Murdoch decides Sun, Times, NYT, to charge for online news

After the release of their annual figures, NewsCorp have finally announced that they will be charging for news online by next summer.

The figures themselves don't make good reading: a $680 million quartley loss, overall revenues down 7.8%, and a $3.4 billion loss at the end of June, compared to a $5.4 billion profit the year before.

PaidContentUK have some more figures:

News Corp. reported both its full fiscal year and quarter results today—swinging to a loss for both. For FY09, the company showed a net loss of $3.4 billion, compared with net income of $5.4 billion in FY08. Revenues were down 8 percent, to $30 billion from $33 billion. News Corp. took a pre-tax impairment charge in FY09 of $8.9 billion for goodwill and intangibles.

It appears that Rupert Murdoch has chosen to announce his online charging plan on the same day NewsCorp's figures are released. This gives him the opportunity to show a wider content as to why users will soon be paying for material they used to receive for free. From Media Guardian:

"Quality journalism is not cheap," said Murdoch. "The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels but it has not made content free. We intend to charge for all our news websites."

The Australian-born press and television baron was speaking as his News Corporation holding company slumped to a $3.4bn (£2bn) net loss for the financial year to June, hit by huge writedowns in the value of its assets, restructuring charges and a dive in commercial revenue.

It seems that David Simon, who created somewhat of a blogosphere storm with his recent article in the Colombia Journalism Review, 'Build the Wall', has got his wish:

If the only way to read the Times is to buy the Times, online or off, then readers who clearly retain a desire for that product will reach for their wallets. And those comfortable acquiring their news at a keyboard will be happy to pay much less than they do for home delivery.

Bobbie Johnson sees a clear divide in the media between those charging for content, and those advocating a free model where journalism becomes something else entirely. This might be an overly simplistic way of analysing the debate - few media platforms will be all free, or all charged for - but it's worth a look at the full article:

Proponents of free news say it is impossible to succeed by charging readers when there are so many competing sources of information prepared to give their services to readers for nothing, echoing the words of the famous futurist Stewart Brand, who said "information wants to be free".

So far at least, history is one their side: while specialist news publications such as the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and the Economist charge for access to some of the information they publish, few mainstream publications have managed to succeed in implementing pay walls.

Of course, the kickback will be that users won't pay for the content, but Murdoch believes he has found a simple solution:

The News Corp boss pointed to the Telegraph's recent run of scoops about MPs' expenses as an example of journalism readers would pay to read: "I'm sure people would be very happy to pay for that."

Rarely afraid of a confrontation, Murdoch made it clear that he was gearing up for a bruising fight: "Our policy is to win.

In the age of 24 hour news channels, and 24 hour newspaper online publishing, how often does a scoop like the Telegraph's come along? For those slow news days, when papers are reporting the same stories, with similar quotes, figures, and pictures, will users will be willing to go to The Sun, The Times and the News of the World?

Unsurprisingly, Jeff Jarvis is having a field day, and points out one of the biggest problems with charging online - even the smallest cost allows you to be undercut by a website offering content for free: a business model where there is no direct charge to the user:

Charging for content brings marketing and customer-service costs. Online, it reduces audience and the advertising they justify. Putting content behind a wall cuts it off from search and links; they cut off your Googlejuice.

When publishers build those walls, they open the door for free competitors, who can now enter the content business with virtually no barrier to entry. Publishers who fool themselves into thinking pay will save the day only further forestall the innovation and experimentation that is the only possible path to success online.

If their content is behind a pay wall, NewsCorp will of course be looking into protecting their material, to a drastic extent. This from the Inquisitr:

Harold Mitchell, the founder of one of Australia’s largest advertising groups and a man connected to News Corp locally, said in a radio interview Thursday (local time) that News Corp. is preparing to sue Google and Yahoo to stop both from linking to, and quoting News Corp content.

Stopping Google linking to your articles, which will already be behind a pay wall, could have a substantial effect on online advertising revenue for NewsCorp websites. But will the subscriptions or micropayments they receive be enough to compensate?

