Posts Tagged ‘Media’

Today sees the disappearance of The Times and The Sunday Times behind the dreaded paywall. An introductory offer of £1 per week for the first 30 days, and £2 per week after that is the only way you’ll get to see what both news sites have to offer. But how likely are we to fork out for content, and will we really miss anything if we don’t?

The staff at The Times seem very confident – at a recent PR Newswire Meet the Media event Tom Whitwell, Assistant Editor of The Times with responsibility for online, saw no reason why the paywall would turn people away from the site. Tom suggested that peoples’ attitudes towards paying for content have changed drastically in recent years; people no longer have qualms about paying £9.99 for The Times iPad app or spending a cheeky 59p on the latest version of Angry Birds for their iPhone. What will attract paying readers to the site, according to Tom, is its wealth of specialised content and the feeling of being part of a closer relationship between the reader and writer. I particularly liked his comparison of paying for content to watching live music – would you rather see your favourite band for free at Wembley, or pay a small price to see them in a smaller, intimate venue?

But not everyone agrees with Tom. The Guardian recently published the result of two surveys into reader attitudes towards print and digital media, The first, from Ipsos, saw a meagre 11% of online adults stating they would choose to access their news digitally and only 3% saying they would opt for a monthly online subscription. An overwhelming 77% said they had no interest whatsoever in paying for news content online. The second survey, compiled by YouGov, had similar results with 83% of respondents saying they would refuse to pay for online content.

Quite contrasting views I’m sure you’ll agree, and as The Times is the first non-specialist UK newspaper to head behind the paywall, we have no real comparison to show who is right. I feel that there will need to be something pretty spectacular on the site to encourage me to pay – what about you?

Such excitement in this morning’s scanning meeting as the team pored over the papers trying to spot the April Fools stories. This year seemed to yield more stories than ever before with several clever advertisers getting in on the act as well.

Granted, in some papers it wasn’t so easy to spot which were the April Fools stories and which just fell under the normal brand of ridiculous reporting, with some of our colleagues even convinced that certain papers did not have any irregular features in them…slightly embarrassing not to spot that the Circle Line is probably not going to be home to another Hadron Collider. What?! It was early!

Anyway we thought we would do a roundup of everything we found - have we missed anything!?

Labour’s election strategy: bring on no-nonsense hard man Gordon Brown - The Guardian

Experts find way to stop us ageing - Daily Express

Labour’s election strategy: bring on no-nonsense hard man Gordon Brown - Guardian

If we are to believe The Daily Mirror and the Daily Express, our Majesty has fallen on tough times, and has taken to Flying with EasyJet…be honest - you did have to look twice!

Meanwhile, The Sun wondered how many people might be tempted by a lick of paper, the Daily Mail wowed us with stories of the AA’s new breakdown service.

In France it’s much simpler. Just pin a picture of a fish on someone’s back…. Poisson d’Avril!

For a full list of today’s Fleet St Foolery, click here.

A interesting post appeared on the BBC dot.life blog yesterday afternoon outlining the results of a recent panel discussion held by the Centre for The Study of Financial Innovation. This city think tank got together a panel of teenagers to try and delve a little deeper into the media habits of ‘Generation Y’.

The part of the discussion that really interested me was the teenagers’ response to TV advertising vs. online advertising. The media nowadays is full of talk about ‘the death of TV advertising’ and increasingly, as is the case for new jeans Gap jeans campaign [see earlier post], companies are pulling their TV advertising altogether to focus their budget on what they see as the more lucrative realm of online advertising. This comes as we are told that more and more people are consuming their media online both on illegal sites and on sites such as BBC i-Player. And yet according to this recent event ‘television seemed to have an enduring appeal for the teenagers.’ Moreover ‘television advertising seemed to be viewed with a degree of enthusiasm – in stark contrast to web ads.’ I know this study is by no means conclusive and is merely the opinion of a few ‘representatives’ of Generation Y but it does make you think…

Personally I would agree with the above opinions. At 23, while I do watch a certain amount of TV online this does not mean that I watch any less TV. In fact, most of the time I watch programmes online only if I have missed them on TV. Equally I would say that I am much more open to TV adverts than I am to online adverts – online adverts totally pass me by, they are on the periphery of what I am looking at so rarely do they earn my focus.

So what is the answer for advertisers? Advertising on TV or online? It would be interesting to learn some of my colleagues’ opinions on what works better for them. Can the answer really be a generational thing?

