Tag journalism

Times Online tells staff its paywall nearing rollout. Roll up for trials.

0 comments By Andy Soloman Filed in Uncategorized Tagged with Chief executive officer, journalism, media, news, news international, newspapers, online revenue, paywall, Rebekah Brooks, subscribers, Sunday Times, the times, Times Online March 18th, 2010 @ 7:30 pm

So here it comes. The Times Online paywall is set to be launched. Thanks to our friends at paidContent:UK for Stephen Brook’s posting today that reported News International Chief Executive Rebekah Brooks told staff that readers registered with Times Online will be invited to register for an “exclusive preview of the new digital proposition” this week.

Let me not just repeat Brook’s posting. Go over and have a look for yourself. However, I will repeat the memo reportedly sent to News International staff today, and which will be distributed to Times Online registered users.

FAIR PRICING FOR DIGITAL CONTENT

Message from Rebekah Brooks
Those of you that subscribe to The Times and The Sunday Times or have registered on Times Online will receive a communication starting from this week inviting you to register for an exclusive preview of the new digital proposition. This shows that we are getting closer to the launch of the titles’ new digital sites.
I have made no secret of our intention to start charging for quality journalism online. As you may have seen speculation in the media about our plans, I wanted to take this opportunity to let you know why we believe this is such an important development.
We are committed to producing quality journalism that is written by professionals with a profound understanding of their subject and a commitment to provide well-informed coverage of the issues. Each of our titles, in its own way, has pioneered quality, professional journalism and we are unashamed to say we believe it has value.
In contrast, the industry is making the mistake of chasing millions of unique users by giving the audience more and more content for free. An obsession with traffic just doesn’t pay.

Great journalism needs investment and we are committed to supporting the fantastic work that you are all producing and delivering to our audiences. It is the quality of the journalism that you create, and the ways in which we produce and distribute it, that will continue to set our titles apart from the competition.
And to be clear, when we talk about charging for our content online, we are talking about charging a fair price. Price alone will not be a barrier to take up. Of course, we expect to see the numbers of unique users of our sites come down dramatically. But the people who register to our new digital products will be customers who have made a positive decision to pay a fair price for journalism that they value, and they will be those who are more committed to and engaged with our titles.
This is an exciting development for our company especially as we will be among the first in the world to take this step. There are many who declare we have set ourselves an impossible task. But our company loves nothing more than challenging the status quo.
Shortly I will update you on our plans in more detail. But, in the meantime, I believe that with the combined force of your talent, commitment and hard work, we will, in the months and years to come, define a new future in the way we create, deliver and profit from our journalism.
Rebekah Brooks
Chief Executive, News International

News International puts its cards on the table (technokitten.blogspot.com)
All hail Rupert Murdoch. Without his money, there would be no good Times (guardian.co.uk)
Times picks senior team for paywall push (guardian.co.uk)

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eBay founder Pierre Omidyar dropping Twitter project for local news service

0 comments By Andy Soloman Filed in Uncategorized, blogging, journalism, news, newspapers, online revenue, publishing, twitter Tagged with Business, EBay, editor, Ginx, Hawaii, Honolulu, Howard Weaver, journalism, local news, media, news, Newspaper, Peer News, Pierre Omidyar, publishing, randy Ching, twitter November 19th, 2009 @ 12:48 pm

: Pierre Omidyar, Image via CrunchBase

Billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar has announced that he’s abandoning Ginx, his Twitter client project, in favour of developing a new online local news service in Hawaii where he lives.

Peer News, founded by Omidyar and fellow eBay stalwart Randy Ching in 2008, has advertised via Twitter for an editor and in a blog posting Omidyar said a lot of effort was now going into building the new service.

We have a lot of work to do before our public launch in early 2010. We’re focused on building a really talented team here in Honolulu. For our Ginx users, we’re sorry to let you know that we’ll be shutting down the service at the end of 2009. We learned a lot and greatly appreciate all the interaction and feedback from you over the past year. We’re huge fans of Twitter, so you will still see us online, but we want our developers focused on the new organization and news service.

Omidyar (@pierre on Twitter) said he had been interested in news for some time and that Peer News was founded with the goal of:

empowering citizens and encouraging greater civic participation through media. We believe that a strong democracy requires an engaged society supported by effective news reporting and analysis. And, we believe that this can be done in a profitable, sustainable way.

So if you fancy applying to be the editor based in Honolulu, the details can be found here. Prospective candidates need to offer answers to two key questions impacting news today.

In 100 words or less, when did you first realise that the Web was going to change journalism forever?
In 100 words or less, what advice would you give the news industry?

