Blathnaid Healy’s Blog

And you can see it here.

As I said, thoughts on this will follow later.

From Monday The Irish Times’ website will be free to access, according to an article on page three of today’s newspaper written by the Editor Geraldine Kennedy.

The site is moving to irishtimes.com and ireland.com will become a separate, commercial site.

The new site will offer ‘richer content in the form of pictures, graphics, audio and video’. The article also talks about developing many multimedia features.

People who are paid-up subscribers to the site will get a full refund, or as Ms Kennedy notes could instead become members of the new Irish Times Crossword Club. In fact they can try out the new club before making a decision. Although with this economic downturn upon us I can imagine what most will do…cash is king after all!

You can read the story online here, I’d have put it up earlier but couldn’t find it free-to-view at first.

Going to digest this story a little this morning and write more on what they plan for their new website later on.

Publishing its new pricing structure this week, the Associated Press has been criticised by some of its newspaper members, David Kaplan writes over on paidContent.org.

Having concluded a drawn-out battle between the AP and member papers over next year’s change in fee structure, a handful of newspapers are expressing betrayal at the AP’s increased interest in cultivating Yahoo and Google —for an entity that was started 162 years ago by a band of New York newspapers—some members are acting like they’ve suddenly been disowned by the family patriarch.

Newspapers used to make up half of the AP’s members, but now they’re at 27% and by next year will drop 2% to a quarter.

The question is how do they keep the old guard happy while pushing ahead with online, which they need to do to survive?

I’ll have to ponder that one over the weekend!

Here’s the beta version of the website

The site offers users a ’story tracker’ and ‘chose your own news’ function!

It is already an improvement from the current site, but the heavy use of black, red and yellow is still too brash.

I think in general news website design is a bit more difficult for broadcasters. After all website design isn’t exactly a million miles ways away from newspaper design. But I do think broadcasters are in a better position when it comes to content.

The BBC has announced plans today to spend £68m on its network of local video news websites. The corporation already has a network of local news sites, but the new proposal would allow for an expansion to 65 websites and a broader range of content. The news sites would provide up to ten video stories each day.

More on this from paidContent.org

However there may be a hiccup or two along the way. According to telegraph.co.uk Britain’s telecoms regulator Ofcom will be looking over the plan after complaints from local newspapers that licence-fee payers’ money would be used to duplicate a service already provided by local newspapers.

Here’s what the Guardian printed on the front page of today’s newspaper about Dunnes Stores:

The Guardian and Observer are no longer available for sale in Dunnes Stores following a dispute over commercial terms. Dunnes Store are refusing to stock both titles after Guardian News & Media rejected demands for new commercial terms over and above those agreed with all other retailers in Ireland. The Guardian and Observer will continue to be available at all other outlets.

From paidContent.org

Thomson Reuters is planning on gaining market share away from Bloomberg. Their plan is to beat them on price…good plan. Considering how expensive a Bloomberg terminal is, this seems pretty sensible and with an economic downturn on our hands a pretty good time to go for it!

This is the first newspaper that the Tribune Co, with Sam Zell at the helm, has overhauled. Read the WSJ’s review of it here

I have only had a look at the front page of today’s paper on the website (because that’s all it provides), can’t say I am blown away by it though.

Initial thoughts:

-The masthead is way too small
-It seems too graphic-heavy (certainly for a front page)
-Too busy, and over complicated (hoping it settles down)
-Immediately looks like it’s all style and no substance

I can’t really say much else because I haven’t seen the whole edition.

One small thing though, I can’t quite understand why the paper’s designer has chosen to make the lead story on mortgage misery jump mid sentence after a mere 3.5 paragraphs! Readers hate jumps and rarely go on to read the rest of the story, so maybe they should focus on getting more of the main story on the page and less shiny info graphics, or perhaps provide a story summery, with the full version inside.

Will check out the full edition when I get my hands on it, but it does give us an idea where the Tribune Co’s newspapers are heading.

Damien Mulley shares some of thoughts on the current state of play and what’s ahead here

There are some good graphs, which provide a quick snapshot even if it is a bit of a rough guide to where things are at.

Earlier this month, the Associated Press sent a letter to the Drudge Retort blog asking them to remove quotations. Specifically it asked the blog to remove seven sections which contained quotations ranging from 39 to 79 words in length. The news agency is now considering its position on blogs.

NYT’s article

paidContent.org’s update

Jeff Jarvis’ take on what the future holds for the AP here 

Have a look at Alexander Wolfe’s take on it also

Michael Arrington has been out and about on this over at TechCrunch

The stories over the weekend were bad enough – the Associated Press, with a long history of suing over quotations from their articles, went after Drudge Retort for having the audacity to link to their stories along with short quotations via reader submissions. Drudge Retort is doing nothing different than what Digg, TechMeme, Mixx and dozens of other sites do, and frankly the fact that they are being linked to should be considered a favor.

Some of this is fair enough, but saying that the AP should consider being linked to by blogs a favour…he can’t actually be serious!