Allegations of phone hacking at the News of the World resurfaced this week following an investigation by the New York Times which looked at past allegations as well as a new case being legally pursued by a third party. This has led to calls today for a judicial review from industry bodies and politicians.

But coverage of the event by the rest of the media has come under criticism by numerous publications and bloggers.

Caroline Crampton at the New Statesman reflected on the issue the day after the story broke, when she claims the Guardian was the only national newspaper to have reported on the NYTimes article at the time.

The Times, the Telegraph, the Independent, the Daily Mail, the Sun and the Mirror all failed to cover the story at all. Considering that the investigation uncovers a widespread culture of phone-hacking at a major Sunday paper, with one source saying “Everyone knew. The office cat knew”, I would have thought that Fleet Street would have more to say about the low tactics employed by one of its number.

But the silence on the Coulson story from the rest is almost eerie. Papers are usually desperate to expose each other’s failures. Why are they holding back?

Online media watchdog Tabloid Watch makes the same points, while editor of the Liberal Conspiracy blog Sunny Hundal wrote on the Guardian website that while he expected News International publications to avoid the topic, he was disappointed by a lack of coverage on BBC radio early on.

It comes as little surprise News International subsidiaries and other tabloids have avoided it. But the BBC’s radio silence also speaks volumes: not just about their deference to the new administration, but of unwillingness to investigate their peers. It needed the New York Times to blow the story wide open again.

(…) The conscience of our country is determined more by Rupert Murdoch’s private interests than is healthy, already. These controversies say less about rightwing bloggers (whose smears are used as a proxy) and more about the collusion that takes place among the media establishment.

However the BBC has since followed up on the Time’s report, including an interview on Radio 4′s Today programme with Lord John Prescott this morning discussing his own concerns of being targeted by phone hackers while BBC Surrey’s Nick Wallis yesterday discussed the report, admitting that the BBC had only touched on the issue “from time to time” but said he would be writing to every Conservative MP in Surrey and asking them if they are happy that David Cameron kept former NOTW editor Andy Coulson as his PR man.

The article by the New York Times is due to be published in its Sunday magazine this weekend.Similar Posts:

• Phone hacking liveblog: Coulson and Kuttner’s evidence
• CMS Report: News International claims party-politics make report on phone hacking worthless
• NY Times response to Atlantic article suggesting death of its brand: ‘leaves a lot to be desired from the standpoint of journalism’
• Commons committee hearing tomorrow: It’s Andy Coulson’s turn…
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With TheTimes.co.uk and SundayTimes.co.uk still not releasing traffic figures through the Audit Bureau of Circulations, we can’t yet see the impact of the paywall in terms of browser figures. But according to research published by Enders Analysis, the value of a paywall subscriber is only a fraction of a print reader.

The research, carried out by Benedict Evans, compared annual incomes from subscribers for paywalled newspapers TheTimes.co.uk and WSJ.com with those for UK quality daily papers.

The main findings quoted online are as follows:

A newspaper paywall subscriber is worth only a quarter to a third of a print buyer: even if every single print buyer is successfully converted to the paywall, newspapers will still face a basic problem of scale.

Paywalls will not be able to compensate for lower revenue per reader by expanding the audience for paid news, due to the long term decline of circulation, free online news, 24-hour broadcast news and free-sheets.

Future change will be radical: publishers may need to consider producing a newspaper its loyal readers recognise and value with just 200 rather than 500 journalists.

Hatip: paidContentUKSimilar Posts:

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• WAN 2008: Print and online newspapers on the rise
• The Times and Sunday Times: What a paywall looks like
• New US local paper paywall divides readership

The BBC is launching a new-look version of its travel news site later this year, with the sneak preview now online.

On the BBC’s website, it says the new site will improve presentation and introduce maps for the first time. Data-handling processes will be better so it will take less time for site visitors to get information.

