Results matching “of the press will”

The Associated Press's recent modifications to its membership rates and the nature of the services that it provides caused a number of US papers to back out of their subscriptions. Publications across the country may be on the hunt for an alternative news source, in particular local papers for whom the AP's content may not be adequate anymore. Papers like The Post Register from Idaho Falls, The Star Tribune from Minneapolis, Washington's Yakima Herald-Republic and The Wenatchee World have already submitted two-year cancellation notices of their contracts. 

Abu Dhabi-based The National, launched in April, has a circulation between 70,000 and 90,000 copies but pertains to "grand ambitions" and "leaders who are bullish on print journalism," writes The Los Angeles Times. A seven-section Saturday issue is scheduled to be launched in the future.

With the World's financial markets nose-diving and talk of an imminent deep recession, people are turning to newspapers to cut through the jargon and market turmoil and to tell them the truth. However, some newspapers stand accused of sensationalising the crisis in the pursuit of a dramatic front page and of being ill informed on the subject matter. General sentiment in the City of London, for instance, ranged from financial workers accusing the press of creating "complete hysteria" to "fanning the flames of the crisis". These severe reactions in the City, combined with an utterly confused public, sparks the question: how should a newspaper cover a global financial crisis?

The Financial Times has proved to be a port in the storm of screamer headlines and misinformed commentary. The Editors Weblog spoke to the Managing Editor of the FT, Daniel Bogler (left), about his views on the coverage and how his newspaper reacted as the crisis unfolded.

Firstly, Bogler agreed with the City's negative view on some of the mainstream media's coverage, saying, "It's unfortunate that the financial literacy and understanding of how things work in the City and of basic accounting and so on, is actually very thin in financial journalism. The FT, because we are a financial newspaper, take the stuff a lot more seriously. We hire people from the City... and also spend a lot of time, effort and money on training our people."

Rethinking the layout

Bogler reported that one of the key things the FT did when the magnitude of the story unfolding became clear was rethink the entire layout of the paper. To ensure that the FT provided enough space to deliver comprehensive coverage, it cleared the first four pages of previously planned stories and bumped them further inside. This shift in focus did result in other key news getting squeezed, but this highlights the newspapers keen news judgement on the significance of what was unfolding on trading screens throughout the world. The bar for a story to get onto the front page was suddenly raised.

Bogler said that not only did the FT clear the first four pages, but it also redesigned the front page to emphasise and reflect the newspaper's focused coverage. The FT's template for its front page is usually three or four stories and a taster section (long column down the side) for stories within (left). However, with its decision to provide focused coverage on the rapidly changing story, it now featured two stories on the financial meltdown and leads to the rest of its coverage.

To further provide space for reporting the story, it reorganised the letters page and also largely cleared its flagship Markets pages at the back.

Since the story broke, half of the Financial Times coverage in print and online has been entirely focused on the credit crisis. The paper is not only featuring pieces to assist and inform investment bankers, but also pieces that will be useful for the average individual. The Personal Finance section last Saturday did a special on how to manage your finances during the credit crash, with practical advice for everyone, from savers to those seeking information on their mortgage.
 
This flexibility in terms of layout is another key reason for its success in its treatment of the story; templates and layout do not dictate to the newspaper when a big story breaks.

Refocusing the team

Layout flexibility followed into the newsroom itself. From what Bogler reports, it appears that three key teams spearheaded the newspapers response to the global financial crisis. The teams were the Crisis Counsel (Chief Editors and senior editors), The Leader Conference (meeting for in-depth coverage) and, specifically, the Hit Team (the financial services (banks) reporters).

Crisis Counsel
As the story hit, a Crisis Counsel was called at around 10am with the Editor Lionel Barber, News Editor Robert Shrimsley and other senior editorial staff. It was here that the decision to clear the first four pages of the newspaper to focus on the meltdown was taken and a senior news editor was appointed to manage the pages. Furthermore, the decision to make this story the focal point for the newspaper was made, with the senior team then notifying the rest of the staffers.

Leader Conference
The team then moved on to the Leader Conference to inform them that in depth and "Leader" stories would now be on the market meltdown. Previously planned articles on the UK's Conservative political party were shelved and resources shifted for optimal reporting.

