At least guardian.co.uk now attributes the stories it merrily rips off from other websites after Roy Greenslade wrongly suggested that the Telegraph was busy scraping rivals’ pages for content.
Today, the Telegraph carries an exclusive story about comments made by the British ambassador to the US, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, about the supposed aloofness of Barack Obama.
The Guardian ripped the story off at just after midnight:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/03/uselections2008.barackobama2
The Times scraped it soon after with no attribution:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article4871276.ece
The Independent ripped it off - unattributed - at 1am and, in a nice touch, also ripped off the Telegraph’s resume of Sir Nigel’s career:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/obama-is-uninspiring-says-british-ambassador-to-america-949853.html
I’m becoming increasingly intrigued by Roy Greenslade’s idea of blogging and his apparent willingness to publish any old bit of tittle tattle emailed to him by two or three Telegraph journalists with axes to grind.
His latest ”contribution” to the debate about the future of journalism at the Telegraph Media Group is unworthy of him. Perhaps Roy, if you had bothered to check a few facts or were more in touch with what’s going on in the real world you might have paused before publishing. Read more…
The Guardian will - in all likelihood - next week trumpet another record month when the audited ABCe figures for August are released. But we can already glean some fascinating insights into guardian.co.uk’s growth strategy by examining the information available from Hitwise - its statistics provider.
As as already been noted, The Guardian is spending considerable sums of money trying to maintain its position as the UK’s most visited newspaper website. What I hadn’t realised was just how eye-watering those sums are - they are far, far in excess of anything that anybody else is spending . Read more…
A few observations on the email from an anonymous Telegraph journo published by Roy Greenslade on his Guardian blog:
Journalist complains: “I can see, from here, that national newspapers are beginning to head in the direction that local papers went 20 years ago, demanding levels of commitment - in hours and workload - that are unsustainable in conjunction with a normal family life.”
When, exactly, did journalists with aspirations to get on in national newspapers enjoy a normal family life? Was it during that hallowed period before the internet, before TV, before radio, even? Seriously… when was it? I am struggling to recall a time when the newspaper publication cycle allowed hacks to be out of the door at five or six and enjoying a supper with their families by seven. But perhaps at 40 I’m too young to remember this golden era of which the author clearly has such fond memories. Read more…
One of the most intriguing things that has struck me while interviewing for some new jobs at the Telegraph is how different disciplines within the journalistic family view something called “the work/life balance”.
During about 50 interviews, I must have been asked at least a dozen times what the shift will be for that particular job. Each time that question has been asked by somebody from a traditional sub or copy editing background - not by a reporter, a desk editor or one of the many “new” journalists with a primarily online background. Read more…
The latest lurch downwards in the global financial crisis has thrown the pay-per-click strategies of the major publishers in the UK into sharp focus. timesonline.co.uk seems to be buying financial keywords on the hoof and is picking them off as each major financial institution shows signs of tottering: Read more…
Press Gazette is advertising for something called an “online reporter”. Apparently, this person’s role will be to “break news stories about the magazine, online and newspaper industries, blog and contribute to the magazine”.
The publication’s advert says that the ideal candidate to be “online reporter” will:
“…have knowledge of and good contacts within the journalism industry and be able to break stories and keep abreast of breaking news, writing for the website and the the wire…” Read more…
Thanks to Simon Owens for pointing out the Bowling Green Daily News in Kentucky and its policy of web last. In an interview with MediaShift, the general manager of the Daily News, Mark Van Patten, explains why his paper chooses to use its website for breaking news only:
Right now, our readers aren’t particularly Internet savvy. Many still use dial-up for internet access. They generally only check their email a couple times a week. They don’t know much about what’s available online. They still depend heavily on the printed paper for their news
He continues:
But that’s not going to stay the case for long. When our readers discover the Internet, and the myriad websites that have local information, they will start migrating from print to online. If readers are going to trust a newspaper, it has to be first with news more often than any competitor. So if we are going to keep readers in an online world, they have to know that when an important story breaks, they can quickly find coverage on our website Read more…
In his Observer column today, Peter Preston argues that newspapers will not die, merely switch on to another delivery mechanism. He cites an e-reader launched by Plastic Logic of San Diego which you can fit in your briefcase and flick through newspaper pages while on the commuter train into Euston.
Preston’s argument is based on this premise:
In sum, a newspaper tells you many unexpected things which you didn’t know in the process of telling you what you wanted to know, while a website deals in expected things that you already know you need to know. So format matters.
Like all those who cannot bring themselves to see what is happening to their industry - that newspaper readership is either rapidly shifting to the web or is simply migrating to a different astral plane, Preston believes that the format developed over hundreds of years cannot simply disappear but will merely lift and shift to some new piece of technology in all its existing finery. Read more…
