New.Journalism.Review

Highlights of Guardian Media podcast 14th March

A particularly brilliant Guardian Media podcast [14th March] flowed from my Creative Zen Plus, through a pair of Sony cans, via my wingnut ears and into my brain this week. It raised a number of interesting reflections regarding the future of the world.........

Monetizing content: When it comes to news sites it seems that 'free' is where it's at. This got me thinking. Exactly ten years ago this month .Net magazine ran a front cover with the headline "The End of The Free!"  and asked the question "How long  will it be before we start paying for our favourite websites?". With the benefit of hindsight, we can now say at least TEN YEARS!!!  But back in 1998 most of us thought that Hotmail / Rocketmail would eventually start to charge. We didn't think that Google would do good things like allowing free access to online word processor apps. 

Today, WSJ and FT.com are examples of only a handful of newspaper sites that have a pay-wall. FT has changed its policy. You get access to 30 articles a month for free. Above that, you've got to flash the cash (to the tune of 98 smackers). To me that just sounds like one of the most irritating and moronic subscription models known to mankind. Rival business newspaper the WSJ still has most of its stuff stuck firmly behind a wall. It has 1.3million subscribers - very useful in an ad downturn, but it doesn't get you Google placements or indeed links on blogs.

As Emily Bell of The Guardian said: "If you're not on Google people are not reading your journalism." You could also say that if people can't link to you then they won't be talking about you. Also people won't buy your paper just because you don't have a website. The people that look at your website are a different audience to those who buy the paper.

'Reach' first, followed by (hopefully) 'revenue'. The web is all about reach. I still think newspapers need to come up with more innovative discounts for their loyal print readers - the type of people that get the paper delivered.

Finally DAB Radio: As with the manufacturers of Freeview boxes, DAB radios seem to be made by strange companies, like Pure and Goodmans. The likes of Sony and Panasonic aren't that interested in supplying to little old-UK - not until there is a European DAB  standard. This also explains why Halfords won't sell me a  DAB stereo for my car. And the boffins at Honda RnD lab in Tokyo care not one jot that I want to listen to BBC 6 Music in my Civic.This has the potential to stifle growth because your only other big audience for DAB is the housewives and the dish-washers of the world. Everyone else will access via broadband. Or you could listen via your digital TV (but that just feels REALLY strange to have the TV on, but no picture). The podcast was highly critical of Channel 4 Radio's strategy on the DAB issue, but you have to take the Guardian view with a lump of salt as the publishers are rivals in this sector.

To make sense of the above download this fine podcast via: Media Talk podcast: a new future for Channel 4 and a round-up of the Changing Media Summit | Media | guardian.co.uk.

Call for Chinese students to blog against "Western Goebbels Nazi media"

The Chinese government appears to be encouraging foreign students in the UK to blog in protest against alleged Western media bias.

The move follows days of negative reports in the media about the Olympic torch ceremony and the Tibet riots. 

The headline in the pro-government China Daily newspaper [yesterday, 26th March 2008] reads: Students rap media 'hegemony'. The strapline reads: "Western coverage of Tibet riots prompts online rebuttals, appeals."

The article encourages students to visit the website anti-cnn.com and report media bias from leading global media organisations including CNN, the BBC and the Washington Post.

The report states: "They have set up a website, www.anti-cnn.com, to collect evidence of what they believe is one-sided and untrue Western reporting, and posted an open letter asking all Chinese to rise up against "the Western Goebbels' Nazi media", a reference to the Nazi-era propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels."

It continues: "Some Western media, in the name of freedom of the press, have long relentlessly denigrated developing countries to achieve their hidden objectives. They have gone to the extreme in mixing right with wrong, black with white, and fabricating rumors," the website said.

Appearing to be registered with an employee of a leading Beijing university, the site has a chaotic design and surprisingly few contributors despite free front page promotion in one of China's highest circulation  government propaganda newspapers. The site does contain some interesting examples of alleged distorted media reporting on websites such as Times Online.

China is keen to present a controlled image in this Olympic year and it seems that the Chinese TV censor was working over-time on Monday. As I sat on holiday in Beijing watching BBC World and CNN, TV screens would go blank during reports about protests at the Olympic torch ceremony. CNN also had the images distorted during a live link from a reporter in Beijing.

Access to news sites was variable. The Guardian reported that the BBC site on Tuesday appeared to have been unblocked.  On some occasions just the headline about a story about Tibet would be viewable on BBC.com/news, but you would be unable to access the full version. Accessing The Guardian presented similar challenges.