Charlie Beckett reckons Murdoch could be going down one of three paths:

1.‘Asset-stripping’: get as much cash out of these businesses as you can without completely killing the customer base to pump up the balance sheet while other media organisations burn their capital and plunge further into debt.

2. ‘The gamble’: If a few titles go down that just proves their weakness. Whatever is left standing will dominate a depleted market as the rivals follow in the wake of News International. In the same way that putting the price up of the Sunday Times actually strengthened its market dominance. If you are a sector leader - such as The Sun - then you have the brand community to set the pace and help dictate consumer behaviour.

3. Genius: Murdoch understands that enough of the public want to preserve their source of news and will be prepared to pay. They realise that they have had a free ride.

Although this business path is not inevitable, it needs to be experimented with - and if anyone can try it, it will be Murdoch. But if nothing else, as Matt Wells says in the Guardian - it is one hell of a gambe.

Observer abandons TV guide due to falling revenue

From Journalism.co.uk, news that the Observer has stopped printing it's TV guide, and is facing a backlash from readers. This is Stephen Pritchard, reader's editor:

The figures are stark. With advertising revenue set to plummet 26 per cent this year and circulation down 6.9 per cent on last year, the Observer, like other newspapers, is having to make painful decisions about what it can afford to print. Loyal readers have displayed remarkable forbearance recently as the news, business and sport sections have gradually slimmed down but they could contain themselves no longer when the TV guide disappeared.”

I've always been a greater fan of Saturday Guardian's pocket-sized Guide, but that's not quite the point. What other supplements will the Sunday's be cutting back on in an attempt to reduce print costs?

Online poll and the Times Online charging on 'The Bugle'

As reported by Media Guardian, 'The Bugle', which is Times Online's satirical podcast, asked how much you would be prepared to pay for access to it each week, followed by an online poll.

Coming on the back of Murdoch's determination to start charging for content, it makes one wonder whether the Times is sending out feelers to its users regarding paid for material.

You should be able to see the poll below:



This gives me an opportunity to plug my own online poll, with all of six questions about how much you'd be willing to pay for content (and what content), and your current charging for-content-habits (if you have any). Here's the link on Survey Monkey, it's only take two minutes so have a go!

New ABCes figures on newspaper websites

The Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronics published their new rankings of newspaper websites for the month of June.

Obviously, the higher the number of website visitors, not to mention the amount of time they spend on the site, what they click through on and what features they use, will have an impact on online revenue through advertising.

The Daily Mail was first, with 29,373,379 unique users, an 83% boost on June last year. The Guardian was second with 28,966,942, with the Telegraph a bit further behind on 27,175,233.

The Independent, whose website is widely regarded as a big step down from its competitors, actually suffered a drop in unique users last month, at 9,352,369. However, it still gained a year-on-year rise.

These figures do not tell the whole story by no means - the differing business strategies mean that more users don't simply translate into higher web revenue: it will depend on many adverts, how much is being charged, how smart that advertising is and whether the websites are charging for any services.

Lionel Barber, Financial Times Editor, on charging for content online

This is a post which will contribute towards the website on new business models in print I am designing. I am publishing them both on this blog, and on one which will exist on the website itself.

Lionel Barber, who has editor of the Financial Times knows a thing or two about a successful business model which allows a paper to charge for online material online, has predicted that 'almost all' news organisations will, within a year, be charging for content online.

Speaking at a Media Standards Trust event, Barber said that:

"...we must go back to first principles and make the case for journalism. This is partly because the recession and the Internet are undermining the business model that has sustained news gathering since the late 19th century. The worldwide web has disrupted revenue streams and dramatically lowered the barriers to entry to the news business. As the Economist noted: “The business of selling words to readers and selling readers to advertisers, which has sustained their role in society, is falling apart.”

'Disrupting the revenue streams' makes the Internet sound like an inconvenience to the news industry, rather than an unparalleled opportunity which they can't very well prevent regardless.

