Phone hacking: despite appearances the centre of gravity has moved West

With the Murdoch’s due to appear at Leveson this week and Labour MP Tom Watson publishing his new book, Dial M for Murdoch, you could be forgiven for thinking that the UK remains at the centre of the phone hacking crisis engulfing the Murdoch media empire.

You’d be wrong.  Almost out of sight is a development which threatens News Corporation in the US, as opposed to News International in the UK and that is very, very significant.  The Dowler family lawyer, Mark Lewis, now claims that he is representing four individuals whose phones were hacked on US soil.  At least one is a US citizen.  Others are, apparently, coming out of the woodwork daily.

According to a Guardian report last week, there is evidence that Fox News, Murdoch’s US cable TV operation is now implicated.  For News Corporation, the holding company, this is a nightmare come true. 

If phone hacking has crossed the Atlantic then senior management at News Corporation could find themselves in the dock.  Federal law states that an individual who violates telecommunications privacy for commercial purposes can face five years in prison with a 10 year tariff for a subsequent offence.   What’s more, civil courts can also offer damages in relation to the profits gained by the violators with punitive damages possible thereafter.

How big a deal is this?  Let’s put it this way.  In the US, News Corporation's cable properties constitute over 60 per cent of operating income for the company.  With News Corporation making circa $1.06bn (£888m) net profit in their last quarterly filing to the SEC it is clear that any implication that Fox has been up to dirty tricks has massive implications.

However, it doesn’t stop there.  The Met Police’s investigation of bribery of public officials also has the potential to cross the Atlantic if it hasn’t already.  The Foreign Corrupt Practises Act offers the opportunity for the SEC to investigate the operations of News International in the UK but prosecute senior officials of News Corporation in the US.

The big question is, where does all this end?  My own view is that a number of very high profile people, some of whom have had access to the very highest levels of UK government (you know who I mean!)  are going to prison.  Probably for perjury, possibly for bribery and possibly for perverting the court of justice. 

Unfortunately James Murdoch, who was recently spirited out of the country to a new position in the US, in an attempt to distance him from phone hacking, may find that New York is uncomfortably close to the SEC headquarters in Washington DC.

The Kids Are Alright

It’s the easiest trap to fall into. Let’s all have a pop at the so-called ‘youth of today’. They have zero respect for anyone, they grow-up too quickly, they spend all their time writing in indecipherable shorthand on Facebook, and they all want to be WAGS or Premiership footballers.

Oh and let’s not forget that they are so driven by consumerism, they all whipped out their BlackBerrys back in the summer and took to the streets en masse to get their hands on a free pair of designer trainers. Of course, this was at great expense to good honest taxpayers and it was also a massive inconvenience to anyone who just wanted to enjoy a quiet Monday night catch-up with friends at The Mailbox (i.e. me and me).

Earlier this week, I walked into a school for the first time in a scarily long time and my experience has made me rethink all my negative perceptions of young people. I was so pleasantly surprised by the students I met, I came to the conclusion that they are getting a rough deal from certain areas of the media.

I was invited to St. Francis of Assisi Technology College to supposedly pass on the benefit of my wisdom to the group of students who worked on the school newsletter - although at a whopping 32 pages, I would argue that this is more of a magazine! I would also add that the magazine is very well put-together and does its job perfectly – but that’s an aside.

Apparently the word had gone out that an ‘expert’ would be giving a masterclass, and I was greeted by a classroom full of kids including those on the newsletter team and quite a few Creative Writing students. This was quite a turnout for an after school session and I must admit I was surprised, whatever happened to the apathetic generation?!

What followed was an engaging one hour session, where the students dutifully listened, asked questions when prompted, and generally acted as though they were genuinely interested in what I had to say.

When I spent more time with the Creative Writing students, I was again quite surprised to learn that far from using the internet to Google Justin Bieber, some of these young people had their own blogs. In fact they were so passionate about writing they actually enjoyed working on essays and would spend their own free time writing blogs, song lyrics, poetry – anything and everything!

They were particularly interested in the career opportunities open to them and I left feeling very positive about the next generation of media stars. In total contrast to me during my teenage years, they all seemed to be very focused on life after education and were thinking about where their passion for writing could take them.

