Media freedoms being curtailed in Pakistan

Bob Dietz Asia Program Coordinator for CPJ reports on some worrying incursions into media freedoms in Pakistan who got an email message from Mazhar Abbas in Islamabad this morning.

He is worried about proposed legislation that passed Thursday through the National Assembly's Standing Committee on Information—which is headed by the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party. The committee has recommended that a new law be passed that would set restrictions on media, including a ban on live coverage of events the government doesn't want to see on the air. Mazhar says the legislation would allow for sentences of up to three years in jail and 10 million rupee fines (about US$120,000). He worries that “it is almost the revival” of an ordinance amended by the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulations Authority that was imposed by former military ruler Pervez Musharraf on November 3, 2007. That's the day Musharraf declared a state of emergency amid mounting political criticism that eventually drove him from office.

Pakistan is of course at the forefront of the fight against the Taliban.its armies are currently on the offensive in the border territories with Afghanistan and the Taliban have responded by carrying out suicide attacks on its cities including a devastating one in Peshawar earlier this week

What is it like to be a modern journalist

What price does the modern journalist pay for living in this 24 hour digital age?

This journalist reveals the pace of modern life in a 24 hour period

I had a speedy day myself yesterday. It's one which might be worth recording if only to offer a cautionary tale to media studies students or the bright young things on City university's fashionable postgraduate journalism course: our trade is changing fast, the future is uncertain.

It started on the day of the Christopher Kelly leaks

the only new detail was the "60-minute train test": no second home allowance for anyone who can get home in an hour.
Both Sky and Radio 4 had rung before midnight. Would I come in next morning to comment?

before he arrived at his newsdesk

Some of my colleagues have been in for hours. No late, leisurely starts any more; in the age of the internet newspapers are close to being a 24/7 operation now: think speed, relentless speed.

Then

I normally watch from the press gallery in the Commons, as I have done for years. You can read the collective mood better, as you can't from the TV. But TV is how most people see it, so that's good too. Nowadays, I don't actually watch as much as I did because I have to cover the event on Twitter. Mostly I listen.

And on it goes-What price indeed

Keep emailing your boss

Certain e-mail connections and patterns at work correlate with higher revenue production.

That's the conclusion of a joint survey by IBM and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Business Week reports that

Workers who have strong communication ties with their managers tend to bring in more money than those who steer clear of the boss, according to this new analysis of social networks in the workplace

So the message is -Keep messaging the boss

Ht-Robin Hamman

How to fix the model-Digital Editor's Network

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same results," according to that well known quote from Albert Enstein.

Maybe that is where we are with the current discussions on how to repair the broken media business model.

That was the conclusion drawn from yesterday's events in Preston at the Digital Editor's Network and the Journalism leaders Forum that followed it

At the former,Francois Nel summarised his research into how the media are adapting to the digital business model and his conclusion was not very well.

His main concern was that that there has been little innovation on the business side as opposed to the content side.Whilst there had been a rush to increase the range and medium on the digital side,video,interactivity,podcasts etc,the perennial problems of how to make them pay had not been addressed.

The old model of selling advertising around content to a mass audience has long since been banished yet the business side has yet to comprehend this shift.advertising and we still believe that this is how it must operate.

As Francois concluded,

Making more content and assuming that more inventory meant more sales was simply not the case.

Whether the future is hyperlocal is yet to be concluded.We are after all at the early stages of this experiment.The Guardian's Sarah Hartley,the person behind the launch of the papers beat blogging exercise told the audience of a rise of the hyperlocal

New tools are giving more opportunity to the population to publish and this combined with the problems in the local press are creating opportunities for the passionate to explore what is going on in their neck of the woods.

The future she sees will no longer see control by a single newspaper but instead by an eco system made up of many players with varying motives.

It is inevitable that the big players will attempt to jump on the hyper local trend and Tom Johnson head of training at the Press Association unveiled a model for Public Service reporting that the organisation is looking to trial next year.

They are looking to set up three pilot schemes to report and make accountable public sector organisations,such as councils,education and health authorities.

Research has shown that over a 10 year period,for mainly resource reasons editors of local newspapers feel that they no longer scrutinise the goings on of local politics.

The gap has been filled by the local council propaganda sheet which whilst produces a lot of information will never be able to act as the fourth estate.

A two week trial has already been carried out in an area in Essex which concluded that a range of stories were simply not being covered whilst others covered should have been higher up the news pyramid.

Johnson estimates that to implement this model nationwide would mean employing between 500-800 people with a cost of £15-18m.As he pointed out that is three Jonathan Rosses.

However in the current economic climate it is difficult to see how funding will be obtained.

One way of obtaining funding is for established successful businesses to step in and one successful business is Microsoft.Alastair Bruce from the organisation told the assembled audience how Microsoft Local is trying to fill the gap.

Their model of aggregating content and information to establish what was important to the local community was interesting but will be criticized as technology driving journalism rather than the other way round.

It was interesting that property prices and schools were the topics were the topics they felt were of most interest to the population.

It was an interesting day with lots of ideas but whether we have solved the broken business model problem,that,I very much doubt

Politico takes on Washington

News from across the pond.

The New York Times reports that

The creators of Politico plan to do for local news in Washington and its suburbs what they already have done for national politics, announcing on Wednesday that they will build a large, Web-based local news organization from scratch, at a time when traditional news organizations are struggling and shrinking.

This latest move will start with a newsroom of about 50 people

Robert L. Allbritton, who heads the family-owned company, and Mr. Brady said they had concluded that the venture had to be done on a large scale or not done at all — essentially the same premise that accompanied the founding of Politico.

Who would have thought a mango could cause so much debate.

There,I thought the headline might attract you,more on the mango shortly.

Yesterday I attended an interesting and lively discussion at the Zion Arts centre in Hulme Manchester.

It was organised by The Manchester Beacon who designed what they called Comixed as a way of bringing different people together to explore ideas collaboratively.

Five ideas were brought to the event and via blogs and twitter of which the one that fascinated me was the role of technology.

Prof. Jon Whittle, Chair of Software Engineering, Lancaster University put this question to the audience prior to the event.

Twitter, Bebo, Facebook, mash-ups, web 3.0, delicious…. where does it all end? Are all these new technologies really improving our lives? Or are they just a drain on our time and resources, keeping us away from the things that really matter….?
The time is ripe for developments in technology to change society for the better. There are unprecedented opportunities to solve some of society’s most complex challenges through the appropriate use of technology. But we must be careful to focus on substance not fads.
Unless we understand the impact of technologies on society, we may never fully realise their potential.

It provided some lively discussion which given the current trend's centred around social media.

The event was live blogged and you can read all five discussions HERE

But to the mango.Kate Bailey, Senior Research Associate, Food Process Innovation Unit, Cardiff Business School offered a lively debate on the sustainability of agriculture.

As global population looks set to grow from 6 billion to 9 billion, food production will need to double at a time where there are real concerns over the availability of energy, land and water as well as the challenge of climate change.

Hence the introduction of the mango.It to the audience symbolised everything about the argument.Should we be able to buy a mango in a British shop,or should all our food be grown locally? Should we be allowed the choice of buying what we want where and when we want or should government intervene.What about the carbon footprint of flying in a mango? But should we take away a steady source of income from the developing world?

How the web will look in 5 years time

So according to Google CEO Eric Schmidt,the internet will be dominated in five years time by Chinese charactors and social media.

Read Write Web have handily summarised his 45 minute interview including

1.that today's teenagers are the model of how the web will work in five years - they jump from app to app to app seamlessly.

2.Within five years there will be broadband well above 100MB in performance - and distribution distinctions between TV, radio and the web will go away.

3.people will listen more to other people than to traditional sources. Learning how to rank that "is the great challenge of the age." Schmidt believes Google can solve that problem.

