I'm getting a bit fed up with the IHT following 'sex and celeb' stories under the guise of only reporting what Fleet Street are reporting, and using press and media commentary as the vehicle to get sex and celebs into their own pages without the stain of actually writing about it themselves.
Either be up front about it or drop this vein of news altogether - I'd prefer the latter.
I'm English and I haven't read a British newspaper for about 15 years, initially because I don't like the blending of news and opinion, news and news analysis, but more recently, their obsession with sex and celebrity culture.
I don't want to read about it, know about it, and every time it pops up in the IHT, which I read in part to avoid it, I regard it as an invasion and a waste of a limted news hole.
This piece below has some valid points about press privacy but the headline is extremely grating.
THE WORLD
Scandal! Fleet street without sex!
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/27/europe/27burns.php
www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com
International Herald Tribune
IHT
New York Times
NYT
Monday, 28 July 2008
International Voices on the Op-Ed pages
I've posted many times on the over-reliance on American columnists and opinion formers for contributions to the op-ed pages.
Here's an example of a piece I would like to have seen in last week's IHT.
Why was Paddy Ashdown writing for U.K newspaper and not the IHT?
Is budget the problem? Not enough money to commission pieces for the IHT, therefore use NYT contributors, who are invariably heavily weighted to American voices?
But as I've said before, are NYT readers best served by being served up mostly American opinion and perspectives?
Bosnia threatened with break-up
LONDON: Bosnia is closer to breaking up than at any time since its 1992-95 war and the European Union must do more to prevent its division, former international peace overseer Paddy Ashdown said.Ashdown said the Serb Republic, which together with the Muslim-Croat federation makes up the Bosnian state, had set up parallel institutions and was working towards secession."Radovan Karadzic is at last on his way to The Hague. But the division of Bosnia that was his dream is now more likely than at any time since he became a fugitive," Ashdown said in an article published by The Observer newspaper on Sunday.
http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/07/27/europe/OUKWD-UK-BOSNIA-ASHDOWN.php
www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com
International Herald Tribune
IHT
New York Times
NYT
Here's an example of a piece I would like to have seen in last week's IHT.
Why was Paddy Ashdown writing for U.K newspaper and not the IHT?
Is budget the problem? Not enough money to commission pieces for the IHT, therefore use NYT contributors, who are invariably heavily weighted to American voices?
But as I've said before, are NYT readers best served by being served up mostly American opinion and perspectives?
Bosnia threatened with break-up
LONDON: Bosnia is closer to breaking up than at any time since its 1992-95 war and the European Union must do more to prevent its division, former international peace overseer Paddy Ashdown said.Ashdown said the Serb Republic, which together with the Muslim-Croat federation makes up the Bosnian state, had set up parallel institutions and was working towards secession."Radovan Karadzic is at last on his way to The Hague. But the division of Bosnia that was his dream is now more likely than at any time since he became a fugitive," Ashdown said in an article published by The Observer newspaper on Sunday.
http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/07/27/europe/OUKWD-UK-BOSNIA-ASHDOWN.php
www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com
International Herald Tribune
IHT
New York Times
NYT
Traditional Information Hierarchies
What I do at www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com is to ignore traditional information hierarchies within the IHT, and try and find a daily narrative, tailored to my own interests. Which is what younger people, teenagers indeed, do every day online. And I don't expect to pay for the privilige.
And I am 42.
Young people "aren't as troubled as some of us older folks are by reading that doesn't go in a line," said Rand Spiro, a professor of educational psychology at Michigan State University who is studying reading practices on the Internet. "That's a good thing, because the world doesn't go in a line, and the world isn't organized into separate compartments or chapters."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/27/america/read.php
Some other stuff that is also relevant to what I call 'information ebru' which I practise at www.aplaceintheauverng.blogspot.com
Some traditionalists warn that digital reading is the intellectual equivalent of empty calories. Often, they argue, writers on the Internet employ a cryptic argot that vexes teachers and parents.
Zigzagging through a cornucopia of words, pictures, video and sounds, they say, distracts more than strengthens readers. And many youths spend most of their time on the Internet playing games or sending messages, activities that involve minimal reading at best.
Web proponents believe that strong readers on the Web may eventually surpass those who rely on books. Reading five Web sites, an op-ed article and a blog post or two, experts say, can be more enriching than reading one book.
"It takes a long time to read a 400-page book," said Spiro. "In a tenth of the time," he said, the Internet allows a reader to "cover a lot more of the topic from different points of view."
