What singles out a successful journalist from an average one? Ideas. Good ideas. Ideas that really chime with the interests of their readers.
What differentiates a really successful magazine, website or newspaper from average ones? An understanding of the reader, of their concerns and interest.
And what underpins this success? Great ideas.
Ideas are at the heart of everything; they are gold dust.
So the challenge for any individual journalist, any editor and any publication, is to come up with ideas that work.
Some editors are great at fostering an environment in which journalists think creatively and ideas flow.
Others are terrible at it. Their editorial conferences are highly politicised and involve the competitive trashing of ideas, and the squandering of inspiration.
Such editors run less effective publications; ones on which the writers, section editors and others are rarely happy. There are plenty of those around.
One magazine, it’s clear from Janice Turner’s piece in today’s Times Saturday Magazine, that fosters just the right atmosphere for great ideas to flourish, is Grazia.
Here’s her account of the weekly editorial conference: “Crammed into an overheated meeting room on a Monday morning, a bunch of noisy women are discussing world events. First up, bunions: not just any podiatric deformities, but Victoria Beckham’s. “She’s been told she may never wear high heels again,” someone says. “That’s going to kill her.” There is much cackling. The agenda chugs quickly through India (street children freezing to death), France (is Sarkozy’s decision to ban the burkha progressive?) and then someone pulls out a clipped photo of Madonna, her cheeks puffy, her chin all Bo’ Selecta. “Ah, she’s a pillow,” says someone authoritatively. A what? Apparently, it’s a term coined to describe a celebrity who has overstuffed her face with silicone pads and collagen fillers.
“Grazia magazine’s weekly conference is a gas. It is like all the heated debates you ever had at the hairdresser’s or with friends over coffee, except when you speculate, for example, whether Kate Moss’s strange new grey streaks are natural or bottle, a perky, young beauty expert is on hand to say: “I’ve talked to Kate’s colourist and she says it’s a very chic grey called Chanel-egant.”
"The meeting has many abrupt swerves in tone: from trivial to serious, skincare to global calamity. A discussion about WAGs segues into Haiti’s orphans, then the Paris couture shows.”
And here’s how the editor runs the meeting: “At the head of the table, calm, quietly authoritative, but seldom interjecting even when debate drifts way off topic or descends into hen-party raucousness, is editor Jane Bruton.”
Such an occasion is in stark contrast to many conferences. Often they are a mere, ritualistic reading of lists from department heads.
Informal sessions – in the easier days of the past an excuse for a long boozy lunch on expenses – are actually where the best ideas come from.
Because, in such circumstances, people talk about what they are really interested in, not what’s on the formal agenda or what they think they ought to be concerned about.
Grazia’s editorial staff seem to be pretty much like its readers, and so what interests them will interest the audience.
Such chemistry creates titles that resonate. As Turner says: “Grazia seems to define a cultural moment, just as Cosmo did for the Seventies sexual revolution or Loaded during the mid-Nineties emergence of the new lad. Grazia Girl denotes a certain type of modern woman: urban, materialistic, fashionable, liberal, educated. She embodies a mash-up of all the comfortable old marketing categories, between up and downmarket, low and high-brow. Grazia Girl wears a Primark top with a Prada bag, she may read a broadsheet paper and love Heat. Advertisers adore her, politicians are starting to court her. But this product of disposable, downloadable, 24/7 culture is impatient and mercurial: she craves the new and she wants it now; tomorrow she will chuck it away.”
I worked on one national newspaper with a patrician editor who would ask at the end of conference, when he’d heard all the lists, “but what are people talking about?” He’d turn to the sports editor and ask, “what are they saying in the saloon bar?”
It was a quaintly old fashioned way of phrasing things, but it showed he had the right idea.
He knew that to really succeed, a publication must address what really interests, what really matters to readers even if – perhaps especially if – they wouldn’t formally admit to an interest in the topic if asked directly.
At Grazia, this is what the editor says about why she runs such conferences: “I don’t like to shut people up, I let them run on. That is often how you get the best ideas. I look around at people in our office. Some are twentysomething, single without kids, others are guilt-stricken working mothers like me. But we all like to debate things; we’re highly engaged with all sorts of subjects. We flick between discussing child abuse to the latest shoes. That is how a woman’s mind works. It can contain all this different stuff at once.
“Clearly, she uses conference as a handy focus group. Bruton’s chief objective is that when women pick up her magazine on Tuesday morning it will contain what they are already talking about. And the easiest way to ensure this is to simulate and observe that conversation."
