Hugh Martin

Shit (some) journalists say

2012-01-31T10:14:00.001+11:00

What's in the digital store for 2012?

2012-01-18T12:31:00.001+11:00

It’s been a horror couple of years for media businesses in the ANZ markets, and on the revenue side things don’t look like getting much better any time soon.

Despite some optimistic predictions by analysts pre-Christmas, early new year indicators from the retail sector are that there is little if any growth to count on in 2012. So display advertising is likely to remain soft.

The car industry is struggling, real estate prices are flatlining, and whilst employment rates are still holding up relatively well job ads are stagnant at best.

Europe is either officially in recession or about to be, depending on who you read, and the only glimmer of hope for developed economies seems to be that the US might just pull a very small rabbit out of the hat and post some limited growth this year.

All of which will leave China wondering who it is going to sell to and trying to figure out how to manage a precariously balanced domestic economy as it grows by a forecast 8.3% this year.

With such challenging external factors media companies are looking to get their operational businesses streamlined and positioned for the next economic upturn, or at least refocused into new markets.

And any way you look at it the name of that game is digital.

Locals will watch with interest as News Ltd puts a price on The Australian’s paywall and starts to charge consumers in February some time, and then extends that to its other news properties. Will they follow a similar model to Slovakian media company Piano Media and introduce a unified paywall for all their sites and channels? Or will they price individually by product and brand?

Meanwhile, Fairfax has taken initial steps with AFR.com by bundling print and online subscriptions, where once there was a distinct price regime for each point of access. This has stimulated useage of AFR.com and provided some good initial data which will no doubt feed into the next iteration of the AFR’s digital strategy.

Other publishers are starting to use detailed information about patterns of useage to feed into cross-selling and build new value for clients.

And this, I think, is the key point for media in 2012: data. Data in all its forms can add enormous value for publishers: data about reader habits and preferences, data about customer needs, and data as a basis for new forms of journalism.

In 2012 innovative, consumer focused product development that takes advantage of all available data inputs for marketing and sales – and data output for editorial – will deliver much needed trial, purchase and loyalty as publishers look to grow valuable digital audiences.

The past ten years have shown us a lot, and one of the lessons is that audiences expect creativity and technical excellence in production values, as well as good content. “Quality” content on its own will not convince consumers to pay online. Quality – whatever that is – needs to be packaged cleverly, it needs to be easily accessible on all devices, searchable, filterable, and able to be interacted with.

In digital publishing terms we’re about to step into the interim stage of maturity as an industry. We’ve left infancy behind, but we’re not yet fully formed. The need for experimentation hasn’t passed, but at the same time expectations are vastly higher than they were five or six years ago and cost management is more critical than ever.

Just as the first phase of digital product development in media publishing was characterised by a serendipitous relationship between traditional journalism and the disciplines of software development, so the next phase of digital publishing needs to take advantage of other non-traditional media skills and expertise.

Some publishers have begun creating new roles in their newsrooms and marketing teams, whether it be social media managers or visual data journalists. This is a good step, but the challenge is to do more than simply retrain the smartest young reporters in the newsroom. Those smart young reporters have a lot to offer, but they won’t provide the solution on their own. So bringing in new skillsets, such as computer scientists, and training them as computational journalists is an example of the kind of direction publishers need to go.

Publishers have been on a set path for some years now, following the advent of new information and communication technologies. But for too long most didn’t really want to acknowledge this new reality. During 2010 and 2011 there was a belated recognition at the highest levels that digital really is the future. 2012 will be the year to act on that.

It’s going to take more careful planning, and in some instances a new culture of innovation and in others a whole of business transformation; it will take a fair degree of courage and even some luck, but the alternative is not pleasant to contemplate.

Behind the scenes of a 1970s newspaper

2012-01-16T08:55:00.002+11:00

Facebook apps: News brands beware

2011-12-01T10:31:00.001+11:00

Facebook's "social news" strategy is just another way of sucking the remaining life out of news brands.

I posted some comments on the new Facebook apps recently. At the time these apps were so new there was no real data about useage.

Now there is some early stage information about take up and response.

Problem is, the data appears conflicting and the commentary is just plain confusing. Added to which Facebook users, when asked, say they don't like the apps. Yet effectively they are corralled into using them because of the way Facebook has deployed them.

The Next Web reports that The Guardian app has had 4 millions instals since its release. The article acknowledges that the app lets "Facebook’s 800m+ users read the guardian’s articles online without actually leaving the social network".

However, despite this the app generates "almost a million extra page impressions a day".

How does it do this if users don't leave Facebook?

The only way that I can see it does this is by promoting other Guardian Facebook fan pages alongside the ringfenced content within the app. So, it is possible to navigate from the app to, say, The Guardian Media fan page and from there to an article on theguardian.co.uk.

But that's an extra two clicks, and effectively another drag on user numbers heading off to the parent news site.

It's all enabled by Facebook's Open Graph framework, which is a clever way of connecting content with Facebook users and functionality through API's. It's a seamless user experience, but one that is actually encouraging news consumers to care less about the news brands they are engaging with.

So Facebook's claim of success here, on behalf of their news partners (Guardian, Washington Post, Yahoo!News, The Independent etc) is disengenuous.

It is a great success for Facebook, but it presents a serious dilemma for news publishers. In reality, Facebook's "social news" strategy is just another way of sucking the remaining life out of news brands.

Publishers should go there at their peril. And to my mind executives like Donald Graham (Chairman of Washington Post and board director at Facebook) have such a conflict of interest that they should remove themselves from any publishing decisions to do with Facebook.

Everybody else needs to get a lot smarter about how they manage their news partnerships with Facebook.

Right now Facebook is sending traffic to news sites, but after the feast comes the reckoning.

What would Facebook do with $10 billion cash?

That's the number being bandied around as its initial raising target as it mulls an IPO. The answer, I suppose, is anyone's guess right now.

So, what would be the chances of them buying up news media? Mark Zuckerberg has been upfront about his interest in, even need for, content. Would he spend some of that change on buying a content generating organisation? Would his Chairman, for example, offer up the Washington Post?

Or closer to home ... would Fairfax be of interest?

A cashed up Facebook might well consider making a play for the newsroom of a traditional media company (or two). They'd have little interest in the production and distribution mechanisms, so effectively it would mean junking those assets and stripping out the journalism.

It's an unpleasant thought, but one that could conceivably happen.

All the more reason for news publishers to value their brands more effectively in their relationships with Facebook.

APN: Can closing papers be offset by digital?

2011-11-22T10:29:00.002+11:00

The closure of APN regional papers in NSW and SE Qld comes as no surprise.

Nevertheless, it is a sad indication of the ongoing shrinkage of regional media choices. The fact is, that current indicators suggest digital will not save APN's regional news franchises.

APN announced yesterday that it would close the Gold Coast Mail and Robina Mail, and reduce the Tweed Daily News to a Saturday paid print edition only and the Coffs Coast Advocate to a twice weekly freesheet.

It's worth mentioning that the Robina Mail only launched this year.

APN Regional Media CEO Warren Bright told the SMH yesterday "We will probably improve our focus on news because we will be breaking it online and will provide people with strong weekly newspapers, and we'll be relaunching weekend editions.

In an official statement Bright said, “We also have strong digital audiences in each market so it makes sense to combine a constantly updated digital news service with this modified print offering.”

That is either a triumph of optimism, or a cynical piece of corporate spin.

Here's what I know:

The Tweed Daily news has been losing money for years. In 2009 APN considered selling or closing it down. The only likely buyer was News Ltd and the view at the time was they might pay $5. Closing the paper meant taking a write-down hit that then CEO Martin Simons wasn't willing to take. So they "relaunched" it, effectively kicking the can down the road.

The TDN web site (mydailynews.com.au) gets something in the vicinity of 30-40,000 UBs per month, average page duration of 45 seconds, time on site of about 3.5 minutes. In online news terms that is not a commercial amount of traffic, and without a newspaper to promote the web site the audience is unlikely to grow. So on it's own it is not the solution.

One of the original printing presses in the office at the Tweed Daily News

Meanwhile, the Gold Coast Bulletin is rubbing its hands in glee. They can expect to pick up, not only the few readers who were still buying the Tweed Daily News but the real estate advertisers and what is left of retail, auto and jobs in the Tweed market.

Free kick to News Ltd.

Further south in Coffs Harbour The Coffs Coast Advocate has been free two days a week for some time, whilst paid the other three, but will now only be available twice weekly. This is probably where most of the job cuts will come from as the Tweed office has been gutted already. All APN offices run on a shoe string, but Coffs had been able to maintain some strength due to its recent success against the Fairfax owned Independent and the relative size of the Coffs area footprint.

Still, that hasn't been enough to save it.

Can the Advocate web site rescue things? Again, it has a similar problem as Tweed.

The http://www.coffscoastadvocate.com.au averages 40-50,000 UBs per month, with an average page duration of 41 seconds and time on site of 3.3 minutes. These numbers will not deliver much in the way of advertising revenue on their own. And note, only about half these number will be local readers. In other words about half this audience is of any value to local advertisers. the same is true of most of APN regional news sites.

Taken in isolation, the future of APN's Tweed and Coffs businesses is bleak. The next round of closure - my guess probably some time in the middle of next year - will be final.

The question has to be asked: How does a previously profitable business running multiple monopoly franchises across some of the country's strongest regional centres get to this point? And we can be sure it's not over yet, the Warwick Daily News will be at risk, and certainly the Sunshine Coast Daily is in a very precarious situation.

In 2006 APN regional newspapers had revenue in the order of $125m. In 2010 it was something like $55m. That's a helluva drop in four years. Some of it has been explained by the GFC, some by extreme weather events and the effects on tourism and agriculture. But at the heart of this company's problems is a failure of management.

At the beginning of this year a new CEO took over at the APN Group level, and in turn appointed a new CEO to the regional newspaper business. Both men were touted as being digital immigrants, at least.

The digital structure these men inherited in Qld was significant. In the previous four years APN had invested substantially (and appropriately) in building a web platform and an infrastructure of expertise to drive training, sales and distribution at both a local and national level.

For some reason this does not seem to have been leveraged effectively.

Meanwhile, print circ and revenue is still dropping and the only mitigation strategy seems to be cost reduction.

APN is often described as the biggest (Australian) media company no one has ever heard of. For years that anonymity served it well as it went about its work as a serious cash generator shipping substantial amounts of that revenue offshore to the O'Reilly's and INM News & Media. Since the O'Reilly's reduced their holding in 2009, and then a flurry of shareholder activism generated some media attention around the AGM in 2010, APN's inner workings have become more exposed.

Still, it's a story that hasn't yet been fully told. As a diverse media holding, the APN group had enormous promise in the late nineties and early noughties. Since then, and despite commendable efforts from some corners of the operation, it has failed to live up to that potential.

[Disclosure: I was GM of APN Online from 2007-2010]

Modern media: Necessary evil or saviour of democracy?

2011-11-09T20:32:00.001+11:00

I sat in on the Media Inquiry in Melbourne this afternoon, and listened to the ever thoughtful Paul Chadwick.

It was an absorbing session, and whilst it is probably clear that the most likely outcome is some increased influence for the Press Council, and not much else, nevertheless the process seems to have been worthwhile. And, in fact, that outcome may be just about ideal.

Who wants more media regulation, anyway?

But amongst all the talk of the threats to democracy and the power of the media, it struck me that an important historical point has been lost.

Inquiries like this start from the point of view that the media is a necessary evil, that it's a loose cannon needing to be controlled or regulated in some way. The underlying theory is that some influence needs to be brought to bear against the worst excesses of greedy moguls or uncaring shareholders.

All of that may be a fair cop, guv. But it does overlook one glaring positive.

Since the rise of a global media in the second half of the twentieth century – whether that be international wire services, CNN, the BBC, blogs, Twitter or digital radio – we have lived in an Age of Communication.

Digital only defines the latter part of that age. So let’s not get hung up on “citizen journalism” or Twitter.

What struck me as I listened to the discussion this afternoon – particularly as Paul Chadwick, who is clearly a student of history, referenced aspects of the long cycle of media influence and its roots in pamphleteering – was that a key aspect of post-industrial revolution western democracy, up until the mid-twentieth century, was militaristic.

I’m not suggesting that things are particularly peaceful in all pockets of the globe at the moment, but within and between western democracies it is true to say there is no threat of imminent war. And when you contrast that with the first half of the twentieth century the difference is startling.

Right now Europe’s economy is under greater stress than it has been since the 1930’s. The US economy is marginally better. These zones have been the driving forces of economic growth for hundreds of years. And yes, we know the centre of influence is moving from West to East.

But the point is that before the rise of global media, these economic stresses – and the communication technologies of the day – resulted in an inward nationalistic mindset that led to devastating wars. Two world wars were fought, millions died. Today no one is predicting that will be repeated.

Of course there are many influences to which this political stability can be attributed, but it is worth acknowledging that one of the very important components is ... the media.

What's your Facebook strategy?

2011-10-20T10:59:00.000+11:00

Most news organisations have Facebook pages that correlate with their brands. These pages may have tens of thousands of friends. Which is all well and good, but how much traffic is this delivering to news sites?

I'll bet it's not much, at least as a percentage of overall site traffic.

Yes, every eyeball counts and there's a good argument that says Facebook friends are more engaged readers than a user who surfs Google to a news story. But whilst having a Facebook presence is an essential requirement for online news publishers, I suspect publishers are getting themselves mired in another low return exercise and training readers to never even visit the "parent" news site.

Publishers have to use the social-networking giant more effectively than they currently do. If we don't, we can be sure Facebook will use us.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes no secret of the fact he wants media content, and lots of it.

“I hope that we can play a part in enabling … the companies that are out there producing this great content to become more social,” he said at an e-G8 forum in Paris earlier in the year. “We’re going to see a lot of the transformation in these industries over the next three, five years.”

Another way to look at it is that Facebook wants to become the "operating system of the web," as Mashable's Ben Parr puts it.

The recently unveiled new Facebook apps from publishers including Yahoo News, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Gizmodo, and a number of others, are a clear step in that direction.

The apps will tie in with Facebook’s new Timeline user interface as well as the new Ticker sidebar to let users read news stories within Facebook and easily share their reading histories.

It’s worth emphasising that these apps keep the reader wholly within the Facebook domain. They make no effort, other than via brand awareness, to steer the reader towards the originating masthead.

That so many traditional and online publishers have given the go ahead for their content to be fully replicated within Facebook, sacrificing page views on their own websites, is a big coup for Facebook. And it smacks of publisher desperation.

Washington Post CEO Donald Graham said in a statement that his company expects to see better user engagement and ultimately more reading activity by putting its stories within Facebook. “If you know that several of your friends have read a story, you’ll be more interested in it. We encourage people to try it out with their friends and keep up-to-date on the news,” he said.

That is a very brave move. And more than a little ironic given that not so long ago some publishers were accusing Google of stealing their content. (Google, by contrast, delivers a large percentage of traffic to news sites.)

