Press Gazette February edition: ‘Being at war is a very big deal - that story has to be told’

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 2 February 2010 at 12:33
Tags: Journalism, Press Gazette

The February edition of Press Gazette magazine is now out (£90 a year plus a free USB stick, £40 a year for students). To subscribe, call 01858 438872, or click on this link. To view the November edition in full (the first under our new look) click here.

Here’s a snapshot of what’s in this month’s magazine:

On 9 January, Sunday Mirror defence correspondent Rupert Hamer became the first British journalist to die covering the current conflict in Afghanistan.

Last year more than 200 British journalists applied to be embedded with the British military alone.

In our five-page special report Mirror colleagues Chris Hughes and Susie Boniface write their own deeply personal tributes to their colleague.

And The Sun’s defence editor Duncan Larcombe, Jason Burke from The Observer, Marie Colvin from The Sunday Times and Alastair MacDonald from Reuters reveal how war reporters have reacted to the loss of one of their own.

Says Larcombe: “Being at war is a very big deal, and I think what motivates journalists beyond their wages, their careers, their egos, their desire to make a name for themselves, is a feeling that there is a lot going on out there - and that story has to be told.”

 Also in this month’s mag:

We reveal the top 50 comment and opinion journalists working in British journalism today selected after carrying out a 1,000-strong weighted public survey and interviewing 22 senior journalists working in the field of comment. We also reveal the public and journalists’ favourites; the public’s favourite journalistic outlets for comment and opinion and the platform (print, broadcast or online) that most people prefer to read/view comment journalism.

Patrick Smith investigates the rise of the journalism mobile phone application, and finds out whether the app presents a viable digital future for journalism. 

James Pallister investigates life after Borders for independent, magazine publishers. As Danny Miller from Little White Lies puts it: “So much shit has happened in the past year that the closure of Borders is just the icing on the cake.”

And Telegraph head of digital development Greg Hadfield reveals why he is leaving Fleet Street for an online business role for a second time in this month’s Big Interview.

Despite the fact that Telegraph.co.uk now attracts more than 30 million unique users a month, he says: “What is important now is we’re on a journey from volume to value. We need to identify our loyal users and pay attention to their needs specifically. What’s so great about 31 million unique users a month? You can’t meet the needs of all 31 million.”

In Comment: Grey Cardigan ambushes the Bishop of Beastville with a strategically placed copy of Razzle; Lori Miles cast her eye over some lacklustre consumer mag coverlines; Alex Thomson looks at how broadcasters covered the big freeze and Haiti; Peter Kirwan asks whether media cost-cutting has gone too far and David Banks pins down Piers Morgan on what he thinks now about those Iraq torture photos.

Also in the February issue:

• A special report on journalism in the Philippines in the wake of the massacre which killed 31.
• A redesign masterclass from Peter Sands.
• Editorial headhunter Martin Tripp reveals how to carry off the perfect interview.
• A two-page freelance section including an in-depth report on making it as a music journalist.
• CNET UK features editor Rick Trenholm looks at ebook readers and finds out which, if any, are best for reading newspapers and magazines.
• BBC college of journalism editor Kevin Marsh explains why journalism trainers could be leading students up the garden path with talk of “entrepreneurial journalism”.
• The Guardian’s David Leigh provides an investigative journalism masterclass.
• As News Corp prepares to take its websites paid-for we investigate at what point aggregation of rivals’ stories becomes plagiarism.
• Mirror.co.uk sports editor Dan Silver showcases his favourite snaps from the Daily Mirror archive of four millon sports photos.
• The author of a new book on journalists in film, Brian McNair, picks out the five greatest journalism films ever.
• Sky News presenter Martin Stanford reveals the latest must-have gadgets and software for journalists.
• Leading defence correspondents reveal what would be learned if the Iraq Inqury were to investigate British journalism’s conduct before and during the Iraq War.
• And Marc Reeves reveals all about his move from editing the Birmingham Post to running an independent business news website which is in direct competition with his old paper.

