Category: Mediawatch

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Mediawatch

The cost of a paper

So the Times must have gotten their feathers ruffled by the news that their spanking new premium scheme is rather “hackable”. That’s only if you call refreshing a page before the irritable subscription request pops up “a hack”. The thing is that beyond what are surely teething problems for the Times (and more particularly for whoever came up with the javascript paywall (see that biwwa? I said paywall) lies a future of secured “income”. Once the flaws are solved then the paywall will definitely be in place for the news website (not portal – idem biwwa?) and readers will have to decide whether paying the €3.99 a week is worth every penny.

That, I believe, is the real question. For all you need to do – as J’accuse reader John Lane has already done – is compare the cost of subscribing to the Times of Malta online (and that is only online – not including print) to that of other papers/journals. I have taken a cursory look and looked around some major titles. The most striking fact is that the UK Times – loaded as it is with goodies and extras – turns out to be cheaper than the Maltese Times. Here is a table of sorts for the sake of comparison:

27€
Le Figaro
€27 per month (includes delivery of printed version and free watch)

24€
Le Monde
Formule Integrale – 24,90€ per month

19.33€
International Herald Tribune & New York Times
Unlimited access to the IHT smartphone apps, IHT app for iPad and NYTimes.com. €19.33 per month (25$)

19€
The Economist (digital + print)
€19 per month

15.96€
Times of Malta
Digital ONLY. 3.99€ /week once the introductory €2.99 expires

14.15€
The Times (UK) Classic Pack (top range) – €14.15 (£12) per month

It’s not just that though is it? For only 3€ more you could have access to the Economist online and receive it at home. Or you could opt for the New York Times/Herald Tribune alternative. The UK Times still remains the strongest contender for value for money – and don’t forget you could get all the local news for free from the Independent, MaltaToday and the various news websites that spring up such as iNewsMalta.

So yes Times people, once you stop grinding your teeth at these offensive bloggers who found a flaw in your paywall system you might have to contend with an even bigger flaw in your business model. If my O’level economics helps me in any way this has something to do with “opportunity cost” – basically your potential readers might take this opportunity to waive the cost for your subscription and go for something – how shall I say it? More worth the euros and cents?

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Mediawatch

This wall is on fire

Kurt Sansone’s Sunday morning article introducing the Times’ (of Malta) new premium scheme kicks off with a tenuous comparison to the introduction of the Rediffusion a good 77 years ago. Biblical scholars tell us that the number 77 signified a very large number as in Jesus’ affirmation “I tell you, not just seven times, but seventy seven times!”. Aeons if you like. The introduction of the rediffusion is in fact not just the matter of another century but in technological terms it is comparable to prehistory. You can get radio anywhere now – especially via internet. I recently discovered the strange experience of driving through forests in Luxembourg while listening to eight-ninety-seven-bay… thanks to an internet connection hooked onto the car sound system.

What rediffusion did was bring wireless entertainment to many homes. I’m not sure whether Kurt opted for the aesthetic/nostalgic approach before dropping the bomb and announcing that “It is within this scenario that timesofmalta.com will from to­morrow offer its readers premium content against payment, a first for any Maltese news website.” That’s another record broken, or should I say broken record? Kurt moves on to examine the “ruffled feathers” and follows this up with the question: ” Should news content delivered by media organisations over the internet remain free?”

It turns out that breaking news will still be accessible (that’s the top part of the TOM page – the one most prone to errors caused by expediency) but the rest will be accessible only once you pay to get through the firewall*. So in actual fact what you would have to pay for is the analysis and blogs and maybe the odd bit of odd news – the rest you could read anyway. Which is just as well given how the Independent has upped its updating frequency and seems to be serving the purpose of immediate news provision just fine – which would make the Times charging for the very same news ridiculous (also considering the other news websites available for public consumption).

So what can we really make of this premium site move? To begin with you do get a feeling that the guys at the Times think a tad bit too much of themselves and their content. The suspicion that you get is that the Times had lured the multitude of commentators (that it insists on calling bloggers) into some form of addiction and is now hoping that they will be willing to pay to sustain their habit. In recent months it was also evident that the Times was delaying the uploading of most content that was not breaking news even more. Sunday articles would only be up on Monday – giving us online commentators a hard time to keep up with the “opinion” corners.