Either way, publishers need to ask themselves who is really benefitting here. Facebook apps, such as the Washington Post’s and The Guardian’s simply play straight into Zuckerberg’s hands by lending their brand to the goal of keeping users within the Facebook universe.

The compounding factors to date for publishers, in product terms, are the disappointing results from iPad apps and the apparent failure of Google+ to steal market share from Facebook.

Whilst it is still early days, all Google+ seems to have done is prod Facebook into fasttracking its product releases and entrenching its 750 million users even more firmly within the site.

Google+ is a fine product, but as a social networking site it doesn’t offer anything to compel users away from Facebook. One social network is plenty for most people, and as long as Facebook keeps a focus on user experience, and manages the privacy debate maturely, it will be hard to displace.

iPad apps are a slightly different story.

Apps just haven’t taken off as many expected they would. Given the level of investment required to build and maintain news apps that can attract paying subscribers the question has to be asked whether that effort should be directed towards improving and marketing web sites.

Apart from the potential channel conflict that a news iPad app sets up, most sites already render adequately on a tablet browser.

Perhaps, now is a time for some different thinking. Instead of driving ahead with news apps, focus on optimising news web sites for access from any device and limit tablet apps to classifieds and transaction products.

And get back to figuring out how to outsmart Facebook.

Working for Rupert

2011-09-09T13:47:00.000+10:00

In 2005 I was appointed editor of www.news.com.au. In November that year I was invited to attend the News Ltd editors conference in Adelaide, where I was briefly introduced to Rupert Murdoch. It was the only time I met the big chief, though it wasn't the only time I felt his influence.

The editors conference is an annual, or twice annual event held in different capital cities where News Ltd has metro daily papers. It brings together all the editors of the metro and regional newspapers - as well as the most senior columnists - and over a couple of days of presentations and workshops, thrashes out the critical issues shared across the Group.

The headline agenda is set by the CEO and then fleshed out by Corporate Affairs chief Greg Baxter and his office. The topics are inevitably current and often controversial. Debates go on all day and well into the night over dinner and many drinks at the most expensive restaurants in town.

It's a big deal within News Ltd, and it's fair to say that in and of itself it's a positive thing. But it's not something you'll see reported anywhere, so outside speculation always tends towards assuming the worst.

I attended a few of these conferences during my time at News and invariably they were focused on how to manage the transition from a print centric to a digital world.

The Adelaide conference in November 2005 was otherwise notable for a couple of reasons. Rupert was in town to open the new Adelaide Advertiser building, and the conference coincided with the inaugural News Awards of which the Murdochs were very supportive.

I was scheduled to speak on the morning of the second day. My brief was to describe the online opportunity for News in Australia in terms of new audience and new approaches to doing journalism. There was real interest at the most senior management levels in trying to come to grips with the implications of digital for every aspect of newsroom organisation, reporting and news production.

The other key point of interest at that time was Myspace. News Corp had just paid $580 million for the social networking site but very few people in the Australian arm of the business knew what it was, how it worked, or how it made money. For Australian print executives it was a confusing and even threatening addition to the business, but the signal was loud and clear: digital is the way of the future.

The session took place in the boardroom situated on the top floor of the glittering new Advertiser building, opening on to a roof garden with views of the city. Twenty five people sat around a large U-shaped table. It was a warm, sunny late spring day.

After opening comments and introductions from CEO John Hartigan and then my immediate boss (one of the sharpest minds I've had the privilege of working with), it was my turn to speak.

At that stage I'd been with the company for about three months. I'd had some experience editing a major news site, having been editor of theage.com.au for the previous three years, so I felt confident about what I had to say albeit somewhat daunted by the audience I was addressing.

There was a web connection in the room, so I was able to project examples of online news coverage from a range of different outlets covering the London bombings, Hurricane Katrina, and other major news events of recent months. A the time there was a clear trend toward user generated, or audience contribution and it was something I was really keen to get working at news.com.au.

Another bugbear of mine at the time was linking out. I was directing my team to put at least one external link into each article. Australian news sites still don't do enough of this, but at news.com.au we were trying to use the medium to give our readers background or further information that would otherwise not run in the actual copy of an article. The web is perfect for this.

And one of the sites we used - with caution - was Wikipedia. I emphasized caution because there are some topics you cannot rely on Wikipedia for, but by and large historical or science based topics, for example, tend to be fairly safe sources of basic information.

In today's terms I was stating the bleeding obvious. But to an audience of News editorial executives in 2005 the whole issue of audience participation was a bit confronting. And as soon as I mentioned Wikipedia arms shot up around the room.

Chris Mitchell, editor of The Australian, was the first to object. For Chris it was a legal issue. "I don't like Wikipedia," he said. "I have my lawyers looking at it."

It was difficult to respond to that, and of course Mitchell wasn't looking for a response from me. I've occasionally wondered since whether The Australian's legal team has had any luck against Wikipedia ...

The second objection came from Daily Telegraph columnist, Piers Akerman. For Piers it was a journalistic issue.

"I don't like Wikipedia," he said. "They're not journalists. We are the journalists and editors. We are the ones who check and verify information. Wikipedia is unreliable and full of mistakes."

I replied that a) the Wikipedia model has a strong self-correction mechanism, b) we used it very carefully, mostly on non-controversial topics, and c) the scientific journal Nature had just published the initial results of a comparison with Encyclopedia Britannica which put Wikipedia in a favorable light against the venerable Britannica.

Nevertheless, Piers seemed unconvinced.

The third objection came from Herald Sun columnist, Andrew Bolt. For Andrew it was a personal issue. "I don't like Wikipedia," he said. "They write bad things about me."

Legal and journalistic complaints were one thing, but this was something altogether different. I wasn't sure how to respond, but rashly decided to pull up Andrew's wikipedia entry live on the projector screen.

Suffice to say the entry was long but bland, and there was nothing in the first few paragraphs that could be immediately described as insulting or biased. Luckily for me.

As I was wrapping up my presentation Rupert came in and stood at the back of the room by the tables that were laid put for morning tea. Afterwards we broke for coffee and biscuits. Rupert mingled with old colleagues like Terry McCrann and was introduced to the few newbies like myself who were present.

Following morning tea, Rupert addressed the room. He spoke for about 30 minutes without any notes. He was quick to say that digital is the way of the future.

"As you know," he said, "we've recently purchased Myspace and we will continue to look for other suitable acquisitions.

"The web is the great disruptive technology of our time. It's where our audiences are moving to, and it's where we have to be.

"When I get up in the morning I can check the news from all over the world. I am constantly amazed by the rich variety of offerings on the web. Sites such as Wikipedia ..."

At which point I looked down the table and saw Andrew Bolt put his head in his hands, and Piers Ackerman nod wisely in agreement.

John Hartigan, whom I was sitting next to, leaned over and whispered, "I'll bet you're glad he said that!"

Indeed, I was.

Chris Lilley is neither Jesus nor the anti-Christ

2011-05-29T15:48:00.005+10:00

Chris Lilley polarizes opinion, but as an artist he has more in common with David Williamson than Austen Tayshus or the team at Working Dog.

In today's Sunday Age Bruce Guthrie is indignant about Chris Lilley's tastelessness and questions whether the the ABC has breached its charter by airing Angry Boys. Although he does still think Mr Lilley is "supremely talented".

If he was a letter writer he'd be "Outraged of Moonee Ponds" and we'd all just roll our eyes. But Mr Guthrie's a paid columnist and you've got to wonder about manufactured froth and bubble such as this.

Still, he knows there's something going on here. He can sense that what Lilley is doing is interesting, but he doesn't quite know what that is. So he has a bet each way, which is hardly guaranteed to get the passions flowing.

There's been a lot written about Lilley's new show, much of it glowing. But a good deal of it perplexed about the nature of his comedy.

One of the most intelligent critiques of Angry Boys comes from Waleed Aly:

"Typically from Lilley, there's plenty of discomfort here. His bigoted characters are extreme but presented with an unnerving realism and an editorial silence that raises tricky questions."

Waleed hits the nail on the head with the reference to realism. Lilley's social commentary is sharply observed, and the work is all the more powerful for it.

Lilley addresses this directly in a recent interview with FHM:

FHM: Is Australia becoming more humourless and uptight?
CL: I don’t know… I’m not sure if I want to make a statement about that. You might be right.
FHM: I’m sure I’m right. It’s why you’re so successful, because your shows remind people of the way we used to be. We used to be unafraid.
CL: I see what you mean. But I also think there’s this really patriotic thing going on in Australia at the moment. That’s what I was trying to tap into with Daniel and his Aussie flag obsession, and the Southern Cross business. Younger people really identify with that now: you’re white, you’re Aussie and you’ve got to have your Southern Cross tattoo. When I was younger that didn’t exist. It was almost embarrassing – you didn’t want to be associated with that old school “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie” thing. It was cringeworthy – but for some reason now it’s back.

One of the mistakes reviewers and commentators seem to be making about Lilley's work is that they insist on reading him through the prism of "comedy". As a writer or actor he's regularly described as a comic genius, but he then confounds these assumptions by not being drop dead funny all the time.

And that reaction is not about his comedy being more or less sophisticated, or the audience being more or less receptive.

As a playwright David Williamson has similarly confounded critics throughout his career. His comedies and dramas are always character driven, but the characters are often types or stereotypes. Lilley is dealing in the same kind of material, albeit in a different milieu.

The one thing on which all commentators concur is that Lilley is a big talent. As David Williamson might agree, it's a talent that deserves a better class of criticism from our cultural elites.

The app is not the savior of news

2011-03-16T09:21:00.001+11:00

The iPad is now one Christmas old and with the benefit of more devices in more hands publishers are readjusting their projections and re-evaluating the success metrics.

The weight of expectation of a whole industry is a lot for one small device to bear. So how is it holding up?

The iPad is doing just fine, thank you very much. But it doesn't look like it is going to singlehandedly save the media publishing industry any time soon.

To get a feel for how apps are being received by consumers, I did a small, informal survey of recent iPad converts, including a few longer term users. Of the ten people I spoke to, all are high consumers of news in other formats, and range in age from their twenties to seventies.

The verdict, unsurprisingly, is that everyone loves their iPad. Some use it more than others, but each said they were spending more time online as a result of it.

But they remain underwhelmed by the available news apps and the device hasn't made any real difference to their media consumption habits yet, nor has it convinced them to pay for news where they had previously not been doing so.

There appear to be two elements at work here. One is that the iPad provides an adequate web browsing experience. It's not perfect, and there are plenty of sites that, for example use Flash extensively, that don't work properly on the iPad's Safari browser. But by and large it is a satisfactory news browsing experience.

The other element is that news apps just aren't up to scratch. Most of the survey sample had tried one or other of the available paid news apps but had dropped the subscription after an initial period of trialling it, making do with the available free versions.

The complaints were fairly consistent. All felt that while they were willing to pay for news, they resented having to pay for something they felt was sub-standard The complaints ranged from "It doesn't have everything that's in the paper" to "It's too slow, the news is out of date" to "It looks too much like a paper", there was some criticism of the technology as slow or buggy.

Breadth and timeliness of news delivery was the most important element. The web has taught consumers to expect instant breaking news, and the expectation is that the app will deliver the same, as well as being a luxurious reading experience. The app is seen as potentially combining the best attributes of print and online.

Early iPad news app usage data pointed to early morning and late evening activity. I expect we will see that change as the tablet finds its way into the routine of people's lives. The expectation follows that we should see increased audience numbers and more frequent session times.

But that puts a spotlight back on the real motivation of publishers in producing iPad apps. Are publishers still defending print circulations, or are we honestly trying to build new audiences with our iPad apps? My small survey group felt the publishers really want them to go back to buying the newspaper. Why else, they argue, would an app look and feel so much like a print product, or even in one case look exactly like a replica of a newspaper?

And why would it be so slow with the news? Queensland's flood and cyclone disasters were a case in point. Major rolling news stories were not available on some news apps as fast as they were on news web sites. Paying customers were right to feel ripped off.

Much was written in 2010 about publishers' embracing the tablet as a way of reviving the habit of paying for news. At the same time the consensus was that the new offering needed to be compelling enough to encourage the habit. With a little bit of time and plenty of apps in the app store, it is painfully obvious that few, if any of the news apps currently available are compelling enough to attract and keep paying readers.

The message from the market is - Yes, we'll pay for it, but it had better be good.

First published in the PANPA Bulletin February 2011.

Resuming transmission ... and changing direction

2010-12-01T23:35:00.000+11:00

I finished up at APN yesterday after three and a half years. It has been a great ride, and very productive. I feel I am leaving a business quite different from the one I joined.

Digitally it is well positioned, with traffic growing and ending the year with the strongest revenue numbers ever. Really terrific YoY growth. The immediate challenge for the business now is meeting client demand and ensuring audience growth continues. But that's not a unique situation. It's an indicator of success.

During the past three and a half years we have established a whole new network of regional news sites that is now a genuine competitor as a network buy to FD and NDM. Obviously, the APN Digital coverage is specific in geography. But it is 10% of the national market that no one else reaches, so it is very valuable.

And this year we did the agency deal with Fairfax to sell classifieds in Qld and Northern NSW, which kicked off in August. I think that is a classic win win.

We also set up some pretty ambitious new products - such as finda - that are set to continue the growth story and extend into new audiences.

So I feel satisfied I am leaving the digital part of the business well positioned and primed for further growth.

And I am pleased to say that we brought some very good digital people into the business. The kind of talent and expertise that will enable APN to build a new business culture, and continue the growth trajectory that digital has been on.

As for me, I'll watch with interest. But right now I'm looking forward to having a break and spending some time with my family.

Happy Christmas, and here's to 2011 ...

Customisation and news sites

2009-04-20T08:23:00.004+10:00

In early March Fairfax Media relaunched www.stuff.co.nz incorporating a degree of user enabled customisation previously not seen in New Zealand news sites. Below is a few thoughts about personalised news services from Darren Burden and David Higgins.

Darren is Director of News and Sport at Fairfax Digital in Australia (he was not involved in the Stuff relaunch). David Higgins is editor of News.com.au which was the first major Australian news site to incorporate broad based customisation.

Q: Any general comments about the style of personalisation we've seen on news.com.au and now stuff.co.nz?

DARREN: Personalisation has been the flavour of the month for as long as I can remember. The thing is that people like the idea of personalisation, but very few could be bothered to actually use the features.

DAVID: Technically – I think I have this right – News.com.au and Stuff.co.nz are examples of customisation, where visitors can change a website to fit their own needs, eg. putting sport up top and entertainment down the bottom. Personalisation is where a site watches a visitor’s behaviour and changes itself to fit that individual’s needs. With care, I think both are good ways of building loyalty, but customisation/personalisation is only one element of a digital strategy.

DARREN: For a news site there are other limitations such as balancing the customisation above the fold, or being able to add components of interest such as email or IM clients. This type of functionality also impedes the “serendipity effect” of being spontaneously directed around a website using devices such as the Top 5 stores, or most viewed videos. I do like the idea however of localisation – this makes a lot of sense. For example the work that Stuff.co.nz has done with weather. We need to get cracking on that concept for all Fairfax sites.

