DailyCaller.com to take on Huffington and Tina Brown

Don't know much about former MSNBC and now Fox personality Tucker Carlson, but he launching a site called DailyCaller.com to take on the HuffingtonPost.com and Tina Brown's Daily Beast.

Report earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal that says pundit Carlson will launch a "conservative-leaning news site that will aim to be an answer to the Huffington Post".

"We're sincerely trying to think through what comes next in journalism," Carlson told the paper. "I think we can answer the basic question, which is: How do you keep reporting? How do you make reporting a viable business?"

As well as blog posts, Carlson is promising original reporting: "We don't simply want to be parasites of other news sites. We want to be creators of news."

The site will focus on coverage of President Barack Obama's administration, I'm guessing from a conservative point of view.

But Carlson is no Bush supporting Republican. He has said in the past that he cares deeply about conservative ideas, but he does not care about the success or failure of any political party. And Conservative Republicans have accused Carlson of not being sufficiently conservative

As well as giving the likes of the Huffington Post and thedailybeast.com (for which he has written for and he's a fan of) a run for their money (Carlson described it as a "general interest newspaper") it will also try to outpace the conservative favourite Drudge Report.

There's more on the website TV News Insider including this:

Daily Intel: So, all of the articles about your new project say that you're competing with the Huffington Post. But isn't what you are doing also competing with Tina Brown's Daily Beast, which you sometimes write for?

Tucker: Even if I could, I'd never compete with Tina, both because I love her, and also because I'm not that stupid.

Daily Intel: Says: You love her? (Thinks: Does he mean in a Harold and Maude kind of way? Ew. Don't ask that. You don't want to know the answer.) Says: That's kind of gross.

Tucker: And also true.

How Hugh Laurie modelled himself on Jane Seymour

Hugh Laurie, who returns to British TV on Sunday has apparently modelled his life on Jane Seymour. This line alone made a piece worth reading this week in The Guardian about the success that a lot of British actors are currently enjoying on US TV. There are absolutely loads. Including Jane Seymour devotee Laurie.

Cue lots of headlines about the British are coming or have already moved into to a Los Angeles pad near you.

Some have, of course, been more successful than others. Laurie in 'House' is more like the exception than the rule as the show he stars in moves into its fifth year. Others, more than 40% will get cancelled. Some barely making a first season before the axe falls in the tough world of US network TV.

I was really late to the whole 'House' thing and only started watching it after a boredom accident when I picked up a box set of the first three seasons for £7 (two Golden Globes and three Emmy nominations can't be wrong). At that price it seemed rude not to. Anyway, I got sucked right into Laurie and his portrayal of pill popping misanthrope Gregory House who, so the story goes, got his break after one of the producers of the show mistook him in his audition tape as an "all-American guy".

Be interesting to see if the numbers hold up for Sky which performed its seasoned trick, mugging poorer terrestrial networks. This time Five was the loser. It always did pretty well out of 'House'. It pulled in as many as 2.6m viewers.

It's unlikely that 'House' will get the same numbers after its move as the story so far has been that all shows moving from terrestrial to digital have seen numbers drop. The same was true for the first two seasons of '24', which then jumped from BBC Two to Sky One and then Lost, which went from Channel 4 to Sky One.

Anyway, I digress, 'House' is back with its fifth season and Laurie talking to the Guardian had this to say regarding the Brit invasion.

"I know I'm not the first British actor to play an American in a network TV show - in this, as in so many other aspects of my life, I have modelled myself on Jane Seymour - but I have tried to represent the UK as well as I know how. I am punctual, sober, I know my lines and I haven't threatened any of my co-workers with a gun. If that has helped smooth the way for other British actors, hooray!"

We can look back a long way and see Brits doing well over there, but recently the latest crop seems larger. Some good and others not so good.

Most recently Laurie has been joined by 'Shakespeare in Love' star Joseph Fiennes and 'This Life'/'Pirates of the Caribbean' Jack Davenport in a new sci-fi drama on ABC called 'Flash Forward'.

Over on CBS Jeremy Northam and Richard Coyle head up Jerry Bruckheimer's 'Miami Trauma' while 'Spooks' star 'Rupert Penry-Jones' is in ABC's 'The Forgotten'.

Not to forget 'The Wire'. I'm way late to this and am only now making my way from Season One. I admit, it is good, but I would never have guessed that Dominic West (who plays Jimmy McNulty) and Idris Elba (who plays Stringer Bell) were British.

There are loads more so here's a handy list I made earlier (no particular order).

