Results matching “a new media empire”

As the toll of casualties from The News of the World scandal increases, the race is on for other publications, owned by various subsidiaries of the Murdoch media empire, to distance or rebrand themselves so as not to find themselves caught in the line of fire.   

Over the weekend yet more senior figures, from the worlds of journalism, politics and policing have been further embroiled in the scandal and have paid the price. Former head of News International Rebekah Brooks (who resigned from her post last week) was arrested and later released while Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson has resigned along with Les Hinton, C.E.O. of Dow Jones, who testified in British Parliamentary Inquiries in 2007 and 2009 attesting that phone hacking was the fault of one single reporter and not symptomatic of wider company policy.

Inevitably, the public is now seeking to establish not only exactly how widespread such unethical malpractice is within News Corp. and elsewhere, including British politics.

"Thank you & goodbye", read the headline of the last edition of News of the World, published yesterday. The newspaper quit its operations after a series of revelations, most glaring being the paper's involvement in the hacking of the voice mail of a disappeared 13-year-old girl.

The Sunday paper's closure was announced only four days earlier, and although the British media industry is still recovering from the move, it seems likely that it will be profoundly affected, in one way or the other, by current circumstances.

Last week, the British Prime Minister David Cameron called for the replacement of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), which he said had failed to act sufficiently in the phone hacking affair, with a new body. The Guardian's Roy Greenslade discussed what this could mean in practice, speculating that the end result would most probably be a body with a new name and staff, but a very similar function to the PCC.

The UK phone-hacking scandal, that involves Rupert Murdoch's tabloid News of the World, is blowing up relentlessly. Revelations come out continuously and the news media is trying to follow them with breaking news updates.

Two are the main news of the day.
Firstly, the announcement by James Murdoch of the upcoming closure of the News of the World, compromised in its credibility and abandoned by advertisers, after 168 years.
The paper published the statement on its website.  
Poynter's Rick Edmonds reflected on why shutting down the newspaper was a good business decision here and Guardian's Roy Greenslade collected what newspapers said about the closure here. 

Originally (but unofficially) announced for Jan 19th, News Corp's new baby, The Daily, is expected to go live Feb 2nd, paidContent reported. According to the invites that hit inboxes today, the article said the Guggenheim Museum in New York will be the location. Steve Jobs and Rupert Murdoch were the awaited presenters, but due to his medical leave Apple is going to be represented by iTunes guru Eddy Cue. Brian Stelter of NYT's Media decoder confirms the press event will be Feb 2nd, at 11 am and he said a spokeswoman confirmed that the app would be made available to consumers on the same day. 

The Daily Mail website scored another month of record traffic, reportedly driven by US growth, the Guardian reported, referring to ABC's figures. Mail Online was the only UK national newspaper website to defy a dip in online audience in December, topping 3 million daily users for the first time in the process, 3,58% up from November. UK traffic accounted for 35% of Mail Online's total monthly audience, with one source indicating that US growth was a key driver of traffic for the site, the paper said.

The Empire reported Newsday has recently hired 31 new, tech-savvy people. "It represents one of the largest infusions of new blood at the storied news outlet", the article said. 13 of them are going to Long Island desk, 10 to Newsday.com, 4 to news desk, 2 to "presentation desk", 1 to Explore L.I. and 1 to Sports.

Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt tells All Things Digital's Peter Kafka that relations between his company and Google are smooth, despite a blog post from the search engine giant last week that implied that its algorithm was targeting content farms.

For more industry news please see WAN-IFRA's Executive News Service  

2,45 pm 18 Jan update: Press Gazette reported that Guardian News and Media has now answered Press Gazette's phone hacking questions.

"I'm pleased to report that the Guardian News and Media has now responded to the questions", Dominic Ponsford wrote. GNM says that phone hacking has never been raised as an issue at the paper, thanks to its own code of conduct (in addition to that of the PCC), regular legal training sessions and the paper's readers' editor.
Could the other four news organizations say the same?

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Press Gazette described how a wall of silence was raised by five news organisations in response to its questions about phone-hacking that Press Gazette planned  to use for the Big Question feature in its February edition.

After a source told editor Dominic Ponsford that phone-hacking was widespread across Fleet Street before the 2007 News of the World scandal, Press Gazette decided to ask what it considered reasonably transparent and helpful news organizations to answer some questions on the sensitive issue. But  Guardian News and Media, Telegraph Media Group, Trinity Mirror and the BBC all declined to comment, and the Daily Mail did not yet give an answer. 

The amount of international news in British dailies has significantly decreased in the last thirty years, according to a study by Martin Moore of the Media Standards Trust. The report, Shrinking World: The decline of international reporting in the British press, looked at exactly how international news has shrunk, and speculates as to why and what it means for the news landscape.

David Loyn, foreign correspondent with the BBC, expressed concern in the foreword of the report at the "increasing use of video shot by official MoD cameramen (often not attributed by broadcasters who use it) and 'quasi-journalism' from NGO activists" rather than from experienced journalists. The decline in foreign reporting "reinforces insular values - prejudices - and discourages understanding among British voters," he added. 

Australian public broadcaster the ABC has launched a new digital initiative called ABC Open to feature user-generated content on existing ABC local websites.

The initiative aims to develop the digital skills of local communities to tell their own stories. The reports produced through the project will be published on the broadcaster's local websites and other sites, and may also be distributed on radio, television or mobile platforms.

More than 50 editors and producers, based in local radio offices around the country, will be charged with helping communities design and develop media-rich local stories.

Jeff Jarvis, author of What would Google do and media columnist at the Guardian, has spoken out against News Corp's recent decision to block NewsNow from linking to its content, condemning Murdoch's as empire "foolish".


