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Media trends digest
– 2008
Reporting wonder drugs is risky 16 July
The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine reports that overly-optimistic reporting of new drugs and treatments can unreasonably twist the expectations of patients and how governments respond. In a recent case, a cancer treatment was given federal funding before many in the medical profession were convinced of its long-term benefits.
The report says: The news media are major sources of information about health issues for both the public and for health professionals, and can have an influence on decisions about treatment choices and medical care.1 Sometimes the media make great claims for the latest medical breakthroughs and discoveries, some of which have yet to be fully developed or indeed licensed for use. These claims can have consequences for patients who may feel they are being denied access to a new therapy, and they may also create extra pressures on the doctor–patient relationship, especially if the clinician has limited or no access to the treatment in question.
Full report
Benton headlines
AT THE UNEASY INTERSECTION OF BLOGGERS AND THE LAW
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Jonathan Glater]
A grand jury subpoena sent by prosecutors in the Bronx earlier this year sought information to help identify people blogging anonymously on a Web site about New York politics called Room 8. The subpoena carried a warning in capital letters that disclosing its very existence "could impede the investigation being conducted and thereby interfere with law enforcement" -- implying that if the bloggers blabbed, they could be prosecuted. This, of course, is a blogger's nightmare: enforced silence and the prospect of jail time. The district attorney eventually withdrew the subpoena and lifted the gag requirement after the bloggers threatened to sue. But the fact that the tactic was used at all raised alarm bells for some free speech advocates.
http://benton.org/node/15207
AMERICAN JOURNALISM, STILL A MODEL
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Gideon Rachman]
A comparison of the British and American flavors of journalism. American journalists regard themselves as members of a respectable profession -- like lawyers or bankers. Their British counterparts generally prefer the idea that they are outsiders. This Brit concludes, "[T]those American journalists who insist on the civic importance of good journalism are correct. What we write does matter - even if it is sometimes easier to pretend that it doesn't."
http://benton.org/node/15206
iPhone not what it’s cracked up to be
Sydney Morning Herald: Most of the TV, movie and other multimedia content offered by Optus, Vodafone and Telstra over their 3G networks is not available on the iPhone.
More
Opinion
NSW – the Stalinist state
NSW’s extraordinary raft of laws enacted for the July 2008 World Youth Day Popefest have had their inevitable effect: police struggling to set cultural standards. The laws are designed to prevent any expression of opinion which might be annoying to the visiting packs of Catholic youth, policed by the police and – more outrageously – the SES and rural fire brigade.
More
Payday for Flickr users 13 July
NY Times: If you are a photographer with high-quality images posted on Yahoo’s Flickr service, you may soon get an e-mail message inviting you to become a paid contributor to Getty Images, the world’s largest distributor of pictures and video.
More
Mobile ads to grow 300%
Frost & Sullivan: The mobile advertising market in Australia is very much in its infancy with total revenues reaching just $2.5 million in 2007. However, this figure is set to grow more than 300 per cent in 2008 and be sustained into next year driven by the growing consumer take-up of 3G data services coupled with attractive campaign pricing to entice advertisers.
More
Davis awarded $140,000
The Australian: Actor Judy Davis was awarded $140,000 for the "inevitable" damage to her reputation by a newspaper article, published last February in Sydney's Daily Telegraph.
More
Broadband submissions online
The federal government has published the submissions it received for building a $4.7 billion national broadband network.
See this link
Newspaper classifieds need to get creative
Editors Weblog: Regional newspapers are becoming noticeably thinner; classified advertisements and standard advertisers are migrating to the web. With this, newspaper and advertising executives are coming up with new and exciting advertising and layout formats aimed at winning back those lost readers.
Northcliffe Media is branching out in their content to new fields of interest. Northcliffe's MD and Chairman of the Newspaper Society, Michael Polesi, advocates adding local traffic news, bus timetables and even the night chemists' opening hours. Such content may appear mundane, but it keeps users returning to its sites and makes it a vital local service. This type of information has obvious potential tie-ins with local advertisers.
Bill Ostendorf, CEO of Creative Circle Advertising Solutions and Creative Circle Media Consulting believes that one of the key weaknesses of most newspaper classifieds is that it is separate to the rest of the newspaper. Ostendoff feels the advert should go in the relevant section of a newspaper, eg, if you are an individual seller selling golf clubs, the advert should be put next to an article on golf.
