editorsweblog.org

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

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

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

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

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

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

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: 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

Business page designs need improvement

In a recent article on BusinessJournalism.org, Phil Nesbitt comments on the state of US business page design, generally lacking in brilliance. Nesbitt reminds readers of the importance of good design, as the design only has a split second to grab readers attention and to deliver clear and memorable information. Too many newspapers mistakenly writing off business page readers as gray and boring, and consequently continue to publish the same bland diet of long columns, overwritten pieces, and other articles that many readers won’t bother reading. Yet the aggressive and entrepreneurial individuals who read the business page are as visually sophisticated as news page or feature readers, and are thirsty for a more enticing design.

Major metropolitan newspapers have fortunately improved their front business page, using strong images, generous white space, and the unexpected element to attract readers. But most readers read newspapers in the 5,000 to 80,000 circulation category, a category in which business pages appear merely as an after thought. Nesbitt asserts that while the business section may be taking losses due to reduced staff sizes still tying to maintain broad coverage, finance and economics have increasing effects on readers' lives. Smaller papers need to make larger efforts to cover occurrences such as local business closings and openings.

Nesbitt gives a specific comparison illustrating his general arguments. The Wenatchee World in Wenatchee, Washington (circulation 24,900) provides an example of where the average business page is today, with a large centerpiece image story and a couple of local stories of general interest. On the other hand, the business front of The Oklahoman from Oklahoma city (circulation 208,000) provides an example towards which other papers should strive. Both papers have a similar design, but the latter example provides a larger buffet of items to choose from.

Source: BussinessJournalism.org

US: new list shows 6% of papers with RSS feeds

Since many are in dire need of more efficient web searching methods, more and more websites and weblogs are adding RSS feeds, an abbreviation for "Really Simple Syndication," to distribute content. RSS readers search through your specified topics of interest and pull the latest headlines, abstracts, and other information from them. As reported from Susan Mernit's weblog, the latest list of US newspapers with RSS feeds has been compiled by Jackie Rejfek, who is finishing a masters degree in journalism, and Kevin Reyven, a Computer Facilities Supervisor at Bradley University. The list includes 73 RSS feeds out of a total of 1178 US papers, with convenient add/edit boxes to update once different papers acquire new feeds. While many are aware of the well known news sites that publish RSS leads, such as The New York Times and MSNBC.com, this new list includes many local and specialized papers. The newspapers in the list can be sorted either by state, by parent company, by those that are consolidated sites, or by their offered services. While Rejfek and Reyven say they will continuously update the database, other RSS feeds that they've missed may also exist.

The list can be viewed at: Sidewalktheory.com

Source: Poynteronline and Susan Mernit's Blog

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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)

Canada: new free paper for youth

The Globe and Mail reports that CanWest Global Communications Corp. will be launching a free commuter daily aimed at urban youth. It will start out in March with a circulation of 300,000 in five major Canadian cities and will be accompanied by a website, eventually expanding to news delivery via mobile phones. CanWest, which owns broadsheet papers in many Canadian cities, is thought to be starting the free paper in a move to defend its market, which has seen competition in Toronto from Metro and 24 Hours, and attract the 18 to 34 year-old demographic. The paper is expected to follow standard free format using concise, easy to read stories and lots of entertainment news.

Source: The Globe and Mail

Canada: a colorful new Sunday paper

January 16th marked the debut of the new color, magazine-style broadsheet of the Toronto Star, Canada's leading daily with a weekly circulation of 2.7 million, according to Canada NewsWire. Not only has the papers esthetic been improved, but it also aims to give readers the quality editorial they desire with engaging columns, breaking news, and lots of sports and entertainment. Giles Gherson, editor-in-chief of the Star realized the opportunities that lie in a Sunday paper: "Increasingly people can get the basic news story of the day off the Web or from television or radio, so newspapers must relentlessly deliver more value, particularly on weekends. This Sunday magazine approach does that in spades - more depth, more context, different story angles - and all beautifully presented." Thought to be the first paper in North America with color on every page, Sunday editor Allison Uncles says, " "With features as the focus of the newspaper and colour on every page, it's like a hybrid magazine - truly unique. "We've put a heavy emphasis on great writing, photography and design, so the content will match the elegant look."