In his column, Jarvis argues that permitting linking is not only in News Corp's interests - as (previously) it directed traffic to the likes of Times Online, Sun Online and NotW.co.uk - but is also in the interests of democracy, allowing the public access to public information. "What's public is public - that is, we, the public, have a right to observe, point to, share, and comment on it. And the internet is public," writes Jarvis. Denying NewsNow the right to link, by disabling its crawler using the robots.txt file, impedes free comment and therefore freedom of speech, he adds.

In his latest move, Murdoch has vowed to remove newspapers in his media empire - including the Sun, the Times and the Wall Street Journal - from Google's search index. The mogul sees this as step towards encouraging people to pay for online content, the Guardian has reported.

The revelation was made in an interview with Sky News Australia, shortly after Murdoch claimed that "Google, Microsoft, Ask.com ... a whole lot of people" are stealing News Corp content and as a solution proposed blocking Google entirely once they had enacted plans to charge people for reading their stories online.

A law passed in Argentina earlier this month placing limits on media ownership, has raised eyebrows over the motivations of the government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, with many arguing she is attempting to restrict press freedom.

The legislation, which at its core prevents ownership of more than 35 per cent of cable and broadcast operations in a single market and requires the renewal of a license every two years, was declared a victory by Fernández for the 'democratization' of media. She said the measure would free up the airwaves and offer a platform for non- profit groups, universities and the government to express themselves.

After filing for banckrupcy protection earlier this month, Canwest Global Communications has announced that flagship daily newspaper, The National Post will probably be forced to close after Friday, if it isn't transferred to a new holding company, Reuters is reporting.

Canwest said a group of creditors led by the Bank of Novia Scotia indicated they no longer wanted to fund continuing losses at the Post, which employs 277 people. The creditor group "will not continue to support funding the National Post Company in the long or short term past Oct. 30, 2009," Canwest said in a court report released on Thursday.

Mobile giant Ericsson has moved to fill the void between publishers' desires to charge for online content and the infrastructure to actually do so with its Internet Payment Exchange system. 

ABC Managing director Mark Scott has announced that the Australian national news service will never charge for its online content. Speaking at the annual AN Smith Memorial Lecture in Journalism in Melbourne, Scott said that a fully paid online content model for media organisations was doomed to fail and that the ABC would not bow to pressure from commercial media outlets to go down this path.  

"The public pays for the ABC to deliver distinctive, quality content to them - and if it is content we are creating and packaging for them now, they are entitled to view that content free of charge," he said.

A government-owned public news service, the ABC has not felt the post-crisis pain of many commercial publications who depend wholly on advertising, sales and subscriptions to survive. None-the-less, it's refusal to charge for content makes it harder for other publications to do so. For people to accept paying for content, it has to become the norm for all news publications. If there is a respected alternative source that remains free, readers will continue to seek this out, as a recent PCUK/Harris poll found.

Something the ABC is not immune to, however, is the challenge to stay relevent. In his speech, Scott talked of the difficulties currently facing the media industry to continue to prove it's value when there is so much other content available. He emphasised the need for publishers to adapt if they are to endure the emerging climate saying that the only organisations that will survive are the ones that accept that "all the rules have changed."  

On Wednesday, Clarity Media Group announced that Rubert Murdoch had sold the Weekly Standard to Phillip Anschutz. The Huffington Post was one of the first sources of the rumor that emerged speculating that media groups News Corp. and Anschutz were discussing the transaction, more than ten days ago.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Murdoch may not necessarily "need" the right-wing political magazine, since its editorial tone echoes that of the more influential Wall Street Journal, a publication that Murdoch recently added to his media portfolio.

New York Times reporter Jennifer 8. Lee gave details on her Twitter feed of the paper's discussions at a strategy presentation to staff yesterday on how the Times might charge for online content, amongst other things. The meeting for news staff was held at the company's Manhattan based headquarters, reported the Guardian.

Her 'tweets' indicated that the NYT is considered introducing a tiered membership scheme, which was compared to an American Express credit card membership with different levels such as platinum and gold. The paper is also "rethinking the assumption that home delivery subscribers get access to everything," and thinking of membership as a "brand building product, not online product."

Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson has told the Financial Times that the paper is planning to launch "a sophisticated micropayments service" this autumn along with premium subscriptions. The system will be aimed at occasional users and pricing would be "rightfully high," Thomson said.

The premium subscriptions will focus on specialist areas such as energy, commodities, wealth management and other niches, reported the FT, and premium subscribers will have web access to the Dow Jones newswire, which is currently a product aimed solely at companies. When WSJ Online executive editor Alan Murray mentioned this "premium initiative" in April, he also suggested the paper was considering a news service for chief financial officers.

Press Gazette, after facing its near closure, has been bought by Mike Danson's Progressive Media group. They will continue to publish both their monthly magazine and online; meanwhile, the current owners, Wilmington group, will retain control of the British Press Awards (where most of the magazine's revenue comes from).

Rupert Murdoch, News Corp Chairman and CEO, has announced that the company is to create a new portal that will allow its worldwide editorial properties to share content and resources across the entire organisation. "The creation of a new unit designed to share valuable news content and harness the power of News Corporation's vast editorial resources is vital to our success as a global media entity," he said.

Executive VP of News Editorial for Fox News John Moody has been appointed to oversee the new unit. He will be reporting directly to Murdoch, and will collaborate with news chiefs across all News Corp properties "to improve news gathering efficiencies and identify areas of cost savings," which implies that the move is largely financially motivated. News Corp's vast empire includes the Wall Street Journal, the Dow Jones Newswire, the Times of London, the Sun, the New York Post and Sky Italia, as well as Fox News.