via (EJC)

Shareholders of Thomson Corp. and Reuters Wednesday approved plans for the Canadian firm to buy the British-based media and information group and create the biggest provider of financial data. (more…)

Comments(0)

London council to ban free newspapers if they don’t recycle

Westminster City Council - which controls much of central London - has voted itself new powers last night which could ban the capital’s two free newspapers from being distributed in the borough. According to the council - around 20 tonnes of free papers end up as street waste every week in Westminster, and it costs the borough £111,000 (EUR 164,065) a year to deal with rubbish.

The publishers have been given one month to agree to ‘a voluntary scheme where they run their own cleaning operation to ensure their waste does not deface the streets’. If an agreement can’t be reached within the next month the council has said it will bring in new rules requiring the publishers to acquire a permit to distribute. (Press Gazette UK, via EJC)

Comments(0)

The Irish Examiner has picked up on the recent Ofcom ruling on BBC’s Blue Peter for the rigging of a phone in competition.

Comments(0)

Global stories retold

Michael McCaughan, a freelance journalist with over 20 years experience of covering development stories, gave the third presentation of six at Media Moves examining the untold stories behind the major global development issues of our times.

(more…)

Comments(2)

AFP, Google sign content deal

Agence France-Presse and Google signed a licensing agreement Friday giving the search engine the right to post AFP news and photos and settling a lawsuit filed by AFP two years ago. A joint statement by the companies said the accord allows the internet giant to post AFP content on Google News and other services.

AFP agreed to withdraw a lawsuit filed in March 2005 accusing the world’s number one internet search engine of copyright infringement for allegedly posting AFP headlines, news summaries and photographs without prior permission.

AFP chairman and Chief Executive Officer Pierre Louette said the accord also goes further. ‘The agreement will allow uses of AFP’s content in ways that go beyond its typical use of content in Google’s services, which features just headlines and snippets of text to provide just a taste of what an article offers,’ Louette said. He did not elaborate.

Source: AFP via Yahoo News, via EJC.

Comments(0)

State of the American News Media, 2007: Economic Challenges Usher In Era of the Niche For Mainstream Media, Says Fourth Annual PEJ Report

Every Component of TV News Is Losing Audience

Washington, D.C. – For the first time in years, every sector of television news lost audience in 2006. And newspapers, despite garnering a larger audience than ever for their content via online platforms, faced more downbeat financial assessments. The shifting economic fundamentals are spurring mainstream news organizations to try to build audience around “franchise” areas of coverage, specialties and even crusades, according to a new report on the state of journalism in America by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a nonpartisan, non-political research group.

The new phenomenon is exemplified by cable news, which had been growing for a decade, but is now suffering audience declines. Cable’s “Argument Culture” is giving way to something new: the Answer Culture, a growing pattern that has news outlets, programs and journalists offering up solutions, certainty and the impression of putting all the blur of information in clear order for people.

These are some of the conclusions from “The State of the American News Media, 2007,” a 700-page comprehensive look at the state of U.S. journalism by PEJ, a project of the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C. and funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts. This is the fourth annual report.

“Trends that we have been tracking now for four years are reaching a pivot point,” PEJ Director Tom Rosenstiel said. “Only one media sector, the ethnic press, is still growing, and every measurement for audience—even page views and visitors—is now being questioned. Things are now moving faster than companies can even recognize. Mainstream news media are adapting, in part, by focusing on specialties. In a sense, every outlet is becoming more of a niche player with reduced ambitions.”

That does not mean that journalism is dying. There is even more reason than a few years ago to believe, the report concludes, that the old newsrooms of America are most likely to be the successful newsrooms of the future.

But the report also cautions that the consequences of the overall trend toward franchise branding remain unclear. “Hyper localism,” a favorite term on Wall Street, can be market speak for simple cost-cutting. Branding can be a mask for bias. Pursued mindlessly, the franchise approach could also spell the death of a big city metro paper. The character of the next era, far from inevitable, will likely depend heavily on the quality of leadership in the newsroom and boardroom, the report concludes.

The 2007 report includes a special content analysis of digital journalism, which systematically examines the nature and character of more than three dozen websites offering news and information in a variety of styles. Among other findings, the online analysis concludes that while journalists are becoming more serious about the Web, no clear models of how to do journalism online exist yet, and some qualities are still only marginally explored. Features such as immediacy and customizability, for instance, have been developed much more than others, such as depth or the use of multimedia.

