BBC could lose exclusive broadcasting rights for Olympics

In the United Kingdom, the Olympic Games’ exclusive broadcasting rights belong to the BBC. However, after the upcoming London games, the BBC will have a fierce set of competitors – pay -TV companies, telecom providers, and more, the Daily Mail reported.

The government will review the situation later this year once the TV network has been fully switched from analogue to digital, according to the Drum. There are many more companies that could potentially launch a free-to-air channel distributed via Freeview, cable, satellite and the Internet, the Guardian noted.

In order to maximise revenue, International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Jacques Rogge told the Guardian “Everything is possible.” Though the BBC is protected by listed-events legislation that secures it free-to-air coverage, companies like Sky or BT could expect the change of legislation during a government review next year.

“We just launched a tender, because this is an obligation by the EU. It is open to everyone – to public companies, private companies, free-to-air, satellite, mobile, even the possibility to sell them to an agent company that buys the rights and sells them on. The deadline is 29 June and then we will enter into negotiations with different companies,” Rogge said.

The bids on Friday include the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi and the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, OnTheBox noted. Some potential bidders may have problems achieving the IOC’s requirement of delivering 200 hours free-to-air broadcasting and for the Winter Games 100 hours.

Rights to the summer Games were sold to Sky Italy, Rogge said. There's an obligation to run 200 free-to-air hours for the Summer Games, and 100 for the Winter Games. Sky Italy didn't have enough free-to-air time, but “teamed up with Rai, who will take care of the 200 hours. We have many countries where that is the case. In many countries in Europe there is a complementarity between pay television and public television.”

Image: Trusted Reiviews

Dow Jones's personal finance magazine to shutter print edition

Dow Jones & Co will stop publishing the print edition of its personal finance magazine SmartMoney by September, The Wall Street Journal announced on its website.

The Sept. issue of SmartMoney will be its last, and will be on newsstands Aug. 14, according to the release. Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Dahl and two dozen other staff will lose their jobs related to print edition production, Bloomberg reported. However, SmartMoney will add six editorial staff positions to make the total number 15 in order to expand online. 

“It’s clear that the volatility of markets and asset classes has increased the need for rapid delivery of personal finance intelligence, so we will be expanding our team and presence on the Web,” said Robert Thomson, editor-in-chief of Dow Jones and managing editor of the Wall Street Journal.

SmartMoney “has struggled to maintain advertising sales” in recent years, Bloomberg noted. The magazine’s advertising pages fell by 10 percent this year through the June issue in a year-on-year comparison, according to Media Industry Newsletter.

SmartMoney was launched jointly with Dow Jones in 1992 and completely acquired by Dow Jones in 2010, CapitalNewYork explained. Thomson said SmartMoney failed to reach the company’s revenue expectations.

Forbes' Jeff Bercovici noted that ad pages decreased by 23.4 percent in the first quarter of this year, according to a report from Publishers Information Bureau.

"Our SmartMoney web operation will be expanded and provide opportunities for some who will be affected by the closure of the magazine, as will other just-approved expansion plans for the print Journal,” Thomson said.

Image: Examiner

Wall Street Journal redesigns its video site

The Wall Street Journal Digital Network launched last Thursday a new WSJ Live site that features videos from WSJ.com, MarketWatch.com, Barrons.com and SmartMoney.com, to watch and share videos from a centralised platform, paidContent reported.

WSJ Live follows the idea of "WSJ everywhere" by providing live news and on-demand video directly from 2,000 reporters. Video is now an "inseparable part of the Journal experience," Alisa Bowen, general manager of the Journal's Digital Network, said in March.

The new WSJ Live site also includes HD content and a new full-screen feature, enhanced social sharing capabilities, on-screen notifications and alerts when a live show is about to air and easier access to WSJ Live’s TV guide and weekly schedule, The Next Web reported.

Also, users will soon be able to share videos with friends as WSJ Live is planning to integrate Facebook's Social Graph.

WSJ Live is available on 18 different platforms, including the iPad, Apple TV, Roku, Samsung Smart TV and a YouTube channel, among others.

This month, WJS Live launched two new shows: Asia Today, live programming with taped video segments reporting on the latest news from Asia; and DC Bureau, focused on politics and hosted by Jeff Seib, Washington Bureau Chief.

As of May, WJS Live streamed 19.7 million videos and its YouTube Channel had almost 25,000 subscribers and streamed 20.8 million videos, according to BtoB.

