02/01/17 - News Corp Australia announces redundancies and $40m cost-cutting (34)

02/01/17 - News Corp Australia announces redundancies and $40m cost-cutting (34)

In a bid to cut down $40 million of costs from Rupert Murdoch's Australian newspapers, 42 full-time equivalent (FTE) roles including journalists, artists and photographers are set to be cut. In doing this, workers in these roles have been offered the opportunity to take voluntary redundancies. If this doesn't occur then forced redundancies will have to take a place as a way of filling this quota. All this is taking place as falls in revenue from print advertising have got worse. Their move to acquire the Australian News Channel, producers of Sky News in Australia and New Zealand, may help see an end to these downcast times. However  for a 'company that had shed 1,000 jobs in the 2012-13 financial year,' it'll seemingly take quite a lot for a real bounce back to occur.

• News Corp Australia is making 42 journalists, artists and photographers redundant in the latest round of cost-cutting in a bid to slash $40m from Rupert Murdoch’s Australian newspapers
• News Corp Australia suffered an 11% fall in advertising revenue in the first quarter

Falls in revenue from print advertising is something that has become quite commonplace within the newspaper industry. The impact of new and digital media shines through with this especially, as companies like Google and Facebook appear now as the culprits of this. This is representative of the fact that regardless of the company, whether it be as big as News Corp or not, no one is immune from the slow death of print media.

02/01/17 - The readers’ editor on Google and editorial independence (33)

02/01/17 - The readers’ editor on Google and editorial independence (33)

In light of recent findings that Google's search engine algorithms had been sabotaged by rightwingers to display stories regarding things like Holocaust denial, the company made the decision to remove the results from the rankings, albeit under a lot of pressure from the Observer. One of the ways in which they applied this pressure was through the paper placing an ad at the top of search results for the cost of £289 saying that: 'Six million Jews really did die. These search results are propagating lies. Please take action.' The journalist who brought light to the story, Carole Cadwalladr, stated in her piece on The Guardian that the reason this approach was taken as oppose to other alternatives was because it was done in 'the only language that Google understands: money.' However irony was found in this when this same news piece found its way in a 'four-page "wraparound" advertisement for Google's new Pixel phone.' Readers of this expressed their dismay and disappointment at these 'mixed messages' and clear undermining of the actual values of the Observer. This here clearly displays the separation that there is between both the advertising and editorial departments of newspapers, and even though advertising is good in assisting to actually pay for journalism, it still should never 'sway the independence of the editorial team and its output.' Funnily enough though in this case, the editor was aware that the wraparound was booked but with Google not being deterred from advertising, he also wasn't deterred from putting a story criticising them in that same issue.

With the notion that advertising has a 'disruptive nature' to newspapers in terms of things like flow and the killing impact it has to the front page of a publication, it is viewed something that 'should be expected rarely.' However, in a time when newspaper revenue is dipping and advertisers are becoming more demanding of what they require, a predicament shows itself where the industry can choose to succumb to commercial pressures or not. These pressures are not helped at all by the fact that newspaper websites too are seeing advertising growth slowing down since revenue is now being siphoned off from news producers by none other than the digital giants themselves, Facebook and Google.

• In 2014-15, global newspaper circulation revenues overtook advertising revenues for the first time, with the 2016 World Press Trends report showing that $90bn (53% of revenue) came from print and digital circulation, compared with $78bn from advertising

I found this article particularly interesting as it brought up the irony that can be found within the journalism industry. Newspapers can often end up taking advertising from companies which they themselves criticise and put under fire. It almost seems the case that things will have to continue being this way too since at this point in time, newspapers need all the money that they can get. While they want advertising to only be accepted here and there, it'll probably be something that occupies increasingly more pages down the line.

26/12/16 - What does the future of publishing look like? (32)

26/12/16 - What does the future of publishing look like? (32)

Views of five industry experts on the future of publishing:

Lorraine Candy, former editor-in-chief of Elle UK, incoming Sunday Times luxury content editor

Lorraine Candy expresses her view that the death of the print platform is nothing but a myth. Not only but this but she says there 'there is enough evidence to prove [...] it will continue to be in many forms and be available in many places.' She also goes into how the world we live in now is primarily driven by both consumers and by companies that aggregate content which are essentially social networks.

Simon Fox, CEO, Trinity Mirror

Simon Fox makes clear his hope that print will have still have a part to play in the next 2 decades. However in assessing the likelihood that a 'generation that has not grown up with papers' will migrate to print, makes it clear that there's no viable reason to think it would happen. He brings up that the imperative decisions that current publishers have to make is the amount of their content they're going to make available on social media and how it can still be monetised. With this he brushes over the issue that adblocking poses which makes it so that digital advertising can't be relied on as a sole stream for revenue. Things like e-commerce which publishers like The Sun have adopted must also be opted for.

