Posted by
Julie Tomlin
on 12 June 2006 at 16:17
Tags: Journalism, Media Law
The Grimsby Telegraph has highlighted concerns about the impact of the draft coroners bill on media access to inquests.
It reports that coroners will be able to impose reporting restrictions in suicides and other cases under sweeping changes unveiled by the Government.
Posted by
Julie Tomlin
on 12 June 2006 at 15:59
Tags: International, Iraq, Journalism
A day of protest on 15 June - Iraq’s National Day of the Press - will draw attention to the “unspeakable suffering” of journalists in the country.
The International Federation of Journalists has counted at least 129 media victims since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Violence by extremists and targeting of journalists by warring factions is cited as the major threat. The satellite channel Al-Arabiya puts the figure at 144.
“No journalist and no journalists’ group in the world is untouched by the routine intimidation of media and the rising death toll among our Iraqi colleagues,” said Aidan White,General Secretary of the IFJ. “We mourn, but we also demand action to end this slaughter.”
Posted by
Julie Tomlin
on 9 June 2006 at 12:03
Tags: Journalism
Following revelations that the Pentagon’s National Security Agency has been logging phone calls since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the New Scientist reveals that the NSA is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks.
It could also harness advances in internet technology to combine data from social networking websites with details such as banking, retail and property records, allowing the NSA to build extensive, all-embracing personal profiles of individuals.
Posted by
Julie Tomlin
on 9 June 2006 at 11:03
Tags: Journalism
Chief executive of Independent News & Media, Sir Anthony O’Reilly has reaffirmed his commitment to the future of the printed media by describing newspapers as “the ultimate browser”
Speaking at the company’s annual meeting in Dublin, O’Reilly said the multiplication of media devices which concentrate on the individual’s needs at any given point had made it much more difficult to aggregate large audiences.
Speaking at the company’s annual meeting in Dublin, he said that TV, newspapers and magazines, and to a degree radio, remained the best and the only way for mass audiences for goods and services to be created.
Arguing that “we are in another period of wild stock-market overstatement for a certain class of media assets” O’Reilly nonetheless claimed that “the internet could yield an extraordinary opportunity to the newspaper industry on the production side in putting together its products at a much lower cost”.
Posted by
Julie Tomlin
on 9 June 2006 at 10:52
Tags: Journalism
Amid all the furore over the death of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi in Iraq, the Conservative Voice berates journalists for not rushing to acknowledge him as “one of their own”…
As a young journalist, Joseph Gutheinz, claims, Al-Zarqawi reported on the withdraw of Soviet Forces from Afghanistan.
Cutheinz writes: “..it is not surprising that one of the worlds deadliest killers is not being acknowledged by the press as a former esteemed journalist, a keeper of the flame of truth, as they see it”.
Posted by
Julie Tomlin
on 9 June 2006 at 10:36
Tags: Journalism
A fall in audiences in Sky Sports’ coverage of the England test against Sri Lanka has lead to calls for Richard Caborn, the sports minister to meet BSkyB officials.
The average audience for the Sri Lanka Tests was 200,000 while last years’ series with Bangladesh reached 700,000.
Cricinfo.com is reporting that “the BBC had expressed a desire to hold “serious discussions” with BSkyB to try to negotiate the return of limited coverage to terrestrial TV”.
Posted by
Julie Tomlin
on 9 June 2006 at 10:27
Tags: International, Journalism, New Media, Newspapers, Online
In the first of a series of features examining troubles facing US newspaper companies, Reuters analyst Robert MacMillan says that newspapers are trying to boost revenue by raising subscription and newsstand prices and have cut costs through layoffs, bureau closings, reducing newsprint consumption and outsourcing administrative jobs.
But “nearly everyone in the industry” believes it is too soon to close down newspapers and publish on the internet instead, he writes.
Although there is currently a lot of discussion about the future of newspapers online “most people in the business call newspapers their “core product,” a frustrating view for some online editors,” he writes.
