The government’s proposals would be a blow to both the BBC’s freedom from government interference, and its place at the heart of British popular culture.
John Whittingdale is a committed free-marketeer. Credit: Jon Super / PA Images
Want a glimpse of the culture minister’s real agenda for the BBC? Just turn to pages 112-115 of the government’s White Paper and the commissioned questions asked by the polling agency. They are very revealing.
The government’s proposals would be a blow to both the BBC’s freedom from government interference, and its place at the heart of British popular culture.
John Whittingdale is a committed free-marketeer. Credit: Jon Super / PA Images
Want a glimpse of the culture minister’s real agenda for the BBC? Just turn to pages 112-115 of the government’s White Paper and the commissioned questions asked by the polling agency. They are very revealing.
Listen to a discussion about the long-term implications of this week’s government White Paper on the future of the BBC.
After weeks of rumour and speculation about an imminent assault on the BBC the publication of the White Paper on the corporation’s future has been seen by some as anti-climactic. But while the headlines have been restrained, the document makes several suggestions that would have a significant impact on the corporation, including major changes to governance, programming and the mission statement. Last night The Media Society hosted a discussion about the paper, unpacking its key points and asking how they might unfold in the long-term.
The requirement for output to be “distinctive”, coupled with the growth of media consortia, could force the BBC out of the game.
BBC New Broadcasting House
The culture minister John Whittingdale may not have succeeded in giving himself the ability to re-schedule the BBC’s programming to save ITV from the perils of competition in prime time. However, the government’s White Paperdoes redefine the Corporation’s mission as something more than the holy trinity ‘Educate, Inform, Entertain’. The BBC now has a new remit: “To act in the public interest, serving all audiences with impartial, high-quality and distinctive media content and services that inform, educate and entertain”.
Now is a good time for publishers to invest in virtual reality
It started as a sort-of-joke writer Kyle Chayka made a few weeks ago, after he’d been reading a lot about bots.
personal chatbots are prob the new newsletters. Ask my bot how my weekend was
— Kyle Chayka (@chaykak) April 17, 2016
Chayka then actually created that weekend bot, which was “kind of an absurdist joke about bots and sort of the pointlessness of this delivery mechanism for all the same stuff.”
The Times of London and Sunday Times on Wednesday launched new phone and tablet apps, and a new website, all focused on publishing online in editions that will be updated four times a day.
There will be a fresh issue early in the morning, followed by updates at 9 a.m., noon, and 5 p.m. — all times when the Times’ traffic tends to peak as readers wake up, arrive at work, eat lunch, and commute home.
Starting Wednesday, about 95 percent of content the British newspaper The Telegraph publishes online will flow through a new content management system — one that it developed in-house through a collaboration between its product team and the newsroom, aimed at simplifying its digital publishing process.
The BBC reaches 68 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds in the U.K., both online and offline, in a given week. The German public media organization ZDF, meanwhile, reaches just 24 percent of that age group.
Why is the BBC reaching so many more young people than ZDF? A new report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism examines how public media can stay competitive online “in a fast-evolving global digital landscape.” The report looks at leading public media organizations in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Finland, and Poland.
Editor’s note: Our sister publication Nieman Reports is out with their new issue— go check it out. I write a column for the print edition of the magazine; here’s my latest.
A few years back, around the time of the financial crisis, I remember hearing about a guy with a startup idea for a news site. The main expense any online publisher has is people, right? People who stubbornly insist on being paid actual money.
Live, local, late breaking: On Facebook Live, news outlets take a cue from TV (but don’t call it TV)
Around 5 p.m. on April 1, everyone in our little office crowded around my desk, watching a live video of baby goats roaming inside BuzzFeed Motion Pictures president Ze Frank’s office — a prank by staffers for his birthday. Would Frank be angry? Would the goats escape?? Would chaos ensue?! Five of us waited for the grand climax, baffled by our own interest, along with 81,000 other viewers.
Editor’s note: There are lots of new stories to read in the newest issue of our sister publication Nieman Reports. In this piece, an excerpt from her new bookSaving the Media: Capitalism, Crowdfunding, and Democracy, the French economist Julia Cagé calls for a new legal structure for media organizations that reflects the role of news as a public good.
Despite Facebook’s unrivaled status as a distribution platform for publishers, it hasn’t always been as effective at helping publishers make money. The latest update to its ad policy might help change that.
Facebook said this morning that it will start letting verified celebrities, influencers, and publishers use their pages to post content they’ve created with brands. The new policy will let publishers post videos (including 360º and Facebook Live video), photos, or articles (Instant or otherwise) that explicitly mention or feature brands.
WordPress, to steal a phrase from Marie Kondo, does not spark joy. When I log in, I see a series of modules that I never use and 11 plugins that need updating.
Medium wants to free us from this unsightly digital mess. At an event Thursday in New York, CEO Ev Williams and other Medium executives repeatedly referred to the company as a city — a new one, built from the ground up. “It’s a simplistic view to say go where the people are,” Williams said. “You need to go where the right people are.”
As most people — and most women on Twitter — know, the Internet can be an ugly and abusive place. The Guardian, which receives more than 50,000 reader comments a day, is taking steps to help change that with “The Web We Want,” a series it kicked off on Monday. As part of the series, the paper will publish its “own analysis of abuse on our site,” it said in an editorial. “Other platforms that have been reticent until now must follow suit,” it added.
Twitter generates 1.5 percent of traffic for typical news organizations, according to a new report from the social analytics company Parse.ly that examined data from 200 of its client websites over two weeks in January. (You’ll need to give Parse.ly your email address to access the full report.) Parse.ly’s network includes publishers like Upworthy, Slate, The Daily Beast, and Business Insider.
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