WHAT'S NEXT: INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS

The “spin doctor” wants to be the next UK Prime Minister.

Everybody knows that, but only a few journalists  will tell you the most well known political secret of the country.

Lord Mandelson is the most amazing and active politician of the country.

Peter Mandelson (“Mandy”) is everywhere, including Twitter.

Appears on television all the time.

He loves to confront the most bulliest reporters.

A committee list published by Downing Street a few days ago revealed that Mandelson is a member of 35 of the 43 Cabinet committees and subcommittees.

But he is not popular.

And this weekend, all the newspapers went crazy with Mandy.

Lord Mandelson is filling in for Mr Brown while he is on holiday, but… as The Guardian said:

“It emerged today that Peter Mandelson has chosen to run the country from Nathaniel Rothschild’s opulent villa overlooking the sparkling Ionian Sea in a secluded corner of Corfu.

The business secretary is standing in for Gordon Brown for the next week but he is currently enjoying the hospitality of his banking heir friend in the exclusive parish of Kassiopi, which has become known as Kensington-on-Sea because of its attractiveness to Russian oligarchs, bankers and politicians.

Last year, Mandelson’s stay in the Rothschild’s cream-turreted Greek holiday home descended into controversy when he was entertained on a yacht by Oleg Deripaska, the Russian aluminium billionaire.”

So, he is in the phone, running the country with his BlackBerry.

What a character!

(Picture by Shaun Curry/AFP/Getty Images)

I went to Somerset to attend the funeral for Harry Patch, Europe’s oldest man.

Britain’s last fighting Tommy, Harry Patch, was laid to rest yesterday.

Watch here this unique historical moment.

Some of Mr Patch’s admirers slept overnight on Cathedral Green so they could be first in line for the public tickets for today’s service.

Others were relying on a large screen erected to relay proceedings live from inside the building.

Born on June 17, 1898, his first job was as an apprentice plumber.

He was conscripted at 18 and fought in the dramatic battle of Passchendaele in Belgium, where 500,000 men were killed.

1.400 people had tickets for the cathedral service but many more were outside along the streets paying respect to the body of the 111-year-old veteran.

For more than 80 years he would not talk about his war time experiences, refusing to attend regimental reunions and avoiding any war films which appeared on the television.

Mr Patch’s great-nephew David Tucker, 65, who carried his medals and decorations, said:

“One of Harry’s greatest moments was when he met the sole surviving German soldier – they actually met on the battlefield and shook hands. It was very important that after all those years we could finally close the wounds of that world war. After all the pain Harry went through, he found a way of expressing it for the millions who didn’t come back.”

Members of the Great War Society attended Harry Patch’s funeral.

After prayers by Peter Maurice, Bishop of Taunton, Mr Patch’s coffin, draped in Union Flag and bearing a poppy-shaped wreath made from 100 red roses, was carried out of the cathedral by the young pallbearers, followed by six young men of equal youth from the armed services of France, Belgium and Germany.

And there,  another friend of Mr Patch’s, Nick Fear, recited the Ode of Remembrance.

As his coffin emerged again a bell tolled 111 times, one for each year of a great life, and two buglers sounded the Last Post.

The local paper, the Western Daily Press, devoted today seven very well done pages to the the last WWI British veteran.

What a day, what a hero!

(Pictures by EPA/Andy Rain)

INNOVATION’s Chris O’Obrien has posted here a slideshow with the first images of The Wall Street Journal News Hub.

Great facility.

Quite better and more futuristic than The New York Times new one.

And better than the Financial Times newsroom.

Matching in many ways the Bloomberg leadership in this area.

Reuter’s Paul Tait reports from Kabul:

Almost half of Afghanistan is at a high risk of attack by the Taliban and other insurgents or is under “enemy control,” a secret Afghan government map shows, painting a dire security picture before presidential elections.

The World Association iof Newspaper-IFRA announced today the 2009 World Young Reader Prize winners.

La Repubblica of Italy, won the top award on the Making the News category, for its relaunched Repubblica@scuola student reporter project that used all platforms and featured regular contact with real journalists to assure lessons about professional news-gathering.

Behind this amazing project is the INNOVATION partner Consuledis.

Consuledis CEO, Gianluca Bovoli, has been for many years investing talent, efforts and creativity in Repubblica@scuola, and this is a well deserved recognition.

We are now working with other international clients of INNOVATION launching similar multi-media projects that capture the imagination of young students: a new generation of Internet natives that find in this new model an innovative way to discover that newspaper are multi-media platforms.

For readers, audiences and communities.

This is the natural evolution of the old fashion “Newspaper in Education” programs.

La Repubbliuca and Consuledis have developed a new and fantastic way to attract young newspaper readers.

If you are interested, I can send to you a PDF with the full entry of the project in English.

You saw yesterday these skimpy cakes for poor Helen Thomas.

Well the White House cakegate gets worse and worse.

Look at this!

Oh my God, what a lack of taste and sweet disaster!

It must be a fake picture, doesn’t matter that in this blog they give credit to the White House.

