If anyone wants to know where the future of the UK’s new media landscape will be forged and decided, it’ll be in the North-East of England. Starting on Monday.

26 November 2009 – 11:46 pm

Whether by accident or design, the North-East of England is a very interesting place to be now media-wise.

That particular penny has taken a little while to drop, but events of the last 36 hours have only strengthened my feeling that over the course of the next 6-9 months, Newcastle, Sunderland and the great English-Scottish borderlands to the north are the place to be… the area to which many an eye will turn come the spring.

Why?

Well, first there is the Northumberland Gazette which is to be one of six JP weekly newspapers to disappear behind a pay-wall come next Monday…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2009/nov/25/johnston-press-charging-for-content

That will be interesting to watch pan out; not least for TrinityMirror who are there, on the same patch, with their own ‘YourPlace’ proposition…

http://www.journallive.co.uk/northumberland-sites/

Which way the JP wind blows is always of interest in this neck of the woods, if only for the fact that John Fry is my old boss at Archant; deep in the bowels of Prospect House we used to have Norwich City conversations before I fled the world of print press halls, delivery vans and paper boys.

Whether now is the time to rebuild Hadrian’s Wall round the Northumberland Gazette’s content just in time for the arrival of Trinity, TenAlps and PA is a moot point; personally, I’d put my written local wares right out front where the world and his IFNC wife could see them…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/26/itv-regional-news-replacement

But, whatever.

What is, however, interesting is Neil Benson’s comments from the TM side of the fence; that their ‘localness’ & ‘community roots’ were a fundamental part of their proposition; that’s where they felt they had to go… into just the sort of patches that JP were now about to build a fence round.

Interesting.

OK, natch we have more than a passing interest in events Ooop north.

But it is two, tiny events in that neck of the woods that – for me – add to the interest that is likely to flow up the Tyne Valley and on into the ancient market towns of Hexham and Alnwick.

One happened in Sunderland; the launch of Josh Halliday’s www.SR2blog.com That kid is smart; smart enough to find himself squeezing up next to Emily Bell for a podcast…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/audio/2009/nov/26/media-talk-podcast-richard-bacon-student-media-conference

Am I biased; yeh, course… he’s playing with our toy. But at least they’re his words, not mine.

http://sr2blog.com/?p=286

But as universtities and colleges up and down the land start to think about how they might arm their J-School students with the tools of a new trade, www.SR2blog.com is very interesting to watch.

And that final straw in the wind? That last, tiny piece of evidence that something might be a stirring in those great, wild borderlands..?

Well, for me, that accolade goes to the Shilbottle Coal Company.

Cos, of course, we have our own little network joining the dots between the River Tyne to the south and the Scottish Borders to the north…

http://www.addiply.com/index.php?option=com_addiply&Itemid=69&r1=1&r2=1

And there, in Alnwick, is a little text ad; placed by a little coal merchant who – for the last 200 years – has ferried his wares within a 30-mile radius of Alnwick.

http://alnwick.journallive.co.uk/

For a fiver-a-week he can now advertise his wares to those same people. And he can place his ad there in three clicks.

It’s not the greatest ad the world will ever see… http://www.coaldirect.co.uk/ … but his message is out there; on a digital platform; in the heart of his local community.

And if anyone tells me that an Alnwick coal merchant has the time, the energy or the inclination to speak to the man from Google and optimise his ad to land back on http://alnwick.journallive.co.uk/ from a little black box away in sunny California, well, I won’t believe you.

He took Google out of the loop; he placed that ad himself. And gave TM £4.50 a week into the bargain.

And that’s interesting.

�

By Rick Waghorn | Posted in Advertising, General, Journalism | Tagged , , , , | Comments (3)

If the NUJ aren’t very, very careful, they will find history condemning them to the same fate as the NUM – the National Union of Monks

21 November 2009 – 5:01 pm

There are several reasons why all roads wound their way towards the National Union of Journalists today.

One was a piece that appeared in MediaShift this week; one that returned to the theme of revolution…

http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2009/11/changes-in-media-over-the-past-550-years318.html

For me, there was nothing ‘revolutionary’ in what was being said; in fact, in my little world I would these days venture to suggest that this was accepted ‘orthodoxy’ – that the arrival of the web is currently changing the way world communicates and interacts with itself in a way not seen since 1500.

That we need to party like its 1499, not 1999…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=260

But what made David’s piece pertinent to the current debate was his musings on how the put-upon scribes and monks of the time might have felt as they – as a professional trade body – were made all-but irrelevant by the march of technology.

‘There aren’t good records of their protests,’ writes David,

‘But I can just imagine their reasoning: that people would be overwhelmed by too much information; that they would become isolated reading at home rather than coming to church; that mediocrity would prevail if publishing was put into the hands of ordinary people.

‘Basically, all of the same criticisms we hear of the Internet today. In the end, the scribes lost and the printing press won. With the benefit of historical perspective, we view the result as inevitable. And we are seeing the same dynamic play out today with traditional journalism and the participatory internet… ‘

For me the challenge now facing the National Union of Journalists is the same challenge that faced the NUM 550 years ago as the National Union of Monks found the great unwashed trampling all over their lawn; after all, who needs a trained sub-editor when you only have 140 characters to play with…

A gilded dropped cap; or finessing out an awkward column turn… they are skills of another age. As are those of the paper boy and girl. Delivering news on the back of a bicycle is soooo 1499.