Image: itunes.apple.com

Twitter to expand advertising products

In an effort to generate more revenue, Twitter plans to put in place new advertising products in 50 countries by the end of the year, the Guardian reported.

Certain prioritised markets on the list include Brazil, Spain and Germany.

"There is a ton of demand but we don't have dates as yet," Twitter Chief Executive Dick Costolo told the Guardian.

"The company has always put itself in a position to choose when it is ready [to make strategic decisions such as an IPO or sale]. We do things when we are ready. We have a good understanding about pacing and have the discipline to make the [right] choices ourselves," Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter, said at a press conference at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity last week, according to the Guardian.

Twitter’s first ad product, Promoted Tweets, was introduced in 2010. Following Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts, Promoted Trends, new analytics tools and additional targeting capabilities were added to Twitter’s advertising products. During the same time, Twitter’s partners grew from six to more than 1,600, Twitter’s advertising blog explained. 

Twitter is expected to gain more than US$1 billion in advertising revenues in 2014, which means that it will grow twice the speed some analysts predict, Bloomberg reported.

Researchers at eMarketer Inc. estimate that the microblogging service would reach $540 million in ad sales in 2004, which would make up almost all of its revenue. However, it will have taken Twitter longer to generate $1 billion than Facebook and Google. Facebook generated more than $3 billion in ad revenue in 2011.

“The marketers who have used Twitter’s advertising opportunities have been pleased,” Nate Elliott, an analyst with Forrester Research Inc. (FORR) in New York, told Bloomberg. “Twitter’s going to be able to push forward and continue to make more money from it.” 

Image: Twitter's Advertising Blog

Fairfax’s cuts reflect state of newspapers around the world

Australia's Fairfax Media Ltd. is the latest newspaper publisher to cut print offerings and focus on digital. Many say the cuts will hurt editorial quality, but most agree that without the cuts, large publishers would go under.


“All the world's newspaper companies are experimenting with what sustainability looks like,” Margaret Simons, head of the University of Melbourne's Centre for Advanced Journalism,  told Reuters. “There is no business model that can support the hundreds of journalists that are employed by companies such as Fairfax."


Fairfax announced its latest restructuring plan last week, in which it will cut 1,900 jobs from the editorial staffs, printing operations and other areas. Approximately 20 percent of its 10,000 employees will be laid off over three years. It also plans to put The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald behind paywalls online and reduce them from broadsheets to tabloid formats by March 2013. It will also shut down two printing plants.


According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), Monday to Friday circulation of The Sydney Morning Herald for the first three months of this year sank 14 percent from a year earlier, to 180,960. Daily circulation at The Age fell 13 percent to 165,061


Given to the slump in newspaper circulation, Fairfax is looking to leverage its opportunities in digital. It stated in the announcement that The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald websites attract about seven million unique users each month and that about 65 percent of readers of the two newspapers access them digitally. It did not forecast what it expected the numbers to be once a paywall was put in place.


“No one should be in any doubt that we are operating in very challenging times. Readers’ behaviours have changed and will not change back. As a result, we are taking decisive actions to fundamentally change the way we do business,” Chief Executive Greg Hywood said in the statement.


ZDNet blogger and former Financial Times staffer Tom Foremski opined that it is hard to ensure quality reporting without a large number of well-trained journalists.


“The problem is we don’t have a value recovery mechanism for quality journalism. Clicks are the currency for most of today’s media but a click is a click regardless of the quality of the content it surfaces ... The clicks I get from an original piece of reporting won’t pay for that day’s work. And I’m just a guy with a laptop. I don’t have a staff of reporters, editors, photographers, admin staff, printing presses, office buildings, pension plans, delivery trucks, etc, to support. So if I, with my modest expenses, find it hard to justify original reporting, how will newspapers do it?”


And while newspapers can no longer afford to employ large staffs, the journalists that are left are still trying to get more done with less - a battle most feel they are losing.


“We certainly feel on the editorial floor like it's the perfect storm because we're seeing around a quarter of our numbers reduced and possibly within a 60-90 day time frame and that's going to be particularly hard to achieve because we already feel like we're running on the smell of an oily rag,” Stuart Washington, a journalist on the Sydney Morning Herald, told the Guardian.


Fairfax is not alone in restructuring announcements. In the U.S. last month, The Times-Picayune in New Orleans cut its print version to three days a week. Lots of newspaper websites put paywalls into practice.