If you want a model for how to come up with great ideas, and feed them into a great publication, Bruton and Grazia show the way.
Saturday, 13 February 2010
Monday, 8 February 2010
Introducing Multimedia Journalism, A Practical Guide
This video explains what my multimedia journalism project is all about.
MMJ is a book plus website designed to cover writing for print and the web, stills photography, video and audio, including podcasting.
It's for any journalism or media student, and it will take them through from day one to graduation in all practical aspects of such a course.
Find out more at multimedia-journalism.co.uk.
Follow the Twitter feed at twitter.com/andybull, the blog at writeeditblog.blogspot.com and the YouTube channel at youtube.com/multimediajournalism
Sunday, 7 February 2010
Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide
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Thursday, 28 January 2010
Apple iPad: the picture they didn't want you to see
Steve Jobs may think he's come up with something new and original...
but Dom Jolly thought of it years ago
Thursday, 21 January 2010
What journalism schools should teach about entrepreneurialism
Entrepreneurialism is in the air, with three events – two UK
So I thought I’d draw together what is being done, look at the common threads in the discussion, and in the process make a stab at drawing together a template for what those who teach/train journalists should be equipping them to do.
First, what is entrepreneurialism?
It’s equipping journalism students and, indeed, working journalists, to spot a business opportunity, and then create a business, that will enable them to make their journalism pay.
Why is it necessary?
Because jobs in established media companies are scarce and getting scarcer. I blogged recently about where I think the jobs will be in 2010, but for increasing numbers of journalists, if you want to practise your craft, you’ll have to create a business that enables you to do so.
What should be taught?
Jeff Jarvis of Cuny, the City University of New York UK , and find the source material to what I summarise below here
and here.
Here’s what students learn:
How to create a plan for a sustainable (profitable) journalism business
That plan includes
· An elevator pitch – how to sell the idea briefly and effectively
· A needs statement – why does the world need this business?
· Market research and analysis – deciding who their customers are, and talking to them about the idea
· Competitive analysis – who do you have to beat?
· Product plan – what is it?
· Revenue plan – how’s it going to make money?
· Distribution/marketing plan – how will people discover it?
· Operations plan – how will it operate? What will that cost?
· Launch plan – what are the phases and milestones?
Here are some of the business ideas currently being developed
1 Making an iphone app around sports
2 Infrastructure for the assignment of news assignments to journalists, bloggers and students
3 Distributing radio shows in the student’s home state in Africa over the phone as phone calls
5 Serving the Ugandan diaspora in the US and the UK
6 A platform for educators to share their curriculum and news about science
Jeff Jarvis’s view is that what he characterises as the big old dumb media company is not going to be replaced by some big new smart media company. Rather, its going to be replaced “by an ecosystem of a couple of hundred individual players who operate under motivations and means and business models. That’s the world our students are going in to.
“There will be jobs in established media but students also need the means to start their own jobs
“So much is changing, we don’t know how journalism will look as a career in 10 years time – even five years. But our hunch is that there will be a demand for journalism, for our traditional skills – which is why we still teach them.
“But we need to be prepared to meet the type of demand that there is for journalists and journalism in the future, and the old model is only going to be one way, and maybe not the main way, of making a living as a journalist.”
Academic journalism courses must be dovetailed with media companies
Cuny also ties in with media companies, and that seems to me to be key.
Indeed, any journalism course that is not allied with a publisher – of a local or national news website, newspaper or B2B or consumer magazine is going to look increasingly cut off from the real work of journalism.
Specifically, at Cuny, says Jarvis: “We just added a course in hyperlocal built around running The New York Times blog, The Local, in Brooklyn . We are working with The Times and others to also tackle hyperlocal advertising opportunities and challenges (funded by the Carnegie Corporation).”
One contributor to Jeff Jarvis’s conference call was George Brock, professor of journalism at City University in London
“Our magazine course does require students to shape and present a new business idea which then gets taken apart by experts and by the class. ...But this kind of exercise is not yet general for our 600-plus graduates and undergraduates and I'm keen to spread this sort of learning so that it reaches all our students and strengthens their hand in the years ahead.