DAVID: For me there are five key reasons why digital journalism attracts people over print. Indulge the alliteration, but I’ll call them the 5Cs: cost (it’s free), convenience (it’s on your work computer or phone), currency (it’s up to date), connection (it’s not just a story it’s a discussion), and customisation (I can make the news suit me).

Q: So, David, has your experience shown that users treat News.com.au differently as a result of the format changes?

DAVID: Just over a third of visitors have in some way used our customisation features to change News.com.au to suit their tastes. Of those, about 40 per cent have moved content modules around on the page. The most popular customisation has been to move sport up to the top of the page. The second most popular has been to move the tech section – which appears at the bottom of the page by default – up to the top. We have seen engagement and session times increase at a higher-than-industry-average rates since introducing the technology.

Would we go to the next level and introduce an iGoogle or NetVibes approach allowing the construction of a totally customised experience? I doubt it because – being a big fan of NetVibes – I know Web customisation is more useful when pulling in feeds from all over the Web, not just from a single news site. Darren and I both agree that news sites are more likely to focus on further enabling users to export news content into third party customised environments.

Q: Darren, I know you have some thoughts on the degrees of personalisation that could work in different circumstances, could you give us either some examples or a rundown of what you see as ideal levels of personalisation for news sites?

DARREN: There are some personalisation techniques that could work really well – initiated from a product point of view. As I mentioned before, people don’t necessarily want to do these actions themselves, but if the product automatically does it for them it makes for a much better experience. Take for example Amazon, who combine behavioural knowledge from an individual – that is what they have bought, with intersections of the crowd to produce suggestions and recommendations. There are other things we can do such as not show you the same video/gallery/story on the home page if you have already clicked on it. The research that we do is consistent - people are time poor, they scan stories, they want breaking news. We should be showing you the stories you are interested in based on your past behaviour – a more up to date and personal experience if you like. We’ll need to change some mindsets and work practices to achieve this – for example the editorial team who currently choose the top eight stories may have to pick the top 25 to ensure we have the selection we need. Jonathan Rosenberg, Snr VP of Product Management at Google talks in much more depth about behavioural personalisation on his blog.

The second level of personalization is really more for readers who want to take our brands/content and build their own views in Facebook, NetVibes, blogs etc. This would entail creating better hooks into our content, but there are commercial challenges around this kind of personalisation which we would need to consider carefully. Nic Newman, Future Media Controller at the BBC recently indicated that they are also going to do more of this kind personalisation/syndication - but BBC don't have the same commercial challenges as public companies.

Q:In that context it’s interesting that The Guardian has just launched Open Platform. Given that we're still at the early, or even experimental stage, of this sort of formatting for news, how far do you think it can be pushed?

DARREN: I think a lot of it starts from some of the ideas already discussed. It can be pushed as far as the limitations allow it. Some of the limitations are commercial, budgetary or the capability of your technical teams. We are pretty interested in making sure we build functionality or features that really add value to the product, rather than just being a good idea.

Q: What about the editing process? Do you think we will see news stories being edited differently as a result of user information generated by personalisation?

DAVID: We certainly edit our home pages and features sections based on behaviour. News-editing is a lot more scientific these days and while there is still an element of “gut-feel”, most editors are more conscious of what stories and angles their audience are interested in. Editors now have incredible real-time data about their audiences and would be foolish not to be making the most of this.

DARREN: Creating and subbing the content would not change – the story will still be the story. The changes are more likely to manifest in layout and content management. For example rather than choosing one lead image, we may select up to 10 that could change depending on behaviour as discussed previously. The types of systems that support this type of content need to be smart and robust – they need to learn as they go along, and above all be easy, fast and flexible for the editorial teams.

DAVID: Current content management systems are not smart enough to efficiently edit stories for individuals – and clearly this will never be a manual task -- but I don’t see why this could not be possible in the future with smarter technology. The positive thing about the disappearance of "competitive barriers to entry" in our industry is the increased focus on innovation, which we all recognise as crucial to our prosperity.

Q: From a commercial perspective, what's the immediate upside? Does it increase the value of specific inventory? Do you think we'll see an upswing in targeted advertising?

DARREN: Clearly any product investment should have a commercial impact. In some of the scenarios above we would see an increase in page impressions as people find more content they are interested in. We would also see a corresponding increase in time on site which is a good indication of engagement – one of the key metrics for smart advertisers. After all it makes sense that the longer someone sticks around, the more chances they have of seeing ads. The engagement metric is also an indicator of quality. People don’t tend to stick around when the content is crap.

The other commercial aspect is really in behavioural advertising – one of the fastest growing segments of the online pie. We expect it to be a premium space as you need to have quite good data to provide this kind of service. It could be as simple as showing specific car ads to people who have been to Drive, or it could be show my ad to readers who are between 18-24, who've visited Drive in the last 7 days and who live at home. There will be an upswing, but creating the infrastructure to deal with this will be a challenge for publishers.

DAVID: Most of the current work News Digital Media is doing in this area is on the commercial side. NDM recently introduced an Audience Targeting product that allows clients to target their ads to people based on their browsing behaviour. For example we can now serve car ads to people who are interested in cars -- even when they are not in a motoring section. This not only makes advertising more efficient for clients, it also makes it more useful to visitors. Visitors remain anonymous of course.

Another US newspaper closes

2009-03-02T15:17:00.002+11:00

Denver, Colorado: The Rocky Mountain News ceased production Friday February 27.

Online news in 1981

2009-01-28T16:39:00.002+11:00

All eight newspaper sites, publishing via dial up, were only weeks old at the time. It took over two hours to receive the full text of the paper over the phone line ... at $5 per hour!

"This is an experiment," says David Cole of the San Francisco Examiner. "We're trying to figure out what it's going to mean to us as editors and reporters and what it means to the home user." (No office users back then.)

"And we're not in it to make money."

*!*

"We're probably not going to lose a lot, but we aren't going to make much either."

An elderly 'home user' (1:35) - who must be 70 if he's a day - really gets it, though.

Says Mr Halloran, "I think it's the future of the type of interrogation the individual will give to the newspaper."

Working the night desk

2009-01-22T13:59:00.004+11:00

Margaret Simons has been all over the Michael Backman incident at The Age this week. Her column in Crikey today discussing how the paper could publish a piece like that in error reminded me of the scene in The Thick Of It (Spinners & Losers episode) where the night desk at the Daily Mail is trying to follow Labour hacks' twists and turns in positioning a replacement for the recently departed PM.

Night Editor: You know our coverage tonight has either been wrong or guesswork. Which was wrong. So all we have now is a story shaped hole.
Angela: Seriously, your blood sugar's low and it makes you very irritable.
Night Editor: No. What makes me very irritable, Angela, is having no f*&*ing story and having to fill an entire newspaper with just f*&*ing prepositions.

(Yes, I know the examples are different, and the TV version of the night desk bears no resemblance to a real newsroom ...)

We're hiring

2008-12-24T20:47:00.003+11:00

APN Online is looking for:

Two web developers, specifically with Python and Django experience.
An advertising operations manager
A product manager.
A producer.
A web designer.
And a graphic designer.

What's black & white and completely over?

2008-12-12T15:43:00.002+11:00

Jon Stewart explains why it's all the internet's fault.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Clusterf#@k to the Poor House - Final Edition Edition

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Reading Fairfax's tea leaves

2008-12-07T12:02:00.004+11:00

Reading between the lines of the latest reports, including comments from industry analysts, it seems there may be a fair shake up inside Fairfax Digital once McCarthy gets his feet under the desk. There's no doubt digital is the future of the business, but there's plenty of debate about the right strategic path to success in this format, and the right structure to pursue within the company.

Here are a few choice quotes.

Malcolm Maiden speculating on Brian McCarthy's brief as new CEO:

"[McCarthy's] elevation following Kirk's departure would resolve a talent overlap at the top, and he would have a brief to accelerate the integration of Fairfax and its new businesses, including its online division, Rural Press and the former Southern Cross radio network."

Jane Schultz and Nick Tabakoff quoting Macquarie Equities media analyst Alex Pollak:

"With respect to Fairfax's ongoing migration to digital, McCarthy was not in the forefront of the digital strategy while at Rural Press (possibly correctly) so it will be interesting to see whether and how he manages this critical process at Fairfax."

Andrew Main in the Weekend Australian (not online) quoting Greg Fraser media analyst at Shaw Stockbroking:

"After pointing out that Fairfax's 'undoubted local content goldmine' could in the right hands become a multimedia powerhouse, as long as Brian McCarthy can upskill himself in that area as soon as possible, Fraser's note ends on a school yard analogy. 'If FXJ was in a game of media bullrush, it would be the big fat kid that knocks a few of the skinny kids out of the way but eventually gets bowled over by its more nimble buddies before reaching the safety line. Lose some weight, FXJ.'"

So, will it be integration and cost cutting at Fairfax Digital?

How the papers covered the Kirk story

2008-12-06T10:31:00.004+11:00

Reading the main papers today on the Fairfax story it's fascinating to see how the four broadsheets (including the AFR) have treated it. It says a lot about their current focus and strengths.

The Australian has done a fairly predictable Oz-type job: a "we told you so", chest thumping editorial, but also some really strong reporting from Andrew Main (currently not online), Jane Schultz and Nick Tabakoff who has led the way in covering the Kirk story for some weeks.

The SMH coverage is truly woeful. I can understand why they might be so timid on this issue, but it just looks pathetic given the scale of the story, its context in a tumultuous week (and year), and the competition from other publications, including within Fairfax.

The AFR does a pretty good job in print (tho of course not online) thanks to the steady hands and experience of Chanticleer's Alan Jury and the dean of Australian media writers Neil Shoebridge.

But my vote goes to The Age. They've gone hard - as they should have - but kept a good balance. They have a solid piece by media editor Matthew Ricketson, and a typically astute piece by the ever reliable Malcolm Maiden. Their straight business report doesn't add much that hasn't already been said, but I think the point about The Age's coverage is that it's bold and it shows that they are putting reader interest ahead of Fairfax politics.

Interestingly, there hasn't been anything from Businessspectator today despite a summary piece from Bartho yesterday. Gottliebsen's piece on the current Fairfax debt woes a few weeks ago pricked up a lot of ears but there hasn't been any more from him on this since.

Life's photo archive

2008-11-19T10:15:00.006+11:00

Good old Google brings millions of LIFE photographs together in an historical archive ...

Melbourne, May 24 1930, crowds cheer Amy Johnson after her long distance solo flight from London to Australia.

One word to describe Peter Costello? Peevish

2008-11-18T14:17:00.005+11:00

The Howard Years was a great piece of television. I'm looking forward to the next three instalments.

But how about Peter Costello? He just can't seem to help himself.

In today's AFR the utterly brilliant David Rowe perfectly captured Costello's squirm inducing performance from last night.

Monaco Media Forum

2008-11-17T11:09:00.002+11:00

Nice place to have a media conference.

Here's Jeffrey Cole's keynote from last Thursday - he's still bullish on TV (kind of ironic given the only place to view the speech is Youtube).

Nocleanfeed

2008-10-31T15:25:00.003+11:00

Protest is erupting against the Rudd Government's clumsy attempt to filter the internet.

It's a quixotic scheme - most likely technically unfeasible, and certainly of dubious economic value.

Stevie Wonder's cure for current ailments ...

2008-10-26T16:57:00.004+11:00

"Don't You Worry 'Bout A Thing" ... we were sitting too far from the stage for the picture to be clear but the screens either side of the stage help. And the sound is cooking. The Master Blaster was in superb form.

Newspaper cartoons online

2008-10-17T20:22:00.002+11:00

I love John Spooner's online animations, and there's a slew of other Age cartoonists pieces on youtube. The Oz had Nicholson's equally brilliant animations, but they seem to have been discontinued.

Reading between the lines with David Kirk

2008-10-15T11:40:00.007+11:00

The Fairfax CEO gave a speech at the Sydney Institute last night defending his company's recent restructure announcements and outlining his vision for the future of quality journalism at Fairfax.

Here's a copy of the speech.

A lot of what Kirk said was his standard stump speech about the strength of the business and its ability to face the current cyclical and structural challenges, etc etc.

But in amongst his assertions of long term sustainability and general optimism about the future of Fairfax are some interesting conclusions. These are not obviously statements announcing direct action, but they will be the inevitable result of some of the foundations that Kirk's optimism rests on.

Here's a salient quote:

" [...] we are in the process of transforming Fairfax Media into a multi-media news and information company. We have a long way to go, but we have begun the process of converging editorial content development and management, and brand management and sales, across our distribution platforms."

Fairfax execs have been saying this for a while now. It's quite obviously become a central piece of orthodoxy in the Fairfax camp. That's good and well, but the really interesting question is - what exactly does it mean? My feeling is that a couple of years ago it meant one thing, but now it means something quite different. What might that be?

Here's another clue, from Kirk's speech:

"We have some of the most powerful brands in the country. And they carry an emotive wallop.

"Indeed, a lot of the public reaction to our restructure that I mentioned at the outset is because our audience feels very invested in the brands because of what they stand for.

"In that sense, a lot of the debate and discussion has actually been heartening to us because of the relevance of what we do for so many readers and listeners – in print, on air and online.

"And their message is to reinforce exactly what we want: to continue the high quality journalism that is so important to them, and to the strength of our brands.

"Our brands therefore are the glue in the relationship we have with our audiences built as they are on our long history of journalism of the highest quality.

"For over 175 years, our mastheads have been the newspapers that champion the community and dare to make power accountable.

"The challenge for us as a company is to stretch the brands – to modernise them – so that they are as powerful in the 21st century as they were in the 19th and 20th centuries."

Brand has always been critically important to Fairfax, but it could be that there is now a real willingness to align the brands properly across content channels.

There has traditionally been a good deal of tension between print and online representations of the metro mastheads, ie. the web sites lean towards the salacious and the newspapers steer through an AB heartland. Some feel that has been mismanaged. Others that it is the right thing for two different audiences.

The real problem, though, is not that there are two (or even three) different audiences for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, but that decisions about how the brand should be managed via each channel are not centrally controlled. Neither metro masthead editor has overall control of his paper's web site. Consequently that consumer brand attachment, which David Kirk rightly values, is at risk.

I posted on this a while back. At the heart of the problem seems to be an organisational disconnect between Fairfax Digital which owns the masthead web sites, and the editorial culture of the newspapers which maintains the tradition of quality journalism. The ongoing separation of the two businesses - print and digital - means that the newspaper journalists have every reason to stay suspicious about the way their efforts will be treated online. Whilst that continues, the brands will suffer.

But Mr Kirk's speech last night may be indicating a shift in position on the governance of the masthead web sites. Whilst he is very clear about the overall value of the digital business, the specific needs of the metro masthead web sites remain distinct from Trademe or essentialbaby or Stayz or any of the other non-news sites that Fairfax runs. For the news sites to work most productively with their parent masthead it is only logical that each metro newspaper editor be able to direct online operations.

No doubt there will be voices inside Fairfax Digital who will maintain that no Fairfax newspaper editor could possibly run a major news site. That is to be expected, but nevertheless it would be quite mistaken.

