Weekly NDM Story ..

Daily Mail overtakes Sun as biggest-selling Saturday paper

The Daily Mail overhauled the Sun in November to become the UK's biggest-selling Saturday paper for the first time. However, the News UK red-top remains by some distance the biggest-selling UK daily across six days – a position it has held since overtaking the Daily Mirror in 1978. In November the Saturday edition of the Daily Mail had an average headline circulation of 2,474,439, compared with the Sun's 2,453,981, according to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulation figures published on Friday.

Across six days, Monday to Saturday, the Sun averaged 2,089,752 copies, against the Daily Mail's 1,755,308. The Daily Mail's headline sales figure includes an average of 91,277 "bulks" – copies sold to airlines, rail companies, hotels and gyms for a nominal fee and given free to the public. This is a marginal rise of October's bulks figure of 87,391. The Sun does not distribute bulks.

The Daily Mail was only daily tabloid to increase sales month on month – and then only marginally, 0.10%. The Sun was down 2.83% compared with October. "While we have out sold the Sun on Saturdays previously, this is the first time we have achieved better sales over the course month," said Roland Agambar, chief marketing officer for Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday publisher DMG Media.

"The performance of both papers demonstrates the strength of the Mail brand, the success of our loyalty strategy and the advantage of continued editorial and commercial investment."

In the quality daily sector the Guardian and i were the only titles to increase sales between October and November. The Guardian's average daily circulation was up by 0.44% month on month to 199,672 – the Guardian News & Media title's third successive monthly sales increase. The Lebedevs' 20p daily i was up 0.32% to 297,510.

Every national Sunday title was down month on month.

The Sun

Headline circulation: 2,089,752

Month-on-month change: -2.83%

Year-on-year change: -11.51%

Saturday edition: 2,453,981

Overseas: 21,816

Daily Mail

Headline circulation: 1,755,308

Month-on-month change: +0.10%

Year-on-year change: -6.21%

Saturday: 2,474,439

UK and Ireland paid-for circulation: 1,593,682 (90.8% of total)

Overseas: 70,349

Bulks: 91,277

Daily Mirror

Headline circulation: 1,000,170

Month-on-month change: -1.41%

Year-on-year change: -4.28%

Saturday: 1,183,499

UK and Ireland paid-for circulation: 938,125 (93.8% of total)

Overseas: 32,045

Bulks: 30,000

Daily Express

Headline circulation: 508,458

Month-on-month change: -1.12%

Year-on-year change: -5.36%

Saturday: 575,494

Overseas: 12,101

Daily Star

Headline circulation: 506,729

Month-on-month change: -2.97%

Year-on-year change: -9.51%

Saturday: 455,334

Overseas: 5,245

Daily Telegraph

Headline circulation: 544,340

Month-on-month change: -0.86%

Year-on-year change: -0.38%

Saturday: 713,297

Overseas: 12,644

Weekly NDM Story ..

The Sun attracts 117,000 paying subscribers to its Sun+ digital service

The Sun has attracted 117,000 paying subscribers to its £2-a-week digital service Sun+ since erecting a paywall around its website on 1 August. News UK's tabloid, the UK's biggest selling paper, reached 100,000 digital subscribers in four months – it took stablemates the Times and Sunday Times a year to reach the same level of paying customers after their online content went behind a paywall in 2010.

"No one else has sought to charge for digital access to a mass audience newspaper, and, though it's early days, we are encouraged by the strong start achieved by the Sun," said David Dinsmore, editor of The Sun. Dinsmore said the Sun was not looking to target overseas users like the Daily Mail and admitted the publisher's social media strategy has not been coherent enough to date. "In reality our marketplace is very much the UK at the moment, we have 60 million people here to focus on," he said. "We are in the process of hiring a social media team, we have been remiss [in this area] in the past. It has been an ad hoc affair. We are a product across all platforms and it is key to have that social-media marketing opportunity.

"It is early days and we are still bottoming out what we want to do, we have a number of successful individuals [on Twitter], good things to build on, but we want to see something much more structured." News UK revealed some details of the subscriber base of Sun+. 