He is the President of the most powerful country of the world and gets this kitsch and tacky cake.

A few months ago, the White House pastry chef Bill Yosses and assistant pastry chef Susie Morrison wheeled out a cake for Michelle Obama topped with fruit, candles and best wishes spelled out on a plaque.

Quite kitsch and tacky too.

So, the tradition goes on and on, and if not, look at this one presented to Ronald Reagan…

But, wait a minute, Sarkozy got a better deal with this “Lafayette” cake served on Nov. 6, 2007, during the White House dinner in honor of French President.

And what about this Inauguration one that was on sale in Seattle last January for just $7.99 that Gabriel Campanario sketched in his great blog.

At least it’s nicer and cheaper.

But nothing to compare with this real White House cake made in 1934 by these three men standing behind this monster cake baked by the Strand Baking Company in Madison, Wisconsin, for the Roosevelt Birthday Ball.

If the Obama’s White House 427 employees at a cost to the taxpayers of over 32 million annually cannot make a decent cake, how we can trust them?

My Finnish friend Jussi Tuulensuu,  the great designer of Kauppalehti Optio magazine drills on  some INNOVATION ideas and goes to the point with this Journalism 101 post:

JOURNALISM

HOW TO DO IT

1. Based on your knowledge about what the reader is interested in, decide what you want to tell and then tell just that.

2. Form follows data. Show, don’t tell.

3. Interesting is the new important.

CURRENT FACTS

1. Life is too short to read boring newspapers. Thanks to the Internet, people have noticed this.

2. Media are not that much in crisis, but journalism is.

SOLUTIONS

1. Stop repackaging the news, start creating them.

2. Edit more. Create better concepts. From newspapers to newszines, from magazines to mooks.

3. Our core business is selling interesting stories – not colour processing wood fiber. From great papers with websites to great websites with great papers.

Bravo!

David Sullivan thinks that the old department stores fate is a good reminder  for newspapers.

And the same lessons can be learned by newspapers from the railway industry.

Today, The Guardian presents the ambitious plans of the British transport secretary Lord Andrew Adonis with this lead:

There was a time when all the world firsts in rail took place in the UK – the first modern locomotive, the first intercity line and the first train-travelling monarch. That time, however, was the second quarter of the 19th century, and for very many years now Britain’s railways have, as it were, been stuck on the slow train. No principally domestic mainline has been built in over a century, and the spread of high-speed services – from Japan in the 1960s through France in the 80s to Spain in the 90s – has all but failed to reach these shores.

Yes, there was a time… when railways ruled the transport world, like newspapers ruled the information business.

But cars and airplanes came as more fast and convenient options.

And the railway industry didn’t react,and died in many markets and in many countries.

Until the fast trains resurrected the old business.

It took time, money and courage… and the results are here.

Fantastic and very comfortable new trains rule again in many European countries.

Investing in fast trains is like investing in the new “online-centric” news organizations of the future.

And as The Guardian says:

The lesson is plain: build it – and they will come.

(Picture by Getty Images)

Barack Obama is celebrating today his own birthday (48)

Like reporter Helen Thomas (89)

So he went to White House Press Room where there she was: seating in the front row.

The oldest working journalist in Washington DC told him that her birthday wishes were “world peace and a real health care reform bill.”

Obama carried cupcakes into the room where reporters were with his spokesman, Robert Gibbs, at the daily briefing.

Watch the video here.

As a White House correspondent for the United Press International, Thomas began covering the Kennedy White House.

Thomas resigned from UPI the day after the announcement of its acquisition by the Unification Church leader Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

Since then she works for Hearst Newspapers as a columnist

Bush didn’t like her, and she didn’t liker him either.

She wrote:

“As he leaves office, President Bush is passing on to his successor two wars and a growing economic debacle. What a way to go!”

Usually dressed in red she is invariably the first or second reporter the president calls upon.

And she is the one that still carries the tradition of closing the White House press conferences by saying, “Thank you, Mr. President”

She is the author of Front Row at the White House: My Life and Times (Scribner, 1999)

Happy birthday fierce Helen!

(Picture by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The news:

Gannett, McClatchy, and the New York Times Company last week reported unexpected second quarter profits on the backs of cost-cutting efforts amid 30% declines in advertising.

Gannett reported that 2009 second quarter earnings per diluted share were $0.30 compared to a net loss per share of $10.03 for the second quarter of 2008.

The McClatchy Company reported net income from continuing operations in the second quarter of 2009 of $42.0 million, or 50 cents per share – more than double the earnings per share in the second quarter of 2008.

The New York Times Company announced also second-quarter 2009 operating profit of $23.3 million.

Mort Zuckerman says he plans to spend the cash he’s raising from a sale of his real estate company stock on new color printing presses for his New York Daily News newspaper. Zuckerman has raised about $31.6 million in two stock sales this week.

My take:

Nothing has changed.

The newspaper industry faces today bigger challenges than one year ago.

So, they cannot dream with the past, that it’s gone.

They must face the future.

How?

Becoming not “print-centric” but “on-line centric” news organizations.”

Period.