Palin v Biden

2008-10-03T13:06:00.002+10:00

Today's much anticipated VP debate turned out to be a bit of a fizzer.

Online profits, Oz Twitter useage

2008-10-01T12:00:00.003+10:00

Monday Note shines a light on the elephant in the online newsroom: the financial numbers don't add up.

But can they?

Scott Karp points out that Facebook is lagging badly in delivering revenue against its current valuation. It has 100 million users but 2008 revenue was projected at only $300 million. So where's the rest?

According to Karp the problem is with Facebook's value proposition to advertising clients. It ain't as compelling as Google's by a long way.

In other words even the newest players can take a leaf out of Google's book. It's really about delivering customer satisfaction.

On another note it's interesting to see the growth in Twitter useage in Australia.

Future of Journalism BNE conference

2008-09-15T07:31:00.004+10:00

I was on a panel at the MEAA backed Future of Journalism conference in Brisbane on Saturday. Bronwen Clune and Cam Reilly have covered a lot of what was discussed. The Twitter feed from the day fills out some gaps.

As usual at these things, there was a lot of circular discussion, some confusion, and much furious agreement.

It seems to me the future of journalism relies heavily on the future of publishing. And it's in connecting those two things that the debate constantly gets lost.

But here's a practical idea - and a serious challenge to Chris Warren and the MEAA:

The current Fairfax layoffs will probably put more than 100 experienced journos on the market in Sydney and Melbourne. Many, if not most of them are not interested in turning themselves into publishing entrepreneurs. They want to keep doing journalism.

Most of them will be offered company redundancy packages. But rather than simply accepting a redundancy offer and hoping for the best, as some have suggested, why not take the opportunity to organise as a start-up publishing operation on a digital platform with a combination of syndication and display ad revenues? As an employee-owned, equity backed arrangement it could be a unique and imaginative attempt to find an alternative solution to the publishing challenge.

But this would really only work with the MEAA's complete involvement in getting the members to consider a proposal. It would also require the MEAA to broker some sort of equity support - they'd need to find the partner. But the contribution needn't be a prohibitive amount. In fact the best PR Fairfax could get out of this situation is to support exactly this sort of initiative themselves.

But if Fairfax weren't willing, others might be. The creative and journalistic talent is there, it just needs a publisher with reasonable pockets and a willingness to take a risk. There are a few around. Eric Beecher is one who has put his money where his mouth is. In fact Crikey Blogs is not a bad model for exactly what I'm suggesting.

Who else?

At the Brisbane conference, discussing tools and techniques for digital journalism are, l-r: Bronwen Clune from Norgmedia, John O'Brien from the Courier Mail and David Higgins from News.com.au. Moderator is Peter Lewis from ABC's Landline.

A bad week for Fairfax is a good week for PR

2008-09-02T11:35:00.006+10:00

Last week started badly for Australia's oldest newspaper company, and then it got worse. By the end of the week staff at the two metro dailies - The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald - were on strike and management was bunkering down to produce the weekend's papers.

All in all, the publicity was as bad as it gets for a major media company. The Australian, in particular, enjoyed the show and took delight in pointing out the shortcomings of their competitor, which of course eventually got right up the nose of Fairfax CEO David Kirk.

But traditional rivalry aside, the changes at Fairfax are really only good news for one group: PR people.

As a senior Communications executive confided last week, the Fairfax news made life for his staff better in two ways. With a flood of unemployed journos becoming available, suddenly the labour market would turn in favour of PR companies who had struggled to recruit quality staff in recent times. At the same time his people would be writing more copy for Fairfax as there would be less people in their newsrooms to knock it back or rewrite it.

It's a syndrome Nick Davies would recognise immediately.

Flat Earth News

2008-08-16T08:38:00.004+10:00

In 2005 US comedian Stephen Colbert coined the term truthiness to describe the things people claim to know "from the gut".

It rapidly became part of the lexicon, achieved Word of The Year status, and culminated with the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association dinner where Colbert gave a bitingly satirical speech in front of an unimpressed President Bush.

As Colbert said later, "It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that's not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It's certainty."

This concept of assertion as fact is at the heart of Davies’ book, Flat Earth News. Facts still matter to the extent that they are necessary to fill pages and airtime, but according to Davies in newsrooms all over the UK the veracity of those facts is hardly ever questioned.

Davies is a long time Guardian journalist who is well placed to spill the beans on the inside workings of Fleet Street. And spill the beans he does with a quarter of the book dedicated to inside stories of UK newspapers’ failings, from management bungling and bullying to newsrooms’ use of dodgy or outright illegal tactics in the chase for stories.

Covered in particular detail are the slow death of The Sunday Times Insight team, the Observer’s support of Tony Blair’s march to war in 2002 and 2003, and the Daily Mail’s aggressive prosecution of everyone from asylum seekers to welfare organisations.

In addition to his insider knowledge Davies has applied the research grunt of a group from Cardiff University. The researchers contributed a study of the ten largest UK newspapers quantifying the volume of stories originating from newswires and PR versus original reporting. This underpins much of the first part of the book covering the current working conditions of British journalists as well as the external influences that come to bear on their professional lives.

In Davies’ hands it’s highly engaging stuff, peppered with anecdotes and written as well as you would expect of a seasoned professional. Nevertheless, it is a depressing read.

The title of the book refers to news created largely as a result of the commercial and political pressures on media organisations.

As Davies sees it news quality is in a death spiral. Most journalists are still struggling to do the best job they can, but against ever increasing odds and the results of their failure are visible every day.

The evidence is visible in reporters paying scant attention to context and subtlety in the stories they are covering because of increased time pressures. In other words producing what Davies calls “churnalism”.

The failure is obvious when newsrooms obsessively recycle the same stories other media are running to avoid being seen as behind the news agenda.

And it’s clear to Davies that self-censorship is rife, with newsrooms choosing to run stories based on “safe facts and safe ideas” for fear of the “electric fence” of government or corporate interests.

Government information management is pervasive and the power of commercial PR extensive.

Added to all this is the ever increasing significance of the single biggest driving force for modern media managers – the EBIT line.

It is very gloomy stuff, indeed.

Davies has no great conspiracy to report. What he has identified is instead a consequence of the drive for profits in publishing running up against the need of governments, NGOs and commercial interests to control the flow of information. Which of course means there are lot of small conspiracies.

Australia is not immune to his forensic gaze. He writes, “A 2001 study of major Australian daily newspapers […] found that 47% of news stories were created by press releases and other PR activity; and that these stories overwhelmingly expressed the angle chosen by the PR firm.”

And Australian journalists feature occasionally too, albeit somewhat out of context.

Davies retells a story about the Murdoch owned National Star which received a tip off about information on the earlier disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa. After convincing the Star he had evidence the tipster persuaded the paper he needed $20,000 to hand it over. The Star reporter who flew to Cologne cash in hand to make the exchange was Piers Ackerman.

As it turned out the evidence, inside an airport luggage locker, was a pair of old brown shoes supposedly worn by Hoffa when he was murdered. The shoes had never belonged to Hoffa. The Star ran the story anyway.

Flat Earth News is rich with this sort of detail, and for anyone who cares about journalism it is confronting stuff. Davies is passionate about the cause but admits that in “trying to expose the weakness of the media” he is really only “taking a snapshot of a cancer”.

The strength of the book is its passion for journalism and the depth of detail about the practical working lives of newspaper reporters and editors. Where Davies is a little less clear is on the philosophical underpinnings of journalism.

On one hand he argues that truth is the primary obligation of journalism. But on the other hand he is equally adamant that objectivity in reporting is impossible. This raises an inherent conflict that Flat Earth News never resolves. If all reporting is necessarily and honestly subjective, what happens to truth?

The closest Davies comes to answering this is by suggesting that honesty is the critical element of good reporting.

The real problem, as this book points out, is that there is a conspicuous lack of honesty operating at all levels within the biggest newspapers in the UK. And because the media is still notionally operating within the traditional fourth estate role this lack of honesty is having a devastating effect, not just on the sustainability of newspaper journalism but democracy as a whole.

Whilst Davies’ conclusion is pessimistic nevertheless there are glimmers of hope. Anyone who loves newspapers ought to read Flat Earth News and grasp the truthiness of it.

Flat Earth News
By Nick Davies
408pp Chatto & Windus

This review is published in the current Walkley magazine

Blogging Future of Media 2008

2008-07-20T13:36:00.010+10:00

Ross Dawson has a review of FOM2008 and a roundup of subsequent comment from a variety of sources.

This was the third FOM event Ross has staged and it went off very smoothly. The technology has been improving year by year so the cross-continental panel discussions worked better than ever.

I was on The Future of Journalism panel with Jane Schultz from the Australian, Jonathan Este from the Media Alliance and Stephen Quinn from Deakin University. We only linked across to Silicon Valley as an afterthought at the end of the session, but it was this topic that seemed to spark the most passionate responses of the day ... mostly on Twitter.

The Twitter streams focus some angry microbursts largely against Oz Media editor Jane Schultz whom the twitterers identified as representative of a counter-productive old media attitude.

Jonathan Este wrote a delightful piece a day or so later that encapsulates the problem as it was manifest last Tuesday. The problem of "Old Media", as such, is given full bore treatment by Stilgherrian.

What surprised me on the day was the attitude of the new media evangelists. They latched on to some generalised points Jane made and then made their own generalisations in turn to cover off the whole of the media. It's intellectually lazy, but it does fit some of the more wild-eyed enthusiasts' view that the MSM is broken beyond repair.

Once that line was off and running it didn't matter what the rest of us on the panel said.

I must admit, though, it was interesting to watch. Here was a bunch of passionate and intelligent new media consultants and proselytisers who believe deeply in the inevitability of the digital media future, who appear not to have the first clue about the way MSM actually works, and who cling violently to a set of pre-ordained notions about said MSM. So the minute any capital "J" journalist makes a disparaging remark about bloggers or blogging they leap on it and shout "told you so!"

It's a two-way thing, though. Of course ...

But it's still annoying how long this same debate has been going round in circles. Back in January 2005 Jay Rosen declared Blogging v Journalists is over.

In June that year I was writing the Media Blog on theage.com.au and I asked Tim Dunlop from The Road to Surfdom to guest blog and discuss some of these issues.

To my mind Tim personified the best Australian example of non-MSM blogger-as-journalist. I later hired him to write the Blogocracy blog on News.com.au.

It should be said that Tim resists the description "journalist", and although we discussed it at length from his perspective he is a political writer in the public intellectual mode rather than the journalist mode. He nevertheless mixes solid occasional reporting with high quality analysis and comment written in an engaging style. Does that sound like journalism?

It's fair enough that he should choose not to be described as a journalist, but my response to Tim back then was that the best journalists are also public intellectuals of one sort or another. The two things are in no way mutually exclusive. It may come as a surprise to some of Tuesday's critics that even in Australian journalism there is a strong tradition of public intellectualism.

I think this sort of example really shows how pointless the argument is.

Maybe one day we can all move past the schoolyard syndrome and just get on with the job of making, distributing and selling great material ... in whatever format.

Update:

* Jeff Jarvis and Jay Rosen have continued the discussion with particular reference to curmudgeons. Jeff's initial example of curmudgeonly attitude happened at a Blogging conference and came from an MSM news editor. By contrast, last Tuesday's panel in question was on the future of journalism, and while there was indeed some provocation most of the curmudgeons were non-MSM types. So, while I agree with Jay that there are entrenched curmudgeonly attitudes within newsrooms all over the country, I would also say that there are equally entrenched attitudes within the digerati that are simply antagonistic to journalism.

* I ruffled a few feathers by saying that the contributions from the floor last Tuesday displayed a negligable understanding of the way the MSM actually works. And I stand by that. Jarvis and Rosen have both spent a lot of time in and around newsrooms. By contrast being a "tertiary trained" journalist or a freelance contributor is a quite different type of experience. Ben Barren, on the other hand, certainly does understand the challenges facing major media organisations and he also knows a lot about some of the initiatives they are developing in the social media space.

Future of Media Summit

2008-07-13T17:39:00.005+10:00

I'm speaking at the Future of Media Summit in Sydney on Tuesday on a "Future of Journalism" panel so have been contemplating talking points ...

Stewart Kirkpatrick has a strong view on the future of journalism question. I tend to agree with much of what he says, although I'm perhaps not quite as pessimistic being still very attached to and ensconced in the newspaper industry.

In the same context, I just stumbled across this video. It references The Economist from nearly two years ago, but the points are still relevant.

Gawking at Gawker's pay rates

2008-07-04T22:11:00.004+10:00

From Radar: "for Gawker writers, a million pageviews a month to an individual writer's blog posts will now net that writer $5000. Just back in January, a million pageviews would have gotten a writer $7,500. The reduced pageview rate means that writers must do more—or, of course, more popular!—work to even receive the same rate of pay."

$5 cpm's down from $7.50 at the beginning of the year?

As Jason Calacanis points out, that still ain't bad ... but the pressure is on.

Interesting insight into the way Gawker pays its writers, though.

Masterful PR at Vanity Fair

2008-07-04T18:41:00.013+10:00

You've got to hand it to them.

Consistently first class stories, beautifully written and accompanied by the best photography. Vanity Fair is an editorial-led magazine. And it is the complete advertisers' package.

The advertising pages in VF are beautiful to look at - they don't yell at you, they beckon seductively.

It takes nearly a whole month to enjoy this magazine properly. I love it.

I also love the way they use their web site. vanityfair.com is really a PR and marketing tool masquerading as a full service magazine site. The site is free, but the magazine leaks articles, on to it one by one as promotion for the current and upcoming print issue.

There's nothing particularly radical in that. But when your site content is as strong as vanityfair.com you can take a different tactical approach.

Their approach is to use PR to drive print sales, which of course is where they make the real money.

They do this regularly. Sometimes it's an Annie Leibovitz cover like pre-internet the one of a pregnant Demi Moore.

Today it was a Christopher Hitchens piece about letting himself be subjected to water boarding. theage.com.au lapped it up.

The story was a reprint from The Guardian, two days ago. The Guardian writer had taken Vanity Fair's bait ... and their hook and their line and their sinker too. But theage didn't mind.

I can't understand why theage didn't just write its own version. They did do a video piece. But the way video is presented on the Fairfax sites it really just looks like an afterthought to the serious work of putting words together.

By the way, if you're ever looking for Vanity Fair in an Australian newsagent you'll need to look in the "Women's" section.

Funny that ...

Bully for him ...

2008-06-27T19:31:00.005+10:00

John Lehmann, former editor of The Bulletin, is enjoying life in Noosa as a wine merchant.

WAtoday launches in Perth

2008-06-10T13:31:00.006+10:00

It was one of the worst kept secrets in Australian online publishing, but after much speculation Fairfax Digital has launched WAtoday.

In design terms the site is more or less a direct copy of theage.com.au, minus that site's feature strip below the splash at the top of the front page. At least it looks better than the Brisbane Times.

Most of the copy is currently coming from the smh or theage, but you can't hold that against them at this stage. With eight dedicated reporters I expect they'll start generating local coverage fairly quickly. It remains to be seen how deep that coverage will go, however.

