Martin Stabe

• Our Real Problem: The Death of the News Package

  Adam Tinworth on what people are really paying for when they put down a few coins for a newspaper or magazine: "we journalists have a bias towards the news element of the publication that our readers do not share. We got into journalism to 'do news'. They were buying a [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: December 04, 2009, 5:20am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• FT.com: Thomson Reuters to overhaul news website

  “I think eventually we will [charge],” Alisa Bowen, head of consumer publishing for Thomson Reuters, told the FT. “This is designed to be an ad-supported property, but as we introduce a greater range of content we will be looking for a range of different business models.” [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: December 04, 2009, 5:14am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Sky News: Government Wants Online ‘Rogues’ Galleries’ To Show Public How Criminals Dealt With By Courts

  Government wants to introduce online sentencing information for local areas. Peter Murray, vice-president of the National Union of Journalists, tells Sky News: "The point about journalism, as opposed to information provided by arms of the state, is that it's filtered through people who have all the ethical training, political background [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: December 03, 2009, 11:40am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Econsultancy: What a lot of rubbish everyone is talking about Google and paywalls

  Malcolm Coles on the rubbish reporting on the First Click Free yesterday: "The biggest load of old rubbish ever has been written about the changes to Google's first click free program. Here's a round up of who understands what they are talking about (and might survive with a paywall) and [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: December 03, 2009, 6:02am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• paidContent:UK: World Newspaper Congress: Mirror’s Kelly: We Must Put Search Engines In Their Place

  Matt Kelly: "Not recommendations from a search engine, but from a friend. That’s how to grow a meaningful audience." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: December 02, 2009, 4:10am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• John Battelle’s Searchblog: What Are The Conversion Rates for Google’s “First Click Free”?

  "I'd guess it's a pretty low percentage of folks who actively try to get the Wall Street Journal by repeatedly searching on Google. The really interesting question is this: Does 'First Click Free' actually deliver a decent conversion of paid customers to media companies?" [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: December 02, 2009, 3:33am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Google Webmaster Central Blog: Changes in First Click Free

  "[We've] found that some [publishers] who might try [First Click Free] are worried about people abusing the spirit of First Click Free to access almost all of their content. As most users are generally happy to be able to access just a few pages from these premium content providers, we've [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: December 02, 2009, 3:28am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Google News Blog: Google and paid content

  "Previously, each click from a user would be treated as free. Now, we've updated the program so that publishers can limit users to no more than five pages per day without registering or subscribing. If you're a Google user, this means that you may start to see a registration page [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: December 02, 2009, 3:18am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• currybetdotnet: Don’t put Johnston Press on trial over their paywall experiment

  Martin Belam: "At the minute, Johnston Press have some sites giving away free ad-supported content, some sites have content snippets urging users to buy the paper, and some sites are charging a subscription for access. Essentially they are doing an A/B/C test of their entire business model online for three [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: December 01, 2009, 1:40pm EST
  by Martin Stabe

• One Man and His Blog: The Content Paywall Ostriches

  Number of comments: 1
  Adam Tinworth: "Sometime the online discussion about content paywalls makes me despair of my profession. There seems to be a strong element of the journalistic community that just want to stick traditional journalistic content behind a paywall, and suddenly journalism's problems will go away. This is madness." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 30, 2009, 3:10pm EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Holdthefrontpage.co.uk: Publisher begins roll-out of new story links

  Northcliffe begins rollout of semantic-search based topic pages at thisisbristol.co.uk. [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 30, 2009, 7:16am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• BBC News: Today: Websites start charging for news

  The Today programme on the Johnston Press paywall experiment: "Emily Bell, director of digital content at the Guardian and Roger Parry, former chair of Johnston Press, discuss how the model will work." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 30, 2009, 6:56am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Comment is free: Why journalism needs paywalls

  Tim Luckhurst: "Today a newspaper innovation is launched that can help the free world's news industry to recover the prosperity it first achieved under Queen Victoria. Johnston Press, Britain's most prolific newspaper publisher with 286 titles, will place the online content of six of its local titles behind paywalls." Seriously? [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 30, 2009, 6:45am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• WSJ.com: AOL Readies New Media-Production System