More
Plus...
The Guardian: Chris Dobson, a senior executive at Microsoft's online business, commutes to his London office from Hertfordshire, where his local paper, the Welwyn & Hatfield Times, has been noticeably thinner of late. 'The property section used to be page after page. Now it's four sides. As a consumer, it really struck me.'
Like other titles, the paper has been deprived of valuable advertising as the downturn in the property market means fewer homes are being sold. Income generated from other ads, including jobs and cars, is falling too.
That is a huge headache for regional papers, for whom classified advertising is a lifeline…
More
An open letter to Craig’s list
Comment by Steve Outing: Guys, congratulations on your continued success. Your ideals of putting service to the community above profit and personal gain are admirable. You have created a public service that benefits millions of people and saves them many millions of dollars. Craigslist is now the 7th most trafficked site on the Internet, and seems to exhibit no signs of slowing down. Bravo.
That said, you have to know that Craigslist has played a role in the downturn of the newspaper industry…
More
Soft economy good for online ads?
Online Publishers Assn: As online ad spending in the US has been slowing recently, with the IAB saying revenues actually dropped slightly in the first quarter, ZenithOptimedia predicts that global online ad sales will actually do even better as the economy takes a hit. Zenith revised its forecast, predicting that overall ad growth in the US would only go up 3.5%, instead of 3.8%, this year, and that European ad growth would be 3.7% (down from 3.9% predicted earlier). But in global online ad sales, Zenith was more optimistic, revising upward its prediction that the sector would take in 9.7% of all ad sales, now saying it would break the 10% barrier and hit $52.2 billion in 2008, eventually accounting for 13.6% of all global ad sales by 2010. "Faced with an uncertain economic future, Western advertisers are shifting even more of their budgets online, where the returns on their investment are obvious, and easy to quantify and fine tune," the report said.
Media Alliance student days announced
MEAA: Dates for the annual Walkleys MediaPass Student Industry Days have been announced. Adelaide August 14; Melbourne August 21; Sydney August 28; Perth September 10; Brisbane September 18. The MEDIA Super Student Journalist of the Year Award is also now open. See http://www.alliance.org.au/students or email mailto:students@walkleys.com for more information and to RSVP.
(Ed’s note: we can highly recommend these days for journalism and media students.)
Journalists should embrace bloggers
Roy Greenslade, The Guardian: The debate over blogging's usefulness to journalism tends to get stuck in a cul de sac, mainly because too few people - well, too few journalists - treat it seriously. At conferences I've attended recently, speakers have referred to blogging as little more than a sad ego trip. It is not regarded as having any real public service value.
I'll scream if I hear yet again that the blogosphere is a form of anarchy…
More
Suppression orders to be audited
MEAA: The Australia’s Right to Know campaign has commissioned an independent audit into the way courts issue suppression orders, due for release in November. The coalition of major media organisations, including the Alliance, ABC and Fairfax, said the heavy-handed use of suppression orders to gag reporting on criminal trials was threatening the principles of open justice.
Full release here; And terms of the audit here
UK newspaper report released
The UK House of Lords Communications Committee has recently published a report on its investigation of the newspaper industry in that country. Its introduction reads, in part:
Successive governments have recognised the impact that media ownership can have on the news. The previous Conservative administration stated that “A free and diverse media are an indispensable part of the democratic process … If one voice becomes too powerful, this process is placed in jeopardy and democracy is damaged”.
When drawing up the Communications Act 2003, the present Labour Government stated that a healthy democracy was dependent on a culture of dissent and argument and this culture would inevitably be diminished if there were only a limited number of providers of the news. One of the aims of the Communications Act was to ensure that a diversity of voices continued to exist in the news media at a time when the industry was experiencing a period of consolidation.
This report examines the impact that media ownership can have on the news and the effect of consolidation on the newspaper, television and radio industries. We have proposed changes to the regulation governing ownership, but do not believe that by themselves media ownership laws are sufficient to ensure our aim of a diversity of voices in the news. We believe that public service broadcasting has a continuing and vital role to play.
Our inquiry took place against the background of what Rupert Murdoch described as the “fairly chaotic” state of the news media. We found plentiful evidence to support this view. Both here and abroad the newspaper industry is facing severe problems as readership levels fall; young people turn to other sources of news; and advertising moves to the internet. The newspaper industry is responding to these challenges in a variety of ways including establishing a high profile web presence. However, even when newspapers run successful internet sites the value of the advertising they sell on these sites does not make up for the value lost. The result of these pressures is that newspaper companies are having to make savings and this is having a particular impact on investment in news gathering and investigative journalism.
