Results matching “daily mail general trus”

Good news from the UK newspaper websites market.
ABC figures - reported by Journalism.co.uk - show a general increase in traffic for the month of March.

The Mail Online leads this positive trend, with a 29.59% increase of monthly unique browsers compared to February's results.

The Guardian.co.uk and the Telegraph.co.uk follow with, respectively, an increase of 24.54% and 22.21%. Good results come also from the Independent.co.uk (+7.10%) and from the Mirror Group (+4.75%).

Results for the Times and the Sun, the article highlighted, remain unreported, as requested by News International following the introduction of a paywall for the Times and Sunday Times last year and following ABC's announcement of changes in its policy that allow members not to publish online traffic figures.

Online Web site PriceofWeed.com tries to find out how much marijuana costs in different areas of the world, according to Poynter.  The site used crowdsourcing to get its information, which is basically outsourcing tasks to a large group of people.  Online news sites can use this and similar methods to get more information out to readers in the future.

Al-Jazeera's live World Cup coverage has technical glitches that angered viewers, as reported by the Guardian.  The glitch was thought to be "sinister" and "for nearly 20 minutes the channel's live transmission of the World Cup's opening match between South Africa and Mexico in June was almost impossible to watch because of blank or frozen screens or commentary in the wrong language," states the article.  The Guardian found that as-Salt in Jordan intentionally and illegally jammed the signal for politicial gain.

The chief executive of the Daily Mail & General Trust has joined in the skepticism on Jeremy Hunt's plans for a local TV and online news service, according to the Guardian.  "Morgan said that DMGT, which owns the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday as well as more than 100 regional titles, was not convinced that businesses involved in the culture secretary's plans could make any profits," the article adds.

The digital content director of Trinity Mirror's Mirror Group is going to leave in January to start a new business division at online sports operator Perform Group, according to paidcontent.org.  The director, Matt Kelly, has been with the group for 16 years.

Plus, according to USA Today, the Cincinnati Enquirer scored big with newspaper sales" after the Reds won the National League Central division title.

Sources: USA Today, the Guardian, paidcontent.org, Poynter

Not fifteen years ago, if a news consumer wanted to get in touch with a reporter or the rest of the community concerning an article in the paper, he or she would put pen to paper and send off a letter to the editor's desk.  That letter would be screened by the editor of the newspaper and, most likely, thrown into a trash bin never to find a place on the op-ed page.  But with the advent and increasing popularity of newspaper websites, any person can comment on just about any article, and many can do it with little thought, moderation or the need to identify themselves.

Such unfettered commenting has led to what William Grueskin, dean of academic affairs at Columbia University's journalism school, called a "brawl."

"A lot of comment boards turn into the equivalent of a barroom brawl, with most of the participants having blood-alcohol levels of 0.10 or higher," he said to the New York Times.

These threads run hundreds of comments long and often stray off-topic or turn nasty.  Though most comment threads are equipped with the option for users to flag questionable content, as the discussion loses direction, offensive comments can slip through the cracks.  In response to out of control comment threads, newspapers have gone so far as to shut down commenting capacity until they were able to clean up the threads. 

The Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic released figures for the number of unique visitors to UK national and regional newspaper websites this week.

While some national newspapers continue to attract new readers every month, some regional newspapers are struggling to keep their online readership up.

ABCes: Top UK national newspaper websites

Mail Online, part of the Daily Mail and General Trust website network, takes the top spot as most popular UK newspaper website for January with 2.16 million unique browsers per day on average, says Guardian.

Redundancy terms for staff at The Independent may have to be cut to ensure the newspaper's sale to Russian businessman Alexander Lebedev goes through, The Guardian reported.

Terms are currently considered generous at four weeks' pay for every year of service but their legal status is unclear as the terms were never placed in writing.

The packages appear to be an obstacle to Lebedev's purchase of The Independent and Independent on Sunday. "We have had a gun held to our heads - if we don't agree to reduce our terms from four weeks to two weeks per year of service the deal with Lebedev is off," an unnamed journalist told The Guardian.

