Parris Match: On Expenses November 5, 2009
Posted by jonbernstein in Journalism, Newspapers.Tags: The Times
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Writing in The Times today, columnist Matthew Parris offers a welcome alternative to the tiresome ‘They Still Don’t Get It’ line on MPs’ expenses.
And he sheds an interesting light on the bills of newspaper folk at the same time.
For fear of his proprietor accusing me of kleptomania I’ll keep the copy and paste to a minimum but the rest is well worth a read:
I last week submitted to this newspaper my expenses claims for the three annual party conferences. For nearly a month I got to stay in three expensive hotels, with restaurant and bar bills all reimbursable by my employers — reimbursements being allowable free of income tax on the ground that the costs were incurred “solely and necessarily in the performance of [my] duties”.
Tweets, Elites And The Same Old News Agenda November 3, 2009
Posted by jonbernstein in Journalism, Social media.Tags: Twitter
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Has new media reinvigorated democracy or throttled good journalism, asks Dr Natalie Fenton in her forthcoming book ‘New Media, Old News: Journalism and Democracy in a Digital Age’.
And her answer? Well, the clue is in the title.
The book is not quite a pessimist’s charter, but nor does it side with the ‘utopian vision [of] everyone connected to everyone else, a non-hierarchical network of voices with equal, open and global access.’
Fenton and her team of researchers at Goldsmiths make two key observations. Firstly, that the mechanics of the journalist’s trade is suffering because of the desk-bound demands of new media – ‘iron cages’, they call them.
Secondly, new media rarely means new voices on the national stage because the ‘economics of news remains stacked against the newcomer’.
Continue reading: Tweets, elites and the same old news agenda on Journalism.co.uk
Syndication Overload For The New York Times November 2, 2009
Posted by jonbernstein in Newspapers.Tags: New York Times, The Observer, The Sunday Times
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It feels like déjà vu all over again.
Keen-eyed followers of this blog will be familiar with David Rohde’s fascinating account of his seven-month kidnap by the Taliban.
Originally published in Rohde’s own paper The New York Times – and simultaneously on the paper’s website – a couple of week’s ago, it made a second appearance in last week’s Sunday Times.
And now, it has turned up in The Observer (pictured). Or to be more precise, The New York Times supplement that appears in that particular Sunday paper.
The New York Times supplement is published weekly in 26 newspapers around the world (cultural imperialism, anyone?).
The articles in the British version are “selected in association with The Observer”, or so it says below the masthead. That being the case, it seems strange that nobody at Kings Place appears concerned that the paper had been scooped by one its fiercest rivals.
I wondered a week ago what the role of syndication was in the link economy and argued that it still had a place in certain circumstances. But syndication in triplicate does seem to be going a bit far.
Related:
- What’s The Future Of Syndication?
The Danger Of Predicting The Next Big Thing – In Less Than 160 Characters November 2, 2009
Posted by jonbernstein in Mobile, Social media.Tags: SMS, Twitter
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Here’s a prediction for you – most futurologists will get it wrong most of the time. Beyond that I wouldn’t put the mortgage on anything technology soothsayers tell you.
Now is a good time to mark this important truth.
Why? Because global revenues from SMS (aka text messaging) have officially passed the $100bn mark, according to new figures from Portio Research.
Question: who predicted that the short message service would become a cash cow for the mobile industry?
Who forecast that SMS would be ”as big as the global music industry, plus the total worldwide movie industry, and the total worldwide videogaming industry – added together”?
Or “bigger than global radio, or bigger than worldwide book publishing”?
Answer: no-one. SMS was meant as little more than an accessory on a mobile phone in the same way you get a calculator bundled with the Windows operating system.
Yet 160 characters of plain text became a phenomenon.
While we are at it, who would have thought when SMS was introduced 16 years ago that someone would ape the service for the internet, throw a little one-to-many communication into the mix, shave 20 characters off in the process and think it a good idea?
One conclusion I think we can draw from the dual success of text messaging and the 140-character Twitter is that ‘lowest common denominator’ technologies have just as much chance of success as - perhaps more chance than – those with all the bells and whistles.
The lesson appears to be this: keep technology simple to use and let the creativity come with the application of that technology, not from the application itself. Beyond that, no predictions.
(Hat tip: Digital Stats)
The Week’s Most Read Posts (26 Oct – 1 Nov 2009) November 2, 2009
Posted by jonbernstein in Uncategorized.add a comment
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A self-indulgent blogger writes… [jonbernstein.wordpress.com]
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And that’s another reason why the hand-delivered letter was interesting. It brought home the potency of ‘push’ communication, when done right. [jonbernstein.wordpress.com]
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In the link economy, where access to the original source is only a click away, isn’t syndication increasingly redundant? [jonbernstein.wordpress.com]
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‘We had already started a “close” period, during which no new self-signups or member referrals to YouGov will be invited to take part in political polls.’ [jonbernstein.wordpress.com]
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Gaming YouGov? This feels like a conspiracy too far. Only one place to turn. [jonbernstein.wordpress.com]
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Twenty hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, nearly a million blog posts each day, 600,000 new members of Facebook and around four million tweets via Twitter every 24 hours – some social media numbers are quite hard to fathom.
