The Brinkwire blog

Manchester United is not China (via @Tim)

Posted on 20. Jan, 2010 by Andrew.

Tim Bradshaw of the FT has just tweeted to say the Manchester United press office is refuting claims in today’s blogs that players have been banned from Twitter. Tim quotes the Man U press office sa saying; “Entirely up to them.”

Paid Content has a good write up which asks “Is Manchester United the next China?” as it discusses the news the club was believed to be unilaterally banning its players from maintaining any form of social media presence on sites like Twitter and Facebook.

It may sound odd – but real time social is a huge problem for sports in the States. Matches tend to be scheduled to air on US TV, across multiple time zones, in a waterfall like chain of appearances. In other words; a match can be viewed live in New York in the morning but then air on TV on West coast some hours later.

The challenge that Twitter et al brings to this is that the fans can get an almost real-time stream of the play-by-play events without paying the extra subscription costs to a pay-for-view or waiting for the network running the match a few hours later.

The English premiership doesn’t have to battle with time zones but does have very lucrative pay-for-view franchises to protect.

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Press Complaints Commission slaps cyber door stepping

Posted on 18. Jan, 2010 by Andrew.

It’s known as “door stepping” – and easy to imagine as a journalist or three turning up on your door step to ask awkward questions about an upsetting issue.

Does that happen anymore? Well, the PCC has just found The Sunday Times of doing just that when a reporter used Facebook to make contact with a family in mourning to – and get this – to ask about a complaint that family had just made to the press watch dog.

Toby Rundle’s family were already upset that The Sunday Times had suggested he had taken his own life. Mother, Deborah Rundle, had made the complaint which had led journalists to the Facebook page of her daughter.

The Sunday Times points out that the reporter (like so many today) as Freelance and was unaware of the PPC complaint in the first place.

However, the daughter had replied on Facebook to say she didn’t want to talk about it when the reporter sent the original article back through to her.

No surprises that the PPC said the incident was “regrettable”.

The Sunday Times have been have said they understand the error and apologised. It’s also worth noting that the PCC sided with the newspaper in that the headline “Harry Potter student found hanged in his Oxford room” was neither salacious or insensitive.

To me it sounds a lot like a serious case of miss-communication at a very sensitive time. If you’re going to be cautious about asking questions then life as a reporter may well be challenging to you but surely you’ll get the best answers by asking questions at the ‘best’ (as in; most suitable) time.

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Northcliffe launches Northcliffe Digital

Posted on 11. Jan, 2010 by Andrew.

Regional newspaper powerhouse Northcliffe Media has created Northcliffe Digital to – as you can guess – concentrate on digital.

The new MD will be Mike Rowley and the new Content Strategy Director is none other than Robert Hardie. I’ve met them both and know they’re clued up in this space.

Rowley told Journalism.co.uk,

“One of the things that I think we and other media companies in the regional press have been really good at is getting our content online and getting people to focus on it. We have a very credible audience online now. We try and create content for the digital space and user engagement and we think we can do more of the same,” he said.

“The digital product has a life all of its own now – this is about deciding where we go forward with it.”

Northcliffe Digital will get a team of 15 digital publishers. They’ll focus on the “thisis” family of sites and existing on online-only revenue models.

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Boston Globe no longer for sale

Posted on 15. Oct, 2009 by Andrew.

The New York Times Company has abannoned their attempts to sell the loss-making Boston Globe. The company had been looking for a buyer over the last few months but had only ever managed to provoke a lukewarm response from possible buyers.

Arthur Sulzberger Jr, chairman of The New York Times Company, told staff via email that the Boston Globe’s finances had improved enough to reduce the need to sell the daily paper.

The New York Times Company paid just over $1.1bn in 1993 for the paper – the highest ever paid for a single US newspaper – but it is reported the best bids they had for their sell were in the region of $35m.

The company is believed still to be looking for a buyer for its small share in New England Sports Ventures which owns the Boston Red Sox baseball squad.

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Speed’s Stephen Waddington (@wadds) covers NLA’s engagement with PR agencies

Posted on 14. Sep, 2009 by Andrew.

We’ve written about the NLA and their money making plans before on this blog. As a result of that post NLA’s PR agency started to interact with us and answered some questions.

Speed’s Managing Director, Stepehn Waddington, has done a far better job at keeping the industry connected to the ‘debate’ with the NLA. His recent post NLA engages directly with critics is a must read.

Key points from the post are:

Clipping agencies like Durrants and Cision as well as online monitoring tools like Meltwater are the targets of the new license model. This is a model which the Financial Times and News International publications are not covered by as they have their own deals.

Stephen reminds us how important clippings are for PR and notes that some of the negative reactions to the NLA’s plans are due to a belief that online content is free. However, as (if) paywalls become the norm then this belief may begin to change.

