How will newspapers make money in future? Shopping? Travel? Sponsored editorial? October 24, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentMartin Moore catalogues some of the ways The Times is trying:
"Many of them [newspapers] are, and have been for some time, looking for ways to 'monetize' their reading public (i.e. milk readers for more cash).
You can get a pretty good idea of what this means by reading todays Times. I counted 21 ads for ways in which the paper could make additional revenue (not including encouraging people to buy the paper tomorrow or Saturday or one just promoting the brand). […]
And, one of the strangest, an ad for a weekly Times online 'streamlined' series with Tony Hawks – sponsored by VW Passat C (see 'A Life More Streamlined'). The remarkable thing about this is the deliberate melding of editorial and advertising – the tagline for the VW Passat is 'See the new streamlined coupe'. "
Martin Moore Blog: Newspaper closures October 20, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentMartin Moore offers some historical context to Emily Bell's scenario of potential newspaper closures:
"The last major period of contraction occurred between the two World Wars when, as the first Royal Commission on the Press found, just under 25% of daily and Sunday papers closed:
‘Between 31st December 1921, and 31st December 1948, the number of general daily and Sunday newspapers published in England, Wales, and Scotland fell from 169 to 128’ (1st Royal Commission on the Press, p.73).
The Commission decided this was not a serious cause for concern, nor was the 25% reduction in the national daily press. Only if it was part of a long term trend did they feel we should be worried:
‘We do not therefore see cause for alarm in the decrease of the number of national morning newspapers from 12 in 1921 to 9 in 1948 – [although any further decrease could be worrying]' (Royal Commission, p.88)."
Economic woe could end inequality in the education system | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk October 17, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentFrancis Beckett's take on how, in the long term, "Britain's economic woes could be good news for our schools". Wonder what he makes of business/industry links with universities. Or maybe we can guess:
"First, they will decouple business from academies…
Second, they will weaken the stranglehold business has over education. It is essentially to appease business that the government seeks to divide children at 11 or 14 into successes and failures, expanding the number of schools that are allowed to select some or all of their pupils. It damages the children, but it is convenient for their future employers.
Top business people will have less time to spend dictating how schools are run. And if they have any shame, they will be less inclined to consider themselves qualified to lecture to schools. Just possibly, Gordon Brown and his ministers will be less inclined to suppose that anything the public sector does, the private sector is bound to do better."
Applying Benford's Law to CAR — car-chase.net October 17, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentA technique to check figures, particularly to aid computer assisted reporting (CAR), summarised by Chase Davis:
"One of the techniques [Phil] Meyer mentioned is known as Benford's Law — a decades-old mathematical rule that forensic accountants have recently used to spot fraud by examining the distribution of individual digits in large datasets. I've been meaning to test it out for a long time, ever since I came across this old New York Times article earlier this year, but I never took the time until a couple weeks ago. […]
Most people assume that individual digits in something like a budget are randomly distributed […] when in fact that isn't the case. […] The important thing is that checking to see whether individual digits occur at the expected rates can reveal indications of fraud — particularly when you're looking at data that people can fudge. […]
You can't support a story on it, but Benford's Law can tip you off when something is amiss."
Local newspapers must be 'information provider of choice' online, says industry panel — Journalism.co.uk October 17, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentLaura Oliver on the Journalism Leaders Forum at UCLAN:
"becoming an information hub could also help address the problem of advertising, as the 'revenue base [of newspapers] is eroding along with the newspaper's grip on its audience'.
"The general concept of ad-supported news isn't broken… it's the fact that we’re not building the audiences that the advertising community wants us to provide," said [Steve] Yelvington. […]
Offering a UK perspective, Simon Reynolds, editorial director at the Lancashire Evening Post, said the notion of a local newspaper as an information portal was 'nothing new', but that the delivery mechanisms for this information had changed.
"I do believe we have to extend our reach away from news and become a more sophisticated portal," he said.
"The press need to understand where the new revenues are going to come from and build a business model on that. We must make ourselves invaluable."