The Hit Team
The Hit Team strategy had previously been utilised by the FT during the Iraq War. The Hit Team - which consists of reporters and editors from the relevant beat for a story - co-ordinate the entire newsroom: deploying reporters, co-ordinating news flow, writing the front-page splash and managing the opening pages. The Team can also pull reporters off their beat to boost coverage of a topic, ie, an autos journalist can be drafted in to aid coverage of a banks story. The core of this unit for the crisis was, and still is - as this rapidly developing story still has legs - made up of ten financial services reporters in London and six or seven in New York. Staffers around the world also called in with their regions' story and any new angles developing. Bogler reported that the news editor and reporters around the world "shaped these pages relatively quickly."

The highly respected "Lex Column" was also given priority. It is a column that features widely read analysis and commentary from a group of reporters who previously worked in hedge funds and investment banks.

The payoff

As a result of its dedicated focus and clear and comprehensible content, FT.com's traffic has exploded. Page views have risen 300 per cent. Unique users are also up by 250 per cent.

When asked about the FT's competition, Bogler said, "Its unfortunate perhaps for the Wall Street Journal, having just been bought by Murdoch, that they have switched their interest to general news, political news and focusing on US politics at a time when US politics is just not the story. We have looked a bit more nimble."

Responsibility and ethics

Reflecting on this fast-changing story, the media coverage it has received, and the perceived "sensationalist" angle taken by other papers, Bogler said he is aware of the added pressure on the FT, "We do have an extra responsibility and we take it very seriously.  We do not 'fan the flames' of the crisis."

He went on to say, "It is in the nature of newspapers to write the most dramatic headline, the most dramatic copy and have the most dramatic picture, so you have impact on your readers.... this irresponsibility is kind of bred into the industry. You have to be very careful, you have to take a step back. A picture of someone with their head in their hands in front of a trading screen, is that the right picture?"
 

Blackberry is set to release a new challenger to Apple's iPhone into the market. The new product, called "Storm", will be released in the U.S., Europe, India, Australia and New Zealand "next month" through Verizon and Vodafone.
























The initial reports on the device are positive, the touchscreen feature has received rave reviews. As with the iPhone, it is sensitive to the bioelectric pulses in your fingertips. Furthermore, it has a very delicate touch and if you want to select something  you have to press down on that screen until it clicks. As a result, Wired report, "there's no ambiguity to button presses". This new system is called ClickThrough.

One negative is the lack of WiFi, however, it does have a dual-mode smartphone running on both GSM and CDMA networks.

It has a high-resolution 480 x 360 pixel color display, Transmissive TFT LCD, the font size is user selectable and the screen is light sensing.

Furthmore, the Storm is suitable for text editing, so the user can access word and excel on the move.

Source: IntoMobile and Wired

Publish2 has announced the creation of a newsgroup called The Wire. The Wire will host links and RSS readers in order to provide wire news for organizations who want to move beyond the Associated Press for budgetary reasons.

Publish2 plans to include the "best content from all over the web, regardless of the source."

The idea, according to Publish2, is that on the "web you don't need to pay anyone to help you bring great stories to readers. All you have to do is link.  Finding all this material is another matter. Individual bloggers do their part each time they link, but there hasn't been a good way to aggregate the blogosphere's links."

The Times Online has decided to restructure their editorial team and will no longer have the position of Editor-in-Chief Online. 

The previous editor-in-chief, Anne Spackman, will now be the comments editor. 

Other changes include a streamlining of print and online editorial management structures, according to the Press Gazette.

Times editor, James Harding, had this to say about Spackman's new position, "she has generated real change in her previous role and I am excited about her editorship of the opinion and comment pages of The Times. She will ensure that we continue to have the best team of columnists in the country, as well as bringing in new powerful voices, challenging thinking and hilarious writers to the pages. She will also develop one of the most exciting areas of modern journalism, reader comment."

Sources: Press Gazette

On Friday, October 3, Singapore Press Holdings announced that it will launch an English weekly paper for the Indian population in Singapore.  The paper will be titled tabla! and will be distributed for free beginning October 10.

The paper will focus on news in India but will also provide information on developments in Singapore that affect the Indian community.  According to Rajendran Jawharilal, editor of tabla!, the paper will "cater to the diverse interests of the Indian disapora - ranging from current affairs to entertainment news, from personal finance to sports."

Although the paper will be distributed free, it will be available for home delivery for $28 Singapore dollars a year.

Sources: NDTV

Bertrand Pecquerie wrote in an article in Le Monde yesterday that the French newspaper industry is in crisis and, worryingly, turning to the State for help. Newspapers have been subsidized in France for the past ten years and, in those ten years, the situation has not improved, it has actually worsened.