News veteran Howard Weaver has been advising the Peer News team, and in a blog posting entitled “Looking toward one future for local civic journalism” he said:

The new venture intends to demonstrate that a digitally native, technologically fluent web organisation can profitably serve targeted readers who want sophisticated journalism focused on local civic affairs.

Local and regional newspapers have been hugely impacted in the crisis affecting journalism and changing reader and advertiser habits. Local publications have been closing in their scores as revenues and circulations plummet. The loss of a local newspaper closes a prime avenue for local accountability and democracy. It is a subject of heated debate, and stressed out newspaper executives will be watching Omidyar very closely to see if he can generate profits from online local news.

VIDEO – Old and new media lock horns to generate fascinating discussion on the future of news

1 comment By Andy Soloman Filed in Uncategorized, journalism, news, online revenue, publishing, video Tagged with Arianna Huffington, Axel Springer, Christine Ockrent, France 24, Huffington Post, journalism, Mathias Dopfner, MMF 2009, Monaco Media Forum 2009, news, online revenue, publishing November 13th, 2009 @ 3:39 pm

Keynote discussion of the week where the future of news media was chewed over at the Monaco Media Forum 2009 by Mathias Dopfner, CEO of Axel Springer, and Arianna Huffington of Huffington Post fame. Conversation is hosted by Christine Ockrent, CEO of France 24.

The resulting video is a fantastic exploration of the tensions between the old and new schools of journalism, commercial pressures and just what the future may (or may not) hold.

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EVENT — Is World Journalism in Crisis? (free video conference 28 October)

1 comment By Andy Soloman Filed in Uncategorized, events, journalism Tagged with coventry university, crisis, event, jeff jarvis, jeremy paxman, journalism, kevin marsh, nick davies October 21st, 2009 @ 4:17 pm

Real or virtual, definitely worth a listen

Cracking looking line-up and agenda for next week’s free conference hosted by Coventry University exploring the question: “Is World Journalism in Crisis?”

Confirmed speakers include Jeff Jarvis, BBC heavyweight Jeremy Paxman and investigative journalist Nick Davies.

Sure to be interesting discussion and debate. The event is free to attend, and it can be viewed or listened to online.

Twitter feeds linked to the event will be using the hashtag #j-crisis.

The event will be chaired by Kevin Marsh, Editor of the BBC College of Journalism and former editor of the flagship BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

The conference is supported by journalism.co.uk and sponsored by Camelot Plc.

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AWARDS – ABI financial media awards 2009 announced

0 comments By Andy Soloman Filed in events, journalism Tagged with Association of British Insurers, awards, financial, journalism October 14th, 2009 @ 5:28 pm

As published on www.politics.co.uk today:

The ABI Financial Media Awards is an important and eagerly awaited event in the financial services calendar. Now in its 14th year, the event attracts a wide range of influential commentators from the financial media and financial service organisations. All sectors of the financial media are represented, including personal finance, city and business, consumer, insurance trade and broadcast journalists.

The event offers your company or client an unrivalled opportunity to develop and strengthen relationships with key journalists, and raise brand profile – essential to enhancing your reputation.

Sponsors already on board include: Aegon, Allianz, AXA, Fortis, Friends Provident, LV=, Prudential, RBS Insurance, RSA, Standard Life, Tesco Compare, Zurich.

Can your company or your clients afford not to be there?

Thursday 15 October 2009

Grange St Paul’s Hotel

10 Godliman Street

London EC4V 5BD

Tel: 020 7630 2000

Fax: 020 7835 1888

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Y Combinator looking to fund great ideas in paid online content

0 comments By Andy Soloman Filed in Uncategorized, journalism, online revenue Tagged with journalism, magazines, newspapers, online revenue, startups, venture funding, Y Combinator October 13th, 2009 @ 10:42 am

US-based venture firm Y Combinator is seeking the next great idea to drive new life into paid content and journalism as traditional newspapers and magazines die.

The hope is that new ideas will be generated to build paid-for content sites from the position of making money first, rather than supporting a particular form of journalism and then trying to figure out how to make money from it.

I’m making no comments here, just going to leave you to decide. The full wording of their appeal for start-ups delivering paid for content and quality journalism follows.

RFS 1: The Future of Journalism

Newspapers and magazines are in trouble. We think they will mostly die, because we think we know what will replace them, and it is too far from their current model for them to reach it in time.

And yet people still need at least some of what they do. You can’t have aggregators without content. So what will the content site of the future look like? And how will you make money from it? These questions turn out to be very closely related. Just as they were for print media, initially. The reason newspapers and magazines are dying is that what they do is no longer related to how they make money from it. In fact, most journalists probably don’t even realize that the definition of journalism they take for granted was not something that sprang fully-formed from the head of Zeus, but is rather a direct though somewhat atrophied consequence of a very successful 20th century business model.