And that’s got absolutely nothing to do with the machinations of the Murdochs or the Baileys. My Little Man is nine-years-old; its not in his genes with a ‘g’ to read a newspaper; what’s in his jeans with a ‘j’ is a mobile phone…

… and there lies our future. Somehow.

Yes, defend your members’ interests. Of course.

But, for me, their best interest is served by learning to embrace the new, not stubbornly clinging to the old….

Read this and the language is that of political opposition; indeed, of the NUM; as if either this Government or the next has any real idea how to tame this web beast…

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=44673&c=1

If neither vision sits easily with the NUJ, what exactly does? Where’s the plan?

If we can start to sketch out a future – and it is still only a sketch – it is increasingly likely that our futures will be small – and localised. ‘Localised’ to a postcode or a place; or likewise ‘localised’ to a subject or a passion.

As the web smashes everything into a molecular wasteland of disparate content and disengaged readers, the new DNA of news will be rebuilt via networks that are small, but perfectly-formed.

Communities of place or passion coalescing around part-time sifters of data, etc, etc…

That’s the new landscape. And if the NUJ don’t ‘get’ this soon, by the time the back bench of the Daily Express is looking for a new living, the likes of a Josh Halliday and his www.SR2blog.com will have populated this new world without them.

I look at what Will (Perrin), Nikki and Mike are doing with their 4iP funding out of TalkAboutLocal and why aren’t the NUJ starting to feed their people into those kind of workshops?

Trying to see if they couldn’t start to promote and support the new forms of journalism; what lessons can they learn from www.thelichfieldblog.co.uk ? Is there a model that – together – we can build to the benefit of their members?

Digging in behind the barricades of traditional political rhetoric – inky workers of the world unite against the bosses and the Press barons – ignores the simplest of truths.

That the bosses and the barons are bust; they’ve gone. Or are going.

Our future lies as a cottage industry; one that just needs a little organising. And for that, history can still be our guide…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=30

By Rick Waghorn | Posted in General, Journalism | Tagged , | Comments (0)

When it comes to our re-invention, Jason and Nigel are spot on. The answer will come from the bottom up, not the top down. A point seemingly lost on Rupert and Co.

17 November 2009 – 6:48 pm

I’ve never met Jason C Fry. Quite like to; think me and him could have a ball.

http://reinventingthenewsroom.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/this-is-broken-from-game-stories-to-well-everything/

I have met Nigel Barlow on a couple of occasions; I was slightly non-plussed to discover that, in his eyes, I was the ‘Godfather of Hyper-Local’; particularly given the fact that in oh-so many ways, we ain’t done anything yet.

All we’ve ever done, really, is sat at our kitchen table and wondered aloud how www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity might get to work and whether or not we could get to somewhere approaching a ‘not-for-loss’ position via www.addiply.com

On both counts, the jury remains out.

But, nevertheless, it was nice to be mentioned in Nigel’s latest despatches…

http://thoughtsofnigel.blogspot.com/2009/11/journalism-models-and-rick-waghorns.html

Both pieces had a thought in common – re-invention.

How would we do this journalism-thing if we started with a blank piece of paper? If we knew what we know now, in 2009, how would we do it? Be it beat sports writing in the case of Jason – or local news in the case of Nigel.

And, in fairness to both, they appear to come to the same conclusion. That you’d start from the bottom up; work with what was once your audience and try to start over again with the smallest forms of journalistic life; or else, try and find something that was fresh and analytical with which you might once again win favour with your former newsprint fans.

Which is all what Evslin’s Law was about; start from the very bottom and (re-)build your way up.�

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=238

And what is the lowest form of news life? What the lad from Wired once described as the ‘news’ that his daughter had scraped her knee in the school playground that afternoon. That’s the very first molecule of news life; that’s where we should start… from the bottom up.

On the streets. Or rather at the school gates – and the news that matters to me.

NOT with the news that News International thinks matters to me.

Today and it was the turn of The Times editor James Harding to tell us what the future of news will look like as he delivered the tablets of stone carved out by His Master to the Society of Editors.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/17/times-editor-james-harding-online-charging�

“We are going to rewrite the economics of the newspaper, newsgathering and delivery business,” he said.

Really?

From on high. You are going to impose a solution on this great, moveable feast that is the web and drop so many pay-walls down in front of our eyes in the sure and certain knowledge that we won’t all just ebb and flow our way around you…

For reasons that aren’t too hard to fathom, I’ve had cause to wander up and down the highways and byways of Northumberland of late as Addiply launches out of TrinityMirror’s micro-sites.

And because we’re open, we’re transparent and we’re accountable, so we can all see the kind of numbers that these micro-sites are delivering.

http://www.addiply.com/index.php?option=com_addiply&Itemid=69&r1=1&r2=1

I’ve never been to Allandale. Put ‘Allendale’ ‘Northumberland’ and ‘population’ into Google and you come up with the figure 809.

Or 2,120. Wikipedia appears a bit confused.

But either way, in that context I don’t think TM’s numbers for Allendale are that shabby – in terms of penetration; in terms of the relevance of that particular news platform to that particular community.

