. If you supply a link to a PDF of your resume, make sure the pertinent job or freelance-experience information is also available via simple HTML (not exclusively in the PDF). Word Docs are not good for online resumes. A Google Doc would be better.

8. People who might want to hire you need to be able to find your contact info EASILY. Don’t make them hunt all over for it. If you supply an e-mail address, make sure you check mail at that address just about daily, if not more often.

9. You need to be around, to be visible, to be seen — people should see your name in comments, retweets, etc.

10. People online should point to you from time to time, as I have pointed to Joe, Dave, Ryan, Greg, and Lauren in this post. This confers authority on you. Brands rest in part on authority, in part on name recognition.

Unistats on the career prospects of journalism students

Josh Halliday spent his Sunday pouring over the Unistats statistics of the UK's Universities and Colleges to look at how media students fared in the job market in 2009.

My eyes fell straight at the figures for Uclan which showed that 39% of journalism undergraduates ended up in a media related profession whilst 85% of post graduates did likewise.

Tops was Sheffield where the figures were 70%

Of course it is fairly impossible to analyse these results further and you probably have to question that categories that the universities provide.

Nevertheless some interesting statistics and congratulations to Josh for ploughing through the figures.

Baby P's killers unmasked under Article 10

The front pages are filled with the pictures of the people involved in the death of Baby P following a courts ruling that it was necessary to maintain public confidence in the judicial system.

Of course the fall out will be that the taxpayer will now have to pay for new identities for those involved.

Pictures have been available for some time having been leaked onto the internet last year and this no doubt contributed to the pressure on the courts yesterday.

As the Guardian reports

The decision by Mr Justice Coleridge to withdraw the protection of anonymity from Tracey Connelly and Baby Peter's stepfather, Steven Barker, followed pressure from several major media organisations, including the BBC, the Mirror Group, and the Times, who argued that this was important to ensure that those who caused the toddler's death were being properly held to account.

The courts stood behind article 10 of the Human Rights Act, the right to freedom of expression.

Not surprsingly there is massive coverage in the media this morning and no doubt the judge's decision will be poured over

The death of blogging

Whisper it but some people are talking of its demise.

Hopefully this blog wont be following this trend but this was a very interesting post from Emily Kostic over at Journalism.co.uk

As I become more involved and more interested in the industry, I’ve blogged less. As I become more interested in online media, I’ve spent more time in my Google Reader, reading blogs on topics similar to my own. Ultimately, a bad decision, because reading other blogs regularly has hurt my own in countless ways — mostly because I feel that I rarely have anything original to say.

and she continues

Instead, I’ve taken what is probably the lazier (but no less effective) approach of sharing stories and blog posts I like on Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader, etc. Considering a majority of stories and ideas today are shared through means other than blogging, I suppose this is what they say when they say “blogging is dying.”

Whatever happened to citizen journalism

When I started this blog,it was one of the main topics of conversation back in 2006.The July 7th bombing,the Buncefield refinery fire,all were signs of a growing shift towards user generated connect.

But we here those phrases less and less in today's media talk

The trouble with citizen journalism on the Internet - and the reason newspapers will survive this onslaught, just as they did the predictions of doom and disaster meted out by radio and television - is threefold: quantity, quality and regularity, each intertwined with the others.

writes Bob Groeneveld,

Too much information,a lack of quality and frequency were all cited at the time as being a reason why the phenomena wouldn't last.

And yet with hyper local and community it may be that citizen journalism with some help from the professionals may be the saviour of content

Milk or social media with your coffee?

Today's topic has been the time at which we look at our multi media devices and connect to the internet.

The New York Times reporting that

After six to eight hours of network deprivation — also known as sleep — people are increasingly waking up and lunging for cellphones and laptops, sometimes even before swinging their legs to the floor and tending to more biologically urgent activities.

and an even more worrying picture of

Weekday mornings have long been frenetic, disjointed affairs. Now families that used to fight over the shower or the newspaper tussle over access to the lone household computer — or about whether they should be using gadgets at all, instead of communicating with one another.

via Mashable

Human shoppers might be turned off by the tricks of Google rankings

Staying on the subject of online advertising,a study by Engine Ready, an Internet marketing company,suggests that

visitors who get to retail sites through sponsored links are more likely to buy than those who click on organic results. They also spend more; the average order of a paid linker was $11 higher, at $117.06.

It suggests that

human shoppers might be turned off by the tricks that make a site show up higher in Google rankings. In particular, Google’s Web trawling software is lured by pages with lots of material. “When we’re optimizing for search engines, content is king,” Mr. Smith said. “But less is more when engaging a visitor.”

via New York Times

Advertisers developing personalised consumer relationships on Facebook

Facebook may be dying in some quarters but not it seems in the minds of US advertisers.

