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Media trends digest – September, 2007

Free newspapers for all? 20 September
UK: The decision by the New York Times to dismantle its website pay wall prompts media commentator Philip Stone to ask whether printed newspapers should forgo circulation revenue altogether and opt for free distribution. He argues that the paper gave in to accountants who made it clear that the company will earn more by opening its site to paid advertising that everyone can access.
Stone asks: "If we can read a newspaper for free on the internet then why should we pay to receive it in print? How come one model works for the internet and another model is used for print? The answer may well be that the print model needs revisiting."
More: Greenslade blog, Guardian

Also…
The New York Times announced the shuttering of its online subscription service, TimesSelect. The obvious question: is this the end of the paid-for online model altogether? How will the Wall Street Journal’s (WSJ) website, the Web’s largest paid-for subscription website, react? The Editors Weblog collected the insight of media analyst Philip Stone, Ali Rahnema, Corporate Development Director at the Irish Times, and Daniel Bernard, General Manager of WSJ Online.
More: Editors Weblog

Plus…
Within hours of the New York Times announcing its was making all content free, News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch told an investment forum that he was considering dropping the paid model for the Wall Street Journal online. It currently charges US$50 per year and has 1 million subscribers.
However Murdoch’s reasoning is that he could pull in many more people from the same well-off demographic and, after an initial drop in revenue, more than make up the loss with advertising.
Wall Street Journal

Newspaper readers more civic-minded
Adults who read newspapers in their youth are more active in civic matters, such as voting or even calling talk radio stations to comment, according to a new study from the Newspaper Association of America Foundation.
More: Editor & Publisher
NAA

Mobile phone ads the next battleground
The mobile phone ad battleground is warming up. Telstra has started sending our redemmable coupons from fast-food chains (and is copping criticism because of ti) while Vodafone has just released a mobile ad charter.
The sector is predicted by the mobile ad industry to be worth $200 million in a few years.
More: The Australian

Local TV hits high point
Australian programs have filled out the top 10 slots for most popular TV shows in 2007.
1. Kath & Kim (7) 2.1 mill
2. Thank God You’re Here (10)
3. Dancing with the stars 6 (7)
4. The Force (7)
5. Border security (7)
6. RSPCA animal rescue (7)
7. City Homicide (7)
8. Medical emergency (7)
9. It takes two (7)
10. Sea patrol (9) 1.6 mill

More sex on TV
USA: There's been a surge in sexual content on TV, and the coming fall season features a prime-time show on CBS about swingers, yet America's contraceptive manufacturers are still finding it hard to get lucky in Tinseltown. That's despite the fact that conservative watchdog Parents Television Council last week issued a scathing report on the state of family-friendly TV. The PTC's conclusion: Sexual references swelled 22 per cent during early prime time when compared with programming from the same time slot six years ago. And according to "Sex on TV 4," a 2005 study by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, the number of sexual scenes on TV has nearly doubled since 1998.
More: AdAge (via Benton)

Stokes to take on classifieds market
Channel 7 boss Kerry Stokes has announced his company will take on the classifieds market, using the Craig’s List model via its Yahoo!7 site.. That means that, initially, it will offer free ads.
This will no doubt be watched closely by PBL, Fairfax, News & Telstra, all of which have significant classifieds ad business.
Craig’s List
Yahoo!7

Will Telstra face a blogger revolt?
Bloggers at Telstra’s BigBlog service are unhappy the organization is now running third-party ads on their pages, without sharing the revenue.
More: The Australian

Radio study could influence ownership rules
USA (media release): A new study by a University of Colorado at Boulder journalism professor that spotlights the growing trend of "news outsourcing" -- when big-city radio stations produce and package local news stories for sister stations in distant markets -- has garnered the attention of federal regulators who are reviewing media ownership rules. More than 40 percent of radio stations produce news for one or more stations outside their own markets, according to data from the Radio-TV News Directors Association cited in a study by Lee Hood, assistant professor of broadcast journalism at CU-Boulder.
Hood's research has captured the attention of the Federal Communications Commission, which will hold a meeting in Chicago on Thursday, 20 September, as part of a series of hearings around the country revisiting media ownership rules. One of the FCC commissioners has asked Hood to cite her study during the hearings. Hood's study, the lead report in the March issue of the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, focuses on news outsourcing and its effects on the quality and relevance of local news coverage in smaller communities.
The "hub and spoke" system enables large radio conglomerates to employ fewer people and cut costs, but authenticity, regional nuances and topical public affairs reporting are lost in the process, Hood says.
More: University of Colorado