I also have to say that the teachers I met do a truly magnificent job harnessing this talent and giving young people an outlet for their writing i.e. the school newsletter.

Now, I’m sure every school is different, but if certain pockets of the media are allowed to generalise about our so-called disaffected youth, then so am I – and I think they deserve a little more credit.

Amidst the doom and gloom of the current economic crisis, these Bright Young Things are the symbol of a much more prosperous and positive future, so let’s not talk them down before they’ve had a chance to shine.

New Independent website is [expletive deleted]

The new Independent newspaper launched earlier this week and I am still waiting for it to work properly! Try it, go on, and see if you can go two minutes without resorting to language you only usually find down at Liverpool docks.

Broken links abound on a site which was trumpeted as a rival to the Guardian’s site and the Telegraph's. I’d give you an actual quote but the page won’t load.

In an excellent piece in The Drum magazine on Wednesday, Matt Lindop, a digital marketer from London commented “It’s clear the site just wasn’t ready for launch.” He goes on to list a host of technical and advertising “don’t dos” which put into context the disaster this has been.

I’m no web designer, I really can’t comment, but denying me my regular fix of three of the best writers in UK journalism is driving me mad. For me there are three ‘must reads’ in the Independent, namely Hamish McRae on economics; Steve Richards on politics and James Lawton on sport (I’d post links to some of their best stuff but all you get is “The Webpage Cannot Be Found”).

At a time when the world is undergoing a seismic financial shock; we’ve just witnessed the biggest rebellion by Conservative backbenchers since Maastricht and racism has reared its ugly head again on the football pitch, the fact that I can’t read any of them is [expletive deleted].

I can’t think of a worse start for new editor Martin King.

Dinner with an American Friend

At the risk of sounding like a stuck record (now there’s an analogy that will pass the iPod generation by) I feel compelled to return to a favourite current hobby horse, namely the divergence between economic reality, particularly in the manufacturing sector, and economic reporting.

I had the good fortune of being able to catch up with the President of one of my clients’ North American operations at a dinner on Tuesday evening in Hannover. He was in Europe to promote his new valve body production machine at a German trade show and was in good form covering a range of topics.

We started with business performance. “How are things at the moment?” I asked.

“Great,” he replied, “we’ve taken on 200 extra employees this year already.”

Noting the slightly sceptical look on my face he went on: “I know, it’s like there’s a parallel universe between what is actually going on and what the media are saying!”

Well yes quite, I’ve certainly read enough in the Washington Post or New York Times to suggest that the American economy is shrinking at an alarming rate. “Oh I tell my guys not to read any of that stuff. You wouldn’t get out of bed of a morning if you took them seriously.”

He offered as an example, recent reporting of the American version of our Purchasing Manager’s Index. “The Index had fallen from 65 to 55 and it was reported as if the world had fallen in, but 55 is still growth!”

However, my American friend did concede that wider economic problems outside of manufacturing could make life difficult for Obama in 2012. “He’s going to find it awfully difficult to get re-elected because of problems in the wider economy. The big advantage he has is that the Republicans can’t find anyone to rival his political charisma that is also electable. If they do find someone then he’s in real trouble.”

Riots coverage show depth of picture desk cuts

The riots across the UK get massive coverage in today’s newspapers but media watchers will be intrigued by the front pages of the Mail, Independent, Express and Sun which all carry the same photo of a hooded “yoof” looking distinctly menacing (presumably the Prime Minister has flown back from his holidays early to give him a hug!).

It is unquestionably a powerful image supplied by EPA, one of the biggest European Photographic Agencies, but it does also demonstrate the extent to which the nationals have now outsourced image sourcing to agencies. Much of it goes unnoticed, but today’s front pages will, I suspect, cause one or two red faces for the editors involved.

A picture may still be worth a thousand words, but today’s use of the same image across four titles demonstrates that our major newspapers unfortunately no longer have the photographic staff (or the budgets) to get their own photos.

A sign of the times.