Source: Canada NewsWire

Trends in Newsrooms 2005: a preview of the 12th World Editors Forum

It will be my second conference at the World Editors Forum and I begin to receive answers from speakers. Here is my introduction to this event to be held in Seoul, South Korea from 29 May to 1 June 2005:

"The newspaper industry in 2003 could be seen as a British year with the launching of compact editions for The Independent and The Times. A smart answer for young readers and commuters and the first real positive action to counterbalance the circulation crisis in mature markets.

By the same measure, 2004 was a German year due to the new initiatives of Axel Springer and Georg von Holzbrinck groups. Welt Kompakt, News and several other new titles now compete with free papers and also attract young readers. What is fascinating in this experience is that media groups have initiated collaborative and exchange processes between different newsrooms.

What will be the symbol of the year 2005? It could emerge at the 12th World Editors Forum to be held in Seoul.

Perhaps 2005 will be an American year. For four reasons:

- we have invited as keynote speaker Dan Gillmor, the well-known blogger and ex-columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, the pioneering Californian newspaper. He will tell us more about his wish to create citizen journalism based on his book We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People. Call it participatory journalism or public journalism or open source journalism, it is a major issue to involve more and more readers in the news gathering and debating process

- RSS (Real Simple Syndications) and news aggregators - as Google News and Google Alerts - are rather unknown outside the US. But editors need to know how it could reshape the way readers are informed. Personalized news is no longer a slogan, it is developing and very few newspapers are ready to this revolution. Google executives will explain their views on this issue, Rich Skrenta, Topix.net CEO too.

- more and more American newspapers are considering charging subscription fees for the online version of their flagship newspaper. As New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr said: "It gets to the issue of how comfortable are we training a generation of readers to get quality information for free. That is troubling." Indeed!

- There have also been major innovations in the design of many American newspapers. Mario Garcia from Garcia Media will help us to discover their main innovations."

In other words, the 12th World Editors Forum is very promising with cutting edge information provided to cutting edge editors!

Source: 12th World Editors Forum

Qué Madrid: the continued spread of free papers

Juan Varela has posted news about the latest addition to Europe's free newspaper phenomenon, Qué Madrid, on his media watchdog site, Periodistas21. Already in trial phase on the web, the Spanish communications group, Recoletos, will release the paper in 12 Spanish cities on January 17. Online interaction and blog postings are the most important innovation of Qué which is striving to become Spain's principal daily for young people. Qué will diversify between its two formats and add new sections in order to compete with its rivals, 20 Minutos and Metro. The print form will follow the basic form of other free papers, with the standard local, national, international, sports, etc. sections, but will also include humor and opinion pages. The online version is specifically focused towards younger internet surfers who are able to enrich the paper's content with their own blogs. Blogging sections include automobiles, education, social, technology and employment, as well as interactive options such as the reader photos, that distinguish Qué from its competitors. The project will include 130 journalists between the two versions and the print edition will vary between 24 and 36 color pages.

The editorial group Marca y Expansion has announced an advertising campaign of more than 8 million euros in order to promote the new free journal. When it is released, the printed version will be distributed at more than 7,000 sites nationwide. This will be an interesting business move to watch.

Qu?, the new free newspaper of Recoletos Group is in the web now. Qu? has a new original formula with two versions:
in the street will be launched January 17th (see Periodistas21) and will be a regular free paper, similar to 20 Minutos or Metro; in the web is a blog aggregator with nine sections or categories. Qu? offers a blog publishing system and a repository of blogs. Promoters hope that blogs attract young readers to the website.

Marca.con, owned by Recoletos, is the first sport news portal in Spain and the second newspaper website in traffic after ElMundo.es. The bet is for the young people. Qu? is going a step further than other free newspapers like Quick (Gannet) and its formula blog/newspaper is in the edge of participatory journalism. More in Periodistas21

A group of Recoletos?s executives bought the company to Pearson in last december (see Periodistas21). Pearson wanted to center the company in financial news (Expansi?n, owned by Recoletos, is the business newspaper leader in Spain) and didn?t trust in the Qu? project and other initiatives.