I suspect they'll struggle for local readers. After more than a year the brisbanetimes.com.au's unique Queensland audience is pretty small and if Watoday does better - given the relative size of the market - it will be surprising. But it does allow Fairfax to flog a (notional) national online reach.

What's the bet they'll do Adelaide next?

Murdoch and the future of newspapers

2008-06-10T13:18:00.002+10:00

"Newspapers are in a sad way in America. Readership continues to fall. Advertisers are deserting them for newer forms of media. Revenues are plummeting, as the costs of printing and distribution mount catastrophically. ... In the eyes of many media experts, print journalism, that stubborn 15th-century technology, appears at long last to be on its deathbed.

"Except that Murdoch is investing in it."

Read the Full article in the Atlantic Monthly.

Rainy Monday (holiday) reading

2008-06-09T12:23:00.003+10:00

Rob Curley’s response to this week's WSJ article on LoudounExtra.com [via AD]

Steve Ballmer on changes in technology and the media (and Yahoo!) [via Cameron]

Lawrence Lessig talks about the link between battling government corruption and media reform

ninemsn execs abandon ship

2008-06-04T13:31:00.007+10:00

Tony Faure, the head of ninemsn has quit as chief executive claiming he is "not the right person" to take the business forward.

This is in addition to Chris Noone resigning as head of mobile. And it follows recent departures of commercial director Jason Scott, marketing director Tony Thomas who quit in March, and Jane O’Connell, the head of content and network innovation who quit in December and is now working for ninemsn partner Microsoft in Singapore. Scott has also turned up at MSN's Asia Pacific operation.

It's not a good look.

Wonder how much is attributable to the private equity influence?

Bo Diddley, Bo Diddley have you heard

2008-06-03T09:22:00.001+10:00

The man has gone, but the beat lives on.

Brisbane Times grows market? I don't think so

2008-05-22T12:24:00.017+10:00

This headline in a recent Adnews - "Brissie Times grows market" - caused a chuckle. Lovely spin from the Fairfax Digital guys, but the numbers don't reflect reality.

The chart above shows the 12 month growth in UBs to the Courier Mail and the Brisbane Times since the launch of the Brisbane Times. At first glance it's impressive enough - both trending up; the newcomer snapping at the heels of the incumbent which lifts its game in response.

At least that's how Adnews reported it. And of course, that's what Fairfax wanted.

"We've actually grown the online news reading habit," said Pippa Leary, MD of media at Fairfax Digital. "When we tested people before entering the market we found they weren't interested in hard news or credibility. Now that's changed."

Well, I'm not so sure about that. Let's look at the numbers a little more closely.

If we take average daily UBs since January 1, 2008 the figures stack up like this:

Courier Mail - 45,826
Brisbane Times - 29,542

Keeping in mind that Brisbane has a population of nearly 2 million, that means on this calculation around 75,000 people a day are looking at the two news sites, and that's not taking into account any duplication between the two audiences.

In other words about 3.75% of the population is interested in "hard news and credibility".

But actually the number is a lot smaller. And the reason is that most of the audience viewing these sites actually comes from outside Queensland. Rather than growing the news audience in Brisbane, what Fairfax Digital and News Digital Media are doing very well is moving traffic from their high volume sites in Sydney and Melbourne to their Brisbane sites.

Fairfax is exceptionally good at this. But News Ltd has a slight home town advantage with the Courier Mail brand reflected in stronger local viewing numbers.

In a trade release this week announcing the success of their new product, The Vine, Pippa Leary gave something of an insight into how Fairfax Digital uses its big traffic generators to spin off new commercial products.

"We were looking at fairly aggressive growth, but were surprised to get four times that in the first three weeks," said Leary.

Leary said Fairfax Digital had done "almost nothing" in the way of marketing the site other than directing existing Fairfax Digital users to the site through cross-promo ads on the SMH and The Age websites.

And that's exactly how they've built traffic to the Brisbane Times. Here's how the state based numbers break out (this is the stuff Adnews should have looked at):

It's clear that only one-third of traffic to the Brisbane Times comes from Queensland. And a little more than half the Courier Mail traffic comes from Queensland. Almost everything else comes from Sydney and Melbourne. I haven't bothered including the other states as they only contribute about 10% of traffic to both sites.

So in terms of "growing the market" the total figures mentioned above, and those used by Adnews, don't illustrate any real growth in the local online news category for Brisbane.

It is good spin, though.

(All stats from Neilsen Market Intelligence)

Bring out yer dead ...

2008-05-07T14:15:00.003+10:00

More doom and gloom about the newspaper industry. The Economist ran this line back in August 2006 with a cover story titled Who Killed The Newspaper? That one got up a lot of noses in the industry, and now they're at it again:

"... although all newspapers are being buffeted by the internet, their ability to respond will probably depend on whether their audiences are national, metropolitan or local. The first category can afford to invest in distinctive international or business coverage, while the last can prosper by becoming 'more intensely local'."

Which means, of course, those metro papers in the middle are probably stuffed.

The other publication taking aim at newspapers recently has been The New Yorker.

"Until recently, newspapers were accustomed to operating as high-margin monopolies. To own the dominant, or only, newspaper in a mid-sized American city was, for many decades, a kind of license to print money. In the Internet age, however, no one has figured out how to rescue the newspaper in the United States or abroad. Newspapers have created Web sites that benefit from the growth of online advertising, but the sums are not nearly enough to replace the loss in revenue from circulation and print ads."

So, is there an alternative view? The Guardian thinks so. Or rather, according to a recent report "newspaper editors around the world remain overwhelmingly optimistic". Which of course, is not quite the same thing.

"In one of the largest surveys of the worldwide news industry, 85% of editors said they were optimistic about their newspaper's future. At the same time, a rising number predict that print and online news will both be free in the future."

Bit of a disconnect there, but what can you expect? Editors sullying themselves with commercial imperatives? Not likely.

"George Brock, president of the forum and Saturday editor at the Times, sought to explain the disparity between the results and falling circulation and squeezed advertising revenues. 'This is a survey of editorial opinion," he said. "Most pessimism is a survey of commercial opinion.'"

Commercial opinion?

Well, there you have it.

It just depends who you ask, really.

State of the news media 2008

2008-04-16T17:46:00.003+10:00

The annual Project for Excellence in Journalism report is out, and not surprisingly online features even more than in recent years.

The number of people going online for news on a regular basis is rising.
The audience for major news sites is also continuing to grow.
But the questions of who will pay and how they will do it seem more pressing than ever.

ABC local and regional online

2008-03-20T11:02:00.007+11:00

Writing in The Oz today, Mark Scott makes the claim that "The ABC has no rival in rural, regional and local news gathering and with fast broadband coming to the bush, the ABC will be the 'town square' where events, issues and community information is posted and debated."

I wouldn't argue about the breadth of regional news gathering resources the ABC has, but I would definitely dispute that this makes the ABC Online the 'Town Square' for localities across regional Australia.

ABC Local is 60 new local web sites delivering - according to Scott - "not just local news, weather and sport but also video and audio, reflecting local events and culture and opportunities for audiences to contribute".

In theory that's fine. In practice ABC Local is a mess.

The layout of the opening page is all over the place. From a useability perspective it's nearly impossible to tell how to navigate to any region. There is a map, but it's hard to read. Once you do find your way to a regional location there's no apparent way to navigate back again.

Getting the UI right, as well as the data relationships, is critical to developing the community aspect successfully. We spent a lot of time doing that for Finda and while it's not finished yet I think we're on the right track.

ABC Local has a bit more work to do there.

Atlantic Freely

2008-03-09T16:32:00.012+11:00

For years my favourite US magazine was The Atlantic. It published quality essays and reviews and strong political and cultural analysis all at length and all broadly inclusive of places beyond the geographic boundaries of North America.

I started reading it in the mid-90s. But particularly under the editorship of Michael Kelly from 2000-2002 it attained a real zip and cutting level of insight, analysis and pure joy in the written form. Every edition was gripping, even if you weren't quite sure of the technicalities of a particular issue under discussion. The writing was compelling.

As a reader remote from domestic US politics it was dramatic, and fun, reading.

I let my subscription lapse in 2004, after about five years as a subscriber. It happened partly because I moved house and the new address got mixed up.

But only partly.

Anyway, I had actually tried to re-subscribe but none of my efforts could connect with the circulation department at Atlantic Media. I even telephoned a couple of times.

Despite the fact I wanted to, I couldn't renew my subscription to the magazine.

The complicating factors were:

I am resident in Australia
The Atlantic was in the process of moving offices from Boston to Washington

Maybe there was more. But it seemed, at the time, that these were the reasons.

However, as part of my original subscription I had received a username and password to access the web site wherein full current and archive issues are available, and more.

That access remained active even after my paid subscription had lapsed. Which meant that from 2004 until early 2008 I had ongoing access to the Atlantic.

During that time, I read the magazine less. I printed articles from the web site fairly frequently, but I didn't buy the magazine often. Largely because I felt it just wasn't up to scratch. Worth a quick look, but not worth $15.

It seemed like it had lost its way a bit. It had drifted into very dry economic territory leaving behind the type of quality journalism that had long been the foundation of its success.

So I read Vanity Fair instead. And paid $18.

Always keeping an eye on what was happening each month at The Atlantic.

And then on January 22 the magazine announced it was "dropping its subscriber registration requirement and making the site free to all visitors".

Which, practically, didn't make a lot of difference for me, but is, I think, a good thing generally.

Finda.com.au

2008-02-28T17:48:00.007+11:00

We launched a new site today at APN Online, which I think is going to do good things for us. Finda.com.au has its first iteration in Toowoomba, and we're planning on rolling it out to the rest of regional Queensland and Northern NSW over the coming months.

It's initially focusing on news and events. But it has a few nice features enabled by the crossover taxonomy and geo-targetting that allows news stories and diary events to be themed together under content or category types. This sort of data configuration allows a lot of flexibility in the way you can mix and mash content.

I was encouraged to see this reference in the Newspaper Next 2.0 report from the other day, because it's exactly what Finda is aiming to do :

“Looking at the possibilities that lie beyond the boundaries of traditional newspaper companies the report describes how such a ‘former newspaper company’ might look several years in the future, in the eyes of the consumers and businesses it aims to serve:”

TO CONSUMERS

The source I try first whenever I’m dealing with a local want, need or problem
The source I use most often to know what’s going on here
The best source of facts, knowledge and wisdom about this place
A source available in the times, places and circumstances in which I need it
The town square and connective tissue of community life here
The place I go to be part of the fabric of life here

TO BUSINESSES

Big, comprehensive solutions for reaching people
Narrow, targeted solutions for reaching people
Small, low-cost ways to reach people
Ways to reach specific target groups, niches, interests
Ways to create one-to-one customer relationships and build loyalty
Ways to build my image or brand
Ways to reach people when they are most likely to buy

Stay tuned for more releases soon.

Newspaper Next 2.0

2008-02-20T15:45:00.002+11:00

Released yesterday the American Press Institute report "outlines a broad new vision for what newspaper companies must become if they are to survive in today's heavily disrupted media landscape. It also presents 24 case studies of new products developed using Newspaper Next principles and methods, and seven profiles of organizations that have made significant structural changes in the process of developing these products. And it examines the most promising areas for maximizing online revenue generation, with assessment tools and practical guides any newspaper can use to begin taking advantage of those opportunities."

Full report ...

Underbelly

2008-02-14T10:32:00.010+11:00

"In Melbourne criminals have a saying: We catch and kill our own ..."

Jason South's photo of Carl Williams as a pallbearer at Andrew Veniamin's funeral

John Silvester's opening line of the feature he and I worked on together with Simon Johanson and Matt Absalom-Wong at theage.com.au in 2004 sets the scene for the story of Melbourne's gangland killings more powerfully than any of Vince Colosimo's posturing on nine's Underbelly.

And Dave Steel's throbbing, sinister slide guitar track adds just the right threatening atmosphere to our "tour of murderous Melbourne".

Underbelly, however has a dinky little soundtrack that does nothing for the atmospherics and only works as an illustration of what a missed opportunity this show already appears to be. Can you imagine the Sopranos without the funky "Woke up this morning"? Or The Godfather without Larry Kusic and Nino Rota's famous theme?

Underbelly has been banned in Victoria, but I watched it in Brisbane last night and many Victorians will no doubt be watching it from today after downloading it from Bit Torrent sites like mininova, iso-hunt and Torrent-finder.

Vince Colosimo as Alphonse Gangitano in Underbelly

On a lot of levels it's a disappointing effort. The performances are quite strong but the timeframes feel too rushed. Some of the events portrayed - particularly around the murder of Greg Workman and the shooting of Alphonse Gangitano - directly reflect news reports of the time, but the sequence and lead up events are not clearly communicated to the viewer. So if you aren't already familiar with the stories on which the performances are based the storyline is confusing.

Alphonse Gangitano in Lygon Street

Gangitano is a good example. The guy was clearly deranged, but the producers have missed an opportunity to create a powerful figure in the tradition of deranged criminality, whether a Sonny Corleone or a Clyde Barrow. Instead we get superficial glimpses of Gangitano at home with his family contrasted with scenes of murder or mayhem that don't do much at all to expose why this guy might have acted in such a way.

Another missed opportunity.

It's almost as if in trying to capture the whole messy era in one (13 episode) series they've bypassed a great dramatic opportunity in favour of a quasi-documentary style. David Chase would have done this slowly across five or six series. The material warrants it. It's a pity Australian producers don't have the confidence to approach such rich material in the same way.

Myspace and the future of social networking

2008-02-12T11:51:00.000+11:00

... in their own words: Chris DeWolfe and Amit Kapur

Going hyperlocal with Holovaty

2008-01-24T14:38:00.000+11:00

Adrian Holovaty has just launched his latest project - Everyblock.

"EveryBlock filters an assortment of local news by location so you can keep track of what’s happening on your block, in your neighborhood and all over your city."

They've launched with Chicago, New York and San Francisco and presumably have much more to come.

Bulletin to cease publishing

2008-01-24T10:59:00.000+11:00

The magazine that has run some of the biggest names in Australian literature during its 128 years - Henry Lawson, Banjo Patterson, Joseph Furphy and Miles Franklin, amongst others - has published its last issue.

PBL Media CEO Ian Law said that the publication had been making a loss for a number of years and they "could see no prospect of this trend being reversed".

As might be expected, the "impact of the internet" was cited by ACP chief Scott Lorson as a factor in the decision.

That's too easy, though. Magazines - weeklies and monthlies - are actually less effected by the internet than newspapers.

The truth is it had lost its edge.

P.S. I don't love you

2008-01-09T17:32:00.000+11:00

I admit it. Stories like this are too compelling.

I mean, all that chopping must have been hard work ...

But then, looking at that page, what really distracted me from the chopfest that was going on with the news item was the MPU ad for "One of the year's best love stories" starring Academy Award winner Hilary Swank, Gerard Butler and Friends "icon" Lisa Kudrow: PS, I love you.

Ahh, the wonders of contextual advertising.

