"There is no way around this fact: the first batch of magazines adapted to the iPad failed to deliver", says Frédéric Filloux on Monday Note, citing the figures of two important American magazines, Wired and Vanity Fair, which show a downturn in circulation. Not only did they lose circulation, but their iPad versions don't reach more than a small percentage of print copy circulation -- 3% for Wired and 1% for Vanity Fair.

Citing a Women's Wear Daily article, which uses Audit Bureau of Circulations figures, the article underlines that several high profile magazines show the same pattern: iPad downloads are in sharp decline everywhere.

Filloux picks out four main causes of this decline.

First the magazine on paper was compelling. "With the product available at the right combination of time, price and location at nearby kiosks, having it on my iPad suddenly lost its appeal", he said.

Secondly, in Filloux's opinion, the supposed convenience of back issues stored on the device is oversold. "Due to the rigid browsing experience on a tablet, very few will be tempted to leaf through back issues stored on their device".

Third, the time for downloading the issues is too long. And fourth, "asking the consumer to pay the same price for an electronic product with a debatable advantage is a bad idea".

Filloux argues that the current experiences still produce some helpful lessons.

1. "Don't try and replicate old concepts": the iPad content must be produced in an adapted way to the new medium.

2. "Make up your mind": news content for nomad devices should come in two flavours, one dedicated to tablets, and another lighter version for the mobile phone's small screen, which relies on low-speed cellular networks.

3. "Encapsulate the web": with the web, we take for granted things such as multi-layer reading, search and recommendation engines. Unless tablet publishers find a way to offer unique e-magazine-like experience, these features will be missed.

4. "Price wisely": don't expect a wide adoption for the e-version of a magazine priced at the same level as the paper version.

A first good answer, at least to one of the problems raised, could be the app Flipboard, which was named Apple's iPad app of the year. With Flipboard, readers who find articles shared on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Google Reader can display them in an easier to read and more beautiful magazine layout.

"The beauty of the print, the power of the Web", as they say.

Sources: Monday Note, WWD, Flipboard

After the EU approved News Corp's bid to take over full control of BSkyB yesterday, a new aspect of the story emerged when it was revealed that UK business secretary Vince Cable, who was due to take the final decision on the bid, had been secretly recorded saying: "I have declared war on Mr Murdoch and I think we are going to win".

The two young undercover reporters who recorded Cable were journalists of the Telegraph, but Cable's fighting talk did not make the Daily Telegraph front page report this morning, nor was any reference included in a "transcript" of Cable's remarks that appeared on page four, the Guardian reported.

"So incensed was a whistleblower at the Telegraph, that he or she contacted Robert Peston, business editor for BBC News. It was Peston - a former business editor at the Sunday Telegraph - who broke the story at 2.30 pm", the Guardian wrote.

Furthmore, Peston later told the Guardian that the whistleblower had told him that the Telegraph "had made a commercial decision not to publish those remarks".

As the Guardian article underlined, the Telegraph Media Group, owned since 2004 by Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay, had led a group of seven media companies - including the owners of the Daily Mirror, the Daily Mail and the Guardian - in opposition to the Murdoch deal back in October.

A spokesman for the Telegraph, and later a senior journalist, said it had always been planned to publish Cable's remarks the morning after.

"However, for the past two months coverage of the News Corporation/BSkyB merger has been a sensitive subject for the Daily Telegraph, with several journalists on the title saying that corporate instructions frequently complicated reporting on the developments of the story", noted the Guardian, adding that "Last week a complaint was also made to the Guardian, following an online report that questioned why Telegraph Media Group was so opposed to the deal, amid speculation that the company hoped to see News Corp forced to sell off the Times as a condition for getting the merger through. Telegraph executives had hoped to present a united front against the News Corp bid."

"This reluctance by the Daily Telegraph may be explained by an understandable wish not to help a commercial competitor, though there could be other less cynical explanations", says the New Statesman.

Ofcom, the UK media regulator, is due to pronounce about on whether to allow the News Corp's bid on public interest grounds, but its recommendations would not have been binding for Cable,who had the power to veto the deal on media plurality ground and should have had until January to decide whether to approve the deal or to refer it to the Competition Commission.

After his remarks, BBC News reported that "Downing Street says Mr Cable will keep his job but will be relieved of any role in the BSkyB deal and other such matters in future. These powers will go to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport."

As PressGazette reported, around 70 staff that worked on media policy will now transfer to work under culture secretary Jeremy Hunt - who will now take the final decision to whether or not to allow News Corp to buy the 61 per cent of BSkyB it does not own.

Commentators are now wondering if there is a question of public interest in this kind of secretly-taped conversations. "The revelations are certainly interesting, but is such a clandestine tactic in the public interest?", asks David Allen Green, the legal correspondent of the New Statesman, especially, he continued, because Cable, a Liberal Democrat MP, was speaking at his constituency surgery, and, as a general rule, the constituency surgery of an MP should not be the place for secret recordings. Even if these do not breach any grand politic or legal principle, there is some cause for concern.

"One suspects that the first use of interceptions of voicemails by tabloid reporters had a solid public interest basis; but it was quickly realised that such material was a rich seam to be mined just for trivial stories. Similarly, one hopes that newspapers do not now see constituency surgeries as "fair game". The secret recording of a constituent would never be appropriate: there will always need to be a private space where a constituent can speak candidly to his or her Member of Parliament", Allen Green says.