1. Stephen Moyer in HBO's 'True Blood'  
2. Robert Carlyle in 'Stargate: Universe'
3. Tim Roth in Fox's 'Lie to Me'
4. Kelly Macdonald in HBO's 'Boardwalk Empire'
5. Rufus Sewell in 'Eleventh Hour' on CBS (cancelled)
6. Alex Kingston and Parminder Nagra in NBC's 'ER'
7. Ashley Jensen in ABC's 'Ugly Betty'
8. Michelle Ryan in NBC's 'Bionic Woman' (cancelled).
9. Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver in ABC's 'The Riches'
10. Anna Friel in ABC's 'Pushing Daisies'
11. Ian McShane in HBO's 'Deadwood' (cancelled)
12. Joely Richardson in Fox's 'Nip/Tuck'
13. Louise Lombard in CBS' 'CSI'
14. Lena Headey in Fox's 'Terminator Sarah Conor Chronicles' (cancelled)
15. Sophia Myles in CBS' 'Moonlight' (cancelled)
16. Kevin McKidd in NBC's 'Journeyman' (cancelled)
17. Naveen Andrews in ABC's 'Lost'.
18. Damian Lewis in NBC's 'Life' (cancelled) and HBO's

There are probably loads more. Some we will never see. Most will probably run late night on digital channels and come and go. Rufus Sewell for instance? Missed that one.

I did catch a couple of episodes of 'Life' after reading a good review in The Guide, but that's already been axed. Shame, that was good, and like Laurie Lewis has that certain quirkiness (not to mention he was very good in 'HBO's 'Band of Brothers' a few years back.

Oh I suppose we should mention Jane Seymour. She was in something it ran for five years. It was called 'Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman'. I have no idea what it was about other than it involved Jane Seymour who, you know, played a medicine woman, and who Hugh Laurie later modelled his life on. Good work.

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Life in the clickstream: the future of journalism

Everyone who works online and has anything to do with publishing should be reading this. A report out today that attempts to map the carnage in publishing and take a guess at the future. Full of good nuggets.

With nods to both the Guardian's Emily Bell ("We are on the brink of two years of carnage for western media") and Roy Greenslade ("Popular newspapers, the mass newspapers, are dying and will die") the starting point and the narrative of the Future of Journalism report produced by the Media Alliance in Australia is the declining fortunes of print and the challenges that disruptive technologies bring in the Australian, UK and US markets.

The starring names of this story are all there as papers like the The Christian Science Monitor fold, as others like the Washington Post, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and CNN rise to the challenge.

No one is immune and while no one is sure exactly what the solutions are, people do know that one thing's for sure: that news media has fundamentally changed and that publishing has to adapt to "the economic and technological landscape".

The companies that will survive and prosper will be those that remember and nurture their core business, which also have the journalists on board who are equipped with the skills to flourish in the new landscape. For the journalists, it is the ones with those skills who will prosper. Hopefully.

The investment question is as important as the question of what content we actually produce.

The report asks a lot of questions about content (it is after all what we do) and provides some answers: where are people going online and what are people doing? It looks at the kinds of content they are consuming and what that tells us.

There are some really good case studies here which offer a pick 'n' mix smorgasbord of options for publishers to choose from and experiment with. Not everything is going to work.

It takes a brief look at CNN's IReport mini-site devoted to user-generated content, which has been a real success for CNN. The news giant has learned well to adapt and ride the Web 2.0 wave like the best. Its success with UGC and other experiments like Twitter offer a lot.

It takes a look at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "where quotas rule".

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution restructured in 2007, targeted older reporters and editors for redundancy and divided those left into two main sections: news and information, with about 170 journalists who break news; and enterprise, with about 50 staff concentrating on features and investigations.

It then imposed controversial quotas on reporters: 60 pieces a year for narrative and profile writers, and 12 for investigative reporters.

The UK is well represented in this report and The Daily Telegraph is billed as the original "newsroom of the future". There is a quote from the paper's digital editor Edward Roussel who is worth repeating with his line that the new era calls for a new type of reporter, with the attributes of a wire journalist or a sports reporter.

"If you imagine the way a football reporter works, filing grabs every few minutes and then turning the whole thing into a story very quickly after the end of the game, that is the way our reporters work now when filing for online."

Roussel is also a believer (and really who isn't) in Jeff Jarvis's belief that success lies in premium content and that we must all live by this maxim: "Do what you do best and link to the rest".

Johnston Press' The Lancashire Evening Post and its "converged newsroom" is here with its newsroom seen as a model as to what regional newspapers can do. Its newsroom has evolved to use Sony HD video cameras, Edirol digital recorders, Soundslide for galleries and Avid Pro Express for editing videos. The Post, and its 65 editorial staff, blossomed into lep.co.uk.

Online content is discussed at every conference. Lep.co.uk publishes stories continuously and most stories appear online first. "We have the market to ourselves as a regional newspaper, so we can control our content, which is a bit different to our national papers," says Post's deputy editor, Mike Hill.

The convergence of journalism and data is looked at in EveryBlock.com. This site is the brainchild of former  Washington Post journalist Adrian Holovaty. Working for the Post in Chicago, he set up chicagocrime.org to analyse daily crime reports from the Chicago Police Department’s website and reorganised the information so people could see what was happening in their neighbourhood. Now with Everyblock no matter where you live you can see what's happening with on your block - it is local news at the micro level and another example of the rise of community sites. Database-inspired journalism is much bigger in the US, but offers untapped opportunities here and elsewhere.

Bloggers on steroids/the rise of community journalism- the community model is seen as the way forward by some and a red herring by others. The report looks at in the journalist-free news operation: Examiner.com.