Pecquerie believes that there are four core problems facing the industry and these are not being addressed. The four core issues are method, diagnosis, objective and means.

Newsquest has announced plans to fire all subeditors and replace them with "multi-skilled, cross-platform journalists". 

According to the Press Gazette, the changes will take places at the following papers, Epping Forest Guardian, the Waltham Forest Guardian, Wanstead and Woodford Guardian, the Enfield Independent and the Borehamwood Times as well as the free Bishop Stortford Citizen and Waltham Forest Independent. 

Google Inc and Yahoo Inc are delaying their controversial search advertising partnership, Yahoo reported on Friday.

"The companies have agreed to a brief delay in implementing this agreement to continue our ongoing discussions with the (U.S.) Department of Justice," Yahoo said in a statement. "We have had discussions with regulators and look forward to responding to their questions about this agreement." The deal is still expected to be pushed through during October.

The deal, which allows Google to sell advertising for some of Yahoo's online advertising space, is unpopular with advertisers who fear higher prices.

Google uses an algorithm that aims to match consumers with what it says are the most appropriate ads, a formula some advertisers find mysterious and bothersome.

An antitrust lawyer, who regularly brings mergers to the Justice Department, said that the delay was probably not a good sign for Google and Yahoo. "It means that they were not going to get a clean bill of health in time, and perhaps it's much worse than that. They don't want to go forward and be told that there's potentially a very serious problem there," said the lawyer.

Source: EJC Media and Reuters

See also:

World's press opposes Yahoo-Google advertising deal

The Department of Justice says Google's deal with Yahoo! clears its antitrust regulations, however, Senator Herb Kohl (Democrat -Wisconsin), chair of the antitrust subcommittee, has reportedly said the deal requires monitoring, Reuters have reported.

According to Paidcontent.org, "Kohl is either giving his tacit assent to the deal or at least resigning himself to its ultimate approval by the DOJ."

Kohl has said that Google and Yahoo didn't supply the subcommittee with all the information it would have liked before making its decision. Kohl would like the ability to act if, further down the road, "Google is gaining a dominant market position as a result of the Google-Yahoo agreement."

Source: Paidcontent.org

See also:

World's press opposes Yahoo-Google advertising deal

Cambridge-based firm Liquivista announces that it will be developing electronic newspapers over the next three years, with £12 million backing the project. The web developer plans to build full-color interactive e-paper reader that will resemble an A4 piece of paper and will feature audio and video content, according to the Press Gazette.

Web metrics company Comscore report that the UK has comparatively high mobile internet usage, with 29 per cent of all mobile users checking their phones for original web content.

In the UK, BBC News and BBC Sport are the top two online news brands for mobile users.

Comscore reported at the Association of Online Publishers Digital Publishing Summit in London, that of the country's 47.5 million mobile users, the two BBC sites receive an average of 3.42 million unique mobile users a month.

Mike Short, head of research and development for mobile operator 02, said: "I would suggest to you that mobile should be part of any media strategy model," he said. "And it isn't part of yours then it should be. The one thing mobiles have is that they are the most accessible platform out there."

Source: Press Gazette

France's newspaper industry is in crises and President Nicholas Sarkozy is launching talks to look into alleviating the situation. There will be a two month industry consultation period led by a one of Sarkozy's former Elysee advisers.

However, unions are reportedly concerned Sarkozy could loosen ownership laws, allowing his television baron friends to buy into the national press. Sarkozy, is known as the "télé-président" due to his media fixation and his close relationship with key figures within the media.

The French press is one of the least profitable in Europe, the daily circulation of all French national papers is just 8 million, which is half that of the UK and one third of Germany. French newspapers' combined turnover fell from €1.145bn (£905 million) in 2000 to €848 million last year.

It also costs more to print a national newspaper in France than in most of its European neighbours due to the Union Le Livre's importance in this sector, it insists on strict working hours and conditions for its members. It is also difficult to buy a newspaper in France because Labyrinthine state controls newspaper kiosks. The press already receive €1.5bn in direct and indirect state each year

Le Monde's editor, Eric Fottorino, has called for Sarkozy to make it easier for the public to buy a copy of a newspaper.

Sarkozy reportedly favours loosening French laws to allow media organisation to own a TV station, a major radio network and a major daily newspaper.

Source: Guardian.co.uk