editorsweblog.org

LAT's Wikitorial as "product-development"?

Eliot Bergson at 5W Mignon-Media café has blogged a new theory to the Los Angeles Times' wikitorial experiment. He questions LAT's op-ed page editor, Michael Kinsley's innocence in launching the idea to begin with. After so many years as an editor of a top online news site, wouldn't Kinsley have realized that the site would be immediately vandalized? Bergson thinks that Kinsley's may have pulled one over on us all, implementing the wikitorial project in order to boost LAT op-ed site traffic through "FREE product-development" via all of the coverage the experiment received. How sneaky. He concludes, "The LA Times’ “WikiScandal” is the best thing a newspaper has done this year to try and save this scandalously sclerotic industry from itself. Bravo."

Source: 5W Mignon-Media

Links to the wikitorial debate here

Printing technologies allow for rapid international distribution

Apart from the Internet diffusing news immediately over the globe, digital printing technologies are allowing papers to print their dailies overseas... even before being printed in their domestic markets. The New York Times has struck a deal with the digital printing firm Oce to print the complete newspaper to be distributed in London while New Yorkers are still sleeping. The Times will send PDF files of the daily news by 4h15 London time to be run off the press, ready for a 6h00 distribution time.

Source: Press Gazette

Lessons learned from "wikitorials" and the "death of the editorial page"

As editors at the Los Angeles Times rethink their wiki op-ed page that came to a somewhat embarrassing halt less than two days after its launch, several pundits have chimed in with advice for future experiments, other ideas for newspaper websites and bleak prospects for the future of newspapers' editorial staff:

Advice: Having both sides of the political spectrum fight over one article about the war in Iraq got a bit messy. To fix this, Jimmy Wales, founder of the wiki, was working with LAT to split the wiki into two camps. Essentially, right and left wing sympathizers would have their own wiki to work on, avoiding the tug-of war that ensued on the solely posted wiki page.

Although news organizations should be innovative, they may be playing with fire when handing over editorial powers to their readers, some of which are surely out to vandalize. Seeing as the demise of the wikitorial came so quickly due to the posting of "inappropriate" images, Steve Outing at Poynter calls for closer surveillance of citizen photos. A newspaper's brand name can be forever tarnished by a posting of illicit content (especially photos which have a more immediate impact than text), even if that content is only online for a few minutes. To discourage negligent postings, Outing suggests requiring contributors to register, giving a real name and email address, before being allowed to post. Editors should also give a quick once over to photos before putting them up on a site.

Ideas: "Pressure to innovate + media trends that are already happening + a litlle Kinsley-esque journalistic mischief-making" (Michael Kinsley, LAT's op-ed editor is the man behind the "wikitorial") is the formula behind 6 newspaper website "prototypes" that Elizabeth Spears at MediaBistro gathered from some of her colleagues. Highlights include:

- an index or graphic showing the political leanings of an article or the newspaper in general

- improved quality of articles to better the daily lot if stories listed in the Most Emailed List, which usually tend to be "dumbed down"

- include more graphics and visuals in order to attract younger generations, who are too distracted by other media to care about reading the newspaper

Who needs an op-ed page? With the plethora of blogs floating around the Internet, Jeff Jarvis at Buzzmachine asks why newspapers even continue to employ an editorial staff. "The truth is that an editorial is just another blog post written by one person with one viewpoint. Here's a case where you can't argue that it makes a difference having a journalism degree and a newsroom." Jarvis envisions the newspaper of the future as having a larger op-ed section, but one filled with the "highest ranked opinions found on Blogdex.net." Facing the immediacy and video and animation options of the Internet, Jarvis feels that it is very old-fashioned and no longer effective for newspapers to continue printing news.

Although a proponent of newspaper innovation, Jarvis also wonders what LAT was doing creating the wiki page in the first place. Instead of the editors dictating to their readers what they feel should be discussed, wiki topics should be left to the public "to share their knowledge and viewpoints." To do this, Jarvis points out that the public doesn't need a newspaper. There are plenty of Internet forums where these types of discussions can and are already taking place.

Sources: Poynter, MediaBistro and Buzzmachine

Giveaway promotions worrying advertisers

The idea of free giveaways, pairing a daily with a complimentary product, to sell newspapers is not new. But is it effective? Certainly for immediate circulation boosts, freebies seem to work, as noted by MediaWeek who reports that the promotions have raised circulation by up to 500,000 at papers in Britain. However, some, especially advertisers, worry that the "reader" simply pays for the paper in order to get the free product, tossing the news in the trash, never again bothering to buy the paper after obtaining their gift. Thusly, giveaways do nothing to promote brand loyalty nor increase time spent browsing advertisements. Chris Reed, VP of SP Partnerships, a firm which collaborates with newspapers on freebie marketing strategies, describes his personal experience saying, "I'm a Times reader, but I bought the Telegraph to get (a promotional DVD). But did I read the rest of the Telegraph? No, I chucked it straight in the bin." Many feel that promotions are a smoke-screen for waning circulations. Instead of spending the up to GBP 1 million that a giveaway costs, most advertisers would rather see newspapers investing in their own content. Higher quality content will theoretically attract more brand-loyal consumers that actually spend time reading a newspaper page and conversely, the adverts on that page.

Source: MediaWeek

Citizen journalism quickie: training, optimism and pessimism

So how's the citizen journalism movement shaping up? Here's a briefing:

- Freelance reporter Amy Gahran is partnering with former senior producer of ABCNews.com, A. Adam Glenn to educate citizen journalists. The initiative dubbed I, Reporter will include a blog, training program, workshops and educational materials among other features. She is currently trying to form a volunteer citizen-reporting team to report on a polemic issue in her Boulder, Colorado community. Steve Outing at Poynter backs the idea, saying that citizen reporters "need to understand why they might benefit from participating in local media. And they need advice on how to do it, and how to do it well."

- Outing praises a short video promotion of a recently launched citizen journalism site noting that it captures the essence of what citizen journalism should be: news "shared with the community by people who witnessed uncovered news events." Outing is generally optimistic about the evolving medium and hypothesizes that it will be the local, independent sites that make it work. Eventually, large media organizations will accept the movement and incorporate it into their own models.

- On the other hand, Sam Whitmore at Forbes is more pessimistic. "It all sounds great--but I predict most citizens media sites will fizzle." He cites poor literacy levels, citizens who would still "rather be pandered to as consumers than fulfill their duties as citizens" and "info-vandals" who barrage sites with illicit material. On the other hand, Whitmore feels that citizen media success will be found in sites that embrace the Ourmedia.org model, which allows free storage and bandwidth for anybody's videos, audio, photos, text or software.

The idea of citizen journalism is generally accepted as being a useful tool for the promotion of democracy and reporting of local events. As we've seen, some experiments succeed (OhmyNews) and some falter (LA Times "wikitorials"). Those looking to launch independent citizen sites have a carte blanche when deciding where they want to go with their project. But media companies looking to include citizens in their news may have to toy around with various business models before they get it right.

Sources: Poynter (I, Reporter and video), Christian Science Monitor and Forbes

Media: from the "Age of Scarcity" to the "Age of Abundance"

"Do you have more media options and outlets at your disposal today than you did 5 to 10 years ago?," asks Tech Central Station. There was a day, about the time that AOL and Time Warner joined forces, when it was predicted that the consolidation of media corporations would result in an Orwellian world where information would be surveyed and controlled by one large company. This is all but true today. "With traditional media operators and industries (books, magazines, newspapers, television, radio, CDs, etc.) experiencing rapidly declining audience share thanks to substitution by new forms of digital media (Internet, blogging, mobile devices, DVDs, video games, i-Pods, satellite radio, etc.), we can be sure that the media environment five years from now will look radically different than it does today." Many larger companies, once thought to threaten democracy, are struggling to find new business models and diversify into new media forms in order to stay alive in today's world of "information overload" in which "the question of who owns what or how much they own is irrelevant." Of course, this contradicts the vision of our last posting on the AP which was predicted to be one of the two news organizations left standing. It also opposes the apocalyptic view that many have of Google, which has overwhelmingly been declared a media company (former posting and New York Times article) and that continues to spew out innovations that make one wonder just how far it will push the media market.

Sources: Tech Central Station and New York Times

UK: The Guardian to stay focused on the news, not the "views"

Despite its upcoming format change (see previous posting), Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of The Guardian, insists that his daily will remain a newspaper, shirking the label "viewspaper" coined by his rival Simon Kelner of the Independent. At first stubborn to alter its appearance, the Guardian has given in to the compact wars and decided to launch a Berliner format in the fall, earlier than expected. Kelner and co. have stolen readers from the Guardian after switching to a tabloid format and pushing their product as focusing on the "views," a strategy that Kelner boasts has been the core of their circulation success. The Guardian is hoping that its smaller appearance at the newsstand (the Berliner format is two-thirds the size of a broadsheet but folded in half on the rack) will appeal more to the public than the tabloid-style Independent. And the Guardian's decision will not be the last British daily morphing. The Telegraph's editor, Martin Newland is said to be seriously considering a revamp of his paper to tabloid format.

Source: The Independent

US: The Los Angeles Times makes further changes to editorial pages

The Los Angeles Times announced to its readers this week that the paper’s editorial page will undergo many changes in the coming weeks, though its mission will remain the same.  Amongst the changes, the page will undergo a modest cosmetic redesign.  Some board members will occasionally write, under their byline, a column called “A SoCal Life” that reflects on life in Southern California.  Board members will also be able to dissent from editorials they disagree with, though only once a year each.   On some days the editorial page will include a box which will critique editorials in other newspapers.  The page will also include: analytical editorials concerning fundamental principles behind a policy debate that will hopefully evolve over the years into a coherent and consistent political philosophy and a column called “Thinking Out Loud,” specifically devoted to exploring possible public opinions on different topics.  The Los Angeles Time will also incorporate “wikitorials” onto the page. (see former posting) And the editors say they may print more editor’s notes to keep readers updated on new developments in the paper.  The editors want to be out in the community more often to explain what the paper is doing and to listen more closely to readers’ complaints.    The New York Times reports that Michael Kinsley, the editorial and opinion page editor of the Los Angeles Times, is making a bold attempt to make the editorial pages more dynamic, argumentative, and interactive.  Mr. Kinsley recently shook up the entire editorial staff at the Los Angeles Times, transferring four of his eleven writers, letting one go, and outsourcing some editorials to freelancers.  Some staff members are disgruntled about how Mr. Kinsely has gone about making such staff changes and how he incorporated his new plans for the editorial pages.   But for whatever internal upheavals the staff may be undergoing, it will certainly be interesting to see how the new editorial experiments turn out. 

Source:  The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times

France: citizen journalism arrives

As French quality dailies experience serious circulation declines, their former public is being furnished with their own voice. In the spirit of Korea's OhmyNews, Agoravox hit the Internet on May 20. The French daily Libération describes its new competitor as "one of the first completely free European citizen journalism initiatives on a grand scale." The 150 to 200 contributors the site has already registered are essentially "blogueurs," but come from varying backgrounds, from the unemployed to company bosses. Carlo Revelli, the experiment's founder, said "We're counting on growing, finding new authors, new articles, coming from associations, local groups, and simple citizens." Registration is free and each new "journalist" has the chance to post a short biography and photo. They can then write about whatever they feel like, their article eventually being placed in the proper news category which range from politics and economics to culture and sports. Agoravox stems from the experienced French internet consulting company Cybion, of which Revelli is co-founder. He and his Cybion partner Joel de Rosnay, have adapted ideas from other citizen journalism ventures, including OhmyNews and various sites in the United States. De Rosnay declares that citizens are inventing a "true democracy of communication" with such sites. Libération closes its article abruptly, asking if these sites are to be taken seriously. Considering its loss of readership, Libération may want to follow Agoravox's story. If it catches on, it may just be the tool that newspapers can adopt to revive interest in French quality journalism and a learning experience for other countries.

Source: Libération (in French)

UK: regional paper increases profits as circulation decreases

Competition from free papers and the Internet have caused a steady decline in circulation for the Yorkshire Post, a regional British daily, culminating in a 5% loss last year, reports the Guardian. Nevertheless, the Post enjoyed a 34% profit margin last year. In the past 10 years, the Yorkshire Press has bounced between four owners where in its previous 240 years of existence, it had had but one. Johnston Press, the newspaper company that bought the Post in 2002 and who witnessed the same profit percentage from its 244 newspapers, is heralded as the stimulus of the paper's margins. Although some worry that content is being sacrificed for profits, of the 122 jobs the company slashed last year, 37 were actually added to their total editorial staff. Of course salaries are low, but journalists who go into regional papers don't expect to be paid well to begin with. The staff of the Yorkshire Press believes that Johnston is actually treating them better than their previous 3 owners who were only after profit. Johnston's CEO, Tim Bowdler, happy with the purchase of the Yorkshire Press, would still like to see a rise in circulation. "You can never be completely happy until you can see sales grow," he said.

Source: The Guardian

The importance of a watchdog culture in newsrooms

What is watchdog journalism? And why is it important for newspapers to incorporate it in their reporting? The Poynter Institute hosted a conference last week with more than 30 publishers and editors to address such questions.  The conference, “Creating a Watchdog Culture: Claiming an Essential Newspaper Role,” touched on strategies to create newsroom cultures that allow watchdog journalism to flourish.  Comments from Charlotte Hall, editor of Orlando Sentinel, sum up the participants’ general consensus: “Watchdog journalism is a state of mind for the whole newspaper: Journalism that gives power to the people.”  Here’s a quick summary of participants’ reflections after they held small discussion sessions.

1. How can a newsroom evaluate its commitment to watchdog journalism? What actions from an editor and publisher, or in general, may underscore such a commitment?

To measure the commitment departments must examine the caliber of their work, the extent of resources and training devoted to the commitment, and the type of staff the newsroom hires.   If the editor and publisher stand united in their commitment and speak of it often, it can become a part of the newsroom culture.  The culture will be undermined if the editor and publisher step down from their strong stance of commitment or if stories produced are of poor quality. 

2.  How can readers evaluate the watchdog journalism in their papers?  And what should they expect from a watchdog paper?

Newspapers have to first find ways to explain what a watchdog culture is to readers and then must make sure the culture becomes apparent through the pages.  More importantly, from good watchdog papers readers should expect to see aggressive reporting that holds institutions accountable.  Readers should also expect reporting with both an international and national mindset and look for stories with a consumer focus.  Papers should make readers feel they are looking out for there interests, and should encourage reader feedback and connection.  The paper should also be willing to scrutinize itself and must make its goal of watchdog journalism clear to readers, perhaps through a printing copy of the paper’s code of ethics.  Paper’s should remind readers that they are on the reader’s side and must remember that a change in culture cannot happen overnight. 

3. What role can innovation play in a watchdog culture? 

A watchdog paper must be innovative in itself, deciding what to cover and involving readers in its agenda-setting.  Online technology and multimedia partnerships can pull out story ideas from the community.  Above all journalists should frame their stories with their audiences in mind, with better graphics, design, and information boxes. 

4. To whom should an editor entrust the responsibility of promoting watchdog journalism – to which reporters, photographers, editors?

All reporters new and old, photographers, graphic artists and designers, copy editors, and editors should be committed to promoting the watchdog culture. 

5. What role should newsroom policies and systems play in the health of a watchdog culture?

Newsrooms should conduct training sessions to promote a watchdog sensibility and help develop techniques. Moreover, editors need to make sure to hire staff that will be committed to the culture and should ensure that everyone in the newsroom is on the same page. 

6. What values and assumptions should be associated with the watchdog culture?

A wide range of values should be ingrained in a newsroom committed to watchdog journalism, including: fairness, honesty, collaboration, transparency, and interest in the community.  Moreover, staff members need to understand how essential the watchdog culture is to the value of the newspaper. 

7. What priority should be given to watchdog journalism?  Is there a good business argument to support it?

Since watchdog journalism is critical to newspapers’ mission, it should always be one of the top few priorities.  The business advantage to good watchdog journalism will surface not in the short term, but in the long term.  A good watchdog paper will eventually become an essential part of the community.   

Source: The Poynter Institute

UK: local newspapers threatened by Internet

Jemima Kiss at journalism.co.uk sums up her vision of Britain's local newspaper market for Local Newspaper Week with an anecdote from last months National Union of Journalists conference. The editors Ms. Kiss met at the conference saw the Internet as a 'threat' and the medium causing their papers' circulation decline. These are the kind of editors that are inhibiting the evolution of newspapers' Websites, according to Ms. Kiss. Many communities get most of the news traditionally printed in local newspapers at their community websites; job searches, buying a house, etc. She is disappointed at local British newspapers' attempts at transferring their news to the Internet and trumpets the adoption of citizen journalism; "If (newspapers) don't move into the citizen journalism space soon, someone else will." She does admit that it will take sacrifice as advertisers will have to get used to the Internet model, "but if you can produce quality content under a recognised brand name and be really innovative and experimental with your site, eventually you should be rewarded."

Source: journalism.co.uk

Spain: PDF's to count in newspaper circulation

Poynter summarizes a posting from e-periodistas that explains the Spanish government's (Infomacion y Control de Publicaciones (Introl) to be exact) decision to allow newspapers to include PDF downloads of their copies in their circulation figures. In this way, Introl hopes that newspapers will be able to show that their sales, normally calculated by subscription and newsstands, are not declining thanks to readers consulting the news on the Internet. Poynter says that this will "help to raise the value of the Internet among newspapers, not just as a distribution medium for the print product."

Sources: Poynter, e-periodistas (in Spanish)

News without newspapers

Jeff Jarvis blogs his preferred highlight from this week's Syndicate conference in New York, and it didn't come from a presentation. Chatting about finding the best business model to support quality journalism, media renaissance man, Doc Searls said, "You need to come up with business models that support news without newspapers." Jarvis blogs on describing how the "audience (will go) wherever it wants to go," and that advertisers will follow. Thus, newsrooms need to stop creating news and start gathering news, diffusing it "wherever, however, and whenever the community wants." It's obvious that the printed word isn't going to be able to do that, but, if it finds the right business models, newspapers could definitely play a significant role in this new media landscape.

Source: Buzzmachine

India: the Mumbai newspaper market heating up

Mumbai's English-language newspaper market is about to undergo a radical transformation, according to Agencyfaqs. Three English-language papers, the new DNA (Daily News & Analysis) a tabloid from The Times of India, and the Hindustan Times, are invading the city, spreading awareness of their coming launches with advertising campaigns. The Hindustan Times distinguishes itself as a paper of quality news compared to others, which it says focus more on entertainment, declaring "Let there be light." The Times of India, which is launching a tabloid version, boasts that its news is "100% Mumbai." Arguably the most interesting approach comes from the DNA, who is attracting future readers with the slogan "Speak up, it's in your DNA." DNA is passing out surveys around the city that ask potential readers what they would like to have in their daily reading, claiming that it will be a paper created by the readers, even awarding one lucky participant with a vacation.