Did the Times gain anything economically from this move? I wouldn’t know. What I can say is that the move is a huge gamble – one that could deliver a sucker punch to the ego of the whole set up at Allied Newspapers. Unlike the printed paper that many faithful readers would buy out of habit on any given Sunday, the payment for online content seems to require a different level of commitment. When one considers the alternatives online and the actual quality of what is being offered by the Times itself it is hard to see how easily internet users would part with even a tiny sum to fall in line with the Times new premium policy.

The Times also forgets one major detail. The “breaking news” bit that is free is a common currency that can be found elsewhere. If anything the Times should have been using its additional “exclusive” content to lure more readers while boosting its advantage through the sale of advertising. The dastardly combination of addicted commentators and free riders should have meant that the Times was steadily building a huge audience – one that should be translated to advertising revenue. What the Times seems to be preferring to do is to slay the goose – sure you get rid of the “scum” (and avoid having to employ a comments censor) but you are risking to get rid of the whole base upon which your online business should have been built.

Much of what is happening can be attributed to a very Maltese way of thinking about knowledge and power when it comes to the media. The traditional media houses still think very much in term of controlling the way information comes out and is presented. From the Times to MaltaToday to the Malta Independent it is the same story that only varies very slightly. The Times has gone one step ahead – charging for what it deems to be premium news. The mentality is sadly very much in the style of Rediffusion  seventy-seven years back – the notion of one-way traffic of information controlled at source that is deemed by the provider to be the “best possible wireless entertainment”. We beg to differ.

Come to think of it there’s a lesson that Times readers could learn from a great wall builder. When the Chinese built their Great Wall most thought that it was meant to keep invaders out. In actual fact its main purpose was to keep the Chinese in.

* It has been pointed out to me by experts in the field that the term “firewall” is not an accurate description of the Times’ premium scheme. The actual name is a paywall. I wrote the article labouring under the illusion that a paywall is a type of firewall that requires payment to be overridden – much like the troll-ridden toll bridges of lore. In this case it turns out that payment for access to a troll-ridden site means that it is a paywall. Apologies for the confusion.

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Mediawatch

Guernica revisited

The other day I was browsing the news on my phone when I came across an item about a series of bombings around Irak and Afghanistan. I remember thinking how this kind of news has become so frequent as to become almost unnoticeable. My first idea of news is in the early eighties when the bulletins would be dotted with IRA bombings, kidnappings and hijacks. Post 9/11 terrorism had not come into being yet and you still had the tangible feeling of people losing their lives – of humans engaged in suffering and misery inflicted upon them by lesser beings – but by humans nonetheless. The Habibiya bombings were just a flicker on the news ticker. By the time the full information was gathered thirty-one people had lost their lives in a series of bombings in the Middle East and many more were injured.

Sports bulletins were not stopped, nation’s leaders were not rushing to express their condolences with the victims of these attacks or solidarity with a nation that was once again pregnant with mourning relatives. Most of all, the item barely made it to the top of news bulletins or front pages across the world.

Then came Boston.

Comparisons are odious and this is not intended to compare for there is no comparison that holds ground with the suffering and misery inflicted by loss of life or grievous injury. An injured human is an injured human – whether he is running a marathon, watching a marathon, on a boat in the middle of the Mediterranean or shopping in a market near Tikrit. A dead human is a dead human – whatever the cause of death may be and no matter if the death was caused in the name of some ‘greater cause’ or due to mere madness.

But the Boston marathon lies in the heart of a United States that still tries to be a melting pot of sorts. People from all over the world aggregated to the town of freedom and tea parties to celebrate life in a sporting fashion. Some twisted minds who deserve the worst of Dante’s circles in hell planned and plotted for bombs to explode at the moment when the largest number of runners are crossing the line. It’s ugly. It’s vile. And the world yelled “Enough” in angry indignation. Which is all good for the par. Every one of these dead runners or spectators (three at the moment of typing) and every one of the persons who had to have their limb amputated, must be mourned and showered with all the compassion and help they may need.

They must be helped because we are human and because we like to believe that our kind is capable of thinking as a society that cares. In equal measure must the perpetrators be found and eradicated. Yes. Eradicated.

But Boston also showed the two-faced approach to emotions. Almost daily the world observes tragedies such as what happened in that fair American city. Yet while Boston will enjoy more than its fair share of attention, events such as the bombings in Irak get relegated to second, third or even nth place. This is not a competition mind you, nobody would vie for top billing on the tragedy headlines. It does say much about our perception of the world. For much as I would like to give the news conglomerates and journalists (as well as their customers and clients – the reader, viewer and listener) the benefit of the doubt you do get a nagging feeling that some lives are more important than others.

