walkerjon.com

Johnston results show newspapers still enjoy healthy profit margins

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 15:01:10 +0100

Johnston Press recently published its interim results for the first six months of the year, showing an increased profit and operating profit of 19.5 per cent.

Operating profit was £40.05 million, up from £38.2 million compared to the previous year, on a turnover of £207.3 million.

As I've pointed out before, newspaper revenues may be falling but profit margins continue to be much higher than in most other industries.

Print advertising revenues fell by £8.4 million while digital revenues rose by £1 million, but it's important to note that digital revenues, at £10 million, are still much lower than print advertising revenues at £124.1 million. Johnston also raised £49.1 million from newspaper sales.

Johnston publishes 18 daily papers, including the Yorkshire Post, and 253 weeklies.

A demonstration "social newspaper"

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 14:27:27 +0100

Some time ago, I wrote a post called promoting communities on newspaper websites, which suggested local newspapers could do more to help communities develop on their sites.

To try to illustrate what I meant, I have now created a dummy newspaper website which does four things:

Allows readers to create an online profile on the website, or to use an existing Facebook profile
Provides ways for readers to interact with each other on the site
Provides ways for readers to interact with journalists and bloggers on the site, on an equal basis
Allows readers to share things, such as links, articles, videos and photos, to create content on forums and to advertise events

It's still clear what's been written by the paper's journalists and news is presented in a traditional manner (perhaps something else that deserves consideration in the future) but it is integrated with the "community" features of the site rather than separated.

Each journalist has a profile containing all sorts of information designed to help readers and hacks interact, and the profiles are presented alongside those of readers.

The features of the dummy site are fully functional. It does not, however, contain any real news or advertising - the news stories, blog posts, forum posts etc either contain information about the features of the site, or are placeholders.

It's not meant to be the "best" or perfect way of designing a news website, and it certainly doesn't have the perfect design. It may have a few bugs.

But it is designed to illustrate the sort of thing I think local newspapers could and should be doing more of. Or maybe I'm wrong - take a look and tell me what you think.

Social Bookmarks module for Joomla

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:37:00 +0100

One of the great things about Joomla is the large number of free modules and plugins available for it (and some good commercial ones too). But sometimes the only way to get exactly what you want is to do it yourself.

So I'm a little proud of myself after creating my first simple module, although it draws on code from a number of different sources as I examined other people's modules to see how they worked.

It's called Social Bookmarks and you can see it to the top left of this article if you are viewing the full article (if you can see the "read more" button below then you need to click on that to see the module - or click the headline).

The rest of this article is aimed at Joomla users coming here to download the module or check what it does:

Social Bookmarks

A simple social bookmarking module with buttons for ten popular bookmarking/sharing services. It also includes a Facebook Like button and a text link for more than 300 other services using AddThis.

Buttons include:

Delicious
Digg
Facebook (share link)
Google Buzz
Reddit
Stumbleupon
Windows Live
Twitter
Yahoo Buzz
LinkedIn

Features:

Can be set to show on article pages only. This allows you to set the module to show in a section or category blog view menu item without having it to appear to readers until they view an article page within the section or category concerned.
Text sent to Twitter can be appended, for example with your username or a hashtag.
Option to send a TinyURL instead of the full URL in tweets.
Facebook Like button currently uses "button count" layout only. Option for a standard layout may be added in future releases.
Option to change Facebook Like button text from "like" to "recommend".
Each button can be turned on or off in the back end.
Minimal styling. Designed to fit in with existing template style with minimal fuss. Style can be altered easily using enclosed CSS file.

Front end:

Back end:

Download:

mod_jwsocial.zip

Distributed under the GPLv3 Licence, except for the icons used in the package which are used in accordance with the Yootheme Free Licence. Icons by YOOtheme, http://icons.yootheme.com.

How sick are local newspapers?

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:56:57 +0100

Trinity Mirror's regional division had an operating profit margin of 18.2 per cent excluding the recently-acquired Manchester titles in the first six months of this year, or 17.8 per cent including them.

That's £26.2 million and £28.9 million respectively.

Full details are available here: http://www.trinitymirror.com/2010/07/trinity-mirror-plc-interim-results-2010.html

For comparison, Tesco's operating profit margin in recent years has been around six per cent.

Politics Home Goes Paid

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 18:26:11 +0100

Farewell Politics Home, another superb free service which is no longer available - except as an extremely limited service - unless you pay for it.

I've mentioned politicshome.com before, calling it "one of my favourite sites". It's a politics news aggregator which manually recommends the best reports on the top political stories of the day as well as comment pieces, blogs and Twitter postings. It also includes a calendar of upcoming events and a précis of the most interesting broadcast interviews.

When I say manually, that means people are employed to monitor news sources and use their judgment to put Politics Home together. It costs money.

As I understand it (based on a brief conversation with someone who used to work there), the plan originally was to provide a free service but use the site to sell paid-for services, such as polling and research.