Call for Net Neutrality in UK
Opinion: The time has come for the United Kingdom to join the growing debate surrounding Net neutrality, the president of the British Computer Society said. Professor Nigel Shadbolt said late last week that, because so much of the Internet's content is derived from the US, the UK and Europe would be affected by any Net neutrality-related decisions made across the Atlantic. Because Internet users in the U.S. tend to have a smaller range of ISPs to choose from than do users in the UK, the consensus in the UK has been that Net neutrality is a U.S.-centric debate. The UK government and the regulator, the Office of Communications, have both argued that, with a competitive ISP market to ensure choice and existing European Union legislation to protect the customer, UK businesses and consumers have nothing to worry about. However, Shadbolt argues that the time has arrived for the UK and Europe to stop sitting on the fence.
More: News.com (via Benton)

Why metered broadband slows innovation
Opinion, USA: If you look at history of innovative services, you'll see they tend to move more and more towards flat rate offerings, as it encourages usage and encourages innovation. Phone service and mobile phone service have both trended in exactly this direction -- and in both cases it's because it's opened up a much larger overall market, even if it means less per customer. So, why are we suddenly trying to go the other way with broadband?
More: Techdirt

Tough times & tough marketers reduce ad spend
USA: Last week, TNS found that US ad spending fell for the second quarter in a row, the first time that had happened since 2001. Depressing as it might appear, it's a trend you might want to get used to, though not for the business-cycle reasons you might expect. Sure, ad expenditure is linked to the overall health of the US economy. And factors such as the ever-expanding subprime-mortgage mess are sure to play a role, as will the relative health of major mass marketers such as the rather sickly Big Three automakers, whose declining spend is what TNS blamed for the downward slide.
But there's something else going on that has nothing to do with the natural rhythms of booms and busts or the fortunes of Madison Avenue's biggest clients. Simply put, American companies are shifting more and more marketing dollars out of paid media. You see it happening every day as marketers—smart ones, at least—talk about things such as word-of-mouth and conversational marketing, the kind of activity that doesn't feed the coffers of media sellers or traditional ad agencies and hence goes unmeasured in bellwethers such as TNS reports.
More: AdAge (via Benton)

Journalism as infrastructure
Opinion, USA: As America wakes up to the crumbling of basic infrastructure, with Minnesota's bridge collapse the most recent example, a more subtle but also alarming breakdown is hitting our cities and towns. In community after community, newspapers are shedding editorial staff at a rate that spells trouble for a well-informed citizenry, a foundation of a free society. As the nation's community foundations gather in San Francisco for their annual meeting this week, I'd like to suggest that they put the survival of quality local journalism squarely on their own agendas. They, perhaps more than any other entities, could play a vital role in ensuring that communities emerge from an inevitably messy media transition with the kind of local information sources we all need.
More: San Francisco Chronicle

Debate over Spanish media
USA: Univision has surpassed the networks in young adult viewership, according to recent Nielsen ratings. The rising prominence of Spanish-language media is prompting concerns – including from California Governer Arnold Schwarzenegger – about a slowing of the acculturation of immigrants. While the Hispanic media offer a different lens on American culture, many experts argue they often help educate recent immigrants about the US while preserving Spanish among their English-speaking children.
"The difference with Spanish-language broadcast is it's really community-oriented news and it's news you can use," says Veronica Villafañe, former head of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. "They actually encourage assimilation: This is where you go to get services; these are your rights. It's really an education channel."
In heavily Hispanic regions of the US, Univision has dominated for some time in local news ratings, says Alan Albarran, director of the Center for Spanish Language Media at the University of North Texas. He concurs that Spanish-language news is more focused on community issues, spending much less time "chasing sirens."
More: CS Monitor

Why does commercial news suck?
Opinion: In the US, for lack of information and context, we don't debate the real issues. Why not? 1) People love fake news and 2) Self-interested corporate media.
More: Huffington Post