Some traditionalists warn that digital reading is the intellectual equivalent of empty calories. Often, they argue, writers on the Internet employ a cryptic argot that vexes teachers and parents.
Zigzagging through a cornucopia of words, pictures, video and sounds, they say, distracts more than strengthens readers. And many youths spend most of their time on the Internet playing games or sending messages, activities that involve minimal reading at best.
Web proponents believe that strong readers on the Web may eventually surpass those who rely on books. Reading five Web sites, an op-ed article and a blog post or two, experts say, can be more enriching than reading one book.
"It takes a long time to read a 400-page book," said Spiro. "In a tenth of the time," he said, the Internet allows a reader to "cover a lot more of the topic from different points of view."
Web readers are persistently weak at judging whether information is trustworthy. In one study, Donald Leu, who researches literacy and technology at the University of Connecticut, asked 48 students to look at a spoof Web site, at http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/, about a mythical species known as the "Pacific Northwest tree octopus." Nearly 90 percent of them missed the joke and deemed the site a reliable source.
http://www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com/
International Herald Tribune
IHT
New York Times
NYT
And I am 42.
Young people "aren't as troubled as some of us older folks are by reading that doesn't go in a line," said Rand Spiro, a professor of educational psychology at Michigan State University who is studying reading practices on the Internet. "That's a good thing, because the world doesn't go in a line, and the world isn't organized into separate compartments or chapters."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/27/america/read.php
Some other stuff that is also relevant to what I call 'information ebru' which I practise at www.aplaceintheauverng.blogspot.com
Some traditionalists warn that digital reading is the intellectual equivalent of empty calories. Often, they argue, writers on the Internet employ a cryptic argot that vexes teachers and parents.
Zigzagging through a cornucopia of words, pictures, video and sounds, they say, distracts more than strengthens readers. And many youths spend most of their time on the Internet playing games or sending messages, activities that involve minimal reading at best.
Web proponents believe that strong readers on the Web may eventually surpass those who rely on books. Reading five Web sites, an op-ed article and a blog post or two, experts say, can be more enriching than reading one book.
"It takes a long time to read a 400-page book," said Spiro. "In a tenth of the time," he said, the Internet allows a reader to "cover a lot more of the topic from different points of view."
Some traditionalists warn that digital reading is the intellectual equivalent of empty calories. Often, they argue, writers on the Internet employ a cryptic argot that vexes teachers and parents.
Zigzagging through a cornucopia of words, pictures, video and sounds, they say, distracts more than strengthens readers. And many youths spend most of their time on the Internet playing games or sending messages, activities that involve minimal reading at best.
Web proponents believe that strong readers on the Web may eventually surpass those who rely on books. Reading five Web sites, an op-ed article and a blog post or two, experts say, can be more enriching than reading one book.
"It takes a long time to read a 400-page book," said Spiro. "In a tenth of the time," he said, the Internet allows a reader to "cover a lot more of the topic from different points of view."
Web readers are persistently weak at judging whether information is trustworthy. In one study, Donald Leu, who researches literacy and technology at the University of Connecticut, asked 48 students to look at a spoof Web site, at http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/, about a mythical species known as the "Pacific Northwest tree octopus." Nearly 90 percent of them missed the joke and deemed the site a reliable source.
So if you have brand trust, but mix up the mix outside traditional newspaper information hierarchies who says that the NYT can't be a major destination for young people, and who says they won't read a newspaper? (Especially if you throw in some brand status - see earlier recent posts on this.)
And while we're on the subject of traditional information hierarchies, why is it that the NYT and the IHT present ONE internet face to readers of ALL ages. Does that really make sense?
Isn't it time for Newspaper 2.0?
http://www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com/
International Herald Tribune
IHT
New York Times
NYT
Experts on reading wonder: Is the Internet friend or foe?
The previous post was about whether young people will pay for certain types of information.
This one is about how they read.
Experts on reading wonder: Is the Internet friend or foe?
BEREA, Ohio: Books are not Nadia Konyk's thing. Her mother, hoping to entice her, brings them home from the library, but Nadia rarely shows interest.Instead, like so many other teenagers, Nadia, 15, is addicted to the Internet. She regularly spends at least six hours a day in front of the computer in this suburb southwest of Cleveland.Nadia checks her e-mail and peruses myyearbook.com, a social networking site, reading messages or posting updates on her mood. She searches for music videos on YouTube and logs onto Gaia Online, a role-playing site where members fashion alternate identities as cutesy cartoon characters. But she spends most of her time on quizilla.com or fanfiction.net, reading and commenting on stories written by other users and based on books, television shows or movies.Her mother, Deborah Konyk, would prefer that Nadia, who gets A's and B's at school, read books for a change. But at this point, Konyk said, "I'm just pleased that she reads something anymore."Children like Nadia lie at the heart of a passionate debate about just what it means to read in the digital age. The discussion is playing out among education policymakers and reading experts around the world, and within groups like the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/27/america/read.php
www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com
International Herald Tribune
IHT
New York Times
NYT
This one is about how they read.
