media

The converging media company

Who would have thought newspapers and magazines would start producing their own radio and TV programmes? Who would have thought radio stations would become…

Bloggers on the payroll of big media

Interesting to see that big media companies are recruiting some of the top bloggers to write for them. This is a clever move for…

BBC's Sambrook on Citizen media

Richard Sambrook who is a new media head honcho at the BBC has long been somewhat of an expert in user generated content and…

Integrating the online & print news operations

I’ve never liked the word convergence. Integration is much better. Some great speakers spoke on this topic from the New York Times, Sydney Morning…

The media should take note of bloggers

It’s been easy for some to dismiss the blogosphere as a fringe publishing phenomenon. Publishers, who have had a monopoly on mainstream publishing since…

Upwardly mobile: Content on cellphones is the killer app

Since the ugly days of wap, phones have got a lot smarter and more efficient at accessing the web. Cellphone screens are getting bigger…

Digital age challenging the establishment

Read Duncan McLeod’s piece on his FM blog, “What the heck is going on?“. He sums up something I have been mulling for sometime…

The people have written

Now South Africa has its own citizen journalism website in Johnnic’s commendable reporter.co.za The relentless pace of technology is turning everyone into citizen reporters….

The future of online advertising

Here’s a prediction: Expect online advertising to increasingly resemble television commercials. Soon there won’t be too much difference between an advert you see on…

Cool newsblog by Bush radio

Thanks to Bush Radio for alerting me to their cool blog project by their trainees. It’s not quite opinion and comment, which is what we…

Roll on broadband

from my column in the media, called net savvy If a survey by search engine Google is to be believed, the British apparently now…

Print vs Online: Interview with Marketing Mix

Just did this interview with Marketing Mix on the (yawn) print vs online debate…

What is your opinion on the general attitude of the newspaper industry towards the merging of online and print?

How far is SA behind (in general) when it comes to combining online and print?

What ‘cool’ things do you have on the M&G site that no one else does, and how are the ‘cool’ things working out – are people using RSS feeds etc, for example?

What are the problems/challenges facing publishers that actually want to embrace online?

Should SA publishers be worried about online? Is it a threat?

What is hampering the real growth of online at the moment?

How long do you think we have until online starts eating into circulation/ad revenue the way it has in the US and UK?

What are the next steps in terms of technology and integrating print and online that publishers need to embrace and use?

How can an online presence be using for success brand-building both for the newspaper itself as well as advertising clients?

Has online revenue started to make a positive impact on the overall bottom line?

Are clients and ad agencies geared for an online presence? If no, what needs to be done (by all parties) to ensure online ad revenue success?

What are the differences between having a print publication and an online site – ie what do publishers/journalists need to learn and understand about online in order to meet consumer expectations?

What is your opinion on citizen journalism and its part?

What do you do about premium news (subscribing mostly?) as most people won’t pay for the privilege esp as they can normally find the stories elsewhere on the internet? But how viable is free content?

Is there a threat yet to classifieds (print and online) from sites such as craigslist, and how do you combat this?

Answers over the page…..

Technology shifting power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media elite?

Saw Mike Stoporth’s article on Bizcom in which he had this quote from Rupert Murdoch, talking about the internet: “To find something comparable, you…

SA's online media space

At KUGM Online Marketing conference in Rosebank Russell Hanly, Chief Executive of the new 24.com, gave us a brief overview of the new 24.com…

The People Formerly Known as the Audience

Read this good summary by Jay Rosen on his Press Think blog about how the media is changing and how patterns of media consumption…

Changing media's battlefield

Ok play is over. Need to do some business here. Conference is tomorrow where I’ll be chatting about online journalism vs traditional journalism. This…

Net advertising 'to overtake national newspapers'

Saw this in the Guardian Unlimited. I quote: “The internet will overtake national newspapers in the battle for advertising spending in the UK by…

Citizen journalism, let's keep our heads shall we?

Did this interview with Herman Manson of Media Toolbox a popular media newsletter. Here are the questions:

To what extent is the M&G planning to make use of citizen/participatory journalism?
What are people writing about on your blogging service and how does this influence the content of your website and the paper edition?
Do you think participatory journalism will grow beyond community newspapers (for which it does seem perfect) to national news organisations locally? Internationally the BBC recently announced a move to integrate more citizen generated content into its services.

My answers over the page

Technorati founder David Sifry appeals for sanity

Technorati founder David Sifry appealed to the We Media conference in London at Reuters to put the blogger versus big media issue “to rest”. He says we need each other! Bloggers need big media and big media needs bloggers.

Nitin Desai from UN wants a combined, killer new media and old media combination

Nitin Desai, Special Advisor to the Secretary General of the United Nations, had a few original words to say on the new wave of “We Media” sweeping the globe. He says that the key challenge – and this is the original part of what he said – is that we face a challenge in finding a business model that can combine the professionalism of the traditional, established media (fact checking; sources; trained journalists; ethics codes and training etc etc) with what we have on the web – the power of collaborative communities, citizen journalism, blogs, collective intelligence, number power etc etc…

Blogs vs traditional media: the Iraq issue

During the first panel discussion of the We Media conference in London a delegate at the conference whose name I didn’t catch stood up and made a very interesting comment. He says he works for a newspaper and that it was his job to review Iraqi blogs for the paper he works for to source stories and comment. He said that ever since he started doing this, he began “losing trust in newspapers” …

Hats off to Media24’s tabloids

Blogging the African Leadership Conference in Kenya, Nairobi

Ingo Capraro, Editor of the relatively new tabloid, Die Son in South Africa gave us a talk on the successes of the paper. Die Son is part of the powerful Media24/Naspers group – the biggest media player in Africa.

Die Son editor gave us a presentation on the newspaper’s successes. It is a tabloid unashamedly covering sex, scandal and has its own page three girl. There was a fair amount of criticism about what the paper was doing. Not sure what the fuss is about.

Who’s running the show at newspapers?

Blogging the African Leadership Conference in Kenya, Nairobi

Dr Peter Mwesige, Acting Head, Mass Communication Department, Makerere University and Former Executive Editor Monitor Publications in Uganda delivered an interesting speech on “African quality journalism”. He emphasised that if we treat the media “like any other business”, we distort the principles of journalism. He noted that there obviously needs to be a healthy mix with regards to the drive for profitability and good journalism, but that the drive for profitability seems to be affecting the craft of journalism. He’s right.

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