Answer or die 31 March The Age: Mobile phone inventor Martin Cooper (pictured) said he was so enthused after his first mobile call that he liked to joke that phone numbers would become so important that "when you were born you would get a phone number and if you didn't answer it you would die." (Pic: Motorola) More
Video of the week
Suffering the side-effects of individuality? Then consume mainstream media!
News writer as news marketer 30 March
ABC Media Report: SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, is an enormous new media industry. Both in Australia and in the United States, there are scores of companies and consultants who specialise in helping you get your website higher up the search engine food chain. That is, optimising the chance that you'll get closer to the top of the search listing pile…Now SEO techniques have been around for some time, there's nothing new there. What is new, however, is that news organisations are now starting to use them. Two people who've been following the development of SEO techniques, and the effect they're having and are likely to have on journalism, are David Higgins and Trevor Cook. Trevor is a Sydney-based communications consultant and blogger, and David is the editor of News.com.au
He recently challenged his Australian media colleagues to look not just at the quality of the journalism that they present online, but also at how they position it to maximise their search engine profile. More
Photoshop moves online
Finding itself relegated to specialist markets such as graphic artists, Adobe has moved a version of its Photoshop image-processing application online in the hope of snaring a broader audience.
Available for free as a beta version, it allows pic manipulation and storage via the web, while promising easy integration with social networking sites like Facebook.
Market observers expect Adobe to eventually offer a premium service, for which it will charge, alongside the free product. Photoshop Express
Red faces over $250,000 drug stunt
Victoria resident John de Jong, who was filmed by media (at the invitation of police) being ‘busted’ driving with illegal drugs in his system, has successfully sued the police department for defamation.
The driver protested his innocence and was subsequently proved right, leaving police red-faced over a publicity stunt designed to promote its new roadside testing regime and a settlement of up to $250,000.
"It's an example where an innocent member of the public was paraded before assembled media and exposed to the international media glare only for it to turn out that the results were a technical error," Katalin Blond, his lawyer said.
No action was taken against outlets which reported the incident, but the instant public ‘conviction’ of the hapless driver raises ethical issues about media being party to publicity stunts.
Further report: Sydney Morning Herald
Brits have no inherent right to local book market The Age (op-ed): There’s been an undeclared guerilla war going on for decades between British and Australian publishers. Like most wars, it is being fought for the financial gains that go with territorial rights. Unlike most wars, however, the aggressors have never tried to clothe their naked self-interest with ethical rhetoric. More
Mobiles remain rampant
IDC's Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker has revealed that in 2007, 9.64 million mobile devices were shipped to Australia and 3.55 million of these shipped in Q4, the highest quarter on record.
Converged devices (smart phones) accounted for 27% of the total devices shipped.
IDC predicts that by 2012 the number of converged devices will exceed 47% as consumers opt for feature rich handsets.
Shipments of new mobile devices will continue to grow 62% faster than the corresponding increase in subscribers, with shipments set to exceed 12 million in 2012.
"Australians want to own the ultimate device that does it all. We are replacing our mobiles more frequently in a bid to stay on top of technological evolution," said Mark Novosel, market analyst, telecommunications at IDC.
"We can no longer call them mobile phones, they are so much more than that. They have become mobile devices, a source of entertainment, a camera, a navigator, a communications hub and above all a status symbol, forming the foundations of oursocial lives," adds Novosel. IDC
Asia growth centre for WSJ The Australian: Les Hinton, the new chief executive of Dow Jones & Co, which owns The Wall Street Journal, expects strong growth for the business in the Asia-Pacific region while yesterday saying he was increasingly unlikely to make the group's entire wsj.com website free. More
Indonesia to block porn sites
Reuters via Benton: Indonesia plans to restrict access to
pornographic and violent sites on the Internet
after the country's parliament passed a new
information bill. The Southeast Asian country has
had a vigorous debate over pornography in recent
years, exposing deep divisions in the Muslim-majority nation. More
Analogue to digital switch gets boost
The Federal Government has given the national switch from analogue to digital TV signals a boost, with the announcement of a funding and management package.