Why the FT's sales are falling

Guido has his own reasons behind the fall in sales of the FT:

The paper now sells more copies overseas than in the UK – which may explain its fanatically europhile stance. Whereas the core UK readership is from the eurosceptic City and business community, the overseas readership is euo-establishment. Increasingly commuters to the Square Mile are turning to City AM if they are casual consumers of financial news or, if they are need-to-know types, the revamped and strengthened Wall Street Journal.

As Iain Dale also reminds us

Iain Martin's new blog on the WSJ site is fast becoming unmissable. He has launched a one man campaign to hold the Financial Times to account for its apparent anti-Tory bias.

Trick or treat for community reporters

Calling all community reporters or those thinking of becoming one.

Fancy some Trick or Treat Tasty bites of New Media?

Well head along to the Central Manchester Friends’ Meeting House in Mount Street this Friday 30th Oct where People's Voice Media will be giving community reporters a chance to use some of the tools of the new media trade.

A variety of different audio and video equipment and audio and video editing software will be set up for you to try out and record onto and then edit.You will also be able to uploaded it to the internet and the best piece could be in line for a prize.

BBC’s Ranvir Singh the co-presenter of North West Tonight will be holding a questions and answer session from 2pm until 3pm.

There will also be a chance for you to have a go at pitching a new idea for a show or event or suggest a story that you feel needs covering.

The event runs from 11-4pm.

France cracks on with its free papers for 18-24 year olds

France announced the details behind its initiative to give free newspapers to all 18-24 year old yesterday.

Originally proposed earlier in the year by the French President Nicholas Sarkozy,the project called “My Free Newspaper,”intends to give away papers to young readers in an effort to turn them into regular customers.

Around 60 publications will be taking part.As well as the established dailies such as Le Monde and Le Figaro, they include a variety of local publications, as well as the Paris-based International Herald Tribune,and the global edition of The New York Times.

The costs will be shared by the newspaper industry and the French government.

30,000 people had already signed up for free subscriptions and a special Web site will be available soon to speed the process.

Council news is keeping local papers alive

Interesting that a local councillor has claimed that council news is actually keeping local papers afloat

Liberal Democrat Gerald Vernon-Jackson told a Select Committee hearing into the future of regional media that Portsmouth Council's paper Flagship helped fund the city's local newspaper.
He said: "We in local authorities are in many ways keeping these newspapers afloat. We keep pumping money into these papers, hundreds of thousands of pounds a year."

via Independent

Maybe goverment funding is not the way to go

An interesting story from Nieman Lab for those who feel that government funding should be at the forefront of the campaign to save journalism.

They bring our attention to a study carried out in Argentina which

analyzes Argentina’s four largest newspapers and finds a strong correlation between their willingness to cover government scandal and the amount of money they received from government coffers.

The study found that

1. a “huge correlation” between, in any given month, how much money went to a newspaper and how much corruption coverage appeared on its front page. For example, if the government ad revenue in a month increased by one standard deviation — around $70,000 U.S. — corruption coverage would decrease by roughly half of a front page.

2.They also, in periods where newspapers were getting more money from the government, they produced fewer corruption scoops of their own and covered fewer of the scoops produced by other newspapers. (It should be noted here that the study only looked at the front pages of newspapers — so it’s possible rival papers were writing about the scandals uncovered by their peers.

Why have a recipe magazine when you have a laptop?

The death of gourmet magazine may well have been down to the laptop computer.

That is the conclusion of Susan Currie Sivek writing over at Media Shift.

For foodies, the attraction of thousands of food websites is powerful. Many home cooks now carefully position a laptop in the kitchen, keeping it safe from crumbs and splashes, instead of a magazine recipe. The loss of Gourmet, which was seen as a prestigious title, means that other food magazines may now feel a greater sense of insecurity.

But actually it is a bit more than that.It is time to blame the food bloggers

There's a food blogger for every ethnic specialty, dietary concern or locality. Bloggers offer personal connections, unique voices, and a passion for their subject that print magazines may not provide. Narrow expectations from readers and advertisers can limit print magazine content, while bloggers are more free to explore topics in frequent posts.

The Paul Foot shortlist is revealed

Private Eye have announced the shortlist for this year's Paul Foot Award for Campaigning Journalism 2009.

There are six entries

Jonathan Calvert and Clare Newell, Sunday Times whose Insight team exposed a number of financial and legislative abuses in the Lords.

Ian Cobain in the Guardian who has covered a long-running investigation into Britain’s involvement in the torture of terror suspects detained overseas.

Ben Leapman from the Telegraph whose investigation into MPs’ expenses began in 2004, and culminated in a series of articles published in the Sunday Telegraph and Daily Telegraph in May 2009.

Paul Lewis whose Paul Lewis’s investigation into the death of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests in the spring established that a police officer had struck Tomlinson with a baton and pushed him to the ground moments before he died near the Bank of England on 1 April in the Guardian.

The Yorkshire Post's Paul Waugh whose exposure of cavalier spending at Leeds Metropolitan University involved examination of thousands of staff credit card statements and a wider investigation into the management culture surrounding the university.

Stephen Wright and Richard Pendlebury from the Mail whose investigation into ShahrokhMireskandari’s background on both sides of the Atlantic revealed his criminal past and the bogus nature of his qualifications and claims of experience.

Now the billboard will get a makeover

The lastest medium to have a makeover in this digital is going to be the billboard.

That is at least according to William Eccleshare, the new chief executive of Clear Channel's international outdoor advertising business.

Interviewed in the FT this morning,he tells the paper that

"People have been sticking things on walls for centuries, but there's now a real opportunity to change the business,In 10 years, and probably in five, the outdoor market will feel and look very different from what it does now.

In what way? Well he continues

"If you get the economics right, you can make digital work," citing plasma screens in Finland's largest shopping centre, which can change advertising to suit different groups of shoppers passing through at different times of the day.

Bad figures for US papers

Some quite awful sales figures from the States as figures released on Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulation show falling about 10 percent in the six months ended Sept. 30 compared to the same period last year.

Daily newspaper circulation dropped 7.1 percent between October 2008 and March 2009 period, and 4.6 percent from April to September period of 2008,

reports the bureau.

One of the worst hit papers was USA Today, a reflection of the slump in the hotel and airline industries.

The New York Times’ weekday circulation fell 7.3 percent, to about 928,000, after two decades above 1 million.

The best selling paper now in the US is the Wall Street journal.It sells around at just over 2 million up around 0.6 per cent.

Source NYT

Social media ads continue to rise

Interesting August saw social networks accounting for 25 per cent of all online ad impressions.

The study by Com Score showed that social networking sites accounted for 13.8 billion display ad impressions in August 2009,

Telecommunications companies, including Telefonica O2, Deutsche Telekom, and British Telecommunications, were the heaviest social networking site advertisers, delivering more than 949 million display ad impressions on social networking sites in August, or approximately 7 percent of all display ads delivered in the site category. The retail advertiser category, which includes leading brands such as DFS, Tesco, and John Lewis, ranked second with 753 million display ad views, followed by banking brands (e.g. Barclays and HSBC) with 248 million, travel brands (e.g. Thomas Cook and Travelzoo.com) with 213 million, and entertainment brands (e.g. Sky and Sony) with 181 million display ad views.

via new media age

Can local survive on charity alone? Bob Pickard on why new journalism enterprises require 18-36 months

Many journalists pursuing new online initiatives are learning that good intentions are not enough for providing news.

That's the conclusion of Bob Pickard who writes that

The conundrum facing many journalists is whether to pursue the noble work of journalism as unpaid charitable work or to become engaged as journalistic entrepreneurs with a serious attitude toward its business issues—something many despised in their former employers.

