The Barclays Bros have bought out the 50% stake in women’s portal Handbag that they didn’t own from Boots.
Originally a joint venture between Boots and the Telegraph, the move makes perfect sense since the Barclay Brothers bought The Telegraph from Hollinger last year.
More info via New Media Age.
I’m still in Vegas, but with internet access for $9.95 at my Orleans Hotel room I can still keep track on what is happening back in the UK.
Like others I have been wondering what cutbacks will be made on the BBC News website. Well, editor Pete Clifton has revealed that a dozen jobs will be going. He announced this via From the Editor’s Desktop by saying of the recently announced BBC cuts:
The 15% cuts proposed over three years apply to most areas of the BBC, including BBC News Interactive - which includes this site, the Ceefax and digital text service and interactive TV news. For us it means a proposal to close about 12 journalism posts directly related to this website in the coming year. We have yet to finalise our plans for years two and three, but by the end of that period we are planning to have trimmed £4.3m from News Interactive’s total annual budget.
I’m abroad for the next week. Going to Las Vegas for a conference, so will update on an occasional basis during this time.
One thing I’m looking forward to is the free wireless internet access at McCarran airport which I previously blogged about.
And then there’s the new monorail that goes up and down The Strip.
Viva Las Vegas!
From time to time I like to look back at the past when it comes the web. We can certainly learn from what happened and hopefully not repeat some of the mistakes people made.
I also like to remind myself of how certain sites used to look and how the content was structured.
So that’s why Archive.org is one of my important bookmarks.
Pretty much most sites that are important today are featured and you can see how they used to look. And also pretty much important sites in the past are still there. Where else can you see the rise of fall of such epic portals as Excite and AltaVista?
Also, from my time at Teletext from 1994 to 1999, I can also see the innovative site we put together. Archive.org’s earliest copy of the Teletext site is here from late in 1996. Quite a few memories from that time.
Not every single site is included at Archive.org, but it does provide a good look at how the web has developed.
There is a similar project that the British Library is working on which is to index and archive British sites. At the moment it is still in a development, but like its US Archive.org cousin, this is a worthy project for people today and future generations to use.
Of course, one downside is that certain pages will haunt you in the future. I mean, who really wants to see how badly my own personal domain bunder.com used to look in the mid to late 90s?
Well, it is still early days to try and work out who exactly will be affected by the recent news that the BBC is set to further axe 2050 jobs over the next few years. But one thing is for certain, online journalists will be part of this.
The BBC is a bit vague as to how many “online” roles will be cut.
Within BBC News there will be 420 posts going, New Media Central is to lose 58 posts and Nations and Regions is set to lose 735 posts.
In all those areas there are many journalists working online in them who are likely to be going.
While the BBC has said it is going to axe people, it also revealed it would be investing money into programming and content and that figure is going to run into many millions of pounds.
Maybe I am being a bit simplistic, but if you are axing people and then investing the money you save from them into other services that need content, surely you need people to create that new content and services?
Or maybe people who have not been axed will be expected to increase their workloads?
Or maybe those being laid off will be invited to re-join again as either freelancers or on fixed term contracts?
Or maybe the BBC will be outsourcing more content creation and programming?
Either way, a confusing time is ahead for all those at the BBC.
The BBC’s news programme Today is looking for three bloggers to take part in its coverage of the forthcoming general election.
No details of closing date on the page where people can apply to become one of those three bloggers.
Interested bloggers need to says in 100 words of less why they should write the blog for Today during the election period.
There’s a good piece in The Observer written by Peter Preston. Preston picks up on some interesting stats on the influence of websites in how Americans get their news.
The results are probably very similar here in the UK especially now that the cost of broadband has dropped and the barrier to entry to buy a home computer has also been dropping dramatically. So with lower online costs and cheaper computers comes more people accessing websites for their news.
And don’t forget with most newspapers giving away some, if not all of their content online, reasons for buying printed newspapers on a daily basis become less and less.
Anyway… here’s what Preston said:
In 1996, just 3 per cent of American adults cited the internet as one of their two main election news sources. Last year it was 18 per cent, a sixfold spurt. In ‘96, some 60 per cent of American voters said the print media were an influence on their election decision. Last year, that was down to 39 per cent.