“The analogue to digital switchover could well be the largest change on a national scale since the introduction of decimal currency in 1966. It will affect every household and every TV receiver in the nation, including those in VCRs and other recorders,” Minister for Communications Senator Stephen Conroy said. More
Cut the blather…
Not everyone is impressed by the Minister’s announcement. Media commentator for The Australian, Mark Day, effectively says the policy is an expensive rehash. Link
US candidates leverage new media Media Post: A recent analysis of BIGresearch's Simultaneous Media Survey of 15,727 participants shows that members of all political parties are making new media a smart, cost-effective alternative to expensive television ads. According to the analysis, the top three used most among Democrats, Republicans and Independents include cell phones, video gaming and instant messaging.
New media is a big part of Libertarians' lives as well with 37.6% regularly or occasionally blogging, while 26.9% of Democrats, 25.7% of Independents and 22.9% of Republicans are doing so. More; Big Research
Ad spending stagnant
AdAge: US ad spending growth ground to a halt in 2007, climbing a negligible 0.2% to reach $149 billion last year after a 4.1% gain in 2006, according to data released today by TNS Media Intelligence. Ad spending in the fourth quarter declined 0.1% from the fourth quarter one year prior. The stall in spending growth isn't a shock, given the general financial uncertainty and specific problems in high-spending categories like domestic auto or housing. But its arrival highlights the speed with which market conditions have gone south. It was only January 2006 when TNS predicted that 2007 would produce a 2.6% gain, itself considered a "tepid" rate of growth. Now tepid looks positively sunny. More
Alternative media expected to get more ad dollars
USA Today: Advertisers and marketers, struggling to keep up with changing consumer habits, are about to make massive investments in new digital and out-of-home media platforms, according to a forecast out today from research firm PQ Media.
It says that companies will spend more than $160.8 billion in 2012 — up 82% from 2008 — on 18 emerging markets including online videos, store-based TV screens, sponsored events, TV and movie product placements, cellphones, video games and digital video recorders. More
Sharing content to combat Google
Customwire: Media companies are sharing more than advertising sales as they form networks of like-minded sites to combat the growing ad-selling might of major Internet portals. Sharing news headlines and other content is a component of many of the revenue-sharing partnerships being forged to give marketers an alternative to Google and other tech-centered advertising vendors. More
Social sites to hook up
Editors Weblog: Google, Yahoo, and Myspace have announced the formation of the OpenSocial Foundation, a nonprofit group "to ensure the neutrality and longevity" of Google's OpenSocial, according to a release. Google hopes to emphasize the community aspect.
OpenSocial was introduced last year by Google to unify all social applications. Those implementing OpenSocial include Engage.com, Friendster, LinkedIn, MySpace, Oracle, orkut, and Plaxo. More
Newspapers a tough ride for new owners NY Times: Critics of newspapers say that part of the problem is that the industry has lost its ability to surprise. Tell that to the guys who have just bought in. “The news business is something worse than horrible. If that’s the future, we don't have much of a future,” Sam Zell, who bought the Tribune Company last year, said recently in The Baltimore Sun. “I'm an optimist, but it is very hard to be positive about what’s going on,” said Brian P Tierney, who bought The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News in 2006.
“The near term and medium term at the paper is more negative than what we expected,” said OhSang Kwon of Avista Capital Partners, which bought TheMinneapolis Star-Tribune in late 2006.
These are all smart businesspeople, with significant success in other endeavors, who took a hard look at the wave-tossed publishing sector and appointed themselves as life savers. And very soon after jumping in, they too began foundering in the tall waves. More
Saving newspapers
The American Journalism Review has published an interesting piece on what newspapers need to do to ensure survival in the current media world.
Its chilling warning says:
“Today's newspeople know they have forfeited the edge on breaking news and lost the buzz in the online marketplace. They have been outflanked and out-thought by portal sites, aggregators, social networkers, indexers, video hosts, auction and classified sites and many others. They see advertisers retreating, and readers fleeing and Web viewers waffling.
“Lots of statistics demonstrate these points, but consider just this one: daily newspaper circulation has declined every year since 1987.”
If you wade through the initial misery, you’ll find the author suggests some solutions. More
Why web designers should not design solo
(From Jakob Nielsen)
Design Team ≠ Typical Users
Generally, if you're a member of a design team, you are not representative of the target audience. I don't care if you're the interaction designer, the graphics artist, the information architect, the writer, the programmer, or the marketer. All of these people:
know too much about the product;
Are too skilled in using computers and the Web in general;
And care too much about their own baby. More
What’s in a name?