"The humanizing moment" Bollocks!

2008-01-09T14:46:00.000+11:00

Hillary Clinton has beaten Barak Obama in the New Hampshire Democratic primary

At NYT.com The Caucus reported that "Terry McAuliffe, Mrs. Clinton’s chairman, on MSNBC attributes her apparent victory to her tearful moment yesterday: “That humanizing moment yesterday,” he says. “That did it.”"

That wasn't a tearful moment. It was pure theatre by an expert performer. Have a look.

But the "tearful moment" was reported seriously all over the place. So it worked a treat.

Schmucks.

Citizen journalism is a dumb name

2007-12-10T11:10:00.000+11:00

In the last couple of weeks a number of current and former colleagues - senior online editors on some of the largest news sites in Australasia - have directed me to Steve Outing's recent column titled An Important Lesson About Grassroots Media.

Their polite, but pointed reasoning is that as someone who's responsible for a network of regional news sites and who has for some time talked up the opportunities around online community publishing (it gets called UGC in some quarters), I should be aware that it's a highly risky endeavour.

All right. I am.

I actually think it has always been wrong to think of so called citizen journalists as full time reporters or replacements for journalists. That was never going to happen. The two things - user generated content and professionally generated content - need to coexist.

Steve Outing's experiment is a good illustration. Pure community reporting as a business model was always going to struggle. The real question is what part does it play in the content mix on a quality site? Is it emphasised alongside professional reporting, or is it something that forms an important part of the backdrop to a site?

My feeling is that for major news sites community contribution has to be there but professional journalism is the key driver. For regional news sites the weighting and mix may lean more towards the community contribution model.

Professional reporting and editing remain at the core though.

As for the term "citizen journalism", at worst it's misleading and at best less than useful in an Australian context. Jeff Jarvis has been talking about networked journalism as an alternative. I don't think this adequately describes what we're talking about either. But either way the debate would benefit from some clearer thinking around what it is we're talking about when we discuss the involvement of our readers in the publishing activity on our sites.

Les Hinton to be new CEO of Dow Jones

2007-12-07T19:44:00.000+11:00

Reports today said Executive Chairman of News International, Les Hinton, had been appointed CEO of Dow Jones.

This afternoon staff received this note from Mr Hinton:

Sent: Fri Dec 07 15:06:38 2007
Subject: A message to all staff from Les Hinton, who has been tapped to be the new CEO of Dow Jones

To all Dow Jones staff:

Some of you will already know that I am to become chief executive officer of Dow Jones & Company next week once the acquisition by News Corporation is complete.

First, I want tell you how thrilled I am. I also want you to know that, even after a lifetime in the media, I have never faced a more exhilarating challenge.

Dow Jones has a great history and a great future as part of the News Corp. group of companies.

You will become part of what is, in many ways, a very different company to Dow Jones. However, News Corp.'s ambitions are just the same: to create and grow media properties that will thrive in the years ahead.

Under Rupert Murdoch's leadership, News Corp. has built itself through a readiness to challenge the odds and make radical, innovative decisions. Its principal resource, as with Dow Jones, is the energy and imagination of its people.

For the last 12 years, I have been executive chairman of News International in the UK. NI is the country's largest publisher of national newspapers, with more than 10 million readers each day. It has many of the same challenges and opportunities as Dow Jones, and we will gain a lot by sharing ideas and working together.

Meanwhile, there are many people for me to meet and there is much for me to learn. I look forward to working with you in the years ahead and seeing as many of you as possible in the coming weeks.

Les Hinton

Growing online ad revenue

2007-12-07T14:58:00.000+11:00

We know the pie is growing fast - AUD$1.2 billion or thereabouts in our market this FY:

It's a good picture, from an online point of view. But some analysts are now questioning just how much of that growth is flowing to online news businesses.

In the US there's a looming debate about the gap between the phenomenal growth of online advertising and the share of that spend being collected by news organisations.

Alan Mutter makes the point that:

"Internet advertising sales at newspapers this year have grown at slower rates than those of competing media, shrinking the industry’s share of online revenues in the third quarter to the second-lowest level since 2004."

Food for thought.

What's the collective noun for editors?

2007-12-07T13:18:00.000+11:00

... And it's not directly related to alcohol.

l to r: Current news.com.au editor David Higgins, Chris Janz (news.com.au editor 2002-05), Hugh Martin (news.com.au editor 2005-06)

Mid-week roundup

2007-12-05T17:35:00.000+11:00

I've been catching up on some reading this week, viz:

Bill Keller of the New York Times on "the newspaper in the days of digital anarchy".
And Jeff Jarvis's response - which in inimitable fashion went on ... and on.
A snapshot of Vint Cerf's guest edited Media Guardian featuring Chris De Wolfe, Chad Hurley and Biz Stone amongst others.
And following on from last year's Australian Press Council State of the News Print Media report is their update for 2007.
Making sense of the semantic web (see below).

Media Report runs blog panel

2007-11-11T08:41:00.000+11:00

ABC Radio National's Media Report this week aired a portion of the blogging panel I was on back in mid-September with Pippa Leary, Tony Walker, Graham Philipson and Chris Gilbey.

The MP3 is here.

Oz Media on APN Online

2007-10-07T13:00:00.000+10:00

APN News & Media is rolling out a series of classified internet advertising brands under the "search for" banner as the first step towards establishing a network of online community hubs based on the websites of its local newspapers.

It's Search4, not "search for". And I even spelled it out. Sheesh.

Thanks Ben. (And you're right about the landing page.)

This is my skybox

2007-10-01T15:29:00.000+10:00

The Rupert Murdoch Film Festival is more a homage rather than a diatribe. It attempts to focus on the evil mogul but inevitably slides towards adulation. What can you say about someone who voices The Simpsons line himself (4:15 in this video): "I am Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire tyrant, and this is my skybox!"

As the narrator Jack Shafer says, "Perhaps Murdoch's embrace of his depiction as a cartoon figure of evil and low scruples akin to Charles Foster Kane isn't a joke on Murdoch. Perhaps the joke is on us."

No kidding, Jack.

Traffic incidents

2007-09-16T13:59:00.000+10:00

I got Blaired on Friday.

Tim Blair linked to one of my posts and as a result this blog got more traffic in one day than it did in its first year.

As a matter of habit I regularly check the traffic logs, not because I get much traffic but because I'm curious about where people are coming from and what they are looking for. A fair percentage of the traffic is Australian, but about 50% is international. They find this site via Google and often they're looking for stuff on the Boxing Day Tsunami or Hunter S Thompson or a range of other, usually media related subjects.

For local readers the most popular posts in the last six months have been this one on Fairfax's view about charging for online access and this post on the old death-of-newspapers chestnut.

The average number of daily readers of this blog is around 20 - I write it for myself largely as an annotation tool so it's only an accidental publication. But on Friday Tim Blair sent me 1880 visitors. And then another 500 yesterday. Traffic, or audience, is a marker of success in publishing, and on that basis Blair is extremely successful. (The vital next step as a publisher, of course, is converting a loyal audience into dollars.)

In a Fairfax piece a couple of years back I looked at blog popularity with "influence" as a key indicator. Blair featured at the top of the list then, though I used technorati inbound links as a metric rather than actual traffic. Influence is a problematic concept because it is very difficult to measure, however there's no question that large audience numbers confer a level of influence. This recent New York Magazine profile on Matt Drudge makes the same conclusion going as far as to call Drudge America's most influential journalist.

Blair and Drudge are similar in many ways. Not least of which is that when you get "Drudged" your traffic spikes noticeably. Whenever Drudge links to another site he invariably sends it a large volume of readers. I started noticing this on theage.com.au around the time of the Iraq invasion in 2003. My colleagues at the smh.com.au noticed the same thing. Since then the art of securing a link on Drudge, or Fark, or Slashdot or wherever has become a standard try-on in every young digital marketing exec's tool kit. It's far too important to be left to pure chance or, worse, to editorial.

Embracing web 2.0 and the impact on news

2007-09-05T20:54:00.000+10:00

In a recent wide ranging and typically well argued piece, Simon Waldman makes the obvious, but no less important, point that Web 2.0 and its elements, including blogs, are part of a fundamental change to publishing. According to Waldman, this change has four main foci:

The change from publishing once a day, to publishing immediately and constantly.
The change from being entirely UK focussed (In the case of The Guardian) to having a global outlook.
The shift from text and pictures to audio and video
The shift from audience to community.

It's that last point that I think contains the key to longevity and future success for news organisations. Blogging is an important part of that, and no doubt we'll be discussing it next Wednesday, but it's only one part.

The blogging v journalism debate has run its course and the verdict is in. As Waldman rightly says: "If we say the two key pillars of journalism are original reporting and informed comment - we have to accept that there are hundreds of blogs that fit the bill."

But community is something more. Sure, you can create a type of community around a blog. But at its heart a blog pretty much always has some sort of cult of personality. Community is richer, or more meaningful than that.

And therein lies the real challenge.

Waldman is optimistic, and he's right. There is a vital need for thoughtful optimism because the threats to newspaper revenues are very real.

A case in point is Google's recently announced intention to publish syndicated news wires. This will inevitably force many news organisations to cut deeper into their resources and come up with more unique content within their footprint.

In other words, newspapers will need to look to their own staff to provide more coverage of the stories the wires don't report in order to maintain their organic search rankings and keep their Google derived online audience.

Blogging panel next Wednesday in Sydney

2007-09-05T20:17:00.000+10:00

The indomitable Rachel Slattery will host an ITDebate panel on blogging next week

When: Wednesday 12th September, 2007
Venue: Lecture Theatre, Museum of Sydney
Corner of Phillip & Bent Street, Sydney
Time: 6.00pm - 7.30pm
Cost: $50 (inc. GST)

Featuring Graeme Philipson, Founder, Connection Research; Chris Gilbey, CEO, Vquence Pty Ltd; Tony Walker, Manager, ABC Digital Radio; Pippa Leary GM Media, Fairfax Digital; and myself.
Moderator is Catherine Fox, Deputy Editor, BOSS Magazine.

The truth according to Jack Marx

2007-09-02T13:02:00.000+10:00

Now we get down to the question of blogs on newspapers. For me they're kind of mongoose and cobra. For a blog to be on a newspaper it has to be doing something the newspaper is not.

It's old news now, but I've just came across Cameron's interview with Jack Marx about his sacking from Fairfax. [Here's the MP3 file.]

News.com.au gleefully covered the story when it broke. And Evan's News blog, Splat, now seems to have be the beneficiary of some the former TDT audience. Nothing particularly surprising there.

So, was it that one post that caused Fairfax to pull the plug on Marx? Or was it - as the official line puts it - the straw that broke the camel's back? In which case, will Fairfax remove the archived blog? Given that Marx previously wrote the Radar blog for the Herald, there is rather a lot of his work floating around Fairfax servers.

The human touch

2007-08-30T14:49:00.000+10:00

Larry Kramer - formerly of wsj.com and Washington Post, amongst others - has some ideas about the future of news that should be music to news execs everywhere. It's all about the human touch.

Of course, paying for it is another matter. But the bottom line is that machines, ie. search, won't suffice.

Here's the interview with Kara Swisher:

More women on the web

2007-08-25T15:48:00.000+10:00

According to Ofcom's annual Communications Market Report, there are now a whole lot more women using the web. In the UK, at least, and in certain key age groups.

According to the study the web attracted more women last year, with those in the 25-34 age bracket, the most highly sought after age group by advertisers, spending more time on the internet than men of that age.

Art of the interview

2007-08-25T14:59:00.000+10:00

... Well, not really. It's just an excuse for a Youtube moment on a rainy Saturday afternoon.

This first one is more of a ramble than a standard interview. But the fact it's the late Hunter S Thompson chatting with Keith Richards adds a certain fascination to their mumblings. And they do mumble.

Filmed in 1993 at Thompson's Colorado property it includes some live footage from Richards' solo tour around the time the album Main Offender was released.

From one extreme to another. This second piece is something of a classic. Taken from Dont Look Back it's the scene where Dylan the media critic excoriates Time reporter Horace Judson - who looks more like the historian of molecular biology he became than a rock journalist.

PANPA 2007

2007-08-12T10:15:00.000+10:00

Long time, no post. I've had three weeks of travelling, budget-related admin, product and staff issues. It's fun, intense, and all to do with managing a fast growing business in a competitive environment. Certainly no complaints, but nevertheless little time to blog.

I did, however, get to the PANPA conference in Melbourne last week. It was an interesting couple of days of conference sessions (Reiner Mittelbach from IFRA was a highlight) punctuated by the inevitable social occasions and culminating in (for APN AP) the Sunshine Coast Daily winning the middleweight Newspaper of the Year award for dailies and Sundays with a circulation of up to 50,000. Here's a happy editor, Peter Atkinson with his award:

The Age won the heavyweight Newspaper of the Year category for dailies with a circulation above 50,000. The award was accepted by editor Andrew Jaspan and MD Don Churchill (below). Mr Churchill is a rather tall chap and the editor is ... err, not. I don't think they've been photographed together too many times ...

SEO and the perfect headline

2007-07-19T12:29:00.000+10:00

With SEO playing an ever increasing role and the need for tight descriptive headlines overtaking the old art of headline writing as honed by generations of newspaper subs, it's good to see there's still room to pack a punch with a headline that would work just as well online as off. Here's the Glasgow Daily Record promoting a story about John Smeaton:

Via Stewart Kirkpatrick.

Blogging Future of Media 2007

2007-07-19T09:04:00.000+10:00

Congratulations to Ross Dawson and his team for yesterday's Future of Media 2007 Summit. The event was a great success.

The technology worked, the panel discussions were terrific, and the audience participation across both San Francisco and Sydney was valuable too - although a little hard to manage when you can only see one group. Ambitious, but hugely worthwhile.

Meanwhile, Scott Karp makes the point that newspapers are at the nexus of the digital media revolution. I couldn't agree more.

There are two phenomenon that everyone interested in the future of media should be tracking closely. The first is the iPhone, which is the first breakthrough mobile media device. The second is the transformation of newspapers [...].

RSS in plain English

2007-07-16T14:53:00.000+10:00

It's one of the most powerful tools of the new web, but one of the least understood. RSS still has a geeky air to it, but the folks from Common Craft have the perfect explanation ...

Click To Play

SEO tips from Neil Patel

2007-07-16T14:21:00.000+10:00

Patel claims he doubled TechCrunch's Technorati ranking after just six weeks, by providing better linking and leveraging sites. In this video he offers some tips for success.

Future of Media Report 2007

2007-07-13T09:04:00.000+10:00

Ross Dawson has just released the Future of Media Report 2007 [PDF] ahead of next week's Future of Media Summit.

Some highlights in the report include:

Eight developments in Media from July '06 to June '07. Examples of key developments, including industry transactions and acquisitions, layoffs, new channels, intellectual property, and censorship.

Shifting global advertising channels. Data and commentary on shifts in advertising spending, and a comparison of ownership of the online classifieds segment in the US, UK, and Australia.

Comparison of fastest growing properties and internet access. Exclusive original research from Nielsen/NetRatings, comparing uptake of new media properties in the US, UK, and Australia, and different online browsing behaviors across nations.

