UK News
Insights from the UK and beyond
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.
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.
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.
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The Wall