“1) In almost anything to do with entrepreneurial activity, there's a huge concentration on the elevator pitch and preparing for the mauling from the audience. TV shows like Dragon's Den (apologies to the US - this is a massively popular British TV show featuring a jury of hard-bitten business gurus chewing, and mostly spitting out, new business ideas) only reinforce this. A business idea for sustaining a new form of journalism is not about making a quick killing: it needs legs, strength to survive imitation by new competitors, the ability to create a platform which lasts.
“2) On an assumption that was perfectly good in the past, many journalism courses assume that their students will join large journalism outfits of several hundred – if not thousands – of people. This is a particular kind of working culture and jobs in them tend to be relatively specialised. Working in teams of, say, less than 10, is a different business and requires a degree of flexibility and skills of collaboration which are worth drawing attention to.
“My hunch is that the very best way to teach this is in experimental local news sites working on the ground in central
I imagine all journalism courses get students to create a publication – print online or both as part of their studies – but very few insist that this be a viable business that will attract readers and advertisers and create the revenue to pay journalists. In future they should.
Some are working towards that.
Goldsmith’s CollegeLondon boroughs that will be linked when the East London overground railway reopens in a massively extended form later this year.
It sounds like a worthy effort
Birmingham’s City University has MAs in Online Journalism and Freelance Journalism with a strong focus on entrepreneurship and enterprise.
Entrepreneurialism isn’t just for students
The NUJ’s Making Journalism Pay conference was filled with examples of journalists who have – often out of necessity – become entrepreneurs.
There are two detailed reports on the conference
Niche business news services that work
The conference heard from the founders of two business news services that took a lot of cash and promotion to establish but which are now profitable.
One was former Yorkshire Post business editor David Parkin who in 2007 set up Thebusinessdesk.com. Manchester covering business news for the north of England
Daniel Johnston is the founder of indusdelta.co.uk a niche news, analysis and community website set up in 2007 for the welfare to work industry. It sustains itself through advertising.
Making local media pay
He told the conference: “Even now, despite the slump, we’re getting by.
“It’s so important to look at the market – and whether you’re going to get advertisers.”
New markets for your skills
If traditional media companies can’t or won’t pay you to do what you do well, you need to find someone who will.
Gavid MacFadyean, director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism, said 75% of investigative journalism is now carried out by foundations or NGOs.
Blogging
Paul Staines runs the 2m-page-views-per-month political blog Guido Fawkes.
And is a founder of MessageSpace.co.uk – an advertising network that represents 40-odd political websites. He told the conferenceThe top 10% of bloggers had monthly sales averaging £2,861 in the fourth quarter of 2008 – and that you can add on perhaps 30 per cent to those numbers now.
Staines also makes money selling stories to newspapers, from T-shirt sales and appearances.
He can get £20,000 from a newspaper for a political scandal story.
“The thought that a rival newspaper is going to get it drives them mad and they pay up for that reason.
“I have achieved the Marxist ideal. I own the means of production and distribution. I have job security, I can’t be fired and do much better than many journalists.”
Dominic Ponsford says: “When it comes to niche business and local media I think we are going to see ever more small web-based start-ups taking a slice of the pie.”
He told the conference how his title, Press Gazette, which has had a troubled recent history under a variety of owners, is made to pay:
- Reach a mass audience online
- Reach an elite audience in print
- Attract people to linked events
I suppose its fair to say that, as journalists have only had to be entrepreneurial in the past few years, it's no surprise not many are much good at it right now. But that will change. It has to change if journalists are to be equipped to survive.
Thursday, 14 January 2010
We are all journalists now – so we need a new definition of news
With Haiti
Yet the old media conglomerates still strive to cover such stories in the old top-down way that they always did. Last night the BBC’s correspondent was bundled onto the 10 O’Clock News a bare 10 minutes after his plane had landed. All he could tell the millions watching was what a few airport workers had told him in that time, and that as his plane had arrived over an area of low-rise buildings he hadn’t really seen any devastation.
Clearly the old cry: have we got a man there yet? Is still heard in the world’s newsrooms.
Now you might argue that the BBC, along with every other news organisation, made strenuous efforts to get material from on the ground, and was very happy to take that from anyone with a mobile phone. You’d be right, but that doesn’t alter the fact that really major stories are actually now covered by those involved in them. The citizens are the reporters. The professional journalists are the curators of that material: they are editors, not reporters. Or at least, they should be.
Because we (almost all) have a multimedia broadcasting device in our pocket, we are all journalists now. I want to hear the story from those involved in it, not some bloke who’s just landed. No wonder the general view of journalists is that they over-simplify, misunderstand and distort.