Microsoft suffers stunning defeat
Microsoft suffered a stunning defeat on Monday when a European Union court backed a European Commission ruling that the US software giant illegally abused its market power to crush competitors. The European Union's second-highest court dismissed the company's appeal on all substantive points of the 2004 antitrust ruling. The court said Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, was unjustified in tying new applications to its Windows operating system in a way that harmed consumer choice.
More: Reuters (via Benton)

$100 laptop becomes $200
A nonprofit group that plans to produce low-cost computers for poor children has raised the laptops' price.
The One Laptop per Child Foundation's XO laptop will sell for about US$188, up from the $176 the group announced in May, said foundation spokesman George Snell.
That's almost double the original goal...
More: Reuters

High-speed broadband on UK agenda
UK media regulator Ofcom is preparing to wade into the growing debate over the next generation of ultra-high speed internet access, with the launch next week of a major consultation as it tries to keep the UK in the upper echelons of the broadband league.
The news comes after Stephen Timms, minister for competitiveness and former e-commerce minister, announced plans to host a summit with industry to decide whether government intervention is needed to kick-start investment in the sort of fast broadband networks needed for services such as internet TV.
More: Media Guardian

Out with the pyramid – in with the diamond?
The Online Journalism Blog (OJB) rethinks the new editorial processes that come with the online world. Away goes the inverted pyramid, in comes the “news diamond,” which is based on the Web’s two main attributes, speed and depth.
The OJB’s Paul Bradshaw begins rethinking the newsroom’s editorial process in terms of these two strengths. On one hand, new media always allow the publication of faster news (TV and radio, than mobile and email, now moblogs…). On the other hand, the Web is the perfect medium to make journalism “potentially deeper and broader than the previous kings of context and analysis: newspapers and magazines,” says Bradshaw.
More: Editors Weblog

Beware injurious falsehood 18 September
Opinion: What do the companies 2Clix (software), David Jones (retailing) and Gunns (paper) have in common?
All three believe they may have found a way of circumventing the 2005/2006 changes to defamation law, which essentially blocked corporations from suing for defamation.
They have been using a commercial law, referring to “injurious falsehood”, to chase people who have dented their corporate images.
2Clix is chasing an online tech forum, Whirlpool, for some unkind reviews and commentary on its product; David Jones is after the Australia Institute (which described the retailer’s kids fashion images as bordering on child porn); Gunns is after a Tasmanian doctor (with connections to an environmental lobby group) who described its wood chip piles as a health hazard.
All of which says that if you’re a blogger, a community group, or an individual, beware.
Each of the companies, in addition to proving injury and falsehood, will have to show there was an intent to cause damage -- in other words the ‘attack’ was deliberately malicious. That may prove difficult.
More sinister, however, is that it opens the door for those with a large chequebook to intimidate those who don’t. Legal action is time-consuming and expensive, no matter who wins – a modest action that ties up people for a couple of weeks and costs $50,000 to $100,000 might seem like pretty good value to a company wanting to silence its critics. For writers and publishers, it means you'd probably be wise to stick to the basic principles of defence against defamation --- which is ensure you at least have truth and preferably public interest on your side -- when writing about a corporation.
GA
More info: Defending Scoundrels link, Crikey story, The Australian

Privacy rules should tighten -- ALRC
The Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) has released a new report on privacy for public comment, and some of its recommendations have the potential to provide more boundaries on what can and can’t be reported.
Currently media enjoys a broad exemption from the privacy act, but the ALRC suggests this should change.
Though supporting the continuation of some form of exemption, it suggests journalism should be defined and include a rider of public interest.
Beyond that there should not be an exemption, it suggests.
The report says, in part: The free flow of information to the public through the media is an important element of a democratic society. This principle is not, however, absolute. It is necessary to balance the free flow of information to the public through the media and the public interest in adequately safeguarding the handling of personal information. Stakeholders recognised the need to reach such a balance. In the ALRC’s view, the most appropriate means of reconciling these sometimes competing principles is to grant media organisations a limited exemption from the operation of the Privacy Act. That is, media organisations should be exempt from complying with the Privacy Act when acting in the course of journalism. 38.66 It was suggested that the lack of a statutory definition of ‘journalism’ allows the exemption to be interpreted too broadly. Consistent with the views of a number of stakeholders, the media exemption should focus primarily on report matters of public interest. It should not exclude from the operation of the Act content such as infotainment, entertainment and advertising. Therefore, the ALRC proposes a modified version of the definition of ‘journalism’ that was originally included in the Privacy Amendment (Private Sector) Bill, by excluding the word ‘information’ from that definition. This means that to the extent that media organisations publish material that falls within the ambit of the general word information—but is not news, current affairs or documentaries—they will be covered by the Privacy Act.
Full report (see section 38 for media)