Key elements of Media business models. Following the Future of Media Strategic Framework from last year, this year's report has four complementary frameworks looking at scalability, value of distribution, value of advertising, and media personalization. These can be applied to understanding emerging media business models. Each of the frameworks is explained in detail.

Media industry network analysis. An analysis by Laurie Lock Lee of the recent acquisition of Southern Broadcasting Corporation by Macquarie Media Group, and insights on the impact on the Australian media industry landscape.

Media transactions. A list of media mergers and acquisitions of at least US$1 billion over the last 15 years, putting the massive surge in recent media industry activity into context.

AOLs new personalisable pages

2007-07-11T09:38:00.000+10:00

(via Techcrunch) - The best of these is easily Mgnet. It's a cool, simple way of selecting a news feed mix via images. It's got some smart technology behind it that learns from your individual image selections to present, over time, individually filtered stories to suit your tastes.

They've also launched a customisable homepage that's tab-related to Mgnet.

All good, as we say in Qld.

I think the value here is the mix of functionality and third party content (and widgets), and ease of use. It's a step beyond a standard personalisable news page.

Backfence demise not the end of community journalism

2007-07-09T14:09:00.000+10:00

One of the more prominent early adopters of "citizen journalism" is shutting up shop. Backfence started in early 2005 with high expectations and now its unfortunate demise is being used as an excuse to call game over for local news and community publishing ventures.

But looked at logically, why should the failure of one community news site, or the survival of others, say anything categorical about the future or viability of community journalism?

Many of the sites that identify with the community media movement look and feel like old media. And there's the rub. Old media is still not quite comfortable with the whole web thing - let alone real communities, mobile extensions etc etc.

Real community journalism remains a significant challenge for traditional media organisations, but one that can be met. Calling for the undertaker because Backfence fell over is giving up way too easily.

Murdoch scores Dow Jones

2007-07-08T15:59:00.000+10:00

According to former Sunday Times editor, Andrew Neal:

"Rupert Murdoch has succeeded with his $5 billion bid for Dow Jones, owners of the Wall Street Journal, according to sources acting for the Dow Jones board. Negotiations on price and matters of principle have been completed, though some details remain to be resolved. None is regarded by either side as a deal-breaker.

"The Dow board is confident that the terms of the deal will be accepted by the Bancroft family, which controls a majority of voting shares in Dow Jones, over the next few working days. A formal announcement is expected next week."

Driving transactions through social networking

2007-07-08T15:40:00.000+10:00

According to Silicon.com social networking doesn't necessarily drive sales.

A Jupiter survey found "53 per cent of online shoppers go straight to the site they want to buy from, rather than being directed there by a social network site".

This is sort of stating the obvious, I would have thought. Yes, online shopping behaviour is reasonably well established and social networking with any sort of commercial outlook is still fairly new.

But what is interesting is that "12 per cent of online shoppers quizzed said they buy more than planned as a result of using a social networking site".

I reckon this points towards an important development. Add to that "social networking sites serve to reaffirm purchasing decisions, with 29 per cent of respondents saying they make better decisions using them", and there looks to be a definite trend.

Australian Augmented Social Network ...?

2007-07-08T15:26:00.000+10:00

linkau is a new social network site. Just launched. It's purportedly Australian, but their Ts&Cs are based on a template created and distributed by a British legal site and they are "governed by and construed in accordance with English law, and any disputes relating to this notice shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England".

That's kind of odd for an "Australian Augmented Social Network on the Internet", which is how they describe themselves.

Not much information about who's behind this, but Laurel Papworth has their number:

"Dunno about you, but I would've said that generic networks with no value add are over. MySpace had it's time, and we've moved on. Perhaps there is traction in local ads and classifieds - sort of craigslist for Sydney - and the 'entry portal page' concept, but the whole user experience needs an overhaul if that is the case. I'm of the opinion that copycat sites that are adapted for niches can work, but there has to be some adaptation."

Print cannibalisation by online a diminishing concern

2007-07-06T13:18:00.000+10:00

A new study [PDF] shows that UK newspapers’ online editors and managers generally see print and online editions as complementary products. And concern at a number of major UK titles about cannibalisation has diminished to the stage where it is not a significant influence on strategy.

There are still sites charging for columnists, archives, digital editions, e-mail alerts, and mobile services, but the study shows most are finding it best to make content free to increase overall traffic.

Future of Media 2007

2007-07-06T12:55:00.000+10:00

Back by popular demand, Ross Dawson's inter-continental Future of Media Summit is happening Wednesday week, July 18.

The list of speakers in both Sydney and San Francisco is impressive. I'm not actually speaking myself but will be doing a few intros from the Sydney end and helping Ross who'll be in San Francisco juggle the technology for the multimedia panel discussions taking in participants from both Sydney and the US simultaneously.

News site relaunches

2007-07-04T14:34:00.000+10:00

There have been a number of notable news site redesigns/relaunches recently which I just haven't had a chance to get to.

The Guardian, ABC News are just two that spring to mind, and watch out for relaunches of theage.com.au and smh.com.au shortly.

Here at APN we added our two cents worth with the launch of thedaily.com.au on Monday. Sunshine Coast news will never be the same.

Meanwhile, Read/Write Web has a review of new looks for three major US news sites: AOL News, USA Today, and CNN.

"... while CNN likely has the most attractive and professional-looking site (they could certainly win some web 2.0 design awards), USA Today has social media down cold. The fact that their users have embraced commenting and rating on news stories so vigorously, so quickly such that every day there are at least two or three stories with in excess of 200 comments is amazing and an affirmation of a tactic that has clearly paid off."

I'm personally not so sure that two or three stories a day with that many comments counts as social media success. Still, it's always interesting to see how a new look and feel reflects the news organisation's view on where online publishing is heading.

Fairfax buys into Southern Cross Broadcasting

2007-07-03T18:55:00.000+10:00

In a deal with Macquarie Media Fairfax is acquiring part of the Southern Cross Broadcasting network and getting back in to radio and taking on some TV production assets.

It's a smart deal and gets them some useful distribution points and content supplements in markets they are currently not strong in, as well as Sydney and Melbourne.

On today's news we can expect Fairfax to launch an online news site in Perth a la the Brisbane Times fairly swiftly.

The Times it is a moving

2007-06-12T10:31:00.000+10:00

The New York Times is on the move from here

to here

The company sold the old building for US$525 million whilst the new building has cost in the vicinity of US$850 million. But the project was a joint venture and the newspaper will only be occupying half the floor space.

The numbers are big, but the NYT Company has clearly hedged cleverly by joining with Forest City Ratner Companies and ING Real Estate bringing its share of the costs in at around $100 million.

Fairfax is currently moving its two metro mastheads for not dissimilar reasons: business integration, updating technology etc. The Age is in more or less the same situation as the NYT in that it has owned the building it occupies. However, unlike the old NYT building The Age is one of the worst eyesores in Melbourne.

Like David Dunlap I remember the sound of the presses starting up in the basement of that old building and shaking the foundations every evening. He makes it sound nostalgic, but there's a good reason why there aren't too many metro newspaper left printing papers on the same premises the editorial is produced.

The end of the world as they know it

2007-06-10T16:22:00.000+10:00

The current issue of The Monthly carries the (reportedly) spiked Good Weekend feature on Wendi Deng as its cover story. And what a major disappointment it is. Spruiked as a yarn too spicy for Fairfax it turns out to be a rather drab rehash of the 2000 Wall Street Journal profile with some bland contributions from former classmates and colleagues at Star.

No wonder it was spiked by Good Weekend.

The Monthly also has a piece by Eric Beecher lamenting the threat to quality journalism brought about by commercial pressures generally and the internet specifically. Beecher writes,

"The reason that the internet isn't - and in my view can't be - the saviour of quality journalism is the vast expense of running a serious-minded editorial operation. In the US, it has been estimated that the newspaper industry spends US$7 billion each year on news and editorial operations. Translate that into the cost of running the journalism of a serious daily like The Age, The Australian or The Sydney Morning Herald, and you come up with figures like these: 400 editorial staff (say, $45 million); travel and international coverage ($8 million); news services, contributors and other costs ($4 million); support staff and overheads ($10 million). That's more than $60 million on pure journalism which, on the internet, would need to be recouped in advertising alone. Not a likely proposition."

This is too simplistic by far. $60 million in editorial budget is pretty steep. The Age has been south of $50 million for some time (of course this is still a large amount of money). And why does a digital strategy have to rely purely on display advertising? It's a big mistake to assume this.

So, what is Beecher really after? Is it protecting newspapers in their current form? Or is it safeguarding so called quality journalism? The paragraph quoted above seems to confuse the two.

If it's the latter then there are already examples of online only publications that are attempting to do quality journalism subsidised in one or other of the traditional ways: Slate, Salon, sp!ked, for example, and in Australia On Line Opinion, New Matilda, Smart Company and even Beecher's own Crikey - though not too many commentators would call Crikey "quality" journalism. Nevertheless, quality is a subjective term so we can stretch it in a lot of different directions.

The point is that the operational costs of traditional mass circulation daily newspapers are quite different from online publications. Unlike Beecher I do believe that it will be possible to produce high quality journalism profitably for digital publication.

I actually don't understand Beecher's fear of the commercial demands on journalism. It's always been this way. The Sulzbergers, Grahams and the Scott Trust are so rare as to be the exact exceptions that prove the commercial rule of journalism. Wishing for charities or benevolant billionaires to come riding to the rescue of quality newspapers seems delusional and even irresponsible.

Beecher has his own internet publication, but on a broad scale his message seems to be that it's all too hard to figure out so we should just get misty about the good old days.

He finishes his essay in The Monthly with a Rupert Murdoch quote from William Shawcross's 1983 biography:

'"All newspapers are run to make profits. Full stop. I don't run anything for respectability. The moment I do, I hope someone will come and fire me and get me out of the place - because that's not what newspapers are meant to be about." As we are now becoming all too aware.'

That final sentence seems to completely misunderstand Murdoch's point. Why should quality journalism, or newspapers, be about respectability? If afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted is an ideal of quality journalism it stands considerably at odds with respectability.

That Murdoch quote was from 25 years ago. Here's one from last week:

"How do I see newspapers? You have the opportunity to make a difference. But any difference we make today is providing more choice. We've kept papers alive for years or part of them … took the losses for 15 years or more to develop franchises to give people alternatives.

We've done it with The Australian, The Times in London -- and no one can say that they're not today very, very fine newspapers."

These two positions are not inconsistent. The Times and The Australian are quality papers that strive to be profitable. The fact is they cost a lot of money to run. But respectability is not the issue.

So we come back to the core question around the cost of producing journalism. Are newspapers still the best or most efficient platform for this? And the answer is no.

Editorial independence and the Wall Street Journal

WSJ has a strong Q & A with Murdoch where he let's fly at some unlikely targets. When questioned on his reputation for interfering with or influencing editorial direction he takes a swipe at the Daily Telegraph and its editor.

"WSJ: There seems to be other examples. The Daily Telegraph in Sydney a few weeks ago devoted most of its front page to your announcement that News Corp. would reduce its carbon emissions. The company logo was in the headline and there was an editorial that suggested you were a visionary.

"Mr. Murdoch: [Laughter] I don't know anything about that. And we sure didn't do that in the Post, which I'm closest to, hardly got them to notice it. Actually, it's interesting. It caused huge excitement among our staff in Australia and in Hollywood. And a fair bit in London. New York was pretty cynical.

"WSJ: Isn't this shilling for News Corp?

"Mr. Murdoch: That is, absolutely. Shouldn't be. That's bad.

"WSJ: The editor told us he was proud of it.

"Mr. Murdoch: They're all crazy greenies over there …"

Crazy greenie is not quite the way I'd describe Penbo. Still, there's no denying he's caught the bug.

Journalistic failure in the Woolmer case

2007-06-09T12:44:00.000+10:00

Mark Lawson makes the point that the early coverage of the Bob Woolmer case will live forever on the web as evidence of journalistic failure and historical untruths. And it's not just material published online.

"Should the BBC retract the edition of Panorama that stated authoritatively that Woolmer was poisoned, or simply pretend that the show was never broadcast?", he asks.

But the bigger problem is what he calls "a growing impatience with fact".

"These problems have occurred because of significant changes in both the speed and the durability of journalism."

It's still possible to find much of what was written about Bob Woolmer as a murder victim. There are interviews with an early "suspect" and reams of scandalous insinuation about the Pakistani players.

But how much old fashioned investigative research could have unearthed this mistake far sooner?

As the Sunday Times reported on June 3:

"Woolmer was found dead in his room at the Pegasus hotel in Kingston on March 18, the day after Pakistan lost to Ireland in the World Cup. There were traces of vomit but no bruises on his neck and no sign of a struggle.

"[Jamaican patholigist] Seshaiah said after his initial autopsy that the cause of death was inconclusive. When he reexamined the body, he decided Woolmer’s death was the result of “asphyxiation as a result of manual strangulation”, pointing to bruises in tissues of the neck.

"Despite the initial uncertainty, his findings were enough to convince police. [Investigating officer] Shields stated he was “100% certain” that Woolmer had been strangled to death.

"The police decided against carrying out a second postmortem, and sources close to the investigation later claimed “significant” levels of herbicide had been found in Woolmer’s body, suggesting he had been poisoned.

"It was only when the postmortem report and photos were examined by Dr Nat Carey, the British pathologist, that the investigation began to fall apart. Carey concluded it was more likely that the bruising in Woolmer’s neck was the result of the postmortem itself."

Last week I was at a dinner in Melbourne with the British pathologist Sir James Underwood who was visiting Australia on a lecture tour. According to Professor Underwood much of the general evidence that ultimately led to the conclusion Woolmer's death was not murder had been reported in the media. In other words, there were clues in the public domain that led experts to suspected problems with the murder conclusion well before Dr Carey was asked to report on the case.

Professor Underwood says it was evident in those first reports: "There were traces of vomit but no bruises on his neck and no sign of a struggle."

It seems that Woolmer had been on some medication - which would have been on his medical record - but despite this, subsequent confusion over the toxicology results of the autopsy can still be attributed to false positives that pathologists say are not uncommon post-mortem. A good pathologist would be on guard against those sorts of misleading clues.

It's easy to be judgemental given the scale of the stuff-up in the Woolmer case, but from a journalistic point of view you have to wonder why none of the news organisations reporting the story sought expert pathology advice? It was already being discussed amongst British pathologists, some of whom had doubts. They would presumably have been willing to air these about an international investigation.

Death, Sex & Money

2007-06-07T12:32:00.000+10:00

Michael Young's "Death, Sex & Money: Life inside a Newspaper" carries a blurb from The Sydney Morning Herald's Peter FitzSimons on the front cover describing it as "Compelling reading", which is not so surprising when you find Fitzy described adoringly as the "legendary Peter FitzSimons" on P.79.

It's a quick read with some entertaining anecdotes about the characters - mostly unnamed and mostly from The Sydney Morning Herald - who populate Australian newspaper newsrooms.