Source: Periodistas21

Dan Gillmor, keynote speaker of the 12th World Editors Forum

Dan Gillmor will be our guest at the 12th World Editors Forum and the keynote speaker of this annual gathering of 300 editors from around the world. In 2005, the forum will be held in Seoul, South Korea, from 29 May to 1 June. I'm very pleased that Dan Gillmor accepted my invitation for two reasons: first, his decision to leave the San Jose Mercury News at the end of the year and to create a new organization focused on "participatory journalism" is an example for all of us. Nowadays it's not so common for writers to put their theory into practice! Second, I'm sure a lot of European editors will not share Gillmor's views expressed in his latest book "We the media. Grassroots journalism by the people for the people". I'm interested to see if, during the debate, Gillmor's ideas will be percieved as pioneering views for the rest of the world or as the beginnings of a dividing line between American journalism and what some call "European journalism". Don't forget this date: Monday 30 May 2005 for the Dan Gillmor presentation and the debate. Obviously, it will be broadcasted on the Editors Weblog.

Source: 12th World Editors Forum in Seoul and our official website

Dutch media survey about consumer behaviour

ANIMA (France) related in its newsletter: "Cebuco, the Dutch Newspaper trade body, has run its Mediabeleving survey 2004, in which consumers are asked to rate the media they are in contact with as well as advertising content. According to the survey, Newspapers are ranked #1 for “information” and “negative emotion,” Magazines lead for “identification,” Free dailies for “leisure/past time,” the Internet for “practical usage” and Cinema for “enjoyment” and “social interaction.”

Source: Cebuco through ANIMA newsletter in France

Germany: Süddeutsche reveals new projects for 2005

Die Welt features an interview with Süddeutsche CEOs Klaus Josef Lutz and Hanswilli Jenke, in which they discuss promising revenues for 2004 and new projects for 2005. Large revenues, according to Lutz, resulted from supplementary projects of the newspaper, such as the 'SZ Library,' a CD collection, and the launch of the magazine 'SZ Wissen.' For other projects in the 2005, Lutz outlines Süddeutsche's "White Label Strategy," allowing for sub-brands which are not directly linked to the SZ brand, hence transforming Süddeutsche into a broader media company in the near future. Referring to earlier announcements of SZ's editor-in-chief Hans-Werner Kilz, Lutz underlines that after the evaluation of market polls, the publisher has decided against a weekly supplement to their daily newspaper to target young readers and is further moving away from a tabloid edition of their paper. Lutz said: "the polls show a clear tendency: young readers are looking for a magazine, that covers their needs and not a general paper," hence indicating that the format for the targeted young readers will most probably be another magazine.

Source: Die Welt

Europe: broadband challenges TV viewing

First news: broadband figures are quite the same in the US and in Western Europe - 10% less in the old continent - according to a BBC news article. Second news: it will be difficult for newspapers' websites to survive without a broadband offer and some aggregated contents from broadcast partners. "The number of Europeans with broadband has exploded over the past 12 months, with the web eating into TV viewing habits, research suggests. Just over 54 million people are hooked up to the net via broadband, up from 34 million a year ago, according to market analysts Nielsen/NetRatings. The total number of people online in Europe has broken the 100 million mark. "Twelve months ago high speed internet users made up just over one third of the audience in Europe; now they are more than 50% and we expect this number to keep growing," said Gabrielle Prior, Nielsen/NetRatings analyst.

"As the number of high-speed surfers grows, websites will need to adapt, update and enhance their content to retain their visitors and encourage new ones." A study by analysts Jupiter Research suggested that broadband was challenging television viewing habits. In homes with broadband, 40% said they were spending less time watching TV. It said TV companies faced a major long-term threat over the next five years, with broadband predicted to grow from 19% to 37% of households by 2009. "Year-on-year we are continuing to see a seismic shift in where, when and how Europe's population consume media for information and entertainment and this has big implications for TV, newspaper and radio," said Jupiter Research analyst Olivier Beauvillian.

Source: BBC news

Germany: Süddeutsche Zeitung to launch edition for young readers

Berliner Zeitung reveals that Süddeutsche Zeitung is planning a supplement to their newspaper directed towards young readers. Editor-in-chief Hans-Werner Kilz announced on Thursday that the new edition carries the working title SZ2 and has given promising results in first test runs. The new edition is not supposed to replace SZ, but should rather be seen as a supplement "following a model similar to The Guardian's G2," illuminated Kilz further according to Berliner Zeitung. Newsroom, on the contrary, reports that Kilz envisions a tabloid version of SZ for his new project in an effort to compete with Welt Kompakt and News. He underlined in an interview with Newsroom, that "SZ2" will have its own style and is supposed to be a "newspaper for reading." A final decision about the SZ2- project will be made in spring of 2005.