Examiner.com is owned and run by the Clarity Media Group in Denver, Colorado, and also runs freesheets in cities including San Francisco, Washington and Baltimore. It is owned by billionaire Philip Anschutz and run by former AOL executive Michael Sherrod. The group has domain names for hyperlocal sites in 70 US cities and has officially launched in beta in San Francisco, Chicago, Baltimore, Denver, and Seattle (all markets where the paid for print titles are risk and folding like the San Francisco Chronicle and the late Seattle Post Intelligencer). Almost following the scent of print death.

The idea behind Examiner.com is pure citizen journalism with contributions from examiners paid by numbers of page views and advertising clicks (not unlike the model used by Nick Denton at Gawker Media). The pay starts at $2.50 for every thousand page views and, according to TechCrunch, the median income is $25 a month. Not exactly a future career.

"We are building a community of Examiners to focus on specific topics ranging from sports to tourism to local politics," a post on the website said recently. "Examiners are local experts who have a voice, knowledge and an opinion. Think of an Examiner like a blogger on steroids."

And so to The Washington Post, which has long been seen as a pioneer. The report looks at some of the Post's work on video, which again offers a lot of ideas. The speed and focus is impressive.

Jim Brady, Washingtonpost.com executive editor, says his team were poor relations in the pecking order until recently, but that has all changed.

Brady said the Post had introduced comprehensive training and all reporters could shoot video, which – he said – was "the hot thing now".

"We have a political blogger out there who has a camera mounted on his computer and when a big story breaks he will do the 60 seconds on what this means, and he will push a button on his computer, send it to our computer guys and 10 minutes later there will be a video of him up there reacting to Teddy Kennedy having a brain tumour … it is totally crappy video, it is a webcam, but it gets it out there.

Brady adds: "Production values are not everything – communicating simple information is what matters. You might get 10,000 video streams for something that took 90 seconds to make."

The Washingtonpost.com has six dedicated video journalists who make everything from documentary-style stories to three minute campaign reports. They are part of a team of about 100 dedicated online journalists who prepare copy from the print operation, moderate blogs, produce video and podcasts and produce original stories.

Niche for news junkies. Here the report quotes the American Journalism Review's Philip Meyer who recently envisaged a “smaller, less frequently published version, packed with analysis and investigative reporting and aimed at well-educated news junkies, that may well be a smart survival strategy for the beleaguered old print product".

That sounds like a description of a news magazine as much as it does a newspaper. The model is the same - as long as what you offer is the best in your field representing premium value to advertisers then you will find a market.

Ownership and partnerships are looked at as the report concludes. Both hot topics. Will US newspapers like the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times become grand old charitable trusts?

What new partners do we need to find, and does this mean looking in areas where you may not have looked before as being 'frenemies' becomes the new norm as companies join rivals in joint ventures, each contributing what they do best.

This report comes in the same week that the World Association of Newspapers had its conference (issued this: Newspaper Circulation Grows Despite Economic Downturn) and both see reasons to be optimistic as they look to the future where many models, new and old, look like they will co-exist. This will doubtless mean that a lot less trees will be needed.

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Google drops idea to buy a newspaper what is the industry going to do now!?

Did Google ever really want a newspaper? Did it want the New York Times? Well it doesn't now and has told the FT that it is really not interested. Maybe it has worked out that, well, while it can make money out of newspapers they in themselves are worthless black holes.

There had been speculation that Google might buy something like the New York Times and turn it into a charitable trust, but according to CEO Eric Schmidt this idea is as dead, well, as some US newspapers. He also appeared to rule out buying the 19% stake in the paper that is owned by investment firm Harbinger Capital (who are clearly wishing they never bought it).

FT: Would you ever consider buying a newspaper; they’re cheap right now?

Eric Schmidt: We've actually looked at this and we're trying to avoid crossing the line between the infrastructure and technology that Google provides and the content that our partners provide. There is a line and we're trying to stay on our side it.

FT: And so the Harbinger Capital doesn’t hold any appeal for you?

ES: I don’t want to comment about a specific stake and ownership but, in general, we have done well by letting content people do content in their own terms and in their own way, and working with them to try to make some significant money for them.

In short Google wants to focus on the bit of the business that makes money. And you have to get the irony here. Google has risen to fame and fortune to a great extent on the endeavours of others.

It is one of the few firms that have made a lot of money out of content online. That is the truth.

Google is a something of a sneaky operator. Having made all of this money out of content it should in some way now contribute, give something back if you want, for all that it has taken. Maybe buying a newspaper is one way of doing it. I'm sure there are others.

But what does Schmidt have to say about this? Well, as the FT put it, he "played down industry calls for Google to increase the amount of revenue it shared with news organisations whose content appears on Google News".

"We've decided that the value we provide to the partners is the traffic. So we want to provide incredible numbers of users going to their sites, their content, which is why we urge them to make it deeper, stronger and use better tools and so forth. From our perspective, that’s where the real source would be."

He apparently said that to do this Google would have to take money from “another pocket” to do so. Would that be another really deep pocket? I'm guessing so.

What Google is doing is working with newspapers in some shape or form including The Washington Post.