These new entries are expected to be accompanied by a spike in advertising rates. Already existing papers such as Mid-Day have plans to raise their ad prices now to earn as much revenue as possible before the new dailies are launched. Besides marketing and advertising, Business Standard reports that the Hindustan Times is poised to sell 50,000 copies at a discounted price to mobile communications provider Airtel, who will then distribute the papers to its customers. Bennett, Coleman & Co., publisher of the Times of India and the Economic Times is considering giving its new tabloid for free to readers of the Economic Times. Stay tuned to see which marketing scheme works and which paper struggles in Mumbai.

Sources: Agencyfaqs (here and here) and Business Standard

The New York Times to add bloggers to its sales staff

If you're a blogger and our last posting worried you about New York Times' site access because of the paywall planned to start in September, don't worry: the Grey Lady wants to pay you for paying them! ClickZ News has more of Martin Nisenholtz, NYT's senior vice president of digital operations, who scrapped his prepared speech for the Syndicate conference in New York to explain TimesSelect, the USD 50 a year pay model. Obviously worried that the paywall will hinder bloggers from reading certain columnists and spread the Times' brand through their snappy commentary, Nisenholtz is giving bloggers incentive to pay the subscription fee. Essentially, if you, a blogger, pay the subscription, include NYT links in your postings, and are successful at convincing your blog's readers to subscribe to TimesSelect, the Times' will throw a bit back your way. "I don't see why this would be viewed as a negative thing if it creates revenues across the blogosphere," Nisenholtz justified. I suppose come September we'll find out if bloggers are willing to pay for Dowd, Krugman, and Kristof, but we must keep in mind that the blogosphere provides 9 million opinions. Hmmm, 9 million for free versus a staff of eight for 50 dollars? With this ratio, it's rather doubtful that bloggers will be sending subscription checks so that they can then work for the Times on commission.

ps. I'm going to have to retract a statement made yesterday about Nisenholtz claiming that TimesSelect is the only pay model the Times is considering. The ClickZ article also reports that the NYT is looking into paid RSS feeds. Are they deliberately trying to diminish their traffic?

Source: ClickZ News

Exaggerated circualtions explained

The Australian site Crikey describes a standard practice of newspapers that boosts circulation figures up to 15%, but which isn't completely honest. For decades, many papers have included hundreds of thousands of copies that were given away freely at hotels, schools, airports or sporting events in their 'paid' circulation figures given to the Audit Bureau of Circulation. Advertisers normally pay papers based on their paid circulation, i.e., the number of readers that will supposedly see their ad. But it is not assured, in fact it is highly unlikely that all if any of the free papers handed out will be read. Thus, advertisers have been essentially cheated for years. Problems of exaggerated circulation stats have recently rocked the US newspaper industry, resulting in a number of papers having to pay money back to their advertisers, With the Internet stealing readers and beginning to do the same with advertisers, revelations such as these are not going to help newspapers win back confidence from their customers.

Source: Crikey

US: free papers catching on

Jon Friedman writes on MarketWatch that New York City commuters are beginning to embrace free papers. When they were first launched, the tabloid sized dailies were mostly found scattered on the subway floor. But as the quality of their news and design has improved, so has their readership. New Yorkers are beginning to question their daily stop at the newsstand when they can pick up their quick news fix on the go from a vendor outside a subway stop and follow up on their morning briefing at their leisure online at the office. With one New York paper, The Sun, seemingly on the verge of going under and others losing and misquoting circulations, free papers may have more of an effect on America than originally thought. And the next logical step for newspapers could be the switch to tabloid.

Source: MarketWatch

US: Papers try podcasting to attract readers/listeners

According to The Wall Street Journal, many US newspapers and magazines have started to add podcasts to their online versions. Through podcasts, amateur broadcasters can read highlights from print versions and create audio files that are then posted on newspapers’ Web sites. Interested users can then use special software to listen to automated podcasts through the musical mp3 player, Apple Computer Inc.’s iPod. Newspapers and magazines including The Denver Post, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Philadelphia Daily News, Washington Post and Forbes have started podcasts with varying degrees of programming. Some podcasts merely summarize the day’s news, while others produce a more radio-style broadcast with interviews from reporters. Podcasts are different from audio and video reports because they are meant to be downloaded and played at a later time and are not streamed over the Internet. Some publications may have jumped on the podcast bandwagon after feeling behind for not embracing weblogs quickly enough. But it is still very unclear as to whether podcasts will help newspapers attract more readers. To date, most of the podcast broadcasters have little broadcasting experience and podcasting audiences remain small.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

US: Chicago Tribune consults its readers via internet before printing

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that the Chicago Tribune is involving its readers in its editorial process. Working with Communispace Corp., a company that organizes online panels. The Tribune has shown photos, layouts and headlines to groups of readers before publishing them, the process they used to test two new sections that were unveiled last week. Although most of the content the online panel sees has already been published, the trend of seeking readers’ advice could become widespread practice as newspapers struggle with attracting new readers. But advice doesn’t come cheap. Communispace’s bill for online consumer groups is upwards of USD 300,000. However, as we’ve said before, sacrificing huge profit margins to invest in research and development may be the only way in which the newspaper survives.

Source: Chicago Sun-Times

Incentive to invest in your newspaper's website

A new survey done by Nielsen/NetRatings done for the Newspaper Association of America found on YahooNews shows only increasing numbers for newspapers' websites readerships. From February to March of this year, unique audience grew 9%, page views by 38%, pages per reader 27% ad time per reader 6%. Overall, newspaper website traffic jumped 3.1% year on year, 44 million readers, or 29% of all internet users, consulting newspapers' online versions. President of the NAA's New Media Federation, Eliza Wing, commented that these readers are usually younger, educated, ethnically diverse, and employed. "Not only do newspaper reach a vast audience (online)... these are very loyal users, connected to their local news site and to the information, including advertising that appears there. The newspaper online audience presents an enormous opportunity." The data of the Nielsen survey is not all that surprising, one example being that the number of visitors to the New York Times website exceeds its print circulation.

A separate survey conducted by Burst! Media concluded that over 60% of online users are spending "much more" to "somewhat more time" online, resulting in less time dedicated to other medium. 25% of those interviewed said that their newspaper reading had dropped by almost a third over the past year. Chuck Moran, Burst's market research manager said, "This has made it increasingly difficult for marketers to not only reach their target consumer, but also get their attention. clearly advertisers are going where the audiences are going, as spending on the Internet also continues to grow." What Moran says is true, as seen in our mini-series on advertising, and seems to be a trend that is only going to perpetuate.

Source: YahooNews (Nielsen, Burst!)

US: Knight Ridder launches new free San Francisco daily

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, reader’s in San Francisco’s East Bay now have another choice amongst their free dailies thanks to the launch of the East Bay Daily News. In attempts to reach a new advertising market, the paper will be published weekdays by Knight Ridder. The paper will be distributed throughout the East Bay, which is an area “rich in academic, business and ethnic diversity,” described Knight Ridder Senior Vice President Hilary Schneider. While some editors of other free East Bay papers do no look favorably upon the launch, the new paper hopes to double its initial press run of 5,000 within a few days.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Spain: the free paper market becomes more saturated

Another free daily, Dicen, is to be launched in Madrid and Barcelona, according to PeriodistaDigital. Distributing a total of 200,000 copies between the two cities, the 24-page colorful paper claims to be the first Spanish free daily to cover "themes of the heart." It will be distributed using traditional freebie methods, at metro stops, hair stylists and supermarkets. Although the editorial staff has not yet been chosen, the new daily plans to launch in September. With the mediocre results of the title Que!, launched in February and competition from the well established and popular 20 Minutos and Metro, it will be interesting to see just how many free papers one country's market can support.

Source: PeriodistaDigital (in Spanish)

The New York Times responds to its readers and "new media"

"We strongly believe it is no longer sufficient to argue reflexively that our work speaks for itself. In today's media environment, such a minimal response damages our credibility." Responding to a public lack of confidence in the media and various scandals at the paper, the New York Times has issued a report to its staff that portends to regain the famed daily's credibility. Various suggestions were made by the internal committee, the combination of which seem to make the Times more responsive and transparent to its readers. These include making the distinction between news and opinion more evident, making it easier to contact reporters and editors, and the possibility of starting a blog.

Noting that the Times has been fairly silent in the face of criticism as of late, the report stated "We need to be more assertive about explaining ourselves - our decisions, our methods, our values, how we operate." Furthermore, the Gray Lady's reformation panel called for a broadening of the paper's coverage to rural America and "a broader array of cultural and lifestyle issues," as well as training its staff in television reporting. In response to recent complaints from the American government, the Times is also to reduce the number of anonymous sources it uses. As for its website, The Times hopes to post interview transcripts and other documents used by reporters in researching and writing to support their articles.

In related and somewhat sarcastic news, Staci D. Kramer at PaidContent reports that the Times is to redesign its Monday through Saturday Business Day section adding columnists, graphics, and editorial. The most interesting aspect of this makeover is a column by David Carr about "new media" which will include regular articles about "the world of blogs." Ms. Kramer jokes that since the Times is covering them, blogs and "new media" are now "official" and "institutionalized." As a resutl, from now on it could be a downhill ride for the blogosphere's popularity.

Transparency? Redesigning? Training reporters in television? Blogs? Could it be that the epitome of "mainstream media" (MSM) is adapting to "new media?" Well, yeah! In an interview with the Boston Globe, Times executive editor Bill Keller highlighted last autumn's American elections in which bloggers slammed the MSM on its credibility and its apparent lack of rigorous investigative reporting, accusations to which many papers were hesitant to respond. "I think a lot of times we ignore critics or react slowly, so that [the criticisms] ricochet out to the world without being addressed." All of these recommendations sound noble, but it may take some time for the Times to adapt to today's new media environment. Commenting on the suggestion to add a column written by the executive and managing editors, Keller said he wasn't sure where to start.

Sources: The New York Times, PaidContent, The Boston Globe

Wall Street Journal switch to compact update

Rafat Ali at PaidContent elaborates on the Wall Street Journal's May 8 confirmation about converting its European and Asian editions to compact. Dow Jones projects the Journal's savings at USD 17 million from 2006 but costs in 2005 for the planned October 17th switch will be more than the amount saved. One major feature of the new format is closer integration with the financial daily's website. A page in the printed journal will alert readers to articles that were published online between print editions and the two versions of the Journal will supposedly be marketed together.

A couple of questions to keep in mind:

- Most changes in format are inherently followed by changes in format. How is the Journal going to avoid this seeing as it is one of the most trusted sources for financial news on the planet?

- If this switch recaptures lagging sales outside of the States and its successful website takes more and more readers from the print edition, will we see the American version of the Journal follow in its foreign relatives' footsteps?

Source: PaidContent

India: Times redesigns

Agencyfaqs reports that in the face of new competition from proposed English-language newspapers, the Times of India has begun to give itself a new look. Apart from personnel changes, the major daily has improved its presentation, added more color pages and has introduced a six-page city and a four page international supplement. It's Sunday edition followed in presentation enhancements and also added new cultural and book sections. The pinksheet Economic Times is also being marketed more aggressively with news that Western financial publications such as Business Week and the Wall Street Journal are poised to enter into the Indian market (see former posting).

Source: Agencyfaqs

Ubiquitous Google angering local papers... and entire countries

Snaking its digital tentacles into every Internet nook and cranny, Google is beginning to peeve a number of organizations. Firstly, the search engine's research on a "web accelerator" described by Poynter essentially portrays Google as the Internet's Big Brother. Already having a good idea of consumer behavior through AdSense and Gmail (previous posting), the "accelerator" would position Google between the web surfer and content, without the reader nor the distributor of the content knowing it, allowing Google to constantly track millions of online users. This alone may be frightening (or beneficial if you hook your business up with Google), but it gets worse.

- Reacting to announcements that GoogleNews will implement a new algorithm to search news sites by quality ratings (previous posting), smaller papers are in an uproar. They're scared that their news will become irrelevant as it appears that Google's definition of quality news will be major outlets. Digital Media Europe (DME) says that local media are "particularly concerned that Google is abandoning its commitment to avoiding bias" because it will begin to use human input, which is inherently biased, along with its computer editors.

- Furthermore, Dan Gillmor posts that Google may soon dominate the local movie search and review market. One of the comments points out that anyone can receive local theaters and showtimes as well as reviews on their mobile phone through Google SMS, essentially rendering local theater websites as well as newspapers' standard movie pages irrelevant.

- Local papers and theaters announcements aren't the only ones that Google could eventually erase. DME reports that in response to founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin's euro 155 million ten-year plan to digitize the libraries at Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford, 19 national European libraries, following the plea of French president Jacques Chirac, who criticized Google for being Anglo-centric, have signed a petition promoting research for a European equivalent. Seeing as Google is already everywhere, it may just be a matter of time before they buy the rights to this project as well.

Sources: Poynter, Digital Media Europe (quality news and European libraries, and Dan Gillmor

US: why young people don't read the newspaper

We all know that younger generations are not reading newspapers. But has anyone gone to the source to ask why? Greg Gatlin of the Boston Herald recently paid a visit to an American college to talk to a journalism class, but ended up asking them about their own media habits. His findings were somewhat surprising. It's seems that younger people aren't allergic to newspapers so much as they; 1. don't want to pay for it, and 2. demand more convenient access. Most students don't apply to a newspaper unless required by their classes, and even then they find them inconvenient because they are usually forced to walk to the bookstore to pick it up. Essentially, American college students, a cherished demographic, ask themselves, "Why pay for something that I can only pick up by walking all the way across campus when I could get the same product on my computer for free five seconds after I roll out of bed?" Realizing this, newspapers are targeting campuses. Some universities now pay for the paper to be distributed on their campuses and others have the paper sponsored by outside organizations. Still, it seems that newspaper classifieds may never come back, as the large majority of students said that when it comes to looking for a job they turn to the internet. And as so far as appeal goes, younger people still find newspapers lacking. They want their news to be "more opinionated, fun, colorful, and (engaging)."

Source: Boston Herald

Jordan: Western style tabloid launched

"We are the first tabloid-size daily similar to those published abroad," said Awni Da'ud, chief editor of the new Jordanian tabloid Al-Anbat. The independent political compact will employ a staff of 100 including journalists with varying political views and claims to combine the "credibility of dailies with the boldness of the weeklies." The staff hopes that its financial and editorial independence will allow the paper to take more daring political positions in a country already known for a sarcastic and critical press. Al-Anbat will be the sixth Arab-language daily in the country.

Source: Jordan Times

Norway: dailies to switch to tabloid format

Following in the footsteps of Aftenposten, four Norwegian dailies, Adresseavise, Bergens Tidende, Stavanger Aftenblad, and Faedrelandsvennen, have appointed a joint committee to discuss changing to tabloid format. All papers are exhibiting much enthusiasm for the trend which has been sweeping Europe for a year and a half and which is becoming popular the world over.

Source: NRK, Oslo (in Norwegian)

UK: the dying daily

Publisher of three major UK newspapers, Andrew Neil recently predicted the demise of the daily newspaper. Quoted on MediaWeek, Neil said, "There is a different pace to the printed word, now that we are in the age of internet. We all have to change and adapt to new circumstances - the printed word is more suited to the rhythm of the weekly." Neil may be on to something. With breaking news being immediately posted on the Internet, it has been predicted that newspapers will have to become more reflective in order to remain relevant. Thorough inflection is hard to accomplish in one day. But a week suffices for writing a well thought-out article, as proved by the famed British weekly The Economist, which pushed past the 1 million subscriber mark a few months ago. Simon Kelner of The Independent has said that it's the views behind the news that will matter (see former posting). The future of mainstream printed word may not lie in who breaks the scoop, but in who can critically analyze events, providing a deeper understanding for the reader.

Source: MediaWeek

Call for free archives

After hearing that the New York Times will test readers willingness to pay bulk fees for access to its archives, Business Week's Stephen Baker recalls Dan Gillmor's January plea that newspapers free them up. Baker fears that if newspapers keep their annals locked up behind pay walls that history will be "ceded" to the plethora of free information provided by blogs. Instead of charging readers, Gillmor thinks that newspapers will earn more from advertising in their library of articles. Personally (read previous posting), I'd still take a trip down to the local library where all archives are free before paying USD 50 a year or even worse, USD 3 an article. By charging for history on the Web, the New York Times is alienating readers, especially those younger ones they're trying to attract, for example, students doing research on minimal budgets.

Source: Business Week

India's booming newspaper market

With a 23.2% circulation increase over the past five years, the Indian newspaper market, arguably the world's biggest is doing anything but following industry trends over the rest of the globe. WebIndia123 gives some surprising statistics:

- 55,780 registered newspapers
- 10% rise in reader base from 2001 to 2003
- 142 million total circulation

Some of the market's success can be attributed to the diversity of the country as there are many local papers printed in local languages. Recently, the Indian government has erased restrictions that were keeping foreign investors out of the market, something about which domestic newspapers are excited as they think foreign money will help them to improve their publications. Presently, Western publications from Business Week, the Wall Street Journal and the International Herald Tribune are all looking to establish themselves in India.

Source: WebIndia123

Blogging for cash: how will newspapers profit?

When Jason Calcanis, founder of Weblogs Inc., was starting his company, he learned quickly that bloggers wanted some remuneration for their efforts. "When we started last year, we found only 1 in 20 bloggers wanted to work for free for the 6 to 18 months it takes to get a blog to break even. So we started offering folks pay, and 19 out of 20 went for the deal." Now, Business 2.0 describes the next step in profit blogging being undertaken by John Battelle, formerly of Industry Standard. Battelle is working on FM (Federated Media) Publishing, an organization which he hopes will attract bloggers who have created feasible business models for their blogs. If accepted in the company, these bloggers will be helped by Battelle who will sell category-specific advertising, aggregate traffic and deal with the technical and business side of each blog. Searching for funding, Battelle says that he's not out to steal people's ideas. Each blogger will maintain ownership of his/her own site.

In related news, Loic Le Meur, chief of the blogging company Six Apart on South Africa's IOL.co.za says that blogs can bring in revenue. "Several brand names are beginning to seek out those bloggers who are influential in their fields, to pay them and get them to test products. Media see in this an opportunity for this to evolve form a brand that diffuses information, to a brand that gives its readers their say."

The question this leaves us with is how can newspapers, many of which have already begun incorporating blogs on their Websites, collect revenue through the blogosphere? Is there a viable business model? Are blogs and newspapers even compatible, or will they exist to oppose one another. And the worst case scenario, will independent blogs become successful enough to rival newspaper revenues?