But of course all those millions with camera phones, Twitter and Facebook accounts aren’t all trained in reporting. So while we all have the technical power to report, only the chosen few have the journalistic skills to do it well, and hence effectively. Often that doesn’t matter. As any journalist will tell you, a big story tells/writes itself.
But what this also suggests to me is that, to be a fully enfranchised citizen in this new age of omnipresent broadcasting capability, a person needs to know how to be a reporter. Such skills should be taught in school alongside the basics of maths and English.
I’m not talking about abstract media studies, but rather the solid basics of what makes a news story and how to tell it, in words, sounds and pictures. That is now just as vital as being able to structure and write an essay.
Increasingly, any citizen who can’t engage with the internet and social media risks powerlessness and disenfranchisement.
More and more, a consumer needs access to social media to get a decent level of service.
Contrast the general ineffectiveness and frustration of spending hours on the phone to a call centre with the ease of posting a tweet about your problem. Very often, the latter works, the former doesn’t.
When my broadband packed up I spent 21/2 fruitless hours on a bad phone line to India
When my car was vandalised our community copper was unavailable. We didn’t hear from him until a week later. Yet my tweet to a chief inspector of another force got an immediate response with solid advice of what I should do.
Pretty soon the best way to get your elected representative to take notice of you will be through social media. So anyone who doesn’t have access to it, or can’t express themselves effectively through it, will be powerless.
The impact of all this on professional journalists and how they are trained is, or ought to be, seismic.
The big stories have always been the ones that involve a lot of people. Now, the participants are the reporters too.
The snow in the UK
When the floods in the north of England devastated parts of the Lake District I looked in vain for really comprehensive coverage on mainstream media that would satisfy my particular interest. I got plenty of reporters doing pieces to camera in a swamped high street. Only on social media did I get the wealth of reporting within which I could find what I wanted.
I was interested in a particular village and valley. I found a blog post from the owner of a bed and breakfast who had driven right across the region, taking photographs of the devastation all along the way, and using a simple piece of free software to geotag them to a map. With this and some other material pertinent to my particular interest, I was able to create my own personalised news stream on my Facebook page.
The material was there on social media to satisfy almost any observer’s particular interest in a very big story, but the established media organisations failed to become the gateway to it.
But what about smaller stories? Not the earthquakes and revolutions, but the stories that might be seen as the bread-and-butter of local news coverage?
Jeff Jarvis suggests that we need to do no less than re-think what news is and how it is reported.
Responding to a Pew report that said 95 per cent of original reporting still comes from newspapers he blogged that the study [the emphases are mine]: “defines news as news has been defined. We should be rethinking our definition of what is news - for many people, it’s not stories about juvenile justice, one of Pew’s subjects - and how it should be covered - not necessarily in articles - and how it is spread - that is the role of blogs and Twitter - and not be stuck in old measurements.
He goes on: “We are also just beginning to see experimentation with the form of news, moving past the articles the study measures. News is becoming more of a process than a product; it is being disseminated in new ways thanks to search and social and algorithmic links. News is changing.
“We must keep mind that we are at the dawn, the very dawn of the new news ecosystem.”
What the economics of that new ecosystem might be is still very hazy. But what we do know is that this new model will strongly feature the citizen-as-journalist, and hence how to do good journalism must be an essential ingredient of a citizen’s education.
Thursday, 31 December 2009
Where journalism students should look for jobs in 2010
The question occurred to me while listening to a Q and A session at the NCTJ’s Journalism Skills Conference. It was actually asked in a slightly different way of a panel of editors and trainers representing the BBC, STV, The Guardian, Newsquest, and The Scotsman by Bob Satchwell, executive director of the society of editors.
Mr Satchwell asked: “How can news providers make money to pay for [new journalists] when information is so freely available on the internet? And are there any implications for the way we train journalists arising out of that first question?”
This strikes me as a really key question, but the problem with the answers he got was that they circled around the seeming impossibility of charging for news online, and didn’t really get beyond that conundrum.
But, actually, things are not as gloomy across the whole range of media. If we go beyond the narrow definition of news, and think about journalistic content – or content produced by journalists - in general, then I believe some clear and positive answers can be given.
Because, while getting people to pay for general news online, whether locally or nationally, is hugely difficult, there are areas of growth in the media, and areas where there is a healthy market for journalistic skills, as well as the ability to pay for them. And all that despite the recession.
