Blurred Keys

Regional newspapers the Mayo News and the Tuam Herald are some of the latest to be courting buyers, or, at least, to be looking for buyers to court. The Galway Independent, according to a news feature in the Sunday Business Post, "also quietly on the market, according to industry sources".

In the same article one paragraph made us raise an eyebrow…

Despite the pressures, one newspaper executive said
he believed that the future for local newspapers was bright, as they
provided a local service that could not be replicated on the internet,
such as local notices, photographs and sport reports.

We don’t predict doom any time soon for the newspaper industry in Ireland – which appears to be in better health than in the US and UK – but  local notices, photographs and sport reports can be replicated online.

Community blogs can all of these easily. Local notices can be posted from the source with little or no extra work. Websites or blogs can beat print hands down, providing more photographs than can fit in print – some of the best examples of local newspaper websites already do this.

The Limerick Blogger is one of the better examples of regional community blogs in Ireland. They seem to have no problem posting up a small match report with photographs.

All we’re saying is the above mentioned things can be replicated… we would have used court reporting as content that can’t be as easily replicated.

Bit late with this one… Entry to Newstalk’s Emerging Voices Student Documentary Competition closes this Thursday. And this is what it’s all about:

"The judges will be looking for work that is original, relevant and
produced to a high standard. The winning entry will be broadcast on the
station, the winner will receive a placement at Newstalk and a cash
prize of €500".

For more see newstalk.ie.

With a circulation decline from 100,000 to 9,000, Independent News & Media are to stop publishing the Belfast sports paper Ireland’s Saturday Night.

MORE: Belfast’s sports paper axed
MORE: DEATH OF THE "IRELAND’S SATURDAY NIGHT"

Damages of €90,000 have been awarded against Associated Newspapers Ireland after a woman sued the newspaper publisher for using unlawfully tapped phone conversations in articles.

The court ruled the articles which appeared in Ireland on Sunday (now the Irish Mail on Sunday) were a breach of her constitutional right to privacy.

MORE: Woman awarded €90,000 over phone-tap articles

Boris Johnson writing in the Telegraph, on a completely different issue, shows how meaningless opinion polls can be…

Last week, the public was asked what it thought of
the Government’s plan to lock people up for 42 days without charge.
Yeah! said a stonking 69 per cent of the YouGov sample. Bang ‘em up.
Better safe than sorry, was the message of the electorate.

This
weekend, the public was asked what they thought of my friend David
Davis’s heroic act of auto-defenestration, and his decision to call a
by-election to oppose the 42 days measure. Yeah! said the public - 69
per cent of them, according to ICM. Good on yer, David, they said. You
stick up for our liberties!

Now if 69 per cent of
the public is in favour of 42 days’ detention without charge, and 69
per cent are in favour of David Davis and his opposition to 42 days, it
is a mathematical certainty that a large chunk of the electorate is
hopelessly muddled.

Dublin Community Television, which is decribed as "Ireland’s first democratically-run, advert-free" TV channel is to launch and officially switch on at 1pm tomorrow, Wenesday July 16, at the New Theatre Temple Bar.

It will be available — as it has been on a pilot basis since September — on the Chorus ntl digital cable network on Channel 802. Here’s the press release from their website:

Read the rest of this entry »

Fintan O’Toole in the Irish Times today talks about "the hyping-up of the ordinary into the extraordinary". In the article he mentions journalism’s part in the in the hyperbole…   

Journalism, of course, has a lot to do with all of this. The tabloid
thesaurus in which every murderer is a monster, every rapist a beast
and every piece of celebrity tittle-tattle a sensation, is becoming the
vocabulary of the mainstream media too.

Of course, tabloids are not the only culprits by any means. For one local newepaper we read, an aim to cut road deaths is hyped to "frightening number of deaths", and new trains which don’t have reclining chairs, don’t have a first class carriages, and don’t currently have any dining carriages, some-how are “luxurious” trains. We’re surprised when there isn’t superfluous words in their news.

I’ve heard excuses along the lines of it makes content more interisting, but nonsense hyperbole slowly chips away at people’s fate in journalism. Is saying this hyperbolic in its self? No, because what are too often brushed away as just a little mistake and, in this case, just a little bit of hype is exactly what erodes the public’s confidence in journalism. 

The Sunday World has relaunched their website, sundayworld.com, recently.

The content includes columns, gossip, and reviews. They also have online-only content from gossip site PerezHilton.com. And there’s video from Balcony TV, along with other video clips of games and films, and ‘funnies’.

But no news.

The roll over banner advert currently running across the site shows Paul Williams, the newspaper’s crime editor, saying - as ever - he’ll be watching the criminals. That’s entertaining at least.