Rusbridger is winning paywall debate, but my money’s with Rupert

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 29 January 2010 at 14:58
Tags: Guardian, Ruper Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch, new media

Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger’s Cudlipp Lecture was a highly intelligent and thoughtful defence of the free-for-all open access content policy at The Guardian.
If I was putting together a dream Fleet Street quiz team, he would be top of my list.
But - at the risk of stretching a metaphor to breaking point - if I was looking for someone to look after the team’s finances, it would be Rupert Murdoch.

For my money Rusbridger is winning the debating competition with Rupert Murdoch on the paywall issue. But the time for debate is over – the time has come for action, to make some money and save journalism jobs.

You can’t argue with the fact that in pure journalism terms, and in terms of The Guardian’s mission to spread liberal values, Rusbridger’s decade-long love affair with all things digital has been an amazing success.

37 million unique users a month is not to be sniffed at (although I’d bet that a huge amount of those are the worthless plankton of readers who drift in via search once in a blue moon from all over the world for a matter of moments).

And being open to all has undoubtedly fuelled some great journalistic triumphs that wouldn’t have been possible behind a paywall: the Twitter revolt which led to the Trafigura super injunction being dropped; the BAE files investigation website which prompted sources to come forward from around the world; the expose of tax avoidance techniques at Barclays prompted, Rusbridger says, by “crowd sourcing” information from readers.

Not to have a fantastic website which is largely open to all for general news is clearly not an option.

Five years ago Press Gazette was a weekly magazine with a gated website. We were drifting towards oblivion as free online competitors covered all the news, debated it and followed it up – while we were labouring away on a declining print-only product.

But it is interesting that Rusbridger’s speech mainly railed against “universal paywalls” – something that Murdoch (unless he has really lost the plot) won’t be doing.

I’d wager that Murdoch and Rusbridger are probably going to end up being not that far away from each other in the paywall debate.

The solution both sides come up with will be more nuanced than free versus paid-for.

With The Guardian losing paid-for £1-a-copy sales at a rate of more than 10 per cent a year, sheer pragmatism means that whatever the virtues of the open, link-fed approach to web publishing – it has to start monetising those 37 million web readers fast. Or more precisely, start monetising the few hundred thousand who delve deep into Guardian.co.uk on a regular basis.

That will mean some form of charging for online content (something which it has already begun doing with the paid-for iPhone app).

And News International will continue to offer much of its content for free online, lest it wants Sun and Times readers to instantly desert the paper for the Mirror, Guardian and Telegraph when seeking their fix of online breaking news.

Jeremy Hunt’s ruthless free market idealism will cost hundreds of journalism jobs

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 21 January 2010 at 19:04
Tags: BBC, Broadcasting

Jeremy Hunt’s ruthless free market idealism will see hundreds of journalists lose their jobs and looks set to remove the only lifeline which had been thrown to the struggling regional media.

Today he stated in unequivocal terms that a Conservative government would scrap the Independently Funded News Consortia which had been set to replace local broadcast news outside the BBC after 2012, when ITV abandons its commitment to public service broadcasting in the regions.

Hunt believes that “sweeping away the cross-media ownership rules at a local level” will be more effective than the £130m of BBC licence fee cash that had been ear-marked to fund the IFNCs.

He says: “This will allow local media operators to follow viewers, as they increasingly switch platform at a moment’s notice, whether from TV to radio to mobile or to online. It will allow a consistent and strong new offering to advertisers: go with us and we will reach consumers in a defined geographical area whichever platform they use.”

Hunt appears convinced that by sweeping away regulations city-based TV and radio franchises of the sort seen in the US will flourish in the UK.

Unfortunately they won’t. MEN Media has a combined TV and print franchise in Manchester which has failed miserably financially, falling into loss in the last six months of the 2008/2009 financial year.

There is already clear evidence that the reduction in journalists nationwide is leading to a crisis in the court and council reporting which underpins our democratic society.

By scrapping the IFNC scheme in favour of a free-market pipe-dream, Hunt is removing the only chance we had of salvaging ITV’s existing network of regional broadcast journalists.

As for the campaign from inside the BBC against “top-slicing” the licence fee to fund IFNCs. Shame on you all from Mark Thompson down.

Under Conservative plans the £130m of licence fee cash currently allocated to pay for digital TV switch-over won’t go back towards funding the next season of Strictly Come Dancing, it will in all likelihood return to the exchequer to be used for some eminently less worthwhile purpose than shoring up the local reporting which underpins all journalism in the UK.