The Guardian website has done it again - the newspaper's website has just announced it has achieved its second record-breaking month in a row with nearly 37 million unique users for December, according to its website.

This surpassed its November record by 3.32%, according to figures released today by the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic.

Morning freesheet Metro Herald, created by the merger of freesheets Herald AM and Metro Ireland, has launched in Dublin today.

The merger, announced last summer, was widely expected as both papers were believed to be running at a loss, according to The Guardian.

In a bit of encouraging media news, Daily Mail & General Trust has beaten profit forecasts and the recession to record an overall 23% fall in profit from October 4th 2008.

There has been quite a bit of recent news about closures, cutbacks, reduced ad revenue and the like so perhaps it is time for des bonnes nouvelles:

London's major afternoon daily the Evening Standard dropped its 50 pence cover price and went free yesterday. The paper, 75.1% of which is owned by Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev (described by the Guardian as 'the spy who loves media), has been a paid-for daily for 182 years. The remaining percentage was retained by the Daily Mail and General Trust.

The move is an attempt to address declines in circulation and distribution will be upped from from 250,000 to around 600,000 in the hope that increased advertising revenue will make up for lost of income from the cover price. 

The Daily Mail and its owner, General Trust, announced today that national newspaper advertising revenue have fallen 16% in the past 11 months while regional advertising fell 31%, guardian.co.uk reports. DMGT has recently cut 200 jobs, part of "decisive actions taken on costs, with £150m of savings delivered." While revenue is reported to have dropped 9% in the last 11 months, analysts are expecting profit before tax of £182m and earnings per share of 35.7 pence.

DMGT exudes confidence however, claiming to have reacted early to the downturn with staff reductions and other cost-cuts that leave it in a good position for a fall recovery and an expected rise in the advertising market.

"Industry observers will be keen to see more evidence of DMGT's digital strategy at the full-year results, which will be an important factor in the next few years as the newspaper industry continues to face structural decline," says Andy Viner, head of media at BDO Stoy Hayward.

European newspaper and magazine publishers have presented the European Commission with a call for more copyright protection as a way to lay the groundwork for new ways to generate revenue online, the International Herald Tribune reported. A press release said that "a landmark declaration" had been signed at a meeting on 26 June in Berlin, convened by the European Publishers' Council and the World Association of Newspapers.

The joint declaration grew out of an initiative in Germany: the 'Hamburg Declaration' was introduced on 8 June and has so far been adopted by 149 German publishers. The declaration advocates "urgent improvements in the protection of intellectual property on the Internet" and stresses that "universal access to websites does not necessarily mean access at no cost." It continues, "going forward we no longer wish to be forced to give away property without having granted permission."

Martin Morgan, chief executive of the Daily Mail & General Trust has revealed that the group is considering methods of charging for its content, as well as devices such as Amazon's Kindle. Whilst he did say not to expect a "big initiative that is going to come out any time soon," he said that DMGT is "certainly looking at those models."

"The more specialised the information is . . . the more likely to you are to be able to charge for it," believes Morgan - DMGT's flagship publication the Daily Mail is particularly known for its celebrity coverage. The paid online content debate is rife, and Rupert Murdoch, head of News Corp has recently announced that the company will be charging for content on all of its sites within a year - could more publications be set to follow?

Source: Financial Times

The London-based Evening Standard newspaper today launches an unprecedented 3-week-long pr campaign to tell Londoners it is "sorry" for the way it has conducted itself in the past, reports the Guardian's Roy Greenslade.

The UK capital's ubiquitous buses and tubes will be emblazoned with one of several messages, each beginning with the word "sorry." One message says "Sorry for losing touch", while other messages apologise for the paper's negative reporting, taking readers for granted, being complacent and being predictable. Some messages will also appear on poster boards around the city.

