Blurred Keys

Thomas Crosbie Holdings’ BreakingNews.ie was relaunched today, it’s the first attempt by an Irish national newspaper company to use embedded video and audio in the main section of their website.   

Irish blog, jazzbiscuit.com, has it just about spot on here…

After several years of stoically refusing to budge, BreakingNews.ie
gets a make over. The simplicity of the old site has been replaced with
a far more modern, but less scannable site. That was my favourite thing
about the old one, you could browse all the latest headlines in
seconds. You can still do that, but it takes a little longer. It
actually seems like you can still get the same old-school view, just by
viewing the site’s archives by day.

Still no bylines on the site! What is it about Irish media companies and online news? Why are there no bylines?

The TCH’s irishexaminer.com is also due to be relaunched later this year.

Just a week after we wrote about the Irish Times adding a second pay barrier, the New York Times reported on their now demolished pay wall for all articles after 1987. (vie tomrafteryit.net)

Meanwhile, another US newspaper currently operating a pay wall looks
to be going the same way. "That looks like the way we’re going," Rupert
Murdoch said when talking of the online version of the Wall Street Journal. (vie Greenslade)

Although speculation has been growing since News Corp’s first moves
to buy Dow Jones, Murdoch’s latest comment are the clearest sign yet
that the wsj.com’s pay wall will be also dropped once News Corp takes
full control of Dow Jones.

“What wasn’t anticipated was the explosion in how much of our traffic would be generated by Google, by Yahoo and some others,” said Vivian L Schiller, senior vice president and general manager of NYTimes.com. The NY Times have learned lessons, Murdoch and co also have a real understanding how the internet works… but, does the Irish Times?

Last year we reported how the Irish Times said that Ireland.com is a success, and nearly a break even levels. Page
impressions were at 15m at the time, that’s down from 25m pre paid subscription. Larger amounts of users is really what advertisers want to hear about. And with online advertising growing and broadband usage growing in Ireland, the IT would want to be asking is it missing out on growth, and readers who may become loyal to other news sites.

On another level, the Irish Times is, apparently, "an independent newspaper primarily concerned with serious issues for
the benefit of the community throughout the whole of Ireland, free from
any form of personal or party political, commercial, religious or other
sectional control," maybe they think less people reading the Irish Times content is for
the benefit of the community throughout the whole of Ireland?

ALSO READ: Is circulation revenue worth having now that advertisers love free titles?

As the World Health Organisation classes Ireland as the least violent country in Europe the church classes the violence levels as "close to a national emergency" according to the Irish Times.

While it might be wrong that anybody is being killed or murdered, the facts simply don’t back that there is any kind of crisis. Crime in the country is low per head of population, and there is no trend of alarming growth.

On the eve of the release of a WHO report that shows Ireland to be least violent state in Europe, the media and "leaders in society" are continuing to peddle outright twisted view that violence in the country is spiraling out of control, it simply isn’t.

In the Sunday Times yesterday a news report started with the view that the WHO report "seems to fly in the face of reality", the reality it seems is that the political and media hype flies in the face of reality and hard facts.

Challenging the idea that the level of violence is out of control is akin to challenging an urban myth that just won’t go away. Close to everybody is sucked into the myth and the fear, and the fear is irrational and near to unchallengeable.      

MORE: There is no crime crisis
MORE: Ireland ‘least violent country in Europe’
MORE: The hyping of crime

It is noteworthy that the arrests came on the day of yet another
gangland shooting and that the execution of the arrest was made by
detectives from the National Bureau Criminal Investigation who should
properly be investigating serious organised and drug crime rather than
a journalist.

The fact that the Minister for Justice Michael
McDowell has the gardaí investigating the media instead of the
godfather of crime does not instil confidence.

- Stephen Raehe, Editor of the Evening Herald

• Government admits role in journalist’s arrest
  Breakingnews.ie, 22/02/2007
• Editor’s anger over journalist’s arrest
  Ireland.com, 22/02/2007
• Row erupts over the arrest of journalist Mick McCaffrey
  Liveline, 22/02/2007 (MP3)
• Reporter investigated over police leak is released without charge
  Pressgazette.co.uk, 22/02/2007

(Apologies for
the delay in publishing this post)

Apparently when crime correspondent Paul Williams is put on the front page of the Sunday World the newspaper’s sales jump up, so the Sunday World put him on the side of Dublin Bus double-deckers. “Who keeps an eye on the on the bad guys?” reads the advertisement featuring the paper’s logo with Williams’ face and title.

Vincent Browne has a different take on Williams, Browne has previously said "crime journalism is (in the main) a debased form of the trade because it relies almost entirely on two unreliable sources: police and criminals”.