More than 80 per cent of the largest US advertisers are using Facebook to promote themselves, suggesting that corporate America has embraced the social networking site as a mainstream promotional platform. reports the FT this morning adding that

Unlike previous big brand promotion on the web, the ads on Facebook are not splashy displays and banners but more discreet, blending into the overall design of the site.
They typically invite users to engage with companies, directing them to pages and applications where they can become fans of the company and receive regular updates.

I believe in the link economy. it adds value to all producers of content

yes the global economy is fairly grim and the cyclical aspects of our business are biting extremely hard in the face of the structural changes. But the Internet isn’t killing the news business any more than TV killed radio or radio killed the newspaper. Incumbent business leaders in news haven’t been keeping up. Many leaders continue to help push the business into the ditch by wasting “resources” (management speak for talented people) on recycling commodity news. Reader habits are changing and vertically curated views need to be meshed with horizontal read-around ones.

The words of Chris Ahearn, President, Media at Thomson Reuters speaking to Media File.

In a tirade against those businesses who blame aggregation for the mess we are in,he has this to say

Blaming the new leaders or aggregators for disrupting the business of the old leaders, or saber-rattling and threatening to sue are not business strategies – they are personal therapy sessions .

Instead he continues

I believe in the link economy. Please feel free to link to our stories — it adds value to all producers of content. I believe you should play fair and encourage your readers to read-around to what others are producing if you use it and find it interesting.

ht-Martin Stabe

Observer's ex editor looks at the paper's fraught relationship with its big brother

The marriage of two like-minded papers seemed to be a union made in heaven, assuring a continued existence of the title.

writes Ex-editor of the Observer Jonathan Fenby in the Independent this morning.

He reveals the difficulty of the paper's relationship with the Guardian

causes for ill feeling between the daily and Sunday multiplied as the weeks and months went by. To meet the targets which the management of Guardian Group had presented to the trust, to justify the purchase, there were sharp editorial cuts, cushioned by Lonrho's generous redundancy terms.

and continues to spill the beans

When they were moved to the Farringdon Road building of the paper's new sibling to save money, Observer journalists found themselves shoe-horned into half the promised space, with some departments put into separate rooms down the street. As for the editor, goodbye to my predecessor's private shower room at the Battersea palace. The Guardian foreign desk told joint stringers that their first loyalty was to the daily.

Social media is the New Punk

Six journalists jailed in the Gambia

Six journalists have been jailed in the Gambia reports Media Guardian

The journalists were sentenced yesterday by a court in the country's capital city, Banjul, after backing a press union statement that criticised the government.
The union today said it would appeal against their convictions, which have been widely condemned by press freedom groups.

RSF reports that

“The press freedom situation in Gambia is the most serious by far in all of West Africa,“Repressive legislation, arbitrary arrests and generalised fear – nothing is spared the country’s few independent journalists. Daring to express an opinion or criticise the authorities is immediately regarded by the government as an attempt to besmirch the country’s image.”

More on that twitter outrage and withdrawal symptoms.

It seems that rumours were right that the downing of twitter yesterday afternoon originated in the dispute between Russia and Georgia.

This from the BBC

the strike was aimed at a pro-Georgian blogger known as Cyxymu.Specifically, the person is an activist blogger and a botnet was directed to request his pages at such a rate that it impacted service for other users."

Meanwhile what was it like to be without twitter?

This from Mark Evans

For hard-core Twitter users, Twitter is their social media crack. Without a fix, it’s probably difficult for many of them to do what they want/need to do to sell, brand, market, promote and share.
Twitter’s outage illustrates how crucial is has become for many people, and a hour or two without Twitter can be difficult.

Twitter under attack-should we be worried?

So twitter yesterday found itself under cyber attack?

According to this report in the FT this morning

it was hit by a denial-of-service attack, in which thousands of personal computers attempt simultaneous connections, slowing the target site’s response to a virtual standstill.

adding that

The outages once again underscored the fragility of internet communications at a time when Google, Amazon and others are touting the advantages of moving corporate work into the so-called cloud, where data and programs are accessible only via remote connections.

Meanwhile accoridng to the New York Times,it may be the continuing tensions between Russia and Georgia which may be to blame

Bill Woodcock, research director of the Packet Clearing House, a nonprofit technical organization that tracks Internet traffic, said the attack was an extension of the conflict between Russia and Georgia.
It was not clear who initiated the attack, Mr. Woodcock said, but it was likely that “one side put up propaganda, the other side figured this out and is attacking them.” He said he found evidence that the attacks had originated from the Abkhazia region, a territory on the Black Sea disputed between Russia and Georgia.

