Thoughts on another media year

There are a number of fast forming trends shaping and reshaping the media. In a few short generation the influence of the printed has diminished dramatically with much of the audience seeking their content online, sometimes behind paywalls. Any well-informed clues on  where these trends are going is gold dust and the CIPR in this video-cast featured David Pemsel, Chief Commercial Officer, The Guardian; a paper advocating free access, for the time being anyway.

He highlighted that newspapers can be more flexible online, using a more diverse a selection of media  sources and formats. The Guardian take the view that they need to have a scale of usage to gather the influence necessary to be a news 'player', and that level of engagement presently only come from the site being without a paywall.

The discussion make a point about news ownership. The Guardian believes that their news content is most trustworthy as a result of their being owned by a Trust...an aspect they believe contrasts with other providers which may be subject to commercial or political pressures.There's also a perspective on newspaper opinion and if they are being dragged into a competition with bloggers for influence. The idea of the media 'melting pot' seemed central with good ideas and perspectives rising to the top.

Munching the credit crunch media

Just over a year ago the term 'credit crunch' was widely outside common use. Though we might wish otherwise, now it dominates. With my (quite tatty) economist hat on I actually prefer the term 'credit reversion', as history will show I think, this period as a ending of loose credit times, and its associated pain.

However, who came up with the term 'credit crunch'. Was it a New York or London banker, who last July saw the wall of investment money vanish overnight? The truth is difficult to pin down, but suffice to say it was in relatively common media use back as long ago as 1969 when the New York Times ran the headline "Fed Reserve study of impact of 66 'credit crunch' on borrowing and spending".

To those who thought that globalisation had bought a new paradigm of ever increasing values, forget the lessons of the past. In my review of media coverage on the term credit crunch (using Factiva) it is clear that during the last year its use has massively increased. Over the previous year its use in the media has increased by 6200% illustrating the markets (and the media's) ignorance to the dangers.