The new site will have a wider page layout and larger text, as well as improved navigation and interactive mapping, which can be minimised if you prefer to see traffic incidents as just a text list. There will be clearer time-stamping of incidents and still images will be frequently updated from traffic jam cams showing conditions on motorways and trunk roads. The local weather forecast from the BBC Weather Centre will also be available on the site for the following six hours.

For fans of the old site – the BBC insists that travel and traffic information will still be updated round the clock, and the map can be minimised, which will put the functionality of the site back to the way it used to be.

The door-to-door journey planner remains a feature, but has been made more prominent, and in the final version of the site, it will be possible to see a country-wide overview of motorways or major roads from every page.Similar Posts:

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The Washington Post has put together a mobile leadership team to develop the availability of its content on portable devices with a new app for the iPad currently being created, according to a report on The Upshot.

The latest developments which were allegedly detailed in a staff email sent out earlier this week and a statement given to The Upshot are part of the Post’s ongoing attempts to increase access to its content through mobile and open up new revenue streams.

Commenting on the news Dawn Osakue advised on the Editors Weblog that newpapers do not simply aim to offer access to their content on as many platforms as possible but remember to be creative.

Going mobile is a bold step for newspaper publishers, but they have to keep in mind that creativity remains very important. Recent research confirmed that newspapers still have a long way to go in exploiting the potential of mobile platforms.

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• Editors Weblog: Google CEO on telling people what to do
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• France: Les Echos goes mobile and new cit-j site launches
• Sharing and signposting: Younger Thinking for news organisations
• DNA09: Vandermeersch on the seven bees

Listen below for this week’s news round-up from Journalism.co.uk sub-editor Joel Gunter and sign up to our iTunes podcast feed for future audio.

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• Podcast: The week’s biggest media stories on Journalism.co.uk

On a day to day basis, the job can be a slog.  It’s pretty relentless.  On some days, almost every PR pro I know has looked longingly at the guy watering the plants (or mowing the lawn or delivering the packages) and naively thought, “I wish I had that dude’s problems instead of mine.”  You wonder what it’s all about.

For me, one of the rewards is cultivating the talents of the next generation.  It sounds particularly old-fogeyish for a 41–year-old to say but hey, I’ve been in this racket for almost 20 years.  You see things.  You cultivate people.

We got this note from a former employee, Chris Lynn, yesterday:

I’m on a particularly weird (and natural) high today: The Austin Chronicle, Austin’s largest and oldest weekly, named me Best Local Blogger and my site, Republic of Austin, Best Local Blog (tying with the Austinist). See my post here.

You guys are the ones that started me on this mad journey, and I thank you so much for all the encouragement and mentoring you gave me along the way. Before I came to SHIFT, I was at a particularly low point in my life. I now feel like anything is possible. Thank you for challenging me to always be better and helping me realize my own power and potential. It will always be appreciated.

And now I’m misty-eyed in the middle of a coffee shop

THAT’s the reward.

Congrats, Chris!

David Higgerson, head of multimedia at Trinity Mirror, has posed some interesting questions on what the William Hague and Christopher Myers story means for the power, image and responsibilities of the blogging community.

The fact Hague felt the need to release the statement he did, and that Myers felt the need to stand down, shows the influence political bloggers have within the Westminster village. (…) Does Hague’s response suggest that he and his colleague over-weighed the true impact of what is written on blogs for the wider public? It’s certainly the mother of all statements, and there’s a danger it sets a new precedent for denying rumours. Will we now see a glut of rumours around the internet in the knowledge that a denial is likely to follow?

And, he adds, if recent events do show political bloggers are becoming increasingly influential, should we now be addressing the introduction of greater responsibilities for such a powerful online community?

See his full post here…Similar Posts:

• Inforrm Blog: William Hague reports ‘postively damaging to public interest’
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Daniel Romero, a PhD candidate at Cornell University in the US, has produced some fascinating research into news organisations and sources’ influence on Twitter.