• The biggest single group (30%) are 25 to 34, which Katie Vanneck-Smith, chief marketing officer at News UK, said "blows out the myth young people won't pay for [digital] content".
• Almost half (47%) of sign-ups for the paid service are via mobile devices, which Vanneck-Smith said was slightly surprising as there had been an expectation that the service might be initially more popular on desktop computers, given the typical print Sun reader's profile.

Sun+ subscribers are split 60/40 between men and women, although this is expected to balance out to an extent once the football promotion slows down, and there is a "slight" London bias to sign ups, with the capital's denizens considered to be early adopters. Not surprisingly, the Sun's almost 30 million online unique user base plummeted following the introduction of the paywall, as users sought out free alternatives.

• The Times and Sunday Times saw almost 90% of web traffic evaporate after the introduction of a paywall in 2010.
• In October, News UK revealed that the number of digital subscribers to the Times and Sunday Times had topped 150,000.

News UK chief executive Mike Darcey, who joined from BSkyB nearly a year ago December, has aggressively pursued digital sports rights deals to bolster the Sun's online offering. First up in January was a £30m-plus deal for Premier League internet and mobile highlights – outbidding former employer BSkyB as well as O2 and Perform Group.

This was followed by a four-year deal for the digital FA Cup rights, and last month the publisher secured the digital clip rights to highlights of Champions League and Europa League matches in a joint deal with BT Sport. The Sun had an average daily circulation of 2.089m in November, according to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations figures published on Friday. However, the Sun has been overtaken for the first time as the biggest selling Saturday paper, with the Daily Mail's edition on that day averaging 2,474,439 in November. The Sun's Saturday edition averaged 2,453,981.

Weekly NDM Story ..

Is Sony's 'smart wig' even more absurd than Google Glass?

http://gu.com/p/3kma3

Age: In development.

Appearance: Like hair. But smarter.

This can't be what it sounds like. Oh, but it can and it is.

Please tell me it's just a smart-looking wig. I can't and won't.

Fine. It's a computer in a toupee, isn't it? That's the idea.

Whose idea, exactly, and how are they still alive? Engineers at Sony. And they're alive and thriving because enough of their ridiculous ideas turn into hugely successful products.

But … but … a wig? A smart wig? So they hope. The electronics giant has applied to patent a "wearable computing device" wired into a hairpiece. The application states the smart wig could be made from "horse hair, human hair, wool, feathers, yak hair, buffalo hair or any kind of synthetic material".

Wool? Feathers? Human hair? Are they drunk? To be fair, the purpose of a patent is to cover all possible bases. It doesn't mean the finished product has to come in a choice of yak or buffalo.

But why would anyone want a feathery PC on their head? Well, for one thing, because it might give them super powers.

Are you drunk now as well? No, I've just been browsing the patent's extensive list of possible smart wig functions.

Such as? Bat-vision. Apparently it could deploy "ultrasound waves" to detect nearby objects and help navigate through darkness.

Pssh. And? Wig-sensing. It could use vibration or small electric shocks to provide "tactile feedback" to the wearer. Plus it could monitor environmental conditions and users' vital signs.

Oh. Hmm. Any more? Telepathy, for one. Or "wig-to-wig communication" via the tactile feedback mechanisms. Also telekinesis, using facial expressions or brain activity to control, for example, a computer presentation.

That sounds brilliant. Anything else? Self-awareness. It could be fitted with an electronic compass and camera to let the user know "whether the wig is correctly mounted on the head or not".

I must have it. You'll have to wait a while.

I must have it at once! Keep your hair on.

Do say: "At the end of the day, it's still a wig."

Don't say: "What next, mind-reading merkins?"

Weekly NDM Story ..

Print readerships down again, but with online audiences on the up ..

http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2013/nov/28/national-newspapers-newspapers

Print readerships for most national daily and Sunday newspapers continue to decline. According to the latest set of National Readership Survey figures, only four titles - the Financial Times, The Times, Sunday Times and i - added a small number of readers in the year up to October compared to the same period last year.

