WHAT'S NEXT: INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS

Oh, boy, that’s a good question.

But six days later (yes, six days) we need no more questions but some answers.

Newspapers, newsrooms and journalists are here to find out the news behind the news.

To dig.

To confront.

To  discover.

To denounce.

To respond when nobody responds.

The European air traffic chaos of the last weeks shows that:

1. On and off line media don’t work on weekends (politicians either).

2. Without press releases and sources ready to speak, the media (specially the TV networks) rely only in what INNOVATION calls “mirror journalism” instead of “window journalism”, record the news but we don’t find the news.

3. Mandarins, Eurocrats, politicians and public officers are followers not leaders, so they don’t take risks, they don’t show up, and they don’t confront the problems. You don’t need to be very brave to close the airspace, but having closed it, it takes a lot of bravery to reopen it.

4. People and business paid and will pay the consequences of this gigantic lack of coordination, communication and decisive action.

5. We need leaders, not just rulers.

6. We need better and more efficient emergency crisis schemes.

7. Foreign services, embassies, consulates and the diplomatic corps stink, and could be replaced by 24/7 online services.

8. Travel agencies, airlines and tour operators were taken with the pants off, and were slow to react with their traditional tools and unable to use in a smart and fast way the new social media resources available on Internet.

9. Again and again, air pilots and companies were grounded by bureaucrats that never presented what kind of quality data they were using to feed their computer models that resulted in contradictory and confusing maps.

10. We didn’t have real news reporting and real watchdog  journalism. Period.

But, what we do now?

Just record the politically correct explanations of the same politicians?

Well, my dear, the losses in Europe hit the 1.7 billion euros mark!

But this must be “peanuts” for Mr. Brown, his party, the Mandarins and the bureaucrats paid for all of us.

UPDATE:

Dr Colin Brown of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers in London has studied the effect of volcanic ash on plane engines. He told BBC World Service: “We’ve been running test flights over the last four or five days and collecting information from the engines that have flown through those clouds and seen what damage the clouds done to them, and we’ve found that the damage is zero and so we’re in the situation where we’re now happy to continue flying through those clouds.”

So… what was the eviodence managed by the Mandarins to decide the opposite?
And the Mail Online adds some caviar:

“The decision to lift the no-fly zone over Britain was taken after British Airways sent 26 planes towards London airports without permission to land, in defiance of the flying ban.”

Greg Hadfield, Telegraph Media Group’s head of digital development, is leaving the company.

He explains here the reasons in The Guardian.

A good reading for any “Monolithic Media” gang.

He ends with a great message: the time for innovation and change is running out.

A serious call.

To survive, newspapers need to rethink radically not only their business models, but also how they manage their businesses; they need to overhaul outdated organisational structures; they need to consider how they relate to all their employees, to third-party providers of content and services, and to individuals with whom they may have no contractual arrangement whatsoever.

Most crucially, they need to rethink how they relate to their communities of readers, subscribers, and users, when they know next to nothing about members of their digital audience. They need to identify their most loyal users and then work harder to meet their individual needs.

No longer can newspapers survive by publishing at their readers, by talking down to them, by controlling what can and can’t be written or said. In future, they will have to provide – and share, not “own” – the online environment in which they can meet the needs of individual members of their community. They have to be part of social media, not monolithic media.

But for those newspapers that survive, it is going to be a long journey. Who knows how long? I suggested radical innovation may take five years … because the future always seems to be five years away.

At 53, however, I don’t have as much time as many to wait for the future. I want to help make it happen now.

(Picture by Graham Turner)

I had been this week in Madrid to speak in an international seminar organized by El Mundo during its 20 Anniversary celebration.

Among other speakers were Robert Thompson (Wall Street Journal), Will Lewis (The Daily Telegraph), Pedro J. Ramirez (El Mundo), Ben Macintyre (The Times), Giorgio Valerio (RCS), Antonio Fernandez Galiano (Unedisa) and Martim Figueiredo (i-Sojornal).

This was my interview published in El Mundo this Wednesday.

(In the above picture, the King of Spain and Will Lewis during the El Mundo Awards ceremony where The Daily Telegraph was honored for its coverage of the MP’s expenses scandal)

Boris Johnson is a real character.

Like New York mayors Fiorello Laguardia or Ed Koch, he is a picturesque and extravagant political figure.

He was the editor of The Spectator and he writes very well.

So, The Daily Telegraph, owner also of The Spectator, decided to pay him 250,000 GBP a year for a weekly column in the paper.

He gives 50,000 GBP to charities, so 50 columns a year means that he really makes around of 4,000 GBP per column.

I don’t know how much other leading British or American columnists charge for their columns, but it doesn’t seem like a big deal to me.

And perhaps he is right, and this really is what he called (watch here the video) just “chicken feed”.

The real problem here is not what he makes as a columnist (as mayor he gets 140,000 GBP a year) but how you can cover local politics if the mayor is on your payroll.

That’s the big issue.

A London newspaper cannot pay anything to the mayor of the city.

Period.

The Daily Telegraph explains:

Officially described as “volunteers” by Beijing, the 30 blue track-suited guards were recruited from specialist squads in the People’s Armed Police (PAP), a one-million strong force dedicated to maintaining public order …

The hand-picked members of the “The Olympic Holy Flame Protection Unit” are all above 5ft 9in and underwent a rigorous training programme at the PAP special police academy in Beijing last August.

And The First Post adds more details:

Lord (Sebastian) Coe, the former gold medalist who runs the committee planning London’s 2012 Olympic Games, is one of many people questioning how the blue track-suited Chinese guards protecting the Olympic flame on its controversial world tour were allowed to manhandle people – and even scuffle with British police – in London this week.

Coe was overheard by Channel 4 News saying: “They tried to push me out of the way three times. They are horrible. They did not speak English… I think they were thugs.” He added that other cities on the route should “get rid of those guys”.

Konnie Huq, the former Blue Peter presenter who took part in the London stage, and was approached by protestors trying to grab the torch from her hands, described how the Chinese guards shouted orders at her and pushed her arm to make her lift the torch higher.

“They were very robotic, very full on, and actually I noticed them having skirmishes with our own police and the Olympic authorities before our leg of the relay, which was confusing,” she said…

Their fitness routine has included running 25 to 20 miles a day and most have martial arts expertise. All have scored highly in “political tests” – a euphemism for ideological training. Most important, they’ve had lessons from a physics teacher in how to keep a flame from going out.

When the squad was formed last August, their leader, Zhao Si, boasted to the Chinese media that the men’s “outstanding physical quality is not in the slightest inferior to that of specialised athletes.”

One city where they will not be welcome is Australia’s capital, Canberra, where the Olympic torch is due next Tuesday. “I have seen what occurred in London,” said Michael Phelan, Canberra’s police chief, “and I can tell you that type of security arrangement will not be occurring here.”

As the The Guardian’s leader will say tomorrow:

“The 30 officers of the “Holy Flame Protection Unit” should be withdrawn, and the torch be given a rest until the games begin.”