It probably beats the penetration level achieved by The Times.

And, in that regard, I think it ought to be deemed something of a success. A model, almost. Because you’re delivering news almost to the school gates; the BBC can do the rest…

All we need to do now is re-populate the rest of the UK with similar micro-sites for the news that really matters to you… and we might be onto a winner.

Just.

But the answer will come from the bottom up, not from the top down.

Whatever Rupert and his many minions will claim.

The Age Of Imposition is over; the Age Of Participation has only just begun.

By Rick Waghorn | Posted in General, Journalism | Tagged , | Comments (3)

Here’s a challenge. Why not take all we see, all we know and start to understand and tell the people of Stoke all about it, the people of Leeds, of Wigan, etc, etc…

16 November 2009 – 1:17 pm

For many a reason, Sarah Hartley and I have found ourselves wandering along similar paths of late.

Which is why I read her latest blog piece with interest… and, to be honest, admiration.

Because there is a very fine line that we all have to walk here; on the one hand trying to keep up with the London Twitterati whilst at the same time trying to work out what difference any of us can actually make with regard to communities that desperately need to find a voice.

It is a line that Sarah managed to tread with a fine sense of balance as she juggled her way between the £1.40 conference at Reuters one day; a social media surgery in Leeds the next.

Whether I’ll be able to follow suit is another matter…

Here’s the piece…

http://sarahhartley.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/musings-on-the-week-a-north-south-social-media-divide/

… the comments that follow are well worth a read too… I suspect for North/South you could suggest inside M25/outside M25; even after 15 years in Norfolk, I’ve still to discover where Norwich sits in the great North-South debate. I do know, however, that it is well outside the M25… we don’t do dual carriageways.

Why Sarah’s thoughts struck such a chord isn’t hard to fathom; last Monday I was in Stoke; delivering a lecture to the kids at Staffs University before enjoying an Indian buffet meal with Mike Rawlins, of TalkAboutLocal and www.pitsnpots.co.uk fame.

On Thursday, me our Ian and Harry Harrold met up in Norwich to plot our next moves; on Friday I was in Newcastle; having lunch with Peter Atkinson MP; talking through the kind of issues that his constituents face in rural Northumberland; be it in terms of broadband connectivity, brand placement, etc, etc…

And, yes, I am going there with a business hat on; I have got a product to promote; a service to sell.

Here’s www.addiply.com on www.pitsnpots.co.uk and, of course, Northumberland is suddenly very dear to our hearts as we partner up with TrinityMirror’s ‘Your Place’ platform and offer hyper-local advertising space across their 20-odd sites at a fiver a throw…

http://www.addiply.com/index.php?option=com_addiply&Itemid=69&r1=1&r2=1

… so, we’re not a charity; I have a commercial reason to be stopping in the Quality Hotel in Hanley of a night; to be playing mine host in the Northern Counties Club on Hood St.

And I wasn’t there pumping out the virtues of Twitter; I know what Twitter can do – you whack a #ncfc tag onto any Norwich City related football tweet and you’re delivering me free content on www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity – among our ‘#ncfc’ community can be found Ed Balls MP, BBC Radio Norfolk marketing their digital audio wares and – as of last night – City skipper @GrantHoltyFooty

Whether he’s the real McCoy, we’ve still to establish – the feeling this morning was that it was a fake.

But the point is that we’re publishing conversations of interest and relevance that help make MyFootballWriter a more sustainable editorial platform; that tag isn’t there for one day only; it doesn’t disappear off into the ether somewhere – it has a practical purpose.

It delivers me fresh content. That’s free. Whilst I’m sat in a curry house in Stoke.

And this, for me, is what Sarah is driving at… out there, outside the ‘Beltway’, what practical difference can these new tools at our disposal make on the streets of Leeds, of Norwich and of Stoke?

Or rather, in her words…

‘What do the views of a bunch of always-on wired meeja professionals in London have to do with delivering news and information services to people working in tough but essential spheres such as the mental health sector, or living in areas where broadband access is still an aspiration not a reality?

… but all in all, for me at least, it was an afternoon inside the echo chamber, the reverberations of which will probably not even reach Islington, let alone Leeds…’

For those who don’t know their Stoke, there is a very real possibility that Stoke Central could return the first BNP MP at the next general election. Of the nine BNP councillors that sit on Stoke City Council, six come from within that Parliamentary constituency.

Should Stoke Central return a BNP MP, you can imagine the level of outrage that will follow in the talking shops and coffee houses of Islington.

It is, you suspect, one reason why Will Perrin, TalkAboutLocal and 4iP are now out there on the ground in Stoke; using Mike and his experiences on the frontline with www.pitsnpots.co.uk to galvanise new community start-ups; to nurture the kind of grass-roots debates that need to happen… out there; where the metal really meets the meat.

And if www.addiply.com can somehow help the like of www.pitsnpots.co.uk to become a ‘not-for-loss’ model; that our offer of a 90% revenue return can help sustain the level of street debate that is desperately needed within these set-upon communities then great…

I’d far rather have a night at the Quality Hotel, Hanley, selling my wares there than mixing with the greater and the good in the heart of London town.