If not more important, then more relevant to others. The onlooker at a marathon is not as distant as the “oriental” at a souk who gets blown to smithereens while buying her vegetables for the daily pot. The message that this sends out is that these people are “different”. That very message of difference that we had all nixed when Huntington came around with his clash of civilisations business. It could not happen we thought. We are all human and humans and their rights are universal.

The irony of the Boston attacks was that they occurred during a marathon. The concept of a marathon began after the battle of Marathon in 490 BC after the united city states on the peninsula beat the invading Persians at Marathon (with Pheidippides running the distance to Athens to announce victory). The battle itself would have been seen as a clash between two great civilisations – the lords of the earth versus an association of free states. The temptation to succumb to this kind of rhetoric might be great but in the end it is humankind that suffers – not democracies or authoritarian regimes – but the man in the street… jogging, shopping or simply minding his own business.

Every so often we get a new version of Guernica painted directly onto the canvas of our collective memories. We are reminded once again of the pain and suffering that a human can and will inflict on another human. We are reminded of the ugliness of our nature and of the fine line that divides this exalted race of ours from animal-like behaviour and of what a struggle it is to be and remain “civilised”.

May their souls rest in peace and may the victims of humankind everywhere be vindicated by what will hopefully be an increased awareness about ourselves and who we really are.

 

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Mediawatch

The United Kingdom’s Fourth Estate

The UK Parliament is under huge pressure (including a looming deadline) to enact new measures that would regulate the behaviour of newspapers. The highly controversial measures have seen an increase in cross-party negotiations as the Lib-Dems (Tory partner in government) seem to prefer an alignment with Miliband’s Labour on this one. Labour, on its own part is not too keen to be seen working comfortably with Clegg’s party for the simple reason that it would prefer to send out the image of a party that could govern alone.

It is not just our “fledgling” 50 year old parliamentary democracy that has trouble working out the difference between legislative representation and governance. Coalitions and possible difficulties they carry have nothing to do with the real problem here. Only the short-sighted would pin the trouble on the existence of the coalition. Cameron, in fact, is having to also deal with 20 rebel MPs (at least) and that surely proves that the controversial subject is one of those that causes rifts and alliances beyond the lines of government vs opposition in any case.

What is more interesting  in fact is the nature of the ongoing debate – whether or not the press should be controlled by statute or by charter. The repercussions of statutory control are enormous since the chances that MPs become the ultimate guardians of the free press would be higher in such a case. The problem of such a scenario is that this would put serious limits on the freedom of the press itself – the risks of the abuse of the power by MPs would end up creating an unnecessary muzzle of imaginary censorship.

A Royal Charter setting up an independent body could be the most amenable solution in the circumstances. It would ensure that one of the entities that must be scrutinised by the press does not suddenly have control over their freedom of expression. By way of example, the British Broadcasting Corporation was set up by Royal Charter.

The danger of having parliamentary control over the press can never be sufficiently highlighted. Dealing with this in a Westminster-style parliamentary democracy is all the more important – and the danger of having a relativist idea of fairness dominate true principles of justice and rights is a clear and present danger. Not just on the embankment in London.

There can be absolutely no doubt that this rise to commercial greatness was partly made possible by those freedoms won in the 18th century – an independent judiciary; habeas corpus; freedom of assembly; the right of voters to choose their representatives; and above all the freedom of the press to speak truth to power: to ridicule, to satirise – even to vilify – and to expose wrongdoing. – Boris Johnson on the rise to greatness of London.

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Campaign 2013 Mediawatch

Il-punt (Ħadd ieħor)

U il-baġit? Il-baġit ġa lest. Il-gvernijiet ewropej ftehmu fl-aħħar. Għandna baġit ewropew. Ovvjament f’żokrot id-dinja jgħodd biss il-biljun u ftit li twiegħdu lil Malta. Mhux li ta min jissottovaluta dan il-fatt. Anzi xieraq ngħidu li l-gvern preżenti ma setgħax jagħlaq ħidmietu b’akkiwst isbaħ u ikbar. La l-Laburisti ma jistgħu ixejnuh għax vera huwa akkwist enormi u wisq inqas ma għandhom in-nazzjonalisti jeqirdu li “issa se jgawdihom Muscat” għax jew mar jinnegozja fi Brussel għal Malta jew le (Gonzi).