A picture worth more than a thousand words

I had the first inkling that Time Magazine would suffer a backlash over its cover this week which can be viewed HERE, when I came downstairs Saturday morning and was told to take my hard copy of the magazine upstairs out of sight of the children.

The photo, of an Afghan woman disfigured by the Taliban, cuts right to the heart of the ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ dilemma that Obama, Cameron and others are wrestling with as we try to find a way out of the quagmire.

Even the most heartless advocate of immediate withdrawal could not help but momentarily consider the implications for Afghan women if the Taliban are allowed to take back control, which was exactly what Time intended when they put the photo on the cover.

However, on the other side of the coin lies our own history in Afghanistan encompassing three previous engagements, namely the First Afghan War (1839-42), the Second Afghan War(1878-80) and the Third Afghan War (1919) which at best resulted in a partial victory for the British and at worst resulted in total catastrophe. It must also be remembered that the former Soviet Union had three times as many troops in Afghanistan in the early ‘80s as the war coalition has now and look what happened to them.

There can be no doubt that the photo is provocative and many do not like to be confronted with our dire choices in so stark a manner. This was a brave editorial decision by Time but the right one.

Could the media talk us into a double-dip?

What is the biggest worry for business at the moment? Lack of bank lending? Austerity measures? Public sector cost-cutting? Well the answer is none of the above, at least amongst senior management at a number of firms I have talked to over the last few weeks.

Apparently, the biggest fear at the moment is the media. How so? Well there are concerns that media negativity about the state of the economy will hit consumer and business confidence, sending us into an economic tailspin when things for many are actually going quite well at the moment. The word from two UK manufacturers I have spoken to recently is of strong sales, good pipeline and increasing confidence. The feeling is that the both business and the public in general have held back investing for long enough and are now dipping into their pockets once again. Of course this isn’t true of all sectors (the cuts to the school building programme were another knife in the back of the construction sector) but it is clear that consumer and business confidence are in reasonable health, which is good in the circumstances.

However, confidence is fragile. I vividly remember having dinner with David Smith, economics editor of the Sunday Times a few years ago (namedropper, moi?) and he readily admitted that there is a bad news bias which can easily affect both business and consumers. Therefore, at times like this I think we should all use our own judgment rather than just rely on the headlines. Smith famously has his skip test to gauge economic activity (ie. consumer confidence is directly related to the number of skips in his road from people undergoing house renovations) while I look out for new cars on driveways, and ‘sold’ signs in front of houses. At present both of these indicators are positive, at least where I live.

My gut feeling is that we will weather this (Friday’s GDP figures were another welcome boost) as most businesses are now very lean and we have stored-up demand due to the fact that nobody has spent anything over the last few years. Barring major shocks, this should be enough to see the private sector through.

The public sector is another matter entirely. As one client put it to me a few weeks ago, “I think they are going to feel some of the pain the private sector felt 12 months ago.”

Should the Telegraph stops its MP’s expenses investigations?

It is interesting that the fall of David Laws, who resigned as Chief Secretary to the Treasury over the weekend, has not been greeted with the same “serves him right” attitude that greeted last years’ revelations about duck houses, moats and second homes.

None of the weekend’s revelations concerning either Laws or Danny Alexander are new, in the sense that The Telegraph is merely mining the CD of information it bought from Parliament’s Fees Office early last year. Why haven’t these revelations about Laws or Alexander come to light before? Because, simply, prior to joining the Cabinet, The Telegaph had not deemed either important enough to question or investigate the raw information it acquired, which merely tells them what was claimed, namely rent in Laws’ case, but not the identity of the landlord.

There can be little doubt that the initial Telegraph investigations of early 2009 was landmark investigative journalism and did the country a great service in exposing the corrupt ‘anything goes’ atmosphere at Westminster. However, the collateral damage inflicted by this story with the effective ‘outing’ of Laws has left a nasty taste in many mouths and split many papers down the middle. Michael White in The Guardian has questioned whether the press has lost the plot on this one, while Roy Greenslade in the same paper defends The Telegraph and calls it a legitimate public interest story.

