Do MSM blogs stack up?

Posted by Martin Stabe on 9 March 2006 at 08:00
Tags: BBC, Blogs, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Journalism, Times

In this week’s Press Gazette, the blogging efforts of David Aaronovitch and Nick Robinson fall under the Expert Eye of blogger Justin “Chicken Yoghurt” McKeating (PDF).

McKeating’s not impressed by the big media bloggers’ failure to exploit blogs’ greatest strength — the ability for readers to leave comments and enter into a truly two-way discussion with the blogger.

“I have yet to see a newspaper blog where the writer has got down and dirty with the readers. This defeats the object of blogging to a large extent and is seen as poor etiquette by many non-newspaper bloggers,” he writes.

Update: Due to popular demand, the full text is below the fold:

(more…)

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News sites’ .eu domain names

Posted by Martin Stabe on 8 March 2006 at 14:04
Tags: Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Economist, Financial Times, Guardian, Independent, Independent on Sunday, International, News of the World, Observer, Online, Sun, Sunday Mirror, Sunday Times, Times

Kieren McCarthy — one of the blogging freelances recently mentioned in a Press Gazette feature — had a story in yesterday’s Times about the new .eu top-level domain for European web sites. The story behind the story is on his blog today.

At present, only registered trademark owners and others who can document a legal claim to a particular name can register with the European names registry EUrid. Owners of big online brands like Amazon and Skype, McCarthy reports, are fretting over whether they will be able to secure their .eu domain names before 7 April, when registration is expanded to a free-for-all “landgrab” for the general public:

… they have good reason to worry, according to EURid, the company behind the domains. “We will give the domain to the first company that applies with a valid trademark,” explained spokesman Patrik Linden.

That means even big names are not necessarily safe. Linden confirmed that Amazon had now been approved as owner of its .eu namesake, but pointed out that there was a Volvo Amazon car in the 1960s, so the car manufacturer could well have a legitimate claim.

Another car manufacturer, Volkswagen, has won a battle of the brands over Polo.eu. It beat both Ralph Lauren and Nestle to the name by a matter of minutes, according to domain name management company NetNames.

Clearly this also affects news organisations’ web sites? Are their European domain names safe?

The Telegraph has won a race for telegraph.eu. Associated Newspapers controls dailymail.eu. The Beeb has registed bbc.eu and skynews.eu is controlled by BSkyB. Also secure are itv.eu and itn.eu.

Surprisingly, perhaps, News International has grabbed thesun.eu, newsoftheworld.eu, sundaytimes.eu and thetimes.eu. But one RM Peddemors, a resident of the Netherlands, has staked claims to timeonline.eu. The same individual is also claiming economist.eu and observer.eu. Only Guardian Newspapers is appears to be challenging the claim to their trademark.

The German postal service has registered express.eu, and four companies (not including Trinity Mirror) are claiming mirror.eu.

The domain ft.eu is set to host a salmon-coloured financial news web site, but some of the other more Euro-friendly papers seem to have missed out.

Neither the Irish or British incarnations of the Indy will have independent.eu: That went to Swedish bank Independent Finans AB. Even normally web-savvy Guardian seems to have missed out: although they have secured guardianunlimited.eu, Guardian Flachglas GmbH, a glass manufacturer in Thalheim, Germany, has snapped up guardian.eu. One other domain name that a Guardian employee has recently been diligently buying up in various TLDs is still available on .eu.

Podcasters should follow Telegraph’s lead

Posted by Martin Stabe on 21 February 2006 at 12:33
Tags: Daily Telegraph, Eastern Daily Press, Northcliffe, Podcasting, United States

Steve Outing, a columnist with the US newspaper trade magazine Editor & Publisher, says podcasting and vodcasting are the next big thing for newspapers. The piece includes an interview with Daily Telegraph’s podcast editor Guy Ruddle:

Certainly, Ruddle’s podcast show could be listened to on a drive into work; it’s partly about “allowing people to ‘read’ The Telegraph while they are driving,” he says. “But we also think we can add value to the paper. You can read about someone in the paper and then, hopefully, hear them in their own words on the podcast, for example.”

Outing says newspapers should follow the Telegraph’s example and produce podcasts that sound like radio programmes, rather than merely reading out what has appeared on the printed page. This is very good advice: Too many newspaper podcasts still lack radio-level production values and sound rather dull and amateur.

Outing’s column surveys the American regional newspapers’ early pod- and vodcasting efforts. Here in Britain, has we have reported, regional newspaper group Northcliffe has started toying with podcasts. Archant’s Eastern Daily Press is experimenting with vodcasting, and a few other regional papers are quietly working on similar projects.

Posted by Martin Stabe on 9 February 2006 at 12:12
Tags: Daily Telegraph, Times

• Times: Telegraph owners use French courts in libel case 

Telegraph hiring more podcast staff

Posted by Martin Stabe on 7 February 2006 at 09:36
Tags: Daily Telegraph, Podcasting

Fresh from appointing what appears to be the world’s first newspaper “podcast editor”, the Daily Telegraph is now hiring two podcast “reporter/producers”. Each position comes with a £25K starting salary. Steve Outing at the Poynter Institute says this is a good idea because “‘boring podcasts’ represent a big danger for newspapers, so hiring professional broadcasters to take charge probably makes sense”.