Entries from August 2009

Friday, August 28th, 2009

Top tips for professional video

The technology to make video is so widely available now that anyone in publishing can be asked to work in the medium. But though it’s easy to work the kit, it’s not so easy to make professional looking results.  As ever, the devil is in the detail. Here’s a quick link to a really good […]

Friday, August 28th, 2009

Where's the advertising going? Facebook, apparently

Need a job in the media? It seems Facebook is the place to go, as founder Mark Zuckerberg aims to double the company’s headcount to 2,000.  Of course, you’ll need to be an engineer or programmer, rather than, say, a journalist, which is the problem when advertising deserts its traditional media home for that new-fangled […]

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

Accuracy level of Guardian now a major concern for readers

My first reaction on seeing this Guardian media headline –  “Literacy level of recruits now a major concern for media, report finds” – was: I know – I’ve said it myself often enough. But then I read the story. The story says absolutely nothing about general literacy.  It makes the following points: The industry needs more […]

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

Critique of the Online Journalism Blog's new look

Being as I’ve been too busy checking, unchecking and then rechecking tick boxes on a CMS for the past few weeks, I’ve only just caught up with the redesign of Paul Bradshaw’s Online Journalism Blog. The OJB is excellent as a resource, but it used to look dreadful – tiny type, an unattractive colour scheme […]

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

Why the advertising model for funding print publishing is broken

Following his recent comments on Freelance Unbound, Martin Cloake has a nice post here on the changing dynamics of magazine publishing.  His thesis (roughly) is that saturation in the market forced down individual title readerships, while a fixation on keeping advertisers happy made magazines so bland that this readership deserted the sector in droves. It’s […]

Monday, August 24th, 2009

Lessons from the superheroes: Marvel comics and mass media

There’s quite a bit of activity in the comment threads again today, as we wrestle with issues such as why newspapers (and TV) are struggling in the internet age. Martin Cloake makes some interesting points about the women’s mass market sector, which he says relies on cheap production, high sales and relatively few advertisements to make […]

Sunday, August 23rd, 2009

Why newspapers (and TV) are struggling in the internet age

The news that Gap has scrapped TV ads for social media should come as no surprise. And it’s bad news for those who think that the media’s focus should be on getting readers to pay for online content. The internet makes it easy for anyone to become a publisher of traditional-style media content at virtually […]

Friday, August 21st, 2009

Electric Ink: the funny side of an industry in crisis

It seems the cutting edge debate between old-style inky-fingered hacks and bright new multimeeja journalists has now been turned into cosy Radio 4 situation comedy. I’ve only just caught up with Electric Ink, which is now on its third episode, but all the tension between old-skool journalism and the weberati is there in a handy […]

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

So farewell then, The London Paper…

Quite a few journalism bloggers have noted the news that London free evening paper The London Paper is to close.  It’s not the one I would have picked. I always found it had significantly higher distribution – at about three-to-one against rival London Lite, so I figured it would crowd out its rival. But then I […]

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

Yet another model to make online news pay

Thanks to Jessica for sending me the link to the new Journalism Online website – home of an effort to create a syndicate of paid-for newspaper content on the web [UPDATE: now rebranded]. This is the organisation that apparently has 170 daily papers on board already, though it hasn’t actually got around to telling us […]