Six dailies suffered what are regarded - by NRS - as "statistically significant" falls. They were:

• The Independent (-22%)
• Daily Star (-19%)
• The Guardian (-16%)
• Daily Mirror, 
• The Sun (-14%)
• The Daily Express (-12%)

The Independent's total readership over the 12 months stood at 393,000 but its little sister, i, managed to record 568,000, a 1% improvement on the previous year. At the other end of the scale was The Sun with a total readership of 6,123,000 readers. To put this in perspective, the paper was claiming an audience of more than 12m in the 1980s. Among the Sundays, six titles were also said to have statistically significant readership decreases. The worst, by far, was the Sunday People, with 42% fewer readers year-on-year.

The others were the Sunday Express and Daily Star Sunday, both down 20%, The Observer (-14%) and the Mail on Sunday (-7%). Of course, all of these print readerships were offset by rises in the users of websites. NRS has also released the PADD (combined Print and Digital Data) figures, which make better reading for publishers. In some instances, these show huge differences. For example, the Daily Telegraph's online increase over print on a monthly basis was 184% and The Guardian was up 159%.

Overall, this article just proves the fact that newspapers are my dying because of online media. Its more productive, its easier to use and obviously because online news is free the audience are going to prefer it, who wants to pay for news? Maybe in the past where people actually used to pay for newspapers everyday but now because everything has changed people don't expect or want to pay for news. 

Weekly NDM Story ..

David Cameron defends opposition to Page 3 ban ..

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/nov/22/david-cameron-page-3

David Cameron has insisted he is right to oppose a ban on Page 3 pin-ups despite his efforts to tackle online pornography. The prime minister said there was a difference between newspapers, which parents could keep away from children, and the internet, where youngsters could "stumble across" legal but hardcore pornography. Under plans set out by Cameron, the largest internet service providers in Britain will force customers to choose whether to turn off filters that will prevent customers viewing porn. 

In an interview with BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour he insisted there was a distinction between images online and in the pages of a newspaper. He said: "I've said what I've said about Page 3 and the Sun and I haven't changed my views. But should we do more to try and help parents to protect their children from legal pornography on the internet? Yes I think we should, and again last week we made some big progress on that."

Cameron added: "You can control your children's access to newspapers and books and magazines. The problem with the internet is that our children are all online and they're using YouTube and they're searching for videos and the rest of it and there's a danger that they can stumble across really quite, sometimes hardcore legal pornography."

The plan set out with BT, Virgin, Sky and TalkTalk was about "making sure every household is offered a default-on filter to stop those images coming through, and that's what we've enabled". He added: "I think there's a difference between a physical product as I said and the internet and that's why I think this specific action is needed on the internet and that's why I'm driving that.

Personally, I think having the filter is an amazing idea for parents to protect their chikdren , I think David Cameron is a fool because he supports page 3 therefore showing he has no respect for women and he supports how the media degrades women and makes them feel as if they're just sex object's. 

Weekly NDM Story ..

Universities should use Twitter to engage with students

http://www.theguardian.com/education/mortarboard/2013/nov/22/universities-twitter-engage-with-students

Universities have started to believe that maybe using twitter to comunicate with their students is the best way to improve learning. A student claimed there had been an explosion of social media around his university. 

• According to recent research, 75% of students in Europe admit to using Twitter "all the time".
• 42% of under 20-year-olds use social media mainly to "stay up to date". 

#UCLChem160x is a hashtag that has been set up for a chemistry course at University College London (UCL) to share course information. Andrea Sella, professor of inorganic chemistry at UCL says: "There's a real need to make sure that students remain engaged. Finding innovative ways to get students interested and connected is a crucial part of what I think teaching is becoming."

Twitter could be used as another method to reach students, to share content and provide information. The social nature of Twitter means you can ask questions, have conversations, and join discussions or debates. But an online community must be active to be successful. #UCLChem160x will need regular use if it is to benefit students.

• An economics undergraduate at the University of Plymouth says: "I might use the hashtag once or twice. It would be pretty helpful to quickly check my understanding, but I don't think I'd actively follow it."