  "In December, when it becomes a stand-alone company, AOL will begin to tap a new digital-newsroom system that uses a series of algorithms to predict the types of stories, videos and photos that will be most popular with consumers and marketers." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 30, 2009, 4:57am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Media Guardian: Doing it for themselves

  A really encouraging feature about UK journalism education... "The students are learning not just traditional local reporting but also useful digital skills: publishing using Wordpress, exploiting Twitter, reciprocal linking, how to search for local stories online through Google Reader and Yahoo Pipes (using metasearches to pick out relevant stories) and [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 30, 2009, 4:51am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Steve Yelvington: Lookie Lou isn’t really a customer

  "Website users are not fungible. Some of them are very valuable. Some of them are worse than worthless, consuming resources or otherwise making a nuisance of themselves beyond reason. If there is a magic to operating a successful website, it's in figuring out how to identify the valuable ones and [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 27, 2009, 12:14pm EST
  by Martin Stabe

• New Media Age: Interview with William Lewis, editor-in-chief and MD of digital at Telegraph Media Group

  Will Lewis: “I’ll take a handful of people with me from Victoria, but in essence want to source new talent, such as engineers, user experience professionals, product people and entrepreneurs who want to do business to create new products and services. In Euston there’ll be no editorial or advertising drive, [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 27, 2009, 12:05pm EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Roy Greenslade: Mystery of Will Lewis’s new digital ‘promotion’

  I suspect Greenslade commenter ZigZoomer is closest to the truth: "Lewis went to Harvard Business School. One of the standard B-school formulas for changing and revitalising an organisation is to set up a 'skunkworks' away from the main offices. ... You take some of the brightest staff, and remove them [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 27, 2009, 7:35am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Media Guardian: Telegraph Media Group promotes Will Lewis and Tony Gallagher

  "[Will] Lewis will set up and run the new digital division, an 'entrepreneurial unit' which will have a staff of 50 and be based in Euston, away from the company's main office in Victoria. As managing director, digital, he will also oversee TMG's existing digital businesses." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 26, 2009, 8:31am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• SearchEngineLand: Thoughts On A “Killer” Bing-News Corp Deal & The Myth Of An “OPEC For News”

  Danny Sullivan: "So what happens if the WSJ is out of Google? Nothing. Seriously, nothing. Remember, for years the WSJ was NOT in Google, and yet Google grew just fine. Also, the WSJ seems to have been fine. Neither is crucial to each other." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 26, 2009, 1:47am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• New York Times: Group of Publishers Is Said to Be Building a Newsstand Online

  "The formation of a new company to run the online newsstand — sometimes characterized as an 'iTunes for magazines' — may be announced in early December. Time, Condé Nast, Hearst and Meredith all intend to be equity partners in the new company, although the deals have not yet been signed." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 26, 2009, 1:44am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• HarvardBusiness.org: Why Big Media’s Anti-Google Counter-Revolution Will Fail

  Umair Haque: "The simplest flaw in the MicroFox's strategic logic? MicroFox is trying to create artificial scarcity instead of value ... Artificial scarcity is usually a one-way ticket to oblivion, as people simply defect to better alternatives." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 26, 2009, 1:39am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Daggle: If Newspapers Were Stores, Would Visitors Be “Worthless” Then?

  Essential reading from Danny Sullivan: "As the war of words ramps up between Google and some news publishers, the latest spin seems to be how “worthless” the traffic is that Google sends. In reality, the traffic probably does have value, but the newspapers are likely doing a terrible job of [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 26, 2009, 1:13am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk: Regional newspaper publisher to introduce online paywalls

  "The initiative being launched next week will restrict users of selected [Johnston Press] sites from viewing content beyond the homepage without payment of a £5 three-month subscription - the equivalent of 40p per week." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 26, 2009, 12:30am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Press Gazette: The Wire: Johnston Press to introduce paywalls next week