I don’t know where, say, the Media140 roadshow is heading next; I think it was Sydney last time out… they have some wind in their sails; they’re re-shaping our meeja future. Smart people; bright minds.

Good luck to them.

OK, here’s a challenge for them. Why not have the next UK Media140 event in a Stoke?

Or a Leeds? Or a Burnley? Or a Norwich? Or a Wigan? Or a Hexham?

And not charge.

I’ll speak. And I suspect Sarah will. And Mike.

Let’s see if we can’t actually start to make a difference. Where it really matters.

On those streets that aren’t paved with new meeja gold.

By Rick Waghorn | Posted in General, Journalism | Tagged , | Comments (1)

The more I see, the more I know… do I start to understand? That part of our future might not be networks, but glass silos?

4 November 2009 – 5:46 pm

‘The more I see, the more I know; the more I know, the less I understand… (P Weller, Changing Man)

So, Twitter lists.

Apologies; this involves a little story.

As the more Addiply-aware of you will have, hopefully, twigged we now have a little thang going on with the good people of TrinityMirror and their far-flung North-East, hyper-local outpost; the JournalLive ‘Your Place’ platform…

http://www.journallive.co.uk/northumberland-sites/

Means that we can now offer an little Amble solicitor the chance to advertise to his local community for a fiver a week rather than take a chance that a Google text ad would ping half-way round the world and back again onto his preferred site in Amble… it’s a simple philosophy that is now open to any SME in rural Northumberland looking to digitally market their wares.

Here you go, peeps… take your pick…

http://www.addiply.com/index.php?option=com_addiply&Itemid=69&r1=1&r2=1

Naturally – given this is the Age of Collaboration; that whilst content may still be king, collaboration is queen, etc… – I’m more than happy to help Helen, David and the TrinityMirror Co ’seed’ some awareness of Addiply; we’re working together.

As we all have to.

So, I therefore start to tart myself round Twitter looking for digitally-minded folk in the region that might ‘get’ what Addiply offers them. Simple, accountable, place-it-yourself advertising for a fiver a week.

@HallMeister, in fairness, finds me. She’s smart that way.

But off we go to @Girl_Geeks_NE and out pops @ElegantIntros

Our Louise runs a posh dating agency out somewhere near Hexham; seeking out the alpha males of Walker, Wallsend and Byker…

http://www.elegantintros.com/

So far, so simple… Ponteland, you sense is posh. OK, place an ad there Louise…

That’s great. But I now want to see who else is out there on Twitter; running a small, digitally-minded business in the North-East. So, I kinda figure that someone, somewhere must have a ‘Twitter list’ of North-East businesses…

And old smarty pants Louise, does…

Like the rest of us, not quite sure why she collected/curated/managed/edited/coralled a list of 165 North-East businesses together under one ‘roof’ – her own, note – but there it is…

@ElegantIntros/north-east-businesses

… which I duly follow.

Now that list is just the kind of list that I was looking for; I don’t know any of them from Adam.. I live at my Mum’s in Norfolk; or at least for as long as she’s in the N&N, I do.

So the chances of me putting together a list of that relevant nature that’s 166-people strong? Nil.

Could do it; but bit like SEO… have neither the time, the energy or the inclination. Not when someone has already done the hard work for me. Louise Northwood, in this instance.

But what’s fascinating in all this is the value that is starting to emerge.

Wittingly or not – and, obviously, she knew what she was doing – but Louise has collected a list of value that, crucially, she controls. And Twitter gave her ‘the kit’ to do it.

She is the gatekeeper to a list of 166 names that I want access to… and Twitter ring-fenced them beneath her brand, @elegantintros

I can’t get to that list without going through Louise, so to speak. Or without Twitter.

I can sift through all 166 little avatars and message them directly; or else I can appeal to the Mistress of the Message and ask Louise to let me in…

Now, for my marketing needs re Addiply and TM’s Northumberland sites, I’d probably pay a micro-payment for access to that list… if a Port & Lemon on the Quayside fails to suffice.

And then Twitter and Louise can divvie up that micro-payment between them.

What’s really interesting is the fact that whereas we thought this new world of ours might be networked – that silos were sooo old-fashioned – here comes Twitter installing glass silos into a network; in that we can now press our Twitchy noses against the glass of Louise’s @elegantintros/north-east-businesses ’silo’ – but we can’t touch.

Not to them en masse… as a group… as a list… as a community.

Not without an invite.

Or, in theory, a micro-payment.

And it’s empowering Louise to be a woman of influence. She’s the one with the ticket to the ball.

For now. Until the next person builds a bigger and a better Twitter-list.

Now I look at other lists. And I look at @DavidCohn – he of SpotUs fame. Top lad.

And I’m following his lists @DigiDave/colleagues cos I strongly suspect that there will be people of value therein; my squidgy nose is pressed up against his glass silo wondering what I have to do to get in… and would I pay to market either myself or my wares to that particular crew…

Possibly; I’d pay five bucks on the door… he’s a smart lad; he probably hangs around with a cool crew; his list is one on which to be seen…. etc, etc.. I could do some business in there; make some good connections with people that Dave has already edited for my benefit.

For that’s what he’s done. He’s subbed out the run-of-the-mill; discarded the flotsam and jetsam and concentrated his efforts and his invites on those that are making the right kind of sounds, not those just making any old noise.