However the students believe that twitter is very public which can put people off using it for university queries. If they have a question or comment using the hashtag, it wouldn't just be seen by those following the tag, it would also be seen by all their followers. "I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable discussing any queries or academic difficulties on social media. It forms a personal record that can be used to define you," says a history of medicine postgraduate student at UCL. 

A biochemistry student at the University of Manchester says: "Using social media in education is brilliant. We have lots of Facebook groups set up for courses at my university, usually by students. "They give much quicker responses than posting on discussion boards, as people tend to check social media more regularly. And students can help each other so you don't have to wait for a lecturer to respond, which can take a while." "Twitter would make it easier to stay involved with my course as I go on it everyday. I'd love to see deadline reminders on there," says a geography student at Kings College London. 

Questioning and debating teaches us to think critically – a key skill no matter what you're studying – and online debate is a way to develop these skills. Hashtags create online communities where you can discuss a topic with your friends so I believe this is a really successful way of improving education.

Notes ..

The Virtual Revolution ..

Broadcast on the BBC in 2010.

• A small part of Africa have just been connected to the internet, if the internet does take off in Africa it'll reshape itself. 
• The internet has become a brain, it's the smartest brain in the world. 

Sir Tim Berners-lee = Invented the world wide web. 

                                  Argues the web is "connecting humanity" 

UK/England - Africa 

    The digital divide - digital haves and have nots. 

• 2 million people are online 
• "How mankind communicate" (Bill Gates)
• "Empowering tool" (Al Gore)
• Challenges authority VS. spying/censorship 

  

Does the internet level us? 

  > The web allows information to travel globally for free. 

  > 1/4 of the glob uses the internet.

• 18 million people read blogs (west london the most) - no limit to self expression.
• Wikipedia allows knowledge to be shaped together - proof of the involvement globally.
• 1985 (San Francisco) "The well" - without the well, facebook, twitter etc wouldn't have worked. 
• "The well" - The first source of internet (computer)
• The internet was a traditional theft.

Al Gore > Exciting and revolutionary prospect. 

- According to most of the internet, it's the biggest move, it's compared to the industrial revolution (Internet revolution.)

• "Greater levellers"
• "Challengers business models" 
• Power to the people equal across/voice"   

> 35 million log in everyday 

> 40% men watch porn 

> 5 million using dating sites. 

Wikipedia - Accuracy, free, ordinary people, undercuts authority. 

"Libertarianism (1960s) 

• Ushahidi - (whiteness) - Posting up examples of abuse & riots. 
• The web and internet are two different things. 
• 1965 emails were made.
• The web as we use it today is completely different to it in the beginning. 
• The story of the internet beginning started a century ago.
• 1991 - The first website went online 

Tim Berners-lee gave away the web for free, made no profit. 

Internet - "paradigm shift on a par with the printing press" 

The US Military came up with the idea of the internet.

• URL > Unique address for a document
• HTML > The universal language of the internet.
• Home computers > Altair 8000 

1999 - A man made a website called napstar. 

              - Allowing eople to share music illegally for free around the world. 

              - It went global, everybody broke the law for the first time because of just once website. 

The web has threatened any traditional ways of sharing information. 

UGC - Youtube, allows anybody to be seen 

         - 2005 Youtube first ever video.
2005 - YouTube's first ever video.

Master shortie - used the internet to promote himself

90% of the market (internet) was owned by Microsoft (Bill Gates) > Monopoly.

"Monetize"

95% of music isn't paid for.

• EBay gets 21 million views a month.
• Amazon gets 16 million views a month.
• The man who invented the web is worried for its future.                        - The webs leveling days are now over.
• Jimmy wells - cofounder of Wikipedia.
• 38 million search Google a month.                                                                - 1/3 now have a Facebook pages (there's no competition for Facebook.)

"The web is inventing society's" - Aleks Krotoski
"The web mirrors the high arki of the real world" 

90% of blogs users are dormant.
        - Nothing is actually happening (its sleeping.)