Melbourne IT argues that generic names may be critical to building your online identity. Link
Is digital killing newsprint? 26 March
In the wake of the digital assault on traditional media, where does the print newspaper stand? Nicole Kouros looks into the question: will the digital revolution be the death of print news and quality journalism? More
Walkley returned over code proposal 20 March
Walkley award-winning journalist Paul Toohey has retuned his prize in protest at a proposed addition to the code of conduct for journalists, put forward by the Media Alliance (MEAA). It affects how reporters would conduct themselves when entering Aboriginal lands
The section in dispute reads: “On arrival in a community media representatives will report to the police and council at the first opportunity and inform them what they intend doing in the community.”
Toohey has said in The Australian today, "Would the MEAA suggest to correspondents in China that they should first consult authorities before seeking out Tibetan dissidents? What if the journalist wants to do a story about the local police, or corruption in the local council? Since when does the independent media announce its intentions to the state?" More at The Australian; Toohey op-ed; MEAA proposal
News fails to keep banker’s hours
Publishing 2.0: [There's] nothing like the biggest business story in recent memory — JPMorgan buys Bear Stearns for $2 (a share) — breaking on a Sunday to bring into sharp relief the difference between news on the web and news in print — not to mention differences in how news is presented on the web.
What’s so interesting about this case is that all the reporting on this story from Friday — when business news usually takes a break for the weekend — quickly became utterly old and outdated when the deal was announced on Sunday. More at Publishing 2.0
Finance biggest media worry -- Pew 19 March
Pew Research Centre (USA): The financial crisis facing news organizations is so grave that it is now overshadowing concerns about the quality of news coverage, the flagging credibility of the news media, and other problems that have been very much on the minds of journalists over the past decade.
An ever larger majority of journalists at national media outlets -- 62% -- says that journalism is going in the wrong direction, an increase from the 51% who expressed this view in 2004. Half of internet journalists and about the same proportion of local journalists (49%) also take a negative view of the state of their profession.
Soaring economic worries underlie these sour assessments. In an open-ended format, 55% of journalists at national news organizations cite a financial or economic concern as the most important problem facing journalism, up from just 30% in 2004. More
A Current Affair to apologise
Network Nine’s A Current Affair will have to run a 30-second apology and retraction on air, after an Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) investigation found it in serious breach of the industry code of practice.
According to ACMA: The Australian Communications and Media Authority has found that the licensee of QTQ Brisbane, Queensland Television Ltd, breached the Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice 2004 in several broadcasts of A Current Affair about government support for children with autism which were critical of the performance of the then Queensland Minister for Disability Services and his department. More at ACMA
ABC launches major online push 14 March
The ABC has launched a major online push including:
ABC Playback, an internet TV service with full screen quality pictures will launch following a beta test period;
ABC Local – the launch of 60 new local online sites, with broadband content, feature stories, pictures, videos and audio reflecting local events and culture, news, weather and sports coverage;
The establishment of a new 24/7 Continuous News Centre (CNC) by ABC News;
ABC Shop Downloads – an online browsing and shopping portal. The integrated ABC Commercial media player and download manager claims to give ABC Shop customers access to a huge catalogue of DVD, CD and Download products. More at ABC
Shield laws needed in WA -- MEAA
Media Alliance: The Alliance has called on the WA Attorney-General Jim McGinty to stand by his commitment to "sensible" shield laws that protect journalists when they are acting in accordance with their code of ethics. In the past 10 months alone, five WA journalists have been threatened with jail and fines for refusing to reveal their sources at secret hearings held by the WA Corruption and Crime Commission. More
Plus…
Fines reprieve for US Journo - The "draconian and perhaps unprecedented" ruling that a former US Today journalist should pay daily fines out of her own pocket, after being declared in contempt of court for refusing to reveal her confidential sources has been overturned by an appeals judge this week. More
The Wheel of Ethics
The recent storm over former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s nocturnal recreational activities has raised debate over how far coverage of personal lives should go. Roy Peter Clark at Poynter has developed a tool he calls the The Wheel of Ethics to help make the decision. See this link
Hulu to rival YouTube?
NBC Universal and Fox in the US have opened an online video portal which the companies hope will eventually rival YouTube in popularity. Called Hulu.com, it claims, “Hulu offers US consumers a vast selection of premium video content, on demand, free and ad-supported: full episodes of TV shows, both current and classic, full-length movies, thousands of clips, and much more.” Hulu.com
New venture for BBC & ACP
ACP magazines has announced a joint venture with BBC magazines to develop product locally. The first will be a print title to go along with the new Australian version of the Top Gear motoring show, being developed locally by SBS.