Now, however, the site has changed to provide only a limited free service, with the full monty available only to those who pay fees of £19 a month, for the "lite" service, or £95 a month for "pro".

I wrote on Twitter today: "www.politicshome.com is now useless to anyone not paying at least £19.95 a month - was a great site, I guess "free" doesn't always work"

On reflection, "useless" is too harsh. It's still worth checking out, but it's no longer the valuable resource it once was.

As I said earlier, in a post about Sprout, the moral of the story, it seems to me, is that nothing that's "free" should be considered reliable. Most things have to be paid for somehow, even if they are not directly funded by the end user.

Let's talk about the future of journalism

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 20:08:22 +0100

I've been catching up with David Higgerson's fine blog, which includes an interesting post about the news:rewired event in London on June 25, and his thoughts on a speech delivered by Marc Reeves, former editor of The Birmingham Post.

Marc argued, among other things, that journalists should be willing to boost their employer's turnover by passing on potential sales leads to the advertising department.

But, he laments:

"That artificial divide we created when we put the noisy people in a room marked ‘advertising' and the studious types in another labelled ‘editorial' was the biggest mistake newspapers and other media ever made.

"It allowed journalists to insulate themselves from the business they were in to the point of revelling in their detachment. I've worked with generations of hacks to whom the very idea of passing on a sales lead was regarded as a murderous betrayal of the memory of CP Scott."

He may be right. I'm not going to comment here on the divide between editorial and advertising departments, but reading both Marc and David's blogs did remind me of one of my personal bugbears, which is the divide between the debates taking place about the changing nature of the news industry and most of those who work in it.

Marc was a great editor of the Post and is doing great things at The Business Desk, but one thing he didn't do at the Post was to mention his ideas about journalists assisting the advertising department. At least, he never mentioned them to ordinary hacks like me.

David attends events like news:rewired in his role as head of multimedia for Trinity Mirror Regionals, but clearly the great mass of Trinity Mirror regional hacks can't start turning up en masse to these conferences on a regular basis, as they have other duties.

So how are we to contribute to the debate and how are we to know, to put it bluntly, what we are meant to be doing?

Well, we can follow people's blogs and maybe leave comments, or even write posts on our own blogs. But in reality, people do need a bit of a prod to get involved in a debate - an invitation. After all, I'm only assuming that my opinions are even sought.

It's also helpful, even for journalists, to give them some idea where they should be looking for information, and to tell them how they can best offer feedback.

(On that note, let me digress and try to make one thing clear, because I'm worried it will sound like I'm criticising David. I'm not - I mention him because he happens to the person who is responsible for the multimedia strategy of the company I work for. I'm pretty sure this divide exists throughout the industry, and it certainly existed at Trinity Mirror before David began his current job).

Let me try to make some constructive suggestions:

Why not point journalists towards blogs and other sources of information discussing changes in the industry, especially those with particular relevance to company they work in. Send them an e-mail.
Let them know how they can contribute. Do you run a blog and welcome comments from your colleagues? Don't assume they know that. (I'm talking here to anyone in a senior position in any media company).
What is your firm's multimedia strategy? Tell your colleagues.
Is there anything colleagues can do to help? Tell them what they can do.
Might it be worth setting up a private forum where people can discuss ideas? By forums I mean a place to speak but a forum as in message board might be a good way of doing it. That doesn't mean we should stop asking readers and anyone else willing to offer ideas for input, but there might be advantages to creating a mechanism where people can discuss things in private (ie, in the unlikely event I thought my own employer did things wrong, which I don't, I'd be wary of saying so here).

Goodbye Sprout - Free things are unreliable

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 19:07:56 +0100

Well damn, there I was talking about how wonderful Sprout gadgets were and the service vanishes.

Sprout used to offer free and paid for services ("go pro!") but the free service has been cancelled, and existing gadgets deleted. You can still use Sprout's services if you are an organisation with a hefty budget to pay them.

I've created a Widgetbox gadget instead, but it uses advertising which can be pretty ugly as it sometimes covers the text you want to display.

Can't blame Sprout, as like everyone else they need to get some cash in return for their bandwidth and to feed their families.

But there is a lesson here I think about taking "free" services for granted. Organisations may try out business plans that don't involve directly charging people for their services, but if they don't work then the "free" product won't be around for long.

Tories Warn Regional Media Not To Join Government Consortia

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 22:37:39 +0100

I've reported previously that the Conservatives are opposed to the Government's plans for regional news consortia. These are the partnerships which will bring together newspapers, regional television and blogs, with a little Government subsidy.

But they went a little further last week, making it clear they would do their best to scrap the consortia even if they have been created before the next election. Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt said the Tories would "do all we can to legally unpick them".

My former boss Marc Reeves, former editor of The Birmingham Post, is part of the panel that will choose the winning bid for the first three consortia.

Here are some extracts from Jeremy Hunt's speech:

"The Digital Economy Bill sets in stone the Government policy of using public subsidy to prop up regional news on ITV. My opposition to such a measure is hopefully, well known. Using the licence fee to prop up regional news simply casts a failed regional TV model in aspic. It would actively prevent the emergence of new, local media models, making broadcasters focus their energies on satisfying politicians not reaching viewers.