Thelondonpaper, News International's free London based daily, will launch a new look website on April 1st. Changes will include increased commercial opportunities and an increased coverage of the publication's Going Out Guide, which offers readers advice on the best places to go in the capital. There will also be a new design, and more focus on social networks (including a link with Facebook).

Saalim Chowdhury is head of digital products at thelondonpaper and explained the overhaul is due to the publication's notion that "18 to 35 users trust us over anyone else to help them get more out of London".

News International launched thelondonpaper as a competitor for the Daily Mail General Trust's morning free daily Metro, and its creation was also the reason for the launch of DMGT's evening free daily the London Lite. Both thelondonpaper and the London Lite are in direct competition with Alexander Lebedev's Evening Standard, which was also previously owned by DMGT.

Source: Media Week

Have you ever tried to sit down on the subway and found that a newspaper had already taken your seat? Daily Mail and General Trust launched a campaign asking readers of the free newspaper, Metro, to recycle their copies instead of leaving them around. Advertisements around the UK show pictures of a neglected Metro on a bus-seat with headlines such as, 'Horror - woman abandons Metro on train' followed by, 'leaving your Metro behind is littering. Please take it away and recycle it.'

With Metro UK celebrating its 10th birthday next week Stephen Brook of the Observer has examined the effect its launch has had upon the newspaper industry in London and the rest of the UK.  Although slow starting, the Daily Mail General Trust owned publication is now distributed in 16 cities, and its success and impact upon the circulation of paid for titles eventually prompted a reaction from rival companies.  "Ultimately, its success came at a cost for DMGT", writes Brook, as it prompted the launch of News International's evening rival the thelondonpaper.  Although DMGT did manage to launch their evening freesheet the London Lite just days before the NI launch, both have had a considerable detrimental effect upon sales of DMGT's Evening Standard.

Metro "which reportedly achieved annual profits of £8m a year during the good times, gave itself over to advertisers in a way that no self-respecting paid-for newspaper would".  However, the exclusive contract which allows Metro UK to be distributed in London Underground stations and is so essential to its popularity, is up for renewal next month.  The merits of free newspapers are debatable: they have a derogatory effect on their paid for counterparts, yet the manner of their distribution attracts younger readers to reading news in print - DMGT's decision to launch Metro UK was apparently partly due to the sight of "young commuters reading a newspaper, rather than staring into space" in Stockholm.  Either way, Brook believes that when "media historians cast their eye over the past decade", the freesheet trend will be a defining one.

Source: The Guardian

The reported deal between Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev and the Daily Mail & General Trust has today been confirmed, and Lebedev has bought the struggling London Evening Standard - apparently for the nominal sum of £1.  He will take on a 75.1% share in the publication, leaving DMGT's subsidiary Associated Newspapers controlling 24.9%.

It was revealed yesterday that Lebedev's son Evgeny last month created the shell company Evening Press Ltd, and it is now thought that it is through this enterprise that the Standard will be run. As the first Russian to own a major UK newspaper title, speculation is mounting as to the effect the eastern oligarch and ex-KGB spy will have on editorial direction.

Source: The Guardian

Daily Mail & General Trust free newspaper Metro, distributed in the morning, announces further job cuts as a response to the financial turmoil that is affecting the industry as a whole. The number of redundancies is still unknown, but regional staff working on the Urban Life listings and the reviews section may be affected.

The Daily Mail is planning the launch of a website in India in order to "capitalize on the global potential of the Mail," said Lord Rothermere, chairman of the Daily Mail and General Trust board.

Taking into account Audit Bureau of Circulation figures suggesting that almost 80% of the Mail's unique users are non-U.K. residents, the paper naturally sees a "huge opportunity" in the "global sphere."  

A move into India would build on existing partnerships with The Washington Post and India Today Group, which worked with The Mail to launched the print title Mail Today, reports Journalism.co.uk.

The Daily Mail, which recently debuted a revamped version of its U.K. website, is only the latest in a series of European and American media companies making inroads into the burgeoning media economies in the developing world.

Source: Journalism.co.uk through IFRA Executive News Service