The sense I have is that the general public, far from being outraged at Laws’ behavior, appears at best concerned at the violation of privacy and at worst apathetic. It would appear that the law of diminishing returns might also be at work here for The Telegraph, with each revelation grabbing less and less attention outside the Westminster bubble.

We now have a new Parliament. The rotten apples have either been thrown out or been forced to account for themselves at a General Election. Certainly, our newspapers should remain vigilant and call MPs to account but, while dragging up information that is nearly a decade old in Laws’ case can constitute a legitimate public interest, I’m not sure his resignation and ‘outing’ serves the public interest . Perhaps it is time to move on.

Murdoch digs in for final web battle

Yesterday’s details which emerged about the introduction of paywalls for The Times and Sunday Times (£1 per day for The Times and £2 per day for the Sunday Times) in effect leaves two armed camps dug in facing each other ready for the final titanic battle.

On our left we have the “if it is on the net, it has to be free” brigade who regard paywalls as an intrusion and believe the current newspaper business model is defunct. On our right is the “internet news is theft” brigade who claim that the web is destroying journalism and we have all got to get used to paying for content.

What is certain is that the News International strategy is high risk. I had been expecting some sort of limited paywall to be introduced, perhaps ring-fencing higher value areas of the publication, such as the comment section, but instead they have gone the whole hog and are looking to erect a paywall around the whole of both sites.

The million dollar question is: who will win? Whilst I am loathe to bet against Murdoch I feel he is acting like King Canute here in trying to hold back the inevitable tide. I don’t think that online will completely replace print, at least in the medium term, but I suspect the relationship will have to undergo profound change.

What will that change look like? It's anybody's guess but going forward online, with its continuous updates, will probably become the main driver of publications rather than just a digital version of the hard copy. I would expect the best and least time sensitive writing to be then included in a weekly print version with a much smaller print run. This time delay will make valuable comment and analysis much more important, with hard breaking 'news' likely to become a commodity product, available from multiple sources like the BBC, Reuters and Dow Jones.

In short, the value will not be in telling me what the Prime Minister has said, but will be in telling me what the implications are of his words. The best journalists may well become 'must read' brands of their own, possibly using their online comments as loss leaders to generate a following in order to sell books to their audiences, which is what already happens on sites such as The Huffington Post.

This is nothing if not a radical departure, both for the newspaper industry and journalist working practices, and you can see why News International is digging in for a battle. My fear for them is that the war is already lost.

Election Blog: A Bad Campaign for Traditional Print Media

Well, it may not have been the Twitter and Blog election we were promised, but I do think we can draw some conclusions about the performance of our traditional media over the last four weeks. For the purpose of this blog, I am lumping the dailies in with their weekend counterparts.

Some individuals have done well. Jonathan Freedland has offered real insight in the Guardian whilst covering the campaigns on the ground, whilst Jackie Ashley and Martin Kettle have provided solid guides to Labour thinking, constitutional questions etc. Steve Richards in the Independent has offered a very good window into the Brown Camp and the PM’s individual thoughts whilst Simon Heffer in the Telegraph offered some excellent commentary on the Tory campaign and what Cameron could and should do next.

The Times, I am afraid has been poor. Election news reporting has been average but the commentary has been lame. The loss of Simon Jenkins to the Guardian, the disappearance of Alice Miles and the increasingly sporadic appearances of Anatole Kaletsky has left them bereft of any real stars, which must be an issue for the paper with paywalls just around the corner.

Commentator of the campaign though goes to David Yelland, the ex-Sun editor (pictured above). He only wrote once, but gave an astonishing insight into the Murdoch empire and how much a Cameron win means to them.

Overall however this has been a bad campaign for traditional media and I offer as evidence three key moments.

Firstly, Rebekah Brooks, nee Wade, and James Murdoch storming into Rod Liddle's offices to complain about the Independent's front page headline, "Rupert Murdoch Won't Decide This Election. You will" an account of which can be read HERE. As Michael White in the Guardian put it, "that's pretty uncool" and shows the extent to which many newspapers have been rattled by Cleggmania.

