Traditional media Archive

  • The places that the tablets can’t reach

    The places that the tablets can’t reach

    Rupert Murdoch’s reputation as a media visionary might have taken a battering in recent months.  His famed enthusiasm for iPads as a news deliver device, however, is beginning to look as if it might yet prove to be as shrewd as his gamble as the one that he made on subscription tv two decades ago. [...]

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  • From newsroom to blogosphere – the sexism goes on

    From newsroom to blogosphere – the sexism goes on

    Report by Alex Klaushofer. Where are all the women? That was the question behind an NUJ fringe meeting at last week’s TUC women’s conference. A wide range of women gathered from all sections of the media. Shadow media minister Helen Goodman, citing the coalition government’s plans to relieve Ofcom of the duty to promote equal [...]

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  • Profit is dead. Long live Public Interest: Journalism in 2012 and beyond

    Profit is dead. Long live Public Interest: Journalism in 2012 and beyond

    Comment by Alex Klaushofer. With the first week of the New Year bringing only warnings from politicians and economists, it seems that wise men have realised it would be foolish to feign optimism for 2012. But while things remain bleak on the economic front, there is at last a glimmer of hope for those rooting [...]

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  • Content farmers’ harvest proves hard to collect

    Content farmers’ harvest proves hard to collect

    Analysis by Tim Dawson “When you pay nothing, you are the product” goes the saying.  As a truism it might pre-date the internet, but it is a sentiment whose perfect expression occurs in the relationship between content farms and their users. Cheaply-generated material on search-engine-optimized pages, surrounded by advertisements seemed, a year ago, as though [...]

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  • Local press: adrift without a compass and in danger of disappearing

    Local press: adrift without a compass and in danger of disappearing

    I met the editor of one of Britain’s oldest regional dailies at a social event recently.  We chatted about the worrying state of the media and with a resigned sigh he said:  “I am hoping that the paper will see me out”.  He is in his mid-50s and the title he edits has been published [...]

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  • E-publish and be damned – emerging trends of the digital book economy

    E-publish and be damned – emerging trends of the digital book economy

    Analysis by Alex Klaushofer. Those trying to follow the changing fortunes of book publishing in the digital revolution have had a tough time of it trying to discern the direction things are taking. But, finally, in the last quarter of this year, a few trends are beginning to emerge. First fact: the long-predicted shift from [...]

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  • Leveson v. the moguls – can the lawyer who let Ken Dodd slip, outwit Murdoch?

    Leveson v. the moguls – can the lawyer who let Ken Dodd slip, outwit Murdoch?

    Review by Tim Dawson. The British press has rarely been in such a fix.  During two weeks in July, apparently unshakeable pillars crumbled to dust.  News International was humbled, the company’s BSkyB deal collapsed, the News Of The World closed and several senior officers of the Metropolitan Police resigned. Buffeted by its own proximity to the [...]

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  • E-publishing provides ‘alternative avenue’ for journalists

    E-publishing provides ‘alternative avenue’ for journalists

    Report by Alex Klaushofer. Amid all the gloom about the difficulties the digital age have brought both the media and publishing, Dan Franklin is almost Tiggerish about the liberating possibilities of the e-book for journalism. As digital editor at Random House, Franklin is in the vanguard of a small group of publishers who are developing [...]

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  • Digital subscriptions – no investment, no sales

    Digital subscriptions – no investment, no sales

    Comment by Tim Dawson. The publication of the first audited circulation figures for digital magazine sales did little to make the case that online subscriptions are the future.  Only two magazines have sold more than 1,000 subscriptions – Men’s Health and Hello!  And neither of them had sold enough to give much cheer to those [...]

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  • Taking the news out of the papers – can the UK’s media empires survive?

    Taking the news out of the papers – can the UK’s media empires survive?

    Analysis by Tim Dawson. Might British newspaper be beacons of innovation and experiment in a news market convulsed with technologically-led change?  Or are they venerable, but doomed dinosaurs whose death agonies are causing them to perform extraordinary convulsions it a final, futile attempt to adapt to a new environment? One could happily reach either conclusion [...]

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