Source: Berliner Zeitung through IFRA Executive News and Newsroom

Danish Information goes tabloid

Der Standard reports that the Danish daily Information has switched to the tabloid format last Tuesday, while at the same time doubling its number of pages per edition. Editor-in-chief Palle Weis explains the move as an attempt to make the paper easier to read and enhance flexibility. Information was launched in the Danish Resistance movement during the second World War and has since maintained a circulation of 20.000 copies on average.

Source: Der Standard

Germany: A newspaper for elementary schools

From IFRA Executive News: The German Institute for Innovation in Learning and Examination Techniques (Institute zur Objektivierung von Lern- und Prüfungsverfahren) has started a pilot project to stipulate young children's interest in reading. The project provides schools in Schleswig-Holstein with free newspapers for all elementary school children for a period of three weeks. Not only is the goal of the project to rise the children's interest in reading, but also to provide a new medium to explore and experiment with in classes.

Source: IFRA Executive News

Finding the market niche

Danai Kramgomut, Executive Vice President, Business Development and Investor Relations, National Multimedia Group, Thailand explained his company's success in the Thai market at the World Association of Newspapers' 2004 Editor and Marketeer Conference in Lisbon. Kom Chad Luek, which means "Sharp", "Precise" and "Depth" in the Thail language, became the country's third largest daily only three months after launch. Its success didn't come as a surprise to the company. For one thing, market research showed there was a demand for a new general interest daily in a market dominated by few players, with little competition and innovation. For another, an award-winning marketing campaign made sure that the easy-to-remember title would be well-known. Mr Kramgomut's presentation focused on that marketing campaign, which took advantage of the Nation Group's assets to promote the new title. Even the name of the newspaper is related to that of a successful television show, so brand marketing didn't have to start from scratch. Mr. Kramgomut said the key success factors were clear product differentiation, leveraging existing assets, and a comprehensive marketing program.

Germany: New products and new readers for the newspaper market

Marc Zeimetz, Manager, Projects and Newspaper Strategy Division and Klaus Madzia, Editor-in-Chief (News), Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, Germany gave a presentation on the evolution, that the German newspaper market is currently undertaking at the World Association of Newspapers' 2004 World Editor and Marketeer Conference in Lisbon. Following similar strategies to adapt to the changing German newspaper market Jan-Eric Peters, Editor-in-Chief, Die Welt, Welt Kompakt, Berliner Morgenpost, Germany illuminates his company's approach. Marc Zeimetz and Klaus Madzia presented marketing strategies and target groups for Holzbrinck's new publications 20 Cents and News, underlining that they were not targeting the masses with the new trend but rather presenting more varied news for the ever growing target groups of print media. Jan-Eric Peters added another angle to the discussion by introducing Axel Springer's new paper Welt Kompakt. He related the merging of Berliner Morgenpost's, Die Welt's and Welt Kompakt's editorial offices to the new trend and explained how all papers profit from the resources of their colleagues at the newly merged editorial office.

