2005-03-07

This posting is an update on previous reports about 'Digital Editions', online versions of newspapers and magazines that include all the illustration and photograph content of the hard copy version. Last year's news was that ABC had agreed that this circulation could be included in the circulation certificate for print. This year so far the news is that no newspaper or magazine has so far decided to 'opt in'.

I now think of most online writing as a form of blogging. The websites I work on do change over time, probably more old stuff disappears than with a blog format. This feedback board can be used to exchange ideas and experience. The editors can choose which bits meet their standards for the main site. I don't know if there is a code of conduct for bloggers but I have looked at the page for citizen reporters and try to follow the approach. I don't see any problem with opinion if it is clearly identified as such.

Today's Media Guardian includes some legal opinion on the rights of bloggers to claim the same kind of protection as journalists. The case in question is Nick Ciarelli, who apparently reported that Apple would release an iPod and a Mac Mini. Apple want him to reveal his sources and the judge has decided that the law on protecting a journalistic source does not apply.

What interests me is the view of bloggers as presented in the article by Dan Trench. "much of their material is utterly unreliable, some of it is beginning to rival the traditional media for attention". Surely the point about Nick Ciarelli is that both reports turned out to be true. Apple would not be so worried about a site that got things wrong or usually just repeated press releases.

Most of what I write is based on reading the Guardian, occasionally the FT, listening to the radio and browsing the web. Given the importance of the ABC story, I have phoned Eulogy the ABC PR company and they have confirmed that there are no UK titles currently 'opted in' to reveal circulation for digital editions.

What I think is happening is that the news organisations with a print base are trying to avoid thinking about the transition to the web. The Guardian still makes no mention in print of the existence of the digital version. They often report on declines in newspaper circulation without mentioning the web.

Pearson have recently reported results that some have seen as disappoining. See the International Herald Tribune for example

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/03/06/business/pearson07.html

Chief Financial Officer Fairhead is reported as attributing circulation decline to 'job losses in the British financial industry'. Other reports have put the online subscriptions at around 80,000. The print circulation is still above 400,000 so 80,000 is in some proportion. The IHT article refers to high prices paid for companies during the 'dotcom boom'. Maybe Pearson as a group should publish enough information for people to assess whether a further move online would work out. The FT is just the most visible aspect of this. Penguin started to publish e-books but not much has been publicised recently. I think the city guides are just versions of the print editions, updated every year or so. I may be wrong about this but it seems a better use of the e-book format would be to update from data more often. At the Learning Technology show in January Longman again showed books about the European Computer Driving Licence. These are selling well at the moment, but are not really an innovation as technology.

If you found previous postings you will realise I am repeating myself. I keep mentioning the ABC circulation figures because it might be possible one day soon to assess the trends in web and print income for the Guardian and FT. Once they decide to make this public they will write about such stuff themselves. Meanwhile at least this post describes what I don't know.

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There is a bit more happening in that the FT now publishes an evening freebie as PDF and is promoting this in the print version.

But in general the print media are not really describing what is happening. If ABC published figures about digital it would be possible to study how much news organisations already depend on web activities.

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