Media Hunter

Leading journalist questions traditional media's position

Today's Sydney Morning Herald contains a remarkable story by respected journalist Paul Sheehan highlighting the battle traditional media faces to remain relevant in the Internet age.

Titled Floundering in a sea of change and using the Sarah Palin (US Republican Vice Presidential hopeful) story as an example, Sheehan notes how he immediately referred to YouTube for news on the nominee rather than traditional media sources. He points out that by the time he started researching Palin, 6 hours after the announcement, the Internet was in it's fourth phase of the news cycle.

Blogs change boundaries for US news coverage

Source: Geoff Elliott, Washington correspondent, The Australian

It was in Knoxville, Tennessee where I was put in my place as a foreign correspondent covering a US election.

Democrat Harold Ford, a young, up-and-coming leader in the mould of Barack Obama, was running for a US senate seat andhe refused to answer any questions. "We're not talking to you, you don't win us any votes," his spokeswoman helpfully informed me.

Never mind that Ford had just said in a speech that Australia wanted to pursue nuclear weapons (still waiting for a clarification on that Harold) but I'm not at all convinced his spokeswoman's premise holds, at least if it is also framed in the negative.

Ford lost the election. He lost for many reasons (the Republican attack machine that created a racially coded advertisement was disgraceful) but on substance there's a chance Ford's gaffe as I reported could have cost him a couple of votes.

Newcastle Herald feature on NEWFM woes

by Craig Wilson

The Newcastle Herald H2 section had a 2 page piece today on the problems at NEWFM titled Rock Bottom. Herald journalist Neil Jameson interviewed me for the story for advertising industry perspective on the current commercial radio imbalance in the Hunter.

The full story can be viewed here.

The Bulletin axed after 128 years

Source: Simon Canning, The Australian

AUSTRALIA'S oldest news magazine, The Bulletin, has been closed after more than a century of publishing.

ACP announced the closure of the magazine, launched in 1880, this morning, saying it had become unsustainable with sales of just 57,000.

Fairfax journalists to stike over pay

Source: AAP, The Australian

JOURNALISTS at five Fairfax regional newspapers in NSW will begin industrial action next week in a bid for more pay.

Rolling strikes and stoppages will hit the Western Advocate in Bathurst, Dubbo's The Daily Liberal, the Northern Daily Leader in Tamworth, the Maitland Mercury and the Central Western Daily in Orange.

Google courting publishers

Source: James Ashton

AFTER colonising cyberspace, Google is going into the newspaper business.

The search engine giant is in talks with several newspaper publishers to sell space in their pages to its online clients.

Macquarie Media bid for Southern Cross gets regulator's approval

Source: Michael Bodey, The Australian

THE first major media deal since the contentious Howard Government's media reform packages was introduced is one step closer to completion.

The Macquarie Media Group's $1.35 billion takeover bid for Southern Cross Broadcasting and nine regional stations owned by Fairfax has been given the go-ahead by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, subject to a number of undertakings.

Any further movement will have to wait until the vote on the takeover offer by Southern Cross shareholders tomorrow. The bid is supported by the Southern Cross board and key shareholders.

The approval by the ACCC was expected.

Nevertheless, Fairfax Media in particular has been hamstrung by its inability to move with any certainty on major changes required at Southern Cross's metropolitan radio stations.

Bloggers are newspapers' 'best friend'

Source: Corrie Perkin, The Australian

NEWSPAPERS have a greater chance of surviving the 21st century if they embrace bloggers, rely more heavily on readers to provide news coverage and abolish subscriber fees for use of online archive material.

Canadian blogger Cory Doctorow, the 36-year-old award-winning science fiction novelist and international champion of the digital age, said newspapers and their journalists should welcome the vast range of opinion now available on the internet, rather than fear it.

"As consumers of information, we have more tools than ever -- not fewer -- to discern the bias in the way information is being presented," he said yesterday. "And bias is not a product of the internet, it has been present in all media forever."

Doctorow -- who is no relation to US writer EL Doctorow -- said the biggest problem facing print media was "a complete failure to come to terms with what is happening to classified advertising on the internet, which is bizarre given that if there's anyone who really should get classified advertising, it's the daily print media who historically are masters of it".

He highlighted The New York Times as a paper that had failed to appreciate the financial advantages of linking bloggers and its own advertisers.

Newspapers make joint bid for ads

Source: Lara Sinclair, The Australian

THE newspaper industry is set to become its own best advocate with the launch of a $10million press campaign.

Aimed at persuading marketers to spend an extra $100million a year on newspaper advertising, the five-month advertising push, which launches on Saturday, aims to promote the ability of the medium to tell a story and engage its readers.

It is likely to be the biggest press campaign in the market in the half-year to December, and will run in every national, metropolitan and regional daily paper owned by the members of marketing body, The Newspaper Works.

Chief executive Tony Hale said the year-old marketing body had conducted research that found media buyers had pigeonholed newspapers as suitable for retail and information-heavy advertising, but not for brand advertising and repositioning campaigns.

Media must adapt: News chairman

Source: Richard Gluyas, The Australian

DRAMATIC changes in the news cycle and the advent of social networking websites such as MySpace meant newspaper companies had to completely reinvent themselves, News Limited chairman and chief executive John Hartigan said yesterday.

Mr Hartigan said the challenge for traditional media was to spread its brands and become part of the online scene, where consumers wanted to be part of the process and not just passive receivers of content.

"Customers are contributing their own content, and the line between the traditional content producers and consumers starts to blur," he told the annual Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers Association conference in Melbourne.

"We are moving from a speech to a conversation." Mr Hartigan said the extension of print brands on to other media platforms reflected the arrival of a 24/7 news cycle that was changing the industry dynamics "forever".