In crude terms, television is still the biggest factor for electoral news and views: but, still swinging around the 70 per cent mark, it’s stuck more or less where it’s been for a decade. The big move is between newspapers and the net. Seventy-five million Americans turned to the internet as their flexible campaign friend last November; 63 million relied on it as their primary poll news source. The bloggers and the party websites have never had it so good. The printed press has never had such slim pickings.
Dot Journalism is running an interesting article about a recent closed industry conference which took place in Cambridge and discussed the future of newspapers.
Two juicy paragraphs to think about:
The resistance to change ‘borders on pathological’, according to one news rep. The news industry is in ‘profound denial’ about the crisis. Another admitted the industry is completely out of touch with consumer expectations of online news.
To make things worse, the industry’s executives still don’t understand what the web is for: “So it doesn’t make money, and it’s not a back up for the newspaper?”
The Sunday Times media editor Dan Sabbagh writes a bit about blogging and his own experience of seeing what people think of him.
A recent search on Google found that somebody had written that one of my articles about podcasting was “quite possibly the most boring one that I have read”. Criticism that was once simply spoken, or on a bad day expressed by scrunching up the newspaper, is now being published for the world to see — or to put it another way, the power relationship between print and online is tilting towards the internet.
And that’s why its important for those running newspapers to start developing a strategy to better develop their relationship with readers.
The Observer and its blog is one example where a newspaper and its journalists are engaging with readers and trying to understand better how they can develop it.
Just went back to The People at 8.35am and the site now seems to features the new edition of the paper.
And yes, the word is “seems”.
Visit the home page and you see the new edition, but click on the news section and while the lead story is from March 13 and concerns a former cast member of Eastenders, the other stories such as the second lead on Maxine Carr and her dog having a heart attack are from last week.
Very strange stuff. I even tried it in Firefox to make sure it wasn’t just a Internet Explorer browser issue, but even Firebox displays on the news page the updated lead story and last week’s old news.
Meanwhile, The People stablemate the Sunday Mirror is now fully updated.
This week’s award for site that doesn’t update when it should goes to two sites actually and both of them come via Trinity Mirror.
Being Sunday, I decided to pay a visit to the various online Sunday newspapers at 8am and find out what they had in store before I decided to visit a newsagent.
So, while the likes of News of The World and its News International stablemate The Sunday Times are doing fine online in terms of showing the latest issue, rival publisher Trinty Mirror is still showing last week’s editions of The Sunday Mirror and The People.
At first I thought it was one of those cache issues where you need to clear your cache and/or just hit refresh about 10 times to see the new updates, but despite refreshing 11 times (I do like to give them the benefit of the doubt), it doesn’t look like it was a cache or refresh issue.
Once again, it does make you question why these newspaper publishers are bothering with their websites.
Come on Trinty Mirror, you wouldn’t keep the same news in this week’s print publication that was in last week’s and try and sell it? Or maybe you would.
If they can’t maintain regular updates, then don’t have the site.
I am starting to agree in some ways with Richard Desmond when one he took over Express Newspapers, one of the first things he did was axe the websites for the Express and Star newspapers. It wasn’t making money, there wasn’t much confidence in how to use this medium and today, he hasn’t got the burden of maintaining a site.
Of course, there are ways to run sites and update them and even make money.
If newspaper owners are not careful, especially when they don’t update, then their loyal readers who use the web as an enhancement to the print publication may not stay loyal much longer and turn to other sources of news and information.
Maybe newspaper publishers rather than going out themselves to launch and publish their own titles, should go into partnership with online media owners who know and understand better the importance of online updated content.
By doing it themselves, newspaper owners are struggling to adapt to the way information is distributed electronically. Forming partnerships/joint ventures with third parties who are experienced online can give them a footholding into markets and audiences they are losing to and the online partner is gaining.
For the past few months I have been using Skype and been stunned at how good it is. For no cost, it has allowed me to talk to my friends and family around the world via its messenger service on my IBM notebook.
I have also been using the SkypeOut service which allows calls to be made to landline or mobile numbers around the world and again this has worked fine. When I was in New York in February I was able to call UK landline numbers for just over a penny a minute which is pretty fantastic.
And now, I have signed up for the SkypeIn service where for 30 euros (around £20) a year they give you a landline number where people can call you on plus voicemail when you are not connected to the service.