Sources: Business 2.0, iol.co.za

Internet advertising vs. Newspaper advertising (III)

"Online ads including video are now an established piece of the marketing pie for many big players," confirms Fiona McDonnell, a senior analyst at Forrester Research on E-Commerce Times. With the online ad industry booming and predicted to grow 30% by the end of 2005, advertisers are beginning to ditch print for the Internet. The Economist notes that on average, only 2-4% of a company's budget is dedicated to online ads, but with 15% of media consumers surfing the Net, a percentage that is rapidly growing, companies are developing their online strategies. Following up on our previous two postings (here and here), here's this week's advertising round-up.

The problem with newspapers: Advertiser see newspapers as, "static, inflexible, and hard to buy. It doesn't help any that media buyers are under 30, and their focus is elsewhere." The New York Times prints these not so optimistic words from Earl Cox, CEO of Martin Agency, a firm hired by the Newspaper Association of America to improve the public and advertisers' view of newspapers. To improve their situation with advertisers, Cox feels that newspapers need to reinforce the image of their readers who tend to be more focused and engaged than those surfing the Net. He suggests that the industry stop thinking of itself as being in "the newspapers business," and consider itself as being "in the business of news."

Video and branded entertainment: With the expansion of broadband, found on over half of all computers in the US and Great Britain, video advertising is becoming more common, says E-Commerce Times. 27% of American Web crawlers claim they watch online video once a week. Internet video advertising also opens up more appealing means of selling products. Through branded entertainment, which usually includes video, advertisers are interacting more with consumers, shedding their image as necessary annoyances and providing small productions that grab the viewers attention, simultaneously diffusing their product's message.

Local advertising: The New York Times prints stats that show local Web searches as well as local internet yellow page searches more than doubled from January 2004 to February 2005. The 6 million small firms that spend USD 30bil on advertising a year are catching on using sites such as Superpages.com. What is holding the industry in suspense now is whether or not local firms will decide to bypass yellow pages and newspaper websites and advertise directly through search engines like Google and Yahoo who have begun pandering to local advertising markets.

Free classifieds: Steve Outing at Poynter is still convinced that paid newspaper classified ads are not going to last long. Craigslist has penetrated many markets and is only going to get bigger as more people discover how easy it is to use. "(Newspapers) need to explore techniques for making money from hosting a free-ads marketplace -- upsells, targeted display and text advertising, handling the transaction and taking a cut, hosting consumer-to -consumer auctions, etc."

Sources: E-Commerce Times, The Economist, The New York Times (winning back advertisers and local) , Poynter

More threats to the commuter newspaper market

To put it simply, it's getting harder and harder for publishers to sell newspapers to rush hour commuters. Despite its official status as a paid-daily, about 65,000 out of 80,000 copies of Chicago's tabloid style Red Eye are handed out for free at subway stations, reports Chicago Reader. Giving the youth-focused paper away yields higher circulation which in turn allows it to charge more for advertising. Newspapers and their distributers are feeling the crunch. Some kiosks, used to selling 500 papers a day, have seen their sales plummet to 100 copies. In trying to regain their sales, Windy City vendors have implemented promotions such as seducing readers to buy a major daily and turn in their Red Eye in exchange for a free cup of coffee.

We may also be witnessing the end of taxi commuter newspaper readers according to Telematics Journal. Cab companies in London, New York, Australia, and China have been installing high resolution, flat screen televisions for their passengers that play major news and entertainment channels. After being forced to watch a number of advertisements, former newspaper readers are free to browse television stations with the control pads on either side of the taxi. Advertisers such as Virgin Atlantic and Nokia have already jumped on the taxi TV bandwagon taking more business from newspapers.

Sources: Chicago Reader, Telematics Journal

Newspaper journalism will survive, but not the print medium

Newspaper journalism is stronger than ever. But the newspaper itself has seen better days. Adam Penenberg, assistant professor in the business and economic reporting program at New York University, writes on Wired News, "People haven't been abandoning newspapers. They have been abandoning the print medium... More people read traditonal news outlets today than ever before. But they are doing it on a screen." Penenberg points out that the many of the most visited web sites around the world are major media organizations and newspapers.

Quoted in Christian Science Monitor in an article entitled "Newspapers struggle to avoid their own obit," Penenberg is quoted also puts faith in younger readers, a demographic that many believe don't read the news, who he says are "voracious" readers. Having accustomed themselves to reading the news online, packaging it in personal ways, skipping from site to site and article to article, Penenberg echoes stats from Poynter that show that 1/3 of the 18 to 24 age group prefer to read their news online, as opposed to 10% who read a newspaper.

Another article in The Australian quotes Mike Game, COO of Fairfax Digital, who says "New media has not replaced the core attribute of newspapers, which is the ability to analyze and to provide much deeper insight." Fairfax Digital, Game explained, is also attracting young readers through its websites that printed news is failing to pick up. Nic Jones, managing director of News Interactive considers newspapers as "content manufacturers" and feels that, being a media company, they should distribute their content through whatever means necessary, including the Internet and mobile phones.

Sources: Wired News, Poynter, Christian Science Monitor, The Australian

India: turbulent Hindustan Times

The Hindustan Times is to announce a complete makeover today reports Agencyfaqs!. The redesigning will include the masthead, page organization, more pictures and smaller font. Overall, the paper aims to be more visual, supporting content with the added pictures. In related news, Financial Express says that the Times is considering launching a financial paper as well as additional English editions in several key markets.

Sources: Agencyfaqs! and Financial Express

Some more advice on Internet advertising

Updating a recent posting, some new developments in online advertising have emerged. Found on Wired News, the most promising, which, for its efficiency in targeting, will probably become the industry standard as the medium evolves, is called behavioral marketing. Already tested by the well-known Internet retailer Amazon, behavioral marketing uses the capabilities of the Internet to track an individual's Internet searches, consequently posting ads related to these searches. If newspaper websites are able to implement this ad strategy, it will more than likely be highly profitable as advertisers will be sure not only that the consumer will see their ad, but that the ad will peak their interest. Personalized ads will theoretically be welcomed by the consumer instead of being seen as a nuisance.

Then there's Google. Poynter references Robert McLaw's Longhorn Blogs which includes advertsing in RSS feeds, a feasibly profitable venture that Internet barons have been trying to work out for some time. Google has jumped on the opportunity, testing its AdSense ads in RSS feeds. If the tests are a success, RSS ads will be an extra source of income for bloggers and newspapers, and of course, Google.

As for the classified market that has been feared to be lost to the Internet, Poynter also notes that the time a classified stays on Craigslist, 30 to 45 days, is a positive thing. Some pessimistically see this as an annoyance because occasionally the classified browser will click on a product that has already been sold. But Poynter notes that this is also a positive feature because sometimes products aren't bought immediately; the longer it's posted, the longer people will see it. Anyway, it's easy to delete a classified from a Craiglist page once the product has been sold. And, let's not forget that the service is free.

Sources: Wired News, Poynter (Google, Classifieds)

Wikinews: the trials and tribulations of editing citizen journalism

Blazing the collective intelligence trail for the world, the Wikinews project is certainly having its ups and downs. But six months after its launch, it's still chugging along. Wired News describes the challenges that the offshoot of Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia to which anyone can contribute and edit, is facing in attracting original stories and editing and fact checking material from news amateurs. Most stories that show up on the site are rehashings of syndicated global news. But now and again, original stories pop up, such as opening discount stores in southern Romania. Jimmy Wales, the founder of the Wiki is optimistic that the site will become more diverse as people catch on around the world, posting articles well out of the sights of major media corporations. And although editing remains a daunting task for the Wikinews crew especially because of digital vandals, one of their goals, the neutrality of its postings, is apparently being accomplished according to Bill Mitchell at Poynter. Stay tuned to see where collective intelligence will take the world of journalism and read our former postings here and here.

Source: Wired News

Advice on the tabloid trend from the experts

Garcia Media, an information design firm, has recently published a report about compact conversions that is sure to be the go-to document for all papers considering the switch. The 23-page PDF includes a detailed history of conversions worldwide, a summary of free papers, reasons for transforming your paper, and advice on how to do so. Mario Garcia and Co. have worked with 16 broadsheets around the world who decided to shrink in size to appeal to the changing habits of their readers. Read the report at Garcia Media (top right hand corner of page).

Source: Poynter

How Google is affecting newspapers

A phenomenon that is becoming impossible to live without, Google has facilitated the rapid expansion of the Internet in ways no other digital entity could ever dream. It may even be safe to say that practically no one goes online without consulting the simply designed page, giggling at whatever witty costume the famous logo might be wearing depending on the day. With features such as AdWords and GoogleNews, its Internet penetration, already profound, looks only to be growing deeper. So what does Google's Internet universality mean for your newspaper?

Advertising: With news this week that Google's AdSense plans to incorporate graphics and animated features, their share of the online advertising market, already at the point of overtaking all traditional media ad revenues, is sure to increase. Another highlight of Google's ads is that they shun traditional packaged one-price ad models by charging per click and/or impression. Poynter predicts that although publishers (most of which have adopted Google's simple ad plan), may not want to include such ads on their sites, the fear of losing revenue will ultimately convince them that such ads are necessary. Invoking the Trojan Horse comparison, Poynter wonders what Google's next move is, seeing as "Publishers have let AdSense inside the gates."

Readership: Although GoogleNews still lags behind competing news sources and aggregators, its links to newspapers' online articles is good publicity for papers. Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine media pundit points out that "Without GoogleNews, (all media) would get less traffic." Others have gone so far to say that refusing GoogleNews to post your articles is suicide.

Search: What about your journalists? According to an article on U-DailyBulletin, it's safe to say that much of their research is fueled by Google. "It's difficult to imagine how journalists, students, or anyone functioned pre-search enginges." The amount of "googlers" worldwide may eventually replace the verb "to search" in every language with the verb "to Google."

Your business: Watch out! An article in the Los Angeles Times predicts that soon Google will be interested in buying your newspaper "in order to differentiate itself by offering high-quality, proprietary news." Somewhat humorously, the Times notes that the market value of Dow Jones is a steal at under USd 3 billion, a number by which "Google's value often fluctuates... in one day of trading." But that's just humor. Isn't it?

Sources: Poynter, BuzzMachine, U-Daily Bulletin, Los Angeles Times

The Content Generation's media coup d'etat

The Media Center has posted a PDF briefing about the future of news. And guess what... it predicts that large national newspapers will peter out, giving way to papers considerably reduced in size and pitched to niche interests. Other highlights include what the news business should really be asking itself about its future, a summary of how technology is going to change the news process, and the rise of citizen storytellers. Certainly this is an essential document for understanding where the Content Generation, fueled by ever evolving technology is going to take the news business.

Source: The Media Center through PaidContent

Metro keeps rolling along

On Gaceta de Prensa: Distributing almost 7 million copies a day after recent expansions, Metro continues to drive the free paper craze and is becoming significantly more profitable. Having launched 11 new editions in 5 countries over the last trimester, Metro International saw its sales jump 28% on the same period last year. It's profits jumped to almost Euro 6 million from well under 400,000 last year. Six of its sixteen national divisions declared profits. As it's local papers continue to expand and it branches out into other ventures (see previous posting), it will surely not deviate from the successful trail it is blazing.

Source: Gaceta de Prensa (in Spanish)

Scotland: the difficulties of launching a newspaper

BBC News reports that a mere seven weeks after its first copy hit the stands, the readers of the Scottish Standard have folded the Scottish national tabloid for the last time proving. This unfortunate turn of events for a paper thought by its editors and staff to be filling a niche in the Scottish newspaper market shows the difficulties anyone undertakes in launching a new publication in a saturated market without sufficient funds. Scottish Socialist party leader and contributor to the Standard Colin Fox said, "The Scottish Standard provided a much needed radical edge to Scottish newspapers and its closure is deeply regrettable."

Source: BBC News also see former posting about the Standard's launch

What women want from newspapers

"Women are fleeing newspapers in droves. If present trends continue, 19 million women will drop their subscriptions in the next decade." Noting that 80% of subjects in newspaper stories and 70% of their photos involve men but that women are the main readers or advertisements, an article in Rocky Mountain News insists that "As a bottom-line issue, it's 'suicidal' for the industry to overlook women." So what do women want? "Narrative, storytelling reporting...graphics, Q&A...local news...stories that tell them how to solve problems." A recent complaint in the US about the misrepresentation of women on American op-ed pages led to studies that have shown that the percentage of top editor positions was down to 20% in 2002, that a mere quarter of syndicated columnists are women, and that only 10 to 20% of op-ed columns are written by women. So who's working to change this? In 2002, media critic Jennifer Pozner founded Women in Media & News, an organization aimed at improving media for women, and is currently working on Perspectives of Women Expand Reporting (POWER). But women seem to have different opinions on how to improve their news experience.

Cynthia Miller, a managing partner at Newsroom Leadership Group feels that hiring more females in newsrooms would be a "huge step in the right direction" but Pozner cites others who don't see this as going far enough. She feels that the dynamic of the newsroom needs to be changed in order to better integrate women. Opinions differ geographically as well. Miller's husband Edward Miller, also a managing partner at Newsroom Leadership Group rejects the idea of female news packaged in supplements; "When you ghettoize women, you marginalize them." But in Europe, newspapers regularly publish such magazines with success. France's Le Figaro prints the weekly Madame Figaro, Italy's Corriere della Sera, Io Donna, and the Spanish daily El Mundo has just released news that it is to launch a weekly supplement for women in May entitled Yo Dona. El Mundo's version will discuss issues most pertinent to women as well as cultural and political news in a 150-page magazine published by a staff of about thirty. Thus, it appears that newspapers will have to research their own readerships to find out what women want. But they'd better do it soon before they lose this demographic so valued by their advertisers.

Source: Rocky Mountain News, In These Times, El Mundo (in Spanish)

Major newspapers experimenting with e-paper

As predictions of the end of the printed word run rampant, it seems that a few major dailies have been investigating into future possibilities of distributing their news. Having already been displayed at March's electronic expo in Tokyo, e-paper (electronic paper) is the latest technology of interest for newspapers, according to the French technology Website EETimes. The Japanese daily Yomiuri Shimbun joined with the tech firm E Ink to create an electronic screen 240 by 240 centimeters designed to diffuse the paper's news. And Nicholas Sheridon, researcher at Xerox which has invented one of the three principle methods of placing an image on electronic paper, confirmed that "(The New York Times and Chicago Tribune) are looking into something about 45 to 50 centimeters long, with the possibility of download from a satellite, cellular phone, or a decoder." E-paper allows users to download various texts, from books to your daily newspaper, onto a portable, rechargeable and flexible electronic screen which diffuses images at approximately the same resolution as reading a newspaper. Russell Wilcox, president and co-founder of E Ink, said that e-paper will soon be released to the American consumer. "In my humble opinion, this technology will witness exponential growth." Newspapers may want to learn how to converge their content with this new technology for the sake of their survival. For some more information on e-paper, check out these former postings here and here.

Source: EETimes (in French)

US: two Websites for one paper? Picking washingtonpost.com's brain

Mark Glaser at Online Journalism Review recently interviewed CEO and publisher of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Caroline Little and washingtonpost.com's executive editor Jim Brady to find out where the heralded paper's web strategy is going. Here are some of the main ideas:

Splitting the website: Since the Washington Post juggles local and international news, Little and Brady are contemplating separating these domains into two separate sites pandering to their two distinct readerships. Site registration and location will determine which page is opened on the reader's computer.

No paid content: Both execs are hesitant about charging for their online material. With various search engines and blogs constantly connecting to their content, they figure that building a paywall will only be detrimental to traffic as so many other free news sites still remain.

Blogs: Although the paper has been launching a number of blogs on its site and would like to continue to do so, Brady sees a kind of contradiction in their use. He questions putting all of their blogs on one site seeing as they are so varied in subject matter.

Advertising: Both Brady and Little prioritize content. Quality content attracts readers, and readers attract advertisers.

Human vs. computer editors: For Brady, the human editor adds more value to the content. Referring to the popularity of its columns White House Briefing, Media Notes, and Today's Papers on the recently purchased Slate, "human aggregators" that WaPo employs are more valuable than their computer equivalents at Google or Yahoo.

Citizen's journalism: Although they're not ready to open their website to citizen publisher's quite yet, Brady is keeping an eye on the new medium and toying with ideas on how to implement it. If ever adopted, he says that it will be used where it makes the most sense; in hyper-local news.

Multimedia: WaPo.com has been showered with awards for its use of online images and video, but readers don't seem to know so. Presently, they are working on ways to make it more visible and easier to use, taking full advantage of the opportunities the Internet adds to journalism.

Mobile: Like most papers, WaPo is figuring out the best and most profitable way of integrating its content into mobile devices. Brady says that it's possible that news organizations will have to adapt to this evolving means of diffusing news.

Source: Online Journalism Review

Spain: El Mundo sues over "intellectual property" infringements

Following in the footsteps of Agence France Presse suing for the removal of its content from Google, the major Spanish daily El Mundo has demanded that Periodista Digital cease using its material. Periodista Digital, whose slogan is "The newspaper of newspapers," has its own staff of journalists, but also uses articles and photos from many other Spanish publications and media. El Mundo complains that without any effort, the Website has been benefiting financially through advertising by posting the work of others in a similar format to that of a daily newspaper and identical to elmundo.es. It does not simply publish fractions of other publications' work, but the entire copy, editorials, and photos. El Mundo would like to see periodistadigital.com suspended with no possibility of restarting as well as the erasure of the many issues it has published. Monetarily, El Mundo is asking for over Euro 3m in damages.

With this news, it appears that the verdict is still out: as newspaper websites and aggregators evolve together, will a paper profit more from prohibiting the use of its content by digital news collectors, or do aggregators help to spread their brand name?

Source: El Mundo (in Spanish)

UK: media groups show interest in London afternoon freesheets

The Media Bulletin reports that Gaurdian Newspapers, which publishes The Guardian and The Observer, might present a bid for the upcoming London Underground distribution of an afternoon freesheet (see former posting). Other newspaper groups have shown interest in the bid set for July 1, including Express Newspapers and NewsGroup Newspapers. The Guardian Media Group already has experience in the free newspaper market, as it co-publishes the Metro free newspaper in Manchester and a free afternoon version of the Manchester Evening News. Apart from the London Underground bid, according to Media Week, the Financial Times officially launched the first edition of its afternoon freesheet called FTpm. Originally set to launch later this month, the first edition of FTpm appeared a few days ahead of schedule.