MacMillan quotes John Leach, editor of azcentral.com, the Web site for Gannett Co. Inc.’s The Arizona Republic saying that the phrase “drives me nuts”. He argues: “We have a suite of products that reaches a larger audience than the paper itself does.”
Posted by
Julie Tomlin
on 8 June 2006 at 20:23
Tags: Journalism, Online
Speaking at Newswatch 2006 at Bournemouth Media School, Simon Hinde, Head of AOL’s Day News Team, has confirmed that AOL is to “demolish” its walled garden and make its subscription-only news service available to all net users.
At a session called Personalising Content - the Online Opportunities For News, Hinde said that the AOL news in the UK will follow AOL.com, which removed barriers to non-subscribers last year.
AOL.co.uk has been gradually making news available to non-subscribers since then. The move will enable them to cash in on advertising revenues, while premium content will remain available only to subscribers.
Hinde insisted that “news and content is profitable” and spoke of a future in which AOL Google and Yahoo would become identified with certain users - in the the same way that Sun readers and Guardian readers are a recognisable “type”.
As readers become disillusioned with the ‘news with attitude’ approach of newspapers there would be a growing demand for a “less spun versions of the news” said Hinde.
AOL’s desire to develop its own distinctive tone of voice means that its expectations of content providers is also changing said Hinde, who argued that “content is free”. He also claimed that the “one size fits all” approach from content providers would no longer work, he insisted.
Posted by
Julie Tomlin
on 17 May 2006 at 11:24
Tags: Blogs, Journalism, Sunday Telegraph
Patience Wheatcroft’s campaign to eradicate all the innovations of her predecessor Sarah Sands appears to have claimed a victim in celebrated blogger Belle de Jour. The London call girl’s 15 May post says she has been stripped of her column in the Sunday Telegraph magazine:
In Memoriam,
My Column in the Sunday TelegraphSo. Farewell then
Regular column
Axed by new editress, Patience Wheatcroft.It would seem that
I am not suitable for
Your esteemed organ.As the old saying goes
‘Don’t like the Torygraph head?
Not to worry
Wait six months and it’ll change.
Update: Going rate for an ex-call-girl-blogger-columnist at a Sunday newspaper? £24,000, apparently. As BdJ today points out, that’s a grand short of the baseline income for a happy life, according to Wheatcroft herself.
Posted by
Julie Tomlin
on 3 May 2006 at 14:44
Tags: Ashley Cole, BBC, Blogs, Journalism, Libel, Newspapers, Sources, Television
Blogger Guido Fawkes has been on the case of BBC political correspondent Nick Robinson. Last week he picked up on his claim in his blog that the Mirror’s Prescott story was a “bombshell”. This week he sets out some questions in response to Robinson’s 29 April entry “I’m not covering up for Prescott”
Firstly, he asks does Robinson know now of any other Prescott mistresses?
Secondly, if he does, what is the public interest in witholding her name from the public if she turns out, like Tracey, to be paid out of the public purse?
Thirdly, if he doesn’t know of any other mistresses and another subsequently comes out of the woodwork, will he feel he has done his best for the British public?
Robinson does seem to be partly entering into the spirit of blogging - unlike some newspaper (Trevor) correspondents who have launched their own blogs, Robinson does allow comments to be posted. And in his blog he does respond to allegations that ave been made that the BBC censored the Prescott story and that the reward was an exclusive with PM Tony Blair
Guido notes with satisfaction that Robinson is a reader of this blog and that he “took the hint” and clarified his “bombshell” comments. But he committed a “major breach of netiquette” says Guido for failing to link to the site despite quoting from it liberally.
“Since the Ashley Cole Case the Dead Tree Press (and the broadcast media) have become nervous about referring to, or directly linking readers and listeners to writ-risky websites,” writes Guido. “Hence the vague references to “political websites” rather than Guido or Iain Dale. Journalists are actually ringing Guido up for quotes, which they then attribute to an unnamed “controversial political website”.
Guido blames media lawyers for scaring media executives into restricting journalists from referring to risk taking bloggers. As with the Ashley Cole case it seems the relationship between “msm” and new media needs working on.