Interesting he adds that One of the most difficult issue for these new journalism providers—is that journalists tend to overestimate the value of news for the public.The public actually want according to Pickard,less and not more news

It is not that the public doesn’t want to be informed, however. It is just that journalists spend so much time, space, and effort conveying commodity news that provides little new and helpful information for readers and cannot generate sufficient financial support.

and interesting he believes that

Most new commercial and noncommercial enterprises require 18 to 36 months of operation before they develop a loyal audience and achieve a stable financial situation.

The all encompassing I-player for digital radio

Acording to Ian Burrell in the Indy this morning

A single website which offers users the choice of the entire output of the British radio industry with potentially up to 500 different networks could be available to internet users within months.

The prototype will be ready by Christmas having been worked on by both the BBC and commercial organisations.

It is anticipated that a site which will build on the popularity of the BBC's Radio Player service, which offers users the 10 BBC UK-wide networks, plus the World Service and 46 regional stations.

says the paper

Survey claims twitter costs the economy £1.4b

In its latest swipe at social media,the Telegraph is reporting this morning that twitter costs the economy nearly £1.4b.

According to a survey by Morse, the IT services and technology company,

More than half of office workers use sites like Twitter and Facebook for personal use during the working day, and admit wasting an average of 40 minutes a week each.One in three of the 1,460 office workers surveyed also said they had seen sensitive company information posted on social networking sites, leading to fears about how workers use the internet.

The one in six excluded from the world

This morning's Observer takes a look at the estimated 10 million people across Britain who have no internet access.

As Tim Adams points out

This one-in-six population might have avoided the addictions of browsing and the despond of "you have no new mail" but they are also increasingly excluded from the opportunities and conversations of the world.

But there are also some statistics

1.the 1.6 million children in Britain who do not use the internet would increase their lifetime earnings by a collective £10.8bn were they to log on tomorrow;

2.those who shop online and pay their bills through the internet, make "average savings of £560 a year"

3.if everyone was connected the Treasury would make overnight efficiencies of £1.77bn,

4.Access to the internet, and the ability to navigate the web has, for example, been shown to produce a significant rise in social confidence among 60 per cent of those who had previously been excluded, while in recent studies of internet usage among individuals who considered themselves to be depressed, "feelings of loneliness" decreased in 80 per cent of cases once people got online, and depressive symptoms were "cured" in 20 per cent of cases

Some quite astounding figures hence the rush by government to get everyone online and one other statistic is also very important

the internet has often been charged with increasing alienation in society, making each of us self-absorbed in an abstracted world wide web which caters to our every whim. A good deal of recent research, however, suggests that the converse is true. Technology has the ability to create links that societies increasingly lack.

Tunisian opposition kept out of the election campaign

Tunisia goes to the polls today but it appears that the election campaign has proved impossible for the opposition media to get their point across.

Reporters Without Borders, have been to the country in the week before the election and report that

Pluralism in news is still not a reality in Tunisia. It is unfortunately particularly true in an election campaign. President Ben Ali is splashed on the front pages of newspapers that are tireless in his praise. The columns of the state-run and pro-government newspapers are brimming with messages of congratulations and support for the candidate-president. The same goes for television and radio. Unfavourable opinions of the head of state are largely absent from media and Tunisians do not have access to balanced news and information”,

President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, currently serving a fourth term after amending the constitution in 2004 to permit his candidacy,pledged that the elections will be held in a transparent, democratic manner.

However at CPJ reports

authorities barred Florence Beaugé, a Le Monde correspondent, from entering the country after she arrived at the Tunis-Carthage International Airport, according to news reports. After spending the night at an airport terminal under tight police surveillance, she was put on flight back to Paris. No official explanation was given.

Geo the new web

This for me really encapsulates the web today (via Adam Tinworth)

It is Ross Mayfield's theme of this year's Web 2.0 Summit,the web squared who thinks that the big driver will be

geo, or location, provides as big of a vector for exploration and impacts the others. Geo has always been the missing dataset of the web, but very soon all mobile devices, browsers, laptops and specialized devices will provide geotagging. Geo will become a facet of the other three trends, becoming ubiquitous in existing services, and the founding opportunity for new ones.

The unveiling by CNN

CNN is giving its website a relaunch on Monday of next week.

There is a full rundown and analysis over at TechCrunch who were party to the preview in New York yesterday where Kenneth Estenson, Senior Vice President and General Manager of CNN.com told the audience that

there are two reasons to change CNN.com: the site wants to constantly move forward, and it wants to help expose the wealth of content that exists beyond what sits on the homepage. The site wants to emphasize breaking news, and more video, as well as perspective and analysis, and keep it easy to use.

Stern's vision of future broadcasting

Jeff Jarvis has been tuning into Howard Stern's radio show whilst running errands and managed to jot down what the shock jock thinks will be the future of broadcasting

Tomorrow I could go on the internet and start my own channel with my own subscribers. You’d be able to click and watch us on TV, watch us in the studio live, streaming. You’d be able to listen to us streaming. You’d be able to get us on your iPhone. You’d be able to do everything right at the click of the internet. I wouldn’t even need to work for a company. I’d be my own company… So true it’s ridiculous.

Interesting and probably true as Jeff says

On the internet, Stern would get the complete freedom he has long lusted after. He would share his revenue and value with no one but his staff. Now that we can listen to radio over the internet – on our internet-enabled phones – we can listen to him anywhere He would have direct relationships with his fans. He could charge them He could sell advertising in new ways. Fans could get him anywhere, anytime. If he’s smart – and he is – he could open up enough tidbits to go viral, letting his audience market him for free.

Up up and away

Today the idea of a mad loner silently avoiding attention seems like a quaint throwback.

You might think that in this country the reality show has taken over but the recent events over balloon boy across the water show we are lagging behind our American brothers.

As James Poiewiozig writes in Time Magazine

on Oct. 15, America spent an afternoon being literally distracted by a shiny object, watching news choppers chase a silver balloon that we were told carried a presumably terrified 6-year-old boy. When we learned during the coverage that Falcon Heene's family had twice appeared on ABC's Wife Swap, who didn't have the same thought? That if Falcon's parents would open their family life for a reality show, then they might also have planned ... but they wouldn't have, right?

Absolute will stream

Absolute Radio becomes the first commercial radio station to produce monthly online listening figures based on its streaming logs.

Acording to this report from New Media

Adam Bowie, head of strategy and planning, said on the company blog that the stats were not meant to replace alternative traffic figures, “It should be noted that this certainly isn’t a replacement for RAJAR, the radio industry’s listening currency. While RAJAR includes a level of measurement of listening via different platforms, the methodology is completely different and it would be unfair to make direct comparisons between the two.”

Twitter-the great excuse of Western media in Iran

I’ve never really quoted anyone that I’ve never met,’ he said. The same could not be said for much of the Western press, who, faced with the alternative of reporting nothing, often relied on broadcasting messages and videos before investigating their provenance.

This is the view of Iason Athanasiadis who was detaines in Iran during the protests over the summer election.He writes over on the Dart Centre Blog that

It was one such video, of Neda Agha Soltan dying after being shot in the chest, that became the most powerful and recognizable symbol of the protests.
“The video turned out to be authentic, but social media also helped spread false images of Neda, inflated protest tallies, and rumors; the multitude of non-Iranian Twitter users who changed their stated location to Tehran made parsing the authentic from the inauthentic all the more difficult.”

Ht-Judith Townend

Is social media changing the world? -Yes

Over at the Huffington Post,Jared Cohen asks whether social media is really changing the world.

He starst by saying that he dislikes the term social media

"Social media" is merely a way to describe new tools in an old and narrow paradigm where we measure success by how many people are reached. This lends itself nicely to competitive obsessions over who has more Facebook fans, whose blog gets the greatest number of hits, whose video goes the most viral, and who has the largest number of Twitter followers. And who are the people who focus on these things? It is those who like to use the technology as opposed to those who need it.