Source: Media Bulletin and Media Week

Europe: the tabloid trend trumps all

"With the generalization of the tabloid format, some feel we are undergoing a graphic homogeny of newspapers. This is false. When you put all these papers side by side, you can see that their templates are almost infinite," commented German newspaper designer Norbert Kupper in Belgium's La Libre. The consensus at the Sixth European Newspaper Congress, held last week in Vienna, Austria was one of compact praise. In attracting young readers and curbing circulation declines, the more than 300 editors-in-chief that gathered for the conference realized that compact formats were creating success stories all over the continent. Specific examples included Holland's Het Parool, whose reformed business model seeks to attract young readers made it the only Dutch daily to gain readers, and Germany's Die Welt whose launch of a reduced-price compact bucked industry trends in adding readers. Other schemes to attract readers including the development of "services" such as music and dating, and the addition of various topic-specific supplements. But the switch to compact, most notably felt by design departments and artistic directors who have become increasingly important to Europe's innovative papers, certainly won the congress' blue ribbon.

Source: La Libre

Spain: first opinionated freebie launched

Madrid witnessed the launching of its first free ideological evening paper, Ahora, on Monday, according to Juan Varela at Periodistas 21. Opinionated columns are not the norm in Spain's booming free paper market and Ahora will attempt to fill this niche with right-leaning editorial, echoing the sentiments of a population unsatisfied with its left-wing government. 200,000 copies were distributed in restaurants, universities, secondary schools, upscale hotels and office buildings for the new daily's inauguration.

Source: Periodistas 21

AP to charge media for right to publish its content online

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports that the Associated Press will begin to require newspapers and other media to pay when posting its material online. Up until now, the more than 15,000 media organizations that buy AP's content were allowed to place it on their Websites with no extra fees. But as of January 1, 2006, the AP will be the latest organization to increase their online revenue. At the Newspaper Association of America's annual conference, the AP's president and CEO Tom Curley explained "The need for online licensing is clear. For the Associated Press to endure during this digital transition, we must be able to preserve the value and enforce the rights of our intellectual property across the media spectrum." Another move to ensure the future success of the AP described by Curley involves a multimedia package designed to attract younger readers who turn more and more to the Internet for their news. "As the audience turns to new platforms and adopts new habits, the news must follow," Curley said.

Source: The Sun-Sentinel See Mr. Curley's speech here

USA Today founder pushes for further internet development

Yet another important figure in the media industry, USA Today founder Al Neuharth, expresses his views on the wavering survival of newspapers in the internet age through a recent article in USA Today. In the same vain as Rupert Murdoch's speech last week (see former posting) at the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Neuharth also encourages newspaper leaders to embrace rather than shy away from investing in Internet innovations. Neuharth stresses that papers should look beyond short term revenues, and focus on ensuring success in the long run. Newspapers need to start appealing more to younger generations before they become all too addicted to TV and the Internet, and should hire “internet experts to help ‘soften up’ their products for more general appeal,” explains Neuharth.

Source: USA Today

France: daily launches email updates covering local communities

Journal du Net Solutions reports that the French daily Ouest-France has launched a new service that will send headlines through emails to its subscribers covering local communities of their choice. The service, initially conceived as a supplement to subscribers interested in local news not covered by their edition, was available through the paper's website. At least ten thousand users have subscribed to this service since its launch at the end of 2004, and the numbers continue to grow. The new facet of the service that will send the headlines through emails will be called “en direct de ma commune,” meaning "live from my community", and will cover 3,500 communities within the paper’s coverage zone. Ouest-France is the first French daily to propose such a concept.

Source: JDN Solutions

OhmyNews International : "We update 24/7."

The Editors Weblog had the chance to have a question and answer session with Jean K. Min, Director of OhmyNews International which has recently opened up its citizen journalism site to the world (see previous posting). Below, Mr. Kim describes how Korea's citizen journalism sensation works, how its newsroom functions differ from those of newspapers, and where the future of the phenomenon may be headed.

1. How is it possible to edit and fact-check stories from 37,000 citizen reporters, a number that's going to continue to grow? Are your editors taught a specific strategy in order to deal with this huge amount?

The number of articles submitted from 37,000 OhmyNews citizen reporters is between 150 and 200 per day, which is barely manageable amount for our 12 dedicated copyeditors to handle with. As you see, not every citizen reporter writes story everyday though some do. However since we are receiving an increasing number of stories recently, OhmyNews plans to hire more copyeditors to cope with this increase. There is multi-step screening process until the articles appear on the main page. During the first screening stage, about 30% is rejected. Remaining 70% is given an 'Ingul' status in the first place. Among the 70% that we accepted, copy editors will select 5 to 10 stories that will appear on the upper section of the main page. They are given more extensive copyediting treatment including thumbnail pictures, eye-catching headline and layout design. Accordingly, we allocate stratified resources on the articles depending on the status each of them will be given.

2. How do you decide what is front-page material and what is "Saengnamu" (secondary news) material? Do items that are more internationally focused receive priority over more local news? Do people often access articles that are not placed on the front page? We have a clear editorial policy, which is "open progressivism." It is the overriding yardstick with which OhmyNews copyeditors will judge every story. However, even if a story fits into this principle, copyeditors will sift them according to their news value, story construction, sentences and typos. If a story does not live up to a certain quality even if it fits into our editorial principle, we still reject them or ask citizen reporters to rewrite them. We encourage citizen reporters to write stories other than usual news you will see in any news media. We ask them to be themselves and not to copy the usual formula they find in the traditional news media. That is why our readers can enjoy a variety of colorful stories from all walks of life in OhmyNews.

3. How does the OhmyNews International newsroom differ in function from that of a traditional newspaper? Did you have to invent positions to compensate for the distinct functions of citizen journalism?

Since we are an internet, OhmyNews has no deadline. We update 24/7. Sometimes, we follow a single event for as long as our readers please. That might be the most significant difference between OhmyNews and traditional media.

And unlike traditional media, we communicate with our readers and citizen reporters on a daily basis. Our editors monitor readers' comments they leave at the bottom of each article and give them instant feedback if necessary. Sometimes we make major editorial changes we deem necessary to comply with their demands. That attitude tells the fundamental difference between OhmyNews and the traditional media.

We have a separate editorial team we call "news guerilla desk" that is dedicated to handling the articles from citizen reporters, which is another major difference. One copyeditor is spending her entire work hours communicating and liaising with our top citizen reporters.

4. How has the English site launched last year been accepted around the world thus far? What is the percentage of repeat contributors to new reporters that are successful enough to have their articles published on the front page?

OhmyNews International, our English language edition, opened itself to the world last year in part as a showcase of the inner working of OhmyNews' citizen participatory journalism. I believe media pundits, industry insiders and Netizens interested in OhmyNews were able to gain a deeper understanding over our citizen participatory model.

However, with OhmyNews International, we hoped to replicate OhmyNews' success home among the global audience. Even before opening of the citizen reporter log on system two weeks ago, OhmyNews International has attracted more than 300 global citizen reporters worldwide. We aim to build a global network of up to 1000 citizen reporters by this year end.

As explained earlier, about 10 out of 150 to 200 submitted articles appear on the front page as top stories. According to our estimate, about 5,000 out of 37,000 citizen reporters are believed to be frequent contributors who write at least once a month.

5. Do you foresee a print edition at any point? Possibly a newspaper or magazine sent to subscribers with selected stories?

We've been publishing weekly print edition already since early 2002. OhmyNews weekly edition are delivered by mail to paid subscribers but available free on the street as free papers. Anyone can pick them up in one of major subway stations.

With the print edition, we believe we can expand our audience reach to include the elder group from the usual young on-line readers. And there is a unique merit of print offering as well, like pictures and liberal layout. Currently the last single page of OhmyNews weekly is dedicated to carrying an English language articles selected from OhmyNews International

6. Do you think that as OhmyNews grows and becomes more of a threat to traditional journals that one may buy out OMNI?

Internet news media in general including OhmyNews is becoming an even bigger threat to Korea's print media. Even the industry leader is undergoing a severe hardship as the bigger part of news audience do not turn to dailies at all in the morning. It is only natural that the old media has been and will try to diversify its media ownership structure to cope with this treat.

However that does not necessarily mean that they will try to acquire OhmyNews. Rather they will try to enhance multimedia offering by venturing out to internet and mobile media on their own. Currently Korean media industry-including OhmyNews- is keen to launch DMB (Digital Media Broadcasting) service via subscribers' next generation mobile handsets. Apparently the old media is also bent on picking its own piece of DMB pie.

China: The Asian Wall Street Journal to print new section in local paper

The China Post reports that a major English language newspaper, The Asian Wall Street Journal (ASWJ), will publish articles in both Chinese and English in a section of the local Commercial Times. The new section of the ASWJ will run up to four pages per week, appearing every Monday starting April 18. The ASWJ managing editor Peter Stein explained that the English articles will inevitably improve readers’ English skills for business purposes. Versions of the ASWJ are currently printed in 34 countries, with a combined circulation of more than 4.5 million.

Source: The China Post

UK: London's new weekly freebie to attract Internet generation

The Guardian writes up London's latest attempt to keep commuters informed. London Line will be be a 24-page weekly that will cover local politics, culture and business comparable to New York's Village Voice and will attempt to fill the evening market. Editor Joy Lo Dico feels that this is a niche market; "There are 8 million Londoners and only 350,000 read an evening paper." With seven pages of news, it is aimed at the 25-35 year-old who tend to get their news from the Internet. Although the paper will be free, readers will be asked to donate 1p in a box placed at the paper's distribution points.

Source: The Guardian

Rupert Murdoch insists on newspaper website development

"I'm a digital immigrant. I wasn't weaned on the web, nor coddled on a computer...My two young daughters, on the other hand, will be digital natives. They'll never know a world without ubiquitous broadband internet access." Speaking at the American Society of Newspaper Editors, media baron Rupert Murdoch pushed delegates to get over their fears of the Internet and invest in their digital wings. Since Murdoch has been in the business quite a while and been, shall we say, successful, his words should not be taken lightly. Here are some of the major points of his speech.

Young people's changing habits of news consumption: Taking his cue from Merrill Brown's recent essay, Mr. Murdoch said that youth "have a different set of expectations about the kind of news they will get, including when and how they will get it, where they will get it from, and who they will get it from." Elaborating on this statement, he gave statistics demonstrating younger generations exodus from newspapers and rapid immigration to the Internet. With the expansion of broadband, Murdoch predicts this shift to the Internet to proliferate.

Involve the reader: "Too often, the question we ask is "Do we have the story?" rather than "Does anyone want the story." Murdoch feels that editors and reporters are out of touch with their readers and that the Web provides innovative tools to include them in the news process that should be taken advantage of, notably blogs and now podcasting. This can work for print as well, as Murdoch points out in one of his paper's, The Times of London, switch to compact and elimination of its broadsheet after very positive reader response to the compact.

Advertising online: "The threat of losing print advertising dollars to online media is very real." Quoting Bill Gates, Murdoch said that in five years, the Internet will attract USD 30 billion in advertising revenue. That's equals the current advertising revenue currently collected by the entire newspaper industry. The most immediate challenge, according to the News Corp CEO, is "transforming (newspapers') offline classified business into online marketplaces."

Optimism (even for print!): "Success in the online world will, I think, beget greater success in the printed medium." "By meeting the challenges I've raised, I'm confident we will not only improve our chances for success in the online world but, as importantly, improve our actual printed newspapers."

Source: News Corp

South Korea/World: OhmyNews goes completely global

"Welcome to the revolution in the culture of news production, distribution, and consumption. Say bye bye to the backwards newspaper culture of the 20th century." So opens your invitation to the world of citizen journalism gone global, courtesy of Korea's OhmyNews. Barely past its fifth birthday, OhmyNews boasts more than 37,000 citizen reporters who are paid according to the relevance of the stories they write. Continuing its expansion from last years launching of its English version, the virtual newspaper where "Every citizen is a reporter," has started a citizen reporter login system where anyone around the world with an internet connection can participate. By logging in, every reporter will open his/her own account, will be able to read comments to their stories in real time, and will also be able to see how much money their stories have earned. Stories will be edited, however, and the invitation apologizes in advance for not being able to include everyone's story all of the time. The OhmyNews team is especially searching citizen reporters from Africa and the Middle East and plans on establishing a system of payment where readers can send money to reporters if they are impressed by their stories. If you're interested to learn more, the invitation from OhmyNews International's Director, Jean K. Min includes an FAQ and a PowerPoint slide show. Happy reporting!

Source: dotJournalism

UK: The Independent changes design

Not even a year after going completely compact, The Independent has changed its look again. Independent editor Simon Kelner introduces readers to a new design," which has been given a fresh, modern look." After complaints from readers about the number of pull-out sections, Britain's first quality compact daily will whittle them down to one a day covering a different topic each weekday. Media listings, art pages and general features were also incorporated in an expanded main body of the paper. As the British elections approach, one page a day will be contributed to news about Westminster. Kelner opens the paper up to criticism, calling on its readers to continue sending suggestions. Apparently he was able to appease advertisers, who were a bit peeved by the new design (see posting here).

Source: The Independent

AP worried that GoogleNews steals revenue

Taking their cue from Agence France Presse, (see postings here and here), executives at The Associated Press have become concerned that GoogleNews and other aggregators are threatening their revenues, according to the Los Angeles Times. AP's website connects readers to its articles in the various journals through which it distributes its news and begins charging for its stories after they've been published for a week. GoogleNews constantly scans 4,500 sources, including AP, and posts new articles on its own website free of charge. MarketWatch suggests that the aggregator, which is still in beta more than a year after going online, has not graduated to officially launched status and started advertising "because it fear(s) content sources would complain." Other aggregators, such as Yahoo News, the US' most popular online news source, sign agreements with media outlets that allow it to publish these sources' news along with ads. AP is presently negotiating a similar agreement with GoogleNews in which the aggregator would have to buy a license in order to publish AP material. If this happens, other news organizations may follow suit which could ultimately change the way in which GoogleNews works. As the site is becoming increasingly popular and is in serious competition for its share of the market, this may not bode well for Google's news venture. Furthermore, if Yahoo's recent dabblings in RSS described by Mark Glaser on Online Journalism Review, ultimately aimed to provide "personalized news" to all of its readers, succeeds, Google will have to further diversify its news, something that could prove difficult without licenses and advertising.

Sources: MarketWatch, Los Angeles Times and Online Journalism Review. Also see our previous posting explaining the aggregator debate

US: Visuals becoming more important in the tabloid era

Online Journalism Review recently interviewed Robb Montgomery, Chicago Sun-Times news design editor and founder of the website Visual Editors. "As more newspapers convert from broadsheet to tabloid, journalists are going to have to talk more often about visuals too," said Montgomery, who began his website last year as a forum for discussions about newspaper design as well as numerous other topics in journalism. In its short existence, 1,500 members have signed on to Visual Editors and have posted more than 10,000 articles. Members post graphics and receive criticism and feedback from other members. "We're bringing to the forefront in a very public way the kind of conversations you might have just a couple of times a year in your own newsroom, or once a year at a conference." Montgomery feels that demand for visual content in print is rising, especially when trying to attract young readers and encourages reporters to use visuals when selling their articles. Join the discussion and add your own graphic at Visual Editors.

Source: Online Journalism Review

US & France: further circulation woes vs. online importance

Editor and Publisher reports that financial firms Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs have released their expectations for this spring's American newspaper circulations. Conclusion: not good. Referring to the State's Audit Bureau of Circulation, Merrill's latest report declared "March ABC figures likely to be ugly," more than likely surpassing the 1% loss margin. Goldman went even further, predicting a more that 2% decline. Although advertising revenue is still growing, expected at 4% in 2005, circulation is showing no signs of a reversal. Online advertising is predicted to see double-digit increases, but, "Unfortunately, this only represents 3-5% of revenues."

Across the pond, it's safe to say that French daily circulation is facing a similar if not worse crisis than their American counterparts. An article on Liberation.fr tells of how some papers are trying to save some revenue online. A few French papers, notably les Echos and le Parisien, charge for their websites, but have not been too successful. Jean-Paul Mulot, director of Figaro.fr, a French daily's website, feels that "If (readers) have to pay, everyone will go to Google." Monsieur Mulot also feels that it is important for young people to be able to consult a newspapers website and that if they had to pay for online information, they would never buy the paper. Bruno Patino, director of lemonde.fr says that if his paper got rid of its website in an attempt to increase circulation, people wouldn't buy Le Monde; they'd simply go visit other dailies‚ websites. However, the French have discovered that people will pay for specialized news, such as financial info or sports statistics. Although no French paper has even come close to approaching the Internet readership of the Wall Street Journal, it has been used as a model when French dailies have transformed certain aspects of their website into paid pages.

Sources: Editor and Publisher and Libération

Newspaper websites create user-friendly newsreader software

Wired News reports that individual newspapers are putting up a fight regain the online edition traffic lost news aggregators such as Google or Yahoo. The Los Angeles Times, the Denver Post and British newspaper the Guardian already provide stand-alone newspaper newsreader software for readers to view stories directly on their own websites and on those of their competitors. Today, most newsreaders require readers to build their own libraries by locating an RSS feed from each website they want to follow. But the new newsreader based on NewsGator for the Denver Post, News Hound, will bundle several news feeds into organized categories. With the newsreaders, publishers hope not only to attract more readers directly to newspapers’ websites, but also to increase revenue through targeted advertising.

Source: Wired News

Spain: newspaper circulation up from last year

Gaceta de Prensa reports that the organization, Informacion y Control de Publicaciones, which surveys 840 publications and 151 news websites, has concluded that average Spanish daily circulation grew by 20,000 copies distributing over two billion papers. Revenues also increased by 5%. The rise of Spanish free papers caused a division of the organization, Publicaciones Gratuitas Ejemplares Distribuibles, to announce that they are now surveying more than 150 publications plus 25 others that aren't yet members of the organization including the popular free dailies, Metro, 20 Minutos and Que!. The 151 news websites received more than 31 billion page hits from 217 million unique readers.

Source: Gaceta de Prensa

Some info on "Factory-style reporting," adept bloggers, and the survival of "old media"

We all know that "New Media," as the digital whirlwind of blogs, Wikis, podcasts and other such technologies is generalized under, is having significant effects on traditional journalism. But what do current events mean for the future of journalism as these media evolve? Will they grow to further rival "old media" or will the two become inseparably intertwined? Here are some predictions about what's to come:

Not intending to sound pessimist, but let's start with some less than stellar news about "old media." In the UK‚s Press Gazette (print version), Nick Davies, former British Press Awards Reporter of the Year and weathered Guardian journalist, warns of the death of skilled reporting due to "Factory-style news." Instead of digging deep, knocking on doors, and asking the right questions (building a story from scratch), Davies says that most of today's reporters are skipping the interview and investigative processes entirely and simply re-writing press releases ("writing" pre-fabricated news, similar to a product that comes from a factory). This results in what Davies sees a suffering newsroom: "There are some national newspapers that are quite scary in that they've got reporters working for them who have been taught how to do their jobs in the wrong way. There are also now middle-ranking executives who don't really know what reporting is about."