Secondly, the April 22nd campaign to discredit Clegg with Nazi slurs and bogus fraud claims. My own view is that the Telegraph, Express and Mail made fools of themselves with what looks like a last baying of a dying beast. Most interestingly, the public chose to ignor it with no discernible effect on the opinion polls.

Finally, the digital reaction to the Clegg onslaught at #nickcleggsfault on Twitter which instantly rocketed to the top of the Twitter rankings. My favourite was, “Kennedy assassination: new footage confirms gunman on grassy knoll was Nick Clegg.” I’ve heard the traditional media questioned before and often accused of bias, but never publicly ridiculed.

My media man of the election though is James Cook of the BBC, whom I met when he came to Worcester Bosch a few weeks ago, following the Prime Minister around on his Battle Bus. Not only did James give me some valuable insight into how Alex Salmond and the SNP are perceived in Scotland, but he also told me that he didn’t expect to sleep in his own bed until sometime on May 7th. Now that is above and beyond the call of duty!

If you give it away it has no value!

One of the biggest issues PR faces as an industry is credibility. In part, I suspect that comes from the fact that the most high profile characters in our industry are probably the celebrity PRs, such as Max Clifford and Phil Hall.

I have enormous respect for what both do, but because it is high profile it tends to dominate the PR landscape and people assume that this is what PR is all about. To the cynics my job is a few quick calls to the papers and then off to the wine bar.

Let me give you an example. I have a friend who is a commercial lawyer in London (his actual job title is Multi-Jurisdictional International Trade Litigator) who delights in asking me what I have done with my day and, before I can answer, usually says something like "sitting in a wine bar quaffing Chardonnay presumably."

As it happens, I've probably met more CEOs than he has (when I point this out he gets huffy) but in his world he is a power player protecting the UK's commercial interests with the simple sword of truth, whilst I am busy organising photoshoots for Katie Price.

It was with some dismay therefore that I found out yesterday that a well-known PR company has come up with the strategy of offering free PR for a 3-6 month period in order to snag new clients. Now I know times are tough but I can't think of a quicker way to destroy credibility than to go down that route.

I remember once having a conversation with the MD of a major UK building products company. I asked him what he thought of the idea of a free environmental audit. His answer was succinct, "free equals worthless."

As one former colleague, whom I would describe as my only mentor, once said to me, "the biggest problem with this job is that everyone thinks they can do it."

If we give away our services free of charge that won't change.

PD and the DG of the BBC

I suspect the Director General (DG) of the BBC was expecting a cosy post-Christmas chat when he agreed to appear on the Today programme guest edited by the crime writer PD James on 31st December.

I didn’t listen to it myself (being laid up in hospital with a broken ankle I only had access to Radio Warrington General which was only marginally more bearable than the quality of food on offer) but I have since read an account kindly provided by the Daily Mail.

Instead of a cosy chat PD launched into a forensic examination of the current state of the BBC. A mere blog is not enough space to cover all her areas of probing (needless to say she was unimpressed with the quality of programming on BBC3, in particular ‘Help me Anthea, I’m Infested’) but there was one area of interrogation which will be of interest to all those in PR.

PD questioned the number of senior communications people the BBC has on its staff and their seemingly overlapping spheres of influence. The current count is that the BBC has four senior executives with responsibly for communications, audience interaction or brand. In fact there is currently a ‘Director of Marketing and Communications and Audiences’ and a ‘Director of Communications’ both in post.

Even more staggering is the size of salaries being paid. The Director of Marketing Communications and Audiences is currently paid £310,000 a year. The Director of Communications nearly £250,000.

The usual excuses were rolled out by the DG, ‘market forces’, fear of losing high quality people to commercial rivals, in line with the private sector etc.

I suspect most PR people reading this, even those in the heady echelons of financial PR in London, will be delighted to hear that they can expect to earn up to £310k at some point in their career. This by the way is exactly the same amount earned last year by the UK Managing Director of Northgate PLC, a FTSE 250, including bonus. Of course the difference is that Phil Moorhouse of Northgate is answerable to his shareholders, has forecasts and budgets to hit. The Director of Marketing Communications and Audiences at the BBC is answerable to er ... well good question!