But the answer to the question is yes it is changing the world

Almost everybody has the ability to connect. This new ability to connect is leveling the playing field and breaking down previous age, gender, socioeconomic, and circumstantial barriers to who can emerge as a leader, activist, or grassroots agent for change. The power of technology today will be determined not by web traffic and viewership, but by its ability to strengthen and more importantly facilitate connections in real time.

The three faces of social media

I love this diagram (courtesy of Stephen's Lighthouse)



via Gartner

More cuts on the way at Time Inc

Time Inc looks to be carrying out more job cuts in the coming months.

It follows last year's restructuring which saw 6 per cent of the staff leaving(around 600 people.)

According to the FT

The cost cutting comes as Time Inc’ key business title, Fortune magazine, said it plans to cut its annual frequency by a quarter and will publish 18-times a year beginning in 2010, confirming a Wall Street Journal report. A Fortune spokesman said the business planned to invest more heavily in the reduced number of issues, with better paper quality.

Facebook members accused of assassination plotting

Thousands of Facebook users are to be investigated in Italy as part of an investigation into an assassination plot of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

There are 20,000 members of a Facebook group called "Let's Kill Berlusconi"

As the Indy reports

A third of the group's members have joined in the past 48 hours after criticism by the Berlusconi family newspaper Il Giornale raised its profile

.adding that

Angelino Alfano, the Italian Justice minister, said: "I'm waiting for the magistrates to do their duty and investigate, pursue and find the ones, who by encouraging hatred and murder against Silvio Berlusconi, are committing a punishable offence."

Welcome the Nook

Technology continues to march on.Now we have the Nook.

This is the lastest E Reader pioneered by the American Book chain Barnes and Noble.

But as Steve Yelvington points out it has already crippled itself:

There's no Web browser on it,no Web browser means no Web browsing. It also means you can't use the built-in Wifi alternative from your hotel or airport lounge, because you need a Web browser to authenticate.

and

devices like the Nook and the Kindle are slow and therefore best used as readers of fairly static content. A PDF-like periodical is more at home on these devices than a Web page with 187 embedded images, Flash movies, CSS and Javascript files. This will change, too; the ARM chip will continue to improve and the displays will get faster and connectivity will be ubiquitous.

Twitter continues to grow as the young flock to it

The latest Pew Report on Twitter came out yesterday,and it show that the medium continues to grow.

Compared to last December 19 per cent of people now use it to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others compared to 11 per cent.

The survey also finds that

Three groups of internet users are mainly responsible for driving the growth of this activity: social network website users, those who connect to the internet via mobile devices, and younger internet users – those under age 44.

Interestingly the report also says that

The median age of a Twitter user is 31, which has remained stable over the past year. The median age for MySpace is now 26, down from 27 in May 2008, and the median age for LinkedIn is now 39, down from 40. Facebook, however, is graying a bit: the median age for this social network site is now 33, up from 26 in May 2008.

Journalism is alive and well-apparently

Henry Blodget says that contrary to much speculation

Journalism" is alive and well, as evidenced by the still-robust health of companies like Bloomberg and Reuters, the survival of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and other great news organizations, the hyper-growth of online news and commentary sites, and the rise of social media. And change is inevitable.

Yes the internet is changing the environment

The Internet is doing to the news business the same thing it has done to dozens of other industries: disrupting it. Specifically, it is taking an old, inefficient system and making it much faster and more efficient. It is also eliminating enormous overcapacity in the news business (yes, overcapacity--society doesn't need hundreds of White House reporters). As always, this disruption is painful, but it's not necessarily bad. In fact, as far as a lot of people are concerned, it's better.

What a better advert to stop people voting for this party

A vigorous defence on the corporation's decision to give airtime to Nick Griffin by Mark Thompson is on the front page of the Guardian this morning.

In an interview with the paper,he challenges the government to change the law if it wants to censor the far-right group.

Ministers would have to impose a broadcasting ban on the party – as Margaret Thatcher did with Sinn Féin in the 1980s – before the BBC would consider breaching its "central principle of impartiality".

No doubt tonight's question time may well rank as the top current affairs programme of the year.The week has been marked by snipings from both sides,criticism of the BBC for allowing the BNP airtime and some quite extraordinary outbursts from the party itself.

Including this one which makes the front of the Times

Nick Griffin has thanked the BBC and praised the “hysterical” reaction of the political elite for giving his far-right British National Party unprecedented publicity.
In an interview with The Times, he said that the bitter row over the decision to invite him on to this evening’s Question Time had attracted record donations for the party.

My view? I have to agree with Mark Thompson that in a democratic society we have to give all political spectrums a platform,really no matter how much we cant abide their views

From what I have seen of Griffin,he will show himself to be exactly what he is to the question time audience,a politician with few principles and shallow morals.

What a better advert to stop people voting for this party

My Space concedes defeat in the race to be the Social media No 1

MySpace have called off their persuit of Facebook.

In an interview in the FT this morning,Owen Van Natta,Cheif Executive of the social networking group told the paper that

the company instead aimed to become an online hub for music and entertainment. “Facebook is not our competition,” he said. “We’re very focused on a different space.”

The paper adds that

The company has struck a deal with Apple’s iTunes store to allow its users to buy tracks without having to leave the MySpace site. It has integrated iLike, a music application company, and launched Dashboard, an interactive tool for bands and musicians, as well as compiling the largest catalogue of music videos on the web.

The fall of the Lebanese press

My favourite journalist Robert Fisk looks at the state of the press in Lebanon in this morning's Independent and doesn't find a particually good picture

For decades, Lebanese journalism has been applauded as the freest, most outspoken and most literate in the heavily censored Arab world. Alas, no more. Beirut's best-read daily has just shed more than 50 staff and LBC, one of the country's best-known television stations, has just fired three of its most prominent presenters. The Lebanese media are being hit – like the rest of the world – by the internet and falling advertising revenues. But this is Lebanon, where politics is always involved. Is something rotten in the state of the Lebanese press?

The problem is part economic,part stuctural.As Fisk continues

The problem is not so much the politics of Lebanon but the feudal state of the press. You cannot start a newspaper in Beirut – you have to buy an existing title from someone else. This costs money. So the rich own newspapers. Not much different, you may say, from the rest of the world. But the system in Lebanon is archaic; there are families in Beirut who own newspapers but don't publish them – they are still waiting for a buyer.

Even execution watching is suffering as the media declines

This is something that I wouldn't have wanted to enter the journalism profession to do,watch executions.

The New York Times tells the story of Associated Press reporter Michael Graczyk who has witnessed more than 300 deaths, and many of those were people he had come to know.

But it seems that even this job is falling prey to the changing world of the media

What makes his record all the more extraordinary is that often, Mr. Graczyk’s has been the only account of the execution given to the world at large. Covering executions was once considered an obligatory — if often ghoulish — part of what a newspaper did, like writing up school board meetings and printing box scores, but one by one, such dutiful traditions have fallen away.

Guardian drops its America.com strategy

Rather surprising to see this report from Paid Content that Guardian News & Media (GNM) is abandoning its GuardianAmerica.com strategy.

I recall writing about this on the blog when the strategy first came out but as they point out

GuardianAmerica.com was The Guardian’s first big attempt to target the large U.S. audience it has found itself with online. It hired Michael Tomasky to edit the site from Washington, DC.
But the page was really only ever a breakaway index, aggregating U.S.-centric stories already found across Guardian.co.uk.

Could sex be the saviour of the newspaper industry

Here is a novel way of saving the newspaper industry...sex.

