Dow bets on Factiva

Dow Jones is to buy Reuters' 50 per cent interest in Factiva for £85.5 million to become the sole owner of the online news archive reports Journalism.co.uk.

Factiva, has 1.6 million paying subscribers and supplies business news and services to the finance, corporate, professional services and government sectors.

News monitoring is big business and Dow now opperates at both ends of the news chain.

I wonder if it can compete in a web 2.0 world.

Universal to sue Sony Picture

Universal Music has filed lawsuits against two video-sharing websites, one owned by Sony Pictures, for allowing users to swap pirated versions of its musicians' videos, reports the Guardian.

The two websites are Bolt.com and Grouper, the latter being the website that Sony agreed to buy in August for $65m (£35m). Universal Music has stated that it is retaining the right to add Sony Pictures to the suit.

Of course, Universal is shooting itself in the foot. The key to getting revenue is more outlets not less.

Creating opportunities for people to use content attracts audiences. The kind of audience that wants the product.

Being creative about how content can attract revenues, and by that I do not just mean advertising...... let me see - sponsorship, product placement, branded goods ... do I need to say more to a creative audience? These are revenues with 'long tail' values. Oh what is their problem?

Guardian Media - buys radio station

Guardian Media Group has bought GCap Media's two Century commercial regional radio stations, in Manchester and Gateshead, in a £60m deal.

Local radio has had a torridtime recently but there is alot more to this extension of the Guardian's radio empire.

Radio is in the mix of channels for editorial and is a useful channel in its own right. Add an ability to re-purpose radio programmes as the BBC is now doing and the options for attracting a different range of listeners grows.

Good move.

E-mail marketing guide

"The Marketer & Agency Guide to Email Deliverability is a comprehensive document that provides marketers with a guide on their email marketing.

Available from the Interactive Marketing Bureau it is full of marketing verbiage but is, never the less useful.

It offer marketers a single standard definition of 'deliverability' as well as accurate and timely information around causes of delivery problems and measurement.

As a very high proportion of such conetnet is regarded as spam and because spam filtering is getting better all the time, this is a valuable contribution in the use of email for communication.

'Press Relations' is re-born

The news from every corner of the publishing industry in the UK is that they have a new way of doing business. In less than a fortnight the announcements have poured out one after the next.

The media has discovered that good, competent and rigorous reporting has value. In addition, its value is enhanced when attached to a well respected brand. Add these assets to digital distribution and publishing is a money machine all over again.

For PR, this is a massive change and a big shift in how we manage the PR process. This is what has happened and is happening now. Its too late to wait. First mover advantage is now.

The news that prompts this post is this:

The Guardian has re-branded to reflect its new digital self. Reuters has a Second Life. We see the Telegraph's new multimedia centre opened (see picture), The Times is getting new interactive features, National Magazines is creating an aggregated digital network. Then there is a huge change at Trinity Mirror which is to re-launch all its regional and local newspaper websites by the end of the year. Trails are already in taking place. The change will include 60 video journalists round the country (competition for local TV stations) .

The Express and Echo ran its first video story this week scooping the local TV station.

The Telegraph's integrated multimedia newsroom

We can now expect every publishing house to begin to deliver news in a huge array of formats. They will all broadcast with podacst radio, TV and video on-line and there will be print. There will be blogs and wiki type resources, file and picture sharing, story forwarding and sharing facilities. News to cell phones will include text sound and video and much more.

Why?

Because the same story, reformatted automatically will have a revenue stream attached to it.

In the past in print, there was one opportunity to sell advertising alongside several editorial stories. Today each story can have a dozen advertisements attached to it in a range of formats through an array of channels. Furthermore, where once a story had no market the day after it was published, today it stays on a server for people to access and use in perpetuity (with a brand new add attached).

The best editorial, the fastest news the best journalism will gain market share.

The market, once largely limited to UK audiences, can now reach round the world, the audience opportunity is far greater.

The PR industry now has a big challenge. We have to understand these forms of publishing. We have to be able to offer content that is optimised for this new form of publishing.

We will need to re-adjust to news being published as a continuous flow 24/7. The first edition will be published every few minutes and there will never again be a second edition. We have to monitor news all the time. Not once a week or day but every hour, every minute.

We also have to recognise that reach has changed. Half of news across Europe is first read online. In fact only half of the readership of newspapers sees the print version. The readership, audience and demographic is completely different.

Value added will come from the further opportunity to attach relationship values to these stories and give them added life among our client constituencies. We can do this with our own media. It might be hyperlinks on blogs, wiki posts, content in Second Life but whatever additional channels we use will be enhanced by using highly regarded content from the new and reformed publishing houses.

These are exciting times.

