Category: Media and Journalism

  • What a crappy ad

    Jeff points to a rather idiotic ad taken out by the World Association of Newspapers. We’ve done the search. You only have to turn the pages. Wha? And quoting the Economist is just as strange for it was they who said: “Newspapers are an endangered species.” Yes they are. And quoting a newspaper that is…

  • Sunday Paper digest

    Like Bernie, I scan the Sunday papers. Helpfully in work we have a reading room with all Sunday papers available for reading – though I still tend to scan the papers online on Saturday night. Here are the best news/opinion articles I found today: Shane Ross: FAS: the €20m-a-week quango Shane Ross calls for FAS…

  • Ahmad Batebi

    In July 1999 the man on this cover of the Economist, Ahmad Batebi, was arrested by Iranian authorities. He was tortured and told he would be killed. During his interrogation he was blindfolded and beaten with cables until he passed out. His captors rubbed salt into his wounds to wake him up, so they could…

  • Guardian Media Group Buys paidContent for $30 Million

    Says Kara: In what will be seen as a new media coup, sources tell BoomTown that Britain’s Guardian Media Group is set to announce this morning that it will buy the company that runs the high-profile digital media news site paidContent for a price “north of $30 million.” Paidcontent even got scooped. More here.

  • Washington Post hires Marcus Brauchli

    The New York Times reports that Marcus W Brauchli, a former top editor of The Wall Street Journal, will become the executive editor of The Washington Post on September 8. It was somewhat surprising apparently. In a statement, Ms. Weymouth (the publisher) said that Mr. Brauchli’s experience at The Journal would “help us navigate the…

  • Rush Limbaugh's new contract

    How bad, as we say in Cork. Rush Limbaugh just agreed to an eight-year, $400-million-plus extension with Clear Channel to stay on the air. Limbaugh’s deal includes an upfront $100-million signing bonus, which means the annualized average salary will be somewhere in the neighbourhood of $37 million through to 2016. Shame he’s such an idiot.

  • Subs go a wanderin'

    Roy Greenslade talks about more subs losing their jobs. CITYAM are sacking their entire subbing team. I linked to the Orange County story earlier this week. Jeff Jarvis talks about it here. So I’d suggest that publications should put all their articles online before publication in wiki form and enable the public to edit and…

  • TV viewers average age hits 50

    Good news for digital natives, bad news for newspapers and TV stations. According to a study released by Magna Global’s Steve Sternberg, the five broadcast nets’ average live median age (in other words, not including delayed DVR viewing) was 50 last season. That’s the oldest ever since Sternberg started analyzing median age more than a…

  • Mr. Murdoch Goes to War

    Murdoch speaks to the staffers at the Wall Street Journal in December last year. Their audience was of roughly three minds, according to a Journal staffer who dissected the newsroom’s mood for me. There were those who were already making plans to leave, or knew they would jump ship at the first decent opportunity. He…

  • Irish Times goes free

    The new Irish Times website is live. I rather like the layout. Popular stories has been given prominence. The choice to change background colour on a hover is … interesting. The hover on pic with text is similar to the Guardian and The Economist. They don’t seem to have included the option to comment on…