"With a number of newspapers, and The Washington Post being an example, we are very interested in trying to develop online news versions that somehow address the immediate needs of people and for which advertising works better. Without commenting specifically about products it seems to me that the newspaper that I read online should remember what I read. It should allow me to go deeper into the stories. It’s that kind of a discussion that we’re having.

Schmidt is also clear that as far as paid content goes, it is not going to happen except in specialist and B2B cases, which appears to be the general consensus.

"I think it's [paid content] unlikely to work although people will certainly try it and they’re welcome to do so. And the reason is that for most content people are preferring an advertising model. There will be some very specialised content, you know, high-quality newspaper articles, magazines, that sort of thing, which I suspect subscriptions will work for. But for the average news that everybody gets today they would prefer an advertising-supportive model."

The full transcript of the FT.com's comprehensive interview is here.

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Read more on Brand Republic:

• BR's full coverage of the downturn and the US newspaper industry.

Read more on Gordon's Republic blog:

• New York Times one of the few that can thrive in a digital age
• People will pay for content, says PwC
• Wait and see as WSJ leaps with micro payments
• Paid-for content -- an impossible dream?
• MediaGuardian.co.uk to go paid for?

Google knows when you will quit your job

More scary Google news. It really is watching YOU if you happen to work for it. It has come up with an algorithm that tells it when staff are most likely to quit their jobs.

According to a story in the Wall Street Journal it is worried about the brain drain and how this "could hurt its long-term ability to compete". Never one to twiddle its thumbs Google got straight to work writing a sneaky little algorithm to analyse data from employee reviews, promotions, peer reviews and pay increases.

This gave it a mathematical formula that it says can identify which of its 20,000 employees are most likely to quit.

Wow. I wonder if this is similar process to what Google does for US intelligence agencies. Remember that story last year about Google working with the National Security Agency and CIA. The agencies apparently bought servers on which Google supplied search technology to process data gathered by spies around the world.

The WSJ quotes Google as saying the algorithm already has identified employees who felt underused, a key complaint among those who contemplate leaving. I guess Google should know it has lost a lot of senior staff recently.

Last week, Ien Cheng director of product management for advertising in Europe went. He had been preceded by senior Google sales executive Tim Armstrong; Jeff Levick, former vice-president of industry development and marketing; Google global display ad boss, David Rosenblatt; and Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, the president of Google's Asia-Pacific and Latin America operations.

Apparently applying a complex equation to a basic human-resource issue "is pure Google". That's what they call it. Pure Google. Using heavy data to drive decision-making is one of its "Ten Golden [Google] Rules".

Laszlo Bock, who runs human resources for the search giant told the paper that the Quit Me Google algorithm (I made that up) helps the company "get inside people's heads even before they know they might leave".

Here's what I say: get out Google. I want you at the end of my computer not in my head.

New York Times one of the few that can thrive in a digital age

John Gapper in the FT today has a good piece on the woes of the New York Times, but he says the Gray Lady is one of the "few print publications with a good chance of thriving in the digital age".

It has been a helluva week for the New York Times as mogul David Geffen emerged as someone being interested in buying a stake in the New York Times Company and elsewhere it was speculated by Gawker that Mexican billionaire, Carlos Slim, could become the biggest shareholder in the New York Times in the next couple of years because of the high interest rates the Ochs-Sulzberger family borrowed $250m at.

Gapper says that while it must be tempting for Arthur Sulzberger Junior to sell up, he says that unlike the Bancroft family who cashed in two years ago and sold the Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation, he should hang on.

"The family should learn from its mistakes by holding on to the enterprise long enough to clean up its balance sheet and put the paper on a solid footing. Then it should retire with dignity by selling it to someone with sharper instincts.

"Despite the financial errors of the controlling family, The New York Times is not just another doomed US city paper. It is one of the few print publications with a good chance of thriving in the digital age."

He has some praise for the Ochs-Sulzbergers. This for instance, he says they are better publishers than media owners, which has seen them turn a city paper into a national and global brand with a loyal, affluent readership in print and online.

Compare that to the Graham family and The Washington Post, which has lost some of its heyday cache as it has become more local and less an international force.

Talking of newspaper brands that have made a global impact, The Guardian always gets a mention here. Not always like this though as Gapper takes a swipe in his piece, which seems harsh.

"Meanwhile, it [The New York Times] produces more original stories than most rivals put together. The UK’s Guardian is another paper that has built a global brand from what was a regional paper, but it relies more on cut-and- pasting (or aggregating) from others."

Looking towards the future what the paper really needs he says is an owner to best exploit its power and reputation as a force in journalism on and offline. Big question: is that owner person a Mexican telecoms billionaire such as Slim or an entertainment mogul such as Geffen? What does Geffen want with the paper anyway? The kind of owner it needs Gapper says is another billionaire, Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg.

"Bloomberg, who is demonstrably attached to New York, has entrepreneurial and financial talent, has a track record of cultivating rigorous and independent journalism, and knows how to profit from digital subscriptions."

What one wonders could Bloomberg do with the New York Times and its digital business? Could he turn a profit? Would he even be interested? All questions for the (near) future.

For now the Ochs-Sulzberger family control 89% of the voting shares, which is a fortress of power, but that fortress is well and truly under assault.