Chaser’s war on APEC a ratings winner 13 September
ABC: Political satire program The Chaser's War on Everything has catapulted the ABC into the ratings records in the wake of its APEC motorcade stunt …preliminary figures show 2.3 million viewers tuned in to see The Chaser's program on ABC TV last night, making it the highest-rating show across all networks.
More: ABC + Chaser
Comment at New Matilda

What will newspapers be in 2020?
Jeff Jarvis on the future of newspapers: By 2020, we had better hope that newspapers aren’t just papers anymore but are valued members of larger networks that enable their communities to gather, share, and make sense of the news they need.
What will newspapers look like in 2020? Well, what’s a newspaper?
That’s what young people may well ask by then. Jeffrey Cole of the USC Annenberg School’s Center for the Digital Future concludes from his latest survey of internet use that people 12-to-25 years old today – who’ll be in the golden 25-to-38 demographic in 2020 – will “never read a newspaper.”
Full story

Birmingham News turns ultra local
The free weekly Birmingham News is remodeling its offer by going hyper-local. It will be rebranded as seven local papers and will rely on many citizen journalists to provide unique content.
"The difficulty in covering a city the size of Birmingham, is that many of the suburbs have little in common. If you live in Acocks Green, for instance, Great Barr is as remote as Timbuktu,” said Ross Crawford, editor of the Birmingham News.
"With the best will in the world, we can't be a traditional local newspaper for the whole city. That's why we've chosen to go ultra local." 25 local citizen correspondents have been recruited. "These are people who are very close to their communities, and their enthusiasm is fantastic. They are really motivated by a desire to make a difference to their own communities," said Crawford.
More: Hold the front page

Youtube to partner newspapers
Korea Times: Google said it will forge partnerships with newspaper companies within and outside Korea to publish video news articles on Youtube, and share the advertising revenue from it.
David Eun, Google's vice president of content who is visiting Seoul, said Tuesday that the firm is having “deep discussions'' with various content providers here, and will announce deals very soon over a wide range of digital content.
“Almost everything is pretty much set up. The only thing short now is advertisements, but it will soon add up,'' Eun told the Korea Times as he attended the DICON 2007 conference in Seoul, Tuesday.
Eun said that partners will have options in the video news business.
``You can have video content on your own Web sites and generate revenue from the ads. Or you can make a `branded channel' on Youtube and have sub-channels for individual reporters, then draw the traffic back to the newspapers' Web site. It's up to you,'' he said.
In either case, the video news will be accompanied by a small, issue-specific advertisement on the bottom, he said.
Korea Times

Become a citizen journo
The International Center For Journalists has just released a free and interactive training module, both for journalists and amateurs, designed to introduce user to the basics of citizen journalism and blogs.
The 10 steps cover the basics, providing a list of possible blog hosts, a few guidelines as to what to say and how to build reader loyalty, as well as some tips relating to safety issues and publishing rights.
More: IJnet

Net Alert budgeted for $189 million
The Federal Government’s Net Alert program – an effort to filter net content viewed by children -- is running with an extraordinarily generous budget.
“NetAlert – Protecting Australian Families Online is a $189 million initiative combining technology, education, awareness and advice, regulation and policing to ensure that Australian families can get the best of the internet, whilst minimising potential harm,” Senator Coonan said.
More: Net Alert + Working Group release

Government local radio content rules relaxed
The Australian reports today that the Federal Government will be relaxing local content requirements for rural radio stations.
Full story

Google to launch election site
Google is about to launch a new federal election website, ahead of other publishers such as Fairfax, News Ninemsn and Yahoo 7.
Google claims: “The site and tools are a world first and have been developed in Australia. This election has already been dubbed by some as the ‘YouTube election’.”
The site is being launched tomorrow in Sydney.