You can watch the conference discussion at http://www.nctj.com/resources.php The videos are long; a full record of a Q and A session lasting almost two hours. I’ll quote the main points the speakers made below, but first, I think its more important – particularly for trainee journalists who hope to find a job in the coming year - to look at where they can best aim their efforts.
My answer is that the pool of employers who will hire journalists, and those with journalistic training, is shifting. Here, in summary, is my list of who can and can’t pay.
Who'll struggle to pay for new journalists in future?
Commercial broadcasters
Who'll be able to afford to pay for new journalists?
Local authority-funded magazines
Consumer magazines
Customer magazines
B2B magazines
Who else will want those with modern journalistic skills?
Social media marketeers
PRs
With the growth in social media marketing, those who can marry journalistic skills with an understanding of this new area will find themselves in great demand
So, let me justify those claims.
Where the jobs will be in the future
Not on local papers
start-ups and very traditional old-school print publications. These enterprises will support very few journalists, and I doubt they’ll be able to afford to train many. Regional press ABCs have been dire, with an overall fall in circulation of 8 per cent.Not on national newspapers
They’ve only ever taken on a few dozen college-fresh recruits annually between them, and that’s not going to change.
On the BBC
Social broadcasting will remain in rude health. The BBC was described as the elephant in the room during the discussions in Glasgow
The BBC will remain very rich and well resourced, and will continue to train people, and to give a journalistic home to those trained elsewhere
On consumer magazines
The August magazine ABCs showed what Press Gazette characterised as a solid performance
“According to final figures from magazine industry trade body the PPA, yesterday’s figures show that total average circulation for all the weeklies, monthlies, quarterlies and so on amounted to just over 657.5 million in the first six months of this year. This compares with 683.6 million in the same period a year ago.
“So while the economy shrank by as much as five per cent according to some estimates – the magazine industry was rather more resilient, at least circulation-wise.”
(you’ll find the interview 20 minutes in on the linked podcast) of 2009 being a “bad year for advertising, a very strong year for circulation, especially in the last six months.” He predicted a rise of a 2 per cent in his magazines' circulation. Despite a fall in advertising, Conde Nast has been expanding, launching two new titles.
On customer magazines.
The top three magazines in the UK
The analysis, again from Dominc Ponsford shows:
Skymag: 7,545,510 (0.0%)Sky Sports Magazine (
Sky Movies Magazine (
Asda Magazine: 2,524,175 (0.0%)
Tesco Magazine: 1,998,407 (0.0%)
Sainsbury's Fresh Ideas: 1,499,499 (0.0%)
TV Choice: 1,335,894 (100.0%)
What's on TV 1,270,032 100.0%
The Somerfield Magazine: 1,003,795 (0.0%)
Radio Times: 961,114 (99.9%)
Morrisons Magazine: 934,535 (0.0%)
Take a Break: 914,109 (100.0%)
Sense Magazine: 821,895 (0.0%)
Sky Kids: 755,141 (0.0%)
Saga Magazine: 652,055 (98.1%)
Very few falls in circulation there.
But how many journalism courses prepare students for this market, and urge them to equip themselves for a first job in it? When I’ve mentioned this to tutors on such courses they tell me their students wouldn’t wear it; that they aren’t interested in this area. So, to answer Bob Satchwell's question, point them to areas such as this, where the jobs are.
Many tutors also say that students aren’t interested in B2B magazines. They should be encourged to think again.
Not all of them will survive, but most will. The survivors will be those that offer information people will pay for: information that helps them make or save money, and do their jobs better.
On local authority magazines
This is a burgeoning area, but one that is much-criticised because of the impact on local newspapers. Local council magazines will remain in rude heath; a whole new platform of social media, funded by the council tax payer.
OK, the journalism won’t be objective, but with 95 per cent of local authorities producing them
there are jobs to be had.
On social media marketing platforms
Social media marketing is going to be a huge growth area. Organisations from the biggest corporations to the smallest family firms want to use Twitter, Facebook and whatever platforms emerge in the future. And to do that well they need people who can create good content. That means journalists, or those with journalistic training and skills.
In PR
Journalists deride PRs and delete most of their press releases unread. Quite right; virtually all of them are poorly targeted, poorly written rubbish. But, increasingly, journalists who can handle multimedia can create a release with stills, audio and video that is extremely useful to the outlets it is targeted at. Those trad journalistic organisations that can’t afford nearly as many journalists as they used to lap the stuff up. Want to write for a local paper or get yor reports on local TV? Increasingly, you'd best go into PR.
