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from MediaFile:
Rupert Murdoch’s long crusade to make digital news pay
On the first day of one of my journalism classes, the teacher produced a large metal ring with a short rope fastened to it. The ring was made to be installed in a bull's nose, he explained; and the rope – called a lead – let you guide him wherever you wanted. The point was clear, if somewhat condescending: Writing a good lead lets the journalist guide the reader around like cattle.
That illustration was a lot more powerful before the web, during an era when closed media like print newspapers and television limited interactivity and left consumers with no choice but to passively accept the news as presented. It doesn't make sense on the web, where any reader can challenge news content or even become a publisher in a matter of minutes.
Rupert Murdoch still lives in a world of nose rings. The News Corp. CEO has had remarkable success in print and television, but he has stumbled again and again on the web, most notably with the great fizzle that was MySpace. Even today, the company is backing away from Project Alesia, its ambitious plan to create a digital newsstand, after other publishers showed little interest.
But as reports emerge on his latest digital venture – The Daily, a newspaper designed for tablets in general and the iPad in particular – it's clear that Murdoch isn't giving up on making digital news work on his terms – that is, in a tidily contained format that demands readers pay for it.
How big a problem is workplace bullying?
A political row is brewing after allegations of bullying were aimed at Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The claims, made in a book and published in a Sunday newspaper, accused Brown of several abusive outbursts, including grabbing staff by the lapels, shoving them aside and shouting at them.
Downing Street has strenuously denied that the “malicious allegations” are true, while Conservative leader David Cameron has said he expects there to be an inquiry into the claims.
PLEASE let there be somebody out there
These are hard times for sweating hacks. Not a cloud in the sky, not an MP in town and — worst of all — not a whiff of a silly summer story in sight.
We can usually count on a few sharks off the Cornish coast but even they seem to have thought better of it this year. Japanese knotweed is pretty scary, and doing its best to get us all worried down in the West country but it’s no substitute for a dorsal fin or two off St Ives.
MPs shoot themselves in foot over expenses
The online release of MPs’ expense claims has only served to further dent their already battered reputation.
Forty-two days after the Daily Telegraph began to investigate MPs’ expenses the Houses of Parliament finally got round to publishing official details of them. Or rather it didn’t, as lots of key information was blacked out.
Nostalgia makes a comeback in TV ad-land
The recession is bringing back the strangest characters. Rising from their graves like the zombies in Night of the Living Dead are people we thought had been buried decades ago.
The Milky Bar Kid is one, Persil mum is another and, inevitably, the Hovis bread delivery boy struggling up his cobbled hill while the brass band plays on.
The London Evening Standard says “sorry”
Bleary-eyed commuters passing through Clapham Junction station in southwest London on their way to work this week were among the first to witness the opening blast of one of the most remarkable advertising campaigns to have hit the capital in recent years.******No, not Flu Man sneezing his germs all over us but a short message in huge black lettering that simply says: “Sorry for losing touch.”******The only clue as to who is so publicly donning the hair shirt is a small drawing tucked away in the corner of the hoarding featuring the Eros statue in Piccadilly Circus, the logo of London’s only paid-for evening paper, the Evening Standard.******The message is an attempt by the paper to reconnect with its readership now that it is under new ownership and will appear in the next few weeks on the side of buses and on the underground. Other slogans will say Sorry for being negative, for taking you for granted, for being complacent and for being predictable.******Not the hardest word at all then, though one that seems likely to cause considerable offence to the paper’s former editor Veronica Wadley.******The campaign comes in response to market research, commissioned by the newspaper’s new editor, Geordie Greig, which found that Londoners felt the paper was too negative and did not meet the capital’s needs.******Russian tycoon and former KGB agent Alexander Lebedev bought the loss-making Standard from the Daily Mail and General Trust in February and media analysts have long predicted it will become less right-wing in its political stance. Some expect it to go more upmarket in an attempt to distance itself from the free sheets which have cut so badly into its circulation.******But few can have predicted such a public confessional as this. The “Sorry” campaign will run for three weeks in the run-up to the 181-year-old paper’s relaunch later this month.******After a year in which so many have been clamouring for a ”sorry” from miscreants ranging from bankers to MPs and even debt-laden prime ministers, Londoners may actually soon find themselves becoming sick of the word.
Mervyn King’s warning to the government
The unusual foray into politics by Bank of England Governor Mervyn King, in suggesting there should be no more tax cuts or spending rises in next month’s budget, has been widely interpreted by the newspapers as a blow to Gordon Brown but a source of secret satisfaction to the Treasury.
Chancellor Alistair Darling, several say, was not happy with Brown’s reported budget plans to offer voters more jam before they had digested the 25 billion-pound fiscal package in last Autumn’s Pre-Budget report.
Don’t turn back into Stalin, Gordon
The system was bust, something had to be done and what Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling did on Monday with their bank rescue package was a bold and sound move, newspapers agreed.
But many worried about how the government will now use its huge stakes in the banks and several had words of warning.
Media’s views on the abortion vote
As MPs prepare to vote on cutting the time limit for abortions, the Daily Mail says the current system “shames our nation”.
Foetuses are being aborted at a late stage in their development when they would have had a good chance of survival outside the womb, the Mail says in an editorial.
Darling’s tax fix wins few plaudits
The Daily Mirror is alone among the papers in giving unqualified praise to Chancellor Alistair Darling’s 2.7 billion pound solution to the damaging 10p tax row.
“Once critical Labour MPs hailed it as a masterstroke,” the paper said. “Hopefully it signals the start of a concerted fightback by a prime minister who has been on the ropes for months.”
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The Wall
