Alton joins PCC

As Roger's recent missives make clear, journalistic standards are a top priority for the Obs editor. And lo, he has joined the Press Complaints Commission, replacing Sundary Telegraph editor Dominic Lawson, who stood down last year. Acting chairman Robert Pinker says Rog will bring a "robust common sense to our work". Otherwise, as they say, what's the er, point.
(From MediaGuardian.co.uk)

Content vs distribution

Hot on the heels of the biggest merger posting the biggest loss, revived debate on whether content or distribution is king. George Mannes in reports on some analysts swinging recently back to distribution.
(From I Want Media)

AOL Time Warner $100bn loss

Biggest annual loss in corporation history. Ted Turner finally stands down. And Steve Case in stupid v-sign photo op.
(From Washington Post)

Quark reclaims QPS development

Quark and Modulo have announced that Quark will "resume responsibility for QPS". Quark took responsibility for development of QPS in July 2002. Now it has taken QPS back entirely. Modulo "will continue to provide support and system integration services to its customers, and honour its existing service and support contracts", which sounds a lot like it is being wound up. Juergen Kurz says that development has already begun on QPS 2.2, "which will be compatible with QuarkXPress 5, and we're on track for release next quarter". The plan continues to support two flavours of QPS -- one based on QuarkDMS and a SQL Server database, and the other sticking to the old Dispatch model.
(From Quark)

New York Times profits up 45%

The New York Times Company has posted a 45% increase in profits in Q4 last year. The NYT increased ad revenues by 21.8% in December -- mostly from large corporation sin telecoms, entertainment, books and healthcare sectors. Total earnings in the quarter were £107.5m compared with £74m for December 2001. The news appeared to boost Pearson shares. NYT Co. has been rumoured to be interested in buying the Financial Times from Pearson.
(From MediaGuardian.co.uk)

Paid content and the invisible web

This week's Stop the Presses focuses on the problem with paid content on news sites being unavailable to search engines. Outing has been getting increasingly anxious about this issue and the growth of the "Invisible Web" -- the information on the internet that isn't seen by the major search engines. The options? Either to provide access to paid content to the likes of Google, so the content can appear in search results; or to provide free summaries of every premium story, so that summary at least is seen by all. Both options raise questions about how such stories should be presented by search engines -- should they be separated out from free content? Should they be "tagged" -- and about the issue of payment in general, and referral fees in particular.
(From Editor & Publisher)

Apple blamed again for Quark's failings

Par-for-the-course summation of industry anxieties concerning Apple's attempts to sell OS X-only Macintoshes. Compares Microsoft's continued support for 1996-flavour NT (due to end this year) with Apple's more aggressive 3-year cutoff marker. Associated's Alan Marshall says it's all too soon. As usual the crunch issue is the absence of an OS X-native QuarkXPress. XPress 6.0 has, allegedly, been seeded for beta testing. Some hints from Glen Turpin on CopyDesk: "QuarkCopyDesk will also be upgraded to run on OS X, Turpin said. But Quark has yet to determine whether its Quark Publishing System server offering, QuarkDispatch, will be upgraded."
(From Newspapers and Technology)

Registration doesn't hurt

Editor & Publisher survey concludes that the newspaper websites that have moved to enforced registration haven't really suffered great losses to their audience figures.
(From Editor & Publisher)

Washington Post stories in WSJ Europe/Asia

The Washington Post has made a deal with Dow Jones to run WP stories in the Wall Street Journal Europe and the Wall Street Journal Asia. The move follows the New York Times's buyout of the International Herald Tribune.
(From Washington Post)

Gillmor on "We Media"

Dan Gillmor on a subject the online journalism community loves to chatter about almost more than any other: collaboration with the audience. It takes many forms: from the hysteria over weblogs to the obsession with some naive concept of "community". Gillmor is using the phrase "We Media": "Journalism is evolving away from its lecture mode -- here's the news, and you buy it or you don't -- to include a conversation ... our readers collectively know more than we do, and they don't have to settle for half-baked coverage when they can come into the kitchen themselves." Gillmor is right of course, and transparency is hardly a bad thing, but hoping for an information democracy is fanciful. Self-selecting communities -- consisting of the bolshiest, best resourced chunks of a potential audience -- are hardly authoritative by definition.
(From Columbia Journalism Review)

IHT move marks "integrated NYT report"

Article by the New York Times's David Kirkpatrick in the International Herald Tribune marking the first issue under the sole ownership of the NYT. Coverage from other papers such as the Washington Post will be reduced. The IHT's executive editor, Howell Raines, says the company is moving toward "a kind of integrated New York Times report that is carried in a variety of media, including the International Herald Tribune". This will have a big impact on the way the company works: "Our journalistic clock will change. We will be a more 24-hour news-gathering organisation." Forrie corries will be expected to meet local deadlines in addition to those of the NYT, and all staff may have to file multiple versions of stories to meet serial deadlines for different time zones (e.g. Paris for IHT, New York for NYT). Furthermore nytimes.com will eventually draw on IHT content to provide 24-hour coverage.
(From International Herald Tribune)