  Commenter on Presss Gazette neatly sums up the case against paywalls for general news: "I'll save everybody time and angst. This model was tried before by many newspapers. Here's what happened. Pay wall goes up; traffic drops like a rock. Advertisers want new cheaper ad rates for low traffic figures. [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 26, 2009, 12:27am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Up Your Ego: Independent printing payments

  "The Independent Newspaper has an interesting way of making a bit of extra cash from their website – they’re restricting printing. ... You get the choice of a ‘free print’ where you can make up to five copies using your home or office printer for free (with an ad). You [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 25, 2009, 2:59am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• The Daily Beast: The Unlikeliest Freedom Fighters

  Douglas Rushkoff: "we can't confuse our actual right to make and distribute content freely with Google’s perceived right to freely exploit the content everyone makes. Google is not in this for the fun of it; they make money off their searches. By making our content available to Google, we make [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 24, 2009, 9:56am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Editor & Publisher: Think Before You Re-Tweet: ‘L.A. Times’ Updates Social Media Rules for Journos

  "Updated guidelines for Los Angeles Times newsroom employees using social media emphasize that just about anything posted online will be viewed as reflecting on the newspaper's credibility and reputation." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 24, 2009, 1:31am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Talking Points Memo: Internal AP Memo Thanks Writers For Successful ‘Literary Treasure Hunt’ In Finding Sarah Palin’s Book

  AP memo on how reporters who found an accidentally pre-released copy of Sarah Palin's book produced a story in 40 minutes: "They bought a copy, ripped it from its spine and scanned it into the system so it could be read and electronically searched. A NewsNow moved within 40 minutes, [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 24, 2009, 1:30am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• BuzzMachine: Murdoch madness

  Jeff Jarvis: "Murdoch himself says that Bing and even Google couldn’t afford to pay all content providers. And for what? For linking to them and giving them value? If anyone were paid ... who’s to say that Rupert Murdoch should be paid more than Josh Marshall? Or Wikipedia?" [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 24, 2009, 12:46am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• FT.com: Murdoch’s plan may be the future

  John Gapper: "[Either], as a lot of digital evangelists have suggested, [Murdoch] does not 'get' the internet; or he has looked at the figures and decided Google traffic is not worth very much. I think the latter is more plausible... [Traffic] drawn to news sites through links and search engines [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 24, 2009, 12:41am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• paidContent:UK: Big News Bucks Unlikely From Bing? Journalism Could Be The Loser

  Robert Andrews: "yanking news from Google searches would pose this challenging question: do web users value news so highly that they would switch search providers? The answer, in sad truth, may turn out to be 'no'." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 23, 2009, 1:21pm EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Independent: British press split in two by Wapping’s great gamble

  Great summary of the state of the paywall debate among UK national newspapers by Ian Burrell. Emily Bell of the Guardian: "This is not about newspaper publishing, this is about news, content and analysis on the internet and as long as you keep making the category error that says newspaper [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 23, 2009, 12:58am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Mashable: How Google Wave is Changing the News

  "Although it’s still invitation only and in preview, the real-time wiki collaboration platform is being used by some media companies for community building, real-time discussion, crowdsourcing, collaboration both inside and outside the newsroom, and for cross publishing content." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 23, 2009, 12:53am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• FT.com: Microsoft and News Corp eye web pact

  "Microsoft has had discussions with News Corp over a plan that would involve the media company’s being paid to “de-index” its news websites from Google, setting the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry. ...[The] Financial Times has learnt that [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 23, 2009, 12:51am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Sunday Times: Jack Straw pledges action to end libel tourism

  "The justice secretary says the large legal fees involved in defamation cases in English courts are jeopardising freedom of speech, potentially curbing vital debate by scientists, academics and journalists." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 22, 2009, 4:56am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Press Gazette: James Harding: ‘Price has been divorced from value in the newspaper business’

  "Times editor James Harding’s speech to the 2009 Society of Editors’ Conference in full" [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 18, 2009, 10:03am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• The New York Observer: Times Media Desk May Be Headed for Small Screen

  Meta-meta-meta-media! "A documentary filmmaker has hit the Times Tower with camera in tow and is planning to make a movie focused on the Times media desk." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 18, 2009, 2:48am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Press Gazette: Google doesn’t need newspaper content, says UK head