Image: Herald Sun

Polish and Australian news outlets to begin charging

Publishers in Poland are some of the latest to try charging users of news websites.


Weekly news magazine Wprost will roll out its pay-as-you-go micropayments and a short-term metered subscription plan on Tuesday, while politics news magazine Polityka began charging in April, and rival Przekroj did so in 2011, paidContent reported today.


On the other side of the world, Australia’s Fairfax Media announced it will begin charging for content on its two main newspapers’ websites, a move that will see the country become the world’s first to have all its flagship newspapers behind online paywalls, News24 noted.


Paywalls will go up at The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald and on March 4, 2013, their print versions will shift to compact-sized versions, The SMH reported this week.


Fairfax will also cut 1,900 staff members over the next three years in order to save AU$235 million by 2015. About 20 percent of cuts will be made in editorial departments.


“I think what it means is that the golden age of newspapers is dead," said Michael Smith, former editor of The Age. "The big question is whether the golden age of journalism can continue."

Creation and collaboration: iPad’s next phase for content

Since its launch, newsmedia companies have focused on the iPad as an important platform to push their content out on; however, a growing number of outlets are focusing on the tablet as a tool for creation as well.


Out today, the latest app from Martha Stewart, called CraftStudio, helps users make “paper” crafts, complete with digital glitter. The app is free until July 8, when it will cost US$4.99, GigaOm reported.


Things users create, such as cards, are made for sharing. CraftStudio has partnered with HP’s Snapfish, so cards can be shared on social media, saved to the device, or printed with AirPrint. The app also aims to upsell added features, such as themes for each project, which come with extra stickers, stamps, paper glitter or customized page edges and corner punches, for $1.99, according to GigaOm.


Creativity tools for the iPad aren’t exactly new, but Stewart’s new app is like a stamp of approval for the tablet as a “legitimate avenue of creativity.” These tools are also successful at engaging users.


Meanwhile, the iPad as a tool for group collaboration is also gaining momentum this week. Startup CloudOn has closed a $16 million round of funding, which it will use to develop new collaboration tools and integrate productivity platforms from big digital players like Microsoft and Apple, in addition to Adobe, Dropbox and Google, which it already integrates, Slash Gear reported today.


CloudOn’s future is tied to “redefining productivity,” CEO Milind Gadekar said. Interacting with information in files – not just simply accessing them – is top priority.


“Multiple people will be able to access the same document, share information, and track conversations around that information. Gadekar also sees this functionality to be cross-platform, where users can choose to work with their favorite services, instead of being locked into one ecosystem,” Slash Gear explained.


Image: iTunes

Mecom's profit warning pushes share prices down

European newspaper publisher Mecom's share prices have plummeted 53 percent after issuing its second profits warning in the past month and a half. Its share price dropped by 78p to 68p - its lowest ever, MediaGuardian reported.

The publisher, which has operations in the Netherlands, Denmark and Poland, told MediaGuardian it expects earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation to be down €14 million year-on-year in the first half to about €52 million.

Mecom's previous profit warning was issued in April after revenues for the first quarter of 2012 dropped by 12 percent. It also warned investors of expected downgrades in 2013 and 2014.

“We were expecting declines year-on-year in the Dutch market anyway, but the sharpness of the declines has caught everyone by surprise,” Patrick Yau, an analyst at Peel Hunt, told Financial Times.

Image: MediaWeek

                                                                                   

Mexico's biggest network alleged to sell editorial line

Mexico’s biggest television network, Televisa, is alleged to have sold its editorial line to prominent politicians, leaked documents obtained by the Guardian appear to indicate. 

Televisa was found to make favourable coverage in its flagship news and entertainment shows and used the same programmes to defame a popular leftwing leader. Many people have been accusing Televisa network of manipulating its coverage to favour the leading candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto.

Dozens of computer documents, which seems to have been created for several years, emerge weeks before the presidential elections on 1 July. These files include payment arrangements of the former president office on media promotion; an outline of fees used for raising Peña Nieto’s national profile.

Televisa is the largest media empire in the Spanish-speaking world, which controls almost two-thirds of Mexico’s overall free television programmes. As a result, Televisa exerts a “powerful influence over national politics,” according to the Guardian. 

“This is especially significant in a country where newspapers, the Internet, and cable TV have a limited reach, particularly among the poor,” according to World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers. 

