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APOLLO FACT OF THE DAY: NEARLY HALF OF NEWS OF THE WORLD READERS HAVE STOPPED BUYING SUNDAY PAPERS
05-01-12
Are independent political blogs a lasting part of the media furniture? Or are they a noughties phenomena that will one day appear on those "Do you remember 2005?" programmes alongside with Girls Aloud and George Bush?
The breathless talk of a few years ago where new media gurus predicted the deat ...
14-12-11
We thought it was worth highlighting twitter's most talked about hastags for 2011. In case anyone doesn't know - a hash tag is simply a way for people to search for tweets that have a common topic. For example, if you search on #LOST (or #Lost or #lost, because it's not case-sensitive), you'll get a list of ...
24-10-11
Columnists are playing a much greater role in news analysis. With so many staff cuts (Times and SundayTimes announcing 150 job losses this week) the debate about 'cut and paste' news will only rage on. But newspapers still have to differentiate themselves from the growth of online 'churnalism' ...
21-10-11
I finally got round to watching Google CEO Eric Schmidt's MacTaggart lecture on youtube. The annual lecture, in memory of the pioneering and innovative writer, producer and director James MacTaggart, is the showpiece of the Edinburgh International Television Festival with previous speakers including ...
09-08-11
A third night of rioting in London, the worst and most widespread in the nation's history, has seen thousands of youths outnumber and defy a largely powerless police force. Politicians have been caught napping, or in the case of the political leadership, abroad on holiday, seemingly without a care ...
11-07-11
With yesterday's closure of the News of the World the consequence of Murdoch's ruthless business reaction to the public outcry over how some of his journalists hacked phones and broke the law, a blatant attempt to try and stop brand toxicity infecting his bid for BSkyB ...
04-07-11
One in seven people on planet earth are now on Facebook. Surely Facebook is now part of our DNA as much as tea and coffee. It can't be got shot off. That's just the way it is. Right? Wrong.
If there is one thing we should know about the globalised world it is that things can be destroyed as quickly as they're created ...
01-07-11
I thought the Guardian Media Group (GMG) had a limitless supply of money all thanks to the Scott Trust which was created in 1936 to safeguard the paper's journalistic freedom and liberal values. A couple of years ago Guardian Media Group even ...
28-06-11
For a while it has felt like nothing could get in the way of News International. Even Vince the Cable couldn't stand in the way of the takeover of BSKYB. Miraculous forces seemed to step in by bugging him saying that he had "declared war" on Rupert Murdoch. The Empire once again seemed to find a way ...
23-06-11
The appointment of Laura Kuenssberg as ITN's new business Editor shows that channel 3 (as I used to call it) is serious about making itself a respected national news outlet again. I can't remember exactly when but at some point ITN news became a bit of a joke - particularly when it couldn't even make its mind up ...
19-06-11
The Economist has recently revealed some startling end of year results. Operating profits were up 10% to £63m, with revenue up 9% to £347m. Advertising increased by 15% and Print circulation grew by 4% to 1,473,939 (UK sales were up 11% to 210,204).
Even on the digital side, things are going well ...
28-03-11
The UK advertising market appears to have brushed aside fears about the health of the economy by registering a 6.9% rise in spending in 2010 over the previous year to total £15.5bn. According to an Advertising Association/Warc expenditure ...
15-02-11
George Thwaites, editor for the last five years of the Mail on Sunday's review section, is leaving the paper this month to set up his own PR company. He follows in a lengthy line of senior newspaper executives who have moved on to public relations, such as Phil Hall, David Yelland, Ian Monk and Stuart Higgins ...
17-01-11
The shooting rampage in Arizona has shaken Americans and prompted a national debate about heated political rhetoric in the news. Fox news and right wing radio stations have suddenly had the spotlight turned on them. A protest has already ...
05-01-11
Two journalists were killed every week in 2010 in a sustained effort to silence free reporting in many parts of the globe, reports the International News Safety Institute (INSI)
INSI recorded that 97 journalists were killed last year in 30 countries, of whom 85 were murdered. Most of the victims were not ...
10-11-10
A new rule was confirmed this US election season: the more
conservative and combative a candidate, the more unwilling they were
to put themselves in front of an independent journalist. Why risk an
unscripted situation, have your inconsistencies probed or face awkward
questions about your past when you can ...
26-10-10
The British public may not be holding French style strikes about the Comprehensive Spending Review but there is still some backlash against raising the cap on tuition fees, cuts to child benefit and the slash and burn of many local authority jobs in parts of the country where there is no private sector.
But there hasn't ...
04-10-10
Two Indian newspapers are claiming to have notched up a global first by running "talking ads".
The groundbreaking ads, placed by Volkswagen, appeared on the back pages of special wraparounds published by The Times of India and The Hindu. When the paper is unfolded a light-sensitive speaker chip weighing ...
15-09-10
Free daily newspapers trace their history back to the 1940s when in Walnut Creek, California publisher Dean Lesher began what is widely believed to be the first free daily, now known as the Contra Costa Times. Outside the US it didn't really take off until 1995 ...