SkypeIn allows you to choose from numbers in the UK (well London at the moment), France, Hong Kong and the USA.
And just like everything from Skype, this works.
Currently SkypeIn is in beta test phase which means they warn you that things may not always go smoothly but so faqr it has gone smoothly.
Within a few minutes of getting my SkypeIn number, it was working and I can take calls on my notebook.
A great service.
So if you want to call me, then here’s my number 020 7558 8113 - If I’m not around, you can always leave a message on my Skype voicemail.
No sooner does Virgin Radio announce it is to broadcast on mobile phones through 3G than it reveals that it will also start podcasting.
The station will put out a 30 minute “best bits” from the Pete and Geoff breakfast show online for listeners to download. To avoid possible legal issues surrounding music copyright, the show will be conversation only.
MediaGuardian reports:
Pete Mitchell and Geoff Lloyd’s breakfast show will be the station’s first foray into the emerging world of podcasting, and is believed to be the first daily show to be made available in this format from one of the major radio groups.
The podcast is being sponsored by the government’s Central Office of Information and online travel company Expedia.
Good to see that the White House is finally recognising blogging by giving out a press pass to a blogger so they can attend the regular US Government briefings that take place there.
The New York Times reports (via News.com)
Another signal moment for bloggers is to occur Monday morning, when Garrett M. Graff, who writes a blog about the news media in Washington, is to be ushered into the White House briefing room to attend the daily press “gaggle.”
Graff, 23, may be the first blogger in the short history of the medium to be granted a daily White House pass for the specific purpose of writing a blog, or Web log. A White House spokesman said Sunday that he believed Graff was the first blogger to be given credentials.
He is being given a press pass as the editor of FishbowlDC, a blog that is published by Mediabistro.com, which offers networking and services for journalists.
Of course it wasn’t easy at first, as The New York Times further revealed the runaround Graff was given.
White House press officials and others said it was relatively easy to get a day pass, prompting Graff to test that premise. He set about trying to get one and chronicled his attempt on his blog. He made 20 phone calls and got nowhere. Bigger blogs picked up on his saga, and traffic on FishbowlDC increased tenfold, he said. But it was not until the traditional media joined in, Graff said, that the White House relented.
Now all we need to do is find out if Number 10 will go the same way and allow bloggers to attend its daily press briefings.
With a General Election likely to be a few months away, political blogging is likely to play a part in the reporting of who gets elected and saavy politicians will want to make sure they give bloggers the same level of access as traditional media.
When it comes to blogging, one of my favourite blogs to recently launch is The Observer. The blog, managed by Observer website editor Rafael Behr offers a unique daily insight into the running of the Sunday newspaper.
In an email interview with Journalistic.co.uk, Behr reveals his thoughts on online journalism, what newspapers should be doing online and what journalists need to do to survive in the digital age.
What do you think of the quality of online journalism and indeed blogging?
Online journalism, if I am honest, has had a patchy start. I have worked on a few websites and a couple of newspapers and I have no doubt that the time-honoured process of subbing, proofing and revising before publication that forms part of the print tradition often makes for better, cleaner copy. The limitation on length imposed by newspaper pages also teaches discipline and economy of style. I think a lot of websites - often because they are underresourced - have writing, subbing and production roles combined in one person and it is inevitable that mistakes get made when only one pair of eyes looks at a page before publishing it. It’s very difficult to sub your own copy. I stress that the problems with online journalism derive mostly from lack of resources, not lack of competence.
Blogging is very different. It is a new medium and has its own idioms and protocols. Generally I have been very impressed by what I have read - and that ranges from blogs by friends to shrewd political commentaries by complete strangers. There are a lot of excellent writers out there. I laugh out loud at things I read on the net now more often than at things I see on TV.
Are newspapers adapting well to the web? Should they do more than just merely replicate their print editions?
I think newspapers first felt the need to do *something* with the internet because it looked like a print medium and they feared obsolescence. But in many ways online publishing has more in common with broadcasting. So it’s difficult to get it right. There is a lot of rewriting of wires that goes on out there.
When you have great copy, just putting it on the internet and walking away is a perfectly decent short to medium term strategy, (whether or not you charge for it or raise revenue through advertising is another, much more complex debate). But there are simply more media outlets than there were 10 year ago. More TV channels, more technology platforms, more radio stations. Even if newspapers were to ignore the internet they would be facing a challenge to make their voices heard.