If online clippings are so important for PR agencies and the newspapers are the original source of that content – as the NLA believe – then the newspapers are due some of that money. How much? The NLA expect the license to raise up to £2 million each year.

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Italian government investigates Google News

Posted on 28. Aug, 2009 by Andrew.

Following on from complaints against Google News from the Italian Federation of Newspaper Publishers the Italian Competition Authority has begun to investigate.

The ICA searched Google’s Milan offices on Thursday morning. This led to a blog post from Google in their European Public Policy Blog in which Google points out they drive and take traffic from multiple sources and only show snippets of the stories. Once a user leaves Google News to read the full story it is up to the newspaper to how they profit from the free traffic, reminds Google.

The Italian newspapers are unhappy that they can’t opt-out of Google News without opting out of Google Web. The Preseident of the Federation, Carlo Malinconico, told the New York Times, “Publishers provide much of the content on the Internet, but they get nearly nothing for it. This is not fair, in our opinion. Our feeling is we lose more than we gain,”

So, what do you think? Are the Italians biting the hand that feeds them? Will they be able to make any more money if they get less traffic from Google?

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Will Johnston Press sell The Scotsman?

Posted on 24. Aug, 2009 by Andrew.

Johnson Press are busy denying they’ll sell The Scotsman newspaper. The rebuttal follows an article in The Sunday Times by Iain Dey and James Ashton which headlined “Bid to buy The Scotsman from troubled Johnston Press”.

Dey and Ashton put forward a piece in which Martin Gilbert, the CEO of Aberdeen Asset Management, Ben Thomson and Mark Shaw had teamed together to buy the paper. The Scotsman was sold to Johnston Press back in 2005 for £160m by the Barclay Brothers. The Sunday Times reports that Johnston Press is trying their best to unload the newspaper for no less than £40m.

Judith Townend reports that Journalism.co.uk received a statement from Johnston Press which denies the report.

“Johnston Press notes the press speculation regarding the potential disposal of the Scotsman.
“Whilst Company policy is not to comment on such speculation, Johnston Press can confirm that the board does not have any disposal process underway in this regard.”

Here’s a question; what do you think Johnston Press should do? Do they try and hang on to The Scotsman, sell it only if they get an unreasonably high offer or sell it once someone offers their minimum threshold price?

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8 blogger reactions to thelondonpaper closing

Posted on 21. Aug, 2009 by Andrew.

Chris Barnyard at Liberal Conspiracy asks “Will you miss it?”

Perhaps the impending paywalls made the freesheet a difficult fit within the Murdoch empire. Or perhaps Rupert Murdoch has just given up on throwing money away.

Either way, it marks another recent media failure, especially after the bad investment that myspace turned out to be.

On twitter, most people were fairly ambivalent.

Richard Johnston of Bleeding Cool worries about the fate of Em Cartoon

Yesterday it was announced that News International are to close thelondonpaper in a month – although its losses had fallen from launch of 16 million pounds to just 9 million, it was still a loss to far and five million over budget. It is expected that Associate will close London Lite at some point, as its reason to exist has been taken away and will only be harming The Evening Standard.

But for me, and many others it seems, this could be the end of Em.

This will not do. Someone, somewhere must find it a home.

Mark Thompson who blogs at Mark Reckons notes

If this is true, I can’t say I am surprised and there are likely to be more MSM casualties as blogs and other online media continue to grow in usage and readers. Closures of papers like this are starting to look inevitable, not least after Murdoch’s recent shocking financial results.

There are rumours that the Independent is struggling and there were also reports that The Observer might have to fold in the near future.

I wonder which title will be next to fall.

Simon Day writing for the sfnblog writes;

The News Corp. subsidiary revealed it has begun a 30-day consultation period on the ongoing viability of the free daily, which has 60 staff from the company’s Free Newspaper branch.

News Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive for Europe and Asia James Murdoch said “the performance of the business in a difficult free evening newspaper sector has fallen short of expectations,” according to the Wall Street Journal, also owned by News Corp.

David Brown writes “Goodbye and goodnight to The London paper” on The Media Blog

I know from experience there are some seriously good journalists and decent people who are losing their jobs and who deserve far better than the hand that has been dealt them.

There was a definite place for a paper of its type to take on the negativity and Kensington-centric smugness regularly espoused by the Evening Standard. In terms of economics, the concept of opening up a way for advertisers to target the pockets of the all-important 20-35 commuter demographic also made sense.

Jancie (Miss Mad News) also notes

I am going to miss reading The London Paper in the evenings. It is a brilliant news source and should stay!

Another print publication bites the dust!

The City Unslickers chime in with this point of view;

I can’t believe any of the ‘journalists’ on the paper are over the age of 25. So in the end I hope this is a victory in the battle of rational sense. This is a terrible paper, London Lite, its competitor is equally as bad and I understand is in equally as much trouble not making any money.

