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Posts Tagged Media economics
Huffington Post Blows It in France
Posted by Kate Nacy in Media Economics on June 12, 2010
Advertising blunder raises interesting questions about ad sales and content farms.
Observed from France, where ads are localized, the Huffington Post’s homepage recently hosted what appears to be a gigantic advertisement featuring the rump of a nude cartoon. The product being sold here was (drumroll please…) a flatulence application for the iPhone. Indeed.
The ad, clearly not of the Rolex-variety, illustrates a blatantly poor choice from HuffPo’s ad sales team, but also seems to highlight what Paris-based writer and media consultant Frédéric Filloux says “demonstrates a tragic inability to understand the true power of the Internet, i.e, making contents globally accessible to a solvent population.” Read the rest of this entry »
A Public Good in Europe?
Posted by Kate Nacy in Media Economics, Media Politics on April 22, 2010
European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) meets in Istanbul, agrees to push Brussels.
The annual EFJ meeting in Istanbul, drawing journalists from 24 countries, incited plans to encourage Brussels to respond to the European media crisis by persuading EU member states to augment the sector. Citing governmental support for theaters and museums in the spirit of reinforcing cultural pluralism, the preservation of journalism was called on for the sake of protecting “information pluralism.” Concerns among members focus largely on how to fund journalism with advertisers scattering like flies. The unions hope to devise a series of proposals geared toward developing a shared, EU-approach to media.
See the EUobserver for more.
Apple iPad Hype
Posted by Stephan Russ-Mohl in Media Economics on February 4, 2010
After news reports focused on swine flu, the snow “catastrophe“ (proving to be scarcely more than a hearty winter), and the tragic Haitian earthquake, last week’s press was inundated with a different strain of media attention.
For days, Steve Jobs and his Apple iPad camped out on front pages, occupying additional space in business and lifestyle sections. Perhaps PR businesses feel tempted to project “ad value” – estimating the millions Apple would have spent had they paid for the free publicity the iPad received via print articles, TV reports, Internet discussion and broadcast airtime – as many PR strategists would in such cases, hoping to convince Read the rest of this entry »
“Reviewing” the Future of News
Posted by Kate Nacy in Media Journalism on November 28, 2009
As 2009 comes to a close, the various problems afflicting the newspaper industry have hardly subsided, although several plans aimed at improving the state of affairs were spawned.
Pay walls, micro-payments, cost-cutting initiatives, online subscriptions, micro-donations, government bailouts – the list continues, although no clear winner surfaced. Of greatest value, perhaps, is the collection of ideas and experiments designed by researchers and practitioners, hoping to erect a new platform for the kind of journalism we gravely require. In what he calls a “Flying Seminar on the Future of News,” Jay Rosen, author of journalism blog PressThink, collected several high-caliber articles dealing with the economy of news.
For a thorough review, see his entry at Pressthink.
Taking a Stand
Posted by Stephan Russ-Mohl in Media Economics on November 5, 2009
Schweizer Journalist, Nr. 10 + 11/2009
American journalism is in a “protracted moment of painful change,” and “both its business model and its sense of mission are in full retreat.”
How might journalism regain its relevance, asks Brent Cunningham, managing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, as he describes today’s journalists as being driven rather than driving. According to Cunningham, the keeper of the record is “aggressively catered to by a public relations apparatus that permeates every public or private institution,” emitting “an endless stream of incremental developments” keeping reporters “busy, busy, busy.”
This leaves “far too little room” for more important roles of the press such as “investigator, explainer, and arbiter of our national conversation” – all functions not easily adopted by amateurs and bloggers. Cunningham suggests the press should pay “less attention to breaking, event-driven news and more to sustained coverage of ideas and – crucially – solutions.” It should stop “reflexively marginalizing voices that come from the fringes simply because no one ‘official’ is embracing them.”
Hunger Strike
Posted by Stephan Russ-Mohl in Media Economics on June 4, 2009
Die Furche, May 28, 2009
In his latest book, American media activist Robert McChesney envisions a dark future for American newsgathering.
The author devises a U.S. government demanding “the reduction of international reporting, the closing of local editorial departments and trimming of employees and budgets.” In addition, McChesney’s president commands the media to focus on “celebrities and trivia instead of the serious investigation of scandals and law violations in the White House.”
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