Experts on reading wonder: Is the Internet friend or foe?
BEREA, Ohio: Books are not Nadia Konyk's thing. Her mother, hoping to entice her, brings them home from the library, but Nadia rarely shows interest.Instead, like so many other teenagers, Nadia, 15, is addicted to the Internet. She regularly spends at least six hours a day in front of the computer in this suburb southwest of Cleveland.Nadia checks her e-mail and peruses myyearbook.com, a social networking site, reading messages or posting updates on her mood. She searches for music videos on YouTube and logs onto Gaia Online, a role-playing site where members fashion alternate identities as cutesy cartoon characters. But she spends most of her time on quizilla.com or fanfiction.net, reading and commenting on stories written by other users and based on books, television shows or movies.Her mother, Deborah Konyk, would prefer that Nadia, who gets A's and B's at school, read books for a change. But at this point, Konyk said, "I'm just pleased that she reads something anymore."Children like Nadia lie at the heart of a passionate debate about just what it means to read in the digital age. The discussion is playing out among education policymakers and reading experts around the world, and within groups like the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/27/america/read.php
www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com
International Herald Tribune
IHT
New York Times
NYT
Anyone think there's a future in paid content?
The received wisdom is that newspapers will save themselves via the Internet and other platforms.
But that's going to have to revolve around getting advertising CPMs up, because the idea of future generations paying for general interest content seems a poor one to rely on, given how there is already a perception that Internet = Free.
Combine that with a new moral compass on copyright among the young, and a willingess to rip even highly specialised content (once considered the saviour for the paid content model), well, then it's back to the drawing board on paid conent models.
Witness this little peach (which as an author I feel super about, but understand):
DIGITAL DOMAIN
First it was song downloads. Now it's Organic Chemistry.
After scanning his textbooks and making them available to anyone to download free, a contributor at the file-sharing site PirateBay.org composed a colorful message for "all publishers" of college textbooks, warning them that "myself and all other students are tired of getting" ripped off. (The contributor's message included many ripe expletives, but hey, this is a family newspaper.) All forms of print publishing must contend with the digital transition, but college textbook publishing has a particularly nasty problem on its hands. College students may be the angriest group of captive customers to be found anywhere. Consider the cost of a legitimate copy of one of the textbooks listed at the Pirate Bay, John McMurry's "Organic Chemistry." A new copy has a list price of $209.95; discounted, it's about $150; used copies run $110 and up. To many students, those prices are outrageous, set by profit-engorged corporations (and assisted by callous professors, who choose which texts are required). Helping themselves to gratis pirated copies may seem natural, especially when hard drives are loaded with lots of other products picked up free.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/27/technology/27digi.php
www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com
International Herald Tribune
IHT
New York Times
NYT
But that's going to have to revolve around getting advertising CPMs up, because the idea of future generations paying for general interest content seems a poor one to rely on, given how there is already a perception that Internet = Free.
Combine that with a new moral compass on copyright among the young, and a willingess to rip even highly specialised content (once considered the saviour for the paid content model), well, then it's back to the drawing board on paid conent models.
Witness this little peach (which as an author I feel super about, but understand):
DIGITAL DOMAIN
First it was song downloads. Now it's Organic Chemistry.
After scanning his textbooks and making them available to anyone to download free, a contributor at the file-sharing site PirateBay.org composed a colorful message for "all publishers" of college textbooks, warning them that "myself and all other students are tired of getting" ripped off. (The contributor's message included many ripe expletives, but hey, this is a family newspaper.) All forms of print publishing must contend with the digital transition, but college textbook publishing has a particularly nasty problem on its hands. College students may be the angriest group of captive customers to be found anywhere. Consider the cost of a legitimate copy of one of the textbooks listed at the Pirate Bay, John McMurry's "Organic Chemistry." A new copy has a list price of $209.95; discounted, it's about $150; used copies run $110 and up. To many students, those prices are outrageous, set by profit-engorged corporations (and assisted by callous professors, who choose which texts are required). Helping themselves to gratis pirated copies may seem natural, especially when hard drives are loaded with lots of other products picked up free.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/27/technology/27digi.php
www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com
International Herald Tribune
IHT
New York Times
NYT
Just to keep in mind: readers=fans
As someone who writes a blog (part of a social network) about the IHT (not, but possibly, a luxury brand for younger people), this caught my eye:
ON ADVERTISING
Luxury brands discover social networks
PARIS: 'I love Cartier," writes Rockstar Mom. "Thanks for being so classic and timeless," adds Emily. Sting just gazes out broodingly from his publicity photo.
