Peterborough Today: What do you think of our new website?
Saturday, 13 March 2010, 15:57
Is this the first of the redesigned Johnston Press sites? As is typical of a post introducing a redesing, there are lots of unhappy comments. Odd to have news sponsored by the local council.
Manchester Evening News: Locked up in February ‘10
Sunday, 7 March 2010, 23:12
This is probably as close to TampaBay.com's mugshot gallery site as British law allows: "The MEN is naming and shaming criminals convicted of serious offences during February. We will be publishing an online gallery of offenders who have been convicted and jailed at courts around Greater Manchester throughout the month."
Leeds | guardian.co.uk
Wednesday, 17 February 2010, 14:10
Interesting: Guardian local blog site for Leeds, with integrated MySociety and Openly Local functionality, plus Google Maps, local Delicious links and a Leeds-filtered panel for the Guardian's dating site.
Guardian: Guardian Media Group sells regional business to Trinity Mirror
Tuesday, 9 February 2010, 11:39
"The deal is worth £44.8m to Guardian Media Group, with £7.4m in cash and Trinity Mirror releasing GMG from a £37.4m print contract. … Its Greater Manchester TV station, Channel M, and the local newspapers in Woking are not included in the deal."
Marc Reeves: Three things I’ll miss about newspapers – and three things I won’t
Friday, 1 January 2010, 12:01
Marc Reeves on the conservatism of newspaper management – and journalists: "The most senior managers in most newspaper groups achieved their positions at a time when the world was certain, definable and predictable. The model was 150 years old and still going strong. Nothing – but nothing – in their experience equipped them to anticipate or create change, unless it was to manage decline and cut costs during one of the periodical and predictable cyclical economic downturns. … The certainty that the [NUJ] would oppose any change has only helped confirm change-averse managers in their own conservatism."
Marc Reeves: Three things I’ll miss about newspapers – and three things I won’t
Friday, 1 January 2010, 12:01
Marc Reeves on the conservatism of newspaper management – and journalists: "The most senior managers in most newspaper groups achieved their positions at a time when the world was certain, definable and predictable. The model was 150 years old and still going strong. Nothing – but nothing – in their experience equipped them to anticipate or create change, unless it was to manage decline and cut costs during one of the periodical and predictable cyclical economic downturns. … The certainty that the [NUJ] would oppose any change has only helped confirm change-averse managers in their own conservatism."
Holdthefrontpage.co.uk: Publisher begins roll-out of new story links
Monday, 30 November 2009, 13:16
Northcliffe begins rollout of semantic-search based topic pages at thisisbristol.co.uk.
BBC News: Today: Websites start charging for news
Monday, 30 November 2009, 12:56
The Today programme on the Johnston Press paywall experiment: "Emily Bell, director of digital content at the Guardian and Roger Parry, former chair of Johnston Press, discuss how the model will work."
Comment is free: Why journalism needs paywalls
Monday, 30 November 2009, 12:45
Tim Luckhurst: "Today a newspaper innovation is launched that can help the free world's news industry to recover the prosperity it first achieved under Queen Victoria. Johnston Press, Britain's most prolific newspaper publisher with 286 titles, will place the online content of six of its local titles behind paywalls." Seriously?
HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk: Regional newspaper publisher to introduce online paywalls
Thursday, 26 November 2009, 06:30
"The initiative being launched next week will restrict users of selected [Johnston Press] sites from viewing content beyond the homepage without payment of a £5 three-month subscription – the equivalent of 40p per week."
Press Gazette: The Wire: Johnston Press to introduce paywalls next week
Thursday, 26 November 2009, 06:27
Commenter on Presss Gazette neatly sums up the case against paywalls for general news: "I'll save everybody time and angst. This model was tried before by many newspapers. Here's what happened. Pay wall goes up; traffic drops like a rock. Advertisers want new cheaper ad rates for low traffic figures. Audience goes elsewhere. Management freaks. Paywall comes down. Audience still elsewhere. Advertising rates are now rock bottom. Its a dead end proposition."
Comment is Free: I, too, mourn good local newspapers. But this lot just aren’t worth saving
Tuesday, 10 November 2009, 20:07
George Monbiot: "Like my colleagues, I mourn [local papers'] death; unlike them I believe it happened decades ago. For many years the local press has been one of Britain's most potent threats to democracy, championing the overdog, misrepresenting democratic choices, defending business, the police and local elites from those who seek to challenge them. Media commentators lament the death of what might have been. It bears no relationship to what is."
New York Times: Politico’s Creators Plan Local News Web Site for Washington
Thursday, 29 October 2009, 08:52
"Allbritton Communications said its new operation would start with a newsroom of about 50 people — far larger than those of other local news start-ups around the country, though still smaller than the local news staffs of major metropolitan newspapers. … Robert L. Allbritton, who heads the family-owned company, and [Jim] Brady said they had concluded that the venture had to be done on a large scale or not done at all — essentially the same premise that accompanied the founding of Politico."
HTFP: Court ruling ‘clarifies law on user-generated content’
Thursday, 29 October 2009, 08:50
"As soon as Newsquest received the legal claim from Mr Karim, the readers' comments were removed from the websites concerned. Mr Justice Eady concluded that Newsquest websites were acting as hosts of the reader comments for the purposes of Regulation 19 of the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002 and therefore would not be liable for any damages even if the material was unlawful."
