The royal baby: birth of a modern media phenomenon

The fortunes of the British royal family are inevitably engulfed by a flurry of news reports, gossip columns and speculation, but as the first major royal born in the new media age the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s baby received unprecedented amounts of press coverage from around the world. Yet in the rush to be first to report on the latest developments, some news organisations forgot that sometimes less is more.

Publishers pressured to promise ad viewability after study finds half of ads do not appear

Following a comScore study that found more than half of display ads go unseen, advertisers are demanding promises of viewability that publishers have explicitly been told not to provide.

Native advertising isn’t what you think it is

The media industry has been using the phrases “native advertising,” “sponsored content,” “advertorials,” “branded content” and “content marketing” interchangeably, but there are important distinctions between the terms. It might seem nitpicky to insist that proper definitions are established and followed, but unless the industry can agree on the lingo then it may never be on the same page in important discussions on the ethics of content marketing.

Mediapart update: interview with co-founder François Bonnet

When we first reported that the Cour d’appel de Versailles [Court of Appeal of Versailles] had ordered the removal of all content related to the Bettencourt tapes from Mediapart and Le Point’s websites, it was clear that decision wouldn’t be accepted without a fight. Within the first few hours of the ruling influential players in the French press, including Rue89 and Libération, had released messages of wholehearted support for their fellow journalists and Mediapart’s Edwy Plenel announced his intention to appeal the decision.

Olympique de Marseille falls foul of the French press

Executives at the French football club Olympique de Marseille (OM) have been accused of “making a mockery of the freedom of the press” by the Association of Sports Journalists in France (Union des journalistes de sport en France, UJSF) after publishing a 12-page document outlining new restrictions on press access to official team information.

PolitiFact founder Bill Adair: fact-checking is necessary evolution in journalism

PolitiFact Australia, the first international licensee of U.S-based PolitiFact, Election FactCheck and the soon-to-be-launched fact-checking service at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) are gearing up for Australia’s federal elections later this year. Each service states that its mission is to hold political powers to account by establishing the veracity of declarations made by political figures. It’s the kind of objective you might think would endear such sites to any journalist keen to verify reports from the electoral trail. However, the apparent need for these sites has provoked questions about the state of journalism as a whole. Indeed, in an article for The Guardian journalist Bronwen Clune asks: are fact-checking sites indicative of the media’s failure to fulfil its primary function?

Corriere della Sera joins forces with Vatican to launch World Youth Day site

To mark the 28th World Youth Day gathering (23-28th July) in Rio de Janeiro, Italian national daily Corriere della Sera will team up with the Vatican to produce pope2you-Corriere.it as part of the pontiff’s wider plans for unprecedented new and social media coverage of the event.

Ten top UK dailies publish airline-sponsored interviews

In an unusual twist on sponsored content, on Monday 10 top British newspapers, including the Guardian, The Times and The Telegraph, published Justin Rose interviews, apparently sponsored by British Airways.

Tribune Co. and News Corp: a tale of two very different splits

When the Tribune Company first announced its decision to split into two separate companies, one dedicated to broadcast and the other to publishing, comparisons were inevitably made with a similar move made by News Corporation in June. However, Ken Doctor’s analysis of the ‘newsonomics’ of the Tribune’s spin-off would seem to suggest that two cases may not be so similar after all.

BuzzFeed’s Community section: Publications recruit staff with UGC

BuzzFeed’s Community vertical takes user-generated content to the next level by giving readers the same publishing tools as reporters and even featuring audience-submitted pieces on the front page. The platform reprises the much-discussed question of how to define a journalist, as BuzzFeed uses the section as a recruiting tool.