Peter Preston is less certain than Barber about what line the great newspaper giants will fall on when it comes to charging for content

The [New York] Times, which invests so much in content, may be able to charge successfully for some or all of it. But its unique user count (see Ken Doctor's warning) is bound to decline, taking online advertising down with it. If there was a widespread, concerted change, then perhaps it could be contrived without too much loss. But current monopoly law makes such an organised commercial shift impossible.

Marks Potts thinks that readers won't pay, simply due to the poor quality and lack of diversity on newspaper websites:

Most newspapers and their sites are full of content that's widely available elsewhere—wire copy, stories covered by competitors, etc. In the flattened world of journalism in the Internet era, where monopolies are shattered and readers are a click away from countless alternatives. it's just too easy for readers to look elsewhere—especially if you stick a pay wall in front of them.
Think newspapers are full of unique content? Well, sit down some day with a copy of just about any paper and circle what's truly unique and unavailable anywhere else. The result isn't pretty. Do the same thing with the paper's Web site, and you quickly realize that the problem is compounded by presentation that just isn't very compelling, to put it charitably.

Now, misguided, desperate leaders like the FT's Barber somehow think the answer is to somehow convince readers to pay for something that, sadly, doesn't have enough value to justify charging. Readers are smarter than that, and that's why Barber's notion that "almost all" news sites will soon be charging for access is a hopeless dream. Sure, they may charge—but readers won't pay, at least not in anything resembling sufficient numbers. Not unless they see significant quality and value. And based on the current track record, there's no reason whatsoever to believe that will be the case.

Jeff Jarvis is, unsurprisingly, almost desperately unsympathetic:

In what other industry do companies feel entitled to revenue just because they used to have it or they think they deserve it because of who they are?

But newspapers think that companies that served their customers better – Google or craigslist – owe them money because they lost those customers for serving them badly and ripping them off for years.

Of course, Barber and his paper are in a rather unique position, seeing as how they are afford to charge for content. They have a rich client base who require the unique financial information which, along with the Wall Street Journal, they provide. So Barber can state that:

'figuring out what is special, distinctive and original is the vital first step. The second is to establish an online platform capable of charging for content, whether on a payment per article basis or a package subscription.

But few papers are in a similar position: and being the only paper to cover say, a small market town isn't enough of a unique base. Peter Preston evaluates the options for some of the main national papers:

"The Telegraph, with a huge print subscription base, has one set of possibilities. The Express, with no subscriptions and not much of a website, has none - except price-cutting and seeing its print possibilities grow. The Guardian, leading the unique user pack, has advertising possibilities to lose if its user count slides too much in a charging switch - but jam the day after tomorrow doesn't help if the teacake is burning today."

With any luck, someone will call on Barber in 12 months and see where we are. But editor of the FT is a privileged position to make such pronouncements from.

Warnings on media profits

This is a post which will contribute towards the website on new business models in print I am designing. I am publishing them both on this blog, and on one which will exist on the website itself.

From the Media Guardian, warnings about the profits on UK media companies:

The past six months have seen the greatest number of media companies issue profit warnings since the dot com crash of 2001, according to Ernst & Young.

Rudberg pointed out that during the slump of 2001, 21 UK listed companies made profit warnings in the first half of that year - but the trend saw a "sharp increase" to a record level of 18 in the third quarter.

Ernst & Young concludes that the decrease in profit warnings between the first and second quarters this year is due to cautious financial forecasting by smaller AIM-listed media companies rather than a sign that the industry is stabilising.

"If anything the second-quarter 2009 profit warning figures suggest that the downturn has started to impact the larger listed media companies," Rudberg said.

"In the 12 months to the end of March, 75% of the media companies that warned [on profits] were listed on AIM. [This compares] to the majority [of companies reporting profit warnings] being FTSE companies in the second quarter this year".

The number of warnings being it's highest for eight years only highlights the need for print media to find a new business model, whether they be small scale local papers or FTSE companies. Trinity Mirror's declining advertising revenue plots a similar sense of urgency:

Trinity Mirror reported today that advertising revenue at its regional newspaper division fell by 36% year on year for the period to 26 April, with sectors such as recruitment and property advertising falling by more than 50%.

