The recession claimed another victim today when News International said that it planned to close its afternoon freesheet, TheLondonPaper. The title was launched nearly three years ago in a blaze of publicity as the freesheet went head-to-head with London Lite. News International have cited the downturn in advertising and the resulting huge losses as being the key cause of the paper’s demise.

This follows news earlier in the month that Rupert Murdoch, the owner of News International, plans to introduce charges for access to all his news websites, including The Times, The Sun and the News of the World, by next summer. Once again, the motivation behind this move is to compensate for the losses that have come about as the advertising industry has been stung by the recession. If the charges are introduced and prove to be successful, is it just a matter of time before other online news sites follow suit?

FT editor Lionel Barber has predicted that “almost all” news organisations will charge for online content within a year. However, many seem to disagree. Roy Greenslade spoke to Channel 4 News and argued that sites like FT.com can charge for online content because it is targeting a niche audience. Sites dealing with general news would struggle to sustain charges when websites like the BBC are available for free.

From the perspectives of the PR and PR measurement industries, the key learning to take away from the news of TheLondonPaper’s closing, and Mr Murdoch’s plan to charge for newspaper sites, is that the advertising industry is no longer the cash cow it once was. Further to this, the recession has had a big impact not just on advertising rates, but circulation figures too – recent ABC figures have shown that consumer magazines in particular have been badly hit.

At Metrica, we have never been fond of Advertising Value Equivalent (AVE) and Opportunities To See (OTS) as methods of measuring PR success, and the current economic climate further hammers home the point that these measures are flawed. AVE and OTS figures are falling across the board, so even if a 2009 campaign generates more articles in higher profile publications, results could still pale in comparison with 2008 and 2007 data when rates were higher. 

So, what are the alternatives? There are a range of useful methods for demonstrating Return On Investment (ROI), and these have been discussed recently on Measurement Matters. In a six-part series of blogs discussing methods for demonstrating PR ROI, there is plenty of food for thought.

How many colleagues do you count as friends on Facebook? I’m friends with quite a few of Metrica PR Measurement staffers – at least 15 at last count, including three Directors, one Senior Account Manager and two Managers. So, should I be watching my words when I update my status or post on other walls?

There are plenty of horror stories about employees losing their jobs following “inappropriate” activity on social networking sites, such as being caught using Facebook when supposedly ill or even for calling work “boring” in a status update. A recent survey conducted by Deloitte found that 60% of business executives believe they have the right to know how their employees portray themselves and their organisations on social networking sites. Unsurprisingly, employees disagree, with more than half of workers saying their social networking pages should not be their employer’s concern.

According to the Deloitte survey, one-third of employees don’t consider what their boss or customers might think before they post material online. I myself am one of the 33%, as it never occurs to me to vet what I say before I update my status. However, I do have the benefit of 1) liking my job and therefore being unlikely to complain about it in general, not just on Facebook or Twitter and 2) reserving my status updates for important stories, such as “Ria went to the UK premiere of Star Trek last night”. Yet, if I ever did want to complain about, is it not my right to do so on my personal Facebook page, no matter who I’m friends with?

Of course, if I ever did discuss my company negatively, it’s not just employers or clients who could be affected. If third parties can see “I hate Company X” in status updates, opinions can be affected, potential new business can be compromised and/or reputations can be damaged. For PR professionals, what kind of systems are put into place – is it the remit of the PR team or the HR team to monitor what staff are saying? If, indeed, this should be monitored in the first place?

In recent times, we have seen the meteoric rise of social media, where chocolate bars have been resurrected, musicians have socially networked their way to chart success and unprecedented levels of hype have opened the door for new marketing methods. The power of social media in a lot of ways boils down to the power of opinion – if enough voices sing the same tune, it’s hard to ignore.

But should there be a limit to the power placed in the hands of the user? NewsCred, a news aggregator that ranks stories by the “credibility of their source”, has recently been launched and sparked a significant amount of online chatter. Users can rate each story, author and publication’s credibility, seeking to establish quality over popularity, unlike other news aggregators.

The site itself claims that NewsCred is all about “the Social Media Revolution” – harnessing the power of community to allow “the discerning news consumer to focus only on credible news content while filtering out the noise”. Interesting concept, yet the premise itself is problematic. Can something be deemed “credible” based on the recommendation of a group of faceless strangers? As Marissa Peacock discusses in her article, “Is it an author’s credentials, a publication’s political endorsement or a penchant for not lying, making up or otherwise hiding the ‘truth’ no matter how messy or uncomfortable it makes us?”

Rory Cellan-Jones also discusses NewsCred in his blog for the BBC Website, taking the debate to an interesting level, by stating his concern that “sites like NewsCred will become playgrounds for lobby groups and obsessives” and asks, “Isn’t it likely that those with passionate views will rush to judge the credibility of news stories according to their own prejudices, while the rest of the internet population just won’t bother?”

My own personal concern is that there is also a level of laziness that results from relying on sites such as NewsCred – since when did it become so difficult to make up your own mind? But perhaps I am missing the point. Either way, if there is one thing that Snakes on a Plane  has taught us (a truly dreadful film – avoid it), it’s that you can’t always trust internet popularity as an endorsement.