Televisa has reportedly issued a statement denying the sale of its editorial line for political interests, and asking Guardian’s Editor and Readers’ Editor to issue a public apology. The statement also accused the Guardian of lacking in professionalism and journalistic rigour, according to Univision, the largest Spanish-language television network in the U.S.

“The lack of journalistic rigour with which the article was written is exhibited in the fact that the reporter uses the word apparently eight times, but it does not figure in the title,” according to Guatemalan news site Prensalibre.com.

Image: Forbes

Report: 2011 has saw the boom of mobile advertising

Global mobile advertising expenditure has reached an all-time high of US$5.33 billion for 2011, IAB wrote in its press release. 

The IAB Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence in the U.S., IAB Europe and IHS Screen Digest jointly launched the first initiative to survey the mobile advertising market at both global and regional levels. 

At regional levels, Asia Pacific area has the biggest share of mobile advertising, followed by North America and Europe. Asia Pacific area accounts for more than one-third of the global share. However, Latin America only accounts for 3.5 per cent, and Middle East & Africa has 3.2 percent. This means that Asia Pacific area has almost ten times bigger than Latin America’s and Middle East & Africa’s respectively.

Among the three advertising formats, namely, display, messaging and search, search takes the biggest proportion, which accounts for almost two-thirds.  

Media practitioners should recognise the increasing importance of mobile as the medium of advertising, thus respond to the trend by making bigger investment in mobile advertising.

Alain Heureux, President and CEO of IAB Europe, remarked that mobile has the “tremendous potential as an advertising medium.”

 “As mobile accelerates its global footprint, it is vital that we measure the worldwide and regional opportunities for advertisers,” Anna Bager, Vice President and General Manager of IAB, said. 

However, PaidContent  thought that the boom of mobile advertising has yet to arrive even though 2012 has saw a big took off of mobile advertising.

Paid Content also listed several problems that mobile advertising is facing, including smaller screens that are less friendly to display ads; users’ feelings that mobile ads are inherently intrusive; and the promise to deliver personalised messages to consumers wherever they go.

Image: The Guardian 

The Huffington Post now writes in 'español'

The Huffington Post launched its Spanish edition last Thursday. El Huffington Post emerges as the new platform for a global conversation for people of Spain and the global Spanish-speaking community.

HuffPo announced last December its partnership with Spanish newspaper El País, as Newsbizblog reported. El País's parent company PRISA is also said to own 50 percent of El Huffington Post, reported Journalism.co.uk.

"El Huffington Post will be rooted in Spanish culture, will be run by Spanish journalists, and, like Spain itself, will have a very distinct personality and its own way of approaching the world," wrote Arianna Huffington in an announcement.

"Faithful to the spirit that turned the Huffington Post into an essential daily read for millions of U.S. readers, we want to explore the new possibilities offered to Spanish society by a 100% online medium: a space in which information and analysis are enriched by the contributions of readers who now have the ability to interact, react and debate with journalists and newsmakers. Now more than ever, citizens want to participate in current events and El Huffington Post wants to become their meeting place," according to Montserrat Domínguez, El Huffington Post's editorial director.

El Huffington Post emphasises on giving a prominent role to the readers: news are no longer stories written and brought to an end by journalists; news are the beginning of the debate, reported El País.

The website is constructed upon three spaces: a column for the hard news, another one for the soft news, related to society and celebrities, and a third one for bloggers. El Huffington Post's most appealing part is its bloggers list (in total 60) which includes leaders in politics such as Esteban González Pons, Popular Party deputy secretary of programs or Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, secretary general of the Socialist Party; or in sciences such as María Blasco, head of the National Cancer Research. As well as filmmaker Álex de la Iglesia, activist of the 15-M movement Pablo Prieto, sports journalist Eduardo Verdú, or hip hop artist El Meswy, among others.

The Huffington Post has today more than 9,000 bloggers, and 200 journalists among UK, France and Canada editions. The next expansion will be Italy, as HuffPo partnered with L'Espresso in January, reported paidContent.

 Image: Elcomercio.com

Fairfax Media – Cheapest bid to make?

Fairfax Media is becoming the cheapest bid for potential buyers who still eyeing newspaper business, Bloomberg reported.