News organizations need to be guided by economics, not emotion or nostalgia, as they seek a business model for the future.

With all the talk in the media returning to the subject of paid content,this post took by interest (via Joanne Geary).

The reason is that the laws of economics are ruthless and the sole arbiter of the marketplace. They don't bend to what you want or feel entitled to.

and continues

Price is determined by the UNIQUE value your product provides TO THE CONSUMER. Both parts of the equation matter: how useful/valuable is it to the consumer, and could the same value be obtained elsewhere for less?

Where print beats blogging hands down

Russell Davies is rather worried about blogs not being updated on a regular basis.

Which, of course, is where print succeeds so well. If these blogs were on paper you'd instantly get a good clue how old the information is. Yellowing, brittle paper. A distinct smell. The only places these blogs should now show up should be second-hand shops and libraries - again giving you a sense of the age of the information.

Ht-Adrian Monck

Murdoch's last gamble

Everyone is getting rather uptight about Rupert Murdoch's comments that all his news sites will be charging for content within the next twelve months.

But what does this really tell us?

Personally for me there has been one organisation ie Murdoch's that has transcended all the other media organisations but yesterday's losses at NewsCorp mean that even he can no longer buck the trend that the old model has failed.

There is a great post from Polis' Charlie Beckett who asks Is Rupert Murdoch an asset stripper, gambler or genius?

three possible rationales I can see for what Mr Murdoch is doing:

1. ‘Asset-stripping’: get as much cash out of these businesses as you can without completely killing the customer base to pump up the balance sheet while other media organisations burn their capital and plunge further into debt.

2. ‘The gamble’: If a few titles go down that just proves their weakness. Whatever is left standing will dominate a depleted market as the rivals follow in the wake of News International. In the same way that putting the price up of the Sunday Times actually strengthened its market dominance. If you are a sector leader - such as The Sun - then you have the brand community to set the pace and help dictate consumer behaviour.

3. Genius: Murdoch understands that enough of the public want to preserve their source of news and will be prepared to pay. They realise that they have had a free ride. They identify with the product and recognise that like anything worth having, you have to pay. Just like Sky. While the Internet enthusiasts preach the value of Free, most people pay for a lot of things online (shopping, books etc) as well as for broadband itself. Murdoch has clever schemes to wrap the payments into other services that will make it feel aspirational and valuable to pay a small charge for premium products.

For me it is the last one

Close the Observer-for once I will not be protesting

Am I bothered that GMG are considering closing the Observer?

Once I would have said yes,a rotten symptom of the current crisis in the media and how we must all fight to save the paper.

But actually I have fallen out of love with it and frankly its quality has gone down.

Often I will read less than half of it,its stories seem dry and a re churning of themes,its analysis apart from Andrew Rawnsley is lacking,its once lively foreign section has simply vanished.

Now it well may be that these are symptomatic of falling revenues but I wonder.

Since the newspaper industry made the leap to bumper Saturday editions,the Sunday market has been dying.Now Sundays are no longer the day of leisure spent perusing the papers.Frankly there is still a lot of Saturday's to read.

People have joined a face book group to stop the closure,there has been a campaign on twitter and yet I won't be joining them.

Maybe in this circumstance the natural course should take precedence

Tomorrow's cleaning goes live

Just a mention for a former student colleague at UCLAN who has gone through the experience of launching her first online magazine as editor.

Charlotte Taylor's Tomorrow's cleaning went live this week and promises that it is

the future of our cleaning industry - providing exclusive content and the latest news, advice and products,

I for one wish Charlotte all the best with the new venture.

Only one problem-how to pay for it

In the midst of all this exciting innovation, there's one certainty: The future of journalism, whatever it looks like, is bright -- we just have to figure out how to pay for it.

Tim Gleason is the dean of the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication and is looking forward to this weekend's Portland digital journalism camp.

We have probably heard many of the points before but it is worth summarising some of his thoughts

1.Journalism has lost its monopoly as the authoritative source of information.

2.In our networked world, our sense and understanding of community has changed. and

3.this isn't just a crisis for journalism and it isn't just print journalism that's in trouble it's a crisis for democracy.but he continues

I'm also optimistic. We're at the beginning of a Golden Age of journalism, and despite the disturbing declines we're seeing within the industry, it's an exciting time to be a journalist.

Very much my own sentiments

Ht-Kevin Anderson

The hammer just came down, tweeps: ESPN memo prohibiting tweeting info unless it serves ESPN.”

