The second Newsroom Barometer results, a survey of 700 newspaper editors senior news executives from 120 countries, was released this week. It makes for interesting reading.

Among the main results this year:

- 86% believe integrated print and online newsrooms will become the norm, and 83% believe journalists will be expected to be able to produce content for all media within five years.

- Two-thirds believe some editorial functions will be outsourced, despite frequent newsroom opposition to the practice.

- A plurality - 44% - believe on-line will be the most common platform for reading news in the future, compared with 41% last year. Thirty-one cited print (down from 35% last year), 12% mobile and 7% e-paper. The rest were unsure.

- 35% said training journalists in new media was the number one priority for investing in editorial quality. Recruiting more journalists was cited by 31%, up from 22% last year.

- A majority of editors - 56%- believe news in the future will be free, up from 48% from last year’s survey. Only one-third believe the news will remain paid for, while 11% were unsure.

- Two-thirds of respondents believe the importance of opinion and analysis pages will increase.

- A majority - 58% - think the decline in young readership is the biggest threat for the future of newspapers.

It gives me an excuse to mention a quote recently included in this blog post and which could be plastered on every wall, in every newspaper on the planet:

In case some of the mainstream media haven’t got this yet - “THE WEB DOES NOT OWE YOU A LIVING”.

It doesn’t care that you have been doing this for years, you have to earn your eyeballs like everyone else.

From Tory MEP Daniel Hannan’s blog in The Telegraph comes a post, “The Borders of the Anglosphere“:

The Anglosphere, for anyone who still doesn’t know, is a modern name for the community of free, democratic, English-speaking nations. Where the EU is based on state-to-state accords, the Anglosphere is chiefly formed of organic links between businesses, independent institutions and citizens. The characteristics of the Anglosphere are parliamentary government, free elections, an independent judiciary, a limited state and the common law.

So, who qualifies? While the borders of Europe are endlessly disputed, there is far less debate about which countries are in the Anglosphere. The US and Canada, obviously, Britain and Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. But then who? Some Commonwealth states qualify on almost all the criteria. Singapore isn’t exactly multi-party, and is a tad authoritarian, but it is clearly a country based on the rule of law and the separation of powers. Sri Lanka gets in, I’d have thought, plus the more stable Carribbean states. Gibraltar, of course, and the Falkland Islands. But all these are tiddlers. Is the Anglosphere white man’s club, with a couple of hangers-on?

The answer depends on whether we include India. If we do, whites and Christians are a small minority of the Anglosphere population. So, do we?

Yes.

It continues here.

Kristine Lowe asks do journalists make good bloggers?

Una on Hot Press: Giving a Voice to Idiots. Ouch, ouch and treble ouch.

Jazz Biscuit. Guaranteed to be good.

The paper’s science page has a piece on the Large Hadron Collider and how it might create a black hole, but some wonder if it might bring time travellers to us.

Bubble wrap that you can pop forever.

It’s been an enjoyable corner of the web for the few months it’s been around, but it appears that The Chancer is no more. It has left a note.

That’s right, kids, The Chancer is taking a long-overdue break from all this interweb nonsense. We need to take a long walk. Explore our options. Stop and smell the roses. Wake up and inhale the coffee. Go read a good book. Watch a sunset. Do our taxes. Have a big stretch. Dust those mental cobwebs. And finally cop on to oneself. We suggest you do likewise. Please stay in touch. It’s been real. Really. Later…

Like Blogorrah, it always had ambitions to turn blogging into a business, and the question could be asked if that proved to be too lofty a target.

Whatever the reason, best of luck to all involved (especially Derek).

If you decide to have a “Lost” blogger - you know, someone who can marvel over and tease out the myriad clues and red herrings and revelations - then it’s probably not great to ask someone who opens by admitting:

As this week’s ‘island’ blogger I first of all have to admit that I’m not the biggest ‘Lost’ buff in the world.

19-year-old, middle-class, Skins-scriptwriting Max Gogarty decides to head to India for a bit of gap fun. He blogs about it on the Guardian website. The readers give him a hammering, while unearthing the fact that he appears to be the son of another Guardian contributor. Much hilarity ensues, for everyone but Max and his dad. Nathan Barley gets mentioned a lot. And the editor, who commissioned the piece thinking it would be a regular bit of whimsy that would connect with the backpacking masses, has a bad day at the office.

A sample comment:

Here’s an idea, Max.

Instead of setting off on yet another inane, identikit trip around Asia before you take up your place at Oxbridge (or wherever), why don’t you leave your family’s Highgate mansion FOR GOOD, cut yourself off from your father’s allowance, move into a council estate in Salford, STAY THERE, and then consider writing a blog about your experiences.

Why does our society only grant a voice to those with nothing to say?

P.S. Are you Paul Gogarty’s son?

(as spotted on Dan’s blog)

Bloggers have been basking in the glory of the Irish Blog Awards long-lists over the last couple of days. Thanks to those who nominated me in some of those categories, it is very much appreciated (although I am somewhat upset at being overlooked in the Best Crafts Blog category).

However, the thread from a couple of days ago (on the nastiness that might show up in comments) has now thrown up a couple of dissenting voices.

First a comment from Roisin:

Am newish to visiting blogs and it seems like some of them an outlet for people who are being bullied and who finally have a place to express their anger - and their targets of the anger are mostly a combination women/fat/old. Even the most reasonable comment will get you blasted by some of the most respected bloggers in the most foul language. Then they all get together and nominate each other for blog awards - sometimes I wonder if the mainstream media have any idea at all of what some of these blogs are like. Worse than the hateful comments are the bloggers who manipulate the replies, leaving out those with whom they don’t agree.