ACP has also announced it is moving FHM upmarket, targeting an older readership away from direct competition with Ralph. BBC magazines
Papers should add value to the web Wired magazine’s Chris Anderson (author of The Long Tail) recently offered the opinion that print titles should consider becoming an enrichment of the web rather than a competitior. He said, during a recent interview: “What we’re learning now, in an era where people have choices, is that the job of every print publication is to add value to the web. If you’re a newspaper, and I say this as someone who loves newspapers, arguably you are a value-subtracting medium. The same product, 18 hours later, that leaves smudgy ink on your fingers.”
Use the video player above to see it at CharlieRose.com
Plus… New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger famously remarked last year: "I really don't know whether we'll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don't care either." See Editors Weblog
Concern over digital ‘road hogs’ New York Times, via Benton: For months there has been a rising
chorus of alarm about the surging growth in the
amount of data flying across the Internet. The
threat, according to some industry groups,
analysts and researchers, stems mainly from the
increasing visual richness of online
communications and entertainment — video clips
and movies, social networks and multiplayer
games. More
China becomes biggest web market
Reuters via Benton: China has surpassed the United States to become
the world's largest Internet market by number of
users, a research firm said on Thursday. The
estimate by Beijing-based BDA was based on data
from China Internet Network Information Center
which indicated that the country's Internet users
totaled 210 million at end-2007.
Nielsen/NetRatings put the United States Web
population at 216 million for the same period,
BDA said. "Based on these sources and the
assumption that these markets have continued to
grow in 2008 to date at the same rates that they
grew in 2007, we can conclude that China has by
now comfortably surpassed the United States as
the world's largest Internet population," analyst
Bin Liu said. BDA added that it expected
e-commerce to become the next boom sector in
China, as businesses take advantage of the mass
market of consumers already online. More
Media to be charged for aborted trials? 4 March The Australian: The NSW Supreme Court has called for new powers to make the media pay for the retrial of criminal cases that are aborted over news reports. More
Black day for Conrad
Former media tycoon Conrad Black has gone to jail… More at The Guardian
Young Australian Journalist Award
Media Alliance: Send in your entries now for the Young Australian Journalist of the Year Awards. Don't miss out on the chance to win a three-week trip visiting media organisations in London, New York and Washington, plus $5000. Entries close at 5.00pm March 14. More
Journalism failing?
Zogby.com: Two thirds of Americans - 67% - believe traditional journalism is out of touch with what Americans want from their news, a new We Media/Zogby Interactive poll shows.
The survey also found that while most Americans (70%) think journalism is important to the quality of life in their communities, two thirds (64%) are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism in their communities. More
Plus…
Comment from The Guardian: The increasing move away from newsprint to the internet in the United States - especially among people under 30 - is underlined once again in a survey… More
Gates on online journalism
Microsoft founder Bill Gates was recently interviewed on the theme of online journalism by CNET.
He said, in part: "I hope that readers will be willing to pay subscriptions or watch ads or things that will keep the high quality and breadth of journalism alive and (make it) even better than it is today," Gates said. "In some ways, we have better journalism today... (With) in-depth, certain kinds of journalism...there's still a question of how that gets funded." More
News sites treading water -- report
Editor & Publisher: Online newspapers are not attracting eyeballs fast enough, suggests a new report from Outsell Research.
"In online usage, what stands out is that most sites are just treading water," Ken Doctor, an affiliate analyst with Outsell and author of the report, wrote. "A few have managed significant growth year-over-year, but most are somewhere between barely growing and losing audience." More
WIkileaks gets a reprieve
Controversial ‘leak’ site Wikileaks may be has been thrown a legal lifeline, after being shut down recently.
