On the Blog
This week on the blog we've got a guide to the six worst possible mistakes you can make when writing a press release. Are you guilty of any of these?
US Media Report
By Heather Lynch
Time magazine, another who has cut back its staff over the past year, is ditching its poorer readers and aiming toward its upper crust in one of a few aggressive business moves. It will raise its newsstand price by $1 to almost $5, and it will produce a 'Select' edition for what it determines are its wealthiest readers.
Time is also hoping to move advertisers to a pricing structrure based on its readership rate, which includes the number of readers borrowing copies rather than purchasing their own. This metric produces a claimed 19.5 million readers, far higher than the standard circulation figure of 4 million. Finally, the title is moving its publication day back to Mondays, from its switch to Fridays earlier this year.
The L.A. Times' new editor, James O'Shea, stepped into the wake of former editor Dean Baquet on Monday, vowing to staff that the newspaper will remain strong, saying that he was ready to resist job cuts. O'Shea, is faced with filling the shoes of Baquet who was forced to resign last week after a vocal struggle over staff cutbacks.
At the same time, the paper is trying to cope with one of the worst performances in an already struggling newspaper industry, with its circulation dropping 8% over six months. As MarketWatch's Jon Friedman pointed out, O'Shea is a forceful man who likes to defend his people. The question is whether he can do that at the same time as aligning with the paper's executives.
UK Media Report
By Annie Kasmai
Deborah Summers has left her position as UK political correspondent at The Herald to join Guardian Unlimited as political editor.
Philip Scott has joined The Sunday Times as money reporter. Prior to this, Scott was editor of Money Marketing.
Helen Thomas is now covering mergers and acquisitions, private equity, hedge funds and capital markets on the Financial Times’ Alphaville team.
The Audit Bureau of Circulations has published its October figures which show that the free newspapers are gaining in readership but the majority of paid for newspapers are seeing less growth and more poor results:
Overall the daily tabloids are down 2.98% month on month and 4.6% year on year. The national morning mid market, which includes Daily Express and The Daily Mail, are down 2.79% month on month and 0.7% year on year.
Overall, the national quality papers are down 1.25% month on month and 2.37% year on year. Within that group The Financial Times was the only paper to see growth and that was 1.79% month on month and 4.9% year on year.
The Metro saw a 0.89% increase month on month and 10.8% year on year, whereas the London Lite was up 3.67% month on month and thelondonpaper saw an increase of 15.41% month on month.
Best of the 'Net
By Sean McManus
Globalrichlist.com
If reading the Times Rich List makes you feel poor, Globalrichlist.com will make you feel rich again. You enter your total annual income and it tells you where you rank compared to the rest of the world's population. Earning the UK national average wage would put you in the top two percent of the world’s earners.
Web 2.0 Watch
By Fiona Blamey
For years, mobile operators have been searching for the 'killer app' that will encourage subscribers to use their phones for more lucrative activities than just making voice calls and sending text messages.
They have explored everything from games and local information services to TV clips and music videos, with varying degrees of success. Whatever the type of application the mobile operators have tried to offer, they have all had one thing in common - the content was packaged up and marketed at the users by the operators.
All that seems to be about to change. The Times suggested this week that Vodafone and O2 are in talks with social networking sites MySpace and Bebo to allow users access to their own blogs, profiles, videos and online friends while on the move.
Similar moves are afoot in the States, where Cingular is expected to announce a tie-up with MySpace in the near future, while rival Verizon is reportedly negotiating with YouTube to allow mobile users to access popular video clips on their phones.
The Times quotes an O2 spokesperson saying "We recognise people want their own content on the move." (my italics). Making that crucial distinction between packaged and user-generated content may prove to be the tipping point for mobile operators.
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