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Isle of Man Newspapers’ parent introduces paywall
Study shows PRs are not liars
How do the news media work?

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In watching last week’s BBC documentary on social class the irony of seeing the head of a top British public relations agency Modus  Publicity get raked over the coals by reporter Richard Bilton did not escape those of us in the business.
According to PR Week, Julian Vogel, Modus’ director ‘inadvertently played a starring role’ in the documentary.  In it, the PR pro was forced to admit that his firm employed up to 20 staff working as unpaid interns at any one time.
You’d think the head of a top PR agency …

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PR Week UK is reporting that the Public Relations Consultant Association (PRCA)  is considering heading to the Court of Appeal after losing its court battle with The Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA)  over payment for web links.  The organisation, along with Meltwater News, a UK media monitoring service, had argued that PR agencies should not have to pay licensing fees when receiving media coverage reports containing links to publishers’ websites.
In a recent judgment, Mrs Justice Proudman has ruled that web links taken from online news sources are …

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Yesterday Chief Inspector Mark Payne of the West Midlands Police spoke to the Isle of Man Social Media Club . Following the Third Thursday meeting, he and I had a fascinating conversation about how social media is changing the police’s relationship with the media.  What follows is a blog post on the subject that Mark published a few days ago and he’s kindly allowed me to republish it here.
I tweeted about an interesting article in the Guardian last week. The thrust of the argument is that police forces are …

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Johnston Press, parent company to the Isle of Man Newspapers, is introducing subscriptions fees on their websites in a pilot scheme starting next week.
The Worksop Guardian, Ripley & Heanor News, Northumberland Gazette, Whitby Gazette (all in England), and the Southern Reporter and Carrick Gazette (in Scotland) will restrict access to non-subscribers, in an attempt to create revenues  from their websites.
The papers will allow access to the homepage of each paper, but stories away from the main page will require a subscription of £5 for a three month trial. …

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It seems that  journalists hate when PRs ring to follow up on an email according to a survey conducted by Iain Fleming as part of his CIPR (Chatered Institute of Public Relations Diploma) course at Queen Margaret University (thanks to Neville Hobson for pointing the story out).
The key finding: “The project also reveals that the practice of making ‘follow-up’ calls by PR practitioners is intensely annoying and ultimately counter-productive…”
This is nothing new; I’ve heard it time and again from news professionals all over, many of whom get more than 50, …

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Time was, when asked this questions, I’d start to recite deadlines, copy guidelines and descriptions of newsroom teams.  But that was before the Internet changed everything.
Now print journalists are producing video reports and podcasts.  Radio and TV journalists are blogging. And then there are bloggers, who many say are a law unto themselves.
So how does today’s media work?  The only definitive answer is:  All the time.
What are the deadlines?  As soon as the story breaks. Who should we be pitching?  Depending on the story. What do journalists need …

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Most newspapers have moved online either wholly or within a mixed publishing model. There is a myriad of benefits to both the publisher and the reader, but there is one downside that comes up time and again.
People like to read the newspaper.  They like to spread it out on the table and take their time dipping into the news, especially at the weekend.  Getting their news served up online eliminates important rituals and some of the enjoyment of a Sunday morning.
That’s why the New York Times has just …

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BusinessWeek is running an excellent article by BL Ochman entitled ‘Debunking six social media myths’.  This is a must read for any organisations thinking of dipping their toes into the Web 2.0 water.  Popular misconceptions include:

Social media is cheap, if not free
Anyone can do it
You can make a big splash in a short time
You can do it all in-house
If you do something great, people will find it
You can’t measure social media results

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January was a particularly busy month for me, what with one week’s hols, one week in London at a trade show and one week caught up with family business, I’m still trying to grasp that it’s February already.
So  I was  probably the last one in the Isle of Man to know that Richard Butt, editor of Isle of Man newspapers is keeping a blog.
And it’s really good.  It gives readers and insight into the workings of the newsroom and explains what goes into publishing a newspaper …