He’s acted as a filter; as an editor.

And in doing that he’s made my own life easier… right, those are the people I need to be talking to… over there.

And for that simple act – of putting a list of his mates together – both @DigiDave and Twitter deserve a reward. And therein may lay the genesis of a business model.

Very interesting.

By Rick Waghorn | Posted in Advertising, General, Journalism | Tagged , , , | Comments (1)

The more I see, the more I know; the more I know, the less I understand… (P Weller, Changing Man). This, however, I do understand…

30 October 2009 – 6:53 pm

Mr Matt Waring and I have yet to come up with a catchy name; but we’re pondering doing our own conference thing come the New Year.

But it’ll have something to do with elephants. As in the big one in the room. The one no-one really likes to mention.

I suspect, like most good ideas in the history of www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity and www.addiply.com inspiration will only come via a spot of lubrication.

But, anyway, the point is that we are beginning to think that it is high time we started to address said elephant in room and, grabbing the bull by both horns, ask one of the more fundamental questions of our times: ‘This web thing… how does it actually make anyone any money?’

Three and a bit years into all things www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity and I have a few ideas; definite answers are rather harder to come by.

Which is why I’ve now instituted Paul Weller’s ‘Changing Man’ as our theme tune; having been stuck in endless traffic jams of late – either en route to do a panel session at #alikeminds in Exeter or on to HelloDigital at Birmingham the week after – there is one, particular verse that has become etched in my mind as summing up the state of this digital nation of ours…

‘The more I see, the more I know;

‘The more I know, the less I understand;

‘I’m a changing man; built on shifting sands…’

In the three and a bit years since I first started to build a new digital home for myself on the shifting sands of the web, there’s much I’ve come to know. And there’s bits that I’ve come to understand. How both marry together into a sustainable whole is – even now – another matter.

What do I know?

That part of the answer will be in sourcing revenue from relevant advertising that both appeals to and is of service to that particular web community.

That local advertisers like simple, straight-forward tenancy deals.

Give them a price per week or per month and they ‘get’ that.

They have neither the time, the knowledge, the cash or the inclination to tweak their ad words to fit someone else’s SEO.

That there is an under-lying assumption at local/niche level that journalists are owed a full-time living.

That’s a big one.

Why do we assume that the future of news on the web will allow anyone to command a full-time living?

I can get www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity and www.myfootballwriter.com/ipswichtown to just about work on the basis that – right now – it is ’staffed’ by two part-time reporters; boys who have a ‘portfolio’ living; that churning out a ‘good read’ once a day in Tom’s case – once before and after every Town game in Dave’s case – is just a part of their working lives.

Right now – without having the revenue opportunities that a fully-fledged MFW network would bring in terms of top-down advertising and content syndication possibilities – I can’t offer them anything more.

They are but part-time curators of their respective sites; we remain endebted to #ncfc for delivering us fresh and rolling content from what was once our audience to keep MFW ticking over.

That I now understand.

That there is no guarantee whatsoever that any of us are going to be granted a full-time living once the sand beneath our feet stops shifting.

But what I also know and understand is that with the right tools at our disposal we can start to the way someone might dig out a part-time living on the web.

Or – and this remains our first rung on the ladder – how someone could start to move beyond that oft-quoted position of ‘not-for-profit’ and get to ‘not-for-loss’.

And I make no apologies for returning to www.TheLichfieldBlog.co.uk but, for me, they are as close as anyone to seeing how a part-time living might work.

Here’s a news story…

http://thelichfieldblog.co.uk/2009/10/30/lichfield-mp-quizzes-government-over-canal-restoration/

… and there’s £60 a month.

And there’s those two boys offering their community a service when it comes to advertising.

For a tenner a month – Lichfield Garrick – you can now place your ad in front of our 11,500-odd readers.

Or else, Lichfield Garrick you can chance your arm with you-know-who in the hope that some mutual SEO magic will get this… http://www.lichfieldgarrick.com/About-the-Garrick/Unforgettable-Film-Season/ – on this www.thelichfieldblog.co.uk via a black box in California.

And, yes, £60 is peanuts. But it’s a start. And how can £60 become £120 become £240, etc, etc…? By HM Government recognising that the people of Lichfield will have specific social, economic and medical needs that HM Government needs to target via appropriate ‘messaging’.

That’s when it starts to work. Or rather that’s when it starts to part-time work. And that’s the bit that I do now understand.

That the web owes no-one a full-time living. Least of all a journalist. �

By Rick Waghorn | Posted in Advertising, General, Journalism, MFW | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

OfCom sees grassroots journalism underpinning a thriving community media sector? Fine, now put your money where you mouth is. On the streets of Alnwick, Ashington, Amber…

14 October 2009 – 11:01 am

It’s been a while. Apologies. Had jobs to do; people to see.

Suffice to say that last week was ‘one for the album’; but for the likes of ‘Mr Darcy’, AJ, Yvonne, Jas and everyone else on the ITU Dept at the N&N the Old Dear wouldn’t be propping herself up in bed this morning, reading her copy of The Times.

Anyway, in amidst all such dramas, Addiply took another small step in an interesting direction when we launched out of 22 of TrinityMirror’s hyper-local sites in the North-East.