Bob Franklin, professor of journalism studies, Cardiff University

Bob Franklin starts off by talking about how search engines with their algorithms suggesting content to users based on previous searches don't challenge the integrity but rather just reinforce their own views.  After having a brief digression to the topic of drone journalism, Franklin mentions how the current issue is that once people read news content online, they stop buying the print product. This is a 'real uphill battle' when: 'you've got to get 100 online readers to match the [ad] revenue income from one print reader.'

Lucie Greene, worldwide director of The Innovation Group, J Walter Thompson, which recently published their own 'pop-up' magazine, Glass

Lucie Greene begins going into how with publishing, the mass market printbrands are now shrinking to reallocate focus onto e-media and also how new entrants to the market are launching online first as oppose to going into print. Audio is also something that is becoming increasingly used to get new information across with things like branded podcasts and also products like Amazon Echo contributing to this. At the same time though, what's being seen is publishers for design and women's titles opting for a luxury experience with things like high quality paper and also a luxury price point. Things like this may become more common over time since what seems to be the case now is that there is a focus 'on scale rather than price point.'

Roy Greenslade, Guardian columnist and professor of journalism, City, University of London

Roy Greenslade brings up that social media companies like Facebook and Twitter need to realise that they actually do need publishers. Bringing up how the agenda for the Brexit debate was set by mainstream newspapers, Greenslade wonders how national conversation will occur in the future as print 'will not be in a position to do that.' He doesn't view social networks as being capable of this with the eco-bubble that they are known to have, particularly Facebook in particular, just feeding you information that reinforces your own ideologies.

What the future of publishing looks like is very unclear as of now. While most share the view that print will be dead, there also a few that actually think it'll continue to live on albeit in different forms. Challenges that there will be come in the form of things like adblocking and also the monetising of online content, with the latter being a very iffy topic in particular. With this said there also worries as to how these social networks will evolve into becoming 'forum(s) for national conversation' as papers die when at the moment they only seem to be good in showing us things that reflect us. It's clear here that publishing's future is unbeknown to anyone as of now, digital expert or not.

26/12/16 - Facebook to begin flagging fake news in response to mounting criticism (31)

26/12/16 - Facebook to begin flagging fake news in response to mounting criticism (31)

With the assistance of both users and outside fact checkers, Facebook has revealed its plans to flag fake news stories that crop up on the social network. This will work through users firstly flagging the potential fake stories and this report being referred to outside fact-checking organisations once enough users flag a story as fake. Among these fact-checkers will be ABC News, AP, FactCheck.org, Politifact and Snopes (none of these organisations being paid for their services). If they deem it that a story is fake, it'll be 'publicly flagged as "disputed by 23rd party fact-checkers."' Users can view why exactly a story was disputed and if they still want to go ahead and share it, they'll be further warned about the reliability of it. Along with this, stories that are shared more by people who've only read the headline as oppose to actually clicking on them and reading the text will be also clearly marked out. While these two procedures will be taken, Facebook is also taking measures to reduce the financial benefits that come with making fake news websites. Activist and journalist Daniel Sieradski, has said that this announcement is a definite step in the right direction but it is still susceptible to failure since 'false-flagging' of fake news by people will occur which only make the process more difficult.

It's clear here that the influx of fake news that there now is, is something that is recognised by Facebook as a danger to society. This contrasts hugely from the attitude taken by founder, Mark Zuckerberg just a few weeks ago. Daniel Sieradski's thoughts on the move the social network has taken match those of mine. While it's definitely a good approach to take in terms of stopping the circulation of the news, 'false-flaggers' pose a huge challenge to the true effectiveness of the procedures and could essentially prevent it from working altogether if not combated against.

19/12/16 - News publishers contributed £5.3bn to the UK economy in 2015 (30)

19/12/16 - News publishers contributed £5.3bn to the UK economy in 2015 (30)

According to Deloitte report by the industry trade body, News Media Association, the news publishing industry in 2015 contributed £5.3 billion to the UK economy amongst the challenges industry has faced as of recent. Along with this it has been also been cited for supporting a large number of jobs within the country whether that be through investment in digital services or the supply chain. Interestingly the report talks about how if this contribution is to be continued in this manner, then newsbrand content 'particularly on digital platforms' has to be monetised to fund newsgathering. Continuing on the topic of the digital platform, Ashley Highfield, chairman of the NMA, said that there's now a need for 'a fair and equitable regime in which news media publishers’ investment in news is appropriately acknowledged and rewarded, without the commercial benefits being siphoned off by digital platforms and aggregators.' Digital giants such as Google and Facebook can be thought to be the main culprits he's referencing here. Additionally the job the UK media does in 'underpinning' democracy is discussed here with how investigative journalism has helped  improve accountability of institutions with an example being the Guardian's Panama Papers findings.