As with past annual reports, the 2007 study offers detailed chapters on nine different sectors of the press—newspapers, magazines, network television, cable news, local TV, the Internet (including blogs), radio, the ethnic press and alternative media. For each sector, the report collects all available information on six different areas: content analysis, audience, economics, ownership, newsroom investment, and public attitudes.

Key findings include:

• The evidence is mounting that the news industry must become more aggressive about developing a new economic model. An increasingly logical scenario is that news providers – instead of charging the consumer directly – charge Internet providers and aggregators licensing fees for content. News organizations may have to create consortiums to make this happen. And those fees would likely add to the bills consumers pay for Internet access. But the notion that the Internet is free is already false. Those who report the news just aren’t sharing in the fees.
• The key question is whether the investment community sees the news business as a declining industry or an emerging one in transition. If one believes that the economics of news are now broken, then it seems inevitable that the investment in newsrooms will continue to shrink and the quality of journalism in America will decline. If one believes that news will continue to be the primary public square where people gather and that, consequently, the economics will sort themselves out in time, then a different strategy is needed. But if news companies wait for the proof rather than act on their own vision, their business will likely be smaller and less robust.
• Blogging is on the brink of a new phase that will probably include scandal, profitability for a few, and a splintering into elites and non-elites over standards and ethics. The most recent example of this new professionalizing was the Scooter Libby trial, which bloggers covered using official press credentials lobbied for and won by the Media Bloggers Association. Corporate public-relations efforts are beginning to use blogs as well, often covertly. At the same time, some of the most popular bloggers are already becoming businesses or being assimilated by establishment media.
• There are growing questions about whether the dominant ownership model of the last generation, the public corporation, is suited to the transition newsrooms must now make. Private markets now appear to value media properties more highly than Wall Street does. What is unknown is whether these potential new private owners are motivated by public interest, a vision of growth online, having a high-profile hobby (like a sports team), or as an investment to be flipped for profit after aggressive cost-cutting. Public ownership tends to make companies play by the same rules. Private ownership has few leveling influences.
• What author Michael Crichton once called the “Crossfire Syndrome,” appears to be evolving. Crossfire, the iconic program of the Argument Culture, has been canceled, and cable’s new symbols are liberal-leaning Keith Olbermann and conservative-leaning Bill O’Reilly. The tone may be just as intense as before, but rather than an equal debate of two sides, the hosts have already made up their minds. The Answer Culture in journalism, which is part of the new branding, represents an appeal more idiosyncratic and less ideological than pure partisan journalism.

“The problems of newspapers appear to be the most acute at the moment,” Rosenstiel said. “After a traumatic year in 2005, circulation and job losses were almost as bad in 2006 and the industry saw earnings fall for the first time in memory in a non-recession year. But other industries are also troubled. Cable news is now seeing its audience decline, led by the biggest drops at Fox.”

The study, which contains detailed charts, graphs and citations, can be accessed online at www.stateofthemedia.org.

Comments(0)

A report of the American Psychological Association (APA) (19.FEB.2007) found evidence that the proliferation of sexualized images of girls and young women in advertising, merchandising, and media is harmful to girls’ self-image and healthy development.

To complete the report, the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls studied published research on the content and effects of virtually every form of media, including television, music videos, music lyrics, magazines, movies, video games and the Internet. They also examined recent advertising campaigns and merchandising of products aimed toward girls.

Sexualization was defined by the task force as occurring when a person’s value comes only from her/his sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics, and when a person is sexually objectified, e.g., made into a thing for another’s sexual use.

Examples of the sexualization of girls in all forms of media including visual media and other forms of media such as music lyrics abound. And, according to the report, have likely increased in number as “new media” have been created and access to media has become omnipresent. The influence and attitudes of parents, siblings, and friends can also add to the pressures of sexualization.

“The consequences of the sexualization of girls in media today are very real and are likely to be a negative influence on girls’ healthy development,” says Eileen L. Zurbriggen, PhD, chair of the APA Task Force and associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “We have ample evidence to conclude that sexualization has negative effects in a variety of domains, including cognitive functioning, physical and mental health, and healthy sexual development.”