Overall Trinity Mirror, owner of the Daily Mirror and more than 140 regional newspapers, said that group advertising revenue declined by 30% year on year.

The regional division fell 37% in January and February and 35% in March and April. Display advertising was down 24% for the period, recruitment down 50%, property down 54% and automotive advertising down 35%.

Given that much of their advertising can now be placed online, and for free or virtually any cost, it is hardly surprising that classifieds are down by such a dramatic rate. When we talk of competition for newspapers, we no longer simply mean news websites, but those competing with their business: Craiglist being one frequently mentioned.

Media Convergence Week at Sheffield University

• Ed Roussel, Telegraph on digital media
• Ben Hazell, Telegraph on search engine optimisation
• The Twitter debate!
• Audio/Broadcast training and more lectures
• How do you make money out of the web?
  

Convergence Week

Here on the print, web, broadcast and magazine courses at the University of Sheffield journalism department, we've just come to the end of 'convergence week'. Essentially, in line with broader trends in the media, each course has training in aspects of the media they are unfamiliar with - for web students, this meant broadcast training, for broadcast it meant web training and for print and magazine it meant both.

Why bother? Because virtually every media organisation now wants multi-skilled journalists happy working on all platforms. Although we learn many aspects of the media together, the four courses are by nature restricted to their own domain. If I'm honest, I don't know how much longer the department will be able to preserve such a structure, without also offering (or entirely replacing all the courses with) a postgraduate degree in multimedia journalism.

I'd imagine there are conflicting views at the end of convergence week, although those of us on the web course seem to have had a largely positive attitude towards it.

I've already done a post on Twitter, a debate started by Peter Cole in the first lecture on Monday. I seem to be finding new people on all the courses on it everyday now, as well as a flurry of new blogs.

Ed Roussel
On Tuesday, in our ordinary guest lecture slot we heard from Ed Roussel, the Telegraph's Digital Editor. The success of the Telegraph online is no secret, and it was a surprise to hear that despite the latter's obsession with it, the Telegraph gained more hits on Obama's inauguration day that the Guardian.

Ed pointed a quick picture of the media: NYT suffering a 60% drop in share price, the LA Times having 3 rounds of job cuts since July (though as I have written about already, their online revenue has reached a critical point) although the Telegraph has remained profitable for 2 years.

Due to their growth online, Ed feels that the reach of newspapers has, in fact, not diminished even though print circulation is down. In essence, the talk focused on what new business models the media could use to profit from journalism online - more on this later.

I asked Ed what role citizen journalism and user-generated content had to play in such new models, as I'd been surprised he hadn't spoken about it more. He replied that it was 'critical' that readers felt they were part of the process, and stated that his colleague Jeff Randall had become 'obsessed' with reading the comments on his pieces. Ed went on:

'Can you make money from it? Right now, no. But if you don't do it, you'll loose audience and therefore loose money.'

In response to another question, Ed stated that regional newspapers, which are still held in such high esteem by journalists (and journalism students) with a more traditional outlook, were 'firmly headed down the wrong path.' Their problem is, in fact, in the title - hyper-local is now more effective that 'regional'.

Search engine optimisation
Ben Hazell, also from the Telegraph, was a student on the web course last year. He gave us a talk about search engine optimisation (SEO), which has given me even more ideas about re-designing this blog and setting up my next one.
In response to a question about Google (I'm looking forward to reading Jeff Jarvis' 'What would Google do?' when it comes through the door), Ben replied that it is not providing facts, it provides information. At university, it's been banged into us for years to be sceptical about online sources of any sort. What's needed is a different attitude, and a better approach to how to find those sources, what to trust and how to check them.

Lectures and Training
As web students, we actually had a minimum of training this week compared to other courses. We had already done the video training so essentially underwent a re-fresh on the camcorders and Abode Premier. The audio training was quick, but comprehensive enough that I'm sure we'll cope.