What would a content site look like if you started from how to make money—as print media once did—instead of taking a particular form of journalism as a given and treating how to make money from it as an afterthought?

(The good news is, we think the writing will actually end up being better.)

Groups applying to work on this idea should include at least one person who can write well and rapidly about any topic, one or more programmers who are good at statistics, data mining, and making sites scale, and someone who’s reasonably competent at graphic design. These functions can of course be combined, and in fact it’s even better if they are. Ex-Googlers would be particularly well suited to this project.

All the details on how to apply for funding in winter 2010 can be found here. What ideas are out there?

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Wikileaks to make life more secure for whistleblowers and journalists

0 comments By Andy Soloman Filed in Uncategorized, journalism Tagged with dissidents, journalism, The Guardian, whistleblowers, Wikileaks October 13th, 2009 @ 10:12 am

Calling all whistlktleblowers, Wikileaks wants you

Calling all whistleblowers, Wikileaks wants you

Wikileaks, the secure platform for international whistleblowers and untraceable mass document leaking, is aiming to make it even easier for leaks to occur through enabling newspapers, human rights organisations, criminal investigators and others to embed an “upload a disclosure to me via Wikileaks” form onto their Web sites.

Through offering a secure channel, the intention is to give whistleblowers the ability to securely leak sensitive documents to organisations or journalists while ensuring both the sender and recipient are fully protected.

“We will take the burden of protecting the source and the legal risks associated with publishing the document,” Julien Assange, an advisory board member at Wikileaks, was reported as saying at the Hack In The Box security conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Over three years on the web, Wikileaks has received around 1.2 million documents.

Wikileaks was established by Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and startup company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa.

As The Guardian said last year: “From government to big business, if you have a dirty secret, Wikileaks is your nightmare”. Now, where’s that Wikileaks WordPress widget?

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CPJ focusses on dangers facing Pakistan journalists

0 comments By Andy Soloman Filed in Pakistan, Region, Uncategorized, journalism Tagged with committee to protect journalists, danger, journalism, nuclear weapons, pakistan, suicide bomb October 5th, 2009 @ 3:01 pm

A young boy dressed in combat fatigues holds a toy gun next to a speaker at an Islamist rally in Quetta, Pakistan. Photo: Andy Soloman

It’s no secret that Pakistan is a very dangerous place. It is dangerous across all levels of society, from within the institutions (such as they are), to inside the mosques, on the streets, in the villages or countryside. And, to cap it all, it possess nuclear weapons.

Just today, there was yet another suicide bombing against a soft target. In this case it was the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) HQ in the capital Islamabad. The compound was attacked by a suicide bomber and left five people dead while shattering the hopes of many more. My old friend Khaled Mansour, a veteran of WFP operations in desperate places, said on Facebook:

Thinking of colleagues, friends and others who were killed or injured in WFP office in Islamabad where I worked a few years ago. Anger does not cover the range of emotions I have … the question: “then what and until when?” repeats itself …like a mantra as if to keep me in my state of denial. Damn!

But whether it is suicide b0mbings, army attacks against militant forces, political strife or other squabbles in this almost failed state, it is the journalists who more often than not are putting themselves in harm’s way.

In the first of a series of articles published by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Bob Dietz, the CPJ’s Asia Program Coordinator today focussed on the pressures faced by local journalists including unresolved killings and other violent attacks.

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Journalism — how it was then. What would this look like now?

0 comments By Andy Soloman Filed in Uncategorized, journalism Tagged with bookkeeping, documentary, forestry, journalism, photography, printing October 4th, 2009 @ 6:36 pm

As the debates on the future of journalism rage, I thought it interesting just to take a moment to reflect on how it once was.

This documentary, part of the late 1940s US “Your Work Life Series” of vocational guidance films, looked at the noble profession of journalism and how stories were gathered and newspapers produced. Other films in the series tackled photography, printing, forestry and bookkeeping among (I presume) others.

Just what would this profession look like today once new media and sexual equality (note the suggestions for women) were added to the mix?

I neither condemn nor condone the content. It is purely a reflection of how things were, not what they were to become. Any takers to make an updated version?

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FT chief says charging for content essential for quality journalism

0 comments By Andy Soloman Filed in Uncategorized, online revenue Tagged with financial times, Free newspapers, FT, journalism, London Evening Standard, online revenue, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal October 2nd, 2009 @ 11:29 am

Financial Times Chief Executive John Ridding has urged newspaper websites to dump the “free is good” doctrine and work out what they can charge for.

In an interview in today’s Media Guardian, Ridding said charging was the only way to safeguard the future of quality journalism.

“I fundamentally believe readers are willing to pay for quality journalism,” Ridding was quoted as saying on MediaGuardian.co.uk.