Click here to download the full report (820k pdf)
Facebook for the news
For the latest in news and opinion, long gone are the days when you needed daily visits from a paperboy. In fact, you no longer even need to turn on the television or troll the Web’s myriad news sites. All you need is a little help from some of your own influential friends. Your Facebook friends, that is.
More
Photojournalism revived
Wall Street Journal: "Exactly upside down" is how Brian Storm, 37, describes the business model that guides the making, selling and viewing of photojournalism at hios company MediaStorm.
They take still images, motion-picture and video footage, and audio tape, seek out the best story within that material, and then create a narrative through cutting and editing, adding voices and music. The product lasts several minutes, can have several chapters of five to 10 minutes that can be watched in any order, and is something like a documentary movie, a TV segment, a book that talks, or a magazine article that moves.
More
What grabs readers?
Editors Weblog: A quick glance at the list of most-read stories and most-viewed multimedia features in June for the LA Times gives a good idea of readers' favorite topics of interest - namely a push towards celebrity news and away from global issues and traditionally important topics such as the general elections. The lists also show that, despite newspapers' widespread emphasis on blogs and videos, these platforms still account for a minimal share of total traffic.
Furthermore, these lists provide some indications about how reader interests may vary from one platform to the other (news, blogs, videos, picture galleries).
More
Mergers and cuts for US newsrooms
Online Publishers Assn: As traditional media outlets go through a difficult, gut-wrenching shift to an online multimedia focus, staff reorganizations are becoming more common. Last winter, CBSNews.com lost 30% of its online staff to cuts, and the Washington Post has also reorganized as it plans to merge more of its print and online staff. So it’s not too surprising that when the Los Angeles Times announced 250 layoffs – 150 in editorial – that some of those cuts would come online. “The Times will be combining its print and web staffs into a single operation with a unified budget, and that perhaps explains some of the online cuts, to do away with the redundancies,” wrote PaidContent’s Rafat Ali. Still, Ali noted that LATimes.com will bring in $25 million in display ad revenues this year, tripling receipts from just three years ago.
Kevin Roderick at LAObserved rounded up blogger opinions on the latest cuts at the Times, saying that “this is all about doing less, with less, and ho
ping the reputation doesn't suffer too much.” The Times cuts come as other newspapers grapple with lower print ad sales, and online news sites deal with increased competition from social networks and social media sites. There will likely be more job cuts coming at other newspaper dot-coms as they deal with integration with print newsrooms. But there are also cases of digital hiring happening as well, as Gannett now has 50 job openings for people to work in its interactive division, as its “information center” strategy takes hold.
Deep dips make design crucial
Jakob Nielsen: A huge increase in "deep dips" was one of the big findings in our new user research for this year's Fundamental Guidelines for Web Usability seminar. That is, ever-more users are arriving deep within websites rather than entering them through the homepage.
The homepage is still important, and you should continue to ensure homepage usability for two main reasons:
The homepage is typically the single most-visited page, because the deep entry points are scattered across a vast number of interior pages;
The homepage is the orienteering point for visitors who arrive through deep links and then decide to explore the site further.
For many sites, the deep-dip increase has an unfortunate consequence: much bigger bounce rates.
The bounce rate is defined as the percentage of visitors who turn around at the entry page and immediately leave the site. Such visitors "bounce" out and never see additional pages.
More
Local TV ad standards exceeded
ACMA: Commercial television networks last year exceeded the requirement to broadcast Australian-produced advertisements for at least 80 per cent of their advertising time between 6.00am and midnight.
More
Benton headlines
ONE MAN, ONE LONG LIST, NO MORE WEB ADS
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Peter Whoriskey]
A machinist and self-described "blue-collar guy" in his mid-50s from upstate New York, Rick752, as he's known online, spends most nights upstairs in his den assembling a list of Internet ad sites and related data. That work, dubbed EasyList, enables millions of Web surfers to filter and freeze out nearly all advertising that would otherwise appear on their screens. Yet the effort to block millions of Internet ads, while drawing raves from users, is feared by some who say that if it continues to grow in popularity, it could threaten the financial underpinnings of much of the Web, where publishers are largely dependent on advertising.