On MySpace, Cartier has many friends like these - 3,761 of them, to be precise. Some of them are famous, others less so, but the jeweler is counting on them to spread the vibe through the social network and beyond.
Cartier's presence on MySpace is the product of a recent agreement that makes it one of the first luxury brands to market itself in a big way on a mainstream social network.
The MySpace profile was set up to advertise jewelry in Cartier's Love collection. But visitors can also sample music from artists like Lou Reed and Grand National, including several songs around the theme of love that were composed for Cartier. They can watch film clips with a romantic story line. And, of course, they can click on any of those friends' pictures to visit their profiles.
The possibility of blending entertainment and marketing and spreading it through chain letter-style links has gotten many marketers excited about social networking. But luxury brands, worried about the company they keep, have been reluctant to get involved with the likes of MySpace or Facebook. Cartier took the risk, said Corinne Delattre, its director of communications, because it saw a "different way to talk to a young audience."
"To work in the luxury environment, it means being a step in advance sometimes," she said. "We work with people moving fast. They use technology. They are ahead in their way of life."
Actually, many luxury brands have been slow to move to the Internet more generally, let alone freewheeling frontiers like social networking. Some brand owners have spent years battling eBay, the online auction site, contending that it does too little to curb sales of fakes. Others have clashed with Google over its advertising system, which has allowed rival marketers to snatch away their trademarks as search keywords.
A number of fashion and luxury companies have advertised on ASmallWorld, an invitation-only social network aimed at wealthy consumers. Now some of them are getting their first exposure to mainstream, mass-market social networks. Some have "fan pages" on Facebook, which allow people to post videos of themselves wearing their favorite designers' fashions, for example.
But practically anyone can set up a page on Facebook, at no cost, which demonstrates two of the biggest problems with social networking as an advertising medium. One, for the advertiser, is a lack of control over the process; the other, for the network owner, is the lack of money changing hands - if "fans" of a luxury brand voluntarily tell their friends about it, why should the brand owner spend any money to do so?
Though ad spending on MySpace has trailed expectations, the company, part of News Corp., thinks it has solved some of the problem, with the Cartier campaign serving as a model. MySpace requires big marketers who want to create profiles to pay for the space, though it declined to say how much Cartier was being charged for its yearlong campaign.
In return, MySpace takes steps to drive traffic to advertisers' profiles and to ensure that the material that appears on them "respects the brand's objectives," as Damien Vincent, head of sales at MySpace France, put it. In the case of Cartier, that means weeding out some would-be friends. Candidates whose photos show them guzzling a beer at a party, for instance, are unlikely to make the cut, Vincent said.
MySpace is eager to show that its audience extends beyond teenagers looking to kill time after school. Eighty-five percent of American users are over 18, it says. "I think there's a huge potential market for luxury advertisers," said Jamie Kantrowitz, senior vice president of content and marketing at MySpace International.
Ben Hourahine, futures editor at the London branch of the ad agency Leo Burnett, said the use of social networks was appropriate at a time when consumer attitudes about luxury were changing. In a recent survey of U.S. consumers by the agency, only 7 percent said they thought "luxury" meant being part of an exclusive club.
"Luxury brands in the past had this unattainable aspect to them," he said. "Now they realize they need to connect and communicate with people."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/27/business/ad28.php
www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com
International Herald Tribune
IHT
New York Times
NYT
ON ADVERTISING
Luxury brands discover social networks
PARIS: 'I love Cartier," writes Rockstar Mom. "Thanks for being so classic and timeless," adds Emily. Sting just gazes out broodingly from his publicity photo.
On MySpace, Cartier has many friends like these - 3,761 of them, to be precise. Some of them are famous, others less so, but the jeweler is counting on them to spread the vibe through the social network and beyond.
Cartier's presence on MySpace is the product of a recent agreement that makes it one of the first luxury brands to market itself in a big way on a mainstream social network.