I can now let Patrick explain…

http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-a-local-ad-network-for-local-people-addiply-raises-its-hand/

Or, indeed, Laura…�

http://www.journalism.co.uk/2/articles/536095.php

On a street level, it means that our Sarah can now advertise her PR wares to the good people of Ponteland for a fiver a week…

http://ponteland.journallive.co.uk/

… and save herself a small fortune in time and money in optimising her site/campaign to end up in exactly the same spot.

While on an elegant network level, we can now offer potential regional advertisers the opportunity to place their brand in 22 market towns across Northumberland… and, more importantly in this Age of Pixelisation and Transparency, they can now do that knowing exactly what they’re buying into; what am I getting here, Rick, for my every last ad dollar?

Well, here you go…

http://www.addiply.com/index.php?option=com_addiply&Itemid=69&r1=1&r2=1

There are several points that, for me, are important.

One, is that we don’t forget our roots; we’re not Mr G. All we’re doing is trying to get people into a position where they can run their sites on a ‘not-for-loss’ basis. To try and see if we can get a first foot on the first rung of the ladder.

Addiply isn’t the answer. Because there isn’t one answer. An answer that will fit every blossoming digital community and platform out there. Hopefully, however, we can become part of someone’s answer. Be they Nikki in Digbeth or TrinityMirror in Northumberland.

Secondly, I think it is important that we give credit where credit is due and gratefully acknowledge the fact that TM have taken a leaf out of David Cohn’s book and looked to collaboration as being their queen; the most powerful piece on this new, digital chessboard of ours.

That in seeking one, possible answer to their own hyper-local experiments they have been prepared to engage with what’s happening on the streets of Lichfield and having witnessed what Addiply is starting to do with www.TheLichfieldBlog.co.uk so the likes of David (Higgerson) and Helen (Dalby) have had the courage of their curiosity to see if this could also work for them on the streets of Alnwick, Ashington, Amber, etc…�

Hence the last post; that collaboration will be the key to our survival; that if nothing works, then together let’s see if this might…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=324

But on the day that the great and the good of OfCom are twittering on about where next for the provision of local news in this country – ‘@foodiesarah: Ofcom sees opp for thriving community media sector underpinned by grassroots journalism #westminster…’

Then they need to start putting their money where their mouth is; turning all that fresh-mined medical data from the regional health observatories into the type of perfectly-targetted messaging that can make a real difference to those trying to sustain local news platforms – be it on the streets of Ashington in the case of Helen and TrinityMirror or Lichfield in the case of Ross, Phil and Co…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=309

That’s the opportunity that the powers-that-be in Westminster and Whitehall need to grasp; they need to starting unlocking the state purse to subsidise new media start-ups through cost-effective and audience-efficient advertising campaigns…

… and in an election year, it is a message that also needs to be hammered home to the various political parties; where am I going to find my voters these days if its not via the pages of the local newspaper. A thought process that, to his credit, Michael Fabricant MP has already twigged on the streets of Lichfield.

‘Ah, there you are… ‘

So, if I was Sly Bailey, the next time I had tea at Claridges with anyone of Mr Purvis’ ilk – or I bumped into our ‘Digital Inclusion Champion’ Martha Lane Fox – that would be my message…

Give me advertising, give me a fiver a week and give me a chance to ride out this ‘Perfect Storm’.

By Rick Waghorn | Posted in Advertising, General, Journalism | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Part of an answer, for me, is something simple, rewarding and available in three clicks. Part of every answer, however, will be collaboration between big media and small

30 September 2009 – 10:16 pm

There have been several interesting posts of late; all of which on their own merited deeper consideration in this neck of the woods.

Alas, my time hasn’t been wholly my own of late; only kid duties have called.

But this was great; like really great…

http://blogs.journalism.co.uk/editors/2009/09/29/mtc09-moritz-wuttke-dont-rely-on-google-and-develop-your-own-adsense/

Because the author – in this case Moritz Wuttke – was delivering the same message to the same audience [the World Association of Newspapers] as Matthew Buckland was earlier this spring; namely that newspaper publishers had to start thinking outside the Google box; that maybe AdSense wasn’t doing them any favours…

In short, Matthew Buckland was describing www.addiply.com in his call for an ad model that delivered a 90% return to publishers…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=272

Just as Mr Wuttke was describing Addiply when he suggested: ‘…that newspaper publishers make advertisers work far too hard when it comes to buying adverts. It should be possible within three clicks, he said…’

As it is.

On Addiply.

And then there was this piece… by Shelby Bonnie. Let’s kill the CPM…

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/25/lets-kill-the-cpm/

And these lines…

What will a new solution need?

  • Simple. In the end, I realize that to make the business of marketing work it can’t all be art. You have to have a way to create a streamlined process… Simplicity can lead to scalability, which allows for more efficiency for publishers, agencies, and marketers.

Where do we start?

  • First, just stop using the CPM. Yes, it will break every model and process that the industry holds dear, but we need to get rid of the crutch. The ensuing turmoil will bring creative thinking, new ideas, and entrepreneurial passion….

Yes, he’s describing… OK.