One more thing, I mean really why does the New York Times have 1,300 editorial staff (compared this to the FT which has 550 or The Guardian which will have 800 by the end of the year). Who can survive with those numbers in this digital age?

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Kanye West lets rip at Twitter celebs – IN ALL CAPS

I realise some of us spend way too much time talking about Twitter and celebrities. What can I say? It's a failing, but some celebrities have been at it also. Namely rapper Kanye West who is very upset about Twitter and celebrites.

Maybe he's been blown away by the recent Twitter race to 1m followers led and won by Ashton Kutcher. Maybe he read the most influential list of Twitter's and saw that none of them counted for anything in his world. Maybe he read fellow rapper 50 Cent's recent tweet, and go annoyed: "902,000 fans on facebook .. are u one of them? I gotta have 1Million!" Hear that? he's got have them. Join him. Errr you know or not.

You already know what I think, I can not really understand why you would want to follow a celebrity on Twitter in the first place.

Kanye West is not just mad about celebs he is mad about all these fake Kayne West's on Twitter. I blogged about that too and most of these celebrities are fake (other than Ashton Kutcher and Mrs Kutcher). I wonder what he thinks about people like Kayne_West (who wants to make it clear that they not affiliated with Kanye West). Anyway, Kayne is angry and to convey that he is also very shouty, which is the only reason to explain why he has written in all caps in this blast from his blog.

    (This spaz comes courtesy of losers making fake Kanye West Twitter accounts) I DON’T HAVE A FUCKING TWITTER… WHY WOULD I USE TWITTER??? I ONLY BLOG 5 PERCENT OF WHAT I’M UP TO IN THE FIRST PLACE. I’M ACTUALLY SLOW DELIVERING CONTENT BECAUSE I’M TOO BUSY ACTUALLY BUSY BEING CREATIVE MOST OF THE TIME AND IF I’M NOT AND I’M JUST LAYING ON A BEACH I WOULDN’T TELL THE WORLD. EVERYTHING THAT TWITTER OFFERS I NEED LESS OF. THE PEOPLE AT TWITTER KNOW I DON’T HAVE A FUCKING TWITTER SO FOR THEM TO ALLOW SOMEONE TO POSE AS ME AND ACCUMULATE OVER A MILLION NAMES IS IRRESPONSIBLE AND DECEITFUL TO THERE FAITHFUL USERS. REPEAT… THE HEADS OF TWITTER KNEW I DIDN’T HAVE A TWITTER AND THEY HAVE TO KNOW WHICH ACCOUNTS HAVE HIGH ACTIVITY ON THEM. IT’S A FUCKING FARCE AND IT MAKES ME QUESTION WHAT OTHER SO CALLED CELEBRITY TWITTERS ARE ACTUALLY REAL OR FAKE. HEY TWITTER, TAKE THE SO CALLED KANYE WEST TWITTER DOWN NOW …. WHY? … BECAUSE MY CAPS LOCK KEY IS LOUD!!!!!!!!!

There's lots of coverage on this today including this great pic on CurrentUK.

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People will pay for content, says PwC

That's what PricewaterhouseCoopes says in its 'Outlook for Newspaper Publishing in the Digital Age' report out today.

The report looks at how the newspaper industry can face up to the structural challenges that have seen paid for titles lose circulation volume while advertisers have been moving online.

The top line findings from its research shows mostly importantly two points that applies across the online publishing world and not simply to newspapers.

Consumers will pay for content - News as commodity - Consumers see breaking news and general interest news as commodities, but there is always a market for high value online content in specific topics. Our consumer research indicates that consumers are willing to pay for this content, but newspapers need to develop strategies for monetising their content and intellectual capital.

Niche Niche Niche - Niche audiences continue to demand specialised, targeted and relevant information. This creates both an opportunity for advertisers to reach their consumers and for newspapers to develop 'hyper-local' or 'local-local' sites addressing content at the neighborhood and suburban level. This is particularly prevalent in the USA.

This supports what people have been talking about this last week, which I have been blogging about and what seems to be the new consensus: that you can (as some still do) charge for B2B and specialist content (as Carolyn McCall highlighted last week) as this is content that people can not get elsewhere.

Here are PwC's other key points which point to the huge role that print still has to play in the future of newspapers (again I think this applies pretty well to magazines as well). This role has become ever more apparent as the print pounds have translated to digital pennies.

Revenue remain with print - Although there is a huge potential for growth online, print remains the largest source of revenue generation for newspaper publishers, and will continue to be so for some time.

The future is longterm - Newspapers have a long-term future and will coexist with other media. However this is unlikely to be either in the formats or volumes seen today and there will some casualties and losses of well-known papers along the way.

Where the value is - Consumers place high value on the deep insight and analysis provided by journalists over and above general or breaking news stories.

Trust and loyalty - Newspapers have been able to earn their readers' trust and loyalty, giving them the opportunity to both lead and follow audiences as they migrate online and into the use of portable electronic media. Indeed, with the core principles of deep analysis and trusted editorial, the medium is secondary to the brand.

Multimedia - Use of video in online news sites gives the feel of a ‘TV-like’ experience (consumers’ favourite medium for news) giving newspaper brands the opportunity to secure online audiences beyond their print readership and into the television audience more generally.