  "Matt Brittin, Google's UK director, said today the search giant didn’t need newspaper content to for it to prosper. Speaking on a panel looking at the future development of the newspaper industry, at the Society of Editors conference in Essex, Brittin told delegates that news content was not a big [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 17, 2009, 1:20pm EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Strange Attractor: Times (of London): Let’s do the time warp again

  Kevin Anderson: "referring to the media economics of the 18th century to build or justify a strategy for the 21st is clearly ludicrous. Paper in the 18th century was an expensive thing and steam presses hadn’t been invented. Information was scarce and could fetch a premium." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 17, 2009, 11:28am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Out-Law.com: Consent will be required for cookies in Europe

  "The now-finalised text says that a cookie can be stored on a user's computer, or accessed from that computer, only if the user 'has given his or her consent, having been provided with clear and comprehensive information'." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 17, 2009, 10:35am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• paidContent:UK: Spectator.co.uk Lost Two Percent Of Traffic In Paywall Switch

  "Prior to the switch, Spectator.co.uk got 40 percent of its weekly traffic on Wednesday nights and Thursday mornings - right after content from the printed mag went online for free .. Ben Greenish, MD of the mag’s parent company Press Holdings Media Group, tells paidContent:UK. 'we’ve only lost about two [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 17, 2009, 9:58am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Press Gazette: James Harding: Online charging is fight of our lives

  "Harding said The Times would confront those who "represent a serious threat to independent journalism" and that they had already had "frank" conversations with Google and the BBC. .. He later told Press Gazette The Times and The Sunday Times were likely to be the first News International titles to [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 17, 2009, 9:38am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Media Guardian: Times editor James Harding outlines plans for online charging

  "Pledging to 'rewrite the economics of newspapers', [Times editor James Harding] said the Times would charge for 24-hour access to that day's edition of the paper alongside a subscription model, but dismissed the idea of micro-payments for individual articles." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 17, 2009, 8:55am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Steve Yelvington: Some advice to designers of news websites

  "In many redesigns, the unstructured and underskilled committee engages in a painfully drawn-out process that leads to round after round of debate and argument about personal preferences, color choices, font sizes, etc., while underneath it all there's a process of jockeying for political advantage in the newsroom. All of this [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 17, 2009, 3:58am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Poynter: Study: Newspapers Need to ‘Shed Legacy Costs’ to Capture Online Ad Spending

  "Penelope Muse Abernathy and Richard Foster highlight the gap between the rate at which people are getting information online and the rate of online spending by advertisers. They say that gap is going to close -- and that publishers better be ready." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 16, 2009, 1:48am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Searchengineland: Josh Cohen Of Google News On Paywalls, Partnerships & Working With Publishers

  Cohen: "If you have subscription content, the user response to it will in effect tell the algorithm this isn’t not a relevant result, I’m not clicking on this. By making it free or by in essence saying it’s paid but Google treats it as free [because of First Click Free], [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 15, 2009, 5:51pm EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Techcrunch: How Murdoch Can Really Hurt Google And Shift The Balance Of Power In Search

  Michael Arrington: "If other media companies joined Murdoch Google could actually find itself in a very difficult position, where Bing had content that Google didn’t. If you knew that Wall Street Journal and, say, New York TImes content was only in Bing search results, mainstream search users would suddenly have [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 15, 2009, 9:20am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Boing Boing: Rupert Murdoch vows to take all of Newscorp’s websites out of Google, abolish fair use, tear heads off of adorable baby animals

  Cory Doctorow on November 8: "So here's what I think it going on. Murdoch has no intention of shutting down search-engine traffic to his sites, but he's ... hoping is that a second-tier search engine like Bing or Ask (or, better yet, some search tool you've never heard of that [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 15, 2009, 6:48am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• New York Times: At Bloomberg L.P., a Modest Strategy to Rule the World