With shares slumping already 87 percent in the past five years, the company trades at 0.3 times its book value – the lowest among media companies around the globe with market capitalisations over $1 billion, according to Bloomberg. On average, for media companies with market values of at least $1 billion, shares are priced at 4.2 times the value of their net assets.

A leading investor in the company confirmed it would consider support a break-up of the company, making Fairfax Media – Australia’s second-largest newspaper publisher – a target for private equity, the Australian reported.

Fairfax Media, owning the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian Financial review, find it hard to get through a time when news market is flooded with new digital entrants. The company is faced with a re-evaluation of its mastheads on the balance sheet while being restructured towards digital, the Reuters reported, citing anonymous board members.

The company’s goodwill and intangibles were downgraded by Citigroup from A$ 5.25 billion in the previous year to A$ 4.98 billion ($ 4.92 billion) in the 2012 financial year, the Reuters added.

“The Sydney-based publisher, which controls New Zealand online auction site Trade Me Ltd. (TME), as well as four of Australia’s ten biggest papers and the country’s top dating site, may now be cheap enough to attract leveraged buyout firms,” Bloomberg reported, citing Platypus Asset Management Pty and Tribeca Investment Partners Pty.

“Clearly private equity would have interest in it…they’ve shown interest in a lot of things that can be broken up. The share price decline has probably been too aggressive,” said Platypus Asset Management’s Prasad Patkar, Bloomberg quoted.

Despite that the share price is still trading record low, the Australian noted.

According to the Australian, the idea of breaking up the company is crystallised in a series of stages selling the group’s assets. The initial stage is the sale of part of online auction group Trade Me, followed by the Metro division housing its most famous newspaper mastheads. A third stage would be the radio assets, which include 2UE and 3AW.

Last month, the company was caught in media coverage about its employee’s strike against outsourcing of some production roles to New Zealand, the Wall Street Journal reported. Falling circulation, a tough advertising market, and calls from the mining magnate Gina Rinehart who owns over 13 percent of Fairfax for change, contribute to the action, the WSJ analysed.

The company’s other restructuring initiative towards digital also raise doubts. “It’s very unclear if online can offset the accelerating decline in print, particularly given the strong headwinds at a macro level and a tough trading environment,” another report of the Australian quoted an anonymous source.

Image: The Australian

South Africa’s “secrecy bill” menaces press freedom

South Africa’s protection of state information bill, known as the “secrecy bill,” revised on June 6, still put nation’s press freedom at risk. Protesters told the Guardian, the country’s media is facing its biggest threat since the end of apartheid in 1994.

Drafted by South Africa’s governing African National Congress (ANC) last November, the secrecy bill would deem the journalists or whistleblowers who distribute state classified information of espionage or hostile activity, putting them into jail from 3 to 25 years.

“Today is a dark day for our young democracy. If passed, this bill will unstitch the very fabric of our constitution. It will criminalise the freedoms that so many of our people fought for. What will you, the members on that side of the house, tell your grandchildren one day?” Lindiwe Mazibuko, the leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance, stated last November when the bill was voted.

Some people thought the true aim of secrecy bill is to put a gag on investigative journalism.

“This bill is being brought in under the guise of an attempt to protect public safety but it will achieve exactly the opposite by repressing freedom of expression.” according to Nadine Gordimer, South African laureate of Nobel prize for literature.

Siyabonga Cele, the state security minister, has argued “The foreign spies continue to steal our sensitive information in order to advantage their nations at the expense of advancement of South Africa and her people.” He emphasised that “This new bill is not about regulating the media. There is no single mention of the media in this bill. Neither is this bill about covering up corruption … we remain resolute and steadfast against corruption and fraud.” 

The new version of secrecy bill provides an exemption to prosecution if the information is used for uncovering criminal activity. The alteration would enable those accused an opportunity to prove they are not disseminating country’s secrets but revealing the crime.

Once secrecy bill is made to law, it will have knock-on effect in the rest of continent and make the press environment worse.  

“South Africa is a key player in the region, both economically and politically speaking, " said Levi Kabwato of the Media Institute of Southern Africa. “Our key concern is that what happens in South Africa can be used as easy justification for policies and actions in other countries. There is a real danger that these developments will greatly affect and frustrate the regional media law reform drive that seeks to do away with all draconian laws.”

However, some African countries had already severely oppressed the press freedom. Eritrea is described by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) as the most censored country in the world.