Link
STOP THE NEW FISA
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Chris Hedges]
[Commentary] Journalist and author Hedges writes that if the sweeping surveillance law signed by President Bush on Thursday -- giving the US government nearly unchecked authority to eavesdrop on the phone calls and e-mails of innocent Americans -- is allowed to stand, we will have eroded one of the most important bulwarks to a free press and an open society. This law will cripple the work of those of us who as reporters communicate regularly with people overseas, especially those in the Middle East. It will intimidate dissidents, human rights activists and courageous officials who seek to expose the lies of our government or governments allied with ours. It will hang like the sword of Damocles over all who dare to defy the official versions of events. It leaves open the possibility of retribution and invites the potential for abuse by those whose concern is not with national security but with the consolidation of their own power. He concludes, "[T]this law is not about keeping us safe, which can -- and should -- be done in a constitutional manner and with judicial oversight. It is about using terrorism as a pretext to permit wholesale spying and to silence voices that will allow us to maintain an open society."
http://benton.org/node/15155
* President Bush Signs FISA Amendments Act
http://benton.org/node/15151
WHO KILLED THE ONLINE JOURNALISM REVIEW AND WILL IT LIVE AGAIN?
[SOURCE: Media Shift, AUTHOR: Mark Glaser]
For more than 10 years, the Online Journalism Review was published by the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Southern California as a place to follow the struggles and triumphs in the nascent field of online journalism. But on June 16, editor Robert Niles posted a note to the site titled, Goodbye, explaining that USC was suspending publication of OJR and that he would be leaving the school. Why? The short answer is that the Annenberg School is going through a major transition, with a new dean, Ernest Wilson, and a new director of the journalism school (which lives within the overall school of communications), Geneva Overholser. They are reconsidering many programs, and want to rethink the way that OJR operates at the school. But there’s a larger story behind the rise and fall (and possible rebirth) of OJR, relating to academia and its own struggles putting online journalism into curriculum in a meaningful way.
http://benton.org/node/15139
IT'S ALL OVER NOW, VIOLET BLUE
[SOURCE: Columbia Journalism Review, AUTHOR: Joe Uchill]
What happens when a blog suddenly decides to remove all reference to someone and all the posts said person ever made on a site?
http://benton.org/node/15136
WHY IS YOUTUBE HOARDING DATA?
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Editorial staff]
[Commentary] Last week, a pretrial ruling in the case caused a furor for reasons that had nothing to do with copyrights. Granting a request from Viacom, District Judge Louis L. Stanton in New York ordered YouTube to turn over all the data it had collected about what its users watched. As it turns out, YouTube has kept extensive records of all its users' viewing histories, including the Internet addresses of the computers they were on at the time. And the data include not just the videos watched on youtube.com but also the YouTube clips embedded on other sites. Although the revelation might have come as a surprise to users, YouTube's privacy policy says the company "may record information about your usage," including the videos watched, the time spent on the site and the clips uploaded. It adds, "If you are logged in, we may associate that information with your account." Privacy advocates hit the panic button, saying the combination of user names and Internet addresses could provide enough information to identify individual users. Stanton's order is a reminder that websites shouldn't retain personally identifiable data any longer than the law or their services require. Google argues that the data enable it to improve its services, combat fraud and personalize offerings. Its approach, though, reflects an engineer's habit of hoarding information for the sake of as-yet-unimagined features, not the cautious practices of a privacy-conscious company. If YouTube really needs to keep months' worth of data about what users do, the least it can do is remove the links to who's doing it. In the meantime, users should remove the links themselves by following instructions on the site for erasing their viewing histories.
http://benton.org/node/15122
'BOOB TUBE' STILL CONTENT KING: NIELSEN
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Linda Haugsted]
Video consumers are spending more time on every available platform, including TVs, computers and cell phones, according to a report on television consumption released Tuesday by Nielsen. Despite other options for consuming content, Americans are spending an increased amount of time in front of televisions: an average of 127 hours, 15 minutes a month. This viewing is not at the expense of Internet use: that metric is up 9%, to 26 hours and 26 minutes a month. Online viewing is estimated at 2 hours and 19 minutes and Americans watch 3 hours and 15 minutes a month on their cell phones.