  "Bloomberg may lack the pedigree and gloss of some of its rivals, but it has one thing they don’t right now: money to throw around. This year alone, Bloomberg, deploying the cash spouting from its data business, has recruited refugees from The Wall Street Journal and Fortune and opened bureaus [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 15, 2009, 6:32am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Techcrunch: Badda Bing! Microsoft woos newspapers by funding their stick to beat Google

  "Microsoft plans to launch an assault on Google’s flank, by cosying up to major content providers, especially newspapers, that feel hard done by Google News. It plans to use Bing as a way to entice them out of the Google eco-system, into one where, increasingly, the content of major newspapers [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 15, 2009, 6:25am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• CJR: A Microformat with Major Implications

  "The goal of hNews is to make certain elements of news articles machine-readable. In and of itself, this may not sound like much. One benefit is that it will help search engines and other parties do a better job sorting and analyzing information contained in news content (cover your ears, [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 14, 2009, 7:38am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Telegraph: Rupert Murdoch to remove News Corp’s content from Google ‘in months’

  News Corp chief digital officer Jonathan Miller: “The traffic which comes in from Google brings a consumer who more often than not read one article and then leaves the site. That is the least valuable of traffic to us… the economic impact [of not having content indexed by Google] is [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 13, 2009, 4:20am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• New York Times: Two German Killers Demanding Anonymity Sue Wikipedia’s Parent

  Number of comments: 1
  "Wolfgang Werlé and Manfred Lauber became infamous for killing a German actor in 1990. Now they are suing to force Wikipedia to forget them. The legal fight pits German privacy law against the American First Amendment." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 13, 2009, 2:37am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Editor & Publisher: Moor: Newspapers Not Evolving Enough for Digital Demand

  Dallas Morning News web editor Anthony Moor on why he is leaving to head Yahoo's local news division: "Part of this is recognition that newspapers have limited resources, they are saddled with legitimate legacy businesses that they have to focus on first. I am a digital guy and the digital [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 13, 2009, 2:28am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Broadcast: BBC Journalism Group salaries, Nov ‘09

  "Full list of the most senior decision-makers at the BBC senior staff, with job titles and details of salaries." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 12, 2009, 5:17pm EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Press Gazette: Job fears as 130-year-old Contract Journal shuts

  "Reed Business Information is to cease publication of its 130-year-old weekly construction magazine Contract Journal and its accompanying website at the end of the month." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 12, 2009, 5:10pm EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Channel 4: Who Knows Who

  "Who Knows Who is Channel 4's new website which shows the connections between politicians, celebrities and business leaders, and where power really lies in the UK. We hope that it will reveal the surprising and often hidden stories behind the headlines. This is the first iteration of an ongoing process [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 12, 2009, 1:06pm EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Comment is Free: I, too, mourn good local newspapers. But this lot just aren’t worth saving

  George Monbiot: "Like my colleagues, I mourn [local papers'] death; unlike them I believe it happened decades ago. For many years the local press has been one of Britain's most potent threats to democracy, championing the overdog, misrepresenting democratic choices, defending business, the police and local elites from those who [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 10, 2009, 2:07pm EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Guardian: Telephone hacking: Cursory and complacent

  Guardian leader: "Since the information commissioner first reported on the widespread use of private investigators by journalists in 2006, the only bodies to have made a determined effort to find out what was going on have been the information commissioner, the police and parliament. The PCC has repeatedly declined to [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 09, 2009, 4:51am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• paidContent: Video: Murdoch Making News Invisible To Search Engines? Not So Fast

  "Here’s how Murdoch replied when [Sky News political editor David Speers] asked why he hasn’t blocked sites from being seen by search engines: 'I think we will. But that’s when we start charging. We do it already with the Wall Street Journal. We have a wall, but it’s not right [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 09, 2009, 3:55am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Sunday Times: Libel threat to force US papers out of Britain

  ...And not just in print: "The National Enquirer, based in Miami, blocked British readers after it was successfully sued in London by Cameron Diaz, the Hollywood actress. Her lawyers showed that an article she deemed defamatory had been viewed 279 times by British internet users. ... Some of the most [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 08, 2009, 6:14pm EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Observer: Aghast Mail bemoans birth of ‘European superstate’