US sports channel ESPN has issued guideleines on the use of social networking sites for its employees reports the New York Times.

The guidelines say that on-air talent, reporters and writers are prohibited from having sports-related blogs or Web sites and that they will need a supervisor’s approval to discuss sports on any social networking sites. They will also be restricted from discussing internal policies or detailing how stories are “reported, written, edited or produced.”

Is this going to be part of a growing trend as organisations reign in the corporate message.

Well according to Chris LaPlaca, an ESPN spokesman,they

have been in the social networking space for a long time, and will continue to be there,but we want to be smarter about how we do it.

Council evokes privacy over bridge demolishion

An interesting ruling from Leicester City Council which denied the Leicester Mercury access to a council debate on the demolishion of an historic bridge.

Hold the front page reports that

The city council marked the debate papers 'Not for Publication' but an insider leaked them to the Mercury last week, enabling the daily to begin its legal challenge over the weekend.
When the Mercury queried the council as to why the meeting had to be held in private, its response was that sensitive financial information would be discussed.

The paper was only able to report that the bridge was to be demolished

What have you done on the web

There is a fascinating report on the evolution of internet usage and social media in a report from Universal McCann

via Read Write Web





They have produced a graph outlining four stages of web usage which includes the fact that

social networks are seeing the most growth globally while other social media platforms stagnate or decline. Users are still sharing photos and videos and posting blog entries, they just tend to do this within a social networking site these days.

You can see the full presentation here

Ht-Stephen's Lighthouse

McCall on how GMG will come out of the recession smaller

There has been much debate about Guardian media in recent days.

Talk of closing the Observer was floated over the weekend,this coming on the back of last week's £89m loss.

Paid Content interestingly reports the comments of CEO Carolyn McCall who in an internal memo to staff suggested that the group will come out of the downturn as a slimmed down version of the one that entered it.

“When the economy recovers, so – to a degree – will our advertising revenues. However, due to structural change, these revenues will not be at the levels they were in the past. GNM’s costs will need to reflect this if losses are to be kept within sustainable limits.”

A pay model for twitter?

An interesting development from the States is reported by Kevin Anderson in the Guardian this morning.

US start-up Social Cord has launched a service to easily allow fans of bands, brands and writers to pay for and receive premium content via Twitter and SMS

writes Kevin

This is how it works

If you are a fan of a band or blogger, you simply register your mobile phone number via a simple web form. As is standard for mobile sign-ups, you will be texted a PIN. After entering the PIN via the web, you're ready to go. A fee is added to your mobile phone bill at the end of the month. You are then sent link to special content via SMS, Twitter or both to download or view special content.

Tracking traffic by copy and paste usage

Traffic and page views are nice, but engaged readers and loyal audiences are more important.

writes Zachary M. Seward over at Nieman.

Introducing discussion on how best to track traffic he has

been playing with new software, already in use on some major news sites, that offers a partial solution by tracking an unusual metric: how many times users copy text and images from each page — and what they’re copying.

The software is called Tracer whose

functionality is apparent when you copy and paste any significant chunk of text from a website that’s using the service.

Study suggests engagement in social media correlates with financial return

A new study suggests that there is a correlation between a social media strategy and financial return.

Engagement ranked the world's top 100 brands and found that the world's most valuable brands are experiencing a direct correlation between top financial performance and engagement in social media.

Those brands that were the most engaged saw their revenue grow over the past year by 18% while the least engaged brands saw losses of negative 6%.

The study looked at four engagement profiles

1."mavens," the brands heavily engaged in seven or more social media channels

2."Butterflies" are like wannabe "mavens," and are also engaged in seven or more
channels but are spread too thin, investing in some channels more so than others.

3.Selectives" focus on six or fewer channels but engage customers deeply in the ones they've chosen

4."wallflowers," or brands engaged in six or fewer channels with below-average engagement;

If you think it is time to blow the whistle on conventional news media, think again.

The twittersphere was buzzing with the sad death of former England manager Booby Robson on Friday and yet it seems that conventional media led the way with the breaking news:

Rob Brown writes from PR media blog

An analysis seemed to confirm that twitter was first to the news if only by a few minutes. At 10.18am (BST) @RobertMNHarvey was the first to tweet ‘RIP Bobby Robson’. The Yorkshire Evening Press website was hot on his heels with an article timed at 10.22am, the first of the so-called conventional media to publish the story. Four minutes later the news was on Bobby Robson’s Wikipedia entry but there was still nothing on Google News.
I contacted the author of the twitter scoop. Was he a hospital worker, a friend of the family, a football agent with inside knowledge perhaps? No, he had seen the story on the TV, Sky Sports News to be exact.