http://benton.org/node/15053
THE FACEBOOKER WHO FRIENDED OBAMA
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Brian Stelter]
A look at Chris Hughes, one of the four founders of Facebook. In early 2007, he left the company to work in Chicago on Senator Barack Obama’s new-media campaign. Leaving behind his company at such a critical time would appear to require some cognitive dissonance: political campaigns, after all, are built on handshakes and persuasion, not computer servers, and Hughes has watched, sometimes ruefully, as Facebook has marketed new products that he helped develop. But in fact, working on the Obama campaign may have moved Hughes closer to the center of the social networking phenomenon, not farther away. The campaign’s new-media strategy, inspired by popular social networks like MySpace and Facebook, has revolutionized the use of the Web as a political tool, helping the candidate raise more than two million donations of less than $200 each and swiftly mobilize hundreds of thousands of supporters before various primaries. The centerpiece of it all is My.BarackObama.com, where supporters can join local groups, create events, sign up for updates and set up personal fund-raising pages.
http://benton.org/node/14996
'PUBLIC' ONLINE SPACES DON'T CARRY SPEECH, RIGHTS
[SOURCE: Associated Press, AUTHOR: Anick Jesdanun]
(7/6) Rant all you want in a public park. A police officer generally won't eject you for your remarks alone, however unpopular or provocative. Say it on the Internet, and you'll find that free speech and other constitutional rights are anything but guaranteed. Companies in charge of seemingly public spaces online wipe out content that's controversial but otherwise legal. Service providers write their own rules for users worldwide and set foreign policy when they cooperate with regimes like China. They serve as prosecutor, judge and jury in handling disputes behind closed doors. The governmental role that companies play online is taking on greater importance as their services - from online hangouts to virtual repositories of photos and video - become more central to public discourse around the world. It's a fallout of the Internet's market-driven growth, but possible remedies, including government regulation, can be worse than the symptoms.
http://benton.org/node/14982
PRODUCT PLACEMENT ON TV TARGETED
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Cecilia Kang]
(6/27) Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin said the FCC will review new rules on how television programmers alert viewers about product placements in programming. He said product placements and integration into story lines have increased as television viewers increasingly use recording devices like TiVo and DVRs to fast forward through commercials. Currently, the FCC's rules require television programmers to disclose sponsors who have embedded products into shows. Those disclosures typically are done during the credits at the end of the show, which fly by viewers in small script. The FCC plans to study whether sponsorship notices should be written in bigger print and displayed for a defined period. They are looking at adopting rules similar to those for political ads, which require sponsorship messages to be in a print at least four percent the height of a screen and displayed for at least 4 seconds. The agency also will look into stronger rules for advertisement disclosures in children's and cable programming.
http://www.benton.org/node/14975
Web 2.0, online video short on revenues 10 June
While widget makers start courting Madison Avenue, they might learn a lesson from social networks and other Web 2.0 companies that have struggled for years to find a profitable business model. The Financial Times reports that most Web 2.0 startups have produced little in the way of revenues, and VCs are wondering if a shake-out is coming similar to the dot-com bust. "If you look at some of the valuations [of startups], you wonder what fantasy of revenues they're based on," Hummer Winblad VC Mitchell Kertzman told FT. Skepticism was also rampant at the recent Under the Radar confab, according to News.com's Stefanie Olsen, who said the social media startups could learn from Web 1.0 companies: "Tech companies often fail to hire media-savvy executives at the top who can sell brand advertising...[and] many social media start-ups are marketing the idea that they have tons of data on people's demographics and preferences."
Within the social media sphere, online video has gone through its own fits and starts in trying to find a business model. GigaOm reported that YouTube's director of monetization, Shashi Seth, recently quit, as the largest video site struggles to bring in money. Om Malik says YouTube brought in $80 million in revenues last year, which could grow to $125 million this year. That's still a paltry amount, and even Hulu, with much less traffic, has made $25 million because of its brand-friendly professional content. CBSSports.com is trying out Heavy.com's "skin" treatment for video ads that surround the video that's playing. Heavy told the Wall Street Journal it gets 1.68% clickthroughs on skin ads and is spinning off its video-ad technology into a separate business.
Online Publishers Assn
Digital television switchover discussion paper
The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy, today announced the release of a discussion paper covering a legislative framework for the digital television switchover.
More
Blogging & country life
ABC: The Macquarie English Dictionary defines "blog" as "a record of items of interest found on the internet" but it is often so much more than that- a chance to interact with others and have a social network beyond geographic distance.