  Peter Preston: "[Stephen Glover] could go on now to inquire whether it's really good enough for poor editor Paul Dacre to cover an all-powerful superstate via its political staff in SW1. And, to be frank, because nobody bar the FT quite escapes the blight of shrunk or shrinking EU coverage, [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 08, 2009, 7:49am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Guardian: What’s your Woolworths now? Money | guardian.co.uk

  Pathetic comment moderation at the Guardian. After a Guardian blogger calls for help finding the fate of former Woolworths shops, my comment linking to our three-month effort to collect information on the fate of more than 500 former Woolworths sites was removed. [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 08, 2009, 7:06am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• paidContent:UK: Bloomberg.com May Charge Up To $1,000 A Year For News Feeds

  "[Having] signaled that its newly acquired Businessweek.com may raise the paywall for certain types of content, Bloomberg is now considering charging Bloomberg.com users up to $1,000 a year to access certain areas of the site starting next year." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 06, 2009, 11:50am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• New Media Age: Guardian bucks publisher trend by charging for app

  "The Guardian is to launch a paid-for iPhone app within weeks. The app is likely to go on sale for £1.79, according to a source close to the situation, with no subscription fee thereafter." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 06, 2009, 10:21am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• paidContent:UK: UBM Will Cut Magazines To Expand Multimedia B2B

  "UBM’s on-going publishing strategy could include an increased use of paywalls, the company told us on Friday. UBM publishes several mostly free sites such as Musicweek.com and Farmersguardian.com, but a spokesman told us that 'all UBM businesses' are considering a range of models to monetise print and online content and [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 06, 2009, 8:31am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Time: Polarized News? The Media’s Moderate Bias

  "[The] news audience, if not news itself, is getting more polarized. But categories like Pew's 'liberal,' 'conservative' and 'neither' ... overlook the most significant bias out there: moderate bias." (HT: Jeff Sonderman) [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 06, 2009, 7:58am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Press Complaints Commission: Adjudicated – Iain Dale v Daily Mail

  PCC shock: "Mr Iain Dale of Kent complained to the Press Complaints Commission that an item in the Ephraim Hardcastle diary column, published in the Daily Mail on 30 September 2009, contained discriminatory references to his sexual orientation in breach of Clause 12 (Discrimination) of the Code of Practice. The [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 06, 2009, 7:09am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Silicon.com: Telegraph CIO on the rocky road to going Google

  "[Telegraph Media Group] began its transition to Google Apps in July 2008 and completed the migration in July this year. A survey of workers in October this year found that in their first six months of using Gmail about 45 per cent of staff rated it as worse or the [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 05, 2009, 4:18am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• paidContent:UK: New Media Age Putting More Of Itself Behind Paywall

  "NMA, which already required a £99-a-year subscription for everything bar 'lead' stories and opinion pieces, is now putting those stories from its print edition behind a paywall, too." Plus, a great debate in the comments. [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 05, 2009, 4:15am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Revolution: Newspaper first to go live with public Google Wave

  "Welt Kompakt has become one of the first [newspapers] to launch a public Wave, helping readers interact with the title." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 04, 2009, 7:42am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• The Texas Tribune: On the Records: A data manifesto

  "The Texas Tribune today launches several database applications designed to give readers more information about their government and elected officials -- and all in one place." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 04, 2009, 5:51am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• MediaGuardian: National papers ‘need to convert less than 5% of web audience to pay model’

  Dharmash Mistry: "Newspapers are scared to see audiences reduce because they all measure themselves by audience size ... Everyone thought the [online] ad model was going to be much bigger than it has actually turned out. It makes sense [to incorporate pay models] from an economic standpoint it is breakeven, [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 03, 2009, 4:25am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• New York Times: Columnist Not Only Quits, Thinks Web Site Shouldn’t Charge

  Saul Friedman ... who had written a column for Newsday since 1996, quit last week over the paper’s decision to require some readers to pay for access to its Web site. ... 'My column has been popular around the country, but now it was really going to be impossible for [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 02, 2009, 2:37am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• paidContent:UK: Emap Will Raise The Paywall In Next Few Weeks