ACP buys Emap
ACP has followed through on the rumoured buyout of UK publisher Emap’s local titles.
According to ACP, Emap Australia publishes a number of leading men’s, action sports and mother and baby titles in Australia, including Zoo Weekly, FHM, New Woman, Empire and a range of well-known sports and family-oriented titles.
“We are delighted with the acquisition of Emap Australia and believe it is a compelling business in its own right, and offers a highly complementary fit to our existing range of leading titles. We have also worked hard to forge a long-term partnership with Emap UK that will result in future joint publishing initiatives,” said Scott Lorson, CEO of ACP.
The price is reported to be $94 million
ACP
Emap

Britney fan gets more hits than Britney?
A Britney Spears fan upset at the reviews of his idol’s recent disastrous performance in Las Vegas may have scored more web visitors than the woman he supports.
His two-minute ranting (and expletive-laden) video has been viewed more than 3.1 million times and scored over 50,000 comments.
YouTube

Oldest document returns home 12 September
From the National Library of Australia: The earliest surviving document printed in Australia, recently found in the collection of Library and Archives Canada, has come home as a gift to the nation from the Canadian Government.
The item, a theatre playbill dated 30 July 1796, was presented today by the Prime Minister of Canada, The Right Honourable Stephen Harper, to the Prime Minister of Australia, the Honourable John Howard MP, at a ceremony held at Parliament House.
National Library Director-General Jan Fullerton accepted the playbill into the collection, noting the generosity of Library and Archives Canada and the ongoing spirit of goodwill that exists between the two institutions.
“This is an extraordinarily generous and highly significant gift to the people of Australia. The survival of the playbill, and its discovery and return, is a demonstration of the commitment of our two institutions to preserving and providing access to documentary heritage.
“It will have a richly deserved place alongside other key documents such as Cook’s Endeavour journal, William Bligh’s notebook and Eddie Mabo’s papers in our new Treasures Gallery due to open in 2009,” she said.
The document advertises a theatrical performance held at the Sydney Theatre on Saturday, 30 July, 1796. It was printed in Sydney by transported convict George Hughes, operator of Australia’s first printing press, which came out on the First Fleet.
It was probable that Philip Gidley King took the playbill with him when he visited England in October 1796.
King was a First Fleet Marine Officer and, later, third Governor of the colony of NSW from 1800–1806. King’s handwriting and signature are on the back of the sheet.
The playbill was found by a Library and Archives Canada rare books bibliographer in a scrapbook containing several items of mostly Canadian printed ephemera, and other playbills and advertisements for performances in 19th century England.
 The scrapbook was transferred to Library and Archives Canada from the Canadian Parliamentary Library in 1973. The scrapbook had been compiled by British banker, botanist and antiquary Dawson Turner (1775–1858).
 The significance of this playbill was realised when the scrapbook was being dismantled and the individual pieces catalogued separately for inclusion in the Library and Archives Canada collection.
National Library (click pic to see the full size ersion at the library website)

Poverty under-reported
From Fair.org (USA): According to the most recent US Census Bureau data, 37 million Americans—one in eight—lived below the federal poverty line in 2005, defined as an annual income of $19,971 for a family of four. Yet poverty touches a far greater share of the population over the course of their lives: A 1997 study by University of Michigan economist Rebecca Blank found that one-third of all U.S. residents will experience government-defined poverty within a 13-year period. The poorest age group is children, with more than one in six living in official poverty at any given time. Yet despite being an issue that directly or indirectly affects a huge chunk of the U.S. population, poverty and inequality receive astonishingly little coverage on nightly network newscasts. An exhaustive search of weeknight news broadcasts on CBS, NBC and ABC found that with rare exceptions, such as the aftermath of Katrina, poverty and the poor seldom even appear on the evening news -- and when they do, they are relegated mostly to merely speaking in platitudes about their hardships. According to its study of 38 months’ worth of stories on the evening newscasts of ABC, CBS and NBC, just 58 stories aired that focused on poverty, with NBC airing the most, followed by CBS and ABC. In contrast, 69 stories aired about Michael Jackson over the same time period.
More