Xark!: 10 reasons why newspapers won't reinvent news October 17, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , 1 comment so farDan Conover's list includes:
"5. Newspapers don't "own" enough creative technological expertise […] to constitute a viable tech infrastructure. Instead, most newspaper payrolls are bloated with pluralities of resentful Luddites who struggle with the complexities of e-mail. […]
6. Inertia, uncertainty and toxic paralysis rule most newspaper companies […]
7… Web ads are still merely "upsell" throw-ins to print-advertising contracts at many papers. It's practical short-term tactics vs. long-term business strategy. …
8. n 2008, all meaningful political discourse — the essential element of social currency — takes place on the Web…
9. The connection between quality and profitability has been broken irreparably. Boosting short-term profits by cutting quality is obviously a losing strategy, and the recent wave of newspaper layoffs and buyouts only exacerbated the trend. Editors will admit this privately, but the public already knows."
Web 2.0: Chronicle of a death foretold | Media Money October 12, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentCrunch time is coming for Web2.0 companies, says Peter Kirwan:
"The business models underpinning social media and user-generated content are in big, big trouble.
Funding is drying up. The space available for experimentation in media planning is closing down rapidly. The cult of free looks decidedly vulnerable. […]
Suddenly, and rather miraculously, ad-funded web sites are becoming unfashionable. Paid content? It’s the new black. As one VC puts it: “Free is over; I am only interested in investing in services that customers pay for.”[…]
Welcome to the future. The breaking of web 2.0 will look a bit like the dot com crash of 2000 — only this time, everyone will be scared."
Top ten blogs to read during the banking crisis October 12, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentSuggested reads by Daniel FInkelstein of The Times (Comment Central blog), with only two plugs for Times bloggers (plus one at WSJ).
“Perplexed by plummeting indexes? Worried about your bank’s future? Comment Central’s rounded up ten of the best blogs to guide you through the banking crisis.”
Why UK Blog Networks Are Really Failing October 9, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentFailing to break stories are among the weaknesses of (professional/commercial) blog networks in the UK — Shiny Media and others — according to SEO and online marketing exec Patrick Altoft:
"For years I’ve wondered why the people running UK blog networks just don’t seem to “get it” when it comes to online publishing.[…] UK bloggers need to ask themselves when was the last time they broke a news story that was a world exclusive? […]
UK blogs need to break exclusive stories and create a social media culture so ensure that the stories are spread around the world as fast as possible."
The news about Robert Peston: meta-reporting? October 9, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : Journalism, News, blogging, reporting , add a commentUpdate: Michael Howard has asked the FSA to investigate the alleged leaking to Peston/the BBC of sensitive information about the bank rescue package, reports Guido Fawkes.
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The BBC’s business editor is becoming the news, and not just as in the spoof article I bookmarked previously.
The House of Lords communications committee asks whether he’s setting the agenda:
“Well, I think there is an argument for that. One can’t deny that Robert Peston has been playing an instrumental role in the story and anyone in the news business has to pay close attention to what Robert Peston reports,” the Daily Mail political editor, Ben Brogan, told the committee.
“He is well informed, well connected and he has on a number of occasions broken the news it would be foolish in the extreme to ignore him. That, in some ways, gives him an enormous degree of power. But more power to his elbow, if he’s the journalist that is leading the charge on this, then good for him.”
More people want to find him online, says Robin Goad of Hitwise…
while he reports on falling markets, his own stock is looking like a good bet. As the chart below illustrates, UK Internet searches for ‘robert peston’ have shot up over the last month.
…which prompts a Media Guardian article on a similar theme, followed by a light piece about Peston’s potential rivals.
Journalists and media-watchers have also had the chance to read interview profiles of Peston in The Independent and The Guardian. Both allude to his contacts and brilliant scoops, of course — but don’t address directly how far he’s managing to steer the narrow course between reporter of scoops and cypher.
Footnote: Yesterday I read Peston’s blog post and not much later listened to his analysis piece on the 6pm Radio 4 news, and realised they were the same thing. So posting scripts is one way to do it, to answer Robin Goad’s query of how Peston was broadcasting frequently and
somehow also finding time update his blog daily with analysis of the latest episode in the ongoing saga of the financial crisis
I doubt I’m the first to realise this.