Is The Guardian of all publications leading the way to making a global presence from its news gathering operations? Its US-based operations broke the story of the US National Security Agency’s Prism snooping operation. This has been a big story in the USA as well as over here. And The Guardian is being referenced as Read More
Category: Newspapers
Write your new intro for the Kennedy killing
This is the intro of the prize-winning news story written by Tom Wicker on the day President Kennedy was shot: “Dallas, Nov 22 – President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot and killed by an assassin today.” It is a marvel of compacted writing, with “who”, “what” and “where” all in there. And he carries on Read More
TV listing mags defy gravity
The TV listing magazines continue to defy gravity: 4 TV listings magazines win the top readerships among weeklies in the latest NRS survey. The information they deliver is all available elsewhere. It is in daily newspapers and in separate magazines of the Saturday and Sunday editions; it is available online. Yet 3.4 million read What’s Read More
Understanding your reader
One of the great things about digital content is how much writers can learn from stats. You can find out things that have always been guesswork in the past – where readers come from, what they read and how long they stick with an article. But many of the writers I speak to at larger Read More
The words flow like water…
I was captivated as a child by the idea that the planet is an entirely closed system. I hadn’t yet encountered the brilliant James Lovelock or his elegant, totally sensible Gaia theory, but could see that something very clever was going on. If literally nothing escaped our atmosphere – ever – then water, for example, was a Read More
Why is my [media] diet failing?
Now I don’t know about you, but I’ve spent the last decade or so steadily cutting back on my media consumption. After all, I’ve had to find time for surfing the web, playing video games, loading – and listening to – my iPod, and of course, to spend hours seeing “what else is on” while scanning the EPG on Read More
BBC hobbles websites with 25% budget cut
The BBC is to cut its web presence to save money and create room for the private sector websites. Director General Mark Thompson announced yesterday that the BBC will: Cut the number of sites it runs; Cover less news; Commit to link to outside sites on its stories; Focus on international, national and regional news, Read More
Is one channel enough?
Flicking through the news headlines, I noted that MySpace has again cut jobs. They’ve now lost two-thirds of their workers over the last 18 months , as part of their “refocused” business strategy. With the might of News Corporation behind them, of course they should stand a decent chance of survival. Prosperity is another matter, especially in such a crowded – and polarised – social media space. Read More
Just one little prediction for 2011
My one surefire forecast for this year is very, very simple: “Predictions and forecasts for the future will become so short-term and safe that they will cease to have any impact or relevance.” With some notable exceptions, such as Richard’s very specific tips for the magazine industry (see his post below) the vast majority of predictions for 2011 that I have seen are along the Read More
Surfing the endless wave
Is it just me, or is anyone else getting a headache from the pace of change in media…? Touchingly, mobile phones now seem rather mature and traditional in technical terms, even though they are only just reaching the point (25 years old) of being handed down from one generation to the next. And now they are merely one Read More