What's interesting is not that China censors TV and Internet, but it's the fact the government is encouraging foreign students to use the same tools it censors to to launch a counter-attack.   

There is evidence to suggest many people in Beijing do believe in a 'united China' and support the government in its stated aim of improving living standards for the people in Tibet. But with total media censorship, you can never quite be sure if  people are just speaking what they read. 

Also how will the large news sites react to Chinese censorship as they look to expand audience reach in the Far East. Will the commercial goals of these news sites take priority over an ethical stance?

Finally, it's very early days for the reporting of the Olympic games. The IOC has placed controls over what journalists can report in their blogs and we'll have to wait and see whether the media will stick to to the rules. 

links for 2008-03-14

• Kristine Lowe: On The Knee-Jerk Journalistic View of Bloggers
  What is good blog style and is it journalism.....the debate continues....
  (tags: blogging journalism blog howto)

Young still consumers of news, they just don't read newspapers

Link: Younger, Heavy Online News Consumers are Not Newspaper Readers, According to comScore Plan Metrix.

OK, so the fact that young people DON'T read newspapers these days sounds like research from the School of the Blinkin' Obvious (SB0) at the Faculty of Not Rocket Science (FNRS), but read on....

The research from ComScore shows that contrary to popular belief, while young people (18-24) in the US may not read on paper, they are still often heavy consumers of news. The research finds that non-newspaper readers particularly enjoy websites of TV news stations in the US, like Fox New, CNN.com and CBS.

"TV news brands are also heavily visited by non-print newspaper readers, underscoring the importance of sight, sound and motion to the digital news experience.

Non-readers were 29 percent more likely than the average Internet user to visit FoxNews.com and 15 percent more likely to visit CBS News Digital."

We need to be careful about how we translate this to the UK. The BBC has struggled to engage with younger users at its BBC News site. Although this may have something to do with the the fact that younger groups sometimes view the BBC brand as traditional and old-fashioned. But the conclusions of the research could suggests that Five News has the right approach in reaching out to audiences on MySpace.

Those that believe in quality journalism may worry that a generation is coming through who do not feel obliged to pay their 40 or 70 pence for the news. 

 

links for 2008-03-13

• Press Gazette - Guardian MD: Digital technology is 'smashing' traditional media
  Random quote: "Colleagues from other newspapers often say that 'print is not in decline'. I say, do you really think that or you just trying to keep this conversation cheerful? Digital media has an extraordinary power over traditional media."
  (tags: guardian newspapers conevergence)
• Angry online reader comments set the news agenda
  HoldTheFrontPage story. Interesting stuff about what motivates readers to comment on stories on local newspaper websites. It's rare to see journalists reading the readers' comments, let alone following them up.
  (tags: newmedia web2.0 feedback interactive local)
• BBC 'opens floodgates' to iPlayer hackers | Technology | The Guardian
  The BBC iPlayer DRM has been hacked...download your Doctor Who and keep it forever. More on online TV coming up
  (tags: BBC hack iPlayer onlineTV)
• Web video has no standards
  [Andydickinson.net] Great video posted on Andy's blog .....now how can we come up with a 'marking criteria' for deciding what makes a good student video? This deserves further analysis.
  (tags: howto video University UserGeneratedContent)

Magazine circulations down. Can digital media save the day?

Would you want to work in magazines right now?
In a matter of months a new batch of journalism undergraduate students will descend on the job market.  Many will no doubt be looking for careers within the magazine sector, as they scan the pages of Media Guardian. But the industry has changing and, as we all know, it's no longer about text on a printed page. The future is multi-platform and multi-media.

The gloom and doom of the ABCs
The recent ABC circulation figures show an industry in stagnation. The impact in the youth magazine market is particularly severe. And the bad news is that it is these types of magazines where our students often aspire to work.

A few examples (data up to Dec 2007): Maxim (down a massive -40%), Loaded (-29%), More (-26%), FHM (-15%), NME (-12%), Heat (-11%), Zoo and Nuts (-12% and - 8% respectively).

Many other sectors are simply stagnating as Net usage eats into all our time. Legendary women's  interest magazine Cosmo had a rise of a rather pathetic 1%. Glamour was down -6%. 

Examples of magazines that have broken the trend are few-and-far between. Inexplicably Top of the Pops magazine managed an increase of 19%. Aimed at teen girls, TOTP has NO website (it's just a holding page) and has no promotion on the BBC1.

Closures:
But this is a real problem. In January, we saw the sad demise of an entire publishing empire - Emap. The company consistently failed to support strong Internet initiatives and its honest and hard working staff paid a painful price.