Then one from AE Mouse:

Interesting point, Roisin.

The bloggers, while they like to think of themselves as cutting edge and anarchic, seem to have their own cosy community thing going on.

When did you ever hear one Irish blogger criticise another?

It doesn’t really happen, or not so I have noticed.

What’s with the blogger love-in? Would one blogger ever dare to diss another interweb colleague? Is this reticence peculiar to the Irish blogworld?

Anybody know?

Among the comments to come out of the recent discussion about blogs was this from Una:

Most of the time, I don’t think the bloggers are the ones being ‘ugly’, it’s generally those who comment on blogs who act the maggot.

It’s been enough of a problem for her that she has had to publicly lay down some ground rules. You would have thought it obvious that “Homophobic, sexist or racist comments will not be tolerated and will be deleted”, but it was clearly happening enough that it needed to be said.

More recently, journalist and blogger Sarah Carey mentioned a letter she received, which went:

“Dear Bitch, Why don’t you fuck off permanently to New York? You anti-Irish Bitch, Paddy”

She laughed it off. However, in the seven years I’ve been writing for The Irish Times I’ve had mail that’s called me anti-Northern, blasphemous, idiotic and cruel on Michael Jackson, but I’ve never had anything that fixated on my gender.

Nor would I expect it. But it would appear that being hetero and male shields a person from the nastier elements lurking out there. I’m curious to know if female bloggers do attract particular nastiness; how much the anonymity allowed by comments threads gives people licence to be homophobic, racist or sexist; and whether it’s rare - or depressingly common.

There can be a mistaken view that because a person is given space in a newspaper to air their opinion, then they automatically attain some authority. Appearing under the banner of a national newspaper doesn’t make anyone a better writer, nor does it make them more authoratitive. It does give them an important platform, of course. I don’t pretend that this blog would have the kind of traffic it does if it weren’t on Ireland.com. But authority still has to be earned.

It’s why successful blogs deserve a great deal of credit. Most have had to earn that traffic and authority through their own hard work. They’ve had to do it in a crowded market, and without being able to hide behind good editors and sub-editors (I know this because I would long ago have sunk without them). It doesn’t mean that all blogs - even successful ones - are good, nor that there isn’t a debate to be had about their value, attitude, what attracts attention and what doesn’t. But newspaper opinion writers have an entire structure on which to lean, and despite that some are very bad indeed.

Yes, blogs are unfiltered, but what value is a filtering system when it is aimed only at bringing in opinion writers who agree with the editorial line of a newspaper? Ultimately a blogger’s opinion is as legitimate as any opinion writer’s. It might be badly written. It might be poorly thought-out and woefully explained. It can be hysterical or nonsensical. But so can the opinion columns in our national newspapers.

Frankly, I’m not sure how seriously we should be taking John Waters’ comments on blogs - he was quite clearly being mischevious the first time around - but he has repeated them a couple of times on radio and in print since. Also, despite the fact that it’s been a talking point online over the past week, I’m always reluctant to open up this blog to any wider discussion on a colleague.

Well, it’s getting harder to avoid because tomorrow morning at 8.30am, on Newstalk’s Breakfast Show, he’ll face off against Fergal Crehan from Tuppenceworth, so hopefully it’ll give the debate a bit more depth.

Although, given how hard it is to avoid using the language of confrontation when even discussing the discussion then it may be too pugilistic for anybody’s good.

Not mine, although we all make mishtakes. Not the newspaper’s, although we do have the odd glitch. But the errors of the world’s media, as compiled into one compelling (and for hacks, very scary) list by the excellent Regret The Error. Which itself has four corrections appended to the list of hilarious corrections.* Oh, the irony.

It’s Correction of the Year comes from the Independent (UK version):

Following the portrait of Tony and Cherie Blair published on 21 April in the Independent Saturday magazine, Ms Blair’s representatives have told us that she was friendly with but never had a relationship with Carole Caplin of the type suggested in the article. They want to make it clear, which we are happy to do, that Ms Blair “has never shared a shower with Ms Caplin, was not introduced to spirit guides or primal wrestling by Ms Caplin (or anyone else), and did not have her diary masterminded by Ms Caplin.”

(more…)

- Conor Pope’s moment of fame has arrived. He’s been “done” on Gift Grub.

- China’s moon probe a fake? No, just touched up

- Charlie Brooker’s column this week was, amongst other things, on what happens when you write nasty things about someone, and then bump into them on the street

- Christian movie site MovieGuide.org reviews the Dylan biopic I’m Not There: “Strong mixed pagan worldview with strong humanist, politically correct elements…”

- Shouldn’t we read more sci-fi?

- That British canoeist who “disappeared” for six years only to emerge in dubious circumstances this week, could have done with help of this site: How To Disappear Completely And Never Be Found.

A couple of days ago I mentioned Megabus, which led to me getting tagged by a blogging Megabus driver, which in turn led me to finding the Bloodbus blog which promises:

I am a bus driver in Glasgow, Scotland. When my passengers misbehave, I blog about it!

It turns out that there’s a small but significant subculture of bus driver bloggers, and Bloodbus - blogging about the late night routes - is at the Travis Bickle end of things. (more…)