I’ve been a tad stunned by the reports over the past couple of weeks regarding who is in power with the Prime Minister on holidays and as a person who studied, trained and for a while practiced as a journalist, there are a number of issues that I feel are worth discussing. The headlines that have really surprised me revolve around Gordon Brown’s two Parliamentary lieutenants, Harriet Harmon and Lord Mandelson both having overlapping holidays, which allegedly meant that that there was no one in charge of the country for two whole days.

I’ve heard of media beat-ups before and I know the British media like to attack their own representatives constantly - just look at what they are doing to the English cricket team after their loss to Australia on Sunday (not that I’m complaining about that mind you). But to think that just because the Prime Minister is on holidays… in his own constituency… in the UK, there is no one in charge shows that it is actually the journalists who have gone on holidays.

When the PM was in Italy for the G8, he was still in charge. Just because Harriet Harman represented him at Prime Minister’s Questions, doesn’t mean she suddenly became PM. If there was an issue of national importance, Gordon Brown would undoubtedly be running the show.

The PM, much to Sarah Brown’s annoyance I’m sure, will still be flanked by advisers and will no doubt be spending a good deal of his ‘down time’ discussing policy, strategies and politics. A PM couldn’t just shut down even if he wanted to.

The Prime Minister is always in charge, that is what he was elected (or not in this case) to do. Pre Alexander Graham Bell, Bill Gates, telegraph communications and electricity, I could understand the argument, but not now.

However, mostly this is summer headline grabbing journalism and if this is what Mr Murdoch wants us to pay for online, I’ll pass thanks.

Gordon Brown has revealed he is a big fan of the Metro and has encouraged his cabinet colleagues to read it every day. So reports today’s, er, Metro anyway.

But the freesheet has become Britain’s fourth-largest national daily newspaper with a readership of around 3.5million every day, so as it approaches its 10th anniversary it certainly has some momentum behind it. But should it really be the daily newspaper of choice for the Government? Are these short news summaries with little or no analysis really the way forward for the industry?

I am a partial fan. Metro is a cut above the afternoon freesheets, with their seemingly never-ending stories about Alfie Allen and football players on the lash, but it is easy to rely on it as your daily news source. It is undoubtedly easy to read and contains a good mix of UK and World news but 10 years ago one would see the whole spectrum of newspapers on the tube - now it is just a wall of Metros.

So in that context it is perhaps commendable for politicians to read it so they get a sense of what everyone else is reading but I do feel that it offers a very ‘news in brief’ view of the world. Politicians of course will get their news from a variety of other sources but how many of your average Metro readers could say the same? I’d certainly be interested in any research on the amount of people that only read a morning freesheet…

But all told, the Metro is a pretty decent newspaper with good writing and reasonable content - what do you think?

The Evening Standard has a long-standing reputation for being conservative (with a big and small c) so it should not come as a surprise that it has published an article denouncing Twitter.

For the uninitiated, Twitter is a micro-blogging service, similar in some ways to Facebook in that it lets you see the status of your followers (friends, colleagues, acquaintances, associates, etc). It is strangely addictive, hugely useful (I got my current job via Twitter) and I have made a whole host of new friends using it.

A number of journalists from the Financial Times, The Guardian and the BBC already use it, so I was initially delighted to see a piece on it in The Evening Standard today, which I presumed would be extolling the virtues of Twitter. How wrong I was.

The journalist didn’t like Twitter - fair enough, perhaps its not for everyone - but wrote such a curmudgeonly piece he came across as both the worst kind of luddite AND a right old misery-guts. He undermined any legitimate points he may have had by making errors in his copy that a few minutes researching (maybe even using the new-fangled interweb thingy) would have picked up. Twitter allows you 140 characters to make your update, NOT 160 for example.

Twitter users are passionate about it and for many it has become an essential part of work and play. I would expect a pretty frenzied response from the Twitterati to this although at the time of writing the article has just two comments on it. I’m guessing it will be through the roof by the time I get in tomorrow.

FAIL!

…in the shape of Paul Carr - the newest columnist for Media Guardian.  If you’re not familiar with him, here is a potted career history in his own words:

“my career to date has seen me kicked out of every web company I’ve worked at, including two where I actually fired myself. Then there was my previous column for (New) Media Guardian which ended after I plugged my own projects once too often, but not before I almost got myself — and the paper — sued for libel. Then there was my run-in with the obscene publications squad, my naming-and-shaming in the Evening Standard and — well, you can read all about it in the book I wrote about how I am, quite literally, not safe for work”

Bring it on - will definitely be worth a read.