The Paris Cluster
16 March, 2007
Thomas Crampton of the International Herald Tribune's tech blog Metamedia reckons he's on to something: How come so many French high-tech and VC companies have their offices in the 8th arrondisement of Paris?
Have we discovered the existence of France's Silicon Valley? Someone's even come up with a Google Maps mash-up of the quartier, posting some of the company offices.
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Where Next For Newspapers?
16 March, 2007
"Assuming that most dailies survive the transition, my guess is that in twenty-five years they will be mostly digital; that even people like me of the pre-Internet generation will be largely won over by ingenious devices like Times Reader, supplemented by news alerts, rss feeds, and God knows what else. But whether newspapers are print or Web matters far less than whether they maintain their historic calling." - The conclusion to Robert Kuttner's long and fascinating column in the Columbia Journalism Review on the future of the printed press.
Kuttner approaches declining circulations and rising internet readerships (and revenues) from the point of view of a young blogger, who reads not only the four newspapers Kuttner reads in the morning, but also 200-odd RSS feeds and numerous other blogs.
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Assignment Editor
26 July, 2006
A place where readers and journalists can collaborate. That's perhaps the short way to describe NewAssignment.net, Jay Rosen's innovative way of planning and funding stories that readers want, but the mainstream media has been unable to deliver.
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Behind The Statistics
26 July, 2006
30 to 40 people day every day in the current Israel-Lebanon conflict. In Iraq, the violence claims 100 lives every day. In the war in the Congo, it's over ten times that: An average day sees 1,200 lives lost in the conflict. So why does the news present the stories in the same running order as above? The BBC's editor's blog has some answers.
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Americans In Paris
26 July, 2006
Paris between the wars wasn't just a golden era for American fiction: Journalism thrived in the French capital too, with reporters flocking to the city to work as foreign correspondents, cultural critics or as hacks on one of the two big US newspapers based there.
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In The 24 Hour Newsroom
25 July, 2006
The Independent has a fascinating look at the dynamics of the BBC News 24 newsroom.
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BBC Prepares For iPods
20 July, 2006
The BBC has announced plans to prepare broadcast content for distribution on mobile phones, PCs and iPods. "We need a BBC ready for digital, for 360-degree multi-platform content creation," said director general Mark Thompson.
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An Eye For Broadband TV
26 June, 2006
Blogs are easy to set up. Podcasts? A little trickier, but not beyond the reach of many users. What about your own broadcast channel, though, using broadband to send video and audio to viewers around the globe? It's easier than you'd think - and is set to become the next user-generated content phenomenon.
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There And Back Again
20 June, 2006
Britain's Guardian newspaper continues to pioneer. Yesterday's announcement, however, looks to some observers like a step backwards. Very shortly, the newspaper will be launching what it calls a "downloadable news digest." In practice, it's going to be a 12 page pdf version of the newspaper's top stories, which can be printed off by readers and carried on a metro or a coffee break. You can see a preview copy here.
Why print? Surely news is moving inexorably online. Is the Guardian's pdf version a rearguard action from a newspaper which declared only last week that it plans a 24 hour online edition, putting stories on its website before they reach print? Not exactly: The Guardian's pdf will be updated every 15 minutes, so it's also going to be as up-to-the-minute as the website.
Additionally, it's a good business move. A 12 page Guardian could compete with any of Britain's numerous freesheets. It keeps the newspaper's brand in the freebie market, where rivals have lost ground. Better still, the newspaper doesn't need to pay any print or distribution costs for its freesheet: Getting hundreds of thousands of copies to every Tube station is a costly logistical nightmare, but having your readers print it themselves makes for substantial savings. Moreover, the Guardian has announced that British Telecom will be sponsoring the pdf edition, so the costs, which let's face it, are likely to be small, are covered at least. In all, a good move for the Guardian.
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Paperboy
08 June, 2006
Here's a question from a smart youngster. Mathias Döpfner, chairman and CEO of German newspaper publishing giant Axel Springer told of how one of his editors was explaining deadlines to a group of schoolchildren. He described how improving technology allows editors to hold deadlines open at the previously unheard of late hour of 11.00 PM, have the paper ready for distribution at 4.00 AM and on the newsstands for 6.00 AM.
“You say there are no changes to the newspaper after 11 p.m.” a boy asked. “Right” said the editor. “So why don’t you just email me the newspaper at 11 p.m?”
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