New business models - Newspaper publishers have responded to the economic downturn by increasing their focus on cost reduction. Many are also using multiple platforms and new technologies as channels for content distribution in order to reach their audiences. However, many have still to fully review their existing business models to take full advantage of the innovation in the marketplace and the demands of consumers.

The mobile internet - The rapid adoption of the internet and mobile technology have created a market for mobile devices – particularly for the 'net generation', those under 35 in age. Though the devices give immediate access to breaking news and information, they are low on the list of preferences for accessing information due to the difficulty of reading content on the devices.

Innovative advertising packages - Shift For advertisers, access to mass markets remains key, so major newspaper brands with large loyal customer bases will be high on the spending plans of advertisers. The overall shift from print to online will continue however, so newspaper publishers must continue to develop innovative advertising packages combining both print and online to secure the advertising spend for their brands.

PwC's key questions for publishers as they look to the future:

1. Is your brand identity clear - both internally and externally - and focused on what differentiates you from your competitors?
2. Are print and new media run as separate operations or as simply two different distribution mechanisms for the same core activity?
3. Do you have an integrated paper and online advertising sales team?
4. Are you using online to extend your core audience beyond the traditional print readership?
5. Will video journalism and print journalism co-exist online?
6. What does your audience want from you - and do you know what they will pay for?
7. Can areas of non-differentiation be outsourced?
8. Have you identified non-core activities that should be downsized or stopped?
9. Are you investing today with?

You can read the full report here:

There was this also out from PricewaterhouseCoopers looking more at insolvency, but some interesting bits particularly liked its interesting turn of phrase where it says that "the internet has turned into a burden not a prize" for some media companies.

Clearly here PwC is talking about the large scale investment in digital that has not brought anything like the return hoped for as all those print pounds are traded for digital pennies.

The consultancy firm says that digital assets that were acquired as an option for future gain will move down, if not off, the priority list and for some the internet has turned into a burden not a prize.

However, it does see opportunities ahead "for those who provide a great experience based on quality content accessible across a range of devices". I'm guessing this is more than about the development of a pretty iPhone app.

For publishers, the report goes on to say that their trajectory has been only marginally impacted by the recent downturn (with a 40% rise in insolvencies since Q1 2008) and instead has been hit far harder by the structural challenge of consumption moving to online models than by the recession itself.

David Lancefield, partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, said: "The move towards Digital Britain could exasperate this trend even further unless publishers can shift their focus to new operating models."

"With consumer confidence at its lowest, the country turned a corner into a technical recession early 2009 – this shift was reflected in the advertising industry, as a third more agencies became insolvent than in the previous quarter. Last year represented the advertising world’s Big Bang, as we saw a collision of severe economic downturn and structural change to online. In this world, grabbing and monetising consumer attention is harder than ever," Lancefield said.

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iTunes kiosks coming to an airport near you?

A patent filing uncovered by industry blog AppleInsider shows that Apple has plans to develop a series of wireless iTunes 'kiosks' or download hubs where users can load content on their iPods before travelling.

The 19-page patent, filed in November 2007, reveals that Apple wants to develop an iTunes Store distribution hub, that could potentially set up shop in airports and train terminals, and would allow wireless downloads of music, films or television programmes for commuters.

The kiosks would be able to detect an iPod in the immediate vicinity, allowing users to download content without wires or cords, even in areas without wireless internet access.

The wireless component would mean that users could purchase content without having incur roaming charges on their devices while waiting for downloads to complete.

Apple said in the patent that the kiosks would be useful for travellers who wish to load their iPods, iPhones or other handheld devices before boarding a flight, ship or train.

The notoriously secretive Apple has not previously mentioned the iTunes kiosks, but it would undoubtedly prove to be a lucrative source of revenue, especially with the right branding and selective location. Hopefully this is one that doesn't get swept under the Apple rug.

Wait and see as WSJ leaps with micro payments

So the Wall Street Journal got it moving as it launches first with micro payments after Rupert Murdoch hinted heavily last week. It was the most obvious to go first, but what the industry really wants is for someone else to leap.

People will shortly be able to buy individual articles according to WSJ managing editor Robert Thomson. He said to Reuters: "It's a payments system -- once we have your details we will be able to charge you according to what you read, in particular, a high price for specialist material."

What's as interesting is that the WSJ.com is using the opportunity for expansion. While newspapers around the US totter on the brink, the WSJ.com is pushing out to cities such as Detroit and San Francisco in an effort to broaden the title's appeal by playing up local political and sports coverage on its website.

What's very interesting about that is that it is not the specialist financial stories (the stuff that people already pay a hundred bucks for), but the more general stories that it also wants to get people paying for.

I could be reading that wrong, but it does not seem likely that the WSJ is to push out to these cities and start giving content away. So it is clearly hoping that people will pay for "local political and sports coverage" as coverage in their own local papers go.

Murdoch said last week that he plans to have all his papers charging. The speed of his US announcement could mean that it happens sooner rather than later in the UK.