The DG is of course talking complete tosh and gives the impression he is completely out of touch with reality, which is not good as the Beeb is under pressure as never before.

I have documented recent BBC failings in a previous blog, but you can be sure that David Cameron has not let this one slip past him. Dave is a former Head of Communications for BskyB (you can bet Murdoch didn’t pay him £310k a year) and will be under pressure from his former employer to break up what News Corporation regards as a state-sponsored monopolist. The Beeb cannot afford this sort of public relations disaster, particularly at a time when scrutiny of public sector spending has never been more stark.

However, even in this debacle, you can see still why the BBC is a national treasure which needs preserving, but reforming urgently. PD conducted her examination of the Director General on the BBC Today Programme without fear of censorship or the heavy hand of interference from either shareholders or senior management. In the world of News Corporation this was akin to the The Times conducting an investigation into The Sun. How likely is that?

I’m retiring from international football

I’m sad to announce that I’m bringing the curtain down on my career in international football. Without wanting to add further to the problems faced by Fabio Capello in the wake of the Aston Villa player, Luke Young’s, shock retirement last night, I just think South Africa might be a tournament too far for me.

Years of pizza, four packs of lager on a Friday evening and an increasing aversion to any kind of physical exercise are, I admit, beginning to affect my performances. I know many will be disappointed and I am already braced, as is Luke Young, for the barrage of criticism that will head my way from the radio phone-ins and national press, in the same way that allegations of being unpatriotic were heaped on Liverpool’s Jamie Carragher when he announced his retirement (but strangely not Paul Scholes).

My only regret is that, if England are based in South Africa’s wine country, I won’t be there to help the WAGs choose between a fruity Cape red and a Spier plantation cabernet sauvignon.

Alas it wasn’t to be.

Real Callousness

The newspapers have been full of the Prime Ministers alleged callousness and indifference in recent days as a result of ‘Spelling-gate’. My initial instinct, that this was a politically motivated attempt to humiliate the Prime Minister, is proving well founded.

On this Armistice Day allow me to tell you a story of real callousness from another age, to put all of this in perspective.

My Great Uncle, Robert Ballard, was a member of the Royal Field Artillery, a regiment equipped with smaller field artillery guns that were generally situated closer to the front lines. As a family we know little about him, other than that he was a beloved older brother of my own grandfather, who eventually called his own longed-for son after him. His role in the Great War was, according to my own mother, “something to do with horses”, presumably tending to the poor animals which pulled the guns into position.

As you have probably guessed by now, he was killed the outskirts of Arras on the Western Front on July 17th 1917. In an act of real callousness, the War Office informed his mother, my own Great Grandmother, of his death via telegram. Nothing unusual in that, except that it was accompanied by an invoice for the blanket in which he was buried. In those days, you not only had to be prepared to sacrifice your own children for the nation, you also had to pay for the privilege of having them buried. To my Great Grandmother’s eternal credit, to the day she died she refused to pay.

Robert Ballard currently lies in Point Du Jour Military Cemetery near Arras. It is a small cemetery named after a particularly strong German redoubt in the near vicinity. The cemetery became internationally famous about 10 years ago when the ‘Grimsby Chums”, members of a Pals Regiment (anybody interested in the sheer idiocy and pointless waste of the Great War should read up on Pals Regiments), were discovered nearby linked arm-in-arm. They were subsequently re-buried in Point Du Jour.

Times have fortunately changed but individuals and organisations are still capable of extraordinary callous behaviour and thoughtlessness. I supect the Sun’s behavior in recent days has offended the British public in such a way. The Sun’s website story is now the recipient of nearly 200 comments from its readers, 90% of which are supportive of the Prime Minister. This will not have gone unnoticed in Wapping.

The talk on the Sun's website is of a callousness perpetrated by a national newspaper which chose to publicly try and humiliate a man on the basis of his disability. The Prime Minister is, if you didn’t know, practically blind.

Apparently, the political editor of the Sun, well aware of the Prime Minister’s failing eyesight, tried to dissuade senior staff on the paper on Sunday night from treating the story as they did. He was ignored.

