Where newspapers need to go?

A local newspaper in England is doing something innovative in a bid to handle the digital future.

I have got upset before about Murdoch‘s pay wall issue, but the more I read about the future of newspapers / print media the more I don’t see a revenue stream aside from a pay wall.

Altho the Rotherham Advertiser does appear to still be allowing access to some content on its regular website.

But what I really like is the app will allow you to see where the story happened using GPS – if you look at the story I have linked to there is a map showing exactly where it happened (which is genius and reflects on the web interaction with physical space I have covered before)

The Rotherham paper is apparently independent – ie not owned by a huge media group – but how long before other papers (belonging to the bigger groups) start doing this?

 

which do you read first?

News is about people. Traditional news covers people such as Prime Ministers, Presidents, leaders of business and so on.

Once upon a time these were all packaged up in newspapers published each day, then broadcast in news bulletins on the wireless every hour and later on TV.

All of this information has moved online – you can read, watch or listen to news as it happens from anywhere in the world. I am quite interested in Aussie politics and read about it at The Age (Melbourne) or The Sydney Morning Herald.

So for free (well, the ongoing cost of my web connection), I can know what is happening to politicians and business leaders on the other side of the planet.

But the web has done something else. I can also read news from hundreds (or thousands if I want) of ordinary people. On Facebook via my PC or mobile I can see a stream of updates from people I see everyday and people I see from time to time (I get updates from my friend in Cambridgeshire and know what is happening to her most days, whereas Before Facebook (BF) we maybe spoke once a month / two months, which involved lots of catching up) and from people I haven’t seen for years.

These events I read about are happening to people, and to those folks and to me, these are news stories. Just not in the traditional sense where news values tell you what the Deputy PM does is news, while what my friend CH does in Cambs is unlikely to make the front page of the Sunday Times (as that DPM story did – havent connected to the original story due to the Rupert Murdoch paywall, which I have mentioned before).

I like news in the traditional sense and I like news in this new sense of status updates / feeds / streams which people I know are uploading. This blog I am writing will appear in feeds, sometimes it is commented upon, sometimes re-tweeted or pinged back. Certainly it is read by a few people and to some, on some level it is news that I have written it. Mostly I write commentary on other events (whether readers agree or not is of course up to them) rather than breaking news here.

Altho my Facebook updates will from time to time break news about my life – the biggest one (so far!) being when my son was born. I got messages and comments from all over the world within only a few hours and in some cases from people I havent seen in years.

A friend of mine was on a plane at the time and he landed to discover a voicemail from his mother demanding to know why he hadn’t told her that my boy had arrived – she had seen the Facebook pictures as well – he hadn’t even heard yet as he’d been on a flight. While my brother-in-law who hadn’t been around for the 24+ hours labour as I had, could have uploaded his photos first, while I slept, but told me later he thought it right he wait so I could upload the first photos. I was grateful for this and am glad he had a concept of Facebook etiquette.

I find it interesting that when I click the arrow on Firefox to look for most visited sites, the top two are always the same. One is a news site, the other is Facebook.

One of the life observations I have is whether I look at Facebook or traditional news first more often?

I know when I am expecting an update from a friend I will always look there first. But when I am just browsing while I wait for a train or for someone to arrive, is it the friend stream or the traditional news stream which I go to first? I am going to pay more attention to this.

Please feel free to let me know which one you go for first.

Sunday Times price increase

Not only is Rupert Murdoch trying to make us pay to read his online Sunday Times content (no link inserted to paid content!), he has also raised the price of the print version too.

I am no economist, but I am sure I heard once raising prices in a falling market doesn’t usually work.

Come on Rupert, let’s not have a repeat of myspace.

I do have an account with myspace, but having just popped across to have a look at it, I have noticed they have removed the last logged in info. From looking at my own site, I would guess I last logged in back in February. Which I suppose would look bad as it is September now.

What is worse for Rupert, while I am having trouble remembering when I last logged into his social network (and it didnt even occur to me to try and link this blog to the blog function in myspace, off to have a look if that is easy to achieve in a minute), is that  my Facebook page gets visited most days.