NUJ conference reveals New Ways to Make Journalism Pay

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 18 January 2010 at 09:59
Tags: Journalism, News Ideas, new media, newspapers, regional newspapers

It was encouraging to see National Union of Journalists members get their hands dirty on Saturday morning and explore New Ways to Make Journalism Pay at a special one-off conference organised by London Freelance Branch.

Too often in the past, at NUJ meetings I’ve attended, its seemed like the debate has not gone much beyond Marxism-inspired calls to arms. I remember one NUJ conference a few years ago when a motion was proposed that the union should call for the nationalisation of the top 100 FTSE companies - not the most immediately practical solution I thought at the time.

The fact that Saturday’s event at the NUJ headquarters was sold out showed that journalists realise more and more that we have to come up with some of the commercial solutions to saving our industry.

Among those speaking was former Yorkshire Post business editor David Parkin who in 2007 set up Thebusinessdesk.com. It now employs around seven journalists in Leeds and Manchester covering business news for the north of England.

It’s a thriving and expanding business and shows that the advertising funded online model can work if you’re dealing with high-value readers and have low fixed costs.

It’s also an inspiring example of what can be achieved when journalists fed up with the endless cost-cutting of the big media owners have the courage to strike out on their own.

Another niche-online local start-up which appears to be doing well is Manchester Confidential.

Angie Sammons, editor of sister-website Liverpool Confidential, told the conference: “Local newspapers have destroyed it for themselves because of their reliance on PRs”, Jon Slattery reports on his blog.

She said that Manchester Confidential sees its future in paid-for content and charges subscribers between £30 and £60 a year.

Right-wing blogger Guido Fawkes told the conference that he now attracts two million page views a month to his website (Jon Slattery again).

Slattery reports that Fawkes, aka Paul Staines, said: “I have achieved the Marxist ideal. I own the means of production and distribution. I have job security, I can’t be fired and do much better than many journalists.”

I was one of the speakers in the morning session and noted that the economic climate for journalism is already looking a lot brighter in early 2010 than it was a year ago.

Back then the likes of Trinity Mirror and Johnston Press were selling their shares for pennies - signalling that investors really didn’t think regional media had much of a future.

In December 2009 Trinity Mirror shares were selling for 31p compared with around £1.50 today. Johnston Press were on 8p compared with 25p today.

In both cases they are still far lower than their peaks, but the signs are at least now more encouraging that investors see them as having a longer term future.

And so far (and I admit it is very early days) 2010 has been much more about new launches and new economic activity in the journalism sector than a year ago, when all we were writing about was redundancies and closures.

We’ve had Champion Media launching a new free weekly in the North West, Spear’s launching new digital editions, Sky News opening a new studio in the City of London , and David Hall publishing launching a new international gun magazine.

As for my two penneth on new ways to make journalism pay. When it comes to niche business and local media I think we are going to see ever more small web-based start-ups taking a slice of the pie.

They’re going to make money from web advertising, sponsored emails, events and in some cases free or paid-for print publications. There’s not going to much new in the sources of income (personally I can’t see paywalls working in the vast majority of cases) - what is going to be different is that these start-ups have much lower fixed costs, less staff journalists probably working harder than they did before.

Guardian and Telegraph’s tit for tat battle

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 15 January 2010 at 14:28
Tags: Daily Telegraph, Guardian

The Guardian and the Telegraph appeared to be locked in something of a tit for tat battle.

Today the lead story on Media Guardian states: “Hadfield quits Telegraph group, saying newspapers have no future” - which as a headline, seems to rather over-egg what he said.

The PaidContent blog post from which the story is sourced has the Telegraph head of digital development saying: “The future is much more diverse. There’s not a dichotomy between being a journalist and an entrepreneur - the future is the individual journalist, not big media.

“The challenge is for big, monolithic media to recognise that being entrepreneurial is corporate ethos, to reflect in the structure to leverage the skills of the individual within the organisation.”

When Press Gazette called Hadfield today he said: “I don’t believe newspapers are dying, I just believe they won’t be necessarily about news and they won’t necessarily be mainly on paper, but then they haven’t been that for many a year.”