During the lecture on online magazines, I realised a point about online revenue. Liz Nice asked who used RSS feeds for magazines, and I replied that I did so for the Economist but obviously didn't pay for any of this. However, this got me thinking. I'm not a fan of ad blockers, simply because if they become too prolific, advertising revenue for websites will reduce and may even cause some to shut down. But is using RSS feeds any different? A tiny minority of the feeds I receive also show the adverts from the website (Mark Halperin and Time's 'The Page' is one of them). Along with a total lack of familiarity with the sites themselves - because you have much less of a reason to look at them - this is just one of the downsides of RSS feeds.

One of our last lectures was on that of digital newspapers. Although this a potentially impressive venture, I can't see it taking off myself. It seems simply like a way to preserve a platform with technology, rather than looking at the wider process of news-gathering and how stories themselves are told. With people getting news and analysis, personally geared towards them from multiple sources on their computers and phones, it may be too late for digital newspapers to seriously compete.

So how do we make money out of the web?
For me, this has been the key and often-repeated question that remains unanswered by the end of this week. I don't believe in charging for content online if it can be at all avoided. Services however, can be charged for (such as pro accounts on Flickr, as Helia pointed out to me). Certain, specialist sections of a website can be used to pay for the rest - Ed Roussel told us the Telegraph's Fantasy Football generated 2% of their web traffic, but 20% of their web revenue.

Making money out of journalism online. There's no lack of people working on this issue, but it will require innovation, creativity and many failed ventures, and even then, there is unlikely to be one, simple, universal solution.

So we'll end with a quote from Jeff Jarvis:

'I realized lately that I’d been assuming we could see an orderly transition, Jan. 20-like, from old media to new. But it’s clear that we’re going to see destruction, voids, and vacuums in the transition.'

London in the Snow

Must get on with this essay, but this article on the Guardian from Stuart Jeffries is too good to ignore. On wandering around London in the snow:

'For a day at least, Londoners returned to a forgotten innocence. Yesterday the headlines howled about how £2bn would be lost yesterday thanks to public transport disruption. Two words: So. What. We're in the middle of a credit crunch and £2bn is the sort of money a hedge-fund trader might find in the lining of his Armani suit. Yesterday we stopped measuring our lives in coffee spoons, overdrafts and balance of payments deficits. It felt good.

We needed the snow to remind us of that innocence. We needed it to remind us of who we are. We are not just homo-economicus, we can't be defined by the size of our negative equity, the burden of our personal debt, or numbers of en-suites. We need something more this winter than cowering at home noting down how many times Gordon Ramsay swears on Channel 4. Our new year resolutions are broken, our jobs insecure, our pensions worthless, our spirits crushed by January's post-Christmas gloom. We needed something to lift our spirits, to give us the excuse to play to no discernible economic benefit.'

Some more, I remember reading these lines in Joyce:

I stand on Kite Hill, looking across the London panorama below and remember the ending of Joyce's The Dead. "His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead." My soul was swooning (there, I admit it) yesterday as I stood and saw the snow falling, not on Joyce's Ireland, but on dirty old London, reborn as a thing of beauty. It was snowing from Epping Forest to Heathrow, Upminster to Uxbridge, on duke and dustman in a way that it hasn't for ages and probably won't for a good while. Savour it, I told myself.

St. Kilda Photo on the Guardian Website

So it turns out, having completely forgotten about submitting it, that I have a photo on Guardian Unlimited. It's on the 'Been there photo competition August 2008', photo 18.

I've put it on the blog before, but here it is again, a Soay Sheep on Hirta, St. Kilda, 40 miles off the Outer Hebrides.

You can see more of my photos on Flickr.

UK Media Advertising Revenue in the Global Financial Crisis

Looking at forecast advertising revenues for the UK media next year: the Guardian has startling figures:

Advertising revenues forecast to be down 21% next year in print industry.
TV ad spending forecast to be down 10% next year, with ad spending on TV between 2007 and 2010 estimated to be down 19%.
Total UK ad-spending down by 12% next year, with growth not predicted until 2011.
Digital media revenue growth will slow to only 2.1% next year, it is also estimated.
Internet display advertising is estimated to shrink by 5.5% next year.