I suspect we will now see the Sun quietly pull away from this one and try to make amends as it did with its other great cock-ups - remember “Bonkers Bruno” and “Hillsborough – The Truth?” Get ready for a gushing ‘Sarah and the boys” story coming your way in the next few weeks.

A fighting retreat?

News Corporation’s interim results make for fairly boring reading, but there was apparently an interesting little exchange during the press conference Q&A in New York, a report of which can be read HERE. As you may well know, Rupert is planning to introduce a pay-wall on all his online news sites and had provisionally targeted June 2010 as D-Day.

When asked about his self-imposed deadline yesterday, he said, and I quote: "I wouldn't promise that we're going to meet that date." Acting unnaturally coy, he then declined to comment on the reasons for any delay except to say that he was talking to rival publishers, including the Telegraph group. "It's a work in progress and there's a huge amount of work going on," Murdoch said.

Two thoughts. Firstly, as I’ve said before on this blog, I’d be interested to know what the Office of Fair Trading think about an attempt by British newspapers to act in concert to fix prices.

Secondly, it is hard not to speculate that this might be the start of a climbdown. Rupert is known to be a luddite at heart, once famously commenting after News Corporation’s acquisition of My Space that “we’re in the stalking business now.” Could it be that he made company policy “on the hoof” and his minnions have now told him that this isn’t going to fly?

The logistics of payment for content are fearsome. The Guardian, in my opinion the best of the online sites and ‘owner’ of more ‘must read’ columnists than any other newspaper (Simon Jenkins, Polly Toynbee, Will Hutton etal), has already declared it will remain free. So that’s at least one hole in his apparent attempts to corral the industry to his way of thinking.

Murdoch opens a second front

They’re either very worried at News International or very brazen. James Murdoch’s Media Guardian lecture in Edinburgh which received blanket coverage over the weekend is a second front in the attack on ‘free news’ which his father started last month. It can be found HERE

His usual targets list will come as no surprise to anybody, namely OFCOM and, of course, the BBC who are now accused of ‘dumping’ free journalism onto the market. It feels to me like an attempt to corral the rest of the media industry into supporting the News International payment for content policy which his Dad recently announced. Of course, this can only work if he gets everyone else on side and there is no ‘free news’ for anyone to access – hence the attack on the Beeb. Apparently, similar moves by the major news organisations in the States to produce an industry standard payment policy are also underway, albeit in their early stages.

Couple of points. Firstly, is the idea of different media organisations banding together to invoke a payment-only system anti-competitive? I’d be interested to know what OFCOM think.

Secondly, what do they intend to do about websites such as The Huffington Post which is way out in front of most traditional media outlets in its coverage of American politics, but has virtually no journalistic overhead and a low cost base? (Apparently the journalists all write for free in return for generating their own journalistic ‘brand’ and readership following which then buys their inevitable books).

Overall, I think Murdoch makes some good points, but I can’t help feeling that the big winner if he gets his way will be guess who? That’s right, News International.

Rupert Changes His Mind

A $3.4bn loss is enough to make anyone think again and that is exactly what Rupert Murdoch is in the process of doing. After once declaring that the subscription model for online news does not work, last week he declared himself confident that his company could produce "significant revenues from the sale of digital delivery of newspaper content" and that “we intend to charge for all our news websites.”

Radical thinking or panicked knee jerk reaction? Only time will tell, but we have been down this path before with the New York Times and they were forced to pull back more than two two years ago (although the Paper of Record is reportedly looking at the subscription model in another format again).

Those, like me, who remain fascinated by the future shape of journalism and the print media in the digital age might find some enlightenment in this week’s Time Magazine which was delivered to me via snail mail on Saturday morning (I remain a luddite at heart). It contains an excellent article by James Poniewozik which can be found online HERE.

Definitely worth a read.

Never mind the width, feel the quality (ooh .. er .. madam!)

Apologies for the Kenneth Williams inspired headline, but I have been asked to put down my thoughts on the alleged demise of the Birmingham Post.

Rumours continue to circulate (much denied I hasten to add) that the Post is going to go to a weekly format. For those like myself who are only now dipping a cautious toe onto the communications superhighway, this would be a tragedy, if not of biblical proportions, then certainly enough to make me a bit grumpy!