TV can lead to attention defecit
Reuters, via Benton: Young children who watch more than a couple of hours of television a day are more likely to have attention problems as adolescents. "The two-hour point is very, very clear with our data, very consistent with what the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends," Carl Erik Landhuis of the Dunedin School of Medicine at the University of Otago, the study's first author, told Reuters Health. "We're not saying don't watch TV, just don't watch too much TV," he added. Study participants who had watched more than 2 hours of TV in early childhood were more likely to have attention problems as young teens, the researchers found. Those who watched more than three hours were at even greater risk.
More

China’s determined censors
Washington Post, via Benton: A look at the Communist Party's enduring determination to decide what Chinese people can read or hear, sing or say, write or perform. More than a quarter-century after Deng Xiaoping launched the country on a course of drastic reforms, the party at all levels has clung to rigid censorship over information and art -- including folk songs in a dialect only the locals understand. But party censors are now turning to China's booming Internet and cellphone networks with particular vigor. Given the easy access to technologies such as text messaging, censors have found it difficult to keep a grip on information. But it hasn't been for lack of trying.
More

AM turns 40 6 September
ABC radio’s morning current affairs show AM has turned 40.
From the ABC: In 1967 when AM hit the airwaves with presenter Robert Peach in the chair, it altered forever the way Australians found out about their country and the world around them.
It also changed the news agenda as it became compulsory listening for newspaper and television news editors and politicians as a starting point for the news day ahead.
No longer were Australians getting information gathered the previous day or brief snippets read by a newsreader they were getting the voices and sounds of the news-makers and up-to-date stories from across the globe.
When AM started in 1967, two new cables made it easier to speak and record voices across the world. Journalists began to carry portable tape recorders that could be worn over the shoulder.
In 1972, John Highfield reported live from the Munich Olympics when terrorists occupied the Israeli team quarters.
Forty years on and AM continues to set the day's news agenda with reports and analysis from journalists around Australia and around the world.
As part of the ABC's 75th celebrations, presenter Tony Eastley and the AM team have been visiting the capital cities, as well as doing special broadcasts from Maningrida, Broome and at a road house in Western Australia's Kimberley.
The Director of ABC News John Cameron, said, “AM has not only been a news leader and agenda-setter over 40 years on the national stage, but it's also been both a great breeding ground and journalistic home for some of Australia's best known broadcast talent.
"We're very proud of the program's history and we're confident it will continue to set the pace in the decades to come.”
Some of the reporters who have worked on AM in the past include: Ray Martin, Charles Woolley, Richard Carleton, Bob Carr, Pru Goward, Claire Martin, Paul Murphy, Tim Bowden, Maxine McKew, John Hinde and Allan Hogan.
ABC

Ready for conflict
Some media staff reporting on APEC have been suited up for trouble, according to The Australian newspaper.
It reports: in a first for a news event on Australian soil, photographic staff from News Limited and Fairfax Media, and camera operators from the Seven Network and SBS, will be armed with helmets, goggles, slash-proof vests and a greater understanding of how to protect themselves in a dangerous environment.
Full story

Foxtel claims footy lift
Foxtel says it is experiencing a 60 per cent lift in audience figures, albeit off a low base, since it made some of its AFL coverage available on its general channels – in addition to the sports channel coverage.
It’s audience numbers are around 164,000.
AFL and NFL are consistently pulling audiences of 650,000 to 900,000 on free to air TV, which is much higher than for pay television.
However there has been a fuss raised in Sydney recently because the AFL is being paid almost double the NFL for similar rights.
The 2007-2011 contract for AFL, shared by Fox, Channel 7 and Channel 10, cost 780 million.
Meanwhile News Digital has sold Foxsports.com.au to the News-owned Premier Media Group.
The site claims around 1.4 million unique users per month and a 54 per cent growth over 2006.
News Digital Media CEO Richard Freudenstein said, “We are very happy with the new arrangements.
“Bringing the online and television teams even closer together will empower the business to better respond to changing consumer behaviour.” 
Foxsports

Media Alliance upates
US newspapers not reinventing - Former Guardian editor Peter Preston has lashed out at US newspapers for not reinventing themselves in the way that The Guardian, Times and Independent have in recent years by opting for a radical change of format. Instead, says Preston, the US model is to "shave away and coin a quick buck". Read more
Old jobs, new media - What impact, if any, is the focus on newspapers' online footprint having on jobs for traditional journalists? Mark Glaser of US blog Media Shift says any job cuts on the physical newspapers are countered by new jobs online. But as Nicholas Carr of Rough Type points out, the jobs are overwhelmingly for designers or technicians at the expense of jobs for traditional journalists. Follow the debate here and here
Media Alliance