How bloggers can get to PR people - and be loved

By Mike Manuel, Voce Communications and SNCR Research Fellow & Chair, Best Practices Committee has a problem with PR people.



He says: an emerging crop of "citizen journalists" that have developed an unrealistic sense of entitlement and have ceased asking and are now demanding, at least in some cases, the same level of access and information from companies that has long been the exclusive privilege of mainstream journalists.


So, how should Bloggers approach a company?

He has some tips:

Who are you?

Introducing yourself never hurts.

What's your schtick?

What's your blog called? What's the link? Some basic info about what your blog is about.

Whaddaya want?

Well - pretty self explanatory.

Also, why?

Just a basic explanation will suffice.

When can I get back to you?

A practical time-frame for getting back to you.

How do I reach you?

Email's great but ... a phone number as well.

Don't be a dick.

PR people in general have pretty thick skins and I think most will make a concerted effort to address an incoming request, but man, I've heard some horror stories lately of bloggers with just zero tact or respect, trying to use strong arm tactics to bully and manipulate (and blackmail) companies for info and access, and that's just ridiculous — and totally unnecessary.

More at New Communications Review.

Browsing in style

Personalising your browser front page is quite fun.
The biggest by far is Google Personalized Page, but there are many more.

They offer interesting opportunities for promotion. For example, creating widgets for them, content for them and even creating or adapting them can offer promotional and message carrying opportunities.
Examples of the genre are:

Webwag,
Motto
Microsoft's Live.com
Pageflakes

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography

Congratulations to Charles Bailey for making the 10th anniversary of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography! For those of you playing along at home, this is version 64, and covers over 2,750 articles, books, and other resources related to scholarly electronic publishing online.

Monitoring and evaluating online content

Read/Write Web has been looking at some of the products that are available for monitoring and evaluation blogs.

He has reviewed:
Techmeme
Topix
Tailrank

For more read the reviews here.

Others might include:

Blogniscient

Blogrunner

Blogsnow

Chuquet

Megite

Memeorandum

Newroo

Tailrank

Technorati Kitchen

Tinfinger

Topix.net

TruthLaidBear

Move over PR's we're the new guys on the block

It happened with the web and its happening with social media.

The PR industry is letting outsiders take over the role of communications advice, service and competence.

For example, many companies are already setting up shop in SecondLife. CNET Networks, Reuters, Adidas, Sun Microsystems, Toyota.

Is the PR industry involved. Yes. Notably Text100. And the other consultants?

Big gaping void.

Instead there is Justin Bovington, CEO of Rivers Run Red, which helps companies like BBC Radio One create events and design buildings inside Second Life.

Media companies even face competition from virtual upstarts inside Second Life, including New World Notes and SL Herald.

Reuters has even commissioned its longtime tech reporter, Adam Pasick, to cover Second Life full-time and act as Reuters' Second Life bureau chief.

I wonder what Peter Gummer thinks of SecondLife?
What does his wiki farm look like and where are his blog advisors?

Half of all people read their newspaper news online......

Does this tell us something?

Visual branding blindsided

Simon Wakeman has begun a discussion about the nature of brand for bloggers.
It is an interesting and well considered piece.

One of his thoughts is about the way blog content is delivered which means the visual identity is less important. As a blogger your personal brand is communicated more through what you write and how you act as a blogger - how your site looks is less important than ever before, especially for your audience that reads your RSS feeds.

This issue of visual branding is also significant for re-purposed content. Say you want to offer a stry to the media, thoughts about Serach Engine Optimisation may colide with how you offer branding in video, MP3, SMS, newsprint text, an interactive PDF, and even the web page on your virtual press office.

As Simon says it is all about presenting values.....

Yahoo profits down

Yahoo posted a 37-percent slump in third-quarter profit and announced it would buy back up to three billion dollars' worth of its stock.

Newspaper competes with TV for hard news

The Express & Echo in Exeter beat television news to a major regional story by publishing a video report on its website Reports the Press Gazette.

Using only a £190 camcorder and consumer software, the paper rushed an exclusive story onto the web which revealed that Devon County Council's preferred bidder for Exeter Airport was a consortium of London City Airport and Balfour Beattie.

Online PR practices can now learn the lesson that Newspapers take theironline presence very, very seriously. Contributing to this new mindset is essential in PR practice.

This means we need a new form of media release, we need a much wider range of elements we offer to the media (backgrounders, photo, video, re-purposed content for mobiles, blogs, contribution to media wiki's, podcasts and so forth).

To do this effectively we need XPRL..... but you know this don't you?

This is the new PR.

Passing off - the Edelman story

Richard Edelman today issued an apology for his agency's role in creating a blog for client Wal-Mart that did not properly disclose its origins or funding says Brand Republic.