Cory Silverberg writes in the Huffington Post that

Sex offers a lesson in the trouble newspapers and network television find themselves in, and a clue as to how they might turn their fortunes around.

and she adds that

Nowhere is the disconnect between mainstream news production and the lives and experiences of those of us who consume it more apparent than in content about sexuality. New outlets love an excuse to run sexual content because they know it attracts readers. But they have to keep it superficial and ultimately judgmental because they live in fear of complaining advertisers. The result is content that reflects back a stereotype and fails to connect with anyone’s lived experience.

CPJ calls on Iran to release remaining 25 journalists being held

It was great news yesterday when Newsweek reporter Maziar Bahari was released from jail in Iran.

He was arrested on June 21, following the country’s June 12 presidential elections but was released on $300,000 bail on Saturday after spending almost four months in prison and arrived back in London yesterday.

However as CPJ reports there are still 25 journalists in prison in the country.

Among these journalists is Fariba Pajooh, a freelance reporter who has worked for outlets such as Itmad e Milli, the Iranian Labour News Agency, and the Persian service of Radio France International. She was arrested in mid-August and was charged with “propagating against the ‎‎ regime,” according Radio France International. The station reported that she has spent about a month in solitary confinement in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison and has been under pressure to make false confessions. The Human Rights Activists News Agency, a local watchdog group, reported on October 12 that ‎Pajooh has been under constant interrogation for weeks.

Why Gladwell is correct...at least to an extent

Malcolm Gladwell's thoughts about journalism appear to have set the cat amongst the pigeons.

In a question and answer session with Time Magazine he offers this as his advice to young journalists

The issue is not writing. It's what you write about. One of my favorite columnists is Jonathan Weil, who writes for Bloomberg. He broke the Enron story, and he broke it because he's one of the very few mainstream journalists in America who really knows how to read a balance sheet. That means Jonathan Weil will always have a job, and will always be read, and will always have something interesting to say. He's unique. Most accountants don't write articles, and most journalists don't know anything about accounting. Aspiring journalists should stop going to journalism programs and go to some other kind of grad school. If I was studying today, I would go get a master's in statistics, and maybe do a bunch of accounting courses and then write from that perspective. I think that's the way to survive. The role of the generalist is diminishing. Journalism has to get smarter.

The radical thought is that it is life and not journalism schools in which a budding journalist will get his knowledge and his ability to write.

No doubt the purveyors of journalism degrees will be throwing their arms up at the very suggestion.But maybe he is not that far wrong.

Whilst journalism courses will teach you the tools of the trade,they will not and cannot give you the specialist subject knowledge that a journalist needs to hammer his unique furrow in the world of media.

In the changing climate,where the career start in local newspapers and magazines is rapidly vanishing,the journalist needs to offer unique skills.One of them is learning how to use the tools of new media but the other is to offer a specialist insight into the world.

This is why Gladwell is to some extent correct.

Get a life skill and then learn journalism

Changes in Birmingham's local news market

So more changes in a media group signalling surely more straws in the wind for the local news industry.

Trinity Mirror have just announced that The Birmingham Post will become a weekly paper and the Birmingham Mail will become an overnight, morning title.

It has also been announced that both editors are leaving and that there will be about 40 editorial redundancies across the group and a further 42 redundancies from the transport, distribution and newspaper sales departments.

The weekly Post will begin publishing on the 12th November.

More opportunities for the local and community blogger?

How a news editor fought for East Germany

There is a very good article in the international edition of De Spiegal magazine in which a 20 something Alexander Osang crossed paths with Fritz Wengler who was temporarily at the helm of the Berliner Zeitung newspaper.

Twenty years ago East Germany was entering its last phase as a Soviet satellite and as Osnag recounts he had been sent me out to report on a torchlight procession by the communist youth group through the city center on the eve of the 40th anniversary of East Germany.

The GDR was going under, and the torchlight procession was the orchestra that continued playing as the Titanic sank.

His article did not show the failing state in the best of lights and he was forced to rewrite it but

cracks had begun appearing in the snow-globe, and the real world began flooding into our building on Alexanderplatz. Tens of thousands of people were fleeing the country, and those who stayed slowly started venturing out onto the streets.

Needless to say when the regime fell Wengler

He wasn't voted out or insulted or called to account in front of some committee. He was simply shunted off into a corner at the newspaper. He remained deputy editor-in-chief, but no-one gave him any work to do.

One definition of social media

I just love this tweet from Paul Wiggins that has just come through on my feed

Newspaper journalism is a first draft of history. Social media is what used to be the unverified pub gossip. Useful but problematic.

Discuss

What will happen to tweets of Demi Moore's bottom

The crackdown on twitter continues as Hollywood film studios are now stopping their actors from using the social media service.

In accordance with the industry's long tradition of keeping its biggest names on a tight leash, Disney and DreamWorks have both decided that the "talent" needs to be kept under close control online. Both studios have inserted clauses into employment contracts to stop stars sharing personal thoughts that might interfere with their carefully-honed public images. reports the Independent

Although as they add

Quite how this will affect Ashton Kutcher's ability to "tweet" photographs of wife Demi Moore's bottom remains to be seen:

The BBC's future lies in being distinctive in the range and quality of its output.

With the BBC seemingly under attack from the Tory Party,the FT's Philip Stephens has rushed out a five point plan to save the corporation:

Here is his scheme

1.the corporation should show some humility. To secure its future, the BBC needs to stop behaving as if it is trying to crush its competitors. It is not paid the licence fee to put Channel 4 out of business or to imitate Google.

2.the BBC should reduce the pay and benefits of top managers - and cut the number of those managers

3.the corporation must rebuild the quality of its journalism. It should start by ensuring that programme editors demand accuracy instead of "impact" from the BBC's large pool of talented journalists.

4.It should think strategically about the space a publicly funded broadcaster should be occupying 10 years hence.

5.the BBC must rediscover the difference between ends and means. The licence fee is the means by which the BBC can provide the sort of programming beyond the reach of commercial rivals; it is not, repeat not, an excuse for the BBC to justify permanent ratings wars with competitors in the name of something called audience "reach". The BBC's future lies in being distinctive in the range and quality of its output.

A collective responsibilty for journalism

Another article about new models in journalism via Adrian Monck as Leonard Downie Jr. and Michael Schudson arguw in the Washington Post that

American society must now take some collective responsibility for supporting news reporting -- as society has, at much greater expense, for public education, health care, scientific advancement and cultural preservation, through varying combinations of philanthropy, subsidy and government policy. It may not be essential to save or promote any particular news medium, including print newspapers. What is paramount is preserving independent, original, credible reporting, whether or not it is profitable, and regardless of the medium in which it appears.

As for the future,Rather than depending primarily on shrinking newspapers, communities should have a range of diverse sources of news reporting.they argue.

This will include philanthropists,Public radio and television,universities,and the creation of a national Fund for Local News

Is transparency always a good thing?

Transparency is not always the best olution for government.Not something that journalists necessarily want to hear.

Lawrence Lessig writes in New Republic recounts that

In 2006, the Sunlight Foundation launched a campaign to get members of Congress to post their daily calendars on the Internet. "The Punch-Clock Campaign" collected pledges from ninety-two candidates for Congress, and one of them was elected.

but he considers that

We are not thinking critically enough about where and when transparency works, and where and when it may lead to confusion, or to worse. And I fear that the inevitable success of this movement--if pursued alone, without any sensitivity to the full complexity of the idea of perfect openness--will inspire not reform, but disgust. The "naked transparency movement," as I will call it here, is not going to inspire change. It will simply push any faith in our political system over the cliff.

Lessons for home perhaps?

Ht-Robin Hamman

A long history of balloon hoaxes

Last week's events in America as the media chased a balloon across the countryside was not the first time that a balloon has played a part in a hoax.