Research evidence shows that the sexualization of girls negatively affects girls and young women across a variety of health domains:

• Cognitive and Emotional Consequences: Sexualization and objectification undermine a person’s confidence in and comfort with her own body, leading to emotional and self-image problems, such as shame and anxiety.
• Mental and Physical Health: Research links sexualization with three of the most common mental health problems diagnosed in girls and women—eating disorders, low self-esteem, and depression or depressed mood.
• Sexual Development: Research suggests that the sexualization of girls has negative consequences on girls’ ability to develop a healthy sexual self-image.

According to the task force report, parents can play a major role in contributing to the sexualization of their daughters or can play a protective and educative role. The APA report calls on parents, school officials, and all health professionals to be alert for the potential impact of sexualization on girls and young women. Schools, the APA says, should teach media literacy skills to all students and should include information on the negative effects of the sexualization of girls in media literacy and sex education programs.

“As a society, we need to replace all of these sexualized images with ones showing girls in positive settings—ones that show the uniqueness and competence of girls,” states Dr. Zurbriggen. “The goal should be to deliver messages to all adolescents—boys and girls—that lead to healthy sexual development.”

Comments(1)

The number of planned job cuts in the U.S. media soared 88% last year, according to a study by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, up to 17809 layoffs, from the 9,453 that were announced in 2005. The trend is to continue, and ‘old media’ must effectively renew themselves.

Importantly, the study focuses on planned layoffs, not actual number of job cuts.

“Already this year we have seen job cuts announced by Time Inc and the New York Times Company,” said John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “These organizations will continue to make adjustments as their focus shifts from print to electronic.”

As readers spend more time online than reading print, advertisers are readjusting their own focus, thus providing less revenue for print, thus pushing newspapers to focus even more on online, and so on.

Newspapers are in tough competition with other media and news organizations, but also with the increased number of alternative news sources and information platforms (blogs, gossip sites, consultants and analysts), according to Challenger.

“This dilutes their audience and dilutes the amount of money they can charge advertisers, which currently is the primary source of revenue for online news sites, since most are not charging subscriber fees to access their content,” Challenger said.

There is only one solution for traditional media including newspapers: transition quickly and smoothly to online and multimedia. For those who can’t embrace the change, or who don’t have the resources to sustain print while transitioning, they will continue to be forced to cut jobs.

“Until they can figure out a way to make as much money from their online services as they are losing from the print side, it is going to be an uphill battle,” said Challenger of planned cuts across the media sector.

Source: CNN, via EditorsWeblog.org

Comments(1)

Malaysian bloggers unite against defamation lawsuits

Malaysia’s independent news and political websites have stepped up their campaign against a pro-government newspaper that sued two bloggers for defamation, with one urging the prime minister to intervene.

The lawsuits by English-language New Straits Times were the first against Malaysian bloggers for publishing comments on the internet. Much of the traditional media in Malaysia are controlled by political parties or by the government, and the suits have raised fears that the freedom of online media may be in jeopardy.

The defamation suits were filed earlier this month against Jeff Ooi - whose ‘Screenshots’ blogs carries daily commentaries on the political situation in the country - and Ahirudin Attan, who operates ‘Rocky’s Bru,’ a similar blog. They are alleged to have defamed the newspaper and some of its current and former editors. The Times has said it is not out to shut down the blogs, but launched the suits because of the defamatory nature of the postings.

Source: - AP, International Herald Tribune, via EJC.

Comments(0)

The Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Die Zeit, Matthias Nass, talked yesterday to Indian students about issues in, and the future of, press journalism.

According to Nass, the quality press is under attack from all kinds of commercial interests and technological developments, whether it is in Germany or in India.

He visualised a scenario wherein a journalist had to contribute to different forms of media at the same time — not just writing reports for the print version but also producing content for television, radio and online. Calling for changes in the way of functioning of journalists, Mr. Nass said journalists should contribute analytical articles too, and not just provide pure information.

Noting that readers and advertisements of the print media were moving to online at an ever faster pace, he referred to the declining trend in circulation of newspapers in several Western nations and to the assessment made in certain quarters that the end of the print media would begin soon.

It [the print media] is not going to die anytime soon. However, the challenges for the quality press are dramatic, perhaps more so than at any other time after World War II,'’

Source: The Hindu

Comments(0)