Against the current: The Times charges its readers

They could not find a new business model and instead they charge us. I can just skip the Times. Journalistic elitism will only satisfy journalistic elites….

Times now charging online readers

Poll shows Americans trust Facebook and Twitter more than traditional media

A recent poll has revealed the news sources that Americans most trust, reports Reuters. And surprisingly, traditional media ended up on the bottom of the list, under social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Nearly half of the 2,100 adults surveyed said they trusted the three big technology firms (Google, Apple, and Microsoft), while 8 and 13 percent trusted Twitter and Facebook, respectively. Only 8 percent of adults and 6 percent of young adults said they trusted traditional media.

Could Paypal “save” the media?

In a June 23rd blog post, media analyst Ben Elowitz explained why he thought Paypal has (whose parent company had a revenue of nearly 9 billion dollars last year) “a the chance to get ahead in an area that still has room for wild success:” micropayments for news.  Elowitz’s proposed formula would entail Paypal creating a more specialized/streamlined system to cater to micro-payments for news articles.  He suggests that if Paypal lowers its security standards, lowers its profit-margin and offers fewer payment options that consumer will soon be lining up at newspaper paywalls to pay via the relatively ubiquitous online payment method.

The OECD on news and the Internet: newspapers are not dying but must look to safeguard journalism

Forbes: journalism needs to stay up to date as technology dependence increases

A recent report by Forbes has predicted that journalism will become more dependant on technology as mobile devices gain popularity. Writing for Forbes, Trevor Butterworth suggests that with the evolution of 3G, cloud computing, GPS and second-generation barcoding, mobile phones are becoming more like “life devices.” Moreover, Butterworth cites a Forrester report that showed that reading news was the most popular activity on mobile devices.

Does Sarkozy exert too much influence over the French media?

Nicolas Sarkozy has a worrying degree of influence over the French media, according to an article in the Guardian today. Prompted by his “shocking” alleged interference in the recent sale of French daily Le Monde, Guardian writer Kim Willsher looked at the ways in which the French president influenced the media and discussed fears of the “Berlusconisation” of the media.