Media Guardian has minutely chronicled the travails of Telegraph Media Group through successive rounds of cost cuttings and redundancies, much to the annoyance of many Telegraph insiders.

The Telegraph for its part published a weird story about Guardian News and Media this week reporting that it had made an operating loss of £55.3m. It appeared that GNM’s losses had ballooned from the £36.8m reported in the 2008/2009 figures last year.

But closer examination revealed that the story used the GNM Limited Company accounts, which are compiled in a slightly different way from the Plc ones, to re-state financials which had alread been reported by GMG. It was very old news indeed, perhaps explaining why it was not followed up anywhere and did not apparently make it on to the website.

I’m not saying journalists on these two publications are making things up. But they do seem to go out of their way to portray each other in a negative light.

Alastair Campbell: Evidence as convincing as a Karzai election victory

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 12 January 2010 at 17:05
Tags: Alistair Campbell, BBC, Broadcasting

Six years after the Hutton Report brought BBC journalism to its knees, Alastair Campbell’s testimony to the Iraq Inquiry sounded as convincing as Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s summer election victory.

Campbell said: “I defend every single word of the dossier, I defend every single part of the process.”

He even refused to show a shred of contrition for the Prime Minister’s statement in the foreword to the September 2002 report that he believed that what the intelligence “has established beyond doubt is that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons” and that he was “in no doubt that the threat is serious and current”.

Whilst being grilled about the wording of the dossier, Campbell told the inquiry: “I don’t think we would be having this exchange if it was not for the controversy that subsequently existed.”

That last sentence in itself is justification for Andrew Gilligan’s 6.07am Today Programme broadcast of May 2003.

Campbell insisted in his evidence today that no-one at Number Ten had any involvement in “sexing up” the dossier, as Gilligan suggested.

And he condemned the way the media still portrays the Hutton Report, which cleared him and broadly condemned Gilligan, as a whitewash.

But isn’t it a plain fact that Blair did exagerrate the case for war by saying that the WMD issue was beyond doubt? Obviously it wasn’t. And as one of the inquiry members said today, intelligence is - by definition - never beyond doubt.

Gilligan made mistakes - he took sparse notes of his crucial conversation with Dr David Kelly and admits the phrasing of his report was misleading.

If Campbell could own up to mistakes on his side too he might help repair the breakdown in trust between government and media that the whole dossier episode caused.

Poll: Who would make the best Independent editor: Roger Alton, Rod Liddle or someone else?

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 11 January 2010 at 12:53
Tags: Journalism

So is former Today programme editor Rod Liddle set to become editor of The Independent under Alexander Lebedev?

It seems a little early to be speculating about staffing changes, as Lebedev has yet to even buy the Independent titles. But the Evening Standard-owning former KGB man is in a period of exclusive negotiations to buy the Independent titles until 15 February.

Media Guardian did not quote any sources, named or un-named, in its story on Friday naming Liddle as the “clear frontrunner” to take over the editor’s chair at the Independent following a Lebedev takeover.

But a Liddle editorship would be no more far-fetched than Geordie Greig moving from editing up-market monthly lifestyle magazine Tatler to replacing Veronica Wadley as editor of Lebedev’s Standard.

Roy Greenslade reports a mini revolt among Independent staff at the prospect of a Liddle editorship because of his right-wing views - as espoused in his regular columns for The Spectator and Sunday Times.

But there were similar concerns about current editor Roger Alton, who was named as Simon Kelner’s successor as Independent editor in April 2008. As editor of The Observer he had backed the invasion of Iraq - in stark contrast to The Independent’s steadfastly anti-war position.

Liddle distinguished himself as editor of the Today programme during something of a golden period for it in the more combative pre-Hutton report era.

In 2001, prickly questioning from Today programme presenters was judged to be putting such a dampner on New Labour’s honeymoon that ministers decided to stop going on the programme.

Liddle exited the Today programme in October 2002 after criticism that his then Guardian column breached BBC rules on impartiality, before Andrew Gilligan’s 6.07am two-way with John Humphrys in May 2003 when the allegations about sexing up the Government’s dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were made.