Using a study by HP Labs’ Social Computing Lab, which attempts to measure influence on Twitter, Romero has created a list of the 100 most influential news media accounts.

The BBC’s breaking news account, the Wall Street Journal, ESPN and the New York Times all rank within the top 25 most influential. But as our visualisation below of the top 25 accounts in the list shows (click to interact with it), a large number of followers doesn’t always guarantee you more influence – the quality of links and how they are shared also count.

(via Memeburn)Similar Posts:

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Following his involvement in the first Datajournalism meetup in Berlin earlier this week, Martin Belam, the Guardian’s information architect, looks at why the US and UK may have taken the lead in semantic web, as one audience member suggested on the day.

In an attempt to try and answer the question, he puts forward four themes on his currybet.net blog that he feels may play a part. In summary, they are:

• The sharing of a common language which helps both nations access the same resources and be included in comparative datasets.
• Competition across both sides of the pond driving innovation.
• Successful business models already being used by the BBC and even more valuably being explained on their internet blogs.
• Open data and a history of freedom of information court cases which makes official information more likely to be made available.

On his full post here he also has tips for how to follow the UK’s lead, such as getting involved in hacks and hackers type events.Similar Posts:

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Scott Rosenberg, co-founder of Salon.com and a writer and editor, makes his contribution to a series on links and linking with a love letter to the humble hyperlink:

Links, you see, do so much more than just whisk us from one webpage to another. They are not just textual tunnel-hops or narrative chutes-and-ladders. Links, properly used, don’t just pile one “And now this!” upon another. They tell us, “This relates to this, which relates to that.”

Links announce our presence. They show a writer’s work. They are badges of honesty, inviting readers to check that work. They demonstrate fairness. They can be simple gestures of communication; they can be complex signifiers of meaning. They make connections between things. They add coherence. They build context.

Full article at this link…Similar Posts:

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Industry group the Online News Association (ONA) has received a $75,000 grant to redesign its website. The funding comes from the Excellence & Ethics in Journalism Foundation (EEJF) and will be used to create an open-source site containing resources and training materials for digital journalists.

Full release from the ONA at this link…Similar Posts:

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A response from the website MediaLens to Alex Thomson’s piece on the Afghanistan war and the practicalities of embed journalism:

In his September 1 piece, ‘Afghanistan: the rough guide to roughness’, Alex Thomson writes:

“Chief among the carpers about embedding, of course, the indefatigable editors at MediaLens who get extremely hoity-toity at the entire concept of embedding.

“However, ask them how they would cover Helmand if they were off to the main bazaar, Lashkar Gah, at noon next Tuesday and guess what? Total silence from the normally electronically incontinent MediaLens email service. Which rather clinches the argument, simple though it is.”

This is false. In April, Alison Banville, an activist and freelance journalist, asked us to respond to Thomson’s question. We did so and she forwarded the following comments to Thomson on 3 April:

“From the Davids [David Edwards and David Cromwell, editors of MediaLens]:

“He’s never asked us ‘how will you cover Helmand assuming you are going there next week?’ The answer is that he should report it as he would any illegal invasion of a sovereign state. He should report it as he would have reported the 1979-89 Soviet invasion and occupation. In other words, present the opinion of the invading forces, of the people under occupation, including the resistance, and of experts in international law who declare the whole operation illegal.

“Obviously, alongside the warmongers, leading anti-war commentators should be regularly quoted and featured: Chomsky, Herman, Pilger, Goodman, Curtis, Ellsberg, et al. I’m not suggesting he could achieve all of that himself in the field, but his reports should be part of a news service that does. There’s no question of intellectual cowardice [on our part, as claimed by Thomson] – the answer couldn’t be more obvious. Happy for you to quote us on this.”

Thomson responded to Banville’s email on the same day, expressing agreement with our comments while claiming that Channel 4 had already done as we had suggested.