Ridding said newspapers had to identify what sets them apart and look for ways to monetise that value.

Newspapers have been having a torrid 2009. Many have closed, some retreated to online versions, while others have tried to tough it out. But nearly all have one thing in common — they have seen profits tumble, or at worst key indicators slump deep into the red.

Those operating in niche markets have that unique content that people are prepared to pay for. If that content is also business critical then the subscription model can be an excuse to print money. While the FT and Wall Street Journal may be able to successfully drive subscription revenue, the majority of general newspapers are struggling to find the golden key within their content offerings.

“It is definitely more difficult for more general publishers [to charge] but often I feel there’s a more fatalistic response, saying ‘It’s not possible’,” Ridding said.

But, on the same day that Ridding’s remarks were published, it was reported that the daily London Evening Standard announced it was to drop its 50p cover price and become free in a bid to increase circulation to almost 600,000 a day from a current level of 250,000.

It seems to me the newspaper business maybe groping in the dark somewhat.

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Is there new in the old?

0 comments By Andy Soloman Filed in journalism Tagged with journalism, photography, vietnam September 24th, 2009 @ 6:12 pm

Second hand TVs being imported into Vietnam. Photo: Andy Soloman

Thinking about my posting on Roy Greenslade’s comments on the crisis British journalism finds itself in set me thinking. Is it really going to have to be a case of out with the old and in with the new? We have to be very careful here. The prospect of the vestiges of mainstream media cowering in its hole churning out rehashed press releases and wallowing in Lord Haw-Haw isms is enough to worry even the most ardent critic of the press. Instinct would seem to suggest that if quality deteriorates then there will be scope for good stuff to shine, and that good stuff will come at a premium. Time to refocus away from generalisms, me thinks, and into the niches that will certainly pay out in spades.

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Journalism in crisis and does anyone care?

0 comments By Andy Soloman Filed in journalism Tagged with greenslade, journalism, newspapers, press association September 24th, 2009 @ 11:18 am

British journalism is in crisis and the question is whether anyone really cares? While the malaise and deep challenges affecting news publishers are really no different in other countries as newspapers struggle to compete in a digital world where words, opinions and news are “free”, one leading commentator is asking whether the journalists are blind to reality.

Writing in the Media Guardian today, veteran commentator Roy Greenslade said too little was being done too late.

Is anybody out there listening properly? Do enough people care? Are journalists themselves sticking their heads in the sand?

We are not facing a momentous crisis in journalism. We are already in a crisis that is putting the central public service aspect of our role in jeopardy.

What is at the core of this “public service aspect”? Democracy, that’s what. Local and regional newspapers, faced with declining ad revenues and circulation, have been closing at an alarming rate. Local councils have been establishing their own free newspapers that suck up local ad spends with their guaranteed circulations, while potentially controversial issues may be going unreported. Council chambers have been where so many reporters cut their teeth, but without commercially driven local or regional news, who is going to be there to see fair play? How is accountability going to be measured?

As Greenslade says:

Justice in some courts is no longer being seen to be done. Police forces, having already erected a defensive PR screen to keep the press at bay, now find that there is little journalistic probing to worry about.

Greenslade welcomed an expected initiative from the UK national agency the Press Association, that in partnership with the Trinity Mirror is expected to bring charitable funding to establish a team of public service reporters that will generate copy that is free to use by any publisher or even individual blogger.

It’s a great idea but if we are not careful, or extremely lucky, it may well prove to be too little too late. Independent funding for one project is all very well (and I support PA whole-heartedly), but we need to think on a bigger scale and act with greater speed. It’s that urgent.

Local weekly titles are closing month by month. Regional dailies are in a terrible state and several could close, or reduce their frequency of publication, within the next 12 months. They are shadows of their former selves.

But Greenslade ventured onto thin ice, arguing that not-for-profit journalism can offer a way forward, a route to securing a future where journalists will put their noses firmly into other peoples’ business, where they won’t be constrained by self-censorship or conflict of interest. A brave new world, one that has its roots firmly in the past and the emergence of real investigative and honest news. I suppose a break with commercialism may offer the best chance in the the world where free is the norm, and imaginative schemes are needed to deliver cutting edge content.

At present, we seem to accept that death by a thousand cuts is good enough. That’s because we – both the employed and the employers – tend to hang on to the fantasy of papers as profit centres (which still means that we see journalism as a commercial activity).

The reason I’m in favour of not-for-profit journalism, whether funded by charity or, at arm’s length, by state bodies, is that it breaks the link with commercialism.

That’s a vital first step in the reinvention of journalism. What we need is a preservation of the old until the new emerges. We cannot afford to let the old die before the new is in place.

But…

(I leave it there. There are too many questions and issues to be resolved before this can really be seen as the magic wand)

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