Posts Tagged ‘Press Gazette’

TV Studios for The Financial Times

The FT has unveiled new TV studios, as the quality newspaper title ramps up its multimedia output.

Press Gazette carries the full story.

Savvy newspapers and magazines, even the smaller, more local titles, understand that in order to keep their readers – and win new ones - they must move with the times and bring their media offerings bang up-to-date.

The days of being ‘just’ a print journalist are long gone – now, reporters and writers must think of stories and features in terms of video, podcast, visuals, blog, and online, as well as print, all of which makes for a rich and unrivalled story-telling experience.

Footballer No.3 Granted Gagging Order

An unnamed England footballer has won an injunction preventing the media from publishing claims about his private life.

He is the third England international player in just 2 weeks to be granted such an order.

Rather than looking to High Court injunctions to protect reputations – as well as big-money contracts and sponsorships - PR Superstar suggests that high-profile figures and so-called “role models” clean up their personal lives, so there is no danger of embarrassing revelations coming back to bite them where it hurts.

Read the latest on this story in Press Gazette.

The Great Paywall Experiment, So Far, So Good…

The websites of The Times and The Sunday Times have fared well since a paywell was introduced last month, reports media trade magazine Press Gazette.

The two sites retained 1.6 million users in July, however, this was a fall from 2.8 million users who accessed thetimes.co.uk and thesundaytimes.co.uk in May, before paid access was introduced.

Other media are watching News International’s great paywall experiment like hawks, and may or may not follow suit depending upon how things go! So far, it looks like the gamble is paying off for media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

BBC News Web Traffic Record

news.bbc.co.uk clocked up its biggest audience ever - the day after the UK election, when more than 11 million people logged on to get the very latest news.

The impressive figure beat the previous BBC News Online record of over 9 million people, achieved on the day of the Barack Obama US election victory in 2008. Read the full story in Press Gazette.

The BBC is rightly regarded as one of the best, if not the best, news gathering organisations in the world, known for fast, trustworthy reporting, delivered by skilled, expert journalists. In the public relations world, the BBC is always high on the list of where PRs and their clients want to be featured. Read this recent Press Gazette Poll.

Journalist-run PR Superstar clients regularly feature on the BBC, including bbc.co.uk, BBC London, BBC Breakfast TV, BBC2 Working Lunch, BBC Radio 2, 4 and 5, BBC World Service and BBC Newsnight. 

On another election note, hats off to veteran journalist, broadcaster and Question Time host David Dimbleby, aged 71, who anchored the BBC election coverage for a whopping 18 hours, after going on air at 9.55pm last Thursday night and finally ending at 3.40pm the following day, still looking as fresh as a daisy!

The Mail Winning Newspaper Website War

The Mail Online continued to be the most popular UK national newspaper website in March attracting 39 million unique browsers a month and 2.25 million a day, according to Press Gazette.

Meanwhile, News International’s Times Online and Sun websites have dropped out of the monthly web audit, ahead of their move behind paywalls from June – users will be charged £1 for a day’s access and £2 for a week’s subscription for access to both papers’ websites.

Guardian.co.uk claimed second place in the audit with 1.85m unique browsers a day and 33.3m per month, the Telegraph was in third place, and Mirror Group and The Independent were a fair way behind in fourth and fifth.

In 2009, Rupert Murdoch announced he would introduce charges for all his newspaper websites, saying that News International wanted to prevent readers moving to free sites by making its content better and differentiated from other publishers. It is a bold and ground-breaking move by the 79-year-old Aussie media czar.

The jury is out over whether this kind of internet payment structure will be a recipe for commercial success, especially if the other nationals do not follow suit, but in the face of dwindling newspaper sales and resulting heavy financial losses, it is at least a step in the right direction towards protecting quality journalism for the future.