Since then he has earned his living as a freelance columnist and broadcaster, so could hardly be said to be “match fit” to take on the editorship of a national daily newspaper.

One of his main claims to fame as associate editor of The Spectator has been his role in the extra-marital bed-hopping antics of staff during then editor Boris Johnson’s ’summer of love’ in 2004, which was dramatised in the play: “Who’s the daddy”.

So far more than 1,600 people have signed up to the Facebook group: “If Rod Liddle becomes editor of The Independent I will not buy it again”.

It is difficult to imagine how Lebedev could find a more experienced or respected editor of The Independent than Alton, who in 2007 picked up the British Press Awards newspaper of the year prize for The Observer. But new owners do like change.

When you’re buying a train-set which will be as expensive to run as The Independent (current losses for both titles estimated at £10m a year) you are going to want to tinker with it a bit.

What do you think? Would Liddle, Alton, or someone else make the best editor of The Independent?

Press Gazette Christmas opening times

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 24 December 2009 at 14:06
Tags: Journalism

The Press Gazette office will now be closed until 4 January.

We will be updating the website periodically over the Christmas period but we won’t be sending out our daily email newsletter.

Have a great Christmas and New Year - you deserve it!

Press Gazette January edition preview

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 23 December 2009 at 07:58
Tags: Press Gazette

To subscribe to Press Gazette magazine (£40 a year for students or £90 a year plus a 2gb USB stick): click on this link.

Some highlights from the next edition of Press Gazette, which will be in the post to subscribers on 5 January:

Your indispensable guide to 2010: Leading journalists pick their big stories and issues of the year ahead, an in-depth guide to the big events with full press contact details.

Tony Gallagher: The new Daily Telegraph editor is keeping his head down so far, and is declining to do any interviews. But Ciar Byrne has been asking around and writes a profile of the new editor of Britain’s market leading quality daily. She finds he is “nice as pie” to reporters who bring home the goods and is more likely to dish out bollockings via email these days.

Steve Dyson. The former Birmingham Mail editor gives a candid interview explaining the particular problems a daily newspaper has in Birmingham and sounds alarm bells for a regional newspaper industry which has rushed headlong into web-first publishing: “We are just beginning to get to grips with the fact that second rise of the internet has not worked for the regional press.”

We investigate the rise of ‘i’, a Portuguese newspaper which appears to be showing that print innovation can win over younger readers.

And Independent on Sunday editor John Mullin explains just how the hell he gets out a national newspaper with just five reporters - paying tribute to a 30-strong editorial team which he says works harder than anyone else on Fleet Street. He also reveals why his title is on track to enter profit next year.

There is expert analysis and comment from Lori Miles on magazines, Alex Thomson on broadcasting, Peter Kirwan on media business and the inimitable Grey Cardigan.

And this month’s Knowledge section includes: exclusive print-only columns from Peter Sands on editorial management and Martin Tripp on careers; an in-depth briefing on freelance motoring journalism; a guide to the best smartphones for journalists from the editor of Stuff magazine Will Findlater; books; training with Kevin Marsh and journalism technology tips from Reuters technology correspondent Tarmo Virki.

There’s also a free 20-page guide to photojournalism.

All this great content is only available to print and e-edition subscribers.

The current annual rate for new subscribers is £90 (with a 2gb memory stick thrown in).

Students can subscribe to Press Gazette for just £40 a year (state name of institution and year you are in).

To subscribe, call 01858 438872.

To subscribe online: click on this link.

Sussex police wrongful murder convictions investigation is in need of a journalist

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 17 December 2009 at 11:30
Tags: Journalism

Now here’s a challenge for a crime reporter with time to take on a big investigation.

Freelance journalist and researcher John Bray has spent 12 years investigating allegations of malfeasance at Sussex Police centring around the wrongful murder convictions of Sion Jenkins, Patrick Nicholas and Sheila Bowler.

He has boxes of research material and is keen to pass it on to a journalist interested in taking the story on.

He says: “I have done an enormous amount of research and am sure of my attested facts but I need a professional writer/Journalist to put it together.  I do not seek money or glory simply to put the matter straight.”

Anyone journalist interested in taking this on should email brayjohn@hotmail.com