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News round-up: Murdoch's merry spending spree

Posted: 11/08/05 By: Jemima Kiss

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It's oh so quiet, as Bjork said. Or it would be, if I didn't have a squadron of baby swallows learning to fly outside my window. Occasionally they duck in through the window and swoop over my head.

Snippets of interest from the past week:

Yet more Murdoch

• Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation recorded a 67 per cent increase in quarterly profits and has some serious spending plans afoot. Last night in New York, Mr Murdoch announced a further $1 billion investment in online business, including an online search firm.

In the past month, News Corp has purchased Intermix Media and US online sports network Scout Media.

It is also reported to have bid £52 million for Australian property network Realestate.com.au and held talks with internet telephony firm Skype about a $3 billion dollar acquisition.

Sharing = good, not sharing = bad

• Jeff Jarvis in this week's MediaGuardian offers some tips for forward-looking news organisations, including 'throwing out the clock' and sharing information more willingly.

"If we believe that more information is good for the news industry and for an informed democracy, then we must find ways to encourage growth outside the newsroom. We should share promotion by linking to citizen journalists, share content by making our stories available as feeds, share expertise by training bloggers and even share revenue in open ad networks."

He also said that editors' pay should be determined by the audience they attract - so pay for online and print staff should be equal. (Don't hold your breath...)

Iraq

• US freelance journalist Steven Vincent was murdered in Iraq last week following a report he wrote for the New York Times on a Sunni death squad operating in Basra. His own blog provides a detailed background to his work, and the environment in which he was working. Extensive coverage online: Google News gives the latest stories and the Times had an early piece.

• The Voices of Iraq news website, set up by the Reuters Foundation, has been given additional funding to expand into a commercial news agency. Content is produced by Iraqi journalists, including 30 stringers and a group from Iraqi independent newspapers, and journalists will also be trained by the foundation.

Broadband

• NTL has announced plans for 10Mb broadband services which will be rolled out by the end of 2006. It's like broadband, but bigger and faster. NTL is calling this next-generation broadband, and it will mean high-definition TV and even speedier file downloads.

• Broadband users in the US watch an average 12 hours TV compared with 14 hours for those that don't use the web, according to Forrester's 'State of Consumers and Technology' 2004 report.

Forrester predicted that broadband use in the US will rise to 62 per cent by 2010, up from 29 per cent in 2004.

New stuff

• The Trinity & Mirror newspaper group has launched a series of local job sites. Trinity & Mirror is one of four media companies with a stake in the national Fish4 network, although the firm says the new sites are localised and will complement rather than compete with Fish4 by 'strengthening advertiser response'.

• Google News has introduced RSS news feeds. Users can subscribe to eight different channels, or set up a feed based on a keyword search.

Interestingly, this story was covered by CNET - but Google of course declined to comment following its astonishing decision to stonewall CNET reporters for a year. [And a few months back, we explained how to create your own RSS feeds from Yahoo! News searches.]

• Yahoo! has launched a beta version of an audio search tool that scans interviews, speeches, podcasts and music.

• Express Newspapers will be using Miva, formerly Espotting, to provide search facilities on its news sites. The network includes the Daily Express, Daily Star, Happy, OK! and the newly-launched celebrity news site Daily Snack.

• And I've only just spotted that CNET News has its own rather natty branded news reader tool called Newsburst. Have a play...

Blogging is officially uncool

It must be. Donald Trump is doing it...

Silly web jargon prize of the week

Podvert - an ad on a podcast...

This is silly

• Totally off topic, but this tickled me. Are you tired of being a hungry vegan?

I'm off for a week. Au revoir...

Comments? Email me.

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