Patrick Smith

Little Bird dramatizes the Sixties Scoop, when thousands of First Nations children in Canada were forcibly removed from their families and adopted by non-Indigenous families. The six-part story follows Bezhig Little Bird, raised as Esther Rosenblum, as she uncovers her identity and searches for her birth family across two timelines. The review praises Jennifer Podemski, Hannah Moscovitch and Darla Contois for presenting the injustice with restraint, emotional depth and Indigenous perspective, while noting occasional caricature and an overwrought score. The series won 13 Canadian Screen Awards and is praised as deserving wider international attention.

The Independent launched a social events planner in partnership with Iome, using a white-label version of Plotstar. The service lets users organize nights out, communicate with friends, book tables and access hospitality offers, generating revenue through commissions, sponsorship and advertising. The platform was to be marketed to the newspaper’s roughly 10 million monthly users, alongside a planned iPhone app. The initiative formed part of a broader push into mobile and social media revenues, while parent company Independent News & Media continued selling assets, including INM Outdoor in South Africa.

Hyperlocal news in the UK showed promise but was unlikely to become profitable in 2010. Speakers argued that grassroots publishers should develop products, services, events and partnerships rather than rely on traditional mass-market advertising, while larger publishers demanded commercially credible proposals. Trinity Mirror had generated modest revenue from a Teesside project and was exploring blogger partnerships, but publicly funded regional news consortia remained uncertain until at least 2012. Growing broadband access, online literacy and local newspaper closures were expected to drive audience and advertiser migration, although sustainable livelihoods remained unlikely in the near term.

The Newspaper Licensing Agency warned news monitoring and aggregation companies to sign a new content licensing agreement by 1 January or risk technical and legal action. Most major British aggregators had agreed to the terms, but Meltwater and NewsNow were among the holdouts. The agreement would give newspaper publishers a share of revenue from tailored content feeds, with the NLA estimating that affected services generate about £10 million annually and seeking 10% of that revenue. The Financial Times declined to participate because it has a separate licensing arrangement.

Northern Echo editor Peter Barron argues that Google and online advertising are not the main threats to regional newspapers; the deeper problem is the aging and declining readership. The paper still expects print to survive for at least another 10 to 15 years, but its circulation has fallen from more than 90,000 copies a day in 1984 to about 50,000. Advertising provides 73% of revenue, with online advertising accounting for 6% and beginning to generate meaningful income. The key challenge is finding new ways to extend the Northern Echo brand and establish sustainable future business models.

Jimmy Leach, digital editorial director of The Independent, is leaving in February to become head of digital engagement at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He will oversee the development of the FCO’s 250 websites in 40 languages, along with ministers’ and officials’ blogs and Twitter feeds. During his time at The Independent, Leach expanded content-aggregation partnerships and relaunched the Independent Minds blogging platform with LiveJournal.

The Press Association has secured a revenue-generating deal to supply Standard.co.uk with news, sports and entertainment video packages, expanding beyond its usual text wire service. The agreement follows substantial investment in video journalism since 2005 and a similar deal with Independent.co.uk, but comes amid advertising-driven cuts to PA’s regional reporting staff. PA is also pursuing up to £18 million a year in public funding for a regional reporting scheme involving as many as 800 staff. The London Evening Standard’s free print relaunch has attracted commuters, but its website is criticized for offering relatively limited multimedia content.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said the company planned to introduce paid corporate accounts by the end of 2009, offering verified streams and analytics for businesses such as airlines and retailers. The monetization strategy was intended to avoid intrusive advertising and preserve user goodwill. Stone also identified mobile growth, data partnerships, geotagging and reputation systems as key to Twitter’s future, including a potentially greater role in how news organizations operate.

Burda Media is purchasing a 25.1% stake in Xing through its Burda Digital division for €48.29 million, making it Xing’s largest single shareholder and valuing the company at about €193 million. The shares are being acquired from Cinco Capital, headed by Xing founder Lars Hinrichs, and the transaction still requires approval from Germany’s Federal Cartel Office. Burda says the investment is strategic as well as financial. Xing, formerly OpenBC, focuses on German- and French-language business networking and had 600,000 premium subscribers in the first quarter of 2009.

Schibsted reported a 52% year-on-year rise in operating profit to NOK303m for the three months ending 30 September 2009, supported by cost reductions and 17% online revenue growth. Online profit rose 14% to NOK199m, making digital operations 28% of total earnings. However, overall advertising and print revenue declined, highlighting the continuing weakness of newspapers. Schibsted was expanding its online classifieds holdings in InfoJobs.net and Finn.no, selling non-core assets, and pursuing a NOK1bn cost-cutting programme that had already eliminated 650 jobs.

