I've been catching up with David Higgerson's fine blog, which includes an interesting post about the news:rewired event in London on June 25, and his thoughts on a speech delivered by Marc Reeves, former editor of The Birmingham Post.

Marc argued, among other things, that journalists should be willing to boost their employer's turnover by passing on potential sales leads to the advertising department.

But, he laments:

"That artificial divide we created when we put the noisy people in a room marked ‘advertising' and the studious types in another labelled ‘editorial' was the biggest mistake newspapers and other media ever made.

"It allowed journalists to insulate themselves from the business they were in to the point of revelling in their detachment. I've worked with generations of hacks to whom the very idea of passing on a sales lead was regarded as a murderous betrayal of the memory of CP Scott."

He may be right. I'm not going to comment here on the divide between editorial and advertising departments, but reading both Marc and David's blogs did remind me of one of my personal bugbears, which is the divide between the debates taking place about the changing nature of the news industry and most of those who work in it.

Read more...

Well damn, there I was talking about how wonderful Sprout gadgets were and the service vanishes.

Sprout used to offer free and paid for services ("go pro!") but the free service has been cancelled, and existing gadgets deleted. You can still use Sprout's services if you are an organisation with a hefty budget to pay them.

I've created a Widgetbox gadget instead, but it uses advertising which can be pretty ugly as it sometimes covers the text you want to display.

Can't blame Sprout, as like everyone else they need to get some cash in return for their bandwidth and to feed their families.

But there is a lesson here I think about taking "free" services for granted. Organisations may try out business plans that don't involve directly charging people for their services, but if they don't work then the "free" product won't be around for long.

I've reported previously that the Conservatives are opposed to the Government's plans for regional news consortia. These are the partnerships which will bring together newspapers, regional television and blogs, with a little Government subsidy.

But they went a little further last week, making it clear they would do their best to scrap the consortia even if they have been created before the next election. Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt said the Tories would "do all we can to legally unpick them".

My former boss Marc Reeves, former editor of The Birmingham Post, is part of the panel that will choose the winning bid for the first three consortia.

Here are some extracts from Jeremy Hunt's speech:

"The Digital Economy Bill sets in stone the Government policy of using public subsidy to prop up regional news on ITV. My opposition to such a measure is hopefully, well known. Using the licence fee to prop up regional news simply casts a failed regional TV model in aspic. It would actively prevent the emergence of new, local media models, making broadcasters focus their energies on satisfying politicians not reaching viewers.

"I know that many organisations in this room are involved in bidding for the pilot schemes that this Bill would make permanent. And I don't blame you: faced with the terrifying situation many of you are in, it is understandable you want to follow the money wherever it is, public or private.

"So let me be clear. We do not support these provisions in the Digital Economy Bill. And we do not support the pilot schemes. The contracts are not due to be signed until May. Anyone looking to sign one should understand that we'll do all we can to legally unpick them if David Cameron enters Number 10. And if they haven't been signed, we won't be doing so.

"This is because we want to see the emergence of a radically different, improved and forward-looking local media sector. Not just local TV, where we are about the only major developed country not to have proper city-based TV franchises. But profitable, hungry and ambitious local radio, local newspapers and local websites as well."

Government subsidies for regional news will stifle innovation and lead to demands for more public money, according to the Tories.

The Conservative stance means there is a very sharp division between the two major parties over how Government can support the local and regional news industry.

As I reported previously, Labour plans to support regional news consortia bringing together newspapers, local TV news and bloggers.

Three pilot schemes will be announced soon. Word in the industry (I can't verify this) is that they will be in Scotland, Wales and north west England.

The projects will get some public cash, probably from the licence fee, although this is only supposed to be temporary.

Jeremy Hunt, the Tory shadow culture secretary, made it clear the Conservatives oppose this idea, in a speech last week.

He said: "Let's look, for example, at what the government is proposing on local news. Essentially it wants to prop up the failed regional news model with licence fee cash.

"Why is this so flawed?

"Firstly, because it will set in stone the current failed model and stifle any possibility of better local news models emerging.

"Once the licence fee is paying for regional news, then all the efforts of those people receiving the subsidy will be put into lobbying ministers and Ofcom as to why it should continue. What they will not be doing is developing the new business models for local media that are being opened up by the internet.

"Secondly it will undermine one of the most successful elements of British broadcasting, namely the fact that our broadcasters compete on their ability to attract viewers not subsidy."

Read more...

I have a feature on the left column of this site titled "Birmingham News", which is meant to provide links to stories I have written for the Birmingham Post and Mail. It never really worked, because there was no RSS feed for my stories. My attempts to create a feed using Yahoo Pipes were unsuccessful (and Pipes, although incredibly useful when it works, is not always reliable in my experience).

So thank you Google News for coming to the rescue. Their author search feature allows you to create an RSS feed for stories written by any given author, so that I can isolate my own stories at last.

I thought this may be of interest to others, because you can of course do the same with any writer whose articles appear in Google News.

For example, I am a fan of Matthew Parris. He has his own page on the Times Online website, here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/

But there is no RSS feed specifically for his work, provided by the Times. At least, if it exists, it is well hidden and I could not find it.

But you can easily create your own feed from Google News. Here is the URL:

http://news.google.co.uk/news/search?aq=f&um=1&cf=all&ned=uk&hl=en&q=author%3A%22matthew+parris%22

To generate an RSS feed for any author, go to Google News:

http://news.google.co.uk/

Enter as your search term (taking Matthew Parris as an example):

Author:"Matthew Parris"

You should get a list of articles written by the author you have chosen. And on the left will be some options, including "sorted by date" and "sorted by relevance". I don't know what relevance means in this context, and personally I suggest clicking on "sorted by date" to ensure the feed gives you the latest articles as they go online.

Then you can either click on the RSS symbol somewhere near the top of your browser (it will be an orange symbol of some kind, and it will look a bit different depending on which browser you use), or simply scroll to the bottom of the page where there is an "RSS" link.

Click that link, and there you go.