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Journalism in a changing world

Archive for the ‘News Agencies’ Category

Murdoch and Thomson have piled into financial info this year

By Andrew Grant-Adamson • Dec 9th, 2007

With James Murdoch confirmed as the heir apparent of his father’s News Corporation business there is much speculation about the future of the media empire he is destined to run.
Possibly the most significant indicator this year of the way in which News Corp will move has been the $5bn purchase of Dow Jones which [...]



Titanic mistake

By Andrew Grant-Adamson • Aug 11th, 2007

How embarrassing! It took a 13-year-old Finish boy looking at a newspaper to realise that pictures used to illustrate the story of Russian mini-subs laying claim to part of the Arctic seabed were actually from the film Titanic.
The boy, Waltteri Seretin, contacted the tabloid Ilta-Sanomat to point this out what picture desks around the world [...]



An interesting prospect: Thomson v Murdoch

By Andrew Grant-Adamson • Aug 1st, 2007

The Bancroft family has accepted what was inevitable for the past three months and agreed to the sale of Dow Jones, which includes the Wall Street Journal, to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
The controlling family was split from the moment the offer was made and the pressure was on those who did not want [...]



‘How to sink a newspaper’

By Andrew Grant-Adamson • May 16th, 2007

It is time for newspapers to reconsider the ultimate costs and consequences of free news, Walter E Hussman, publisher of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, argues in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece.
He presents a cogent case for not giving away news on the web but, I fear, it is too late to put the genie back [...]



Digital legacies: Murdoch and Thomson

By Andrew Grant-Adamson • May 7th, 2007

Since the Times passed from the Thomson family to Rupert Murdoch in 1981 we have tended to forget about the media empire founded by Roy Thomson, the Canadian who came to Britain and developed a media empire.
Suddenly the Thomson family business, based in Canada, is in the UK news again, making a bid approach to [...]



Fight between Google and MSM approaches

By Andrew Grant-Adamson • Apr 24th, 2007

Roy Greenslade has picked up on Telegraph editor Will Lewis’s opening address at the 6th International Newsroom Summit and thinks it implies that the Telegraph group is going to follow other mainstream publishers into battle against Google.
According to ifra, Lewis called on newspapers to welcome transformation as a friend. The traditional business model would be [...]



Work experience turns students into journalists

By Andrew Grant-Adamson • Feb 9th, 2007

I have had a couple of pleasant days talking to students who have returned from work placements. They have come back more confident, feeling like real journalist, after using the reporting skills we have been encouraging them to develop since the autumn.
They are happy and more convinced than ever that they want to be journalists, [...]



Making money from citizen paparazzi snaps

By Andrew Grant-Adamson • Jan 5th, 2007

Yahoo’s choice of Mr Paparazzi as the best UK entertainment website in its 2006 Finds awards suggests there is a way to make money out of “citizen journalism” or whatever you choose to call it.
The site is a spin-off from the Big Pictures business of Darryn Lyons who got a lot of free publicity from [...]



Yahoo and Reuters solicit ‘citizen journalist’ pix and vid

By Andrew Grant-Adamson • Dec 5th, 2006

From today sending a picture to Yahoo News could lead to world wide distribution to mainstream media by Reuters. Stills and video can be submitted to You Witness pages at both Yahoo and the news agency.
Material will be uploaded to Flickr from where Yahoo will select material to be used in its news service [...]



A writer’s adventures in Second Life

By Andrew Grant-Adamson • Oct 29th, 2006

Tim Adams of The Observer has spend a week in the virtual world of Second Life and finds it has “quickly acquired a powerful twist of designer corporate capitalism”.
Adams, or rather his avatar Kenny, finds land price inflation has hit Second Life when he tries to find somewhere better to live than his initial land [...]