Press Gazette also wonders about the ethical questions the journalists' behaviour raised. The paper cited Ivor Gaber, City University professor of political journalism, who ask "First, was it justifiable to use subterfuge against Cable when there was, and is, no evidence of wrongdoing? And second, was it right to miss out undoubtedly the most important part of the story because it could, potentially, adversely affect the Telegraph's business interests?"

Sources: Guardian, BBC News, New Statesman, PressGazette (1), (2)

In the New York Times, Brian Stelter tried to take the stock of the US news coverage of the Afghan. "As the Obama administration conducted an Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy review this month, the news media did too, and the coverage came peppered with question marks", he said.

He cited the ABC News series of segments titled "Afghanistan: Can We Win?", the special report "Can This War Be Won?" of CBS Evening News by Katie Couric and a recent New York magazine headline questioning "Why Are We in Afghanistan?"

"The questions reflect the complex nature of the Afghan war, and of the news coverage", he argued.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism, of the Pew Research Center, cited in the Stelter's article, produces every week a News Coverage Index, analyzing which news dominate the week.

During the November 29 - December 5 week, for example, "Afghanistan was the No. 5 story of the week (3%), which included coverage of an attack that killed six Americans and President Obama's surprise visit to the country on December 3", the PEJ news coverage index said.

"The grueling war there is like a faint heartbeat," said Stelter, citing a study by the PEJ, "accounting for just 4 percent of the nation's news coverage in major outlets through early December. This is down slightly from last year, when the war accounted for 5 percent".

But it is a problem of news coverage or of readers attention? Does the Afghan war still draw people's attention?

"The low levels of coverage reflect the limitations on news-gathering budgets and, some say, low levels of interest in the war among the public. About a quarter of Americans follow news about Afghanistan closely, according to recent surveys by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press", NY Times noted.

After President Obama's statement about refocusing attention on Afghanistan, news organizations too withdrew from Baghdad and moved staff to Afghanistan again. "But," in Stelter's opinion, "there is no doubt that cutbacks by media companies have affected the way that the war is transmitted to American living rooms".

This tallies with the findings of the Media Standards Trust study about the decline of international reporting in the British press and the Reuters Institute one about the changes in foreign correspondence.

Stelter cited also a study of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, which does a weekly survey about what gain the public interest (the News Interest Index) in conjunction with PEJ's News Coverage Index. In 2007, when the study started, the Afghanistan conflict accounted for only 1 percent of the nation's news coverage, and the same accounted in 2008. The coverage picked up at the end of 2009 when Obama conducted a review of Afghanistan strategy, but still added up to only 5 percent for the year.

Another study analyzing news content from a different perspective found that 60% of the top stories on news websites covered the same topics as legacy media, but that blogs and social media tended to focus on different topics. As EJO reported, Scott Maier published an 18-month research study, also based on the PEJ News Coverage Index, which examined 3,900 news stories to asses whether there is any difference between online news coverage and that of the legacy media.

Sources: The New York Times, Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, EJO

Last week a UK judge's decision to allow journalists tweeting in court during Julian Assange's hearings opened a debate about the implications of live reporting from courts.

Today a new guidance was issued for live, text-based communication from court: the Lord Chief Justice cleared the way for Twitter to become a more common tool of court reporters by ruling there was no statutory ban on its in courts, PressGazette reported.

As Journalism.co.uk reported, the Lord Chief Justice, England and Wales' most senior judge, said that, even if journalists have greater freedom to file live reports and Twitter updates from courts, judges can authorise it on a case-by-case basis. He also warned that it could be dangerous in criminal trials where witnesses outside of court may be influenced. The use could also be limited to journalists.

As Journalism.co.uk reported, the guidance said: "There is no statutory prohibition on the use of live text-based communications in open court. But before such use is permitted, the court must be satisfied that its use does not pose a danger of interference to the proper administration of justice in the individual case".

Lord Chief Justice last November 16th, during the Judicial Studies Board Lecture in Belfast, talking about the impact of modern technology, said that there isn't a statutory prohibition on the use of text-base remote transmission of material from a courtroom. "How is the principle of open justice compatible with preventing an ongoing, live and text-based dialogue to the outside world from a courtroom? If a reporter of member of the public is permitted to write notes to himself or herself in court, and then "file them" from a telephone outside the court, what is the qualitative difference if they are permitted to do so when sitting in court, say, by sending a email", he said.

"We must always welcome new technology. When jury trials began there was no electricity: there were no typewriters: people came to court by foot or on horse back. We now use technology for many purposes, to the public advantage. We do turn on lights: we even put some heating into the building. So judges are not anti-diluvian. We welcome advances in technology, provided that we are its masters, and it is our tool and servant. But we need to examine the impact on our jury system with great care, and an increasing need for urgency, just because technology is developing at an astonishing rate", said the Lord Chief Justice in his speech.

Journalism.co.uk says also that the guidance also calls for the launch of a consultation on the use of live, text-based communication. The Secretary of State for Justice, the Attorney General, the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) and the Society of Editors will all be involved in the consultation.

Sources: PressGazette, Journalism.co.uk, Judicial Studies Board Lecture