This comes from a report by Enders Analysis. The full report can be found here.

Ouch. Not sure what else can be said about those figures. With even digital media slowing down considerably - there was a 20% growth in this sector of the industry in 2008 - the global financial crisis will hit UK media very hard. Let's hope it can emerge in tact, if not changed for the better. If digital media is going to continue growing, and with luck it will, then outlets will be forced to focus more on this area and develop it properly if they aren't doing so already.

This could, in the long run, be a positive thing for the media. But that doesn't mean the next few years will be easy or simple for the industry.

Start of my course: MA Web Journalism

I don't normally blog on activities I personally undertake, however considering its relevance I thought I'd pen (or type) a short piece on the start of my course.

I've currently studying for an MA in Web Journalism at the University of Sheffield. It's been a busy few weeks with inductions, module choices and lectures, seminars and workshops - certainly more than I've been used to in my undergraduate degree.

Already I'm beginning to see more of the differences between the traditional media, in particular print, and the emerged world of online media.

The Journalism department at the University of Sheffield offers a a range of different MA courses, namely Print, Magazine, Broadcast, Web and Political Communication. These are roughly in the order of popularity, Print being way out front. Many of the modules are shared and thus are undertaken by most if not all postgraduate students.

So far we have had lectures and seminars on, among many other aspects of journalism, the newsroom, media law, face-to-face interviewing, the PPC (Press Complaints Comission) code and so on. Thus far, I can't help but feel that much of what we have been taught is focusing on the aspects of journalism which are in decline and very much part of the MSM.

I'm not entirely sure this is a bad thing, but at a time when print media is in decline, and thus there are undeniably much fewer jobs available, could there be more recent developments incorporated instead? Luckily, there will be.

With digital research sessions to come and an acknowledgment from every lecturer about the importance of the Internet, this is unlikely to be a perception which will last. The department is impressive in its equipment and software, with all students having remote access to the UK PA newswire. This is not a department harking back to the ol' days of print media, but undergoing the same transition the whole sector is with interactive, multi-platform journalism taking a prominent role.

It's also worth remembering that much of what is taught that may seem to be aimed at traditional journalists - media law, ethics - is just as relevant to those working in the online media. There is an awful lot that that I simply don't yet know and whatever blogs or articles I've read about the state of the media so far, I'm not going to dismiss what the course has to offer. Not to mention that highlighting such a distinction between one 'type' of journalist and another, considering media convergence, may be outdated itself.

In particular, the aspects of the course exclusive to online media have been much more what I expected - it took all of 20 minutes to mention Facebook - and a lecture yesterday touched on Twitter, the idea of 'citizen journalism' and the Guardian's disastrous 'Clarke County' project in 2004.

The course is pretty intense, but fascinating and will be a lot of hard work. I'll be making a website using Dreamweaver with original articles, as well as engaging in patch work, discussing journalist ethics and studying lots of media law. On with the course!

A Western Jewel in the Middle East

I've always been fascinated by Dubai. Changing planes there on the way to and subsequently back from Australia is the closest I've ever got to setting foot in the Middle East.

Even the airport gives a flavour of this capitalist haven, an enclave in which rich Westerns can engage in acts possible in any British town on a Saturday night, but accompanied with skyscrapers and year-round sun. I expect there is no where like it in the world.

Carole Cadwalladr explorers the issue of the two Dubais' - the expat paradise balancing against an intolerant, undemocratic regime. Some extracts:

'But then, somehow Dubai manages to be all things to all people. It's capitalism's ultimate expression: the land of opportunity, the most developed city in the Middle East, a free port.'

'There are now 100,000 Brits living and working in Dubai. And last year 1.1m UK tourists visited - despite summer temperatures of 50C plus, it's now the second most popular long-haul destination after Florida. And the ways in which the city is changing are in many ways a reflection of Britain itself.'

Cadwalladr comments on the fact that it is four days before she hears any Arabic.