Imma oltre in-numru fantaxjentifiku (għax immens) ta’ ewri li se jaslu b’xi mod jew ieħor għal tgawdija (sakemm ma jonfquhomx fuq proġetti imbażwra li jservu biss biex jinfurraw bwiet min ma ħaqqux – u f’dak il-każ nafu min igawdi), oltre dan kollu hemm l-imaġni ukoll ta’ Ewropa mhix daqstant magħquda li qed taqdef f’dgħajsa imbenġla fl-ibħra ta’ kriżi dejjiem li għad ma trdix taf tbatti. Din ir-realta tmur oltre il-kwalunkwiżmi elettorali frott ta’ diskors forzatament partiġġjan.

L-Ewropa qed tipprova tqum fuq saqajha. Hi ukoll (u hi tfisser aħna tafux) għandha programmi u proġetti – tixtieq tinvesti iktar f’impjiegi għax jekk forsi ma tafux il-qgħad u l-prekarju fl-Ewropa huwa ħafna ħafna agħar minn dak li taraw Malta. Tixtieq tagħti nifs ġdid lill-ekonomija. Tixtieq tħajjar iktar investiment. Tixtieq ħafna l-Ewropa. Imma għaddejja minn żmien fejn kullħadd jiġbed għal djul għajnu l-Ewropa ukoll. Hemm min qed jaħsibha jibqax ġewwa. Hemm min jixtieq jibqa ġewwa imma li jrid li tikkalma ftit mir-regoli sakemm jieħu nifs. Hemm min fehem li r-regoli huma bosta li issa jagħtuna drittijiet ġodda u li mingħajr dawn ir-regoli ma tibnix Ewropa.

It-tensjoni hija kbira. Is-sens ta’ camaraderie ilu li intefa’. F’dan id-dawl biss, il-ftehm li intlaħaq il-bieraħ huwa suċċess enormi għall-ikbar għaqda fil-kontinent il-qadim. Jaf, minkejja kollox jagħti tama. Jaf li – sakemm l-Ewropa issib l-illuminazzjoni ta’ mexxejja b’rieda vera li jagħtu missjoni dejjiema lill-proġett, sakemm in-nazzjonaliżmi tal-paniku u l-firda tal-biżgħa jittaffew – jaf li dan il-ftehim jagħti dik l-ispinta neċessarja biex il-proġett jibqa jaħdem minkejja kollox.

Raġuni li tiżboq il-biljun u mitejn miljun raġuni li għandna għal xiex nifirħu bihom bħalissa.

Għax l-Ewropa, issa iktar minn qatt qabel, tagħna lkoll.


 

Categories
Campaign 2013 Mediawatch

They promise the earth

The short man from Milan is back. His political campaign has begun (as always) on the football field with the return of the prodigal son Mario Balotelli to the Milanese fold (sponda rossonera). Berlusconi hit the headlines in Italy today with his promises of major tax cuts and institutional reforms. It should all sound familiar by now – in Italy it is the restitution of an alphabet soup of taxes from the IRAP to the IMU – and of course given the lack of popularity of politicians Silvio is also banking on promises such as halving the size of parliament and the removal of public financing of parties.

His opponents (and former allies) did not waste time in replying. There’s a huge familiarity in that too: Berlusconi promises much but never delivers is the most prominent of them all. Even Casini who had shacked up with Berlusconi for quite some time pointed an accusing finger at Berlusconi’s track record. The Cavaliere is knee dip in the populistic approach and don’t forget he is the man who reinvented political marketing in Italy. His is also an attack on the caretaker Monti government. Guess what? He claims that Monti betrayed the people and did not fulfil its duties of democratic representation.

Outspoken Nichi Vendola best described Berlusoni’s latest sortie: “Sembra Wanna Marchi” – comparing the ex-premier to a notorious fraudster who had built an empire selling rubbish on the tv. In Malta we had Mike Briguglio describing the local scene as “An electoral supermarket”… not too far off the Wanna Marchi mark.

Berlusconi built his empire starting off from the property business. In his case HE is the contractor. Will his promises be enough to win the trust of enough voters? Will the fish bite?

Wanna Marchi was condemned for 9 years and 4 months in prison – her biggest mistake was not becoming a politician. With the kind of talents that she had you never know how far she could have got.