If and when that happens, things will start to speed up and maybe quite quickly, as if this is going to work, the industry has to do it as a concerted push – to assert this as the new world order, so to speak.

It was the Financial Times, which reported this story about the WSJ, and it must, along with some element of Guardian Media Group (after chief executive Carolyn McCall's comments last week), be a strong candidate to be somewhere near the front of the cue to begin experimenting with charging. At the moment the FT's system of giving some content away really does not work. I subscribe to the WSJ.com and get to read about all I need from FT.com for free. You can always find its content on Google, no payment necessary.

FT.com introduced its current model in October 2007, which at the time seemed to suggest that paid content was coming to an end. It was also when Murdoch was talking about dumping subs charges.

But if anyone is to be next, it will probably be another American newspaper and probably the New York Times. I imagine that is what people are hoping for.

It is all very well seeing the financially strong WSJ leap into the semi dark (for it at least), but what the industry really wants is to see a more general news outlet take the leap and see how it turns out. There is I think a little wait and see taking place. So I guess we will. Wait and see that is.

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Paid-for content – an impossible dream?

The PaidContent blog has a good piece today on why the idea of charging for content might be a flight of fancy and impossible to implement after years of free access.

The post comes in a week that two media figures have been talking paid content and raising much debate in the industry. First there was CEO of Guardian Media Group Carolyn McCall identifying B2B and MediaGuardian.co.uk as possible future areas for charging.

Then came Rupert Murdoch, the News Corporation chief executive and chairman, who said he expects News Corp-owned newspaper websites to start charging users for access within a year. Murdoch is, of course already in a rather lovely position in that he owns the biggest subscription newspaper site in the world, the Wall Street Journal.

"We are now in the midst of an epochal debate over the value of content and it is clear to many newspapers that the current model is malfunctioning. We have been at the forefront of that debate and you can confidently presume that we are leading the way in finding a model that maximizes revenues in return for our shareholders... The current days of the Internet will soon be over," Murdoch said.

Do you remember when Murdoch first took over the WSJ and talked about dumping the subscription charges? How far and how quickly we have come.

Paidcontent has a number of really salient points summing up the risks and challenges:

—You can't charge for abundance: basically news is done for, there is too much and it is not a premium, but you can charge for market intelligence and niche information the WSJ, FT.com and many small B2B sites do rather nicely.

What then does this means for newspaper sites like the Mail Online, Times Online and Telegraph.co.uk is anyone's guess as they cannot charge for the bulk of what they do. Unless Murdoch knows something we don't?

Paidcontent mentions databases – Americans talk a lot about this and the power of database journalism. Think things like league tables and other information people cannot get elsewhere are possible candidates.

—The genie can't go back in its bottle: It says that because of 15 years of free content it will be tough to turn back the clock unless it is an industry-wide effort, but that means working together and that is not something the newspaper and magazine publishing industry does well.

—BBC News is the gorilla in the room: When McCall made her comments about charging for content she was answering a question about the BBC. Paidcontent points out rightly that the BBC, not to mention bloggers, is not going away and that it is ludicrous to suggest that the corporation's remit should not extend to online. Whatever publishers do they will have to consider that the BBC is there with a well-funded site.

I don't personally think that is an issue, as the BBC's content is general in its nature and if the same content were produced by a commercial organisation I do not think you could charge for it.

—Advertisers would hate it: This is a question that has not been readily discussed in much detail by anyone that I have heard speaking on the subject. How will advertisers react to the erection of paywall barriers? Not with open arms, as they will see it as users being locked out. Paidcontent argues publishers need to be sure that the extra revenue that comes from charging makes up for any lost advertising.

—E-readers are a white elephant: Paidcontent has no time for the idea that the e-reader, which many publishers are looking at developing for, represents a new way they could charge for their content. The extra gadget in the bag that an e-reader represents has always been my main problem with Amazon's Kindle and e-readers. Like Paidcontent I don't think people want to carry around another gadget adding to their mobile, iPod and netbook.

—Even paid-for content is infinitely copyable: true to a point. Clearly bloggers take from the WSJ as quickly as anywhere else, which underlines the idea that if you are going to charge make sure that it is content that is difficult to replicate.

This is why database journalism (tables, charts et cetera) is good. Anything that basically comprises a bunch of words and nothing else can be ripped off in no time.

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Draper and the collateral damage to the blogosphere

Not many tears will be shed over the departure of Derek Draper as editor of LabourList, but his exit leaves the Labour Party with a question that can not be easily answered.

The Today Programme this morning called the blogosphere "the Tories' most potent weapon" and it is right, but in a identifying this it also underscored something about the nature of the blogosphere.

The best political blogs are not created by party apparatchiks, by political hacks like Derek Draper who has long had friends in high political places in the Labour Party, but by a collection of individuals outside of party structures and operations.

LabourList, Derek Draper's effort was not always destined to fail, but it might very well do so. Death by association is not an uncommon affliction in political circles in the wake of the Smeargate scandal and the effort to create a blog called The Red Rag to spread malicious stories about Tory politicians.

Look to the United States and Huffington Post on the liberal left or the Drudge Report on the right. Neither of these are organs or creations of the Democrat and Republican parties respectively.

