Roy Greenslade and Trinity Mirror

This post just a moan but there is a hook for something.

Tabloid Guardian still hard to navigate. The sections do not all out of each other.

Media section now a page in the main bit, towards the back.

Seems to be a different blog each week, Roy Greenslade maybe once a month.

In this one the Trinity / Express story is at the end.

Worry about the journalists who may be redundant if  say Sunday People merged with Daily Star Sunday. But what politics covers both sets of readers? and also how will the print work?

No mention here of how Guardian finances work with Trinity Mirror. Is the Guardian enough to fill the print capacity given what rate of decline for Trinity titles?

Why would Desmond get cash and the pension fund get shares in Trinity? Maybe this is a story somewhere or maybe journalists are saving it for a future enquiry.

Social media and trust

Guardian print version now reports a loss of trust in social media. Issues with fake news, child safety, extreme views.

The Edelman trust barometer, published on Monday, suggests the days when social media was championed as an enabler of citizen journalists and for its role in the Arab Spring have passed.

Just my guess, there also seem to be a lot of negative stories in the print media, still with an audience on some scale. There never was anything in the Guardian that "championed" citizen journalism. A not very funny piss take and to be fair two reports on OhmyNews in the tech section while it lasted.

But on another page Emily Bell is complaining at a lack of traffic from Facebook to the proper news publishers.

Why is there no background on the finances of the paper operations? Surely part of the situation and also an explanation of the tone of the reporting?

My guess for the UK is that Mirror / Guardian circulation will continue to decline in print. Hard news on Express required some time this year.

Continues on Fleet Street..... blog

Continued comment on Peter Wilby / Guardian / OU / Futurelearn

Some comment already in Hello Spiders, main blog or one where most things seem to fit.

This below relates to Guardian. Interview with Peter Horrocks mostly negative about digital trends and schemes. Two quotes to mention.

Horrocks, his critics can reasonably say, has form. He came to the OU from the BBC, where he had spent his entire working life, latterly as head of the World Service. In an earlier job, he turned BBC news into a multimedia operation, to the consternation of its more traditional reporters who were upset when he said that aggregating and curating content, some of it from social media, was part of their job.

Well, is it actually true, what he said? Is it ok to base a news story on a tweet? Should a proper journalist reply to comments?

UK newspapers, Horrocks said in his Durham lecture, never tried “to create a shared platform for value and quality in news content”. Universities were in danger of making the same mistake – until the OU’s “foresight” provided a “best of British universities” platform.

One more time, there was Guardian Unlimited Talk , an early platform supported by readers. Trashed without warning. Now never mentioned in Guardian Media Group history. whatif etc.

Tabloid with Trinity Mirror is consolidation in an industry, some explanation would be reasonable content for news media, multimedia or whatever. No sign of that so far. 

Now off to plan radio show, Phonic FM  12 - 2 . Presented with Jon Mahy who thinks FM is on the way out. We are trying to find a social media equivalent. Not obvious but enough happening with streaming etc to show that there is a situation. Something similar could reach newspapers or even the campus.

Naughton on purpose for Twitter / questions still for print

Even with links there is still limited space in a tweet, so here is an expanded blog post.

I have to agree that Twitter has attracted lots of broadcast mode advertising, unknown proportion of bot retweets, some abuse. But it remains part of social media and it can link to longer texts and other content. I think that opinion such as John Naughton in Observer today is part of a print journalist trend that seems to be about finding the negative in social media. See another Post in Hello Spiders, should be near the top , will check the link later.

Week after next I think, the Guardian and Observer will go tabloid. Trade issues about how fast the consolidation around Trinity Mirror can go given the Mirror decline in circulation. Express pension funds have concerns but not much reported. Still less on what is supposed to happen online.

Apparently the news value of Twitter has forced proper journalists back to following Twitter. So some communication continues with readers, even lost ones. Something will replace the print liberal opinion, not clear what though.

One more time on the facts. There was once Guardian Unlimited Talk. Early form of social media. Trashed without warning, all copy deleted. Now never mentioned in history of Guardian media Group. Anything contrary welcome.