The ABC recently travelled into the blogosphere to explore what it is that drives people to put their thoughts and stories up in cyberspace for all the world to see.
More
U2 manager slams ISPs
Variety via Benton: U2 manager Paul McGuinness launched a blistering attack on the world's Internet providers Wednesday, accusing them of strangling the music industry. Speaking at the Music Matters confab in Hong Kong, McGuinness likened ISPs to "shoplifters" and accused them of "turning their heads" away from the music industry's troubles and "rigging the market." "The recorded music industry is in a crisis and there is crucial help available but not being provided by companies who should be providing that help -- not just because it is morally right, but because it is in their commercial interest," McGuinness, said. He and numerous others speaking on the first day of the confab said the industry was caught between rampant piracy and ISPs' extortionate terms of trade.
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The future of the internet economy – OECD
Are we making the most of what the Internet has to offer our economies and societies? What are likely future developments, and can we make sure they are positive ones? This Policy Brief looks at likely future developments in the Internet economy, and how all stakeholders can help the Internet to meet the increasing demands made upon it, continue to drive innovation, provide new communications services and platforms, while being secure and respecting privacy.
Report
* Convergence and Next Generation Networks (OECD report)
Report
* Broadband and the Economy (OECD report)
Report
Upcoming conferences
The 2008 Annual Australasian Emergency Media and Public Affairs
"Excellence in Crisis Communication" Conference is to be held on the Gold Coast 25 - 27 June.
The conference will benchmark the best media liaison and public affairs responses to major emergencies and to provide a forum for interaction between media and public affairs professionals and researchers into emergency media and communications. This conference will build on the success of last year's inaugural conference and will be even more interactive and will include a hypothetical, panel discussions and open forums on both current research and its application.
Further information, and conference brochure available from this link.
And another…
The Second International Conference on Religion and Media will be
held in Tehran and Qom, Iran, from November 9th to 12th, 2008. We
cordially invite all media researchers and scholars, representatives
from diverse religious traditions, professionals and students
involved with the subjects of the conference to attend and submit a
paper. Further information could be found at the conference website.
Rampant churnalism
 Media Alliance: In his book Flat Earth News, an examination of the British newspaper industry published earlier this year, Guardian journalist Nick Davies found 80 per cent of the stories in Britain's quality dailies in a two-week period were rewritten wire copy and press releases. On the concern that Australia is facing a similar rise of churnalism, Alliance NSW state secretary Richard Harris told The Australian this week, "There has been a marked increase in journalists' daily workload as a result of newspapers launching and expanding online sites," which meant there was often less time to spend of stories.
Guardian story; Book link
Piggy-back ads rile Google customers
Wall Street Journal via Benton: As Google pushes to sell ads crucial to its revenue growth, some of its largest advertisers are growing angry with the way the company oversees its sponsored searches. The problem is a tactic known as "piggybacking," in which smaller advertisers use major players' brand names, slogans or other trademarked words in the text of search ads to lure Web surfers to their own sites. While Google and other search engines have policies against this maneuver, some marketers say the practice often goes unchecked. The brick-and-mortar world has long-established laws in this area, but the legal situation is less clear for the Internet and has only recently started to be tested in the courts. Tensions over piggybacking have been simmering for a couple of years. Companies such as Marriott International Inc, InterContinental Hotels Group PLC, AMR Corp's American Airlines and Northwest Airlines Corp. say the use of their names and slogans in the text of other companies' search ads confuses potential customers and increases their cost of doing business. They are particularly upset with Google, which is the dominant player in the search business. It controlled 71.2% of the search market last year, according to research firm eMarketer Inc.
More
Voice of America warns on censorship
Broadcasting & Cable via Benton: Dean Austin, the head of Voice of America, the US government's international broadcasting arm, advised other countries Monday that they must be on guard for Web censorship and "influence operations" disguised as journalism, and that they must protect journalists' rights to gather information without fear of overzealous courts.
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A shield law for the world?
Washington Post via Benton: The United States owes a federal shield law not only to American journalists but to journalists around the world. Passage of such a law is urgently needed. By finally allowing the media to protect the anonymity of confidential sources, Congress would do more than close a fissure in US press freedoms: It would also help curtail the destructive behavior that current US prosecutorial habits are inspiring globally. The proposed US federal shield law is officially called the Free Flow of Information Act, in reference to the renowned commitments of the Helsinki Accords more than 30 years ago -- human rights promises that still invigorate today's Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Passing the Free Flow of Information Act would send a clear message that prosecuting journalists is not in vogue anymore and would signal solidarity with nations that crave more press freedom.
