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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Via the indispensable Mark Potts, Bill Wyman has offered up a hefty slice of on-the-money analysis about why the newspaper industry is going belly up in Splice Today. Crucially, it answers a lot of the holier-than-thou criticism of internet content and punditry by purist journalists and academics. I like it when Wyman hits out at […]
How has the past decade of technological and business change in print publishing changed freelance patterns of work? A lot, as it turns out. Here, for the sake of example, is a comparison between a representative week’s work for me as a freelance sub/writer in around 1999 and the work I have been doing this […]
It’s meme day on Freelance Unbound – mainly because it’s August and I think we all deserve to enjoy the Silly Season. (Though in the era of 24-hour rolling news, does that even exist any more?) Here’s an interesting meme started by Linda Jones. (Well, she hopes it will become a meme, and I’m calling it […]
Spotted in today’s Metro – a travel piece on what looks like a delightful part of Sardinia. But I think the “gut-busting” lunch enjoyed by the writer has affected her English. …courses of muscles and clams, fat prawns and melt-in-the-mouth hoops of calamari… And I thought the Metro was supposed to be a subs’ paper…
There’s an impassioned rant on the Soilman blog about the general rudeness and disorganisation of journalists who send cold emails to try to get input for their copy, and then totally ignore any positive response they are given by the potential contact. It’s worth reading – both by newbie or student journalists and by those who […]
In a rare free afternoon hour, I am goofing off and watching Moonlight, a kind-of crappy new vampire private eye series on Virgin1. I normally like this kind of thing, sadly, though this series seems to suck more than the average vampire show should. (Which is why it seems it may already have been cancelled.) […]