Crikey founder to start new site
Stephen Mayne, the founder of the cheeky news commentary site crikey.com.au, is to start a new venture called The Mayne Report at Maynereport.com on October 1.
He says it will concentrate on his primary interest – shareholder activism -- and will not be in direct competition with his old site.
The holding page for  the site promises: “The Mayne Report is a daily videoblog and subscription newsletter focusing exclusively on shareholder activism and corporate governance issues that will be launched in October 2007. The website and videoblog are free, but subscribers will receive regular newsletters about the latest AGMs, corporate campaigns and inside stories.”
Mayne Report

IRB & media still at loggerheads
With the international rugby season about to start, the organizing body, International Rugby Board (IRB), and the media are still at loggerheads.
The IRB initially wanted full control of what photography could be used from matches, with its main concern that sponsor’s logos may not be shown in a way it approved of. That was last March, and several issues have been sorted out.
However the IRB is still insisting on having ownership of, or rights to, all images taken at the events, regardless of who took them. Not surprisingly, publishers are still  fighting  the issue.
The IRB’s actions are indicative of a global tendency by sport series owners to control the media output.
French media syndicate SPQN recently summed up its concerns by saying, “Journalists and newspaper editors are having a harder and harder time doing their job and informing readers. Where there once was lots of freedom of reporting and of work for the press, restrictions to the right to information and on press freedom are multiplying.”
Earlier story at Editors Weblog

Sky beats majors to Bush interview
Sky News has created a minor fuss by gaining a one-on-one interview with US President George Bush, ahead of more fancied players such as Channel 9 and the ABC.
There are various theories on how the relatively obscure (in the local market) network got the gig. David Speers of the channel told The Australian, “It was honestly just putting in a request through the US Embassy, and a lot of persistence."
Others see it as the result of political interference, while Australian columnist Mark Day opines that Sky’s reach into other media (which use it as a resource) and political cogniscenti helped its cause.
The Australian Media section

Ninemsn sells Vodafone ads
Ninemsn is to sell advertising across the Vodafone network, following form the announcement that it was providing mobile TV content.
The industry is suggesting the local mobile ad market will be worth $200 million in a few years’ time.
In anticipation of  this, the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association last week released guidlelines for the market.
It says, “Advances in multimedia handsets, the increasing use of mobile data services and the proliferation of 3G services have opened the mobile internet up to variations on traditional above-the-line and below-the-line advertising. Mobile advertising is the placement of advertisements (currently display and search are the most commonly used) on mobile internet sites - both on the carrier portal and off-portal.”
AMIA guidelines

Old media still best for branding -- survey claim 5 September
Media release: new media have a long way to go before they replace traditional media as advertising communication vehicles, reveals the 2007 US release of Compose from Pointlogic and KMR Inc.
Compose asked consumers about the communication values of a range of 33 channels, and found that mainstream media - notably TV, Print and Radio - perform best among all the investment options open to advertisers. Consumers recognize TV as the number one medium for building awareness: 43 per cent rate it as excellent or very good. Magazines (31 per cent), newspapers (29 per cent) and radio (24 per cent) all also performed well. In helping consumers decide whether they can trust a brand, TV came first again with 26 per cent, followed by newspapers (21 per cent) and magazines (19 per cent). The newest media - video games, video-on-demand, interactive TV and streaming video – are currently regarded by the population at large as being niche communication vehicles. Their scores on these measures ranged between two per cent and five per cent.
Those who do consume these new media are more alert to the commercial potential. 18 per cent of users of interactive TV consider it effective at conveying trust; 12 per cent of video games users rate it highly for driving awareness. However their usage levels are still small relative to traditional media. Traditional media must therefore still be regarded as the cornerstone for brand advertising. They deliver large audiences and they deliver impact. Newer media can help in extending a campaign planned in traditional media, but their low reach means that few brands can rely on them uniquely. (Pic: Compose USA 2007 output screen displaying ranking of channels’ potential in conveying high quality for brands. Click to see larger version.)
Source: Pointlogic

Ed's note: this is a measure of perception, rather than engagement. We strongly suspect the figures would be quite different if the latter was measured.

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