If the quality of reporters continues to wither, it could spur a further rise in the popularity of bloggers. An article from Knowledge@Wharton discusses the current theory that blogging could one day replace traditional journalism. Legal Studies professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania Dan Hunter, after studying the Apple vs. Bloggers case, concluded that this will depend on how skillful the bloggers become. As of now, Hunter feels that some blogs are just as good as well-respected op-ed pages. But he doubts that blogs will become a legitimate substitute for investigative journalism seeing a future balance between breaking news and
watchdogging bloggers and professional investigative journalists taking leads from bloggers.

This m?lange of "New" and "Old" media could help to further define the difference between the two, according to Australian novelist and blogger Sophie Masson on On Line Opinion. Ms. Masson sees "New Media" as opening a niche for traditional journalism, a niche which at one time it filled: objective reporting. The current trend towards opinionated journalism only blurs the line between old and new and is something with which, in the face of millions of opinionated blogs, traditional journalism will not be able to compete for long. Remarking that many people have lost trust in traditional media due to their opinionated tinge, Masson says "Good feature writing and investigative reporting as well as straight reporting are the huge advantages the 'old' media still have over 'new' media; and before it's too late, those ideals should be restored."

Sources: Press Gazette (print edition), Knowledge@Wharton (registration required), On Line Opinion

US: new news Website looks like tabloid

In related news to our last posting, Jeff Jarvis at Buzzmachine describes a new site launched by Gawker called Sploid. In the New York Observer, Gawker publisher Nick Denton, who expects the site to rival the famed Drudge Report, labeled the sites politics as "'anarcho-capitalist,' pitted only against 'all the lazy incumbents who thrive on hypocrisy.'" Jarvis says it looks like a "cheesy German tabloid," better than Drudge, and notably puts the most important headlines first. Is Mr. Denton taking a smart entrepreneurial move throwing the two biggest trends in the newspaper industry, tabloids and Websites, into the same mixer? Or is the new site too much to handle? Keep an eye on Sploid; it could be the next hottest craze.

Sources: Buzzmachine and The New York Observer

US: Opposing views on converting to compact

Eyeing the European trend, US papers have been considering shrinking the size of their printed newspapers. One daily, The Jersey Journal, recently went through with the switch, accompanying news by media companies Knight Ridder and Gannett were considering trial downsizes of their national dailies (see former postings). Here are some contradicting views about the possibilities of American tabloids:

Pessimism:

Alan Jacobson, President, Brass Tacks Design: "Tab conversion? Fughedabowdit (forget about it)." Commenting on an article on NewsDesigner.com, Jacobson rejected any belief that tabloids could succeed in the US based mostly on the fact that advertisers, who provide 85% of American newspapers‚ total revenue (whereas Europeans depend on advertisers for 60-70% of revenue), prefer broadsheets. The Jersey Journal's switch, says Jacobson, was simply a "last-ditch effort" to save a plummeting readership. He refers to other attempts at smaller formats in the US such as Chicago's Red Eye, aimed at young commuters, pointing out that Americans won't pay for compacts: "It doesn't bode well for any industry when they need to give their product away."

Javier Errea, director of the Spanish chapter of the Society for News Design: commenting on the same article, Errea says that London's The Independent changed formats because "It had little to lose...it was in a nose dive." Because consultants are all pushing compacts, he asks, "When all the newspapers go to tabloid, what will happen later? Change them back to broadsheet again?"

Optimism:

Robb Montgomery, News Design Editor, Chicago Sun-Times: Montgomery sees the eventual adoption of tabloid in the US, comparing the trend to USA Today's color press upgrades of 20 years ago. He thinks the primary reason that papers and journalists are hesitant is psychological, due to the negative connotation associated with tabloids.

Tony Smithson, production director, The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky: Quoted in an article entitled "Tabloids to broadsheets: drop dead," on Newspapers & Technology, Smithson sees Yankee papers following their European counterparts' lead. "Within five to ten years, broadsheets will be an anachronism. You won't see them much."

Editors Weblog: Why not give it a shot? Seeing as The Jersey Journal's circulation had fallen by 75% before its switch, it does appear that their decision was a "last-ditch effort" to save their title. But with free urban dailies attracting significant commuter readerships in some American cities, it wouldn't hurt for major metropolitan papers to try... if their circulation is declining of course. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," but when looking to save circulation, tabloids could be the answer American newspapers are looking for.

ps. Investing in newspaper website development and innovation ain't a bad idea either.

Sources: Newspapers & Technology and NewsDesigner

The New York Times to publish International Weekly Supplement in Venezuela and Austria

According to The New York Times Company, The New York Times announced that it will launch its International Weekly news supplement in Venezuela’s El Nacional and in Austria’s Der Standardin early April. In Venezuela the supplement will be published in Spanish, while in Austria it will be printed in its original English format. El Nacional is the leading newspaper in Venezuela, and Der Standard is a liberal daily in Austria that attracts a young and affluent readership.

Source: The New York Times Company

Philippines: two newspapers merge due to declines in readership

In an opinion article in The Los Angeles Times Fred de la Rosa highlights the challenges facing the media industry in the Philippines. Naturally the Filipino newspaper industry is no exception to the general industry trends across the world, facing undeniable declines in readership. Competition in the Manila metropolitan area is intense, with about eight daily broadsheets and two dozen tabloids trying to attract the same advertising base. Yet, fewer and fewer people are reading newspapers and instead turning towards the internet, television and radio for news. Recently, owners of Today and Manila Standard in the Philippines decided to merge and publish a single paper in attempts to minimize losses and maximize profits. To cope with decreasing profits, will Manila newspapers follow other popular patterns and switch to more tabloid formats or offer more free dailies? There is no official answer yet, but it will be interesting to see how the Filipino publications adjust to such industry changes.

Source: The Los Angeles Times

Financially modest ideas for saving the newspaper

Milking the newspaper cash cow until she runs dry, the business interests behind huge media corporations are simultaneously sharpening the butcher's knife for her slaughter. Although circulation is declining which, along with rising prices, will eventually cause advertisers to start pulling out, media moguls are reveling in incredible profits, too blindly drunk in their financial success to plan for the future. Some sober journalism specialists have several ideas on how to reverse the process.

Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of North Carolina, Philip Meyer sees a noble journalistic cycle that will eventually lead to profits. In "Saving Journalism," his article on Columbia Journalism Review, he describes how quality journalism attracts readers and advertisers. Papers that emphasize credibility, accuracy, easy reading, and an excellent staff fare better than those who don't. By not providing these four points, Meyer says that papers will undermine their business models.

Grassroots journalism champion Dan Gillmor is working on ways to involve the audience in the news process. He feels that people will pay for quality journalism but that young readers are changing everything, thus requiring those in journalism "to innovate on new forms and delivery mechanisms as well as the journalism itself."

Jay Rosen, journalism professor at New York University, says on PressThink "Getting newspaper journalism across the divide means a big investment now in the Net and its emerging forms." He calls for research and development and the retraining of newsroom staffs.

These sound like good and logical ideas. But are media companies heeding their advice? An article in American Journalism Review suggests that The Washington Post is trying to reverse its circulation decline along the lines of Meyer's suggestions. Its editors feel that the Post has always provided quality news which has helped it establish a sound advertising base, but that the paper was too "fluffy," meaning its articles dragged on to the frustration of the reader. The article reports that the Post is "trying to create a more compelling and accessible paper," with shorter articles and more appealing pictures and graphics as well as revamping the front page. However, this sounds suspiciously like a format change that will eventually change the quality of journalism and cause a loss of advertisers.

Apart from several papers in the US and Korea's OhMyNews marvel, citizens journalism is being ignored by large national papers. Sure, they've established blogs and provided methods of reacting to articles, but have newspapers really embraced these tools? It seems that they are simply there. How often do columnists refer to their reader comments, use information provided by their readers, or even read reader responses? On the other hand, although blogs and other citizens journalism tools are becoming more popular as a source of information, Gillmor rejects the idea that they have the legitimacy to replace traditional journalism. But as their popularity grows and their influence becomes more noted, newspapers will have to find better ways of really including readers, turning the news into the conversation that Gillmor foresees.

As for websites, it is generally agreed that newspapers have poorly adapted themselves to the net (see former posting). Rosen is especially appalled, not only at this fact, but the fact that newspaper companies are cutting their online budgets even as online advertising is booming and millions are shunning print to read their news on the Internet. Instead of simply republishing their printed news online, papers need to find innovative ways to diversify their products, capitalizing on the capabilities the Net offers.

Obviously all of these ideas, along with the fact that advertisers remain hesitant about online advertising, will result in immediate profit loss. But advertisers are starting to catch on and internet advertising is increasing significantly and classified ads are already dominated by the Internet. Media moguls must be weaned off of the cash cow and buck up and invest in online development if they are to survive. By doing this, the profits will eventually come rolling back in.

Sources: Dan Gillmor, Columbia Journalism Review, PressThink, American Journalism Review

Canada: launch of Metro in Ottawa and free daily in Vancouver

According to Yahoo News and CBC News, two new editions of free dailies will launch in Canada. Metro International S.A., Torstar Corporation and CanWest MediaWorks announced the launch of a Metro edition in Ottawa, the fourth Metro publication to be launched in Canada. Initial Metro daily distribution in the Ottawa region is set at 60,000. Metro in Canada, already distributed in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, enjoys a weekly readership of 1,295,000 and continues to show double-digit growth each year. Quebecor Inc.'s Sun Media Corp. and the private Jim Pattison Group also announced the launch of a free newspaper in Vancouver to take on the competing issue of the Metro launched in Vancouver earlier this month. Like Metro editions, the new Quebecor and Pattison Group paper will have various sections covering local, national, and international news, sports, and entertainment.

Source: Yahoo News and CBC News

German firm to launch tabloid in Western Europe

According to The Telegraph, German press giant Axel Springer plans to rejuvenate the sleepy European newspaper industry by introducing a tabloid red-top similar to The Sun and the Daily Mirror.  The firm launched a racy daily in Poland in 2003 called Fakt, which has since reached a circulation of over 500,000.  Following the firm's recent success in Poland, Axel Springer now hopes to target Spain, Italy, France and Scandinavia, with France being the most likely first target. While the main dailies in France face increasing declines in finances and readership, currently British style tabloids are relatively non-existent.

Source: The Telegraph

Aggregators: traffic blessing or copyright curse?

The news industry has mixed opinions about the advantages and disadvantages of aggregators according to the Wall Street Journal Online through Excite. Some editors enjoy the traffic that their site receives when their stories show up high on the list of headlines. Others are perturbed by their lower positions. And in a practice that some in the industry believe will be common place, a few newspapers simply pay for aggregators to give their articles priority, such as the New York Times did with Topix.net. This past week's two aggregator related events, the Topix.net deal and AFP's legal action against Google, whose consequences won't be know for some time highlight the dilemma that editors are facing. AFP demanded that Google remove its content from its GoogleNews site on charges of copyright infringement. Some in the industry scoffed, dismissing AFP to the nut house for canceling the free press and traffic its brand name gets through Google. But this is nothing new as others, notably Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's largest paper, have also refused Google permission to reprint its material. On the other hand, the Topix.net deal, in which three major newspaper companies - Gannett Co., Knight-Ridder Inc., and Tribune Co., each bought a 25% stake in the high-traffic news consolidator, hints that publishers see aggregators as boosting hits on their own site and spreading their brand recognition. What will be the final verdict?

We can't be sure yet. But we may be able to make a pretty good prediction simply from this posting. My source for this posting is the Wall Street Journal, one of the very few pay-for newspaper websites in the world, a publication which has been documented as being ignored as an online reference strictly because of its pay-model, yet a news site to which I am not a subscriber. So how did I read the article? I'm only assuming I've been able to access sacred WSJ content because the Dow Jones Co., publisher of the WSJ, has a deal with Excite which allows it to let a free article slip out from time to time. Considering this, my guess is that most newspapers will keep themselves open to aggregators, or else risk suffocation at the digital hands of those who do.

Source: The Wall Street Journal Online through Excite.

Winning back classified revenue

On Editor and Publisher: A new website called eMarketplaceXpress which targets eBay and Craigslist's rapidly growing share of classified advertisements has been launched by Vancouver based CityXpress. Users will be able to place a photo and up to 2,000 characters for free. Revenue is expected to be gathered through ad-ons such as extra pictures and special features like priority listings. CityXpress will take a 5-9% cut of sales to newspapers who will pay a monthly fee depending on the number of listings and volume on the website.

Source: Editor and Publisher

France: Le Monde capitalizes on Internet opportunities

LeMonde.fr has revamped its ten year old website, changing its presentation, content, and facilitating site navigation. Less than a quarter of the digital publication will be the same articles that are published in the print edition. Breaking news will be available to everyone and subscribers will be offered additional content and services. All webpages have been redesigned to take full advantage of online features such as video, blogs, search, and interactivity. Reading the online edition will also flow more smoothly as links to related articles and breaking news will be posted at the end of all articles, thus avoiding the "back" button. Le Monde will also syndicate its site with RSS.

Source: Le Monde

Norway: leading daily's successful switch to compact

On Publicitas: Recently released figures show that Aftenposten, Norway's main daily, gained an average of 10,000 new daily readers in the year from March 2004 to the present, a period which coincides with the paper's switch to a tabloid format. During the same time frame, the paper also gained 10,000 new Saturday readers and 9,000 new Sunday edition readers. The paper's CEO, Olav Mugaas commented on the paper's success saying "We are very satisfied with the fact that our work involving Aftenposten’s changes to compact format as well long-term editorial development have given us such good results." Mugaas also said that the paper's website witnessed substantial growth. On a contrary note, Aftenposten's Evening Edition lost 11,000 readers, showing the growing importance and popularity of the morning compact edition.

Source: Publicitas

European and Asian publications practice different web strategies

The International Herald Tribune reports that in coping with declining circulation and advertising sales for print editions, newspapers in Europe and in Asia have begun experimenting with ways to earn revenue from the Internet. Some have increased the amount of subscription-only online content, while others have increased content available for free. Yet most fall in between the two extremes, charging for some online services but trying not to alienate readers by charging for all items. Internet ad spending is expected to grow 20% worldwide this year. Thus according to a media strategy firm called Initiative, European newspaper websites seem interested overall in growth. For the time being they are simply on the path to finding the most profitable strategy.

Specifically, The Financial Times in Britain and Les Echos in France have followed the example of America?s Wall Street Journal by charging online readers a subscription fee. The percentage of subscribers to The Financial Times website is growing at an annual rate of roughly 7%. In Asia online editions have become powerful tools in reaching economic emigrants from countries like the Philippines or the Chinese diaspora wanting to read news in Chinese. Group advertising director Mark Simon of the one of the largest-circulation Chinese language newspapers in both Hong Kong and Taiwan, Apple Daily, explained the paper?s interesting online strategy. ?We found a profitable model by building advertising domestically and charging subscriptions for overseas readers," Simon said. In Europe few general interest dailies charge for basic access to their web sites, with Spain?s El Pais being a prominent exception. Furthermore, the website of The Times of London and its sister paper, The Sunday Times, has begun to drift from the subscription model. The Times dropped the international fee for basic access, and as a result, enjoys a percentage of international visitors that has since surged.

Source: The International Herald Tribune

US: paper with waning readership to switch to compact format

The New York Times reports that The Jersey Journal, in trying to reverse its declining circulation, has decided to make the transformation to a tabloid format, a switch that many papers are considering. One American experiment with compact formats, the free amNewYork, has proven popular with commuters who like the brief news summaries and colorful pages which compliment daily rides public transportation. But in the United States, major corporations' such as Knight Ridder, consideration of compact formats for their major metro area publications have been stymied by concerns of loss of advertising. Advertisers are hesitant about the smaller papers whose advertising spaces will logically be smaller. European dailies have had an easier time switching to tabloid formats because advertising accounts for 60-70% of a paper's revenue, whereas in the United States, newspapers depend on advertisers for 85% of their revenue. Jeff Jarvis, journalism professor, blogger, and consultant for the New Jersey paper is optimistic about American compacts, noting that readers prefer them to broadsheets. Only time will tell if advertisers learn to accept this trend.

Source: New York Times

US: another dismal report of newspaper performance

The State of the News Media, an annual report published by the Project for Excellence in Journalism which is affiliated with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, paints a bleak picture of the state of American newspapers. Expectations of big gains in the wake of an industry recession proved to be wishful thinking as circulation continued dropping, advertising was up minimally, and investors lost more confidence. Here are four main points about the American newspaper business taken from the report. Don’t worry. It’s not all bad news

1. Circulation: Last year’s report opened with “Newspaper circulation is in decline,” a phrase which the industry hoped to turn around this year. But despite the success of a few newspaper companies and individual papers in improving circulation, the industry as a whole lost almost 1% of of its daily and 1.5% of its Sunday circulation. Gannett, the industry leader, declared losses of 2% apart from its banner paper, USA Today. The sustained decline was not helped by the circulation scandals that surfaced over the summer of 2004, resulting in exaggerated figures of almost 250,000 readers.

2. Advertising: Although newspaper advertisements gained almost 4% through September 2004, this percentage did not appease analysts who had expected more of an improvement and whose predictions for future advertising gains are dim. Although help-wanted classifieds improved a bit, the report concluded that newspapers have more than likely permanently lost their classified revenues to online providers. On a much brighter note, advertising on newspaper websites grew between 30 and 60% and although they still account for a small amount of newspapers? revenues, are expected to keep growing. Niche papers are also attracting advertisers.

3. Online: ?The capability of people to get what they want when they want it, and to manipulate it, edit it and seek more depth, could bring a needed revival to journalism.? But despite this optimistic outlook and impressive growth figures, newspapers are still failing to capitalize on the interactive information opportunities the Internet offers, simply rehashing news from the print version on the website. On the other hand, they seem to be adjusting to posting breaking news online and newspapers in general seem to be more tied to the type of website their company produces.

4. Niche papers: Youth and ethnic, especially Spanish-language papers, were all the rage in 2004 according to the report. The number of Spanish-language papers in 2003 jumped to a total of 666, up 14 from the previous year. Circulation of these papers has risen steadily over the past four years and despite last year?s circulation scandals which affected one of the primary Spanish-language publications, is expected to continue this growth. Newspaper companies have started to diversify in attracting their future readership, launching popular free papers aimed primarily at youth. Although there are no concrete statistics to date, these papers have so far proved popular and appear to continue expanding.

