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In the age when all we seem to read and write about is the imminent demise of the newspaper, this mornings NY Times reports on a heart-warming tale from France:

Mon Quotien (My Daily)

When Elisa Cammarota gets home from school, she tosses off her knapsack and reads her newspaper from front to back. Anthony Azoulay does, too, though he focuses on articles about soccer and large photo spreads. Both Elisa and Anthony are 10 years old and entering the fifth grade in the fall. And both are regular subscribers to one of the most popular daily newspapers in France.

On a recent morning, the two children sat at a large rectangular table with several of the newspaper’s editors. The paper, Mon Quotidien, or My Daily, invites several of its readers twice weekly to help edit the paper, except for the front page, choosing stories that will be featured in its seven other pages.

The national editor, Caroline Hallé, was proposing an article about a school in Britain that had bought hawks and falcons to drive off a plague of seagulls that were dirtying the premises.

Alternatively, she proposed news of how divers had recently found bottles of French Champagne that King Louis XVI had sent to the czar of Russia, but had gone down when the ship transporting them sank in the Baltic Sea. “How did Louis XVI end?” asked Olivier Gasselin, 40, the paper’s deputy editor. “Guillotine,” Elisa shot back, without raising her eyes from the notes she was making.

“We propose, they choose,” said Ms. Hallé, 34, who joined the paper nine years ago after working at an Internet news site.

In an age when many children are addicted to computers, iPods and iPads — and when newspapers are feeling the pressure — Mon Quotidien appears to be an anomaly, all the more so in the journalistic climate of France.

Despite great journalistic names like Le Monde and Le Figaro, the French read ever fewer newspapers. On a per capita basis, only about half as many papers are sold here as in Germany or Britain, and readership is especially low among the young. Only 10 percent of 15- to 24-year-olds read a paid-for newspaper in 2007, the last time the government took a survey, down from 20 percent a decade earlier.

In fact, so concerned was the French government with the decline in newspaper readership that it detailed plans last year for a program called Mon Journal Offert, or My Complimentary Paper, to offer 18- to 24-year-olds a free yearlong subscription to a newspaper of their choice. Though the program quickly reached the 200,000-reader limit the government had foreseen, there was little sign that readers continued their subscriptions once they had to pay.

The papers, which appear every day but Sunday, are lively and colorful mixes of news, photos, cartoons and quizzes. A recent issue of Mon Quotidien featured a front-page photo of Paul the Octopus, which successfully picked the winners of 2010 World Cup soccer games. Another featured a tiny new car at the Berlin auto show that folds up for easy storage in tight spaces.

[news source - NY Times]

The much vaunted paywall experiment by Mr Murdoch seems to have hit the proverbial wall! Newser reports as follows:

“What has putting up a paywall done for the folks at the Times? Driven away most of their readers, predictably. Only 150,000 signed up for “Times+” accounts, and only 15,000 of them actually agreed to pay when their free trial ran out, according to an unconfirmed report on Beehive City, written by former Times media correspondent Dan Sabbagh. “This figure, apparently, is considered disappointing,” he writes.

And with good reason. Based on those figures only 12% of the Times pre-paywall readership was even willing to sign up for the free trial, according to PaidContent, and only 10% of that group actually decided to pay, meaning a slim 1.2% of original readers have agreed to pony up. Even during the free month, visits fell 58%; they were down by 67% once the paywall went up—which might actually be better-than-expected. It also has 12,500 iPad customers, which is a pretty nice number given the relatively low number of iPad owners.

Read more: http://www.newser.com/story/95915/paywall-drives-off-988-of-times-readers.html#ixzz0uChRj6QP

                                                                                                                                                                                                 With this little email popping into the ‘inbox’, a new era in the relationship between Print and the Internet has begun.

“Times Online is closing.  Dear Simon, We would like to inform you that the Times Online website, timesonline.co.uk is closing today. It will be replaced by our two new websites: thetimes.co.uk and thesundaytimes.co.uk. As you are already registered, you can continue to enjoy access – simply visit thetimes.co.uk or thesundaytimes.co.uk and enter your login details in the box on the bottom right to explore. We hope to see you soon. The Times and The Sunday Times”

 

 

From now on, if you wish to access either The Times or The Sunday Times you have to register, log on and there is an inevitability about having to pay GBP1 per day in the not too distant future.

The question we ask: Will the others follow suit? Or is Rupert using one of his flagships as the pioneer and feeling the temperature?

It’s going to be interesting.

                                                                      Log on to Twitter and follow us on ‘hulloprovence’. Follow us!

The Aussie media are experts - and so is the UK - at cutting down the tall poppy. Kevin Rudd as PM of Australia has run out of time to convince the media that he can pull anything off. Here’s a snippet from the local media -

“In fact, so incompetent is Rudd’s Government that it couldn’t even be trusted to commission mugs to celebrate the visit of US President Barack Obama. Not only is the visit cancelled, but the official mugs commemorate a “Barrack”.”