The blog, walmartingacrossamerica.com, chronicled a couple's journey across the country in an RV while stopping at various Wal-Mart parking lots. Although the blog did not initially bear any clear disclosures outside of an advertisement, the trip was funded by the group Working Families for Wal-Mart [WFWM], a Wal-Mart-backed organization designed to promote a positive portrayal of the company. The group is part of Edelman's effort to turn around the reputation of the controversial retailer.

Richard Edelman posted a statement of apology for the incident on his personal blog on Edelman's website today.

"For the past several days, I have been listening to the blogging community discuss the cross-country tour that Edelman designed for Working Families for Wal-Mart," the statement said. "I want to acknowledge our error in failing to be transparent about the identity of the two bloggers from the outset. This is 100% our responsibility and our error; not the client's."

Edelman went on to say his agency supports the transparency guidelines of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association [WOMMA], which call for disclosure of the source of such efforts.

The fact is that, 'passing off' is bad practice, transparency is essential and both Edelman and WalMart know this and both are culpable. There is no excuse. It is, as Edelman says, an error. It is also bad practice and reflects on the professionalism of the profession. In the UK Asda was acquired by Wal-Mart and would hope its PR team is more professional.

In the UK this form of practice is banned by the CIPR code of conduct. It may also be illegal anyway.

When Colin Farrington comes out of his six month purdah and it will not be soon enough for CIPR to ask its lawyers the nature of the legal position. Certainly in election law passing ones self off as another candidate or representing a participant is not legal and there is a lot of consumer law that would make miss-representation illegal as well.

Wikipedia to get competitor

Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia, is launching a social media encyclopaedia that will attempt to balance the original's democratic principles, allowing anyone to add content, but with much greater editorial control.

Citizendium (sit-ih-ZEN-dee-um), which will go live in the next few days, will initially be made available to a limited number of content editors and members of the public who apply. It will become available to the masses by the end of the year.

From Revolution

Bertelsmann to compete with Murdoch's MySpace

PC Advisor has an inside story.

German media giant Bertelsmann AG has begun crafting plans to develop an entertainment-driven social networking website to compete with MySpace and other similar services, a source familiar with the discussions has revealed.

The news comes less than one week after Bertelsmann agreed to sell video content to the popular internet video site YouTube, which has a social networking component and which was acquired days later by Google.

With the new site, Bertelsmann aims to create a community for its music and video projects, according to the source.

Saudi link up

"It really took off last year," says Saudi journalist Rasheed Abou-Alsamh to the BBC.

There are now between 500 and 600 Saudi blogs - in English as well as Arabic - and the bloggers are women as well as men.

"I think young people see the internet as a way of expressing themselves easily and in an uncensored fashion," says Mr Abou-Alsamh.

This means it is not too difficult to open a dialogue with Saudis.

In Blog Relations terms this is an opportunity for PR and the rest of the world.

There are some links in the BBC site.

Teen blogger for the Shropshire Star

Hey! I’m Rhian, I’m the new teen blogger for the Shropshire Star.

And away goes another blog published by a newspapers. What is going to be interesting is the kind of pitches she will get from 'PR' people.

She says:

Before I get started I just want to get one thing clear, in case you don’t already know. Rhian is a Welsh name, pronounced Ree-Ann.

So at least there is no excuse for getting her name wrong.

Next, I guess, you will want to know how to pitch to a blogger.......

One in ten are bloggers

Here is a nice quote for Colin Farrington:

All the world's a multimedia platform, and all the men and women merely bloggers. Or perhaps to blog or not to blog sums up better the sense of Hamletian introspection, the solitary unburdening of one's hopes and fears.

It comes from Tom Leonard writing for the Telegraph. He reports:

Research published yesterday by Harris Interactive suggested that nearly one internet user in 10 has started a blog.

The big suprise is how few undergraduates are bloggers. In Bournemouth the figure is (was) 2%. So these figures worry me a little:

The figure suggests that the blogging habit goes way beyond the teenager stereotype and, today, charities including the National Trust and English Heritage are asking all of us to submit a blog of our day to a website (historymatters.org.uk) to provide a snapshot of a day (October 17) in the life of Britain.

Once more famous for people wanting to talk about their sex lives, their views on politics or, perhaps, just what they had for dinner, blogs are now frequently seizing the news agenda.

Who'd have thought David Cameron would ever jump on a fashionable bandwagon? But sure enough, he has his own blog, featuring video clips of his thoughts on cleaning up politics and his actions on cleaning up the kitchen, while his children scream in the background.......

Perhaps David C has more than one blog.

Virtual meeting of communicators

BL Ochman reports that Kami Huyse has posted a PDF transcript of a meeting of communicators' avatars in Second Life last week. ....

Hosted by Text 100 this is a classic PR tool. It is a conference.