The world-wide spread of journalism convergence

Convergence is a likely destination for news media in many parts of the world, though the duration of the journey will vary from country to country. This paper defines convergence as well as it is possible to do so, traces its spread around the world, and describes some of the most common business models. It looks at the forces driving convergence, and factors common to the most successful converged operations. The paper also describes the uncertain scenario in Australia now the Howard government has announced plans to change media ownership laws. It ends with discussion about changes in curricula at journalism programs in the United States in the light of the spread of convergence.<br /

The Big Problem of Large Bills: The Bank of Amsterdam and the Origins of Central Banking

Central banking, commodity money, debasement

The big problem of large bills: the Bank of Amsterdam and the origins of central banking

This paper outlines a model of the first true central bank, the Bank of Amsterdam, founded in 1609. Employing a variant of the Freeman (1996) model of money and payments, we first analyze the problematic monetary situation in the Netherlands prior to the founding of the Bank. We then use the model to describe how the Bank could remedy this situation by creating a stable medium for the settlement of commercial obligations.

How Amsterdam got fiat money

We investigate a fiat money system introduced by the Bank of Amsterdam in 1683. Using data from the Amsterdam Municipal Archives, we partially reconstruct changes in the bank's balance sheet from 1666 through 1702. Our calculations show that the Bank of Amsterdam, founded in 1609, was engaged in two archetypal central bank activities—lending and open market operations—both before and after its adoption of a fiat standard. After 1683, the bank was able to conduct more regular and aggressive policy interventions, from a virtually nonexistent capital base. The bank's successful experimentation with a fiat standard foreshadows later developments in the history of central banking.

An economic explanation of the early Bank of Amsterdam, debasement, bills of exchange, and the emergence of the first central bank

The Bank of Amsterdam, founded in 1609, was the first public bank to offer accounts not directly convertible to coin. As such, it can be described as the first true central bank. The debut of central bank money did not result from any conscious policy decision, however, but instead arose almost by accident, in response to the chaotic monetary conditions during the early years of the Dutch Republic. This paper examines the history of this momentous development from the perspective of modern monetary theory.

Where is the business model for citizen journalism?

Citizen journalism is not stealing much of the audience from traditional journalism. To date, it has failed to find a viable business model in the sense that it does not pay for itself. Yet it threatens traditional journalism because it has the potential to fragment audiences. That means that traditional journalism is going to have to revise its values and practices. The most likely scenario is a coming together of professional journalism and user-generated content and comment. Even so, the same dilemma confronts all forms of journalism: how to access financial support for &quot;quality &quot;.<br /

