The Bolton Independent and The Bury Independent will launch in the next eight weeks, each with a free distribution of 10,000 and a monthly frequency. Stuart Parker head of Big Spark, the publishing company, says that they will concentrate on ’soft news’. There’s no mention of any kind of web presence.

Source: how-do.co.uk

Andy Burnham’s proposal to let the BBC come to the aid of Britain’s dying local newspaper industry is merely the latest demonstration of how little the Culture Secretary understands this country’s media - both digital and non-digital.

Much has been written already about the Tories’ proposed relaxing of rules on ownership to allow more mergers. But Burnham’s latest plan is destined for the bin like all the others. “We have to plot a path for local papers to move into the digital age,” he says. “We should be looking at public-private partnerships. The BBC could provide sound and images to the website of the local paper. Newspapers can provide information for BBC websites. All of them could work together providing a service under the trusted banner of the local paper. As we said in the White Paper Digital Britain, the BBC should become an enabling force in the media world.”

Not even the Batman could save Britain's local press

It is hard to imagine being able to come up with anything less considered and more poorly thought through than this. The problem with most local newspapers - in both their print and web forms - is the lack of unique, meaningful content. Readers are deserting the local press in their tens of thousands because the decline in the service being offered has become an unstoppable descent: circulations and revenues fall while online growth stalls so quality is cut leading to further sales and revenue falls leading to further cutbacks. There is seemingly no way out of this spiral. Read more…

So The Guardian’s SEM agency has bought The Apprentice as a Google sponsored link. It’s a shame that Lee was last season’s winner. How much are they paying these guys?

My colleague, Shane Richmond, blogs on the FT’s workflow changes which will see reporters preparing ‘web ready’ copy, complete with hyperlinks, metadata and tearsheets and its effect upon the production of the newspaper. It seems that sub editing, already being scaled back at the Financial Times, is to be virtually eliminated with those production staff remaining reduced to a revise desk.

Far from being incompatible with publishing newspapers efficiently and productively, major media companies are finally waking up to the fact that web-first workflows can have a dramatically streamlining effect upon print production. David Montgomery may have experimented with templating pages back in the 90s but it’s taken virtually 15 years and the rising power of the web to force the rest of Fleet Street - and the regions - to take it seriously.

There is no reason why, with sophisticated spelling, style and grammar engines like Tansa, reporters cannot self publish stories directly to the web without a second pair of eyes. Adding furniture, metadata, links and images should be second nature to most writers by now as should writing to a commissioned length. And the next step has to be the desk taking that copy and making it print ready - thus eliminating much of the subbing function. Read more…

Interesting that the NHS is using pay-per-click on the back of the late Jade Goody’s struggle with cancer:

It didn’t take long after the death of Natasha Richardson for The Sun to buy her name as keywords with Google.

The Sun buys Natasha Richardson as a Google sponsored link

This kind of thing drives me nuts. Timesonline carries an excellent piece of analysis by Kevin Daly and Ben Broadbent of Goldman Sachs on why Britain will not fare as badly as some big exporting countires during the depression.

But the piece is hinged around a graphic which shows monetary conditions in Britain and the Eurozone area. The authors write:

“The chart above shows monetary conditions indexes for Britain and the eurozone (these combine short and long-term interest rates, together with the trade-weighted exchange rate, into a single indicator, with weights that reflect the importance of each input in driving year-ahead growth). Since the start of the credit crunch, UK monetary conditions have eased by more than 6 percentage points on the back of sterling’s decline”

The only problem is that the chart is not reproduced in the online version rendering at least half of the commentary useless.

The website still plays second fiddle at The Times, that much is obvious. But with News International said to be considering adopting a subscription model for timesonline.co.uk, they’re going to have to start putting the web before their papers if they’re to stand any chance at all.

I’m compiling a list of Britain’s independent local news blogs. Following Roy Greenslade’s publication of a list of local newspapers that have closed over the last 12 months, I’m beginning to wonder if more people now have access to local information from independent online providers than traditional sources. If you run one, use on or read one, I’d be grateful if you could let me know about it using the contact form on this site or by Tweeting me @justin_williams. The only stipulation is that the site must not be owned or run by a publisher that also owns local TV, radio or newspaper interests.

If, as is being strongly rumoured, timesonline.co.uk puts some or all of its content behind a pay wall, it would mark a sensational shift in the online strategy of Britain’s third biggest newspaper on the web.

Immediately after the rumour broke on Twitter yesterday, there were howls of derision from the freeniacs. “Timesonline has gun to its head, is considering pulling the trigger,” tweeted my colleague, Shane Richmond.
“Excellent news for you guys,” said James Higgs. Only Charles Arthur seemed more circumspect: “I can believe timesonline might be considering putting ’some’ content behind subscription. Smart move if done right.”

There are two camps in the pay wall debate: those who believe that some form of subscription is ultimately the only way to make web publishing truly profitable and those who think it’s the fastest route to digital suicide - the freeniacs.

But economic circumstances are debasing the position of the freeniacs. The sheer volume of content being produced by major publishers on both sides of the Atlantic is combining with the depression to drive down the yields in online display advertising. Wsj.com’s Heard on the Street paints a bleak picture: “The sudden sharp weakness in online display advertising, which hit fourth-quarter revenue at companies ranging from Yahoo to Time Warner’s AOL and New York Times, isn’t just about a cyclical downturn caused by the recession.” Read more…

The Freeman’s Journal presents an excellent analysis of the Currah report, prepared on behalf of The Reuters Institute, and trailed in The Guardian on Monday by its author. In short, the journal concludes that the report is a rehash of old arguments about the trivialising of the news agenda in response to the drive for uniques online and that it presents very little evidence of such.