Yet more frankly unbelievable waste from the BBC. New DG Tony Hall has called time on their Digital Media Initiative, which has by their own admission completely and utterly failed in its task of carrying them into the digital age. Hall’s scathing statement admits:

“The DMI project has wasted a huge amount of Licence Fee payers’ money and I saw no reason to allow that to continue which is why I have closed it. I have serious concerns about how we managed this project and the review that has been set up is designed to find out what went wrong and what lessons can be learned.”

The total cost is a staggering £98.4 million…

The digital gurus over at ITV News have been trying to make ITV a social media savvy news outlet. So it was all a bit awkward when their website crashed yesterday, buckling under the traffic spike that came with their footage of the Woolwich terrorist. This blog became the only news outlet running the video, fully credited and attributed to them in the headline, of course.

Since it was now the only immediately available copy, news websites across the world used the video from this blog – with the ITV watermark. Sixteen hours and 1,867,835 YouTube views later, and having failed to capitalise on their own scoop, the ITV News team finally sprang into action and had the video removed from YouTube. Social-media is about sharing, that is why it is called “social”. It is not our fault if ITV’s site can’t take a traffic spike… 

Guido had a record traffic day yesterday with our fast reacting curation of the news from Woolwich. You can now watch a more extended version of the footage courtesy of our friends at The Sun...

UK national newspaper website figures for the last month are out, with the Mail still well out a head. The percentage change is year on year.

-MailOnline: 7,833,182 (up 39%)

-Guardian.co.uk: 4,771,866 (up 23.1%)

-Telegraph.co.uk: 3,041,594 (up 29.8%)

-Mirror: 1,176,217 (up 78%)

-The Sun: 1,698,572 (up 11%)

-Independent: 1,131,150 (62.5%)

-Metro: 406,187 (38,5%)

For the sake of comparison Guido had 516,730 unique visitors in April (up 53%).

Despite the new pay-wall, the Telegraph is beginning to catch up with the freebie Guardian.

No end in sight for the scandal-hit BBC: now Today programme veteran John Humphrys has confessed to bribing a police officer… with a bottle of whisky as a 17-year-old reporter. Humphrys has finally come clean over how he was the mastermind behind the crime 50 years on: “Now they would be banging my door down at 5am in the morning”. Operation Elveden have their latest suspect…

Just one problem with Ed’s Google-bashing this afternoon:

Google shouldn't be going to extraordinary lengths to avoid paying its taxes. My article for @HuffPostUK huff.to/1a0NDFY—
Ed Miliband (@Ed_Miliband) May 21, 2013

Guido readers will know that HuffPoUK is owned by AOL Limited, whose parent company is the Luxembourg-registered AOL Europe Sarl.

In 2010 AOL UK Limited, HuffPo’s esteemed owners, had a revenue of £78 million. Despite that they paid just £122,000 in corporation tax, cleverly moving £30 million out of the reach of the UK tax authorities by “repatriating” a dividend payment to a tax avoidance special purpose vehicle (SPV) AOL Europe Sarl, registered in the tax haven of Luxembourg. This meant, despite returning 38% of revenue to shareholders, they had an effective tax rate of less than 1%. Guido looks forward to Ed’s article attacking AOL and HuffPo for “going to extraordinary lengths to avoid paying taxes”. His spokesman insists that “all companies need to be responsible.”

Further reading on HuffPo’s tax avoidance hypocrisy:

• Introducing Tax Avoiding HuffPo Luxembourg
• HuffPo’s Luxembourg Tax Dodge Bonanza Part II

MEDIA ADVISORY NOTE

STRICTLY NOT FOR PUBLICATION

Rebekah Brooks and Andrew Coulson, along with others, currently await trial in relation to allegations of misconduct and corruption at the News of the World and various other publications.

Editors and publishers are reminded of their responsibilities under the Contempt of Court Act 1981 (the Act).

In particular, the Attorney General wishes to draw attention to the risk of publishing material which could be seen to impede or prejudice the administration of justice in these proceedings – such as by publishing details of material which has not yet been called in evidence, and which may be subject to an application to exclude.

Editors and publishers should take legal advice to ensure they are in a position to fully comply with the obligations they are subject to under the Act.

-Ends-

For media enquiries please contact: The Attorney General’s Press Office

More defections expected this week…

Via Telegraph.

In today’s Sun column:

• find out which national newspaper editor has a crush on SamCam
• how NHS England spends your cash
• Read about Nadine’s bumpy bounce back
• Claire Perry’s sexy invitation
• why there is some money left for Liam Byrne
• Petrolheads and a Westminster wedding

All in your 60p Sun…

One nugget of news from James Forsyth that will be keeping them happy over at Telegraph towers: apparently the PM’s new favourite columnist is Ed-bashing Blairite refusenik Dan Hodges.

“At the moment, the Cameroons are whining about the Conservative party being ‘unleadable’. There is much quoting of Cameron’s new favourite columnist, Dan Hodges, a former trade union official who is equally scathing about Conservative backbenchers and Ed Miliband. But even those who are indulging in this pastime know that it is not serious politics: if they really believed the Conservative party was unleadable, they wouldn’t be spending their lives trying to lead it.”

As if he hadn’t got under Labour’s skin enough already…