30-08-10
I remember watching Christopher Hitchens debate with his brother Peter in Conway Hall, London, when I first moved to the capital in my early twenties. I can't remember what they were debating but I remember a room full of names like Salmon Rushdie and Tony Benn who all seemed to be burbling with delight ...
18-08-10
Every few weeks, an off-colour or overly candid Tweet from a working journalist blows back into the newsroom in spectacular fashion. Over the last few weeks we’ve had the sacking of Octavia Nasr, CNN's Senior Middle East Editor, after she tweeted upon ...
27-07-10
BBC Journalist Andrew Marr openly admits that he is "the last of the news romantics" but he recently posted:
"I am on the edge of replacing paper newspapers with electronic versions for my iPad and phone; of accepting that I hardly ever wait for a conventional ...
24-06-10
US Magazine Rolling Stone has set the news agenda once again by running an explosive profile of America's senior commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal eventually leading to his dismissal. McChrystal and his army aides are reported making disparaging remarks about President Obama ...
22-06-10
There is a constant theme (A bit like the drone of a vuvuzela) in all my recent discussions with colleagues in France which has finally led me to blog about the fact that something is not quite right in the current state of the French press. Granted things aren’t exactly ...
16-05-10
A year ago Vanity Fair writer Michael Wolff said that “If Newsweek is around in five years, I’ll buy you dinner”. Even that prediction for the title’s longevity now looks optimistic. The Washington Post has put Newsweek up for sale – and so far no one seems interested in buying it. Thompson Reuters are half-heartedly ...
18-04-10
All over the world a brand new divide is being created. Those who have access to the free flowing information of the World Wide Web and those who don’t. This is not what British Computer Scientist Tim Berners Lee had in mind when he gave the biggest money maker of all time away for free.
And it’s not just ...
27-02-10
You've Googled the world, you've updated your status on Facebook, you've uploaded your pictures to Flickr, and you've tweeted about it on Twitter. But now Google would like you to head back its way and join in the Buzz and follow all of the previous actions in one place. Students no longer spend time in ...
24-01-10
The New Labour project spent years courting the traditional Tory press. The Sun famously switched sides to Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell in 1997 and in 2007 Gordon Brown formed a real friendship with Paul Dacre, Editor of the Daily Mail. It is widely believed that Dacre is not a fan of David Cameron’s flashy ...
06-01-10
The digital revolution in which any interesting organization can generate their own content and stream it online should have been a boon for think tanks. But it’s been a while coming. When I worked in policy wonkery ten years ago, I would often listen to ...
03-01-10
Eddie Mair quizzing John Hutton repeatedly on radio 4 about whether he was the Minister two years ago that said Gordon Brown would be a “disaster” as PM reminded me of a ridiculous children’s game. Once Eddie got the answer he wanted he was like the cat that got the cream. Is this what all those years of ...
05-12-09
The news of Border’s closing down sale is grim news in a grim deep winter for the publishing industry. It’s particularly bad for magazines – as Word magazine stalwart David Hepworth argues on his blog. The huge selection of independently produced magazines stuffed in those acres of shelves between ...
29-11-09
It’s been a long-held belief in the US Conservative movement that the “mainstream media” – meaning the newspapers, the network broadcasters (in fact anyone outside the cable channels) are run by sneering liberal intellectuals who are determined to discredit conservatism. The audiences turning up at ...
02-10-09
Apparently it does according to David Miliband at Labour party conference today. “But not the one printed in Wapping” he then pointed out. He’s right of course but is he right to imply that the Sun newspaper is not as powerful as it once was ?
All the old Labour ‘Masters of spin’ of course queued up to say ...
24-09-09
I found out about Michael Jackson's death in a way that I couldn't have done ten years ago - a news alert email from the New York Times quoting the AP confirmation. After deciding to wake the household, we huddled around the BBC 24 news coverage for an hour or so. If there was ever an example of Greg Dyke's ...
22-09-09
In recent years I’ve become an aficionado of American magazines - the New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harpers – and their long pieces of reportage. It’s odd that reportage has never taken off in the UK – perhaps because in the UK our news coverage is pretty entertaining and veers into features territory ...
20-09-09
Newspapers were the most successful media organizations in the world because they controlled the market place - what music we listened to , which jobs we found and which homes we bought.
Now, the most successful media organistions are the ones which build platforms and support communities ...
13-09-09
Can we imagine Sunday’s without the Observer? This week there’s been a queue of former Editors asking how we could let the paper of Orwell sink without trace. Roger Alton even gushed about how well it was currently being edited (Not sure how well that would have gone down with his office-mates at the Sindy) ...
06-09-09
This is why the future of news is bright. People that never used to tune into the 10 o clock news are now automatically hit by important headlines when they log onto their email in the afternoon. The logistics have also been taken out of the operation as you can click on cnn.com rather than go to the shop and buy a ...
05.01.12
Are independent political blogs a lasting part of the media furniture? Or are they a noughties phenomena ...
14.12.11
We thought it was worth highlighting twitter's most talked about hastags for 2011. In case anyone ...
24.10.11
Columnists are playing a much greater role in news analysis. With so many staff cuts (Times and ...
The Slate website, bastard child of the Washington Post, is an embarrassment of riches – but ...