Three ways media organisations can make money from online

It’s a very interesting question we’ve been asked to cover in this month’s topic for the Tomorrow’s News, Tomorrow’s Journalists blog ring, and not least because it’s one the entire industry is trying to get its head around. There’s a lot of talk about pay walls and how they will work, back in December I wrote about how if news organisations are going to use pay walls they need to do them properly – and invest in technology that will actually help them to work (if they do work).

But away from the pay walls, how can money be made online out of the Generation Y’s who like browsing around in their spare time? There’s three ways media organisations can make money from online. The first is mass audience, the second is niche content and the third is location. Read the rest of this entry »

Advice for student media editors

It’s been three years since I was editor of the student media at the University of Central Lancashire. Blearly eyed, cold pizza and a whole lot of fun is how I remember it – but I thought I’d offer some advice for all those about to begin what will be one of the best year’s of their lives.

Being in charge of the student media is a tough role. You will be working for an average of £1.50 an hour for all the hours you do, you’ll never really be able to switch off but you will sit back one day and go ‘Shit. Yeah. That was good.’

So, here we go, here’s my far from definite guide for how to have a good year running your student media (this is general advice covering radio, newspaper, TV and online). Read the rest of this entry »

“It’s not about having your face on the frontpage” – UCLan SU’s adventures in web land

Gave a presentation to AMSU (Association of Managers in Students’ Union) North-West meeting this afternoon about what’s nearly been a year journey for our development of the web presences at UCLan Students’ Union.

It was a great chance to reflect on how far we’ve come, particularly in the last six months, and to take stock of some of the big changes that have happened as a result of our new website and approach to the web and social media.

The presentation was only a few slides long but there was plenty of discussion about how Union’s can use the web, and in particular how they can engage the membership through the web. Hence some discussions about online voting, the use of Ning as an issue based social network and the collection of members data to communicate messages properly.

It was useful to show what we’d been doing and hear that others wanted to follow suit, but needed to have a real think through what they wanted to do with their web presences. We also talked about what we’d got planned for the next six months and it looks promising.