"I know that many organisations in this room are involved in bidding for the pilot schemes that this Bill would make permanent. And I don't blame you: faced with the terrifying situation many of you are in, it is understandable you want to follow the money wherever it is, public or private.

"So let me be clear. We do not support these provisions in the Digital Economy Bill. And we do not support the pilot schemes. The contracts are not due to be signed until May. Anyone looking to sign one should understand that we'll do all we can to legally unpick them if David Cameron enters Number 10. And if they haven't been signed, we won't be doing so.

"This is because we want to see the emergence of a radically different, improved and forward-looking local media sector. Not just local TV, where we are about the only major developed country not to have proper city-based TV franchises. But profitable, hungry and ambitious local radio, local newspapers and local websites as well."

Tories Reject Labour's Plans to Subsidise Local News

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:34:42 +0100

Government subsidies for regional news will stifle innovation and lead to demands for more public money, according to the Tories.

The Conservative stance means there is a very sharp division between the two major parties over how Government can support the local and regional news industry.

As I reported previously, Labour plans to support regional news consortia bringing together newspapers, local TV news and bloggers.

Three pilot schemes will be announced soon. Word in the industry (I can't verify this) is that they will be in Scotland, Wales and north west England.

The projects will get some public cash, probably from the licence fee, although this is only supposed to be temporary.

Jeremy Hunt, the Tory shadow culture secretary, made it clear the Conservatives oppose this idea, in a speech last week.

He said: "Let's look, for example, at what the government is proposing on local news. Essentially it wants to prop up the failed regional news model with licence fee cash.

"Why is this so flawed?

"Firstly, because it will set in stone the current failed model and stifle any possibility of better local news models emerging.

"Once the licence fee is paying for regional news, then all the efforts of those people receiving the subsidy will be put into lobbying ministers and Ofcom as to why it should continue. What they will not be doing is developing the new business models for local media that are being opened up by the internet.

"Secondly it will undermine one of the most successful elements of British broadcasting, namely the fact that our broadcasters compete on their ability to attract viewers not subsidy."

The Tory proposal was to reform the rules regulating media ownership so that it was easier for existing media companies to invest in new platforms, such as local television stations, he said.

Local rather than regional channels (eg, Birmingham, rather West Midlands) could be included on existing digital television broadcasts, known as multiplexes, he said.

"I am a big supporter of the idea that we need to create space for community and volunteer-led local TV stations. But I also recognise the challenge of making them commercially viable - as we have seen from the struggles of the brave and spirited Channel M in Manchester.

"Another option is to use space on existing multiplexes to create a national network that local programming could affiliate to. This has the advantage that costs are dramatically lowered: local affiliates only need to finance around four hours of programming a day outside prime time. Advertising can be sold nationally with local opt-outs. This is the system that has worked successfully in the US and other countries for many years.

"Who might want to invest in such a model? We could set up a new network, although given that we already have as many networks as America with a fifth of the population many would question whether there is room for one more.

"But becoming the backbone for a network of local affiliates could be an opportunity for ITV, 4 and five - either on their main channels or subsidiary ones. As for the local affiliates, one could imagine investment from a combination of new players and existing local newspaper groups."

Make an RSS Feed for your Favourite Journalist

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:19:52 +0100

I have a feature on the left column of this site titled "Birmingham News", which is meant to provide links to stories I have written for the Birmingham Post and Mail. It never really worked, because there was no RSS feed for my stories. My attempts to create a feed using Yahoo Pipes were unsuccessful (and Pipes, although incredibly useful when it works, is not always reliable in my experience).

So thank you Google News for coming to the rescue. Their author search feature allows you to create an RSS feed for stories written by any given author, so that I can isolate my own stories at last.

I thought this may be of interest to others, because you can of course do the same with any writer whose articles appear in Google News.

For example, I am a fan of Matthew Parris. He has his own page on the Times Online website, here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/

But there is no RSS feed specifically for his work, provided by the Times. At least, if it exists, it is well hidden and I could not find it.

But you can easily create your own feed from Google News. Here is the URL:

http://news.google.co.uk/news/search?aq=f&um=1&cf=all&ned=uk&hl=en&q=author%3A%22matthew+parris%22

To generate an RSS feed for any author, go to Google News:

http://news.google.co.uk/

Enter as your search term (taking Matthew Parris as an example):

Author:"Matthew Parris"

You should get a list of articles written by the author you have chosen. And on the left will be some options, including "sorted by date" and "sorted by relevance". I don't know what relevance means in this context, and personally I suggest clicking on "sorted by date" to ensure the feed gives you the latest articles as they go online.

Then you can either click on the RSS symbol somewhere near the top of your browser (it will be an orange symbol of some kind, and it will look a bit different depending on which browser you use), or simply scroll to the bottom of the page where there is an "RSS" link.

Click that link, and there you go.