If I look back over the last 12 months in this roller-coaster world of ours, there are two lines that stand out. One, almost, inevitably by Clay Shirky. ‘Nothing works, but everything might…

The other comes from Mr Cohn who I first bumped into at Jeff Jarvis’ www.NewsInnovation.com gig at CUNY in the autumn of 2007. David subsequently went on to win Knight funding for his Spot.Us project out of San Francisco… all of which inspired those wonderful lines about if, online, content was king, then collaboration was queen. And as with the game of chess, we all know which is the more powerful…

http://www.digidave.org/2009/03/collaboration-is-queen.html

Superb.

It was to such thinking that David returned with news that a certain Warren Hellman was about to pump $5 million into the launch of a Bay area newsroom that would, it appears, have collaboration at its heart.

http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/politics/2009/09/hellman_and_partners_to_launch_1.html

Or, at least, that was David’s hope… http://www.digidave.org/2009/09/dear-warren-hellman-some-solicited-advice.html … as various parties, the New York Times and the Berkeley School of Journalism among them, sought to find a new, not-for-profit way of providing the Bay area with the kind of news that the San Francisco Chronicle once laid claim to.

Of course, we have our own interest here. Cos for the last 5-6 months we have been collaborating with said J-School; looking to see if we couldn’t empower Richard Koci Hernandez’ kids to run OaklandNorth and MissionLocal on a not-for-loss basis.

Behind the scenes, that process continues as we tweak and twidde with our $ Addiply.

But the point is simple. For me, in media’s darkest hour of need, big media and small media are starting to work together; there is a growing sense that the solution – perhaps – lies in this vast, great melting pot that lies between the two…

…that if we can apply some of that big media ’selling’ science honed and refined over 300 years of newspaper production and ad sales to some of the street-level solutions that such community-minded folk as David at Spot.Us and, hopefully, us here at www.addiply.com have come to recognise as key to our own survivals, then maybe part of an answer may emerge.

I suspect the answer may be beyond all of us; part of an answer may however be within reach.

By Rick Waghorn | Posted in Advertising, General, Journalism | Tagged , , | Comments (1)

Welcome to the world according to OfCom and Oliver & Ohlbaum… and the world that, I suspect, Mr Rusbridger sees…

22 September 2009 – 5:28 pm

As news emerged today that three more weekly titles were off to meet their maker…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/sep/22/trinity-mirror-weekly-closures

.. it was re-assuring to discover that OfCom were there to be found with their finger precisely on the beating pulse of this regional media nation of ours…

This is a particularly fascinating and insightful document… one to be pondered at length if it is now to form a bedrock of OfCom policy going forward; which – you would like to presume – it will given that the over-burdened and invariably under-whelmed UK tax-payer has just funded said masterpiece.

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/tv/reports/lrmuk/

When in doubt, tis always a good time to get the consultants in – in this case, the boys and girls from Oliver & Ohlbaum – http://www.oando.co.uk/ – and a macro-economic view of the nation’s local news landscape…

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/tv/reports/lrmuk/macroecon.pdf

Which then, presumeably, offered the foundation for this…

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/tv/reports/lrmuk/Salford_local_media.pdf

As presented to a gathering of the great and the good by Stewart Purvis at Salford University.

As a piece of ‘No sh*t, Sherlock…’ it is almost beyond compare.

I know headlines to individual slides can over-simplify, but ‘Online specialists have taken market share from local and regional newspaper websites (p15)…

Or ‘The Internet is drawing traditional revenue steams away from local media… (p14).

You’re kiddin?

The best one is the data chart that offers examples of local news provision (p8); that the Manchester Evening News ‘provides Greater Manchester focussed content, with a few national stories…’ And that the Salford Advertiser provides content focussed on… Salford.

Albeit on a smaller scale than the Manchester Evening News.

Given the crisis currently befalling the world’s great media institutions – the publishers of said Manchester Evening News principal among them as GMG seek yet another round of job cuts in a bid to keep The Observer alive – it is at least heartening to know that the industry regulator knows what the Manchester Evening News does.

The fact that OfCom offers up ‘Channel M’ as a prime example of someone like GMG looking to morph itself into a ‘local media consortia’ of their overly-fond imaginings merely re-inforces the impression that the OfCom clock has stopped c2007… that the ‘Perfect Storm’ in which we are now engulfed still, to them, appears somewhat distant.

There is no sense of what’s happening right now, right this minute… to any of their thinking. As much as the likes of Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger might try to emphasise the point.

Twice.

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=313

And, in particular… ‘in delivering this line… ’I don’t think our legislators have begun to wake up to this imminent problem as we face the collapse of the infrastructure of local news in the press and broadcasting…’ he actually went over a phrase again.

‘I don’t think our legislators have begun to wake up to this imminent problem – even begun to wake up to this problem – as we face the collapse of the infrastructure of local news…’

Go back to the work of O&O and you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Rusbridgers of this world were making a fuss about nothing…

That if you flick through to P30 of this, even the ‘low case’ example would see EBIT margins dipping to, say, 10% by 2013. You can get 15% on P29.

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/tv/reports/lrmuk/macroecon.pdf

All the MEN, the Salford Advertiser, etc… have to do is share their print costs/capacity with every other regional newspaper publisher in the North-West and then hack away at their individual ad sales teams to build a pan-regional ad tele-sales operation that could service MEN, Trinity’s Liverpool titles, NewsQuest’s Bolton operation, Granada TV, Key 103, Smooth, Galaxy, Channel M, etc, etc… and all would be well.