Almost all Emap former  titles suffered circulation losses. Bauer Consumer Media has closed former Emap titles First (no surprise) and the long-established New Woman (recently re-branded NW).

Things are even starting to look bleak in B2B-land.  Reed Elsevier, AKA the largest B2B publisher IN THE WORLD, is talking about selling RBI.

The future is multimedia and probably 'free'
But despite appearances, magazine publishing isn't totally screwed. These days publishers talk about magazine 'brands' and 'multimedia portfolios' rather than standalone magazine 'titles'. This suggests that publishers are getting their acts together when it comes to investing in convergent technology.

If only we can find a truly accurate method of counting 'brand exposure' (one which doesn't sound like fraud). We need a figure that takes into account website unique users, podcast downloads and digital radio listening hours.

The cynics would say that people download anything on the web,  so long as it's FREE. Our students are pretty astute. They ascribe value to paying £2.80 for New Woman or £3.20 for their copy of Loaded. The idea also still lingers that online plays second fiddle to print.

The winners
So here is a quick (and totally subjective) review of how a couple of magazine publishers are adapting to the multimedia world and a few ones to watch. I'm keen to find more examples of good interactive content from the likes of Hatchette, Bauer, BBC and Conde.

Small print:
Print figures: ABC Print figures based up to Dec 2007 and may be rounded up or down.
[Websites: ABCe figures. Unique visitors per month. These are latest figures I could track down. All figures should be treated as approximates as the months do vary when data was taken] 

DENNIS PUBLISHING
Paper:
Maxim (78,463) & Bizarre (50,000) struggling. The Week doing well.
Paper/Website converged:
All magazine brands have websites. Maxim.co.uk (719,394 unique users) with its photo galleries and behind-the-scenes video is performing well. Bizarre uses a similar template, but has less users (220,814 unique).
Innovative stuff:
The big success has got to be Monkey Magazine an internet-only interactive lads mag with 271,667 users. It is a good example of integrated advertising. It uses Ceros technology, which 'pushes' content at the viewer. Internet-only politics magazine First Post looks brilliant and sits well next to The Week. 

NATMAGS/HEARST DIGITAL
Paper:
Esquire did well in a struggling men's interest sector (up 14%). Cosmo (up, but just 1%)
Paper/Interactive converged: 
Esquire website currently under-construction (boo!). Cosmo has a few blogs, but fails to offer anything remotely interactive. Men's Health magazine to launch TV channel?
Innovative stuff:
Despite a disaster with Jellyfish (a teen girl magazine which employed the same push technology as Monkey), Hearst is investing heavily in Handbag.com and other female websites. Aimed at 31 year-old females with a salary of £40,0000, Handbag claims to be the most visited women's lifestyle site in the UK (1,452,290 unique users) and is currently developing applications for Facebook.

IPC
Paper:
Will the NME hang up its muddy pair of Doc Martins? Say it ain't so.
Paper/Interactive converged: NME.com (1,824,038) is a truly multimedia interactive experience with loads of users. Nuts  (631,467) has plenty of user-generated content but Maxim is better online.  Loaded.co.uk is a weak offering and struggles with just 308,442 unique visitors. Most (or all) of IPC mags have associated websites, but the quality is variable.
Innovative stuff
IPC has been slow to create standalone brands. The paper magazine may be in trouble, but NME TV  will be hitting Sky soon. Also has Nuts TV on Freeview. Web User magazine has launched a channel on YouTube. 

Future:
Paper:
Total Film (85,000) is one of Future's biggest magazine brands. Internet technology magazine .Net makes a big gain (although it only shifts a modest 18,000 a month). Classic Rock is up (+7%) and has overtaken NME. Future has struggled outside its main sectors of technology and games, so the success of Classic Rock and Total Film are important victories.
Paper/Interactive converged: 
Future's focus on technology meant that it took interactive media seriously back in the mid-90s. The website of gadget/reviews magazine T3 is doing well at 2,517,25. Kerrang podcast.
Innovative Stuff:
Non-Magazine brand website, Gamesradar, pulls in impressive figures (3,257,408) despite relatively little marketing. Experiments with digital distribution of magazines didn't come to much.

links for 2008-03-10

• ITV News responds to criticism of vlogging experiment : Journalism.co.uk editors blog
  Do ITN understand (V/B) logging? Interesting thoughts about the difference between journalism and blogging

  Random quote:
  "These vlogs are far from traditional broadcast news. They’re rougher, edgier, sometimes more opinionated and don’t cover th

