'Nevermind RBS, what about the media fat cats?'

Following the row over RBS chief executive Stephen Hester's bonus payments, the NUJ is turning its guns on the bumper rewards paid to executives in large media companies.

The NUJ today declared that public outrage directed at RBS should now be aimed at directors of the Trinity Mirror media group, who it says are pocketing more than £1.3 million a year - equivalent to 50 journalist jobs - at a time when editorial staff are facing another pay freeze and 700 job have gone in a year.

The NUJ says there can be no excuses for excessive bonus payments in the media industry and the money should be used to save jobs.

It claims the total directors’ pay and pensions bill for Trinity Mirror last year was £3.9million - £1.3million of which was cash bonuses - and chief executive Sly Bailey's package of pay and pensions was £1.7m, including a cash bonus of £660k.

Chris Morley, NUJ organiser said: “Stephen Hester has shown the way that most decent people in this country expect directors to act in companies that are failing to deliver growth. We need those at the top of companies such as Trinity Mirror, Newsquest and Johnston Press to show a real example and instead of thinking about their own wallets, to think instead about protecting their workforce and the overall business.

“Bonuses need to be earned and where that is in doubt the money should go to keeping up the resources of editorial departments across each business - not a race to the trough where rewards are showered on those who have done little to earn them.”

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With iBooks 2 And iBooks Author, E-Book Publishing For The Masses

E-Books that originate in newsrooms are an increasingly common phenomenon. The Washington Post and POLITICO, to name two publishers, have both gotten into that business lately, and have had success with porting their work to the longform platform.

Apple’s recent introduction of iBooks 2 and iBooks Author brings the ability for much smaller newsrooms with limited budgets to create and sell e-books for iOS devices. And these are not just any e-books: these are interactive e-books that gives you the ability to embed videos, photo galleries, quizzes and interactive images. continued…

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Mail online goes top of the world

The Daily Mail has become the leading online newspaper in the world, according to figures by the tracking service comScore.

The British middle-market tabloid has eclipsed the previous, and long-time, holder of the top spot, the New York Times.

The figures show that Mail online reached 45.3m people last December compared to the NY Times's 44.8m. Trailing behind them are USA Today, the US-based Tribune newspapers and The Guardian.

Mail's online's editor, Martin Clarke, puts it down to ever-improving US traffic, and says: "We just do news that people want to read."

In an interview with the BuzzFeed website, he talks about the paper's middle-class roots and its "Fleet Street heritage" being the source of its "entertaining, engaging way with clear, concise, straightforward copy and lots of good pictures."

BuzzFeed's unidentified author describes the Mail's website as being unlike any other online properties:

"It's dense and almost endlessly scrolling, and feels like several newspapers stacked on top of one another.

It blends original reporting with sharp rewrite, celebrity gossip and hard news, citing but relatively rarely linking out to other publications."

The NY Times isn't too happy about being overtaken. A spokeswoman, Eileen Murphy, disputed the way the comScore figures are compiled.

She says the Mail only passed the Times by including in its total a personal finance site published by the paper.

"It's a roll-up of their properties," she says, arguing that the Times could beat the Mail if it included its Boston Globe properties in its total.

We remain the number one individual newspaper site in the world, she says.

She also distances the two papers by saying the Mail "is not in our competitive set."

As the author rightly points out, online traffic is notorious for the varying slices that can be taken, and there's no clear standard.

So "the ...

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Is Apple's iBooks Author the right eBook creation tool for journalists?

Nope, not even close.

Oh…kay, so is Apple's new iBooks Author at least another option for writers looking to pick up some extra money writing eBooks?

Sure.

Apple released its new eBook production tool last week, coupled with an upgrade to its iBooks app. Apple's trying to get into the textbook market, positioning its iPad as an electronic textbook reader. But to do that, Apple needs an ongoing supply of eBook textbooks. The company's signed deals with some textbook publishers, but it's also offering the iBooks Author tool to encourage more people to create texts, as well.

The iBooks Author app's gotten plenty of attention since its release for its user license restriction that any book created with it can only be sold through the iBookstore. No Amazon. No Barnes and Noble. While iBooks Author can export files as a PDF, it won't generate the ePub file needed for best results in publishing eBooks through those and other online vendors.

That alone disqualifies the iBooks Author app as a serious option for any journalist looking for a single eBook creation solution. Better to continue creating an HTML file using your favorite editor, then running that file through Calibre to generate your ePub, which you can submit to Amazon, BN.com... and the iBookstore. The iBooks Author app also requires that you be running Mac OS Lion - it won't download to Macs running Snow Leopard or earlier versions of the Mac OS. And if you're using Windows? Fuggedaboutit.

But if you do have Lion, creating a book through iBooks Author and selling it exclusively through Apple is better than not making or selling eBooks at all.

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Peecho lands 570,000 euros for its ‘cloud print button’

Peecho, a Dutch startup that enables anyone to sell professionally printed products from their website, mobile or desktop apps, has raised $750,000 in financing from Peak Capital and DHG Holding to boost development and marketing of its embeddable 'cloud print button' service.