Walk into any professional services firm within a ½ mile radius of Colmore Row and you will find the Post. Partners, associates and mere minions like myself pick it up and give it a flick through every day. It’s readership may be relatively small, but it is of the very highest quality.

I am reminded of a story from across the pond which occurred during the first season of the great American TV series Hill Street Blues (they don’t make ’em like that anymore!). Anyway, ratings for the first few episodes were disappointingly low and NBC considered cancelling the whole thing until a bright spark in the advertising department pointed out that those who were tuning in were exactly the sort of viewer, young urban professionals with high disposable incomes, that key advertisers like BMW and Mercedes Benz were struggling to connect with.

Hey presto, a new strategy was born, premium television with, crucially, premium advertising rates. I’m not saying the same strategy would work for the Post. I fear the global downturn for the newspaper industry will demand a far more subtle strategy than just putting up prices. But, there has to be some way to keep this institution, which offers such a valuable means of engagement with such a high quality readership, as a daily going concern.

What Price Fame?

So, was it all just a sham? Or has five years conducting their relationship under the scorching rays of the media spotlight finally taken its toll? Yes, I’m talking about the recent announcement that Katie Price, AKA page three stunna Jordan, is finally calling time on her marriage to Peter Andre – he of the waxed chest, washboard abs and questionable musical ability.

In the post-match analysis, no doubt every man and his dog will be speculating as to the real reason behind the perma-tanned pair’s parting of ways. But regardless of the conclusion you come to, one fact is undeniable – they understood how to work the media like no other celebrity couple out there. Forget Posh & Becks and their tasteful (read cringeworthy) fashion shoots and increasingly desperate attempts to get us to take them seriously, Katie and Peter courted the media unashamedly from Day One – and they got it down to a fine art. What’s more, their warts-and- all, comi-tragic approach to celebrity has made them an outrageous amount of money in a very short space of time.

Which is why their request that the media “respect their families’ privacy at this difficult time” is a little hard to swallow. Surely the Price family’s privacy was irreparably compromised the moment they chose to invite an entire tv crew into their home to document their every cross word and happy moment? For a couple whose fortune has been amassed almost entirely through selling the mundane minutiae of their private lives to an eager public – be it through the pages of Hello or via their eponymous tv series – they are being uncharacteristically tight-lipped.

Katie, Peter, a word to the wise: don’t bite the hand that feeds you. You owe your very existence to the media machine and the fans that have followed your every move since that first fumble in the jungle – so be careful what you wish for. It might just come true.

Brilliant Insight!

We recently had a brilliant training course from Paul Bramwell of Brilliant Media (how apt) who gave us a comprehensive overview of how the media and advertising spend is changing, from Facebook to Twitter and beyond.

Fascinating, but it did make me feel like a dinosaur. For a man who still likes to feel the crisp pink pages of the FT each morning (you can’t beat a bit of Martin Wolfe) it was a glimpse into an uncomfortable future.

I did however take the opportunity to ask Paul a question that has worried me for a while. Those of us who became obsessed by the recent Presidential election, eagerly awaiting news of half point swings in Rasmussen tracking polls in Pennsylvania (I know, I’m boring you don’t need to tell me), got most of our information from either the Washington Post or New York Times websites.

Two more contrasting business models it was hard to find. The Washington Post provides totally free content, the New York Times, on the other hand, until recently utilised a controversial subscription-only model for any information beyond the home page. The ‘Paper of Record’ has now backed down, but the debate over charging for online news continues to rage, not least because so many newspapers in the States, notably the Chicago Tribune, have filed for bankruptcy protection and are struggling to find new revenue streams. In fact, there has been a call only this week for newspaper owners across the US to band together and insist on a subscription-only service on the basis that they can’t keep giving news away “for free”.

So, is subscription-only the future? “Absolutely not” says Paul. “Even Rupert Murdoch says that you cannot charge for web content and if anybody knows how to extract cash from something it’s him.”

So there it is the definitive answer, subscription-only content is not an option to save the newspaper industry, says Paul (and Rupert).