Category Archives: Press Gazette

Is it time for a British Journalism Awards?

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In the time I worked at Press Gazette — and indeed even before that — there were complaints like this one from Craig McGill’s blog about how the British Press Awards deal with digital journalism every single year.

We had plenty of good-faith internal debates on how to fix this and the organisers have come up with plenty of not-quite-right solutions.

How can there be a legitimate news website of the year award, for example, if the BBC or Sky can’t win it? Why should a reporter’s digital efforts have a special class of awards when there is barely any recognition for other specialist functions like subbing? Does shooting some video or running a really great blog really warrant an award separate from reporters or photographers working in print?

These questions are definitely being asked behind the scenes. And the sub-optimal outcomes are not, contrary to the common assumption in the media blogosphere, caused print dinosaurs resisting or resenting digital journalism.

There’s a bigger philosophical problem here about adapting media awards categories devised in a different age to the era of converged media.

What we really need is a medium-agnostic journalism awards rather than a “press” awards and a “television” awards and a “radio” awards, each with tokenistic “digital” gongs.

Wired.co.uk: Crunch time for British newspapers

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Peter Kirwan: "[Many] of our wilder ideas about what’s happening to British journalism have emerged, by osmosis, from the US. ... In some ways, however, the US newspaper market is different from ours. ... In terms of sheer awfulness, the numbers reported by some of America’s metro newspapers outstrip anything we’re seeing in the UK. ... In the US, debt has become a problem in ways that still seem exotic from a UK perspective. ... Locked into a US-style patchwork of local monopolies, Britain’s regional chains have spent the last six months watching their print-based ad revenues melting into thin air. ... The stakes are not quite so high – yet – for Britain’s national press."

Media Guardian: Is the Press Gazette a canary for the industry?

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Dominic Ponsford: "With Press Gazette gone, who will be left to write [stories like that of Sally Murrer]? The remaining journalism news websites aren't generally in the business of covering this sort of slow-burn news story. Web-only reporters often need to write five or six news stories a day. Spending a day out of the office chasing a story which might well be a dead-end could mean falling hopelessly behind competitors who have been glued to their computer screens watching the wires and RSS feeds."

Jon Slattery: Why Press Gazette should not die

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"Journalists of all people can keep a lively, independent website called Press Gazette going. ... We can't let some small time publisher like Wilmington kill it off. We are in a different era from print magazines. All we need is access to the web, to tap into the independent spirit of Press Gazette and connect with journalists across the country."

Jon Slattery: End in sight for Press Gazette Limited creditors

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Missed this few weeks ago: "A report to creditors of Press Gazette Limited, the company set up by Piers Morgan and Matthew Freud when they took over the magazine from Quantum Publishing, is expected to go out in the next four to five weeks from the administrators. PGL was put into administration in November 2006." Wonder how the Grey Cardigan feels about this...

Press Gazette: Doctor’s warning: ‘Poor quality of British journalism is a serious public health issue’

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"In an interview for this month’s print edition of Press Gazette, [Ben] Goldacre has condemned journalists for fueling what he calls the “MMR hoax” by giving widespread coverage to Doctor Andrew Wakefield’s claims that MMR jabs caused autism. He points out that vaccination rates have dropped from 92 per cent to 73 per cent prompting serious disease outbreaks since Wakefield’s research was first reported in 1998."

One Man and His Blog: More Evidence for the Death of Print

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Adam Tinworth: "When I heard that Press Gazette was switching to publishing once a month, with a features-led magazine, I thought it sounded like a good plan. It was exactly the sort of solution that could save a title - moving upmarket with a more analytical bent. How much to subscribe? £115. That's £7.67 per issue on the current "15 for the price of 12" offer or an eye-watering £9.58 without the offer. That's frankly insane. They're either relying on corporate subscriptions - not a good idea in the current financial climate - or they seriously over-estimate how much disposable income the average journalist has."

Full disclosure time: New job

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As those who stalk me on Twitter or Facebook already know, yesterday was my final day working at Press Gazette.

Next Thursday, I will be joining Emap as online editor of Retail Week. There are some interesting digital plans afoot at Emap, so I’m very excited to be part of it.

I’ll continue watching developments in online journalism on this blog. But of course my move to Emap will limit what I can and do blog about what is going on there, that everything on this blog is my personal opinion and that nothing here necessarily reflects the views or options of my new employers.