Thomson now claims that by “total silence” he meant we had totally evaded his question – hard to reconcile with the meaning of “total silence” and with his positive response on April 3 when he made no mention of evasion.

The truth is that we never avoid difficult questions from mainstream journalists. On the contrary, we are forever seeking to engage them in written debate and are consistently ignored or fobbed off. Readers can find 3,000 pages of examples here: http://www.medialens.org/alerts/archive.php

Similar Posts:

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Shortly after The Times put up a paywall The Guardian posted figures that showed 90% fewer readers than pre-paywall. The people who left the Times most likely didn’t give up altogether on reading a newspaper but moved to a paywall-free newspaper like The Guardian.

The question comes up whether a paywall is the right thing to do for a newspaper. They lose readers and thus lose online revenue. But a paywall is essential for the survival of journalism. Newspapers and media corporations need to figure out the right kind of paywall. The obvious utopian solution would be to have all major newspapers come together and figure out a common system of online distribution. Of course something like that will never happen. But it is necessary that all major national newspapers have a paywall.

If we take a look over at Hollywood we can see that people are willing to pay for quality. When Avatar came out as the first major 3D film torrent posts of the movie were filled with comments that stated that people should go see the 3D version instead of downloading it, which many did.

A country’s major newspapers are the main newspapers because the quality is better than other newspapers in that country. Charging for quality content is not wrong. It does more good for journalism and journalists than harm. The smaller newspapers without a paywall will gain some more readers and give their journalists more exposure. Those journalists will then have a bigger chance of getting seen by one of the “bigs” and getting picked up by them. That way local newspapers, not behind a paywall, can serve as a springboard for journalists. Much like today except for the fact that they will also be in the public eye.

This does not mean that major newspapers will lose revenue to smaller, local papers. On the contrary they could gain readers who follow their favorite journalists over to the “big” paper. People not willing to pay to get behind the paywall on their web browser will go over to the e-reader version or print version, both of which have to be paid for. This will revive journalism since people can read their local paper online and read the major newspapers when they’re not on their computers.

Now to the paywall model. The newspapers that now have a paywall, like The Times; The Financial Times and the Washington Post, activate their paywall as soon as you click on an article or after having read one or two articles. Even if you don’t have a membership with that newspaper you still see the same front page as paying users which is the wrong kind of paywall. Newspapers need to add more advertisements for free users.

Newspapers look almost ad-free these days. Use bigger advertisements on the top of your webpage. Pop-under and pop-up advertisements need to be added. People will easily get annoyed with advertisements and either pay for online use with reduced advertisements or buy a print/e-reader version. For those that would buy the print version there should be a unique code(see Augmented Reality barcodes) in each newspaper that would make the online version available for that day.

Even if a newspaper is behind a paywall it can still make certain articles available to free readers. For example make the main news available since either way that will be available to a web user and block analyses, smaller more specific articles and editorials that are unique to that paper. This promotes not the news in itself which people can access through TV and radio but the journalists that make and have made journalism important to society over the years.

Mapping: Crowdmap, a tool from the developers behind Ushahidi, allows you to map reports from readers sent in via mobile phones and online forms mixed with your website's own updates. Tipster: Laura Oliver. To submit a tip to Journalism.co.uk, use this link - we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

Media Standards Trust 'wholeheartedly agrees' with calls for an official inquiry following revelations of New York Times investigation

New Ria Navosti agency will be led by Dmitry Tugarin, former adviser to the chief of the Russian federal agency for sport and physical education

Allan Little's experiences reporting the Gulf war gave him an enduring distrust of embedding. But now, he argues, free-roaming, eye-witness reporting is under threat

The new title Scene will replace the Harlow Herald and the East Herts Herald with no editorial redundancies

Figures from the UK Online Measurement company (UKOM) suggest a 111 per cent growth in visits to Demand Media's sites from July 2009 to July 2010

Subject to approval by members, Esser, who is executive managing editor of the Daily Mail, will replace Donald Martin later this year