UK News

from MediaFile:

Rule Britannia? FT fires warning shot at Apple

The release of a Financial Times app that bypasses Apple's App Store is a warning shot at the iPad maker's quest to rule the high seas of digital publishing.

Launched just hours after Apple announced Newsstand, the iPad maker's destination to access digital versions of mags and rags, FT made clear why it created the app:

"We are determined to make it as accessible as possible for the user," John Ridding, chief executive of the FT told Reuters. "Readers will be able to get our journalism through whatever device or channel they may choose."

Of course, that's in addition to the British daily not having to pay a 30 percent commission for the privilege of having its iOS version appear in Apple's Newsstand.

Some of the other advantages of FT having its own, HTML5-based app are spelled out nicely by GigaOm's Bobbie Johnson. First, the app is independent of anybody, ending the possibility that any of its content will be blocked. Second, updates will be automatically performed via the Web and won't need to go through Apple. Lastly, the app isn't OS specific, so there's no need for readers to download separate apps for different devices and publishers like the FT won't need to pour money into developing separate apps.

By opting for HTML 5, the FT also gets to control its subscriber data. With Apple's Newsstand app, publishers chose a  compromise with Apple, whereby subscribers were given an option to share their name, email and address with publishers.

So why is FT the first? Deep pockets (FT publisher Pearson has an estimated market cap of $15.19 billion) and the time to develop an app on the arguably immature HTML5 platform  may have something to do with it.

from Sean Maguire:

The raw and the crafted

The Media Standards Trust has begun a lecture series on 'Why Journalism Matters'. It is disconcerting that it feels we have to ask the question. The argument put forward by the British group's director Martin Moore is that news organisations are so preoccupied with business survival that discussion of the broader social, political and cultural function of journalism gets forgotten. It is a pertinent review then, given the icy economic blasts hitting most Anglo-Saxon media groups, and notwithstanding the recent examples of self-evidently broader journalistic 'value' produced by London's Daily Telegraph in its politican-shaming investigations into parliamentarians' expenses.

First up in the series was Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times, who cantered through the justifications for a vibrant, independent press. Watchdog, informer, explainer, campaigner, community builder and debater - those are the roles that journalism plays. The value that it brings is most evident by comparison with the unhealthiness of states where the press is not free, noted Barber, citing the struggles of the citizenry in China and Russia to hold their leaders to account.

The FT's USP as a media group, according to Barber, is as an explainer and analyser of complicated events that play out across a global stage. But analytical reporting of global stories costs serious cash, he noted, in a question-begging aside. That you get the quality of journalism you are prepared to pay for, ultimately, is his response to the challenge posed to mainstream media by Internet-enabled communicators. For free you can have the rawness of a blog. For crafted journalism that is properly sourced, reviewed for taste and style and checked for accuracy, you must find ways to charge. At your peril do you blur the edges between the crafted and the raw world of easy comment, hasty opinion and rumour billed as fact, argues the FT editor.  (There was a hat tip, however, to the bloggers that have broken news, such as Guido Fawkes who forced the resignation of an advisor to Gordon Brown by revealing his plans for a smear email campaign.)

So a sharp distinction was drawn between the value proposition of professional journalism and its unruly blogging and twittering cousin. No such clarity yet, though, on the funding model for the former when the Internet has made audiences expect to read most general interest news and a lot of specialised niche content for free.  No secret that each and every news group is daunted by this obstacle, even the FT, which has not been immune to the downturn in advertising revenue.

We were left with a couple of clues on the way forward.  Barber predicted that within a year all news organisations will be charging for online content in some way. (The FT's model is to allow readers access to a few articles for free and then charge for further use.)  Will Google ever pay for content - unlikely says Barber. But at least they might be prepared to talk about linking via searches to articles requiring subscription, which they do not do currently.

And his flippant response to the demographic challenge posed to a print-based news organisation by the emergence of a generation of youngsters who get all their information from screens? People are living longer - they will still buy newspapers.

Editorials praise Brown’s energy package

Unions and energy watchdogs lashed out at Gordon Brown’s aid package aimed at helping householders cope with soaring energy bills, saying it was ”too little, too late”. Even  pensioners’ charities gave a frosty response.

But newspaper editorials on the whole were supportive, describing it as “bold politics. More importantly, it was good policy”, as The Times said.

From The Guardian to the Financial Times, the editorials praised the “eminently sensible” measures which concentrated on big companies helping householders to lag their lofts and cavity walls.

It may not have delivered on the pre-hype, but the editorials blame the government for bumping up the publicity in a desperate attempt to boost its poor showing in the opinion polls.

But the government resisted the temptation to impose a windfall tax on big power companies — a target on so-called excess profits.

Instead, the utility companies have been persuaded to invest 910 million pounds in helping householders pay the cost of insulating their homes.

The editorials said the government was right to resist pressure from Labour MPs and unions to impose a tax.