The New York Times reports (via Benton): On Friday Judge Jeffrey S White of Federal
District Court in San Francisco withdrew his
earlier order disabling a Web site that allows
the anonymous posting of documents to discourage
unethical behavior in governments and
corporations. On Feb 15, Judge White ordered the
American address of the site, Wikileaks.org, to
be disabled at the request of Bank Julius Baer &
Company, a Swiss banking company, and its Cayman
Islands subsidiary. They charged that Wikileaks
had posted confidential, personally identifiable
account information on some of the bank’s
customers. The judge’s action drew criticism --
and court filings -- from numerous organizations
concerned that the order violated the First
Amendment protection of free speech. Because
Wikileaks operates sites, like Wikileaks.cx, in
other countries, the documents were and are still
widely available, both in the United States and
elsewhere. In reversing himself at a hearing here
on Friday, Judge White acknowledged that the
bank’s request posed serious First Amendment
questions and might constitute unjustified prior
restraint. He also appeared visibly frustrated
that technology might have outrun the law and
that, as a result, the court might not be able to
rein in information once it had been disclosed online. More
Demand for online TV will grow Media Post: The break-up of the TV audience is accelerating the convergence of the Internet, and TV as networks increasingly seek viewers online...it's become clear that online video has gone mainstream. eMarketer estimates that one in two Americans, or 154 million people, will watch a video at least once a month in 2008. By 2012, the audience will hit 190 million as growth gradually slows over the next several years. More
Web the ultimate media distributor?
Comment – Online Publishers Assn: Every time Hollywood has offered people a more convenient way to get its films, sales have leapt. Bringing movies into the home via television, VHS and DVD built the industry into what it is today. The internet may look unfamiliar and dangerous, but it could be the ultimate home-entertainment weapon. No trip to a thinly stocked retailer, no late fees, no waiting for a package in the post; instead, on-demand access to any film you want, from the latest blockbuster to the most obscure art-house tear-jerker. Because distribution costs mostly go away, online sales are more profitable too. The Internet is the industry's best hope for future revenue growth. The rightful successor to the DVD is not Blu-ray or anything else. It is the web. Online Publishers
When branding should be emphasised
Jakob Nielsen: Typically, you should deemphasize your company's name in links, but a new
guideline recommends frontloading the name for search engine links under
certain conditions More
Double embarrassment for New Idea 2 March New Idea magazine richly earned its nickname No Idea recently by blowing the embargo on British royal Prince Harry’s deployment as a soldier in Afghanistan. The magazine is widely believed to have put Harry and his fellow troops at great risk, by potentially making them a prime target. Perhaps even worse, though is that the ‘scoop’ (which even the UK’s notorious tabloid media had avoided reporting) was largely ignored until Bill Clinton's favourite US website The Drudge Report picked it up. Adding insult to injury, New Idea’s Managing Editor then expressed ignorance of the agreed embargo – fine, but did anyone think through the consequences of the story?
Links: UK Telegraph story Commentary – The Independant
Media influence greater than many realise
Alertnet (USA): The major media plays a much bigger role in the formation of our
national politics than most people realize. The media helps define
and choose the issues, and acts as gatekeeper in setting the limits
for political discussion and sometimes even candidacies for public
office. The most media-savvy candidates know how to play within the
media's rules, and use them to their advantage. The media can also
veto candidates. The media does much more than directly influence the
opinion of voters. Most donors, politicians, institutions and other
important political participants will not waste resources on a
candidate that they think is unlikely to win. They often look at how
the media treats a candidate in order to make this decision. If the
media does not take a candidate seriously or is obviously hostile to
him or her, these potential supporters will look elsewhere. Sen Obama
has played the media like a violin, and unless he stumbles, it should
carry him all the way to the White House. More
Job cuts shrink newspaper coverage LA Times via Benton: Experts say the American appetite for news is as strong as ever. But
buyouts and layoffs are being imposed at newspapers all over the
country. California is especially vulnerable because of the severity
of its real estate downturn. Along with real estate, advertising in
related categories such as home furnishings, hardware and even
big-box electronics retailing has been slowing, newspaper executives
say. Even big-city papers such as The Times that have suffered sharp
declines in print circulation in recent years have seen their total
audiences grow, when viewers of their Internet sites are included.
Political candidates, corporations, even churches find that they can
lure more traffic to their websites by slapping on a news "ticker" or
a digest of wire-service stories. The problem is that few news
organizations have yet found a way to make the kind of money online
that they had generated from print. "Citizen journalists" -- unpaid
volunteers, mainly -- have stepped into the breach here and there,
but research by the Washington-based Project for Excellence in
Journalism shows that most of what they are producing is commentary
rather than eyewitness accounts of news events or meat-and-potatoes
coverage of school board meetings and the like. More
Return
to top