All in all, the State of the News Media concluded that of the various types of media, newspapers still provide the most quality content, impartiality, most varied sources, and most thorough investigation. One would assume that this fact, combined with last year?s 20% profit margins for major newspaper companies would logically imply huge increases in circulation and advertising. Does the continually poor performance of these revenue streams mean that newspaper companies will simply ride the current profit wave for what it?s presently worth, eventually abandoning their publications for lack of money or worse, lack of interest? Have publishers already secretly conceded that forecasts of their papers? ultimate and permanent demise are true? Will they diversify into other medium, leaving their papers to the Google and Craiglist dogs or will they use their profits for research and development purposes in order to save their sinking flagships?

Source: Journalism.org

Restoring trust in journalism

In a follow up to The Media Center's Vanishing Newspaper webcast (see previous posting), Philip Meyer, Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of The Vanishing Newspaper gave an interview to PJNet Today. Despite the title of his book, Meyer says in the interview that he doesn't actually believe that newspapers are going to peter out within the first half of the century, but that they are certainly going to change. Some of his predictions include more niche market papers and internet editions, entrepreneurial papers who focus on quality instead of huge profits, and the continued collection of profits by the Mainstream Media in spite of a steady yet slow decline in circulation. Behind all of this, Meyer sees a media obligation to reestablish public confidence in journalism and to distinguish professionals from the growing lot of those "storming the (professional) gates." "To bring up the market again, there is an unmet need for trusted sources."

Source: PJNet Today

Too late for newspapers to charge for their websites?

"We're in the midst of a long and painful transition," worries Colby Atwood, vice president of the media research company Borrell Associates Inc., commenting on the fact that major American newspapers now have bigger online readerships than their print editions. Katharine Q. Seelye writes in The New York Times that what publishers regret the most about the switch to digital news, apart from its heist of print readers, is that the grand majority of it is free to the reader, a tradition they themselves started at the dawn of the internet news age ten years ago, and one that may now be impossible to change. Rumors that the New York Times has been considering charging for its website have caused a stir, those in favor arguing that quality content deserves respect with paid access by readers, those against arguing that the internet has transformed access to information into a kind of born right. Here are three points in support of the latter:

1. Attracting and sustaining readership: Free online news, now more popular than print in most cases, is not only an alternative source for regular readers fed up with paying rising subscription prices and hauling piles of papers to the recycling bin, but is also a great way to maintain and increase clientele in the future through exploiting the habits of younger generations. Let's face it, younger readers are so accustomed to and adept at using the internet and so enjoy its interactivity, that they just really don't need print anymore, and unless we find the Fountain of Youth in the next few years, habitual newspaper readers will soon be gone. Between the success of free papers and the internet, which youth expect to be free, the newspaper readers of the future simply won't accept a pay model.

2. Advertising: Internet advertising is booming. Some studies show a 40% jump from last year. Although it still only accounts for roughly two to three percent of newspaper revenue, it is publishing companies' fastest growing revenue source and will continue to grow, as long as newspapers keep their websites free. Online ads not only provide advertisers with more innovative ways to push their wares than static print pages, but most importantly provide immediate demographic feedback something that can't be equaled in other medium. Charging for websites can handicap advertising revenue, as proven in the case of the Wall Street Journal, the only major American newspaper to charge subscription fees for its online content. The Journal recently bought the free financial site MarketWatch, primarily to give its advertisers more online visibility.

3. It's simply too late: The outlook for paid daily news is not good, especially now in the nascent stages of citizens journalism and the increasing push for free archives. Newspapers make a good point in saying that their quality product should be paid for, but there are so many alternative free sources of news that switching to a paid online business model could be financially devastating for newspapers, as readers will certainly start reading their news on Google or Yahoo. Take the example that Ms. Seelye uses of a 100,000 circulation Washington state newspaper whose switch to paid content not only abruptly halted a steady 40% yearly rise in traffic, but actually caused online readership to drop by 5% in a year. Of course, ten years ago, at the dawn of the internet news era, newspapers effectively signed their own pay-model death wish by putting the same content that was in their print editions online for free.

But on a positive note, this brave idea has greatly facilitated the evolution of the internet, the "free"dom of information, and has in fact made newspapers more visible. Chances are, if papers had begun charging for online content back in the day, declines in print sales would have continued and millions of people, especially youth, who were beginning to spend more time online would not have begun to read their papers. The challenge that newspapers now face is not how to increase revenues directly from the pockets of their online readers, but how to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the internet in order to attract more readers to their digital news pages adorned with demographically specified advertising.

Source: The New York Times

US: tabloid craze to conquer?

Following the success of tabloid versions in other countries, it seems that the Chicago Tribune has been toying with the idea of its own compact paper, reports Crain's Chicago Business. Having already attempted to attract younger readers with RedEye, a venture that attracted advertises but has failed to increase paid circulation, the Tribune could be looking for additional outlets to attract readers. Susan Mango Curtis, a professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, said, "Generation Y, that's their format. (Newspapers) should all be thinking about going tabloid." The Tribune's management has declined comment about any definite change in format. However, hypothetically, a successful tabloid could spur other papers around the country to consider changing their format, just as the RedEye persuaded The Washington Post and Dallas Morning News to launch their own youth papers.

Source: Crain's Chicago Business through Poynter

UK: The Financial Times to experiment with compact

On Media Guardian: Along with the rest of the newspaper industry, The Financial Times has suffered declining sales but has so far refused to give into the tabloid fad. Until now. After the announcement of the pre-election budget, the famed pink daily will release a free special evening edition in tabloid format at strategic locations outside of underground stations, most likely uniquely in London. FT will print between 70,000 and 100,000 copies and the paper will be no more than 10 pages. As for permanently making the switch, a FT spokeswoman said that the planned evening compact is simply a marketing tool to persuade people to buy the paper the following day, an edition that will contain the "usual detailed comment and analysis."

Source: Media Guardian

UK: The Guardian to go berliner earlier than planned?

MediaWeek reports that London's The Guardian, who have been planning to switch to a Berliner format in spring 2006, may release the mid-sized paper this summer, eight months ahead of schedule. At this point, it seems financially and strategically unfeasible because printing would take place in Europe after which the daily edition would have to be flown to Britain, cutting precious time off the printing of any breaking news. Steve Goodman, press director at MediaCom, is wary of an early launching, saying, "I don't want it to be sprung on us. We need enough time – three to four months, say – to explain all the ramifications and have a dummy to show clients."

Source: MediaWeek

US: reconnecting the press with its readers

An editorial at Columbia Journalism Review calls for a reconnection of the American press with its readers. It has only been recently, with the rejection of a proposal that would have allowed big media to concentrate even more power into fewer hands, that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has learned that public opinion, one that is against this concentration, actually matters. The article says that this is "a wonderful development" but that public opinion is also disturbing to the extent that it views the media as a "self-serving behemoth," just another "special interest" disconnected from the needs of the American population. To turn this around, the editorial calls for journalists to "rededicate (themselves) to journalism's central mission," and "do work that actually benefits (the public)." "The quality of our press and our democracy really are linked. This new day for journalism requires an old-fashioned faith."

Source: Columbia Journalism Review

US: a digital broadsheet

USA Today describes the University of Missouri's experiment to fuse print with digital. The university will soon release a weekly electronic version of it's daily paper, The Missourian, called EmPrint. The paper is designed to transfer the comfort that most people have with a printed version to the computer screen, appearing in the shape of a broadsheet and divided into traditional newspaper sections. The full page fits on the screen, avoiding the need to scroll, and can be printed on normal computer paper. The technology will also include characteristics typical of digital editions such as links to other web pages as well as audio, video, and interactive options. "There's a large niche out there that is not being filled, of people who have an appreciation for what a newspaper can provide but who are also much more digitally attuned these days," says EmPrint's designer Roger Fidler, former new media director of Knight Ridder. Reactions to the initial 10-week experiment currently underway have been positive. EmPrint can be viewed at the Missourian's website.

Source: USA Today

UK: innovations in design to attract readers pressed for time

After researching the habits of its readers, England's regional Hull Daily Mail has made some innovative changes to boost its present circulation of 71,000, reports HoldTheFrontPage. The study showed that readers craved more value packed into the time they spend reading the paper. The Mail adapted accordingly, adding "in short" boxes and pictures for all page leads, website links, "What happens next" boxes which predict the effects covered events will have, and a page two "paper in a page," which summarizes the entire paper with headlines and short resumes. Test runs of the new format have been well received by readers. The paper's editor, John Meehan, said, ""These changes are a huge stride forward in making the Mail even more relevant and appealing to our readers. They also give the paper a very fresh, contemporary feel." In adjusting the paper's style to reader's desires he said that regional papers in general need to "package (their) content differently to reflect (readers) habits and also to help readers to access further information online." He also pointed out that the "in short" boxes actually encourage readers to continue reading the article instead of simply being satisfied with a story's brief.

Source: HoldTheFrontPage

Citizens journalism to save the media?

Danny Schechter promotes the benefits of citizens journalism in the ultimate survival of the media on mediachannel.org. With about 70% of the American population unhappy with the state of the media, Schechter suggests that its saving grace could be to "Democratize the media by allowing citizens to be more than media consumers." Schechter demonstrates that with the growing popularity of talk radio, blogs, Wikipedia, and the "be the media" movement led by IndyMedia, a "populist bottom-up" media hierarchy may already be poised to take over the traditional "elite top-down" press. He supports his argument with descriptions of the decline of mainstream media and the rise of innovations such as OhMyNews and Dan Gillmor's citizens media project. All in all an interesting read about a hypothetical media future.

Source: mediachannel.org

Singapore: daily to go the way of the Wall Street Journal, charging for online content

Singapore's The Strait's Times is poised to charge readers for access to the articles published on their website, according to The Industry Standard. A few months ago, the paper began requiring registration for use of its website and has decided to take the next step, joining the rare amount of dailies around the world that do the same, such as Hong Kong's South China Morning Post and the Wall Street Journal. An annual subscription will cost S$120 whereas the printed newspaper costs S$276 for a year. The paper plans to improve the content of its website once it starts charging for it in March, posting business reports 12 hours earlier and expanding the archive from 3 to 7 days. "We believe that we have a good and valuable product that users will want to pay for," explained the newspapers. "It's also not a tenable business model to charge for the print edition of the newspaper and not for its online edition." In related news, Online Journalism Review summarizes Adam L. Penenberg of New York University who feels that the Wall Street Journal is losing its "long-term relevancy" by charging for its content. Young readers, said Penenberg, are not paying for online news, and thus, will more than likely never pick up the habit of reading the Journal.

Sources: The Industry Standard, Online Journalism Review

Blogs and wikis are a disruptive force

An article from the Financial Times by Tom Foremski, publisher of Silicon Valley Watcher, summarized on the blog NevOn, declares blogs and wikis to be two of the most important features in what he calls "Internet 2.0." "Let me explain why I think these technologies are so groundbreaking," says Foremski. "The content of blogs is not the interesting part - it is the underlying blogging software and its ability to automate the many tasks required to run a website. No technical skills are required of the writer, beyond being able to use a browser and the ability to type." Characteristics such as its affordability, trackbacks and RSS engender the primary "disruptive potential": online content management systems cost exponentially more than blogging software, and RSS and trackback provide previously unimaginable content distribution.

Sources: NevOn and Financial Times

Craigslist to adopt citizens journalism?

Here's something to watch from SiliconBeat. Craig Newmark, founder of the classifieds sight, craigslist, has recently stated that he the citizens journalism movement appeals greatly to him and that there is a possibility that his sight will eventually branch out into this evolving medium. "As a consumer of news, I've learned that there's too much important stuff which isn't printed or which is distorted on the way out. One example being news out of the White House. We need to fix it. We meaning the public, need to evolve a trusted institution with lots of fact-checking that we can trust and that we can prove does provide honest news." Read the interview on internetnews.com and the summary at SiliconBeat.

Source: SiliconBeat

Peter Chernin's 10 rules for media (and newspaper) survival

News Corporation - the Ruppert Murdoch empire from The Times of London to Fox News in the US - President Peter Chernin challenged fellow executives to face the media industry’s biggest problems through a forward-thinking speech entitled “10 rules for Media Survival” at the Forrester Consumer Forum last week. Chernin explained that networks and advertisers need to work together on new formats, and that companies need to turn to technology for new forms of distribution. In particular, Chernin addressed the most contentious issues currently facing the media and threatening future profits including: fragmentation, ad-skipping, and piracy. After addressing media's increasing difficulty to follow its traditional pursuit of passive audiences due to technological advancements, Chernin laid out his 10 rules for survival.

Chernin?s rules are as follows:

"Rule 1: Realize that consumers? desires of control, choice, convenience, and simplicity have not been altered by the recent changes in technology.

Rule 2: A wired home does not change anything. It merely allows consumers to move content from one device to another within their home.

Rule 3: Media companies and advertisers have to redefine their relationship.

Rule 4: Consumers don?t reject advertising, they reject complacency. Advertisers need to evolve the methods through which they reach consumers, especially their old habit of using 30 second commercials.

Rule 5: Content is still king, but financing the kingdom is complicated.

Rule 6: If content is king, then marketing is the crown prince. Broadcast or cable networks need to create tightly focused brands, like HBO, FX, or MTV.

Rule 7: Get noticed. Even the brightest ideas need to be original, more audacious, and more gripping.

Rule 8: The industry cannot ignore the fragmentation that is going on around the world.

Rule 9: Nothing compares to the spontaneity and thrill of things that are live, including sports, news, and entertainment.

Rule 10: If the industry does not solve the problem of piracy and can thus not protect content, all other rules are meaningless."

It's easy to understand that this "Bible's decalog" mainly applies to the broadcast industry, but some rules are relevant to forecasting the future of the newspaper industry.

Source: Forrester Magazine through paidcontent.org

Charging for RSS feeds?

Although the percentage of news readers who presently use RSS is still relatively small, Poynter asks what will happen when the popularity of their personalizing capabilities grows. Will newspapers begin to charge for their personalized RSS feeds? Will users be willing to pay? Will they restrict online publishing like what has happened with Norway's Verdens Gang? Will major international papers that now charge for archives eventually charge for "highly detailed RSS feeds?" The evolution of this business model, as well as the eventual use of advertising in RSS will be hot topics to follow.

Source: Poynter

Jimmy Wales to the Editors Weblog: "on Wikinews, every contributor can be an editor"

Thanks to Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, to answer our questions about his vision of Wikinews defined as a "free News source" written and edited by different experts and contributors (see the former posting on wiki technology).

How does the editorial process differ between Wikipedia and WikiNews? What is the average profile of a WikiNews contributor?
Wikinews is very young and so many editorial processes are still being discussed and established. Because a newspaper is a different creature from an encyclopedia, the process must be different. But the thing that the two have in common is a commitment to high quality and neutrality.

What is your personal role in the WikiNews process? Do you consider yourself an editor-in-chief?
No, I am not editor-in-chief, this is not the wiki way. My personal role is simply to provide a focal point, to provide guidance and vision on the big picture issues of neutrality and quality, not to dictate to the volunteers about how to get the job done. It is a fun hobby for people, and so they need the freedom to make it fun.

Is every contributor an editor on WikiNews? Or is there a complete absence of editors?
Every contributor can be an editor, yes. There is no firm delineation of roles in that sense.

What consequences could WikiNews have for the "traditional" printed editor? Will a lack of an educated editor result in too much false information being posted?
Our editors are highly educated. :-) It seems likely based on the track record of traditional media outlets and of Wikipedia that our error rate will be slightly better, not worse. Whereas Dan Rather can get away (for at time) with publicizing fake memos, the open process of the internet guarantees realtime peer review of a type not possible in a closed organization.

Do you fear that false or doctored information will be posted? How WikiNews can deal with that? For instance if a Public Relations company tried to add promotional information?
We review it and if it is bad, we delete it.

Can the average contributor be trusted to post substantiated information?
They will need to cite their sources. First-hand reporting will be limited to highly trusted community members, and I do not expect it to be a major part of what we do for a long time.

Do you see the "collective intelligence" of WikiNews as "objective" since it is essentially a combination of information from various sources?
I try to avoid the word "objective" because it means too many different things to too many different people. We prefer our terminology of "neutral".

How do you see WikiNews and blogs working together? Are they complementary or contradictory seeing as WikiNews portrays the collective intelligence and blogs individual opinion?
I like to draw this parallel: a really good blog is like a really good columnist or editorialist. If it is done well, wikinews will be like a really good front page of the newspaper. There is nothing wrong with opinions, and there is nothing wrong with clear neutral information. There is a place for both.

Are you ready for a partnership with a printed newspaper if a daily would like to publish some of the WIKINews articles?
Yes, and our free licensing policy makes that very easy.

-- Jimbo

CNN.com offers free RSS feeds to users, bloggers

Interesting initiative - that could be followed by many newspapers - from CNN. According to the Blog Herald, "CNN.com has introduced a new self-syndication feature to enabling users to post and view the latest headlines through an RSS aggregator or on their blogs. The feeds can be accessed directly at CNN.com/rss. “Our new RSS feeds provide an additional way for our users to access CNN.com quickly and easily,” said Mitch Gelman, senior vice president and executive producer of CNN.com. “The feeds provide fast access to CNN.com’s top headline news and allow users the opportunity to then experience the full breadth of CNN.com’s special reports and interactive features"... The feeds are available free to users for private, non-commercial use."

Source: Blog Herald

US: Knight Ridder buys five free Californian papers

The Associated Press reports that the Newspaper publisher Knight Ridder has continued its methodical expansion in the nation's six-largest media market by buying five free daily papers distributed in the affluent suburbs just south of San Francisco. Knight Ridder intends to retain the current staff of each newly acquired paper. The deal will add another 55,000 readers to Knight Ridder, as it continues to surround Northern California's largest newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle. As the publisher of 31 daily papers, Knight Ridder operates in 27 other U.S. markets, but the San Francisco Bay area generates a significant portion of the company's profits. Though all of the large papers in the San Francisco Bay area currently charge readers, the region has turned into a source of free community papers that offer intensive coverage of local issues often glossed over by large media outlets.

Source: Associated Press through Mercury News

Online video news clips attracting wealthy audience

Poynter quotes a study done by the Online Publishers Association that shows that well-off online news readers are enthusiastic about video clips. A quarter of these readers watch a video one a week and more than half once a month. A quarter of them also visit an advertised website after watching the news clip, which is good news for advertisers who are contemplating the benefits of video ads online. The study also showed that daytime and nighttime traffic for videos is about equal, allaying some advertisers fears of low level of viewing during working hours.

