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Alan Rusbridger on the Future of Journalism from Carta on Vimeo.

The Guardian’s editor Alan Rusbridger spoke at the Institut für Medienpolitik in Berlin earlier this month, captured (via Vimeo) on the embedded video above.

What he has to say on the future of journalism and newspapers is very interesting. He describes the creation of ‘Comment is Free‘ and how it was inspired by blogs like The Huffington Post; a new, better approach to commentary.

He also talks about inverting the model of journalism and suggests that newspapers will die and there will be far fewer journalists in future.

(via journalism.co.uk)

The Independent, a cornerstone of the British media landscape, is in trouble.

According to a piece in The Times today, the paper’s owner of 11 years, Sir Anthony O’Reilly, is trying to sell the publication. There are apparently a number of options including co-ownership, a merger with a London daily (think Evening Standard), a digital-only edition or even closure.

Why has it come to this? It’s becoming a familiar story:

“The Independent, the fourth-ranked upmarket UK daily, and its Sunday sister title are expected to lose more than £10 million this year. Compounding the newspaper’s woes is the €1.4 billion (£1.24 billion) of debt that is burdening its parent company and a critical €200 million bond that is due to be paid next month.”

Whatever happens, it seems it will be an uphill struggle.

Would the Independent really be able to sustain a digital edition? Gordon Macmillan isn’t sure, and cites an interesting example of Finnish financial daily Taloussanomat – a newspaper that went the same way. Traffic figures significantly dwindled without the print edition to support it. And we all know what that means…

I don’t think the Indie could survive as an online-only publication. Whilst I think that newspapers in printed form are doomed in any case in the future, I think rather than seeing them all move online, we will see casualties. And I fear it will be the titles that have failed to significantly invest online that will fall. The Independent, in my opinion, falls into this category.

Whilst the Guardian, Telegraph, Sun and, increasingly, the Times have all really developed their online offering (still work to do however), the Independent still lags behind.

With the UK’s media increasingly lacking overriding distinctiveness (perhaps driven by the vanilla state of our political scene), there just isn’t enough room (or advertising spend) for all.

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A great article (well, I would say that, wouldn’t I!) by Steve McKee in Business Week – Why PR is the Prescription.

In it, he argues that, despite the convergence of different marketing disciplines, PR is a great strategy in this new world we find ourselves in, and especially at the moment when budgets are being cut:

“While it is possible for any publicity campaign to fall flat, the right story told at the right time in the right way can bring powerful and valuable attention to your business far in excess of what you spend to develop it. Especially in light of the second trend forever changing the news business: complexity. ”

He goes on to suggest that with more and more space to fill and ever diminishing newsroom staff, there is a great opportunity out there for businesses have their 30 minutes in the spotlight. And, in theory, he’s correct. However, the reality is in many ways a bit different.

The ‘traditional’ media (e.g. profession journlists), which is what McKee is refering to, is under more pressure than ever to deliver results: hits, traffic, advertising pounds.  This means that, especially online where all this can be tracked more easily, content counts. And not just any content; valuable, insightful and unique content.

In actual fact, this makes his final point all the more valid:

“The key word, of course, is “good.” Put yourself in the shoes of a journalist for a moment. Imagine what it would be like to spend precious time sifting and sorting through inane news releases, annoying e-mails, and calls from pesky publicists while laboring under continually looming deadlines to deliver original, compelling stories.

“The best PR pros will tell you the truth about your stories—more than once I’ve been told that some idea I’ve come up with would appeal to my mother and few others. That’s no fun to hear, but if tough love protects my company’s credibility with the press, it’s worth it.”

And in many ways, the latter comment is exactly why PR, in some cases, has a bad name. As with all marketing, getting the right message to the right audience at the right time is crucial. Of course, we all think that our story, our business, our new product is the best, greatest thing since sliced bread, but its not alway true, or at least, not for everyone.

Its “tough love”, but it has to be done!

