Notes From Articles

Print in 2013: Newspapers cut costs and seek tablets of salvation

• Just over £1bn is forecast to be spent on national newspaper advertising, 9% less than 2012 and nearly two-thirds less than the £2.55bn in 2005.
• Attention will be on Murdoch's plan to spin off News Corporation's newspaper and book publishing assets from his more lucrative film and TV businesses, which will result in more pressure to address the £1m-a-week losses a week at the Times
• the publisher of the Guardian is planning to cut 68 journalist posts in order to help reduce its editorial budget by £7m, after a £44.2m loss in the year to the end of March
• There will be a relentless battle between cost-cutting and product investment and development," - Douglas McCabe
• The new business will face major changes, but scrapping the papers' online paywall is not likely to be one of them.
• Other potential sellers are Russian billionaire Lebedev, who is looking for an investor to share the losses at the Independent and Independent on Sunday, and Financial Times
• Lebedev might consider the same for one of the market's few bona fide success stories, the cut-price 20p national i
• The i has done well and imagine what would happen at 1m-plus copies a day out there... A better read than The Metro
• The magazine market will face a projected 7% slide in ad revenue and there has been no growth since 2005; like newspapers, magazines have to get to grips with digital strategy.
• Sales of the top 100 magazines have plummeted by 31% from about 31m to 21m over the last decade
• huge sales expected this Christmas, 2013 should be the year of the tablet.
• "The key will be tablets and how publishers get to grips with monetising [them], - Jo Blake
• New chief executive Simon Fox will be hoping that the revitalisation is not derailed by the allegations of phone hacking reaching beyond News International.

BBC and ITV apologise to Lord McAlpine for sex abuse allegations

• The BBC and ITV have apologised to Lord McAlpine at the high court for "disastrously" and falsely linking him to allegations of child sex abuse.
• The BBC and ITV have already agreed to pay the Tory peer damages of £185,000 and £125,000 plus legal costs respectively.
• McAlpine, the former Conservative party chairman, took action against the BBC over a bungled Newsnight report in early November that falsely linked him to an allegation of child sex abuse.
  • The following week, Phillip Schofield brandished a list of senior Tory politicians allegedly linked to child sex abuse live on air during ITV1's This Morning.
• "Notwithstanding that the allegations against him had finally to be shown to be false, Lord McAlpine understandably remained extremely hurt and distressed by the broadcast."
• Ian Felstead, the solicitor representing ITV, apologised unreservedly to McAlpine, but said neither Schofield nor the broadcaster had intended to make the allegations.
• Andrew Reid (McAlpines Solicitors), said the legal costs paid by the BBC and ITV amount to nearly £200,000 in total, on top of the damages payments amounting to £310,000.
• nearly 1,000 Twitter users had written to McAlpine to apologise for tweets that falsely linked him to allegations of child sex abuse.

Twitter active users pass 200 million

• Twitter now has more than 200 million active users around the world
  • 10 million of those in the UK
    • Its rapid growth as a social media tool.
• Twitterati has shot up from 140 million in May,
• major events such as the presidential election in the US and the Olympics converting more people from passive to active users
• ore than 500 million registered users worldwide, the figures show that more than half of those with a Twitter account prefer not to tweet themselves.
• Mobile growth is also catching on with 60% using smartphone apps – in the UK 80% of active users are using their phones to access content.
• “There are now more than 200M monthly active @twitter users. You are the pulse of the planet. We're grateful for your ongoing support!" – Tony Wang
• UK was the fourth biggest Twitter nation, beaten only by the US, Brazil and Japan.
• June 2012 the top three cities by number of tweets were Jakarta, Tokyo and London. Manchester came in as the second most active city in the UK.
• ielsen research shows 36% of 35 to 54 year-olds and 44% of 55 to 64 year-olds use their tablets while watching TV.