On April 13, 1844, Edgar Allan Poe wrote an article in The New York Sun, chronicling how Monck Mason, leaving England for Paris drifted off course and had traveled across the Atlantic in three days, landing safely on Sullivan’s Island near Charleston South Carolina, while riding an ``egg-shaped gas-filled balloon’’, named the Victoria.

However

The story caused such a stir that an excited mob quickly gathered outside of the editorial offices of the Sun, hoping to land a copy of the historic edition. Not until two days later did the New York daily publish a correction, noting the story was pure fiction. The published correction read: ``We are inclined to believe the intelligence is erroneous.’’

Hunt says Tories will abandon plans to tax phone lines

Apparently the Tories would reverse two of the main proposals in the government’s Digital Britain bill and are considering plans to rip up the BBC’s royal charter.

This morning's FT reports that shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt,in an interview with the paper said a Tory government

would scrap a proposed 50p a month tax on all telephone lines, aimed at raising about £175m a year towards the cost of funding superfast broadband to UK homes, “as soon as possible” after the election, expected in May and,also promised to reverse government plans to force the BBC to share £130m of the television licence fee with other broadcasters.

How technology can change the future

Author, speaker and technologist Juliette Powell sees the true significance of social media technology in the new kinds of collaborations we are able to forge that offer the potential to create a new kind of future. Powell believes that the ability to connect with people who previously did not have that opportunity will add tremendous value to government, business, and media undertakings.via (Ideas Network)

The spotlight on war reporting moves to Afghanistan

Straws in the wind?

The New York Times' Brian Stelter reports that

No longer overshadowed by Iraq, the “forgotten war” in Afghanistan, as news outlets had once called it, is suddenly very visible. Television networks have opened small bureaus, and major newspapers have assigned more staff members to the country, and its neighbor to the west, Pakistan. But with the media business under great strain, this war is being covered on a budget.

as now for the For the first time in years, Afghanistan has “emerged as the top story” for news organizations in the United States.

The country provides a number of challenges for journalists,safety obviously being the top one but also financial

Battered by the recession, some news organizations have made deep cuts to their already small foreign staffs, making it difficult to finance continuing coverage of wars in two theaters. While no one says news organizations are skimping on security measures, it is evident that they are trying to maintain flexible presences in Afghanistan.

Neilsen-internet customers not loyal enough to justify subscription

It appears that Australia is also not keen on charging for online content.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the marketing research company Nielsen says

publishers taking that route were bound to fail - with Australian consumers ''highly unlikely'' to pay up.

It adds that

Drawing on a panel of 7000 online users in Australia, Nielsen argued yesterday that in contrast to newspaper readers, consumers on the internet did not show enough loyalty to any particular news provider to subscribe to a provider's coverage. More than 70 per cent of visitors to Fairfax Media's websites also read those of its main rival, News Ltd, it said.

Ht-Martin Stabe

Message to politicians-Leave the Beeb alone

Good article by Anne McElvoy in this week's New Statesmen in which she a.gues that Opportunistic politicians should remember the BBC is a public-service, not a state, broadcaster.

It was the intervention of Ben Bradshaw's tweets aimed at the Today programme's Evan Davis that have really incurred the wrath of Ms McElvoy and she says that

Beneath the politicians' presumptions lies a belief that the BBC is an extension of government - present or future. It isn't: we have a public-service, not a state, broadcaster, and it is vital to preserve the difference.

adding that

They're all trying to muscle in on the fight. David Cameron wants to decide the DG's salary. Harriet Harman wants more older women on TV and will doubtless wag her Equality Bill at any future contraventions. If (for one never knows how far Harmanism goes) her next good cause is another target group, are we to expect an instant rejigging of the on-screen staff to oblige her then, too?

Newspaper sales continue to fall but some hope for some Sunday's in September

There were one or two interesting quirks in yesterday's ABC's.

Interestingly both the Observer and the Sunday Times saw their circulation's rise in Septemeber.Cynics may well put the former's rise down to talk of closure though GMG scotched speculation that the paper may close by confirming it will continue publishing and is to be revamped.

The News of the World also bucked the trend with its circulation up 0.26% month on month in September, to 3,129,162.

Sunday sales though continue to fall year on year and the Independent's saw a 2.72% drop in sales last month compared with August and a 14.29% decline year on year.

The Mail on Sunday also took a battering having posted the largest year-on-year fall of any title in the sector with a 10.11% drop in circulation to 2,012,741 copies.

Mail's old style response blown away by new media

There is as expected much coverage of the Jan Moir controversy in the media this morning.

I do like this from Jack Riley though in the Independent who writes that The Daily Mail's response was a case of old versus new media.

Whilst the Twitterati and Facebook brigade were rallying against the article he says

in a scramble to save face, the Mail's editors, and in particular those of its online team, must have been bewildered when efforts to soften the blow by editing the headline to the piece online only attracted more derision; the change was documented on Twitter photosharing website TwitPic within minutes.

Did Marx predict twitter?

An interesting argument from Chris Gillow who asks

Does the Trafigura/Carter-Ruck case vindicate Marx? ie
Marx argued that technical change was a powerful force behind social change, so technology influenced power relations between people:

Would Trafigura have got away with it without the new media?

In the pre-web age, they might well have gotten away with trying to suppress free speech. But thanks to technical change - the emergence of the web and twitter - their efforts backfired spectacularly and inadvertently led to one of the most effective viral marketing campaigns of recent years.

Wikipedia's top 100

i have just come across the 100 most viewed articles on wikipedia for this year

These are the top 10 and how interesting that You Tube,Wikipedia itself and Facebook all appear in the top 10

1. Wiki (131,383 page hits per day)

2. The Beatles (111,896)

3. Michael Jackson (79,734)

4. Favicon.ico (78,077)

5. YouTube (72,318)

6. Wikipedia (52,542)

7. Barack Obama (49,401)

8. Deaths in 2009 (48,758)

9. United States (46,545)

10. Facebook (42,679)

Ht-Stephen's Lighthouse

The balloon boy coverage sums up network news

The three hour escapade that American TV audiences were put through yesterday as the race was on to locate a boy and a helium balloon may be symptomatic of the coverage of 24 hour news.

Judith Ellis writes that

today I'm watching CNN and they have wall-to-wall coverage of the kid who it was believed had gotten into a balloon and was flying hundreds of feet off the ground in an invention that his dad had created. For two hours, CNN followed the silver balloon in the air and called on experts who spoke on the possibility of the direction of the balloon and where the kid might have been hiding. It was high drama. CNN created all kinds of scenarios. Finally, the balloon landed and there was no child. Oh, my! Now, this bit of drama added more speculation and scenarios, calling on many experts who talked about heat technology to identify the boy. It was getting dark. Where was the basket? Where had it dropped? Thank God for Google Earth! What other kind of technology will be needed to locate the boy?

Cuban blogger recognised

Thirty-four-year-old Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez was one of four journalists honored yesterday at the Maria Moors Cabot Prizes given by Columbia University’s School of Journalism.

As CPJ reports

Sánchez writes the blog Generación Y, which, along with six others, is hosted by the German-based portal Desde Cuba (From Cuba). The blog records her observations on politically motivated arrests, food shortages, and problems in Cuba’s renowned education and health systems, among other things. Recognized as the pioneer of the Cuban independent blogosphere, Sánchez describes herself as a Cuban citizen writing about what she sees everyday.

Unfortunately the Cuban authorities would not let her travel to New York to collect the award

You Tube now has the chance to become a VOD destination

Great news that channel 4 have announced that they have signed a deal with You Tube to to make hundreds of its homegrown shows available on demand.

The Independent reports that

the broadcaster's original, commissioned programmes will be added to the site in the coming months, plus 3,000 hours of archived shows.
Programmes will be seen in full and free-of-charge, but the service will be supported by advertising.