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Why is coverage in the Guardian perceived to better than a piece in Retail Week? Simple; number of readers. Whether right or wrong, circulation figures have always been a way to demonstrate the ‘importance’ of a media outlet.

And with the internet, out goes circulation and in come ‘unique views’ and ‘visits’. The idea is that online measurement is easier, better and more reliable.

So, I was interested to read a blog post today (via the Online Journalism Blog) by Dan Thornton.

The post explains why it is dangerous to compare print figures to web stats and the various foibles of each. He cites the fact that offline circulation figures are often multiplied to take into account people passing on newspapers to each other. And he highlights how online figures miss out a much more diverse range of potential distribution methods too:

“And there’s a big elephant in the news room: Whoever said that print newspaper readers were guaranteed to only be getting their online news from newspapers? I can get digital news on my mobile or my PC, via text,audio or video, and via social networks, blogs, websites, link aggregators, RSS, podcasts, videocasts, and from global sources. Whether or not print titles are only seeing a small percentage of their print readership visiting them online is less relevant, than how many of those readers are getting news content online from any source.”

Dan concludes that data trends are the way to go in working out figures to attach to ‘online media’.

And from a PR standpoint, circulation or visits matter little if the audience is not targeted. I could be on the frontpage of Guardian Online everyday, but if my customers or prospects don’t look there then its meaningless. It’s time we move away from circulation and look more at reach, conversion and conversation. For media organisations, these measures still matter though as advertising budgets are stretched even further.

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If you are an avid micro-blogging user then you will no doubt be aware of the perenial struggle to condense the brilliant thought or idea you want to share with the world into a mere 140 characters.

When you add long, rambling URLs into the mix, the headache increases.

Which is why URL shorteners like bitly and tinyurl quickly came to the rescue, offering spaced-out tweeters a much needed character boost.

But now these knights in shining armour are threatening many components of the world-wide-web and the future of our long-agonised-over mini blog posts.

The fear is that, if one of these shortening services were for some reason to fold, then the links they pointed to would be lost forever, leaving a wide array of meaningless tweets, status updates and blog posts, with useless links.

Dave Winer (via Steve Winton) has one possible solution:

“One easy way to lower the cost of URL-shortening is to use our own domain names in place of tinyurl.xom, bit.ly, tr.im, et al. Any one of those services could take the lead here by allowing for that. Let me map my own domain onto theirs, easily back up all my data, and give me the ability to switch services when I want, or when I need to.”

And now, following the launch of the Diggbar, there is a new threat from URL shorteners that wrap your page in a frame. There are many downsides to this as well as Andrew Girwood expertly highlights over on Econsultancy.

I’m surprised this issue hasn’t been raised before now and the solution outlined sounds a good one. Now, it just needs someone to come up with an easy-to-use implementation and we’ll be set.

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Today saw the (re)launch of the UK version of Wired magazine. The title which has been highly successful in the US has been absent from the UK-scene for many years. Its return has been greeted enthusiastically (although there are some obvious fears in some quarters). We’ll post a fuller review on here in due course.

However, elsewhere in magazine-land, things aren’t quite as rosy with Dennis Publishing announcing that Maxim is to cease producing a print title and move all its content online. And there are some truly astounding stats on the back of this announcement:

“According to Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABCs), Maxim’s circulation for the six months to December 2008, was 45,951, made up of 34,871 news stand and 11,074 subscription sales. The magazine posted a circulation of 328,463 in 2000 and had a circulation above 107,000 in 2007.”

OK, so not really a fair comparison – two different titles, two different target audiences (though not entirely mutually exclusive I’d guess) – but still interesting nonetheless.

Wired obviously feel there is potential here in the UK for the title and they seem pretty determined to make it work, with advertising all over the place. But it does buck what seems to be an unstoppable trend, one which Maxim has fallen to.

And for Maxim there are undoubtable challenges too. The move from offline to pure-online wont be easy and, unfortunately, is set to mean a diminished workforce.

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