However, it's somewhat backward looking. It reeks of nostalgia for the glory days of print.

But that's OK. Pre-internet newspapers were something to behold. Of course they still have a place, but that place is changing radically.

Despite his sentimental attachment to print, Young does explore some of the questions for newspapers around the challenges of the digital age. Sort of:

"The print product will retain one distinct advantage over the internet - credibility - and while such credibility remains, the traditional media will continue to influence and form public opinion."

The problem here, of course, is that he confuses the whole of the internet with specific elements of media discourse.

A recurring theme through the book is that the internet is not to be trusted. By which he means that not all the information one finds on the internet is trustworthy or reliable. This is a bit of a straw man and really only exposes Young and the many Australian newspaper editors he quotes as uncomfortable and somewhat lost in a digital environment.

He asks: "Who will survive in this competitive environment?"

"Different media groups argue their specific corners. Tabloids argue that they will survive because they understand exactly what their readership wants from the net and are well placed to deliver infotainment and celebrity news with short snappy news headlines. This, they say, is what they are good at, and they can easily adapt their content to the cyber-environment. Broadsheet editors see this as a flawed rationale. The net, they argue, is already saturated with this world of infotainment and instant gratification, and that tabloids are simply repeating ad nauseam what is already available on the net in bucket-loads. The way forward, they argue, is to use the multiple technology platforms to deliver quality journalism and content in various guises, each developed to fit the medium that carries the message. This is the view of Fairfax."

Young is clearly a broadsheet kind of guy, but his analysis of this brave new world towards which Fairfax editors are charging is lacking in any economic context or feel for the culture of the web and it's digital extensions. It's all a little too corporate and anodyne.

News Ltd, of course, is a different beast.

"The Australian takes a contrary view and sees middle-brow newspapers such as those published by Fairfax as most vulnerable because of what it describes as the group's move towards 'fridge-door' journalism that confuses infotainment with news. The Australian claims that its own core value of editorial quality is the model that will endure. But The Australian, although sporting a strong web site, seems bereft of a strategy that embraces the inclusive new media landscape and its weakness lies in its mission, as a national newspaper, of trying to be all things to all people."

Note the reference to "inclusive new media landscape". Unfortunately, it's easy to write but more difficult to actually explain this concept in the context of current major Australian news sites. And Young doesn't really try.

"The malaise that afflicts The Australian is one that has permeated through the organisation from the top down in the parent group's slow uptake of the net's benefits. Les Hinton, Murdoch's trusted lieutenant who runs News Corp's British newspapers (the very newspapers that lectured News Limited's Australian executives on how best to tackle the net), said in an interview with Media Guardian that News Corp failed to understand how the web works and is still trying to develop a way to make money out of the web."

I don't think this is an accurate reading of News and its attitude towards online publishing. It's also an inaccurate reference to a video conference that took place on the evening of July 17 last year.

On P.179 Young writes:

"In mid-2006 Rebekah Wade, editor of The Sun, and Robert Thompson, editor of The Times (whose site is far more sober than that of the Sun), addressed a key group of Australian news executives by video from London. The thirty-two executives gathered in a television conference room in Sydney to hear Wade and Thompson extol the virtues of their web sites. Every editor of every Murdoch Australian paper attended this lesson in global communications."

I was at that meeting, and Young's account is wrong on a number of points:

Les Hinton didn't lecture anyone. After initial introductions he sat quietly in the background while Rebekah Wade and Robert Thompson spoke. And they didn't lecture anyone, either.
Wade and Thompson didn't extol the virtues of their web sites. On the contrary there was a frank and open discussion about the specific challenges all were facing in terms of newsroom management, production operations and the effects of the new environment on the journalism their newspapers produced.
The meeting was not attended by every News Ltd editor but only by the metropolitan newspaper editors and online editors.

Young's book is a useful addition to the literature on Australian newspapers, specifically as they adjust to the changing dynamics of media useage. It is, though, limited by its reliance on anecdote and observation and the author's lack of familiarity with the online world. The style of reportage that works so well for journalism feels somewhat inadequate as a format for a permanent record of major media institutions in the midst of radical social, technological and economic change.

Journalism in the digital age

2007-06-06T08:47:00.000+10:00

This year's WAN conference is in Cape Town, and the Editors Weblog is reporting some of the sessions. Unfortunately, as is the nature of these things, the coverage is a bit superficial. Stephen Brook at The Guardian's Organ Grinder is doing a good job, but there's nothing like being there. Last year's conference in Moscow was the same - still, as an attendee I can testify it was both professionally valuable and mighty good fun. That's what it's all about.

Here's a snippet from the session on user generated content. This is the pointy end, as far as I'm concerned. And it's interesting to see who's in the vanguard.

Aussie web 2.0 apps

2007-05-30T08:21:00.000+10:00

Ross Dawson's Top 60 Australian web 2.0 applications went up on Read/Write Web yesterday.

It's a fascinating list and shows just how robust local new media initiatives are. I hope Ross repeats this exercise in a year's time. It will be intriguing to see how that list evolves and expands.

Web 2.0 in the newsroom

2007-05-24T15:54:00.000+10:00

Robert Scoble, Google Vice President Marissa Mayer and Web Strategist Jeremiah Owyang discuss the effect Web 2.0 will have on journalism.

Here's $1.1m to kick start your business ...

2007-05-24T12:00:00.000+10:00

Congratulations are due to Adrian Holovaty for scoring a US$1.1 million Knight Foundation grant to develop a new business "that focuses on making local news and information useful".

There were a stack of other worthy winners, but ever since Holovaty came to prominence with chicagocrime.org he has been watched closely by anyone looking for clues as to where the combination of software and data might take journalism.

And now that he has quit Washingtonpost.com you can bet his new venture EveryBlock will be the focus of a lot of interest.

Web 2.0 in Australia

2007-05-24T11:34:00.000+10:00

In early June Ross Dawson is hosting a one-day conference on Web 2.0 in Australia that promises to be a very interesting showcase of current local initiatives - as well as a discussion on future trends and funding opportunities. There should be more of these sorts of events to help promote some of the excellent ideas that are fomenting via tech and media startups in this country.

Hitchens' tribute to Falwell

2007-05-17T09:50:00.000+10:00

Jerry Falwell died on Tuesday, and Christopher Hitchens was ready with a wonderful spray of invective. Check this out ...

Fairfax considers pay-per-view

2007-05-11T10:32:00.000+10:00

In this week's B&T Pippa Leary, Fairfax Digital’s director of news and information says Fairfax would move to a user-pays system "in a flash" to reduce the company’s dependence on classified advertising if the appropriate unique content could be found.

"At this point in time when we look at our current online set, we don’t see anything that is unique. But that said, if we were to bundle certain information together, we may be able to create an offering that people would be willing to pay for, we are constantly looking at and testing that concept," Leary says .

This is an interesting admission that reveals a number of the structural problems, in organisational terms, Fairfax Digital suffers from at the moment. And despite an apparently strong commercial position those problems are inhibiting Fairfax Digital's ability to really address the challenges they face in the longer term.

As Director of news and information Leary is responsible for content. She is a very smart operator but she doesn't have an editorial background, and that's part of the problem. She was responsible for bringing the discipline of the ninemsn product development strategy to (then) f2's commercial team which was a significant achievement and led to her being promoted from running the product development team to effectively managing the market facing strategy of the two major sites (plus Brisbane).

This is consistent with Fairfax Digital's view that the newspapers are the content engines for the web sites so uniquely produced online material really only needs to be marginal in volume. The majority of material comes from the papers and is shovelled on to the web sites by the online editorial teams at theage.com.au and smh.com.au.

Despite making some noise about the few dedicated online reporters Fairfax Digital has painted itself into a bit of a corner here. By sidelining editorial input, and focusing heavily on commercialising newspaper content at the expense of creating online environments that are adapting to and evolving with the new digital space, they are fast approaching a showdown with the newspapers over who actually "owns" the masthead web sites.

It's worth remembering that Fairfax Digital is a separate company from Fairfax Media. What that means in practice is that the web sites of The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald are not the responsibilities of Andrew Jaspan and Alan Oakley but rather of Pippa Leary. The fact is that the online teams under Simon Johanson at theage.com.au and (until recently) David Higgins at smh.com.au are proud of their associations and work hard to maintain good relationships with their print colleagues. But when push comes to shove it's Pippa who has the final say.

So her statement above, about not seeing anything unique in "our current online set", is really an admission that the strategy of separation - of print and online - is not working. Right now Fairfax's approach is to tell print journalists that they have to "adapt or die", give them a few gadgets and a couple of days training and tell them about the wonderful integrated newsroom they'll soon be working in.

However, the ongoing separation of the two businesses - print and digital - means that the newspaper journalists have every reason to stay suspicious about the way their efforts will be treated online.

When the Director of news and information at Fairfax Digital is betting on bundling certain information together "to create an offering that people would be willing to pay for" you can be sure those supplying the information will be sensitive to how that bundling process is being handled, particularly if they're told there's nothing unique about their material.

If, on the other hand, the editors of the newspapers were given full responsibility for their masthead sites - notwithstanding the economies inherent in shared technology and other resources - then the print staff could reasonably be expected to take a more positive view about their own activities online.

Structural remedy needed

Since the late nineties Fairfax has more or less copied the nyt.com in all things digital. For a while that was OK as nyt.com was clearly one of the early leaders in online news. But ever since the failed registration strategy at theage.com.au and smh.com.au - based, as it was, on the successful nyt.com registration format - it's been clear that simply aping your favourite US newspaper site is not a long term option.

As far as organisational structure goes, even the New York Times has adapted to new imperatives. In 2005 they rolled the former New York Times Digital business into the New York Times company rather than keeping them as two separate businesses.

The lesson is that the fanciest, most high tech integrated newsroom is not enough on its own. The company's organisational structure needs to reflect the mantra of "integration" in a comprehensive way that encourages staff to feel an ownership and attachment to the digital products in the same way they do to the print product.

But there's one other missing element here. Leary's statement to B&T is focused very much on static content, packaging that content and selling it. In other words trying to attract specific demographic groups to traditionally produced material and wrapping advertising around it.

What's missing is community. Where is the vision at Fairfax Digital for new modes of publishing? Why are we just hearing about re-packaging content and charging users, as if this was the smartest way to grow an online business?

I don't suggest that Fairfax should give up serious journalism, but while some people may read Pippa Leary's search for unique content in order to charge readers for access as an implied need for investment in journalism and journalists, I think it just illustrates the failure of imagination and leadership at Fairfax Digital.

Web 2.0 going mainstream

2007-05-09T09:19:00.000+10:00

A recent article in a US trade publication pointed to a Hitwise study showing that "Web 2.0 websites accounted for 12 percent of all US web activity for the week ended April 7".

The article quotes Bill Tancer, Hitwise general manager of global research, as saying, "It's the participatory aspect of Web 2.0 that is still in a very nascent stage. When online participation goes mainstream, we can expect an explosion of new content on the web."

But here's the rub. What exactly is web 2.0 and when does nascent become mainstream?

The debate over a definition has been going on for a while. In fact, I'd argue it has become more a debate about what the definition applies to. In other words, what is the user experience on engaging with a so-called web 2.0 site that encourages meaningful interaction?

As far as the other question goes, 12 percent strikes me as something more than nascent. Of course, this is only US traffic and so not representative of all markets. I'd like to see a similar study for Europe and Asia. I suspect the percentage would be lower at the moment, but the growth rate strong.

Networks and the News Corp approach

Rupert Murdoch is cleverly positioning News Corp to take advantage of the trend networking and social media ahead of the competition. Murdoch's dinner guest Jeff Jarvis has a bit of an insight into the recent News offsite in California, and he adds this point about the culture at News:

"The good and the bad of News Corp., I’ve long said, is that they fly by the seat of their pants: They make decisions quickly and decisively and some are brilliant and some are not but at least you can get a decision and move on. Now, of course, you can disagree with those decisions. But I would reassure the people at Dow Jones that this is not the News Corp. of fable. Murdoch is not an ogre. He’s a gracious and charming mogul. And the reason his people like working there is that he leaves them to operate more independently than I’ve seen in other companies — so long as they succeed, of course."

Having attended some Australian company conferences, and seen the Chairman in action, I couldn't agree more. The bottom line is always the bottom line for News. To succeed means to make money. And why not? It's a business, after all.

And that's one of the fascinating aspects of the current state of the media industry, one which Murdoch recognises. As he writes in the current issue of Forbes, "Companies that take advantage of this new meaning of network and adapt to the expectations of the networked consumer can look forward to a new golden age of media."

The issue, of course, is how do you deliver anything like the same margins in a digital publishing environment as was previously available in a print environment?

All tip and no iceberg

2007-05-07T19:12:00.000+10:00

And while we're in a Red Symons mood, here's another. Former PM Paul Keating in fighting form:

Besieged

2007-05-07T18:52:00.000+10:00

Red Symons has been displaying his talents on Youtube to hilarious effect. This piece is from last year but given it's Budget week I thought it appropriate.

The journalist 'besieging' the Treasurer from behind in this clip, adding a couple of nicely timed eye-rolls, is Dan Silkstone from The Age.

Murdoch has Dow in his sights

2007-05-03T14:51:00.000+10:00

But so far his US$5 billion offer has been rejected. No doubt that won't be the end of the story.

It may be that the Dow Jones' internet properties are the main attraction to News as The Oz reports today, but it's interesting that this comes at a time when Rupert Murdoch has assembled senior editorial staff at his California property to map out the future of News Corporation's online news delivery.

"It's really focused on what the newspapers are doing online and how they adapt to the new world," News Digital chief executive Richard Freudenstein said of the conference.

The subtext being that the newspapers need to do a better job of digitising their businesses. Video is a major focus, and getting journalists to work across multimedia formats. But more than that developing new commercial models is a major challenge, one that needs to go hand in hand with refined editorial approaches.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal has its own view on what life as a Murdoch-owned paper would be like.

Oz Gawker-like blog launches

2007-04-28T13:01:00.000+10:00

This was signposted back in February and launched a week or so ago. Crikey has a polite review with relevant background.

It's an interesting experiment, but the real reason for posting today is that I just noticed a reasonably significant feature on the Australian Defamer site. Back in February Paul Montgomery raised the obvious question about a licensing exercise like this: why wouldn't you just go straight to the original?

Well, guess what? You can't. The link to the "US edition" at the top of the Australian page points straight back to the same (Australian) page. What's more, type the URL to the US edition straight into your browser and you bounce right back to defamer.com.au.

Are they paranoid? Or shall we give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it's a mistake? I've emailed the editor and we'll see what she says.

Meanwhile, Gizmodo, the Australian partner site to Defamer, doesn't feel the need to restrict its readers from accessing the US edition.

Weirdness.

Update: Redirect quietly corrected

Well, no reply from the editor but strangely enough the re-direct has been fixed. (And no, it wasn't my imagination in the first place. I tested it on two machines.) So, how about that? Let's assume it was an innocent mistake and not an attempt to keep Australian audiences from going straight to the source.

Now we can all see how much copy is being duplicated.