Can Rupert Murdoch save journalism?

Rupert Murdoch has thrown a huge rock into the media pool by announcing he is planning to start charging for some online News International information.

How to make cash from internet news sites is the biggest conundrum newspapers face in the 21st century and no one has cracked it yet. Having given the shop away years ago by providing print news online for free, most commentators believe there is no way back. Why on earth would consumers used to getting their news free from any number of web sites suddenly start paying for the privilege?

I don't have a clear answer, but I do have a growing sense that as people start getting to grips with explosion of 2.0 information, there will be a marked shift towards quality. The reason for this is that amidst the diarrhoea of digital information out there, there is actually a lot of really good stuff that is worth accessing - and maybe even paying for.

Take Twitter. At first, many people simply couldn't fathom the point in receiving instant messages from thousands of complete strangers every day, much of it mind-numbing trivia. There's no doubt that none of us has the time to read all of this stuff, but used properly, Twitter can be an extraordinarily effective tool. The trick is to follow people or organisations who post information that has real value - whether it is a tech nerd keeping you up to date with the latest digital developments, someone who supports your football team who roots around the net for articles, an airport tweeting about flight delays, or your favourite restaurant alerting you if tables become available at the last minute. All of this is good stuff.

In turn, if you post useful information on Twitter, on blogs, or on social media sites, you can establish yourself as an expert, build relationships and win business.

This flight to quality that I sense is happening, could persuade some of us to pay the likes of the New York Times, the Guardian, Daily Telegraph or the FT for our news. It's a big ask, but my old boss at The Scotsman, Tim Luckhurst, who now plies his trade at the Centre for Journalism, believes that if newspapers can charge for content, then they can reinvested it in high quality journalism. He notes, quote correctly, that the legions of citizen journalists who micro-blog from the streets of Tehran about the Iranian elections are good for democracy because they defying attempts at censorship. However, amateur journalists are highly opinionated and are not trained to be critical, objective and accurate. If you want information you can trust, you need professional journalists - and charging for online content might allow struggling newspapers to continue supporting great journalism.

Love him or loathe him, Murdoch has an uncanny knack of spotting where the media market is going and jumping into that space early. If he's right, and others follow, the Dirty Digger just might turn out to be the unlikely saviour of journalism.

www.breenmedia.co.uk

Social Media is all grown up

If anyone working in public relations still has any doubts that social media is going to be a massive part of their job then the latest report from Marta Kagan on Digital Buzz should put them right.

It’s packed full of extraordinary figures about the remarkable growth of social networking sites on the web.

For example:

* three out of four Americans use social technology
* two thirds of the global internet population use social networks
* social sites are the fourth most popular area of online activity - ahead of personal email
* time spent on social networks is growing three times faster than overall internet growth, accounting for 10% of all internet time
* 100 million YouTube videos are viewed each day
* Twitter grew by 1382% between January and February this year

It’s bursting with compelling reasons why every PR practitioner has to include social media as part of their arsenal of communication tools. The swear words might not be to everyone’s taste, but the message is clear.

But enough from me. Why not view the slideshow here yourself.