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Media enabled the Iraq war
NY Times via Benton: In his new memoir, “What Happened,” Scott McClellan, the former White House press secretary, said the national news media neglected their watchdog role in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, calling reporters “complicit enablers” of the Bush administration’s push for war. Surprisingly, some prominent journalists have agreed. Katie Couric, the anchor of CBS Evening News, said on Wednesday that she had felt pressure from government officials and corporate executives to cast the war in a positive light. Jessica Yellin, who worked for MSNBC in 2003 and now reports for CNN, said on Wednesday that journalists had been “under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation.” On Thursday, she clarified her comments in a blog post, writing that her producers at MSNBC had wanted their coverage to reflect the patriotic mood of the country. A spokeswoman for General Electric, which owns NBC and MSNBC through its division NBC Universal, declined to speak about the specifics of the comments but said, “General Electric has never, and will never, interfere in the editorial process at NBC News.”
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Commercialism & pluralism don’t mix
EU Parliament: There is a "considerable risk" that the private media's pursuit of profit could compromise its ability to act as a watchdog for democracy, warns a report adopted by the Culture and Education Committee on Tuesday. MEPs advocate "editorial charters" to prevent owners, shareholders or governments from interfering with editorial content, and ombudsmen to protect media freedom. They also want status of weblogs clarified, and suggest introducing fees for commercial use of user-generated content.
Market mechanisms are not enough to guarantee media pluralism, warns the own-initiative report by Marianne Mikko (PES, ET), which voices concern about the concentration of ownership in the media business, "as experience shows that the unrestricted concentration of ownership jeopardises pluralism and cultural diversity".
More
Back to mags for Wash Post
Change is in the air at the Washington Post Co. The venerable media company has seen the departure of longtime interactive honcho Caroline Little, as well as online wunderkind Rob Curley, as it tries to integrate its online and print newsrooms more tightly. The Wall Street Journal reports that Curley is leaving for the Las Vegas Sun after a botched effort at hyper-local with LoudonExtra.com, a site that never caught on in the community, largely because the developers never got out into the community. "I dropped the ball," he told the Journal. "I won't drop it in Vegas, dude." Meanwhile, Washington Post Co is hoping that Slate's Jacob Weisberg can extend the success of his online magazine into other niches, as Weisberg is being tapped to run the new Slate Group, a kind of start-up venture within the Post. "I think it's sort of the logic by which Time magazine gave birth to Sports Illustrated and People, and it's the idea that you can incubate a magazine within another magazine," Weisberg told Reuters.
Online Publishers Assn
IDC: Online ads will surpass TV by 2012
Google and others have long touted Internet advertising as the perfect safe haven for marketers during a recession. IDC is now backing that concept, predicting that U.S. online advertising revenues will explode, doubling from $25.5 billion in 2007 to $51.1 billion in 2012 -- with a compound annual growth rate of 14.9%. Plus, online advertising will go from an 8.6% share of all ads to hit 15.6%, overtaking broadcast TV and newspapers and trailing only direct marketing. That's not bad, considering that IDC thinks that overall ad spending will contract in the years ahead. The firm also believes video advertising will boom. "What will also drive this trend is that consumers are starting to realize that, as opposed to TV, Internet video lets them watch what they want, when they want, and increasingly where they want," said IDC's Karsten Weide.
Online Publishers Assn; IDC release
IAB: European online ad growth is huge
If you think online advertising growth will be eye-popping in the US, watch out for Europe, where growth is almost stratospheric. According to the IAB Europe, online advertising was up 40% last year to hit $17.4 billion -- compared to 26% growth in the U.S. If those rates of growth continue, European online ad revenues will surpass the U.S. by 2010. The IAB noted that the UK, Germany and France vacuumed up two-thirds of all online ad money in Europe last year, but that growth rates were higher in less developed markets: Greece saw 90% growth, Spain hit 55% and Slovenia notched 49%. The IAB predicted that 10 European countries will have 10% of all ads going online -- up from 7 countries that already have that percentage. "Not only is the growth coming from some of the smaller markets...but also from the more mature countries as companies move their advertising budgets online for the first time," said IAB Europe honcho Alain Heureux.
Online Publishers Assn
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