There’s a 30% saving to be had there. Chop, chop…

If only someone had a fully-networked, self-serve, 90% revenue return ad system that we could take off a shelf and just over-lay across all concerned and then offer pan-regional, highly-targetted branding opportunities to advertisers large and small…

Oh, someone has…

Of course, it should come as little or no surprise to find ‘big’ Government turning to a ‘big’ consultancy firm in its search for the ‘big’ answers…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=244

The fact that there might simply be no ‘big’ answers doesn’t actually appear to pop up on their radar; this idea of Mr Shirky’s that ‘Nothing works, but everything might…’ appears a conceptual leap too far.

What bugs me most, however, is the underlying assumption that come 2013-2015 we’re still looking at a ‘Newsprint’ Britain, a ‘Television’ Britain and a ‘Local Radio’ Britain. And not a ‘Digital Britain’.

In a ‘Digital Britain’ there is no them and us; no TV, no radio, no newspapers… just this glorious, heaving mass of ‘digital publishers’… all trying to wipe the smug grin off the BBC’s face as we scrabble for survival on the one, single platform that is the web; the ‘big’ now shattered into the small.

Try as anyone might, it is a future that OfCom doesn’t appear to ‘get’ at all.

By Rick Waghorn | Posted in Advertising, General | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

For me, the choice is simple… Either you give people the chance to place an ad themselves or you let others put a bag on your head…

20 September 2009 – 11:39 pm

It is a block that we walked around many moons ago…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=100

And in the 15 months since, my knowledge of all things SEO hasn’t improved. I remain pretty wedded to this notion that if the content is good enough, your community will find you; you’ll find a place around their campfire provided you add something of relevance and interest to their conversation on a regular basis.

… that and the fact that I had neither the will nor the simple wherewithal to pay anyone to optimise my site on a regular basis in the hope that I would somehow look that much sexier to a Google spider.

Of course, once we decided to ditch the Google AdSense strip and launch something rather more home-grown onto an unsuspecting world in the shape of www.Addiply.com, so my need to work my way up the Google rankings with £400-a-month’s worth of ‘optimisation’ held even less appeal.

Even in these straitened, League One times we’re still pulling around 20,000 monthly uniques to MFW/norwich not having a spent a bean on optimising our site.

All of which, therefore, made news of Google’s impending move into the display ad market rather interesting… or rather, wryly amusing as the Man from G explained one or two of the problems with the current display ad market as publishers and advertisers alike try to tweak and twiddle themselves into the most optimal state possible in the hope that the right ad (display) would find its way onto the right, relevant site…

Here we go… http://tinyurl.com/m9lc2d … and, in particular…

“With a multitude of display ad formats, and thousands of websites, it often takes thousands of hours for advertisers to plan and manage their display ad campaigns,” he [Neal Mohan, Google's vice president of product management] said. “With this complexity, lots of advertisers today just don’t bother, or don’t invest as much as they would like.”

“On the other side of the equation, some publishers are left with up to 80% of their ad space unsold. It’s like airlines flying with their planes mostly empty… We believe that a better system built on better technology can help grow the display advertising pie and benefit everyone…”

Whereas planning their text ad campaigns is a piece of cake, right…?

Because I’ve had two conversations in the last week with two smart, web-savvy people for whom both the cost and the complexity of tweaking the right ad words to make any ‘AdSense’ was getting beyond even them…

… that they didn’t have the ‘thousands of hours’ to plan and manage their campaigns. And, more importantly, neither did they have the will or the wherewithal to out-source that planning to a third-party agency.

That, in short, they were the sum of all Mr Mohan’s fears; that when faced with such complexity – and, dare we say it, such obscurity when it came to quantifying the actual results – that they didn’t bother.

And on the ground – on the corner of 17th/Main or behind the counter of Josh & Archie’s Shop – people don’t have the time, the energy or the MSc in data manipulation to product-stroke-ad place with kind of dexterity and understanding now required.

It is a dark art, getting ever darker. And as whole swathes of local and niche advertisers look to take their first, tentative steps on-line, they simply don’t ‘get’ it.

Particularly not in a depressed economy in which every last ad cent-stroke-penny needs to be accounted for.

Which is one of the reasons that I trawled through the YouTube archives for a piece of Not The Nine O’Clock News brilliance.

Only for the word ‘gramophone’, IMHO you can substitute ‘Google ranking’… and watch the kind of fun that any SEO marketing company can have with the unsuspecting advertiser-stroke-publisher for whom – even now – this remains a whole new world.

http://tinyurl.com/m9lc2d

People want simple. They want accountable. They want open. And honest.

They don’t want a bag on their head. Or the slimline salad dressing.

I want to place my ad there.

How do I get it there? And what does it cost? A tenner a week? Fine. I get that…

And to my mind – particularly out there in local/niche land – it needs to be no more complicated that that.

What can I get for a tenner? OK. You mean I can just place my ad there, myself?

Yes.

By Rick Waghorn | Posted in Advertising, General | Tagged , | Comments (0)
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