Basically, their solution lets anyone sell digital content as physical products (think magazines, photo books, canvas prints and whatnot), by helping its customers hook into a network of professional print production facilities.

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Research: Professionals With iPads Are Deserting Printed Media

Stark new research statistics suggest digital replacement of analogue content is now very high amongst tablet owners.

• Newspapers: Seventy two percent of worldwide professionals polled by IDG Connect say they are buying fewer since owning an iPad.

Asia and the Middle East lead the way with, respectively, 90 percent and 80 percent of respondents saying they now purchase fewer printed papers.

“These markets for physical media are already in decline,” the iPad For Business Survey 2012 concludes. “On this evidence, tablet computing will hasten their demise.

“For advertising- funded media (newspapers and magazines), the challenges are particularly substantial. Readers who can afford iPads tend to be more demographically desirable than those who cannot.”

In North America, 15 percent of respondents said they would consider buying an alternative tablet to iPad next time.

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Is A Facebook Newsroom On The Way?

There has been talk for years about the possibility of Facebook entering the news gathering and distribution game in a big way, given its size and the number of links posted to it every day.

So today’s news that Facebook has purchased a number of Facebook Newsroom-themed URLs shouldn’t come as a surprise.

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The Times Plans Social Sharing Upgrade, Real-Time iPad News

News International’s The Times may shed its social media invisibility cloak by letting subscribers gift paywalled articles to friends.

It is also considering introducing micropayments and may add rolling news to mobile editions.

“Sharing, within the Wapping headquarters, has been a hotly-debated topic,” News International digital product director Nick Bell told me during a one-on-one Q&A session at the Digital Content Monetisation Europe conference in London on Wednesday.

“Over the next six months, you will see us rewarding our paying subscribers with the ability to share amongst their network. That’s going to be an interesting piece for us. If they want to share content with their direct friends, then we’re going to enable that.”

But exact details, like whether recipients of subscribers shared articles will get to read for free, are at an early, exploratory stage.

“We’ve watched with interest the launch of other newspapers’ apps on to Facebook,” Bell said. “We have yet to see where the true value lies there. If you speak to the likes of The Guardian and The Independent, they probably agree on that.

“It’s a huge platform and a great way to get a lot of eyeballs on your content, to increase your brand presence in that space - but, actually, trying to derive direct monetary value from those users is still a challenge. We’re monitoring that space with interest and we’re keen to give more value to our paying customers.”

The Times pioneered paid content’s big second wave when it implemented platform-wide digital fees in summer 2010 and reported 115,000 customers in September. Its online audience and exposure in social media has naturally declined, but the company remains bullish, with a liberal ethos to charging formats going forward.

A social metre?

Bell said the payment method is not set “hard and fast” but told me the publisher won’t let some articles go free under the metre model operated by titles like The Financial Times and New York Times.

“We’ve taken that question back to our customers on a very regular basis - they keep telling us that they don’t want that system,” he said. “They want to have a level playing field - if they are paying for content, then other people are also paying for content.

“Where...

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Penguin's DK: Goodbye Books, Hello 'Flat' Content. Make Once, Use Anywhere

Dorling Kindersley, the division of Penguin that publishes children, travel and reference titles, made a strong case for how it is moving to a “flat” content model, where a printed book is only one of many output options. The digital publisher of DK also said that companies like his need to do this to be ready for the next big thing in books—whatever it is—but as is so often the case for old media industries, the change is “massive” and not easy for everyone in publishing.

Speaking at the Digital Content Monetization conference in London yesterday, Peter Buckley, digital publisher for DK, said that the company’s e-book catalog probably now numbers in the thousands—he does not keep exact count—and that the company is “almost there” in terms of having titles on offer simultaneously as e-books as well as printed books.

For a company focusing on reference books, the rise of apps has been a big deal for DK. E-reading devices like the basic Kindle, with its high emphasis on providing a good text experience, were limited as a platform for books that have more graphics than text, and with their emphasis on information and discovery, beg interactivity.

However, apps have a drawback, too: they are too expensive to produce. Buckley said that now the tide is shifting for companies like his to move away from apps to e-books.

E-books, he said, are taking on more and more functionality, and they, rather than apps, have become the go-to place for paying customers looking for publishers’ works.

“It’s not as sophisticated as an app to publish something in, for example, the iBookstore, but the technology will either catch up with e-books or something else will come along,” he said. “E-books are a lot cheaper and easier to produce. And they sell so well. [Platforms like the] Amazon/Kindle and Apple’s iBookstore are so solid for us, and people are used to paying for that content up front.”

But he also added that DK will not leave the app space altogether. It will continue to create apps for certain categories of their catalog such as travel—DK oversees the Rough Guide brand—where these benefit more from their ability to be updated and interface with web-based content.

Flat content. That assumption that “something else will come along” is also driving what Buckley calls the...

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