The deal now means that as Paid Content say

So YouTube now has one of the four key UK broadcasters’ names to wave in negotiations with the other four, a real platform from which to negotiate for content that would make it a real TV VOD destination.

Gawker launch Open Forums

Gawker Media are inviting its readers to share tips news, videos, links, and trivialities and as Nieman Lab reports

The new feature, part of an otherwise modest redesign across the company’s nine blogs, could transform tag pages, typically little more than archives of old posts, into commenter free-for-alls and transparent tip lines.

They explain further

Tagging a message with #tips on Gawker, for instance, automatically sends it to the “tips” tag page, where anyone can follow the stream of submissions and Gawker writers will keep an eye out for news to promote on the front page.

The art of headline writing and A/B testing

I always think that the headline of a blog post, newspaper article, news release or other piece of written material is the most essential thing to pay attention to when you write that content.

writes Neville Hobson,and in these days of Search engine optimisation, I couldn't agree more.

But have you heard of A/B testing

From direct mail to web design, A/B testing is considered a gold standard of user research: Show one version to half your audience and another version to the other half; compare results, and adjust accordingly. Some very cool examples include Google’s obsessive testing of subtle design tweaks and Dustin Curtis’ experiment with direct commands and clickthrough rates. (”You should follow me on Twitter” produced dramatically better results than the less moralizing, “Follow me on Twitter.”)

The Mail uncovers more BBC subversion

That prolific hater of the BBC,The Daily Mail has found a story to get its teeth into today.

The paper reports that

The winner of a Blue Peter and Royal Mint competition to design a coin for the 2012 Olympics is the daughter of a newly-appointed BBC boss,

her father is the new boss of the BBC Natural History Unit, Andrew Jackson.although as the paper points out

The announcement of Mr Jackson's appointment to the Bristol-based unit was made on July 6, but he is not due to start work until the end of the month. The winning design was chosen from anonymous entries by a panel of judges on July 16.

Ht-Martin Belam

Does public broadcasting stifle commercial enterprise?

A question that is asked on a number of occasions in this country is the effect that public broadcasters have on the market.

Critics of the BBC will argue that it distorts the market,something that I have written about numerous times.

Robert Pickard takes a look at this very question in the United States as WGBH Education Foundation—operator of WGBH-TV, the highly successful Boston-based public service broadcaster announces that it will purchase the commercial radio station WCRB-FM.

As he points out

Were WGBH a commercial broadcaster, those who hate big media would be howling in protest, arguing that it puts far too much control of the airwave in the hands of one organization and that the concentration will create market power that harms competition. But they are strangely silent.

It does have similar parallels with criticisms handed at the BBC.For example the purchase of the Lonely Planet organiation springs to mind

If competition among commercial firms, between commercial and non-commercial firms, and among non-commercial firms is good for pluralism and diversity, cannot concentration and reductions in sources of news and entertainment due to acts of large not-for-profit firms also harm competition, pluralism and diversity?

Ht-Adrian Monck

HBO,Fast food and start up models to save newspapers

The Fast company has given its take on the business models designed to save the newspaper industry.(via Francois Nel)

It offers up what is calls

a)The HBO model where it should offer complex characters and provocative storylines worth paying for.

Newspapers,should also charge for premium, exclusive content -- instead of reprinting AP stories -- so that reporters can "stay on a beat long enough [to acquire better] information.

b)The fast food model-

News-papers need to identify their true jobs -- corruption watchdog? community calendar? -- and innovate around them.

c)The start up model-start ups try many things before refining what works and getting rid of what doesn't

newspapers designate several teams "to launch anythingthey agree is worth trying."

A flapping good story

Great story from the Columbian journalism review who ask

How do you make a story about the economics of boneless chicken wings— weird and whimsical and actually kind of delightful?

The answer is to include lines such as

1.Like the tail that wags the dog, the wings are now flapping the chicken. or

2.“If they can figure out how to grow chickens with four wings,” Mr. Scott said, “we’d be in really great shape.”

Despite the repression,blogging flourishes in the Middle East

In the Middle East and North Africa, where political change occurs slowly, blogging has becomes a serious medium for social and political commentary as well as a target of government suppression.

writes Mohamed Abdel Dayem over at CPJ

We are all aware of the problems for freedom of speech in certain countries in the region but as he says

Blogging has flourished in the Middle East, propelled by the region’s unusually high growth rate in Internet use, and the exceedingly restrictive landscape for traditional media. This nexus of demography and repression has led activists, journalists, lawyers, and others online, where they express dissent and report information in previously unimaginable ways.

Little enthusiasm for online paywalls

More than a quarter of people have cut back spending on magazines and newspapers in the economic downturn in favour of free online content according to a recent study by You Gov for the accountancy firm KPMG.

Only 11% of consumers said they paid for any online media and of those who did not currently pay, only a further 11% said they may begin any sort of subscription in the next 12 months.

Despite the fact that news organisations are considering charging for content,the report found little enthusiasm for paying for online news and also found that as more content goes on the net for free

Consumers are also spending less on traditional media; 28 percent respondents say they have reduced their purchases of print newspapers and magazines in favour of viewing free online content since the beginning of the recession; amongst those who had cut-back only 3 percent felt they would ever return to their pre-recession spending levels on these types of media.

Back to the problem of the oversupply of news

One of the problems of the current business model is the oversupply of news.

As economic theory says the greater the supply the lower the price is demand remains constant.

As Nieman Lab reports,Tom Curley, president and chief executive of The Associated Press spoke to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Hong Kong.

The truth he said was that

the market for news is growing. But the reality is — and none of us can create some fantasy picture here — there is an oversupply, at least in the short term, of us. And so that is creating some differences in the market, and I see these being resolved by innovation and creativity over time.

For a full transcript of the talk check out the link HERE

A victory for freedom but the speaker now has some questions to ponder

The news that the block on the Guardian's reporting of Labour MP Paul Farrelly's question regarding Trafigura can be seen as another win for freedom of speech.

The pressure is now on the Common's speaker John Bercow who has been urged by his fellow MP's this afternoon to either block future legal attempts to prevent the reporting of parliament, or to curtail MPs parliamentary privilege to speak freely.

Trafigura's legal firm, Carter-Ruck,decided no longer to persue the case earlier today after what was a concerted effort during the day to stand up for the rights of free speech.

As the Guardian reports

Labour MP Paul Farrelly put down a question yesterday to the justice secretary, Jack Straw. It asked about the injunction obtained by "Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton Report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura

Dress codes for avatars

You might not think that it is all that important but Gartner Inc predicts that by year-end 2013, 70 percent of enterprises will have behavior guidelines and dress codes established for all employees who have avatars associated with the enterprise inside a virtual environment.

Gartner have established six tactical guidelines that organizations can follow

1. Help users learn to control their avatars. For most people, controlling and using an avatar is not viewed as intuitive or easy, but like any skill, after a few sessions a user can master the basics. The platform being used can also be an important factor, but improvements in optimizing virtual environment memory have lessened this issue.

2. Recognize that users will have a personal affinity with their avatar. Users often take pride in their avatar and dress them up or down. For enterprises, this is where dress codes can come into play, if the avatar is being used for company business. Early efforts with avatar appearance have often been viewed as an inhibitor to adoption but this issue should fade as quicker and easier methods of configuring avatars become available.

3. Educate users on the risks and responsibilities of reputation management. Organizations can avoid problems with employees mixing their personal and professional avatar interaction and activities by suggesting that employees use one avatar for their work interactions and another avatar for personal activities.

4. Extend the code of conduct to include avatars in 3-D virtual environments. Just as with social networking sites and individual Web pages where employees participate as representatives of their employer, an avatar's behavior and appearance are a reflection of the individual and the company they work for. Companies with codes of conduct for other Web activities, such as blogging, should be able to extend those policies into virtual environments. However, because 3-D environments add the visual dimension, they will need to make sure that their policies also cover dress codes.