Free sheets can be history and London will be better for it. I’ll let the Metro off in the morning as being slightly better in that it contains some news between ads.

Adam Bowie blogs that he won’t miss the paper;

Will I miss the London Paper?

No.

It was rubbish.

Dross.

On those few times I picked up a copy, I found that by the next tube stop I’d read everything that was worth reading in it. The news values were low-brow, and it made Metro look postively good. Page after page of “celebrity” coverage, along with dull columns and pointless space fillers.

What do you think?

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The PRCA goes on the offensive against the NLA

Posted on 11. Aug, 2009 by Andrew.

The Public Relations Consultants Association (that’s the PRCA to you and I) has started to take action against the Newspaper Licensing Agency. It has created a petition calling http://act.ly/d1 on the NLA to abandon their plan to charge organisations which forward snippets of newspaper articles or the URL to the article.

If you’re not familiar with the NLA’s plans then sit down. If you send a clip of an online newspaper article to a client then the NLA will charge you. If you send an email along the lines of “Dear client, Event X has made newspaper Y. You can read the preview at http://www.example.com/newspaper/” then you’ll also be charged.

We’ve had a copy of the email the NLA originally started to send out. Here it is for you;

The Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) is the UK newspaper industry’s licensing body that grants your business the permission to lawfully reproduce newspaper content internally.  A licence from the NLA will allow you to copy what you need, whilst protecting from copyright exposure and ensuring that legal obligations are met.

A licence is required when:

• Reproducing any newspaper content. This includes photocopying, faxing and digital copying (scanning, emailing, hosting on an intranet site)
• Copying of content from a newspaper website
• Reproducing newspaper content received from a Press Cuttings Agency (PCA) or a Public Relations (PR) company. This includes:

1. Cuttings viewed via a PCA’s website that are printed or digitally copied
2. Cuttings viewed via a PCA’s website by more than one person
3. Photocopying / digitally copying content that is sent by a PR company

• PR agencies that supply newspaper cuttings to clients. This also includes allowing client access to your PCA service

Please read the enclosed information and ascertain if there is any reproduction of newspaper content within your organisation.  Should copying take place, then a licence is a legal requirement in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patent Act 1988.

I look forward to your response.

A number of thoughts popped into our mind when we read this. First off; “What’s a newspaper?” For example, the Hearst publication the Seattle Post-Intelligence was once a paper newspaper and now it’s online only. If that was a British publication then would that count?

We’ve also spoken to journalists about this. Questions like; “Wait… I’m not getting any of these royalties. Are these being collected on my behalf?” were common.

The PRCA_UK are pretty clear in their response. The petition ends with;

This is money for nothing and we must unite against it!

The petition has been set up on the Twitter based Act.ly site. One of the features Act.ly offers is a supporters button. If you’d like to display the call to action on your own blog then simply use this code.

<script src=”http://act.ly/widget/firebox/d1″ type=”text/javascript”></script>

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Adam Westbrook (@adamwestbrook) introduces tomorrow’s journalist

Posted on 24. Jul, 2009 by Andrew.

In a post well worth reading Adam Westbrook as he shares intelligent thoughts on what the journalist of the future will look like. He talks about the invasion of PR guff and the failure to reject it. Most of all he cites the lack of time journalists have to do proper journalism these days.

So what does Adam think the future journalist will have to do? Everything and more; tomorrow’s journalist needs his journalistic skills plus an entrepreneurial edge.

Here’s a brief summary of Adam’s list

The Jack of All Trades

Tomorrow’s journalist does a bit of everything; reporting, video journalist, photo journalism, audio journalism and eve interactive design.

The Web Designer

Tomorrow’s journalist will be a dab hand at XHTML and CSS. These skills are needed when it comes to presenting their work online and therefore how much future journalist can charge for his work.

The Collaborator

Tomorrow’s journalist will aspire to meet Charlie Beckett’s Networked Journalism.

The Specialist

Tomorrow’s journalist copes with the fact that internet gives general news away for free and the solution is to go niche. Tomorrow’s journalist builds her own audience.

The Flexible Adapter

Tomorrow’s journalist is a survivor. They will have adapted as necessary to cope with the recession and the enforced evolution the trade is currently going through.

The Entrepreneur

Tomorrow’s journalist is a freelancer who is immune from the rubbish being washed through the newsroom from the PR industry. The future journalist will make her mark by discovering stories but also generating new ideas on how to sell them.

The Storyteller

Tomorrow’s journalist cannot be restrained by house rules and will not be afraid to break the rules.

What do you think? Do you agree with Adam? Is this what tomorrow’s journalist will look like? Is the PR industry nothing but guff?

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