What the panel said
But enough from me. Here’s what the panellists at the NCTJ’s Future of Journalism conference had to say for themselves.
The session, on December 3, was chaired by Aasmah Mir, Presenter, Radio 5 Live and Radio Scotland
Bob Satchwell asked them: “How can news providers make money to pay for [new journalists] when information is so freely available on the internet. And are there any implications for the way we train journalists arising out of that first question?
The videos can be seen in full here. If you want to pick up on just this part of the discussion, it begins at 7.50 in the embed below. The debate was filmed by three students studying NCTJ accredited courses: Clare Carswell, Glasgow Caledonian University; Lesley Quinn, Cardonald College; Natasha Radmehr, University of Strathclyde.
Tom Happold, head of multimedia, Guardian News and Media
"I suspect the answer isn’t one big answer it’s a lot of answers. I suspect we are going to have to look at a number of ways of raising revenue as we increasingly become online publishers.
"Touching on the Murdoch question [paywalls for Times Online and other titles] I’m really curious to see how they do on that. …I find it really hard to imagine who’s going to subscribe to read the Times online. … Its website isn’t as good as its newspaper…it’s not a particularly pleasurable experience reading that website, and it’s not true to the behaviour of people who…get news online.
[He’s asked by the chairperson whether, if all newspapers together chose to charge, people would subscribe. He answers:] "There is one very big text news organisation that is financed by the licence fee [the BBC]. That is the elephant in the room. Also, pure news in the text form is very easy to replicate. ..It’s very easy even if something is behind a paywall to pick up on that story and replicate it and report on that story. It’s why papers often hold stuff back to the last edition.
"To go back to the question; a number of answers. Advertising is still going to be a big part of it, creating a strong relationship with your users online so that you can sell services to them, get them to pay for events, … Also maybe journalism in the future is going to have to look at other sources of funding to do big investigations. …There is no reason why news organisations shouldn’t … appeal to your readers to help you do stuff.
Margaret Strayton, group editorial manager, Newsquest
[She is asked by the chair whether the Johnston Press paywall trial is that the right way forward.]
“I wish I knew, and I wish Johnston
John McLellan, editor, The Scotsman
"I think you can probably track it back to the 1980s and the free newspaper explosion …we have since that point steadily devalued news and its reached its peak with the giving away of the London Evening Standard, and online is basically an extension of that. As an industry we have devalued what has cost us a lot to produce …as an industry we do have to try and roll back the years and collectively get back into a position when we do start putting a value on what we do and are not prepared to throw it away.
"We chased audience and Scotsman.com was very successful; we built up three million unique users…but print still represents 95 per cent of our revenues and we have to put 95 per cent of our effort into maintaining where the money’s coming from.
It may be that the future for us is in some kind of PRS [performing rights] setup. If someone plays a Paul McCartney song in Taipei
Tom Happold
"We are in danger of sounding like loom weavers in industrial revolution Manchester
"Google and the other search engines are creaming off vast amounts of the advertising online but that is because they are providing a service that people like to use. And actually the growth of the web has allowed a publication like the Guardian to become a global news organisation. There are opportunities as well with that and I think."
John McLellan
"The vast majority of us working in a commercial environment cant lose the amount of money the Guardian loses every year. We can’t do it, or we’d be out of a job."
Tom Happold
"Some people have experimented with charging. The New York Times put a paywall around its comment section and then took it off because the New York Times stopped being part of the cut and thrust of political debate in online American journalism.
"The idea we could have gone back in time and put a paywall around our sites, [if we had] we wouldn’t have the huge audiences that publications like the Guardian do have online.
"In reality what we are going to have to face up to is a contraction of the industry".
Alex Gerlis, head of training, BBC College of Journalism
"Obviously from a BBC point of view we cannot charge, people are paying a licence fee in the United Kingdom
"When Murdoch is using, the kind of rhetoric he is using around Google, he’s also got the BBC in mind as well. I can’t think that it is commercially helpful to talk about Google in the kind of language that is being used about it. …because for an awful lot of people Google is now part of the English language, so to suddenly demonise it, an awful lot of people aren’t going to understand what you mean, about why is Google stealing things when its simply a way for us to find out about your information.
"…Maybe once you get past the rhetoric, and you start thinking about what sites you would pay for maybe it’ll change, maybe some specialist sites maybe people would do."
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