  David Gilbertson: “We’re shifting the balance of the marketing message from, ‘this is a magazine and it has a website’ to ‘this is an information brand that delivers content across a range of media”. [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 01, 2009, 8:03am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• Times Online: Libel tourists flock to ‘easy’ UK courts

  "John Mardas, a Greek citizen and former associate of the Beatles, is fighting a case in the British courts against The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune over articles that he claims falsely represented him as a charlatan. Just 31 people read the relevant articles on the internet [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 01, 2009, 6:16am EST
  by Martin Stabe

• BBC News: New lease of life for newspapers

  Number of comments: 1
  "The Newspaperclub team, all of whom have backgrounds working online, are creating a website that will allow people to design and print small runs of newspapers. ... Recently the Cabinet Office asked them to produce an experimental paper covering just one postcode." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 31, 2009, 8:23am EDT
  by Martin Stabe

• Editor & Publisher: ‘Newsday’ Pay Wall Debuts Today — With Most Stories Behind It

  "[All] stories, photos and video are accessible only to subscribers. Others get a headline and brief summary. But any further information requires a log-in and password. Non-subscribers to Optimum Online or the print edition can pay $5 per week." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 31, 2009, 4:01am EDT
  by Martin Stabe

• BBC iPlayer: The Media Show: 28/10/2009

  Includes an interesting segment with Dr Natalie Fenton from Goldsmith's University "who argues that instead of democratising information, the internet has narrowed our horizons." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 29, 2009, 5:07am EDT
  by Martin Stabe

• Online Journalism Review: Does your site really need to be in Google News?

  Number of comments: 4
  Robert Niles: "What if your site's focus is local, as are the readers your advertisers want to reach? What if you are trying to build an online community, cultivating ongoing relationships with a core of contributing readers? 'Drive-by' visitors from search engines inflate your site's traffic stats, but they don't [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 29, 2009, 3:55am EDT
  by Martin Stabe

• New York Times: Politico’s Creators Plan Local News Web Site for Washington

  "Allbritton Communications said its new operation would start with a newsroom of about 50 people — far larger than those of other local news start-ups around the country, though still smaller than the local news staffs of major metropolitan newspapers. ... Robert L. Allbritton, who heads the family-owned company, and [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 29, 2009, 3:52am EDT
  by Martin Stabe

• HTFP: Court ruling ‘clarifies law on user-generated content’

  "As soon as Newsquest received the legal claim from Mr Karim, the readers' comments were removed from the websites concerned. Mr Justice Eady concluded that Newsquest websites were acting as hosts of the reader comments for the purposes of Regulation 19 of the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002 and [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 29, 2009, 3:50am EDT
  by Martin Stabe

• McGuire on Media: Let’s not let Medill Innocence Project be another Hazelwood

  "To attempt to redeem itself for its ignorance and sloth on [Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier], the mainstream press needs to rally to protect and defend the Medill Innocence Project." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 28, 2009, 1:38pm EDT
  by Martin Stabe

• Journalism.co.uk: Manchester Evening News launches iPhone news app

  "The Manchester Evening News (MEN) has become one of the first UK regional titles to launch a news application for the iPhone." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 28, 2009, 1:20pm EDT
  by Martin Stabe

• Joanna Geary: Online Protests – why do they make me uneasy?

  "I’ve seen many use the Jan Moir affair as an example of democracy in action. It is certainly true that the will of many people led to the removal of advertising from an offensive and homophobic article and an apology from its author. Now you can’t say that’s a bad [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 28, 2009, 10:57am EDT
  by Martin Stabe

• Nieman Journalism Lab: Writing the novel, then the CliffsNotes

  Gawker posts a bullet-point version of a 2,000-word piece: "the full story has generated 480,000 pageviews and 189 comments. But the CliffsNotes version has generated another 39,193 pageviews and 83 comments on its own ... there’s real value in taking the longer pieces we journalists love to write — and [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 28, 2009, 3:26am EDT
  by Martin Stabe