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One medium, one country? News to all those beavering away on ITV.com catch up, or at its Global Content division. [jonbernstein.wordpress.com]
Sir William Garrow And The Power Of BBC Prime Time November 2, 2009
Posted by jonbernstein in Books, TV.Tags: Amazon, BBC
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A new entry in Amazon’s Hot Future Releases in Business, Finance & Law.
In at number nine, and likely to rise and rise in the coming weeks, is Sir William Garrow: His Life, Times and Fight for Justice by John Hostettler and Richard Braby.
In other news, a BBC drama set in the 18th century and featuring the life, times and fight for justice of an idealistic young barrister began last night.
Garrow’s Law stars Andrew Buchan (he of ITV’s The Fixer and BBC4’s short-lived Party Animals) and is written by Tony Marchant (The Mark of Cain, Holding On etc).
As Buchan and Marchant take hold of Sunday evenings between now and Christmas, expect Hostettler and Braby’s book (not published until 1 December) to scale the pre-order charts.
Just like that upstart Twitter, the BBC has the power to shift units.
Related:
- As Print Dwindles, can Amazon Re-Kindle?
Sorrell On ‘One Medium, One Country’ ITV October 30, 2009
Posted by jonbernstein in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
Sir Martin Sorrell is one of the Today programme’s go-to men.
Every three months, when his company’s quarterly results are announced, the WPP CEO will appear on Radio 4’s flagship news show and offer his economic state of the nation.
WPP employs 135,000 people around the world, is worth some £5bn and has its fingers in many, many media pies – advertising, public relations, lobbying, marketing and investment management among them.
All of which makes him an interesting and informed listen on business and consumer sentiment.
Right at the end of this morning’s interview he was asked about ITV’s continued search for leadership, and he offered this stark assessment:
ITV is in a tough spot. It’s a one medium company in one country. And that’s a very difficult place to be particularly when you compete against the BBC who get three and a half billion pounds from the licence fee payer every year, in cash, upfront on January 1st.
One medium, one country? News to all those beavering away on ITV.com catch up, or at its Global Content division.
Perhaps ITV should have held on to FriendsReunited after all.
(You can listen to the full interview on the BBC iPlayer. Starts around 1.21.00)
Related:
- YouTube If You Want To: Why Susan Boyle Won’t Save Michael Grade’s Micropayment Plan
The Me, Me, Me Blog Post October 29, 2009
Posted by jonbernstein in Journalism, Magazines.2 comments
I think I’ve finally got this blogging business cracked.
Self-indulgent? Check.
The worst kind of vanity publishing? Check.
All about me, me, me? Check.
From 12 November I am joining the New Statesman as deputy editor.
I’ll be working under Jason Cowley and alongside his very talented team. And I’m pretty excited about it.
More details over on the Press Gazette and on The Media Blog.
Normal service will now be resumed.
Not All Social Media Is Digital October 29, 2009
Posted by jonbernstein in Journalism, Magazines, Social media.Tags: NUJ
2 comments
Late last night a hand-delivered letter dropped through my door. It began:
Dear colleague,
You should have received a ballot paper to vote for a new editor of the Journalist – the NUJ’s magazine.
I live in Honor Oak, SE23, and have dropped this through your door to ask you to vote for me, Richard Simcox.
I was impressed, not necessarily by the Simcox manifesto, but by the campaigning. Honor Oak is not a million miles away but nor is it a stroll around the corner.
During a postal strike, the message needs to get out and this would-be editor was willing to put in the hours.
There are eight candidates hoping to run the National Union of Journalist’s house magazine. It’s a high-profile role and the first time in 21 years that the position has been vacant.
It’s also a key point in the evolution of the print publication. Its production cycle has been cut from 12 to six issues a year as more and more NUJ news and information goes online.
One of the dilemmas the new editor will have to wrestle with is how to balance a web presence with a print presence. Sound familiar?
And that’s another reason why the hand-delivered letter was interesting. It brought home the potency of ‘push’ communication, when done right.
Simcox, like his fellow candidates, has ticked all the digital boxes: website, Twitter, Facebook etc. The NUJ, too, will explore ways to use social media to make the most of its ready-made community with its shared interests.
This all matters but so too does the ‘physical contact’ that the print magazine dropping on the doormat every other month provides.
Any future editor who thinks that the only social media is digital would be very wide of the mark.
Related:
- How The Atlantic Is Rethinking Magazine Publishing
- As Print Dwindles, can Amazon Re-Kindle?
- Five innovations in news journalism, thanks to the web
links for 2009-10-28 October 28, 2009
Posted by jonbernstein in Uncategorized.add a comment
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One of the admins at the BNP website recently set up a page on its social network to encourage people to game YouGov. It is titled: ‘YOUGOV – Let’s increase BNP’s support in polls, and raise money at the same time!.‘ [Liberal Conspiracy]
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The Conservative party did experiment with AdWords during this year's budget. It was the most dynamic use I've seen of the medium by a British political party. [Martin Belam]
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Why is it so hard for content makers to create value on the web? Because the web has evolved to minimize content makers' ability to retain users. [paidContent]
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Freakonomics co-author throws it out there [Freakonomics]
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