Source: Poynter

Wall Street Journal expanding its mobile capabilities

On MediaWeek: As major newspapers contemplate new business models to keep up with the digital age, the Wall Street Journal is embracing mobile technology. WSJ Online has joined with wireless-information distributor Outercurve Technologies in order to diffuse its news on Blackberry mobile devices. Blackberry users will be able to receive continually updated business news from WSJ Online as of April 30. The WSJ company recently launched WSJ Mobile in another attempt to expand the distribution of its content. Advertising still poses a problem for these technologies but Richard Trumble, director of business development at WSJ Online, is certain that advertising capabilities will evolve as the screens on mobile devices improve. As for the present move, Trumble is optimistic, as well as about the future of the newspaper: "We see this as a logical brand extension. We are platform agnostic. If there is a platform that our audience wants, we want to support it. We do not see this as a replacement for the newspaper."

Source: MediaWeek

washingtonpost.com: new home page

Jim Brady, Executive Editor, washingtonpost.com speaking: "washingtonpost.com has launched a redesigned home page, and I wanted to take a moment to point out some of the changes and explain the reasons behind them. • New navigation: We have removed the left-side navigation that previously appeared on the home page and moved to roll-down top navigation. To see the list of the sections previously featured on the left side of the home page, roll over the section names at the top of the page—News, Opinion, Sports and Arts & Living. This change provides more room to showcase the day's top news and allows for more layout and photo flexibility.

? Cleaner design on the bottom of the page: By switching to a tighter three-column layout at the bottom of the page, we are able to better organize the deep well of content featured on washingtonpost.com.

? Faster loading: This new design also significantly reduces the weight of the page to allow for quicker downloads.

While we believe these improvements make for a positive change, we'd like to know what you think. So please feel free to send any comments to executive.editor@washingtonpost.com.

Thanks,
Jim Brady
Executive Editor, washingtonpost.com

Norway: winning back paid print customers from free websites

Verdens Gang, a top Norwegian newspaper, is taking steps to bring back readers to its print edition according to Poynter. A 3.9% drop in circulation over the past year due mostly to readers getting their information from the paper's website has motivated Bernt Olufsen, the paper's editor in chief, to make a few rules about publication on the website. These rules include not publishing feature stories on the web, saving consumer interest stories for after lunch, having columnists writing exclusively for the online edition, and varying the expressions of the front pages of the online and print edition. It is not known how the paper's customers, who have come to expect the news free online, will react to the new rules.

Source: Poynter's e-media tidbits

Weblogs as complementing journalism with diversity

An interesting piece by Julie M. Moos on Poynter major media organizations for whom it is difficult to constantly provide news for various interest groups (be them religious, political, environmental, etc.), could capture these audiences by adding blogs particular to their interest groups. Although media organizations are not expected to cover every story all of the time, Ms. Moos thinks that these blogs could add depth and diversity to traditional journalism with grassroots journalism through blogs. The article includes some new ideas and interviews of a number of professionals who hold different views on the subject.

Source: Poynter

US: study finds newspapers more 'influential' than TV and radio

Interesting article in MediaDailyNews on "influential Americans" and how they consume news: "At a time when advertisers and agencies are trying to understand the connection influential consumers have with the media they advertise in, new research suggests that print media, especially newspapers, are far more effective outlets than electronic media like TV and radio. The research, which comes from NOP World, the parent of Mediamark Research Inc. (MRI), integrated an NOP study on "influential" Americans with MRI's Survey of the American Consumer, finds that 41 percent of "influential Americans" are among the most avid newspaper readers. Influentials are defined by NOP as "the critical 10 percent of the population who drive what the other 90 percent think, do and buy."

"The finding should come as some comfort for newspaper publishers, which have been struggling to prove their relevancy to Madison Avenue amid declining newspaper circulation, especially among younger readers... By comparison, influential Americans account for only 14 percent of heavy users of TV, and 20 percent of heavy users of radio."

Source: MediaDailyNews

Free papers: new distribution methods

Some recently launched free papers provide innovative means of distribution, straying from the original idea of placing them at subway stations in order to attract the morning commuter. Click on the link below for some new ideas.

In London, Standard Lite, The Evening Standard's free spin off launched in December, has replaced the first two editions of it's mother paper and is distributed between 11:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. The freebie, aimed at the 600,000 downtown Londoners that leave their office at lunchtime, is designed to give readers a taste of the evening news to come, so as to increase sales of The Evening Standard. Originally aimed at 50,000 readers, the paper's first circulation figures show that it has surpassed this goal by 5,000, but it is still greatly overshadowed by Metro, which has a circulation of more than a million.

Spain's new free paper, Qu?, released last month by the publisher Recoletos has had huge success passing the million mark and distributing more nationwide papers than Metro and 20 Minutos over the month-long period. Apparently somewhat illegaly, Qu? has been distributing its papers in the afternoon as well as near kiosks in trying to best its competitors. Its marketing team has discussed distributing the paper in kiosks with an important kiosk group but so far with negative results, as this group has threatened to stop distributing Marca, a sports paper also owned by Recoletos. Metro, on the other hand, is distributed in 50 kiosks in Barcelona paying 0.018 cents (euro) to the kiosk owner for each copy it distributes. Several Spanish paid papers have tried unsuccessfully to stop this practice, possibly leaving the way open for Qu?'s desired expansion in the future.

Perhaps the most aggressive move in the free paper market is the delivery of Washington D.C.'s new free paper, the Washington Examiner, to wealthy residences as well as its distribution to commuter traffic, resulting in a combined circulation of 260,000. If this venture proves successful, the paper's owner, Philip Anschutz has applied to copyright the papers name in over 70 American cities. Jack Shafer at Slate, however, questions the relevance of a delivered free paper to high income households that can get the same if not better free news on the internet whenever they want.

Sources: MediaGuardian on Standard Lite, PRNoticias on Qu?, Slate and the Washington City Paper on the Washington Examiner

Spain: El Mundo's website surpasses 6 million readers in January

elmundo.es, the website of Spain's main daily, has beaten its own record by reaching more than 6 million unique readers in January. In only three months, the number of the site's readers grew by more than a million, affirming elmundo.es' position as the most consulted news site in Spain, as well as in the Spanish speaking world. With monthly figures for the New York Times being around 17 million and France's Le Monde at 3 million, elmundo.es is not making a bad showing at all, especially for a European paper.

In a related note, Juan Varela at Periodistas 21 posts that elmundo.es is launching several blogs. Gumersindo Lafuente, the website's director hopes that blogs will help open the readers' eyes and help the news escape the shackles of individual journalistic opinion and political correctness.

Sources: elmundo.es

and Periodistas 21

Writing, editing and design: the perfect combination for a successful paper

On Gaceta de Prensa, Mario R. Garcia asks why some papers are more successful than others when implementing a new design, even if these designs happen to be similar. The answer: W.E.D., or Writing, Editing, and Design. When ameliorating the esthetic aspect of a paper, writing and editing must be meticulously integrated. How can a font be decided upon if it is not known what content it will embody? How can the architecture of a page be discussed if it is not known how long the articles to be published on the page will be? Garcia thinks that there should be constant exchange between journalists, editors and visual designers and a lot of creativity. Journalists should make sure that the visual designers understand the idea behind a story and the point of view that the story will take. Editors, when implementing W.E.D. (which they should), need to encourage coordination in the newsroom and not discriminate between the higher importance of reporting or designing. The designer must understand the story before considering the physical presentation, including photos, of the article. By working together in the newsroom, journalists will be more successful in reaching the demands of the reader, who does not, for example, want to see a photo that says the same thing as the headline, who likes to see the face of the people involved in the story, and who likes to know by looking at the design the general gist of the story. Garcia's W.E.D. ideas relate to compacts, free papers, and when attracting younger readers, all efforts that have experienced a change in content and editorial management that accompanied the change in format originally designed to attract readers.

Source: Gaceta de Prensa

Google wants to work with the Wikimedia Foundation

Exceptionally, I quote a complete post from Staci Kramer, paidcontent.org because it is a scoop: "A new post on Wikimedia describes a vague proposal from Google "to host some of the content of the Wikimedia projects." The non-profit Wikimedia Foundation includes Wikpedia, Wikinews and the Wiktionary. A possible tie-in with eternal beta Google News? Google Answers? Something completely new? The mind whirs ... Terms are being discussed by the board, the developer committee has some details and a private IRC chat with Google is being scheduled for March. More information will be posted "when the offer is allowed to be made public." The most explicit information is a note "that this agreement does not mean there is any requirement for us to include advertising on the site."

Google and WikiNews, it's what we call in French "le mariage de la carpe et du lapin".

Source: Wikipedia through paidcontent.org

Will all news sites become aggregators?

On micropersuasion.com: In the wake of last week's adoption of the RSS desktop reader Newspoint by the LA Times and the UK's Guardian, CNETNews.com has announced that it will launch its own RSS news aggregator called Newsburst to compete with Bloglines, recently acquired by AskJeeves, and Rojo. "This is the beginning of a trend where the big media launch branded RSS aggregators to make sure they retain reader loyalty," says micropersuasion's Steve Rubel. For a summary of what's happening in the world of RSS and brief explanations and links of a few aggregators, click on the link below.

Source: micropersuasion.com

Although some problems still remain, primarily advertising capabilities, it appears that RSS news aggregators could soon become a standard feature on readers' desktops and will be something that editors should get acquainted with.

Current events:

First: The LA Times and The Guardian adopt Newspoint by the Swiss-American company, Consenda, which is still in trial runs as of this posting. Read Director of Digital Publishing at The Guardian Simon Waldman's explanation of his paper's move to Newspoint here.

Then: AskJeeves buys bloglines.com, the Net's most popular RSS service. Read news of the of the acquisition on the Internet Stock Blog and some opinions on the deal and the future of RSS posted by weblogsinc's Jason Calacanis.

Now: CNETNews.com announces it will launch it's own RSS desktop aggregator, Newsburst.

Explanations:

Newsburst( from its website): Newsburst is a personalized tool that tracks virtually any type of information on the Web: news, blogs, shopping lists, weather, search results, alerts, auctions and more. Information is everywhere, and Newsburst lets you access it from one place. Read differently.

Newspoint: Being tested by the Guardian and the LA Times, Newspoint is a desktop RSS aggregator for newspapers. From Consenda's website: Using NewsPoint, newspapers are able to place themselves at the convergence point of traditional news publishing and blogs, while increasing average revenue per user through NewsPoint?s innovations in RSS-related targeted text, display, and classified advertising.

Bloglines: Some highlights of AskJeeves recent acquisition: the website emphasizes primarily that the service is free. Other qualities include personalized news, its ability to diffuse news feeds and blogs regardless of their authoring technology, and the user's options to create his/her own blog.

Other sites:

Rojo: Pronounced like Mojo with an R is a web-based service dedicated to helping Internet users efficiently manage online content and information flow. Currently, it is only available by invitation.

Kinja: An RSS aggregator that deals exclusively with blogs. Readers can create a personal digest in order to track their favorite bloggers.

UK: Sunday Telegraph and Vodafone collaborate in weekly supplement

MediaWeek reports that the Sunday Telegraph and mobile phone giant Vodafone have teamed up to create a new supplement targeting small businesses entitled Business Voice. Business Voice will run for the next thirteen weeks and will feature advice and articles from both Vodafone's business experts and the Telegraph editorial team. The collaboration marks a significant move by the Sunday Telegraph's commercial team to incorporate demands by major advertisers to run advertorial projects.

Source: MediaWeek

Spain: 20 Minutos relaunches its webpage

The ongoing Spanish free paper war has moved online, according to PRNoticias. In a move to differentiate itself from its printed edition, 20 Minutos has added new sections, more photos, an optimized archive, more services, and an overall increase in breaking news to its website. The site will also include PDF versions of all of its printed pages and options for reader commentary. The papers director, Arsenio Escolar, says that the idea behind the new website is to put the paper in direct contact with readers, "so that they become 20 Minutos' neighborhood correspondents."

Source: PRNoticias

Switzerland: a case study of Blick's change in format

Gaceta de Prensa has posted an article summarizing last year's change in format of Switzerland's Blick. When the daily originally sold its compact version alongside its broadsheet at newstands last May, 75% of readers chose the tabloid. After seven weeks of success, the paper decided to change its format permanently. Below are the observations of the staff and some useful information for switching to tabloid.

Source: Gaceta de Prensa

The succession of events at Blick:

-The change energized the paper's staff

-Commercially, the change was a success, but their was some pressure to reduce advertising prices.

-So, they modified the size of advertising formats...

-...and the price, reducing the price of a full page add by 10% and raising the price of the smaller, modified ads due to their better visibility.

-Then, they guaranteed the prices for 18 months.

Their clients were happy with the changes. Although they reduced the price of the full page, in the following months, they surpassed the revenue gained by the old format.
Originally, circulation was very high during the period that the double format was offered, but eventually evened out, falling to normal levels. There was no real "explosion" of circulation, but declining newstand sales stopped. However, they did have problems with subscriptions, somehthing the Blick staff contributes to demographics. The compact was attracting women and younger readers, and the paper has realized that it needs to change its content to appeal more directly to these groups. Overall, the change has been positive for the paper.

Dan Gillmor, Chris Anderson, and the end of objectivity

"Maybe it's time to say a fond farewell to an old canon of journalism: objectivity," says Dan Gillmor in his posting, "The end of objectivity (version 0.91)." The opportunities that the internet provides, continues Gillmor, allow this journalistic standard to be approached in a different manner; through thoroughness, accuracy, fairness and transparency, all of which could add up to objectivity. Chris Anderson on his Long Tail blog, agrees with Gillmor, and contributes some distinct points to his theory. Read a comparison of the two articles by clicking on the link below, or read the postings themselves by clicking on the Source links.

Source: The Long Tail and Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism, Etc.

Gillmor notes that the rise of objectivity is a relatively recent phenomenon, primarily being established over the past fifty years in an age of newspaper and television monopolies and oligopolies. Bias was simply too risky for these companies' business which strove to maintain its audience by not offending it, thus, both sides of the story were always portrayed. Now, Gillmor would like to see a change to this approach, replacing objectivity with four "pillars" of quality journalism, a goal facilitated by the interactivity allowed by the internet.

Thoroughness: Instead of the traditional journalist's chore of calling everyone on their contacts list to get as complete a story as possible, today journalists should embrace information and reflections from their readers.

Accuracy: "Get your facts straight." Today, a reporter is better off printing things he or she don't know, leaving holes in the story that can be filled in by reader responses.

Fairness: The most difficult of the four pillars to define considering the subjectivity of the term. But in the interactive age, fairness can be maintained through the information conversation. The writer should always be open to the comments and feedback of others, eventually incorporating them into their work, resulting in a well-rounded and fair report.

Transparency: Bias is instilled in all of us even though we may not realize it. In reporting, this bias can be offset by always providing the information source, a task made easy through internet links.

By following these four pillars, Gillmor feels that journalism will take a large step "toward the worthy goal of helping our audiences/collaborators."

Chris Anderson would also like to see an end to the "commodification" of media, adding some new details to the debate. American newspapers, he says, have long been obliged to be impartial because they are distributed city by city in ones or twos, something he calls media scarcity thinking. On the contrary, the UK produces national newspapers, which, in order to remain competitive and distinguish themselves from one another have always taken sides, avoiding scarcity and espousing abundance thinking. Anderson thinks that the objective American media can broaden itself, not necessarily with pure opinion and political partisanship, but through a combination of sensibility and worldview.

Sensibility: This departure from objectivity could be described as connecting with readers through an author's personal values. Anderson thinks that this is already accomplished through erudite publications such as The New Yorker or popular culture outlets such as MTV, but is best expressed in blogs which are the true, unedited sentiments of any individual.

Worldview: When journalists pick one principle and stick to it, arguing their case and offering "informed perspective and analysis" on a subject, they have achieved "worldview." Anderson sites The Economist, Fox News, and Wired as various forms of media that champion a specific ideology. He says that "What worldview shares with sensibility is that the writer's voice is louder than in traditional journalism, and his/her own observations and reactions are less suppressed."

The combination of these two principles will lead to what Anderson calls "passionate media," the only way to defeat the "commodification" of news.

Read the articles and comments yourself and enrich these two theories with your own response.

Poynter: a manifesto for online journalism

Last week's three day conference entitled Web+10: the Future of Online Journalism at Poynter's headquarters in St. Petersberg Florida analyzed the past ten years of online journalism and plotted a path towards the future. Forty industry experts divided the conference into seven major subjects, content, customers, competition, community, credibility, competencies and corporate structure with the goal of eventually producing an online journalism "manifesto." Some of the questions to be answered:

- How will journalists and the organizations that fund their work react to the changing relationship between the media and its audience?
- During the next 10 years, will the economic underpinnings of the current media business collapse?
- What business models will support quality journalism?
- What new storytelling models will emerge that engage online audiences and attract new participants to newspapers' journalism, brands and products?

Some observations:

- The transformation for media companies needs to happen faster

- In order to stay competitive, the industry will have to take more big risks instead of simply modifying existing business models.

The conference also touched upon the topic of the Flash presentation Epic making waves in the digital world, concluding that the predictions made in the production may be the biggest fear of traditional media companies but are what young journalists see as inevitable. Concerning community journalism, veteran blogger Dave Winer added a twist on a familiar proverb, saying that in the future, everyone will be famous to 15 people. We'll have to wait for the publication of the manifesto to learn where these professionals really think the future will take us.

Source: The Poynter Institute

Spain: popular free papers boosting paid paper sales

In an interview with Metro Spain's director, Carlos Oliva-Vélez, on PRNoticias, the country's free paper market is put into context. Oliva-Vélez, emphasizing the crisis that printed newspapers are facing, says that the launching of Metro three years ago in Spain has "strengthened and recuperated" the entire market, even that of traditional paid papers. Because people get the local news from free papers, they don't get the depth that a paid paper offers, and thus have begun to buy more paid papers. The problem, says Vélez, is that the free market is now inundated. Even though each freebie offers something different, ( Metro gives brief informational summaries, 20 Minutos provides more opinion, and Qué focuses on "sensationalism"), Veléz doesn't think that there is room for the three major free papers, but is certain that Metro will not be the one to go under. In fact, Metro Spain plans on doubling its market in the coming year, from 15 cities to 30.