Shame. Makes one remember when Steve Waugh was cut down with such fierce venom that the media even forgot to say ’sorry’ when he scored a last century at the SCG.

Kevin, pull on your pads, strap on a helmet, you are going to need them!

This morning - Wednesday - Crikey in Australia had an insightful editorial about the real state of play in the world economy.

It makes grim reading and for those of us in Europe who are looking nervously at Greece, Spain, Portugal and the UK, read on …..

“Greece is on life support. Spain is ailing. Britain is far from well.

But the really sick patient in the global emergency ward isn’t in Europe. The most serious case of infectious economic disease is suffering in the heartland of global capitalism, and the prognosis is pretty grim:

“More than 15 million Americans are out of work, and nearly half have been jobless for six months or longer. New college graduates are having a terrible time finding work, and many are taking jobs that require only a high school education. Teachers are facing the worst employment market since the Depression…

“It’s impossible to overstate the threat that this crisis of unemployment poses to the well-being of the United States. With so many people out of work and so much of the rest of the population deeply in debt, where is the spending going to come from to power a true economic recovery? The deficit hawks are forecasting Armageddon, but how is anyone going to get a handle on the federal deficits if we don’t get millions of people back to work and paying taxes?

“Some inner-city neighborhoods, where joblessness is off the charts, are becoming islands of despair. Rural communities and rust belt cities and towns are experiencing their own economic nightmares.”

That’s how columnist Bob Herbert described the US jobless malaise in yesterday’s New York Times.

Europe may be going through a serious contagion built around unmanageable deficits, but the real sick man of the world economy is American and he’s out of work.”

[Reproduced from Crikey. If you want to subscribe go to www.crikey.com.au : it's worth it!]

“Carl Williams is dead and believe me the world is better for his passing. It’s one more vote for a cleaner Australia. He was scum and don’t let TV shows like Underbelly ever fool you otherwise.” - Derryn Hinch.

As usual the ‘human headline’ from 3AW in Melbourne has cut through the cr-p and told it like it is.

There’s no doubt the Australia’s most notorious and, glamourised criminal Carl Williams was ‘taken out’. The taxpayer is better for it. We feel sorry for the child, especially as her mother is an ex-jailbird, so is her paternal grandfather and her grandmother committed suicide.

Talk about the sins of the fathers and mothers.

Naturally, the Aussie media have had a field day. Fodder for the masses. Sales builders. Circulation boosters. Call them what you will. We love the Underbelly saga!

The Herald Sun website and, Channel 9 (labelled, the Underworld Channel. Kerry Packer spins………]

 

For those who are interested in the entire story, download the Underbelly series from iTunes. It’s pretty good - gritty but true.

Tesco, the undisputed champion of the supermarket world, have now moved their iPhone App into the mainstream. In an advertisement in this week’s Sunday Times (UK), O2 have trumpeted the Tesco finder and a new app - BMWTV.

Essentially, the Tesco app allows you to input your shopping list, locate your nearest store and walks you down the aisles with the easiest route and in the shortest possible time.

No more impulse buying? Depends who has the iPhone in the family.

Here’s a screen shot of the Wine app:

 

[All too easy - when will the others copy?]

BMW have launched their own. With access to video clips, vehicle stats and the ability to track your order, it’s a pioneer in the vehicle industry marketing league.

It seems as though an iPhone App (and iPad App) is one of the first jobs you do when you start an ad campaign these days!

Crowds queued up at the Apple store in downtown Manhattan, New York over the weekend to buy the first supplies of the new Apple iPad.

Sky News reports that the USA Today’s tech correspondent, Edward Baig said the iPad was not so much about what you could do but how you could do it.

“Apple have pretty much nailed it,” said Mr Baig. The interface is “stunning to look at and blazingly fast”.

However, he noted the battery is sealed and therefore non-replaceable, “it’s too big to fit in your pocket” and the lack of webcam will make it less attractive to skype users.

We watch and wait. Personally, I can’t wait for the launch of iBooks.

Marmite launches a new version - X.O.

In the first change to a 100 year old recipe, Marmite has launched a new variant - heavier and stronger than the usual it is made from Guinness-type beer sludge.

Devotees of Marmite (called marmitians) such as The Queen, Helen Mirren, Daniel Craig and Paul Mc Cartney have all been consulted on the new development.

The origin of the iconic sandwich spread is interesting. Its creator was a 19th century chemist Justus von Liebig (he also invented OXO!) - he devised a way to turn the wasted yeast sludge left over from brewing beer into a protein-rich paste.

“No two batches are the same,” says St John Skelton the Marmite company’s taster-in-chief. “We make no apology for it”.

Secret tastings of the new Marmite X.O have been held in London and we’re expecting to see bottles on the shelves soon. Yum!

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