• Guardian: Guardian Jobs website hacked

  "The Guardian has contacted some users of its UK Jobs site to say that a "sophisticated and deliberate hack" means personal data may have been accessed. Not all users are affected, and the hack does not affect the separate US site" [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 25, 2009, 9:13am EDT
  by Martin Stabe

• Wired.co.uk: The great transition: All the news that’s fit to bin

  Peter Kirwan on the inefficiencies of the print media supply chain. One ex-digital editor turning back to print tells him: “The system obviously hasn’t been optimised since Georgian times ... It could all be done using horses, carriages and street urchins. If you were Coca-Cola or Procter & Gamble, you'd [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 25, 2009, 9:10am EDT
  by Martin Stabe

• Medill Washington: Understanding data to be a better reporter

  "At Medill, we’re using a Firefox add-on called SQLite. It’s small, fast and free; in other words, it’s perfect for a journalist on deadline." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 24, 2009, 8:18am EDT
  by Martin Stabe

• The Scoop: The Case Against Teaching Access

  "SQLite is my choice for the candidate to replace Access in journalism education. In addition to the advantages listed above, it’s also easy to “install.” If you can download files, unzip them and move them to a location on your hard drive, you can “install” SQLite. If you can install [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 24, 2009, 8:18am EDT
  by Martin Stabe

• AP: Google CEO: Vast Web changes coming within 5 years

  "A Web where Chinese is the dominant language, and connections are so fast that distinctions between audio, video and text are blurred is perhaps just five years away, the head of Google said Wednesday..." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 24, 2009, 7:59am EDT
  by Martin Stabe

• The Shatzkin Files: Aggregation and curation: two concepts that explain a lot about digital change

  "Aggregation ... simply means pulling together things which are not necessarily connected. Curation is a term that has always referred to the careful selection and pruning of aggregates, such as for a museum or an art exhibition. But the concept in the digital content world means the selection and presentation [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 24, 2009, 7:55am EDT
  by Martin Stabe

• Guardian: Postal strike: How is it affecting mail delivery?

  Nice Google Maps project from the Guardian: "To monitor the effects of this strike we sent postcards via first-class mail on 20 October to 500 Guardian readers who will let us know when they arrive. As we hear from those readers we will plot their postcodes on the map." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 23, 2009, 4:20am EDT
  by Martin Stabe

• Daggle.com: Dear WSJ: To Avoid Google Disease, Please Put A Condom On Your Content

  Robert Thomson doesn't like promiscuity of readers who get their news online, and blames Google: "the whole Google model is based on digital disloyalty. It’s about disloyalty to creators." Danny Sullivan responds... [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 22, 2009, 7:02pm EDT
  by Martin Stabe

• Folio: Condé Nast Launches Reader for the iPhone

  "Condé Nast has developed its own reader technology to view magazine content on Apple's iPhone. The publisher will test launch the December issue of GQ mid-November for $2.99 in the App Store." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 22, 2009, 1:05pm EDT
  by Martin Stabe

• Media Management Center: Life beyond print

  "America's newspaper journalists are eager to compete in the digital world and want their newsrooms to speed up the transition from print to digital, according to this study of almost 3,800 journalists at 79 newspapers." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 22, 2009, 1:03pm EDT
  by Martin Stabe

• Editor & Publisher: Report: Many Newspaper Journos Want a Faster Transition to Digital

  "Far from resisting the transition to digital news delivery, nearly half of all print newspaper journalists think their newsrooms are moving too slowly, a report from Northwestern University's Media Management Center (MMC) finds." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 22, 2009, 1:02pm EDT
  by Martin Stabe

• Media Week: UK consumers won’t pay for web news, report saye

  "Nine in 10 UK consumers would never pay for news stories online, regardless of how cheap it was, according to ... A study of 2,000 UK consumers by Lightspeed Research commissioned for digital research outfit The Global Web Index..." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 21, 2009, 9:03am EDT
  by Martin Stabe

• NMA: Mail Online traffic up by 21% following Moir column controversy

  "Mail Online saw a 21% daily increase in traffic on Friday after a post by its columnist Jan Moir prompted a backlash across the web." [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: October 21, 2009, 4:41am EDT
  by Martin Stabe