• The news publishing industry contributed £5.3bn to the UK economy in 2015
•  news media industry generated £4.8bn revenue through circulation and advertising over the course of 2015
• The sector also supported an estimated 87,500 UK jobs; invested £97m in digital services; and added value across the supply chain because the average publisher dealt with nearly 2,600 suppliers
• 90% of the total spend with suppliers by news media organisations remained within the UK, compared to the average of 77% across the economy
• publishers are by far the biggest investors in original news content, accounting for 58% of the total investment in news production

I feel that this article has a lot more of a positive outlook on the situation of the UK news industry. Displaying the benefits it continues to bring with one being its investigative journalism and another its support of jobs, it's clear that the sector isn't completely gloomy. The main part of the article which really caught my eye though, is the one that describes how this positive contribution of news publishers can continue. Monetising news online is something that can either be a hit or miss move, with it more often than not being the latter with The Sun being an example of this. Whether most publishers in the industry will choose to make this move will be something that'll have to be paid attention to over the next few years.

19/12/16 - Complex Media shuts down print magazine after 14 years (29)

19/12/16 - Complex Media shuts down print magazine after 14 years (29)

Complex Media, a New York media company founded in 2002, has announced plans to cease production of its bi-monthly print edition centred mainly around pop culture and the hip-hop genre, Complex Magazine. With the December 2016/January 2017 issue marking the last edition of the magazine, Complex has said in a statement to Billboard that this move was made as the company 'embarks on a rapid expansion of premium video creation across the company's networks and with a growing list of distribution partners.' With this of course comes with redundancies, with a number of staffers from the editorial department of the company making it clear that they had been laid off on Twitter, though Complex have not made clear the exact amount of these.

• Verizon Communications Inc. and Hearst Corp. said they have agreed to acquire Complex Media, with the deal valuing Complex at $250 million to $300 million

This article just continues to chronicle this downfall that the print platform is going through. While it doesn't appear that Complex Magazine is necessarily doing badly as a print product, it seems that from an cost efficiency point, continuing to invest in it just doesn't make any sense. Something that should also be paid attention to is the fact that this move will be done as a way of 'reallocating certain positions to address its content needs' which funnily enough lie in the e-media platform. Again, this is representative of this 'death' that e-media is causing for print.

NDM case study: News on the Tweet

NDM case study: News on the Tweet

1.

Respected newsbrands are good for Twitter since it means that the social network, as well as having content coming from citizen journalists and just ordinary citizens in general, there is also things coming from trusted organisations too. With the lack of gatekeeping that takes place on the internet, this goes a long way in boosting the accuracy of information that there is and also helps the network stretch its audience even wider since people will be willing to join it to get up-to-date stories from the newsbrand - increasing ad revenue for Twitter.

2.

Twitter is good for these brands since as said above, it's a way of expanding/widening their audiences even further. As said in the report, 60% of newsbrand followers say that twitter gives them the opportunity to engage with newspaper brands they wouldn't normally read in print format, representative of how the social network even helps these papers increase their readership.

3.

Personally I do feel that old and new media are in direct competition. With the large number of closures and downsizing of newspaper institutions that have gone in this year alone due to the reduction in print revenue being received, partly due to digital giants like Facebook and Google, new and digital media can be viewed sometimes as something of a slow killer to old media. This coexistence can also be said to not really be there as we're now seeing what could be referred to as a 'death of journalism' due to new media, which as a public good is a matter of huge concern within the newspaper industry.

4.

• Neil Ashton - Arsenal are toast: In all seriousness now, what are the sales figures like for this kind of stuff?
• Camilla Long - Favourite story all weekend has been Del Boy killing the British sheepskin coat industry. LOL
• Tom Newton Dunn - Biggest cheer at the Emirates tonight by #AFC? To an announcement for the MUFC away fans that no more trains leaving Euston.

5.

It can generally be said that the reputation of news and journalists isn't really harmed that much by their use of banter, however to a minimal extent it could be thought to damage it. Audience members may end up perceiving posts by journalists like this as being representative of a lack of seriousness and real inclination for journalism amongst them.

6.

The report essentially represents that trust in news stories on Twitter emanates from verification. With this being confirmation that the account is of an authentic nature shown through a blue badge, when users see this then they can be sure that they can trust things being posted from that journalist's account. This means that there isn't any uncertainty on behalf of readers when seeing this content.

7.

New and digital media developments like Twitter can be thought to have had a positive impact on traditional newspapers in the sense that for one, the citizen journalism that is prevalent through it can become part of the stories in these papers. In cases where there aren't journalists on the field able to report on an event, using things like images that come from ordinary citizens on Twitter can be very helpful in forming news stories. However of course, an issue creeps up in that these same new and digital media developments are contributing heavily to the ongoing death of print media (newspapers) through factors such as the immediacy they have in getting stories across and also easier accessibility.

8.

With the influx of fake news that's been coming through Facebook, perhaps what needs to be done which has already been suggested, is clearly marking out stories that have been published by respected newsbrands. By separating these articles from all the others then it'll be clear to audiences that they need to be more wary when reading stories that aren't actually from these brands. A system like this could be compared to how Twitter has its 'verified' system which was described above.