Wordblog

I haven’t been able to find a copy of the new-look Press Gazette yet, so no comment on that. The website has been spruced up too and looks good with clear navigation, but still lacking full content online.

Of course, with an audience that universally has access to the web they need to protect revenue. I have no objection to paying for the content behind a subscription wall, but the replica digital edition I do not want.

Some glitches are to be expected — and forgiven — but hopes that the blurb below the new top navigation bar, would deliver what it promised ("Editors explain the relaunch of Press Gazette") were dashed. It linked to Martin Stabe, the online editor, writing about the website relaunch. Stabe is always worth reading but it was not what was promised.

Ian Reeves’s video report on the state of video in British newspapers and magazines gets a strong plug at the top of the web front page. The video was a fairly superficial gallop through how video is being adopted which left the impression that most of it is pretty boring, which it is.

I am not sure that the talking head with relatively short clips was the right approach. And why no links to the mentioned blogs to allow further examination? That is one of the things web video can do which broadcast TV cannot.

Actually, you would do better to look at the vlogs on Reeves blog to get a view of newspaper and magazine use of video. He does provide links to the sites mentioned. Good stuff, but I wish he would keep his head a little stiller and not let his eyes dart around as though he was looking for an escape route. But he is a whole lot better than the reincarnation of Ananova at the Eastern Daily Press shown in his Press Gazette video.

Later: Thanks to Martin Stabe (comment below) I have the link to the article about the redesign (I clearly did not scroll down the home page far enough to find it). 

In the redesign we are seeing the strategy of the new owners, Wilmington Media, to extend the audience to all journalists, rather than the much narrower one of  newspaper people.  The editor, Dominic Ponsford, writes:

The new look, masterminded by designer Michael Crozier, sees a new logo in place which places greater emphasis on the word "press" and incorporates our new slogan: "For all journalists".

This underlines the fact that "press" in our case is meant in the broadest sense of the word, encompassing all journalists wherever they work.Beyond that they are aiming at, "all those interested in the fascinating machinations of the fourth estate".

Nitpick: As the British Journalism Review said in a centenary article on the Daily Mirror in 2003: "The use of the word ‘first’ is as dangerous in newspaper history as in any other." Press Gazette heads an article: "Fleet Street’s first female editor Lori Miles on her move to customer mags." The first female Fleet Street editor was Mary Howarth, the first editor of the Daily Mirror, who lasted just a year before being replaced by a man.