So I think the answer is yes, they should ultimately do more than cut and paste.
How difficult was it to get Observer management to agree to your style of blogging? Do you think other newspapers will learn from The Observer example which seems to be pushing with the concept of engaging direct with the readers?
Not difficult at all. Honestly. In terms of the editorial voice, I write leaders, reviews and comment pieces for the paper, so the editor(s) know how I write and they trust me to take charge of the blog. In terms of how far we go in revealing our processes - we are all learning where the boundaries are. But at the end of the day I’m a hack. I’m not going to give away any scoops. Will other papers learn? I don’t know. It’s very early days. I think British papers are behind the US and a lot of other European countries in the way they use blogging as part of their dialogue with readers.
Digital media or new media? What is your take on this, or is it just a discussion of semantics?
I’m not sure I understand the distinction very clearly. I think ‘new media’ is not a very useful term because, obviously, it won’t be new for ever. But then again, ‘old’ media is useful shorthand for newspapers, terrestrial analogue broadcasters, er.. flyposters.
If Robert Maxwell was alive, how do you think he would have dealt with online media?
A litigious man. Dead or not, I should watch what I say. In fact, I’d say that the answer is ‘very conservatively’, for the simple reason that no one has yet nailed a way of making big bucks from online journalism. It is exciting, fun, good for media, good for journalism sure. But the lucre is eslewhere on the ineternet.
Will we see newspaper owners blog eg: Rupert Murdoch?
I’d love to see Murdoch blog. But I can confidently state it will never happen, except perhaps only as a risible PR exercise.
What skills do you think a journalist needs today in order to survive in the business?
There is nowhere near enough original reporting goes on. My advice to any aspiring journalist - and to myself in fact - would be: get out of the office more, get up from the computer for at least a morning (or take the laptop with you) and go get a new story. The most valuable commodity in journalism across all media is still the scoop.
Is the future “multi-skilled” journalists where they work across all media (TV, radio, print, online, emerging) or will there be room for those who specialise in just one area eg: just reporting, just working on radio. What is your take on this?
I think there will always be room for specialised journalists. But as in every profession, the bar will be raised in terms of how quickly people can adapt to new technology because training and supporting Luddism costs money.
Will newspapers need to do more with blogging and how will their journalists find the time to blog as well as do their other shifts?
Newspapers probably won’t be obliged to write blogs. But they will certainly end up reading them.
Which 3 websites/blogs do you find most essential to use on a regular basis.
For blogs, it’s too hard to say. It changes with my mood. For example, I follow Larry Lessig because I like to geek out on IP/internet issues, but he wouldn’t be in my top three. I keep an eye on Boing Boing. But as I say, it depends on mood.
And websites? (With the caveat that obviously I also hereby plug all Observer and Guardian Unlimited sites).
Three off the top of my head: The Onion - some editions better than others, but at its best, it’s genius. Bbcnews.com - sets the standard for what a news website should be. Anorak.co.uk - because I don’t have time to read the tabloids but it’s useful to know what’s in them.
What technology could you not do without?
Not much to be honest. Give me a decent computer, a good connection and a phone and I’m alright.
A few years back I was always amazed that newspapers would seem to so lax as to not keep their websites updated over the weekend.
So if a story was breaking on other media or indeed other websites, the newspaper site was struck in a regid publishing regime which meant it would not always be in the position to update itself.
Often this could be down to lack of staff working on the site so various tasks needed to be done and not all of them could be finished. Or it could be that it would only update when it had copy from the newspaper. So if the newspaper didn’t have a story, then it wouldn’t update.
Today, we know who was the winner who will be representing the United Kingdom in Eurovision. It was announced last night that Javine had won. But if you are reading the Mail On Sunday’s site, on its homepage it is still saying that model Jordan is the favourite.
The time at the moment of me writing this blog entry is 9.45am, maybe someone has forgotten to update this part of the Mail On Sunday homepage, or there are other things more important to be done in the management of the site?
Either way, that homepage is the first page people usually visit and see, so when very out of date information is still appearing it looks bad.
I thought it might be my browser causing the problem. I often find that when I visit the News of the World site that unless I do a couple of refreshes, the home page shows pictures from the last time I went to the site.