Image: RT News

Digital ad sales slow at newspapers

Online advertising growth is grinding to a halt at newspapers, where many U.S. papers are cutting print and focusing on ramping up their digital offerings, Reuters reported Thursday.


Digital ad revenue increased only 1 percent year-on-year in the first quarter at U.S. newspapers. It was the fifth quarter in a row seeing declining growth, the Newspaper Association of America announced, according to Reuters. The stalling digital ad growth is due to a surplus of ad space, an increasing number of ads being sold at rock bottom prices and the poor U.S. economy.


While these three things are contributing to a poor environment for digital ads overall, “the real culprit is falling prices,” Poynter’s Rick Edmonds opined. The situation would be helped if newspapers would “stop selling through ad exchanges and to use better targeting and other strategies to create premium-priced ad placements.”


And unsurprisingly, print ad revenues aren’t faring so well either.


In 2011, ad revenue for print newspapers dropped to US$20.7 billion. Adjusted for inflation, it’s the lowest annual ad revenue for newspapers since 1951, figures from the Newspaper Association of America show, according to the Oregon Business Report.  


Adjusted for inflation, 1950’s yearly newspaper ad revenue was about $20 billion, and in 2000 it reached $63.5 billion. Then, just 11 years later, it was back to the $20 billion mark, the Report explained.


“Revenue declines are relentless, and industry efforts to grow the digital business and reduce costs are not sufficient to offset pricing pressure and print volume losses,” concluded Moody’s senior credit officer John Puchalla, who gave the entire newspaper industry a “negative” outlook, according to MediaDailyNews.


Image: Nielsen

Telecoms billionaire shows his strength at Independent News

Telecoms billionaire Denis O’Brien showed just how tight his grip on Independent News & Media is, when on Friday he led a shareholder revolt that saw the expulsion of the chairman and chief financial officer, the Irish Independent reported.


O’Brien, who has 29.9 percent of INM shares, is calling for change at Ireland’s largest media company, saying he believes “it is of the utmost importance for the company, its shareholders, its employees and its assets, that urgent, radical restructuring is undertaken immediately.”


Chairman James Osborne and CFO Donal Buggy were both voted off the board.


O’Brien has been gaining more power over the company since his rival, Gavin O’Reilly, stepped down as chief executive in April. O’Reilly’s departure marked the end of his family’s 30-year control over the media company and “years of bitter squabbling between O’Brien and the O’Reilly family,” Reuters noted.


Paul Connelly, a board member backed by O’Brien, kept his seat on the board, according to the Independent. Connelly has gone to court, seeking action against the company’s decision to pay O’Reilly a severance of €1.8 million.


Image: Sportige

Twitter’s mobile ads outselling Web

Many times over the past year, Twitter has earned more money from advertising on its mobile platform than its website, GigaOm reported Thursday.


“We're borne of mobile," Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said in response to a question at an Economist conference Wednesday, Reuters reported. "We have an ad platform that already is inherently suited to mobile, even though we launched our platform on the Web and only started running ads on mobile recently.”

Twitter ads are in the form of promoted tweets and hashtags paid for by advertisers, integrated into each user’s newsfeed, GigaOm explained.


More than 400 million tweets are created each day, and most of those are sent via mobile devices, CNet reported.


“…because tweets are 140 characters, and born of mobile and constrained that way, when we designed the ad platform our ads would go everywhere tweets go, and the only way is if the ads are tweets,” Costolo said at the conference, according to CNet.


Twitter considers its business as primarily an ad platform, and has been able to keep brands in line, AdWeek noted. Brands must create their ads in tweet form, and “it’s fairly spam resilient because you don’t end up with companies wanting to send spammy messages out and lose free followers just so they can send this spammy message,” Costolo said.


Image: cbhdesign's Flickr photostream

Press Gazette switches to quarterly print, ramps up digital

Following the launch of its weekly digital edition, British media news publication Press Gazette is moving from a monthly to a quarterly publication in print, MediaGuardian reported last Friday. 

The digital edition has about 7,000 subscribers and can be read on iPads, e-readers, desktops, laptops, iPhones and other mobile devices.

"If we can get that figure up to 10,000 by the end of this month we believe we'll have a compelling case for advertisers and it will be all systems go for the new launch," Press Gazette editor Dominic Ponsford wrote in his editor’s blog. “The relaunch of Press Gazette as a weekly title isn’t about nostalgia – it’s about packaging our content in the best way for busy journalists to have a weekly way to catch up on the latest industry news, gossip, tips and insight."

