@Society of Editors - Football economics coming to online journalism salaries?

Posted by Martin Stabe on 6 November 2007 at 11:14
Tags: Guardian Media Group, Mail on Sunday, Sky, Sky News, Sky.com, Society of Editors, Society of Editors, Telegraph Media Group, Telegraph.co.uk, Times Online, telegraph

The final session of the conference is “The Future is ours: 2020 Vision”, which is billed as “lifting the covers on editors’ crystal balls”.

Appropriately, the panel will be chaired by Martin Stanford, presenter of Sky.com News, the rolling news channel’s interactive programme which covers the most popular stories and debates on the web. He reveals the the Madeleine McCann story has constantly lead Sky news traffic, regardless of what else is going on. Meanwhile, the revelation that the home secretary smoked cannabis, which was a massive story everywhere else, “scored an absolute zero”.

Anne Spackman, editor-in-chief of Times Online, says the paper has been digitising its archive, which will add 20 million items to its website, which already has 750,000 “bits of content” at any one time. It is noticable how litttle the publication has changed over the first 200 years, she says, but the pace of change has increased dramatically.

Her most startling prediction for the future is the rise of football economics in journalism. Spackman describes a “Drogba effect” where pay in journalism will be greatly skewed towards stars who are able to bring in a lot of traffic online.

Spackman repeats her comments from last week about the type of journalists she is seeking to recruit for Times Online: “The people who are by far the most valuable are those who combine journalism skills with real technical skill.”

Her prediction for 2020 reflects her view that many people with these attributes are currently men: “I think this will be an industry rather more full of men than it is now.”

Mark Dodson, chief executive of GMG Regional Media, which includes the host Manchester Evening News, says things have changed dramatically in this sector. Cover prices were static for years, and companies relentlessly measured themselves against the semi-annual ABC figures. That has all changed recently, with the introduction of part-free distribution and new online products.

“Video will be a key aspect of every web site we produce,” Dodson says.

Will Lewis, editor-in-chief of the Telegraph Group, outlines the trends he expects in the next few years:

1. Localisation - Good news for the regional press, because there will be greater focus on customising news by location.
2. Personalisation - Mobile and other personal gateways will become the preferred medium tailored to the individuals
3. Enablers - Rather than handing down pearls of wisdom, and will provide practical help and user-generated
4. Double media - Video and text will not be enough. They want to read as the watch.
5. Customer obsessiveness - It is no longer a secret what our readers actually want. We will sell more papers where people now shop. “Our customers will be as much outside the UK as within it,” he concludes.

Additional links for Thursday

Posted by Martin Stabe on 12 October 2006 at 16:02
Tags: Digg, Guardian, Guardian Media Group, Journalism

• Read/Write Web: The Social News Faceoff
  A head-to-head comparison between social news aggregation sites Digg, Reddit, Newsvine, and Netscape. Digg is judged the winner, although it has not made the promised strides from being tech-centric to appealing to a more generalist audience.
• AOP: Conference keynote videos available
  Watch last week’s speeches by Carolyn McCall and Tim O’Reilly.
• CJR Daily: London Times Prints ‘Rumour’, Market Goes Gaga
  Times rumour of the day lifts brewery shares 2 per cent.
• Newsknife: Top 100 US newspaper sites on Google News
  Contains what it says on the tin.

Will the MEN giveaway work?

Posted by Martin Stabe on 25 April 2006 at 13:21
Tags: Guardian Media Group, Journalism

Stephen Newton thinks the Manchester Evening News’ strategy of giving away 50,000 copies in the city centre won’t halt circulation decline:

… the real problem for the Manchester Evening News is editorial. The paper has simply failed to engage with the city, is out of touch and hates what Manchester has become. The MEN is terribly curmudgeonly, loathes public art and ignores the city’s popular culture; something others would die for. The letters page is dominated by those who simply sign themselves ‘pensioner’ (‘I’m poor’; ‘where’s my pension gone?’; ‘we’re all poor’; ‘oh my back’.)

But tomorrow’s pensioners will not be like todays and if the Manchester Evening News doesn’t do something to connect with those under 65, it will deserve to die.

Ouch.

He also argues a similar circulation-boosting strategy wouldn’t work online, where giving away editorial content is also increasingly the dominant business model.

‘Incompetent egomaniacs’ or ‘pitiful slaves’?

Posted by Martin Stabe on 25 April 2006 at 12:40
Tags: BBC, Guardian Media Group, Journalism

If you ask Chris Dillow, young, poorly-paid journalists are “irrational incompetent egomaniacs” who have entered a high-risk career tournament in the hopes of one day commanding seven-figure pay packets (not to mention fame and influence over public debate) like Jeremy Paxman.

Writing in the Times, however, Libby Purvis has a more conventional analysis of “the pitiful slaves of showbiz” toiling in the creative industries, including journalism.

Purvis has two striking examples: BBC researchers who still earning well under the national average male full-time earnings of £31,500 two decades into their careers — and Guardian Media Group regional newspaper trainees who were on £10,486 in 2002.

For Purvis, unlike Dillow, “to opt for poverty and a buzzy job is a reasonable thing to do, and it is not unreasonable to proffer your services free, at least until disillusion or a real job intervenes.”

The real problem with the recent outrage over BBC salaries, Purvis suggests, is that the entry fee for the journalism tournament is becoming prohibitive to all but those wiuth wealthy families who can subsidise long stints of low- or no-pay work.

More Guardian classifieds worries

Posted by Martin Stabe on 17 February 2006 at 16:27
Tags: Guardian, Guardian Media Group, Online

How many posts can we have in one day about the Guardian’s hand-wringing about classified ads moving online? At least one more, I’m afraid.

This time Brand Republic does the honors with a story about the Guardian-owned Auto Trader magazine:

Since GMG bought Trader Media in October 2003 for £600m, Auto Trader’s circulation is down 21.9%. In the first half of 2003, its average sale was 365,549, compared with the second half of 2005’s 285,501.

In a stark indicator of classified advertising’s shift out of print, other buying and selling titles have suffered even worse falls. Since the first half of 2003, Trader Media’s general Ad Trader is down 30.8% to 157,173 copies, while rival Loot, owned by the Daily Mail & General Trust, is down 38.4% to 153,744.

GMG is currently studying possible asset disposals as a safeguard for the future of its newspaper business and on February 2 appointed Merrill Lynch to advise.

Trader Media is the jewel in its crown, having generated £116.6m of GMG’s £122.4m operating profit for 2005, thanks in part to its profitable Auto Trader website. The site attracts 4.8m monthly users and 8,300 car dealers, according to GMG’s 2005 financial report.

No wonder Alan Rusbridger asked his audience to “say a small prayer” for Auto Trader at his Queen Mary speech last week.

Guardian Media Group regionals on the block?

Posted by Martin Stabe on 13 February 2006 at 10:36
Tags: Guardian, Guardian Media Group, Observer

• Times: Guardian may be planning surprise sale of GMG regionals
• Sunday Herald: Guardian poised for £1 billion assets auction