So I tried holding down CTRL R for Mail on Sunday, but that didn’t do anything, so the only reason for the outdated story appearing on the home page is probably forgetting that it is time sensitive and needs to be updated.
The ever kind Suw Charman who took part in the recent LSE debate on The Fall and Fall of Journalism with myself, John Lloyd from the FT and Prof Robin Mansell from the LSE has now put up both an audio stream of the evening as well as a download.
If you want to hear all 80 minutes of it as a 28meg download and you’ve got a fast connection, then click here.
If you want to listen to it as a stream, then click here.
I know Sue was having some initial problems with working out how best to stream it and Jascha from UndergroundMedia offered some help via a great little guide on how to stream audio.
Having worked with audio and indeed video in the past (and indeed from time to time today), it is not always the most pleasant job in the world to enable your media to stream.
One very useful, quick and indeed easy method for getting audio to stream is by using Radio Blog. Sure, there are a few cosmetic faults with it (no fast forwarding when listening), but overall does a great job at streaming your audio through its player.
As I have always suspected, in the future listening to the radio will not be just about tuning in your wireless. The wireless you will be using will be a wireless network device to listen to radio broadacasting on a computer/PDA.
The BBC has just announced another increase in listening online to its various radio shows. Nearly seven million listens were made in January to its shows with Radio 4’s The Archers being the most listened to gaining an audience of 456,975. Radio 1 breakfast show host Chris Moyles takes the number two slot, with 311,635 online listens a month.
MediaGuardian reports:
According to latest figures from the radio measurement body, Rajar, more people than ever are using the internet to listen to radio, with 25.8% of the UK’s population having visited a radio station’s website - taking in both the BBC and commercial stations - and 16.3% have listened via the internet.
A few years back we had the likes of Storm Radio and Chrysalis trying to get all of us listening to internet only radio programming. Of course, this was at a time when people were just about connecting through 56k speed dial-up and suffering break ups in trying to listen.
Today with broadband, streaming of audio (and indeed video) is much easier and better, so it’s only natural that people are happy to listen to radio programming on the internet as the listening experience is not a negative one.
So what does this mean for journalists? Well, if people are now getting use to listening online, then podcasting and creating sites with audio of your reports is a good idea.
Now is a good time to be up there with broadcasters and start creating your own audio.
With audio all you need is a good mini-disc recorder which these days cost less than £100, some software to edit your audio and your blog/site.
If you are looking for editing software, then Audacity will help you out and its totally free. If you have ever used Cool Edit, then you will find this very familiar.
Mink Media has unveiled its latest blog - a gadget/technology offering under the name “bleepblog“.
And why you may pray is it called “bleepblog” well according to the blog’s masthead “because all the cool things go bleep”.
But I’m not sure if the UK or indeed the world needs yet another gadget/technology blog unless you can do things different or better than what there is out there.
I’ve been impressed over the past year at what the folks at Shiny Media have been up to with Tech-Digest and indeed they have set a standard for this type of UK focused blog. Bleepblog just doesn’t seem to cut it. Maybe it is the fact that it seems to be a solo writer behind it?
If you aim to enter the world of consumer blog publishing, especially one where there is much content on rival blogs and indeed other websites, you need information and bleepblog seems very thin on content.
Virgin Radio fans across the world will soon be able to listen to the SMG owned station on 3G phones following a deal involving music technology company Sydus.
MediaGuardian writes:
Software can be downloaded from the station’s website onto a 3G phone for free and the stations are then accessed via a Virgin Radio logo on the phone’s screen.
But there is no such thing as a free lunch. Here lies the initial problem especially in the UK. The cost to receive and access media content on 3G phones. If you are likely to listen to the station even say 30 minutes a day, it’s likely to cost a few quid.
While in some countries, 3G operators offer as much as you can use 3G content for fixed monthly fees, at the moment in the UK the bundles being offered by the likes of Vodafone or even Three for content are not very tempting. Though they often run various offers, I’ve yet to see a decent unlimited offering.
Maybe Three and Vodafone along with 02 and T-Mobile (when they both get around to offering their consumer 3G offerings) will bundle radio access either for free as a come on offer, or charge a flat fee for access.
I really can’t see people opting for pay as you go radio.