5. Explore the business case for avatars. Justifying avatar use in a business setting is becoming easier, in part because avatar use is gaining wider acceptance. Training and virtual meetings are the top use cases, and one of the main reasons for the increased use of avatars is cost.

6. Encourage usage and enterprise pilots. Looking ahead, one of the biggest uses of avatars appears to be for online meetings. Web meetings are emerging as an important new use case for virtual environments, and this may be a good point at which to start learning about the issues and opportunities surrounding users and avatars. Enterprises may find that they have a willing and ready population of users who are familiar with avatars and their usage. Pilot testing is still the best option for starting to understand the issues that enterprises will face with increased avatar adoption.

Ht-Neville Hobson

A terrible indictment of Michael Grade's reign

Yesterday's Lex column in the FT maybe sums up the current state of play at ITV

It is a terrible indictment of Michael Grade’s reign as executive chairman that the company is unable to attract new tenants for its c-suite. With Sir Michael Bishop withdrawing his candidacy for the chairmanship, headhunter Russell Reynolds is again back to square one, days after Sir Crispin Davis, the previous favoured candidate, also left it in the lurch. How the headhunter must wish it had never won this mandate, which over the past six months has turned into a dismal advertisement for its capabilities.

Guardian gagged

The Guardian believes that it is being gagged from reporting Parliamentary proceedings today.

According to the paper

Today's published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.
The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

The paper believes that these legal grounds appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights.

An elegy for magazines

I love magazines. Not all magazines, I suppose, but the good ones. My magazine love is not rooted in the fact that I write for them, the fact I write for them is rooted in my love for them. I love them because they are both more ephemeral and immediate than, say, Michelangelo's "David" or Welles' "Touch of Evil," but art just the same.

writes Brian Alexander over at the Huffington Post

Imagine what you get for your money. You can travel to places you aren't likely to visit, meet people you are not likely to meet, learn about some topic you may never have wondered about but there you are, reading about it, because a magazine has delivered it to your eyes and packaged it in such a way that you wind up enlightened or amused or outraged

And as for the web it

does some things well, but the best magazines are simply not translatable to the Web because they lose their essence when they are sliced and diced. A magazine is not just the one story you might want to read, it's the story and the images you didn't know you wanted to read, but that thing is in your hands and you're flipping pages and you are arrested by a picture, or a headline or a first sentence.

Will social media be the new conduit for online advertising?

An interesting point on social media's impact on advertising from Jo Wadsworth

social media allows brands to bypass mass media entirely. And it's not just commercial brands - it's also local authorities, celebrities, politicians, lots of the people who previously relied on the papers to get their message out there.

who also draws our attention to this report that makes it clear that Social Media is a better investment than banner advertising.

1. 2-3%: percentage of all banner ad traffic actually engaged with the target brand
2. 3 seconds: the average time users remained on target site from a banner click
3. £££s: cost per single engagement during four week campaign was 23 times HIGHER than that of equivalent Social Media campaign

Ht-Sarah Hartley

Measures to protect your social media security

Social media remains for the moment an area in which the individual lays him or herself open to abuses of privacy.

Internet Security Analyst Robert Siciliano gives some tips over at the Huffington Post

1. Strengthen your passwords; use upper/lower case, numbers and characters. Don't use easily guessed words from the dictionary or pets, kids, birthdates etc.

2.Don't access social media from libraries, internet cafes or any public computers that could have spyware.

3.Make sure your own PC has updated virus definitions and security patches. Don't bother with all the 3rd party apps in social media. Many are risky.

4.Don't click on links in emails from "friends" asking you to download a video or see pictures. This is becoming a common ruse in social media.

Newspapers will always have a future says Harris

Some uplifting remarks for the newspaper industry from the novelist Robert Harris in this morning's Independent.

Although he is glad not to be a journalist any longer, Harris remains a firm believer in the importance of newspapers. He reads several a day and it was an article about Pompeii that inspired him to write his book of that name. The role of the journalist remains vital, he says. "On the whole, I'm optimistic about the future because I think people will always want to read the filtered views of professional journalists. I don't think that's just comforting ourselves, it's just a fact. There is good stuff that's free on blogs and so on, but you have to wade through an awful lot of rubbish to get to it."

The author also appears to be a fan of bundling

should we pay to read content online? "Yes, I welcome that, but I think the future is probably in packages, whereby you choose which titles you want to read and pay a certain amount a year to get access to them.

Why subscription may be the solution to fix the business model

Maybe life is going to turn into one big subscription service?

As Damon Darlin writes in the New York Times

Everywhere you look these days, businesses are selling subscriptions. Cable television, Internet and cellphone services are sold that way. So are business software, office printing and car rentals like Zipcars.

The new business model replacing the one that has existed since the industrial revolution has now come to the end and in an effort to find a new one this could be it.

The rational way to think about your purchases, says V. Seenu Srinivasan, a Stanford business school professor, is to replace a product when the benefits of a new version outweigh the costs — financial and psychological — of upgrading.

so replace that with subscription which

moves consumers over the hurdle of mentally depreciating an existing asset.

Gary Copitch talks about how Social Media in Manchester is connecting communities.

Via-TM_AT_MBS

Will Gutenburg be turning in his grave?

Paid Content have done an excellent analysis of the number of the number of printing presses that have closed in the UK.

It says that

At least 14 major print plants have closed and 1,496 jobs lost since 2005,but adds

That doesn’t tell the full story: many publishers have actually been steadily investing in reorganising and upgrading the presses, despite rising print costs.

Rupert Murdoch amongst them at automated plants in Broxbourne, Knowsley and Glasgow.

As they point out

for the regional titles, it’s the end of a publishing era. Big papers have traditionally been printed on their own presses in rooms near to their editorial creators, but publishers are now admitting this model is uneconomic and many papers are moving printing to rivals’ presses or to their own larger, but centralised presses many miles away. That means cuts to daily editions; evening editions turned in to morning papers to fit the new economy.

Nice idea but please redesign your web Bury Council

Digital Bury has been launched as Bury council say

In response to this growing sector and to gain a better understanding of it, together with identifying who is operating within it locally,

Digital Bury will inform, influence, advocate and promote the best interests of the Digital sector in the short, medium and long-term through events, web platform and active engagement with the companies, individuals and education.

A good idea in practice but I have to say that surely they could have done a better job with their site design

via How do

Murdoch calls for media freedom in China

It was nice to see that Rupert Murdoch is calling for media freedoms in China.

As the FT reports he asked its leaders to

allow a more open media sector, saying Beijing needed to compete in a global "marketplace of ideas" just as it had opened its industrial economy up three decades ago.

adding that

"In this new world, China will also have to compete in the marketplace of ideas - the media. That's a noisy, messy, colourful market,

Of cause cynics may see this and his embrace of the Chinese premier as another cynical attempt to get a hold on the Chinese media market potentially the bigest in the world.

But I will for the moment applaud his call for freedoms

Gaps in the new media skills of TV and radio journos according to a survey

According to a survey from the association of electronic journalists,only 38% of TV and radio news directors say their staffs are “really on top of new technology and where they’re headed.” The rest have “a long way to go” (48%) or are “mostly winging it” (13.7%).

via Advancing the Story

The study show that practically every TV news station has a web siteand nearly all radio stations also have one

Looking specifically at TV, a vast majority (92.7%) of sites are airing video, but many fewer are airing newscasts, either live (33.9%) or recorded (30.6%). Interestingly, the Web publication of recorded newscasts dropped from a year ago while live newscasts increased, and there was more audio streamed online.
A little more than half the stations in the survey are producing blogs (55.6%) and just a fraction have the option to let users assemble their own newscasts (8.1%).