Closer to home, look at Guido Fawkes, the conduit if not the architect of Derek Draper's downfall. He is a blogger of the right, Tory supporting, but sits well outside the party.

Tim Montgomerie's ConservativeHome blog, which Derek Draper looked to when creating LabourList, was not a party creation and has a critical eye when it comes to the Tory Party.

Elsewhere on the left blogs like Harry's Place, have Labour supporters among their ranks, but no more than that.

I am sure that is the reason these blogs have survived and grown.

Derek Draper was always too much the insider. He was not jut an insider, but the insider's insider. A long time wheeler dealer who had been rubbing shoulders with Labour MPs and inner circles from his time as a student stalking NUS conferences.

With all of that access came much baggage and on both occasions it is this that has brought him down, both in this 2009 Smeargate scandal and in 1998 in the Lobbygate scandal where he was caught on tape boasting about how he could sell access to government ministers.

To be successful, scratch that, to be useful to a cause or party that you support it appears to me that it is obligatory to sit outside to be effective and have that necessary sense of perspective.

This does not mean you can not have links and associations with that party or cause. That's all well and good, just don't step into the inner circle.

With an election a year away this incident leaves Labour groping somewhat digitally in the dark lacking the "potent weapon" that the Tories have (I think stumbled upon). This is not a pretty situation to be in.

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MediaGuardian.co.uk to go paid for?

Very interesting news coming from Guardian boss Carolyn McCall today at the Fipp World Magazine Congress in London where she is talking about charging for content and MediaGuardian.co.uk could be one of its sites that goes paid for.

Carolyn McCall's comments follow those in March of Guardian News & Media MD Tim Brooks who said charging was high on his wish list.

She said: "More people are looking seriously at how they can make money charging for content that costs a lot of money to make. I don't think we will be doing much content online in B2B unless we get money for it. It's crazy that we do so much to put content out there but we don't get money for it."

It's interesting that McCall would cite MediaGuardian.co.uk and B2B as it is reflective of the way the thinking is going in the industry over what could possibly be charged for.

There seems to be from what I hear a consensus emerging that goes like this: the boat on generic breaking news has long since sailed and you can not charge for that content, there is simply too much of it out there; but specialist and niche news offers the possibility of charging.

This content is much more of a premium. It is not so freely available or freely replicated.

Some of this content used to be paid for. The territory that MediaGuardian.co.uk operates in for instance overlaps with what we do at Brand Republic and Haymarket in general and some of that content used to be paid for.

Take Campaign's original website, when that launched that was all paid for and only available to subscribers. I remember talking to people back then about that model when much other content was free. That is all a long time gone, but here we are again.

If the Guardian makes a jump and puts some kind of charge or attaches subscription access to MediaGuardian.co.uk and others specialists areas of its network (or the B2B Emap business that it owns that includes Drapers Record, Broadcast and Retail Week) then others will quickly follow. There will be a global trickle.

People will still be able to get much free, but for those who want more specialist business and industry news, they might well have to pay for it.

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Boston Globe fate hangs in the balance

The fate of the Boston Globe is hanging in the balance this week as the New York Times Company moves towards a deal with unions, but one with journalists is so far out of reach.

According to a report in the Washington Post, the New York Times Company has backed off from threats to close the paper temporarily at least. It has reached agreement with six of the seven unions that operate at the Globe, but crucially not with the union representing journalists, the Newspaper Guild, which represents 600 editorial staff.

The remaining $10m of cuts the New York Times Co wants to see have to come from the Newspaper Guild, which said it has offered a proposal that has met management's demands. But the New York Times Company says the Guild hasn't come gone far enough.

But even if they do agree the $20m cuts its nowhere near the $85m that the paper is going to lose this year.

There are a number of sticking points. While both have proposed ways of cutting $10m in pay and benefits the Newspaper Guild and the New York Times Company have gone about it in different ways. The Guild has proposed pay cuts of 3.5% as well as longer working hours and reductions in benefits. The New York Times Company wants pay cuts of 23%. There is a lot of distance between those two figures.

That said, that isn't even the main stick point. This is the fact that the union is demanding that the lifetime job guarantee is retained. I can see why they want this. Once that is lifted it is likely the New York Times Company could use it as a way to cut jobs. In particular it would get rid of expensive long serving staff. It is what happens.

But what do you do? The New York Times Co has the Guild over a barrel as the US newspaper industry goes down the pan faster than you can say, I don't know, pan? And with the Boston Globe set to lose $85m (to recap) in 2009 there is no way it can not continue with those kinds of losses for long as pretty soon you will end up with no newspaper and no jobs at all. Period. 

It's sad in so many ways as people will lose their jobs, and we're all concerned for the future, but some jobs have to be better than no jobs?

There's loads of coverage around on this here at the Washington Post with more at the New York Times and not forgetting the Boston's Globe's comprehensive coverage of its own troubles.

While down market rival the Boston Herald reports that if talks do fail and the New York Times decides to sell or close the paper, it might not get that much for the asset it paid $1.1bn back in 1993.

Also worth a look is the Wall Street Journal's useful map and table tracking trials and tribulations of the US newspaper industry.

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