Changing journalism for the likely present

Media convergence and newsroom integration have become industry buzzwords as the ideas spread through newsrooms around the world. In November 2007 Fairfax Media in Australia introduced the newsroom of the future model, as its flagship newspapers moved into a purpose-built newsroom in Sydney. News Ltd, the country&rsquo;s next biggest media group, is also embracing multi-media forms of reporting. What are the implications of this development for journalism? This paper examines changes in the practice of journalism in Australia and around the world. It attempts to answer the question: How does the practice of journalism need to change to prepare not for the future, but for the likely present.Early in November 2007 The Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Financial Review and the Sun-Herald moved into a new building dubbed the &lsquo;newsroom of the future&rsquo; at One Darling Island Road in Sydney&rsquo;s Darling Harbour precinct. Phil McLean, at the time Fairfax Media&rsquo;s group executive editor and the man in charge of the move, said three quarters of the entire process involved getting people to &lsquo;think differently&rsquo; &ndash; that is, to modify their mindset so they could work with multi-media.The new newsroom symbolised the culmination of a series of major changes at Fairfax. In August 2006 the traditional newspaper company, John Fairfax Ltd, changed its name to Fairfax Media to reflect its multi-platform future. In March 2007 Fairfax launched Australia&rsquo;s first online-only daily publication in Queensland, brisbanetimes.com.au. In May 2007 Fairfax completed its merger with Rural Press to become the biggest media company in Australasia, with annual revenues of about $2.5 billion and market capitalisation of about$7 billion. Two months later Fairfax got even bigger when it acquired at least one radio station in all Australian capital cities plus television studios when it bought Southern Cross Broadcasting. Fairfax is expected to bid for one of the two digital television licences made available by the changes to media ownership laws promulgated in May 2007.The aim in moving Fairfax from a print to a multi-platform company was to reach as large an audience as possible. &lsquo;We have a total readership in print of over 4 million per day and online of over 5 million per month&rsquo;, CEO David Kirk said at the time of the Rural Press merger. &lsquo;Our brand of quality, independent, balanced journalism will serve and support more communities than ever&rsquo; (Kirk 2007). A few months earlier chairman Ron Walker had written in the company&rsquo;s annual report: &lsquo;Fairfax is evolving into a truly digital media company&rsquo; (2006: 2). Within five years Fairfax would be a significantly bigger Internet company that distributed its content &lsquo;over more media&rsquo;, Kirk wrote in the same report (2006: 5).Kirk developed a three-pronged strategy. The first part of the strategy involved the need to &lsquo;defend and grow our newspaper publishing businesses&rsquo; &ndash; that is, to consolidate and develop the existing newspapers, whose circulations were holding steady during the week and improving on Saturdays. The second part involved plans to &lsquo;accelerate the revenue and earnings of our digital business&rsquo;. The third part was &lsquo;to build a digital media company for the twenty-first century&rsquo; (Fairfax annual report 2006: 3). In June 2007 Kirk appointed Tim Mannes project leader for the Fairfax Media-Rural Press integration. &lsquo;The purpose of the integration work is to bring the two companies together and build what is truly Australasia&rsquo;s leading media company&rsquo;, Mannes wrote in a memo to all staff on 7 June 2007. &lsquo;It&rsquo;s vital throughout this process that we maintain continuity and momentum and protect the interests and needs of our customers&rsquo; (2007: 1).The business model appears attractive. Kirk said Fairfax&rsquo;s increased scale and diversity would mean it relied less on classified lineage advertising in major metropolitan newspapers, so it could &lsquo;rapidly develop the best online response to changing media advertising patterns&rsquo;. In the two years to 2006, online&rsquo;s contribution to Fairfax&rsquo;s profits had grown from 1 per cent to 14 per cent with &lsquo;much more to come&rsquo;. Online&rsquo;s share of the national advertising pie had grown from 2 per cent in 2002 to 10 per cent in 2006 (Beverley 2007: 6) and had jumped to 14 per cent in 2007. Analysts said they were happy with Fairfax&rsquo;s move &lsquo;from a newspaper company to a media company&rsquo; and banks such as Credit Suisse upgraded their profits forecast (AFR 19 September 2007: 37).Planning for the move to One Darling Island Road in Sydney&rsquo;s Darling Harbour started early in 2006. Fairfax CEO David Kirk took personal responsibility. He and chairman Ron Walker visited integrated sites around the world, along with a group of editorial bosses. The favoured site was The Daily Telegraph in London, which embraced convergence from June 2006. CEO Murdoch McLennan hired a consultant from Ifra, Dr Dietmar Schantin, director of the Newsplex, to facilitate the move from mono-media to multi-media at The Telegraph. Schantin said change was less about new technologies and more about altering the established mindset. The focus must be on the audience: &lsquo;The whole idea of audience orientation seems to be quite new for some newspapers. In the past it was more &ldquo;we know what is good for our readers and so we distribute the content&rdquo;.&rsquo; Newspapers were a service industry whose service was information and news, he said. Newspapers had to learn to &lsquo;serve&rsquo; its audience with the things the audience wanted to know, on any appropriate platform. &lsquo;We start from the audience. What they want is a very important point. That does not mean that a newspaper should just do what the audience wants. The newspaper [also] needs to stickto its core values&rsquo; (Luft 2006, Coleman 2007: 5).Tom Curley, CEO of the world&rsquo;s biggest newsgathering organisation, Associated Press, gave an important speech to the annual Knight-Bagehot dinner in New York in November 2007. The news industry had come to a fork in the road and needed to take bold steps to secure the audiences and funding to support journalism&rsquo;s essential role for both the economy and democracy, he said. Otherwise the media industry would find itself &lsquo;on an ugly path to obscurity&rsquo;. He similarly emphasised the need to serve the audience: &lsquo;Our focus must be on becoming the very best at filling people&rsquo;s 24-hour news needs. That&rsquo;s a huge shift from the we-know-best, gatekeeper thinking. Sourcing, fact gathering, researching, storytelling, editing [and] packaging aren&rsquo;t going away&rsquo;(Curley 2007).Kirk appointed a &lsquo;newsroom of the future&rsquo; committee from editorial (reporters and photographers), IT and HR. The committee initiated a study tour by editorial executives of leading integrated and converged newsrooms in the UK and the US in April 2007. This became known as the &lsquo;Tier 1&rsquo; course and involved the editor and deputy editor of The Age, and the news editor of The Sydney Morning Herald. The Herald&rsquo;s editor went to the annual conference of the World Association of Newspapers in Cape Town, South Africa in June 2007 because that event featured convergence as one of its main themes (PANPA Bulletin June 2007: 6). The committee designed a two-day awareness course for senior editorial managers, known as &lsquo;Tier 2&rsquo;, that was run in Sydney in July 2007. The &lsquo;Tier 3&rsquo; program for all editorial staff started in August 2007 and this &lsquo;multi-media awareness program&rsquo; continued until the end of the year. A &lsquo;Tier 4&rsquo; course for about 10 per cent of editorial staff (about 40 journalists), where they learned a range of multi-media skills, was scheduled to start after the Beijing Olympics in 2008. The author facilitated most of the Tier 2 and 3 courses.The Tier 3 and 4 courses have profound implications for journalism education in Australia because they represent the start of major changes to how journalists work in Australia. The process reflects evolution in newsroom practices around the world. In November 2006 Ifra, the international media research company, asked newspaper executives worldwide about their priorities for 2007. The survey attracted 240 responses from 43 countries and results appeared in January 2007. Integration, editorial convergence and cross-media strategies attracted the most attention. Four in five executives rated it one of their top priorities, and half made it their main priority in terms of allocating &lsquo;significant&rsquo; funds (Ifra 2007: 34). Ifra repeated the survey in November 2007 and published the results in January 2008. Expanding web strategies was first on the list for 2008, just ahead of editorial convergence strategies, which topped the list in 2007. Improving video and audio content jumped 14 places, and mobile phone strategies leapt 9 places between 2007 and 2008 to be near the top of the list (Ifra 2008: 8).<br /

Youth publications, generation Y and hopes for the future of newspapers

If readership projections are correct, newspapers in the United States will become niche players by 2010. That is, in about half a decade fewer than half of American adults will read a daily newspaper. This will produce major problems in attracting advertising, the lifeblood of the newspaper business. The biggest decline in readership has occurred among Generation Y - people born between 1977 and 1995. They do not read newspapers to the extent their parents did. They get their news elsewhere, mainly online. As part of a process to attract readers, many of America\u27s major publishers launched a series of youth-focused newspapers in the 18 months to March 2004. The aim was to try to get the elusive 18-24-year-old demographic into the habit of daily reading, hoping that over time they would migrate to more traditional outlets. This paper explores the background to these youth-focused publications, describes the main players and issues involved, and provides a case study of a youth-focused pioneer, the Tribune Company s Red Eye, which is published in Chicago.<br /