For me, Dubai, along with Venice, encapsulates the dilemma of globalisation. Dubai has been dramatically changed by the influx of exterior business and its own self-promotion as a playboy destination. However, with an indigenous population of only 20%, can the UAE really retain its own identity? In the same vein, can Venice survive as a city when its native population is escaping, squeezed out by holiday apartments, hotels and restaurants marketed at the masses of tourists it receives every year?



Or, should we simply accept this as a sign of globalising forces and stop trying to preserve what is quite possibly a false sense of national or cultural identity, and is saying otherwise simply an Orientalist perception? Do we need an 'East', such as that in the UAE, to exist in order to identify our own declining civilisation? Can we deny the riches of capitalism in order to study that which is different from ourselves?



Created by Sultans, built by the poor and enjoyed by the rich, Dubai represents not to so much the development of the Middle East but the desires of the West. It is nothing less than one of the more visual frontlines in the merging of the world.

Charlie Brooker on 9/11 and searching online

Following on from his welcoming tirade against 9/11 conspiracy theorists, Charlie Brooker, perhaps the funniest commentator of the current time, turns his attention to the result of online searches. The reason his last post, which was on CiF and, being about 9/11 managed to attract...1778 comments, was given so much attention is the traffic it generated for the site. He highlights the ways in which certain key words - 9/11, names of celebrites, Obama and whatever else is hip with the kids at the moment - are delibrately wriggled into articles in order to up their slot on search results.

His article is worth a look. Then again, Charlie Brooker's articles are always worth a look.

Flickr and Getty: New and Old Media Converge

Interesting story from the Guardian: Getty have signed a deal with Flickr which would allow the photo library company to buy pictures from users. Although the specific group is by invite only, you can easily see Getty extending such a useful platform - 2 billion photos is nothing to ignore.

It's a great demonstration of how old media - Getty (though it was only set up in the 1990s) can harness the potential of new media. Professional photographers can't be everywhere, but sites like Flickr can, for no cost, provide an infinite library of pictures from around the world. It is still interesting to note however, that it's still the old media taking the charge, needing the photos taken by clients they'll never meet. The real change may well be when those in the new media no longer feel the need, or the want, to sell to old media - but whether this will change is sceptical.

TGA on Nations and Liberalism

Timothy Garton-Ash again makes some accurate points on the general international situation, bringing in the future of the nation-state, liberal values on an internationalist scale and keenly rebuking the inevitable refutation of his argument as a 'neo-colonial export of Western ways'.

TGA refers to the 'drawbridge' (isolationist) option or the 'crusader' (uber-intervention) option. The trend currently seems to be towards the former: Obama's proposed withdrawal from Iraq and protectionist rhetoric; the liberal-left's reluctance to any form of physical intervention in non-Western countries after Iraq; growing scepticism about the purpose of the E.U from within its own borders and a strengthening of ethnic and religious identities across the world are testament to that. TGA's solution is 'liberal patriotism at home and liberal internationalism abroad', and more noticeably, a strengthening of the nation-state.

Such a view, that the nation-states whose cultural barriers and physical borders have never been more porous since their artificial creation (and wider implementation) should re-assert themselves as bastions of liberal values is a highly unfashionable one now. However, it is a point worth considering, even if I remain sceptical about it. Strong nation-states have both benefits and downfalls, and it is arguable whether such a trend could now develop given the prevailing forces of globalisation and fragmentation.

One of TGA's weaker points is his belief in an international set of values, indeed laws which could actually work. He fails to explain how such a system would work, though perhaps a short Guardian Comment article is not the place. I'd love to hear his thoughts on Robert Kagan's 'League of Democracies.'

TGA ends a strong point however:

'As at home, so abroad, we need a conversation - not a dictation. That seems to me especially important in the non-western democracies, and with people of open mind in closed societies. The world wide web is an amazing resource for this purpose, but we're only beginning to work out how to use it.'

In whatever debates are had, values discussed and people persuaded, the Internet will have an invaluable role to play. Chinese dissidents, Islamic Democrats, American party activists, African Human Rights lawyers and indeed, white European bloggers - it's all their platform to develop, deliberate, decide and most of all, act.