Trinity Mirror reported a 22% year-on-year decline in digital sales for the 17 weeks to 25 October 2009, following a 19% fall in online advertising and a 15% overall revenue decline year to date. Recruitment and property advertising were the main causes, although digital advertising excluding those sectors rose 26%. The company’s national and regional advertising declines had moderated, but regional revenue was still down 32%, prompting the closure of 26 newspapers and significant restructuring costs. Trinity expected the rate of decline to improve, while caution remained that any recovery in the media economy was still fragile.

UK news organisations are adapting to financial pressure by hiring investigative journalists through charitable funding and using journalism students and amateur contributors to support local and hyperlocal coverage. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism received a £2m grant to hire up to 20 staff, while Newsquest’s Brighton Argus recruited students for community news sites. Although these approaches raise concerns about the erosion of professional journalism and low-cost labour, reduced newsroom staffing may make alternative funding and pro-am participation necessary features of the post-professional news landscape.

The recession compounded an already serious structural decline in magazine publishing as readers and advertisers shifted attention to online media and social networks. NatMags recorded a £42.8 million pre-tax loss in 2008, Haymarket's profits nearly halved, and other publishers including Reed Business Information, UBM, Centaur and Future reported substantial declines. UK magazine readership fell 21.5% in the first half of 2009, equivalent to 17.4 million fewer copies. The sector's likely path forward is to develop stronger digital operations and find sustainable ways to charge for online content, rather than relying solely on increasingly vulnerable print titles.

An IPA survey found that advertisers were increasingly dissatisfied with the online advertising services of major UK newspaper websites, while ad networks, search companies and several other digital media providers scored better. Satisfaction with Guardian.co.uk, News International and FT.com declined from the previous year, although Telegraph.co.uk improved. Specific Media ranked highest, and digital agency executive Dave Katz attributed newspapers’ weaker performance to traditional media companies’ slow and insufficient focus on digital advertising.

Spanish digital news site Soitu.es is closing after 22 months despite winning Online News Association awards and attracting around 500,000 unique users, plus roughly 2 million monthly users through hosted widgets. Founder Gumersindo Lafuente said audience demand was not the problem; the site’s innovative and costly model was difficult to explain and monetize through advertising, particularly during the economic crisis. The closure will make staff redundant and highlights the challenges facing independent online news startups competing with newspaper-backed websites.

The Wall Street Journal is separating its European edition more decisively from the US edition by ending distribution of the US paper in Europe, revamping the European print edition, expanding europe.wsj.com, and adding online-only content, blogs and email alerts. Under European editor Patience Wheatcroft, the operation has grown to more than 400 employees, while Dow Jones is also increasing events activity. The strategy aims to make the Journal more relevant to European business readers, compete more directly with the Financial Times, increase paid subscriptions and potentially improve its appeal to advertisers.

Arsenal has launched a £2.99 iPhone app offering fans exclusive pictures, video, scores and news, adding to an extensive digital operation that includes its website, paid and mobile video-on-demand services, and Arsenal TV. The club's direct relationship with highly engaged football supporters illustrates how major sports organizations are becoming media companies and developing new revenue streams. The expansion raises concerns for traditional publishers, including whether fans will continue paying for newspaper football coverage and whether clubs might eventually restrict reporters' access to protect exclusive content.

A Lightspeed Research survey of 2,000 people found that 91% would never pay for online news, while only 5% would consider buying individual articles and 4% would consider a longer-term subscription. Most respondents also rejected paying for analysis or online sports content, although music downloads attracted greater willingness to pay. Younger consumers were more open to paid news than older respondents, but the findings challenged publisher strategies, including Rupert Murdoch’s expectation that readers would accept online charges. News Corp maintained that separate Australian research showed stronger support for paid content.

ZenithOptimedia revised its forecast for UK online advertising spending from 2.3% growth to a 2.1% decline in 2009, putting the market at £2.78 billion. It expects further contraction in 2010 before modest growth in 2011, while the wider UK advertising economy is projected to fall 13.1% in 2009. Globally, online advertising remains the only growing major advertising category, although overall ad spending is expected to decline more sharply than previously forecast. Zenith says the global market should bottom out by the end of 2009, with recovery led by emerging economies.

Rick Waghorn has launched Addiply, a deliberately simple hyperlocal advertising network aimed at independent bloggers and small local publishers. Publishers set their own prices, sell text or display ads directly to local businesses, and retain 90% of revenue, with Addiply and PayPal sharing the remainder. The platform is used by a small number of UK, US and French sites and has secured a significant deal with NCJMedia, part of Trinity Mirror, for 22 postcode-based sites in north-east England. The deal suggests that low-cost, ultra-local advertising could help fund emerging online news projects, particularly as regional publishers face extensive budget and staffing cuts.