The MySpace profile was set up to advertise jewelry in Cartier's Love collection. But visitors can also sample music from artists like Lou Reed and Grand National, including several songs around the theme of love that were composed for Cartier. They can watch film clips with a romantic story line. And, of course, they can click on any of those friends' pictures to visit their profiles.
The possibility of blending entertainment and marketing and spreading it through chain letter-style links has gotten many marketers excited about social networking. But luxury brands, worried about the company they keep, have been reluctant to get involved with the likes of MySpace or Facebook. Cartier took the risk, said Corinne Delattre, its director of communications, because it saw a "different way to talk to a young audience."
"To work in the luxury environment, it means being a step in advance sometimes," she said. "We work with people moving fast. They use technology. They are ahead in their way of life."
Actually, many luxury brands have been slow to move to the Internet more generally, let alone freewheeling frontiers like social networking. Some brand owners have spent years battling eBay, the online auction site, contending that it does too little to curb sales of fakes. Others have clashed with Google over its advertising system, which has allowed rival marketers to snatch away their trademarks as search keywords.
A number of fashion and luxury companies have advertised on ASmallWorld, an invitation-only social network aimed at wealthy consumers. Now some of them are getting their first exposure to mainstream, mass-market social networks. Some have "fan pages" on Facebook, which allow people to post videos of themselves wearing their favorite designers' fashions, for example.
But practically anyone can set up a page on Facebook, at no cost, which demonstrates two of the biggest problems with social networking as an advertising medium. One, for the advertiser, is a lack of control over the process; the other, for the network owner, is the lack of money changing hands - if "fans" of a luxury brand voluntarily tell their friends about it, why should the brand owner spend any money to do so?
Though ad spending on MySpace has trailed expectations, the company, part of News Corp., thinks it has solved some of the problem, with the Cartier campaign serving as a model. MySpace requires big marketers who want to create profiles to pay for the space, though it declined to say how much Cartier was being charged for its yearlong campaign.
In return, MySpace takes steps to drive traffic to advertisers' profiles and to ensure that the material that appears on them "respects the brand's objectives," as Damien Vincent, head of sales at MySpace France, put it. In the case of Cartier, that means weeding out some would-be friends. Candidates whose photos show them guzzling a beer at a party, for instance, are unlikely to make the cut, Vincent said.
MySpace is eager to show that its audience extends beyond teenagers looking to kill time after school. Eighty-five percent of American users are over 18, it says. "I think there's a huge potential market for luxury advertisers," said Jamie Kantrowitz, senior vice president of content and marketing at MySpace International.
Ben Hourahine, futures editor at the London branch of the ad agency Leo Burnett, said the use of social networks was appropriate at a time when consumer attitudes about luxury were changing. In a recent survey of U.S. consumers by the agency, only 7 percent said they thought "luxury" meant being part of an exclusive club.
"Luxury brands in the past had this unattainable aspect to them," he said. "Now they realize they need to connect and communicate with people."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/27/business/ad28.php
www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com
International Herald Tribune
IHT
New York Times
NYT
Sunday, 27 July 2008
If the solution is the Internet, where are the readers?
China says Web use surpasses that in U.S.
SHANGHAI: China said the number of Internet users in the country reached about 253 million last month, helping China overtake the United States as the world's biggest Internet market.The estimate, released by the China Internet Network Information Center in Beijing, shows a powerful surge in Internet adoption in this country over the past few years, particularly among teenagers.The estimate, based on a national survey, shows that the number of Internet users jumped more than 50 percent, or by about 90 million, during the past year, suggesting that China could soon have more than 300 million people using the Internet for everything from news to online shopping.
By contrast, the United States is estimated to have about 220 million Internet users, or about 70 percent of its population, according to the Nielsen Company, with similarly high percentages in Japan and South Korea.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/25/business/internet.php
www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com
International Herald Tribune
IHT
New York Times
NYT
SHANGHAI: China said the number of Internet users in the country reached about 253 million last month, helping China overtake the United States as the world's biggest Internet market.The estimate, released by the China Internet Network Information Center in Beijing, shows a powerful surge in Internet adoption in this country over the past few years, particularly among teenagers.The estimate, based on a national survey, shows that the number of Internet users jumped more than 50 percent, or by about 90 million, during the past year, suggesting that China could soon have more than 300 million people using the Internet for everything from news to online shopping.
By contrast, the United States is estimated to have about 220 million Internet users, or about 70 percent of its population, according to the Nielsen Company, with similarly high percentages in Japan and South Korea.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/25/business/internet.php
www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com
International Herald Tribune
IHT
New York Times
NYT
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