Source: PRNoticias

US: spending for reading materials divided by 3 in 40 years

AdAge has presented a very disturbing study on what the Americans are buying and why. Between 1960 and 2003, the spending for reading materials (including newspapers) was divided by three! According to the study, "The share of money spent on entertainment has hovered around 5% since 1950, but priorities have shifted. Spending on consumer electronics has soared; spending on newspapers, magazines and books has plummeted. The average household apportioned just 0.3% of spending ($127) for reading materials in 2003, down from 1% ($51, or $317 adjusted for inflation) in 1960. The rich, who also are more educated, spend more money on print media and books than the poor do. But don’t read too much into that. It turns out households in every quintile of income spent the same average 0.3% of budget on reading in 2003. For publishers, that doesn’t make cents." If you have figures on Europe, Asia, Africa and South America, don't hesitate to forward them.

Source: AdAge

US: experienced citizen journalism site set to expand

With 45,000 citizen journalism websites around the country already, GetLocalNews.com may be defining the future of citizen journalism. After realizing that "local community members are addicted to interactivity," the five-year-old company began establishing hyper-local sites whose success is based on turning readers into reporters. Anyone in the community can post articles or opine on message boards from topics ranging from speeding on residential streets to the most recent high school play. GetLocalNews also provides advertising opportunities and is integrated with print software so that citizen journalism sites can start their own print publications. CEO Edgar Canon says, ""Our network of citizen journalism sites creates a middle layer in the information world between individual blogs and fully edited news sources." Perhaps more importantly for newspapers, Canon also points out that teens are keen on the interactivity that these sites allow. "We've found that our sites attract the generation that newspapers have lost."

The Guardian tests the distributed/ decentralised internet says Simon Waldman

A new RSS reader? Again? But this time, it seems there is a real innovation - especially the link between advertising, classifieds, content and personalisation - with My Guardian / Newspoint at the British newspaper. The "My" is interesting because Consenda, the software company who developed the RSS reader, works as a media ASP and offers to newspapers a sort of custom branded newsreader. The Editors Weblog - John Burke in fact - asked five questions to Simon Waldman, director of digital publishing at The Guardian about his expectations and his vision of the RSS feeds' future.

1. What's the difference between the RSS reader The Guardian used until now and NewsPoint?
Newspoint is just one of a number of things we're testing and examining at the moment in the RSS area. Actually, our thinking is not simply driven by RSS, but about the whole principle of the distributed/ decentralised internet which we think is going to be one of the main developments and challenges that face publishers over the next three years. What you've seen is a simply a bit of beta testing (which is now pretty much fully signed up at the moment thanks to the extra publicity it's received) for something that we might or might not ultimately go with. But our engagement with the distributed internet will - we think - ultimately go much further than this.

Why Newspoint - or a branded RSS reader for that matter? We think that once you get beyond the early adopter crowd, the best way to bring people into RSS etc. is through leveraging existing brand relationships. This what Yahoo and MSN are doing with their 'My' offerings - and we feel there's a window where we might be able to help people make the leap to RSS, while helping them venture into a new and exciting world, we have a bit more control over their RSS experience than if we simply leave our content in the hands of other newsreaders and aggregators.

2. Is NewsPoint going to change the way people read your news? If they can add news from competitors in their feeds, will that threaten loyalty to your brand?
I think that once you offer RSS feeds, you're entering into a world where you no longer have end-to-end control of the user's consumption of your content. If you can't deal with that - then don't offer RSS feeds (although someone will probably scrape your site if you don't). I think that the best way to encourage loyalty is to offer people the best possible content in whatever way is most accessible for them. Letting people add other feeds only makes it more likely that they will keep using the tool, and therefore have sustained exposure to our brand. I have every confidence that our content can sit alongside that of other players and only look better as a result.

3. Is the choice of NewsPoint a purely commercial / advertising decision in order to increase online revenues, or are there also some new editorial opportunities?
Our choices on RSS generally - Newspoint included - are 360 degree publishing decisions. They combine editorial and commercial needs, along with an informed understanding of what our users want - and are likely to want - from us.

4. Will you try the "classifieds delivery newsreader" that the Los Angeles Times is trying with Consenda?
We think the situation with classified RSS is equally fascinating and frightening. We have recently started offering RSS feeds of any search on our jobs site because we believe it adds and extra dimension to our role as a matchmaker between employers and jobseekers. At the same time, when I saw Feedster suddenly offering a search of jobs RSS feeds, I start to wonder whether we've simply let a fox into the henhouse. So, in any RSS activity we do in the future - Newspoint included - classified is going to play an important part.

5. Do you expect the move to NewsPoint to increase readership? Revenue? Do you already have figures on Guardian RSS feeds?
Yes, we have plenty of figures - but I'm not going to tell them to you! Overall it's a small, but growing source of traffic. The importance is not so much the short term benefits - but the long term challenge of making sure that our content is where our readers want to find it. The online world is changing. The idea that we are simply seeing a move - however painful - from publishing newspapers to publishing websites is optimistic to see the least. We are entering a world where people are increasingly going to access our content through RSS, aggregators, bloggers and search engines. It is - as I said - the distributed internet and it is a real challenge for us. The more we learn about it; and the more we engage with it "now", the healthier we will be in the medium and long term future.

Source: Simon Waldman, director of digital publishing at The Guardian. See also MediaGuardian (registration required).

Excerpt of the presentation of Consenda:

"CONSENDA is a Swiss-American media software company that has developed a patented online content delivery platform called NewsPoint. NewsPoint is based on the ?RSS? online publishing format.

RSS enables end users to automatically receive the latest content from pre-selected websites and ?blogs?. It is currently the fastest growing format for online content, and is being embraced by leading online media companies around the world.

NewsPoint is licensed to online newspapers, who distribute their own versions of the software to their end users. The software works as an add-on to an ordinary web browser, and NewsPoint?s unique and simple interface enables users to receive timely updates via RSS from their favorite news source. In addition, users are able to receive all types of content from other websites and blogs in the NewsPoint interface, eliminating the need to visit those sites to see if new content has been added.

Using NewsPoint, newspapers are able to place themselves at the convergence point of traditional news publishing and blogs, while increasing average revenue per user through NewsPoint?s innovations in RSS-related targeted text, display, and classified advertising."

Sports fans prefer team websites for sports news

Not good for news providers. According to DMEurope, "A staggering 79 per cent of sports fans in the UK polled in the have stated that their team or official body website is the most important medium for accessing sports results, news and information, while 61 per cent plumped for national newspaper sports pages, 50 per cent for terrestrial TV, 46 per cent for cable and satellite TV, 37 per cent for radio, 35 per cent for teletext, 24 per cent for magazine and six per cent for mobile text alerts, according to a survey by digital sports agency Aura Sports.

Perhaps the most surprising finding was that some 46 per cent of respondents agreed that if a brand advertises on Official Websites then it must be trustworthy. Similarly 36 per cent stated that they are more likely to buy a product advertised on an official website than products advertised elsewhere. Paul Wright, MD of Aura Sports said: ?The industry has long suspected the power of sports brands online. What is particularly evident is the trust that fans invest in their official websites. They are viewed as the source of definitive proof on news stories that may appear in other media. They also give brands that advertise on them a kind of reflected halo of trust.?

Source: DMEurope

UK: Telegraph to axe 90 journalists

The Telegraph Group in London announced plans to axe 90 journalists from the Daily and Sunday Telegraph newspapers through its reorganization effort to fund a £150m investment to provide full color papers and to increase pagination, according to the Media Bulletin. The organizational cut was announced by chief executive Murdoch MacLennan in a letter to staff, who wrote that the £150m investment program would be funded in part by a significant "re-shaping exercise" across the entire organization. A consultation process to carry through the staff cut will begin soon among the 521 journalists employed by the Daily and Sunday Telegraph. Such a large restructuring constitutes a significant employee layoff for a European newspaper. In October, News International, which owns The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun and The News of the World, announced a five-year investment programme to upgrade its presses to supply full colour on every page.

Source: Media Bulletin

Should newspapers' online archives be free?

On USC's Online Journalism Review, Mark Glaser asks whether newspapers are ready to open their online archives to the world's web users free of charge. Seeing as much of the information on the web is already free, including breaking news from newspapers, many industry insiders expect the eventual addition of archives to the internet conversation, but most feel that newspapers are not quite ready. Although paid archives presently make up a very small percentage of most newspapers' online revenues, they are still seen as a source of steady income. The best way to replace this revenue in making archives free would be paid-search ads, something that Martin Nisenholtz, CEO of New York Times Digital, does not think possible. On the other hand, Simon Waldman of the UK's Guardian, one of the few major papers that provides free archives to its users, thinks that, "Having a permanent presence on the Web like what we have is the most cost effective form of marketing that you could ever hope for." Although Waldman is a proponent of free archives, he says that the decision is up to individual papers and opines that they "might want to do it at a later date, but not now, not when (they) don't have to." Now, read the debate and decide for yourself.

Source: Online Journalism Review

US: ethnic newspapers as primary source of news

Surprising poll abouth ethnic readership in the US. According to the Amsterdam News, "Mainstream newspapers are still struggling to reach the majority of readers of African American and Hispanic newspapers, according to the finding revealed by two new studies conducted by the Circulation Verification Council. The studies, which polled 15,000 readers of 110 Black newspapers and 77 Hispanic newspapers nationwide, showed that only 12 percent of Blacks polled subscribe to a daily newspaper while 66 percent cite African American newspapers as a primary news source. Similarly, 14 percent of Hispanics polled say that they subscribe to a daily newspaper and 66 percent say they use Hispanic newspapers in the same manner."

Source: Amsterdam News

South Korea: lobbying against conservative newspapers

According to the English edition of The Chosun Ilbo, an internet group called Nosamo has begun a campaign determined to steal readership away from the Chosun and another major conservative paper, the Dong-A Ilbo, in hopes that readers will switch to the government supporting papers, the Hankyoreh and the Kyunghyang Shinmun. Nosamo claims that it played a significant role in the 2002 electoral victory of President Roh Moo-hyun, and the move is timed to take advantage of a controversial new media law that will go into effect in April. With hopes of amplifying the effects that the new media law will have on the conservative papers, Nosamo will publicly denounce them while simultaneously praising the two pro-government papers.

Source: The Chosun Ilbo

Spain: 2 more specialized free papers to be launched

With 20 Minutos, Metro, and Qué enjoying success in Spain's free paper market, specialized gratuitos according to subject are soon to be published. PRNoticias reports that in the wake of the free sports paper, Mediapunta which has recently been launched, two new freebies will hit the streets in April. Ahora will be an evening paper dedicated to politics and 20 Negocios will focus on economics and finance. They will share the common goals of capitalizing on the success of free papers and diversifying their content from the three major free papers which provide general news. PRNoticias thinks that Spain's established paid papers, such as Cinco Dias and Expansion may "suffer the consequences of this 'second revolution of free papers.'"

Source: PRNoticias

Sweden: an advanced, and successful, newspaper market

The Swedes may embrace technology, but at the same time, they still love newspapers, reports Monique Van Dusseldorp on Poynter's e-Media Tidbits. Van Dusseldorp recently had the chance to visit the Swedish regional newspaper publisher Goteborgs Posten, and the local paper Hallandsposten, who have both successfully integrated technology into their market strategies while maintaining healthy circulation. When Goteborgs Posten switched to tabloid format last year, it promoted the new format with a 30-day trial offer for which 40,000 people signed up, over 10 percent of which used their mobile phones for registration and payment. Hallandsposten, with a circulation of 33,000, has a website but it contributes to a very small percentage of its revenue, which is split 60/40 between advertisements and subscription respectively. Sverker Emanuelsson, editor-in-chief of Hallandsposten believes that the future of newspapers lies in local news. He also takes the contrary stance of the current debate on the future importance of newspapers. Realizing that friends and colleagues no longer watch the same TV shows because of the enormous amount of programming and that they rarely talk of the websites they visit, Emanuelsson says that news stories from the local paper once again become the source of people's morning water cooler discussion.

Source: Poynter's e-Media Tidbits

Personalizing the news in print

The age of customized news creeps closer. A.S. Berman at Presstime Magazine reports that last June, Los Angeles based magazineReason personalized its monthly edition for each of its 40,000 subscribers, placing customized editorial content on the inside covers and a satellite photo of their residence on the cover accompanied by the headline, "(Subscriber's name)...The Know Where You Are!" Berman describes the process used to create the monthly magazine's personalized edition and new technology that will be used to customize news such as GMA Inc. Print-on-Demand system, which GMA's director, Gretchen Walters feels will be used to customize advertising before content. Despite these projects, Douglas Karr, database marketing manger at the Indianapolis Star, says that personalized news has not come close to reaching the level that consumers would like, but that newspapers will have to start embracing customized news as the wave of the future. "We're still trying to please everybody with one product. I think the day is coming when we'll have to please everybody with their own product." He indicates that there is much work to be done, emphasizing the huge difference between printing a monthly personalized magazine and a customized daily newspaper.

Source: Presstime

US: birth of "Keeping People Connected"

It happens in Indiana, USA and the evolution is quite interesting. First, this little media group from the Middle-West - The News-Sun, The Evening Star or the Herald-Republican - radically changes its name: "For years we had been known as Kendallville Publishing Co. For some people, that’s what we’ll always be, even though it’s an image that isn’t quite true anymore... Finally, the change was officially made to KPC Media Group Inc. with the “KPC” part reinterpreted as “Keeping People Connected.” It's a very clever name because "Keeping People Connected" is the main asset of newspapers. Offline and online. Second, the group recently decided shift towards a paid model: "The first change you’ll notice at the beginning of February 2005 is that the Web site will be moving to a paid model. That is a huge shift, and one worth talking about.

For years readers tell that they couldn’t understand why we offered so much of our newspaper content for free on the Internet. The standard response was that we were being supported by online advertising, much like a free newspaper, or “advertiser,” would be.

The advertiser newspaper analogy broke down at some point, though, because none of the companany’s advertisers, called the Smart Shoppers, carried as much sheer information as the Web site...

Another reason why the Web site is going to a paid model is just plain fairness. You might argue that there are other ways to be fair, but let’s take a look at the situation for a moment, broken down by reader types.

“Group A” gets the regular daily newspaper — the print version.

“Group B” is our Web reader, who hasn’t had to buy or borrow anything, but who is able to take advantage of most of the same content as the person who has bought a subscription... If you only want a subscription to the Web site, that cost begins at $5.95 per month, $29.95 for six months, and so on."

With rumors on big newspapers' websites moving towards paid models, this attempt of a very local media group could be pioneering.

Source: KPCnews.com through paidcontent.org (Stacy Kramer)

Chicago Tribune launches program to keep subscribers

From MediaDailyNews: "In a bid to keep its subscribers on board, the Chicago Tribune this month launched Subscriber Advantage, a program that will provide benefits to any subscriber of the paper who signs up and activates an account... The program offers subscribers special discounts from Tribune advertisers, special events, Q&A sessions with Tribune journalists, a Chicago help desk and hotline, and complete access to the Tribune's online archives."

Source: MediaDailyNews

Slate rekindles the blogging debate

Tipped off by Jack Shafer's observations on Slate about last week's Blogging, Journalism and Credibility Conference at Harvard, a small digital battle of opinions has emerged. Shafer thinks that the bloggers are arrogantly and prematurely exaggerating the success of their medium as well as the extent to which blogging is revolutionizing mainstream media by declaring "blogs as the medicine the newspaper industry should take to reclaim its lost readers" and open source journalism as the "tonic for what ails the press." He says that bloggers ignore the historically proven adaptability of the media and the fact that professional journalists have been "Webified" for years, actually being more "Webby" than bloggers are today. He points out that none of the representatives of the "dinosaur" media at the conference felt threatened by blogs and that many journalists have even begun their own blogs. Responses were quick, many and varied from supportive to openly hostile. Theagitator.com agrees with Shafer, saying that bloggers have begun to take themselves too seriously. Jay Rosen on the Conference's website says Shafer, aside from being lazy and lacking decency, writes "false characterizations" about the meeting. Ed Cone calls his Shafer's article "boring" and "innacurate." Read the article and join the debate by posting your own comments.

Source: Slate

UK: new focus for regional newspapers

An article in the UK's January 14 press gazette reports on the change in focus of a regional paper, the Norwich Evening News. Research done by a London marketing agency, The Future Foundation, showed that the internet and 24 hour news stations have made it much less important for regional papers to carry breaking news. The Norwich Evening News decided to heed the study's results. It moved its edition times forward by 40 minutes, meaning that late-breaking stories could not be included, but assuring that the paper would be on the streets when people were out of work. Now, if a story breaks after the paper goes to press, it is simply posted on the paper's website. The research also showed that readers of regional papers, normally pressed for time, now prefer smaller news summaries. The Norwich Evening News adapted accordingly, adding a summarizing paragraph at the beginning of lead stories.The public reaction has been positive and circulation has risen 4%. The paper's editor, David Bourn, commenting on the way the industry is changing, said, "Local exclusives will always be our meat and drink but these days national and world events are reported as they happen on TV and the internet. This has changed the role of a newspaper from being the medium to break news stories to being the medium providing detail and analysis."

Source: press gazette (print edition)

US: Knight Ridder eyes launching tabloid papers

According to Reuters , "Newspaper publisher Knight Ridder Inc. is considering launching free dailies and smaller, tabloid-size editions of its papers to boost readership, Chief Executive Tony Ridder said. A Knight Ridder circulation task force is eyeing both of these industry trends, said Ridder, whose San Jose, California-based company publishes papers including The Miami Herald and the Philadelphia Inquirer. "We think that a tabloid size has a lot of appeal and there's a track record in various places that indicates that really works and can boost circulation. Even though we haven't made a final decision, we will probably be testing that in a few markets" said Ridder."

Source: Reuters through Yahoo

Middle East: newspaper circulation falling due to rising internet connections

In three separate surveys of national Middle Eastern newspapers in Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Iraq the BBC reports that the impact of the internet is being felt. The articles mainly focus on competition between papers, press freedom, and circulation difficulties caused by war. But they also note that in both Saudi Arabia and Israel, the number of internet users has exploded, resulting in significant readership losses in both countries. On the other hand, some papers in war-torn Iraq which have found it difficult to distribute their publications have turned to the internet as a secure source of disseminating their news. Read the articles for further information by clicking on the country names above.

Source: BBC News

US: do free newspapers spell the end for traditional dailies?

A good synthesis on the free dailies market in the US by channelasia.com: "The move towards free newspapers is not a trend that is going to go away, said Mr Mark Fitzgerald, editor at large at Editor & Publisher, a journal that covers the US newspaper industry. Young people expect content to be free. "The reality is that there are whole classes of readers who do not really want to pay for newspapers," said Mr. Fitzgerald.

Just one specification: advertising counts for two thirds of the revenues of a newspaper in America and in the UK, only 40% or 50% in continental Europe. It means that paid-for circulation remains a strong asset in this area and that European publishers will be - for a long time - less attracted by the free paper business model.

Source: channelasia.com