TheBusinessDesk.com really means business

No apologies for this shameless plug for the web business I work for - TheBusinessDesk.com - because it's a big day for us as we launch new features which in my view take us to a whole new level.

We've just added a new shares & markets channel, which for our business and financially-focused readership is a significant addition to the existing diet of company and economic news from their regions.

But we've not just plugged in a vanilla-flavoured national feed from one of the financial newswires - rather we've worked with the

Speech to News:Rewired, June 2010

I spoke at the News:Rewired conference on June 26, 2010.

I'm still cogitating over what I heard from other speakers at this very well organised and focussed event, and will post on what I conclude later.
For the time being, here's the text of my speech, which a couple of Tweeters called brutal. If that's how it came across, I'm truly sorry: I was aiming for 'passionate.

I’ve three main points to make today:

They’re these:

• In a niche, it’s not enough to be a journalist – you’ve got to be a business person too
• In a niche business, it’s not enough just to provide information – you’ve got to do other stuff too, even if that’s selling your readers a credit card
• A niche audience needs a niche approach – not a mass market one

Why are we talking about niche today? Why has this subject risen up the agenda – why this sudden

Speaking truth to power: my speech to the CBI

On Thursday this week (June 10), I’ve been invited to speak at the Senior Executive Lunch of the West Midlands CBI. I’ve been asked to talk about “Tomorrow’s news today -  changes to regional media and what the future holds for news journalism.”

It’s a well-worn theme and I’ve spoken on this at many events before, but mostly to media-dominated audiences. In front of an audience of very senior business figures, I thought I would try to give them an insight into where the media is going, and even steer them towards the realisation that smaller media enterprises will become more and more significant in the near future.

This is my first draft, and I’d welcome suggestions for other points to make to this audience.

(June 9 update: thanks for all the challenging and thought-provoking reaction to this post. I never expected to get such a response, as I said nothing here that I've not said before - mostly on this blog as it happens. In the light of yesterday's announcement by Jeremy Hunt that IFNCs are dead, I'll try in the speech to better represent broadcasting issues. For the moment, though, I've concentrated on tidying up some of my editing howlers on this draft and will try to update more fully later. June 10 update: I added a couple of pars about IFNCs and the Jeremy Hunt announcement. They're pasted at the bottom of this post)


Journalism has no God-given right to exist and journalists are owed a living by nobody.

By the same token, none of you have any ‘right’ whatsoever to receive a daily print newspaper that provides you with hundreds of stories focused purely on your needs as a senior business decision maker in this tiny outpost of the global economy.

Sadly, listening both to both journalists and to readers over the past few years, you would think that news journalism was like the air that

Why the NUJ needs to get real on Bullivant

The ever-credulous NUJ removed its head from the sand just long enough this week to hail Chris Bullivant as the saviour of journalism and the Robin Hood of the newspaper industry.

As reported by Jon Slattery and others, NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear said: “The launch of the Birmingham Press this week is a vote of confidence in the city as a news centre where the skills of writers, photographers and production journalists can help to provide an added service to readers in a complex modern environment.”

Dear concluded: "We warned Trinity Mirror that by collapsing the scope of its publications in the city and making journalists redundant, the market was being opened up for a competitor happy to recruit skilled staff who became unexpectedly available."

The union’s northern organiser Chris Morley said the Press was a ‘significant step’.

Oh please. To read the comments above, you’d think Bullivant had created in his Knowle nerve centre a newsroom bursting at the seams

Meet the Pollyanna editor

I'm an eternal optimist, but even I can't share the sunny outlook presented by this New Zealand editor, as reported by Roy Greenslade.

"Newspaper companies are effectively reinventing themselves in the digital age and are now providing a compelling, integrated experience for readers and advertisers alike."

That's all right, then.

Read the full post here



SKGNDGUK7XW4

Media mayhem in the Midlands

THERE’S  a lot of activity in the West Midlands medialand at the moment, much of it a microcosm of what’s going on in the sector across the UK and beyond. I wonderered, then, if I could draw any conclusions about the future shape of the media by looking at a snapshot of what’s happening now.

What follows is a pretty incoherent collection of thoughts, and I apologise in advance for my lacklustre excuse for a ‘conclusion’ at the end. You might want to stop reading now, to be honest.

Disregarding the entry of my new venture, TheBusinessDesk.com into the fray, we’ve seen the launch of at least two new Midlands business

New business models for news: the Great Wild Goose Chase

I liked Salon co-founder Scott Rosenburg's challenge to journalists. Don't start from the premise that a newsroom is there to be preserved, and then look for the business model to support it. It should be the other way round, he says, and he's dead right:

"Journalists who set out on the Great Business Model Hunt are trying to figure out how to support a newsroom. This is entirely understandable. If you have a great newsroom -- and as a lifelong reader I certainly feel that the Times does -- then of course you're going to worry about that around the clock once you realize that your old business model is doomed. But it's the wrong question. It's backwards. The newsrooms of today acquired their size and shape and structure thanks to the business model that supported institutions of their size. The world has changed; that model is vanishing. We shouldn't be asking "What sort of business can support a newsroom online?" The question is, "What's the best kind of newsroom that the online business can support?"

Read the whole post here.

What the collapse of the Third Reich tells us about Apple's IPad and newspapers

 This first appeared on my blog for Drum Magazine on January 30, 2010

It's clearly a somewhat inappropriate metaphor, but I can't get the image out of my head of forlorn Nazi soldiers in March 1945 waiting in vain for the Fuhrer's secret weapon to turn the course of the war and secure the destiny of the 1000-year Reich.



But I can think of no clearer parallel to the desperation shown by so many in the newspaper business in their reaction to the release of the Apple IPad. With its ability to reproduce