  
  
  (tags: ITN blogging vlogging broadcasting)
  
  

links for 2008-03-09

• Blogspotting Why journalists should ask dumb questions - BusinessWeek
  Useful when teaching interview skills. New journalists are often afraid of looking stupid when doing interviews. In reality, they need to get interviewees to explain jargon (people tend to hide behind it) and challenge accepted wisdom.
  (tags: business journalism writing howto interviews education)
• Launch of new magazine - TOTAL POLITICS
  New free political magazine from Tory blogger Iain Dale.Random quote:"We looked at other ways of doing it, including online-only, but we weren't convinced that it could work. Given the age demographic of our potential readers, how many were actually going to download a PDF?"
  (tags: magazines online journalism IainDale)
  
• Andy Bull: This week, the futures look like this
  Interesting post, but I would question whether the future is really B2B. You may want to ask staff at RBI that question.
  
  (tags: future journalism business trends)

links for 2008-03-08

• IOC blogging guidelines - ‘Blogging form of personal expression, not journalism’ : Journalism.co.uk editors blog
  International Olympic Committee rules that blogs should not include 'journalism'
  (tags: blogging olympics IOC china censorship)
• Ten ways journalism has changed in the last ten years (Blogger’s Cut) « Online Journalism Blog
  A good summary from Paul. Contains a few changes that are easily overlooked, like 'RSS' and 'measurability' and a few that are just taking off - like ' mapping'
  (tags: journalism web writing trends)
• Definition of 'journalist' is changing fast - PRWeek US
  This link was mentioned on Dr. Mike Hurst's blog. It's an article in PR Week (the US version) about a student product at University of Washington.Random quote: "The course is another example of future journalists - and the people who train them - adjusting to a media map where bloggers hold as many post-graduation opportunities as traditional media sources. Reporters are not only trafficking in the written word, but manning digital cameras and audio recorders."
  (tags: conevergence university website journalism)
  
• They think it's all over for the NME - Times Online
  Could the NME go web-only? Popbitch predicted it, but then was forced to print a retraction.Random quote: "Former readers then become like embittered ex-spouses, forever recalling a rose-tinted Golden Age of rock journalism."(tags: convergence IPC jobs journalism websites NME music media magazines)
  

Flat Earth News debate (London College of Communication - 6/4/08)

The ethical issues raised in Flat Earth News by Nick Davies were debated at the London College of Communication and here are a few notes [more analysis to come].

Davies doesn't pull his punches when it comes to 'naming and shaming' those journalists who he believes have poor ethical standards. Davies reserves no less than 14 pages to giving Kamal Ahmed, former political editor at The Observer, a dressing down.   

Davies alleges that Ahmed, supported by his bosses at The Observer, produced a series of reports about the Iraq war which were misleading. He also accuses him of cuddling up to Ali Campbell (not the former UB40 singer, the other one) to get some pro-Blair spin and "exclusives" for his paper.   

If it wasn't enough having a book in Borders that pulls your career apart, Andrew Gilligan [a man of truly impeccable journalistic standards] also felt the need to twist the knife during the debate. He said: "The attack on Kamal Ahmed was justified. He was lazy."

Gilligan appeared in celebratory mood during the night. His ultra right-wing Evening Standard was having a successful week stiffing Ken and pimping Boris. Gilligan describes his investigations as good old-fashioned news reporting. "If it was left to 'churnalism' this story would never have happened," he stated proudly.

But Gilligan risked upsetting his employer by dismissing the free sheets as "not really news." Apparently,  places like London Lite and the London Paper employ just "five 22 year-olds...copying the news off the Internet. He also said that Wikipedia was often used as a legitimate news source by reporters generally.

A few more quotes:

• Nick Davies, Guardian hack, author,: "This is stuff worth fighting for...let's stand up for the right to tell the truth about the media itself."

• Peter Preston, media columnist, Observer: "I fought a long battle against anonymous sources and there are far too many in Nick's book." He said that the Cardiff University statistics, which Davies relies heavily on to back up his argument, were "crap". Preston said that staffing levels at The Guardian had actually increased in recent times from around 260 to 430 (not taking into account online staff).

• Michelle Stanistreet, President of the NUJ,: "Quality Journalism is what we strive for, but 'churnalism' is all too common..... The average day for many [journalists] is rewriting press releases."

• Sally Costerton, UK CEO, Hill & Knowlton [PR agency]: "I don't believe there is a loss of transparency. We are not in the business of making up stories."

Flat Earth News by Nick Davies is on Amazon now.