Fergus Cassidy

I once witnessed senior editors on sentry duty beside newsroom fax machines.

The paper had an exclusive and was taking every precaution to prevent the story leaking to rivals.

That was ten years ago and BI (before internet). These days, newspapers with online editions face a dilemma with an exclusive.

If they break it online, they miss out on the potential lift in print sales. If they delay and hold for the print edition, they could get scooped.

And that's what happened last Thursday evening when, for the first time, British Sunday The Observer broke an exclusive news story on its website.

'Turkey carcasses from Hungary linked to UK bird flu outbreak' ran the headine, posted at 7.30pm.

The Observer website editor, Susan Smillie, said: "It seems crazy not to take advantage of it if the story won't hold and there's huge public interest".

There's a valuable lesson there for newspapers that treat their online editions as an afterthought.

Israeli newspaper Harretz carried an interview with Arthur Sulzberger last Thursday. Sulzberger is the interview-shy, owner, chairman and publisher of the New York Times.

When asked did he see the paper being printed five years from now, he said: "I really don't know whether we'll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don't care either."

How long does it take for some newspapers to become digital-only?

362 years.

Founded in 1645 by Sweden's Queen Kristina, Post-och Inrikes Tidningar (which means mail and domestic tidings), became web-only at the beginning of last month.

The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) will continue to recognise Post-och Inrikes Tidningar's ranking as the oldest newspaper still in circulation.

A WAN spokesman said: "An online newspaper is still a newspaper, so we'll leave it on the list".

Source: Associated Press

IN 2004, the minister for communications, Dermot Ahern, spoke at the launch of the Irish Cellular Industry Association's 'Children and Mobile Phones – A Parent's Guide'.

During his speech, he dropped a bombshell: "To protect Irish children I think we need to go beyond the present degree of protection – I think we need a national register of 3G phones". In other words, 3G handsets would only be sold to over-18s.

For many of the mobile operators present, the news of such a register must have been the equivalent of getting a cocktail sausage stick shoved in their eyes.

The scare tactics worked – regulate yourselves or it'll be done for you.

Yesterday, that threat was answered. An agreement on protecting minors using mobile phones was signed in Brussels by all the leading mobile operators. It was brokered by the European Commission and hailed as "a good example of industry self-regulation".

Operators signed up to support:

• access control for adult content;
• awareness-raising campaigns for parents and children;
• classification of commercial content according to national standards of decency and appropriateness;
• the fight against illegal content on mobiles;

The deal is a sure sign that the convergence of mobile networks and the internet is about to get a speed boost.