The official website of Press Gazette publishes more than 50 stories, stories, blog posts and features every week. Ponsford wrote that he hopes Press Gazette Journalism Weekly will provide an easy way for readers to catch up on the best news.

The trade magazine changed its printed title from a weekly to a monthly in 2008.

The move to a quarterly print publication is a "sign of the challenges facing print titles in the UK," according to Ponsford, MediaGuardian noted.

"It hardly needs to be said that with British journalism beset by challenges on all sides there has never been a more pressing need for journalists to have their own publication, fighting their corner, sharing best practice and holding the industry to account," he told MediaGuardian. 

Press Gazette’s case is not unique. Beginning in the autumn, The New Orleans Times-Picayune will end its 175-year run as a daily and switch to printing only Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, and at the same time ramp up its digital offerings, the newspaper announced last month.

Image: Press Gazette

Vatican newspaper targets female readers

For the first time in its 150-year history, the Vatican’s newspaper is publishing a special section for women.

L’Osservatore Romano's new monthly supplement, "Women, Church, World," will be edited by women, aiming to "provid[e] information on the female condition, without ignoring hot topics like procreation, access to culture and women’s rights,” Lucetta Scaraffia, an editorial writer for the paper, told AFP.


The newspaper's first female journalist was hired in 2008, according to the Guardian.

In an interview with non-profit news agency Zenit, Scaraffia asserted the supplement will break stereotypes of Catholic women — inside and outside the church. Moreover, the editor, Giovanni Maria Vian, said the new section will try to promote a keener understanding of the “under-appreciated treasure” of women in the church.

Giulia Gaelotti, a writer at the newspaper, also stated that “the dialogue between women and the Church is not new today. It's a dialogue that has been undervalued, that's why we've created this project, this monthly supplement to make this dialogue clear. This encounter is one that continues to enrich both women and the Church.”

Vian said Pope Benedict supports the supplement, which he said would hire non-Catholic contributors, according to Guardian.

The first issue, which was printed on May 31 includes Maria Voce, president of the Focolari Movement, an appreciation of the Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi and an essay on Joan of Arc.

While it seems a bold move for the Vatican newspaper to target female readers, Scaraffia said that “some will not be pleased.” GetReligion expressed its doubt by questioning the effectiveness of the change.

Image: The Catholic Sun

Report: Male journalists continue to outnumber females

Men are more likely to author newsmedia articles, a new study by the OpEd Project reveals.

Men continued to overshadow women in writing general interest news articles, including economy and politics-related news in new and traditional news outlets. Only about one- tenth of articles in economics sections in legacy media outlets were written, or co-written, by a woman, the study found, according to the Huffington Post.

The OpEd Project conducted a byline survey to evaluate more than 7,000 articles published in 10 media outlets during a 12-week period from Sept. 15, 2011 to Dec. 7, 2011. The articles were categorised by media type: New Media, Legacy Media and College Media. Researchers analysed articles’ authors’ status based on gender and subject matter. 

The OpEd Projects has been conducting the survey for the last three years to analyse who is heard most in public discourse.    

The survey results indicate that women are much more active in New Media (33 percent) than in Legacy Media (20 percent). The OpEd Project's Taryn Yaeger said this year's results were expected because women were more active online than men are in general. In contrast, women contributed 38 percent of articles to the College Media category. School papers surveyed included Yale, Princeton, Harvard and Columbia. 

“The good news is that we have seen major improvements in women’s op-ed writing in the last [six] years,” Yaeger wrote in the OpEd Project's Byline Blog.  

While the surveyor has noticed some improvement in major outlets like The New York Times and Washington Post, “progress towards truly equal representation behind the news desk is disappointingly slow,” J. Bryan Lowder from Slate commented. 

In both Legacy Media and New Media, women wrote a higher proportion on Pink Topics, which are subjects that women have traditionally written about, such as family, food, furniture and fashion. Women authored significantly fewer articles than men on general interest subjects except health in new media.

Some media critics refer to Pink Topics as the “pink ghetto” because women have historically been confined within them.

The underlying cause of this phenomenon lies in the fact that there are fewer female journalists in media field. Since 1982, women have only occupied one-third of all full-time journalists working for the traditional mainstream media, Poynter reported. However, women with less than five years work experience are now at 54.2 percent, outnumbering men for the first time.

Image: The Byline Blog