Traditional German newspapers are too old, too expensive, too big, too slow and too rigid, says Mr Zeimetz, in introducing the strategy that has led to new, youth-oriented newspapers like Von Holtzbrinck's 20 Cent and News. "Having identified these problems, we now have opportunities," he says. "We want to be young, inexpensive, fast, streamlined, practical and convenient, and flexible." The presentations by Mr Zeimetz and Mr Madzia included case studies of the recently launched German newspapers, which are already attracting young readers who never read newspapers on a regular basis before. 20 Cent, named for its cover price, is a young, quick information newspaper with a big entertainment section, targeted at 14- to 39-year olds. It has led to new market expansion--other newspapers in its test markets have not suffered circulation declines. And the paper has attracted new advertising. News, which Mr Madzia described as a "newszine", attempts to combine hard news and information with more in-depth magazine-like reporting and increased utility. It also includes interactive elements like SMS options and web links. It sells for 50 euro cents. "We are not talking any more about one product for the masses, but different products for different target groups," says Mr Zeimetz.
Jan-Eric Peters, Editor-in-Chief, Die Welt, Welt Kompakt, Berliner Morgenpost, Germany illuminates his company's adaptations to the changing newspaper industry in Germany. At first glance, Welt Kompakt might seem to be smaller version of the Germany quality broadsheet Die Welt. But it is something completely new, and completely different. "It is not just a new concept for newspapers, it is part of a unique world-wide journalistic model," says Mr Peters. "We've not only increased quality, but we cut costs. Name me a publisher in the world who would not want such a model." The new model began when Axel Springer's quality national Die Welt and its regional sister publication, Berliner Morgenpost, combined their editorial staffs -- going from 300 journalists each to 350 for the two publications. Although the cuts were severe, Die Welt benefits from the regional competencies of Berliner Morgenpost, while the Berlin paper benefits from the national competencies of Die Welt, says Mr Peters. And when Welt Kompakt joined the mix, it benefited from both. "It is similar to a news agency serving several newspapers," says Mr Peters about the combined newsroom. Launched in May 2004 in Berlin and seven other German cities, Welt Kompakt is not a substitute for the broadsheet, but a different offer aimed at new readers, particularly younger readers who don't have a lot of time but want quality journalism. The tabloid sells for 50 euro cents. The majority of readers are between 18 and 35 years old and have not read newspapers before on a regular basis, says Mr Peters. And although it was designed to be a quick read, customers spend an average 50 minutes with it -- same as the broadsheet Die Welt. "We reach a very attractive target group," says Mr Peters, adding that circulation has grown 10 percent since launch.

Getting a degree in circulation science

At the WAN World Editor and Marketeer Conference in Lisbon, Jim Chisholm, Director, Shaping the Future of the Newspaper Project, of the World Association of Newspapers presented a one-hour "master class" in which he provided a multi-step guide on how to build and implement a successful circulation strategy. This included simple, low-cost research tools for developing a clear understanding of newspaper customers, markets and sales processes. "I do not think we spend enough time on understanding our readers," he says. "Too few newspapers understand who their readers are, what they want, and what is their value to us. Newspapers too often fail because they don't know who their audience is and what they want." Mr Chisholm's class showed how developing a clear definition of readers can be used to attract those who are most valuable to the newspaper. For example, the information can be used to focus content, position marketing and determine distribution. Participants in the class will be given access to a web-based template that will help them conduct the research suggested by Mr Chisholm. The presentation, along with case studies presented at the conference and other information, will form the basis for "Circulation Science," the next Strategy Report in the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper series from WAN. For more information on SFN, consult http://www.futureofthenewspaper.com.

Leading Danish daily is a free newspaper

Alain Neuville's ANIMA newsletter announced on Friday that the leading Danish daily newspaper in October was the free MetroXpress with 681.000 readers. The readership of MetroXpress has steadily increased, in September they boosted 787.000 readers in comparison to Jivlands-Posten with 671.000 readers in September and October. The trend seems to continue since the third newspaper on the list of most-read dailies in Denmark was also a free paper: Urban, published by Berlingske Officins with 633.000 readers.

Source: ANIMA newsletter

Washington Post discusses Circulation, and diversity

Frank Ahrens from the Washington Post writes about the newspaper's annual self-evaluation meeting, an offsite event that includes top editors and executives from the paper's business. "Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. met with hundreds of newsroom staffers yesterday to outline management's latest attempts to combat declining circulation. This year's meeting focused on the paper's declining circulation -- now at 709,500 daily copies, down 10 percent over the past two years -- and the results of an extensive readership survey taken last summer. In an effort to win new readers, Downie said Post reporters will be required to write shorter stories. The paper's design and copy editors will be given more authority to make room for more photographs and graphics. The paper will undergo a redesign to make it easier for readers to find stories. It is considering filling the left-hand column of the front page with keys to stories elsewhere in the paper and other information readers say they want from the paper, which they often consider "too often too dull," Downie said. However, the more intense discussion at the meeting involved diversity at the newspaper, as several minority staff members lamented that a white man, Philip Bennett recently was chosen over a woman, Liz Spayd and a black man, Eugene Robinson as the paper's new managing editor.

Downie told staffers that the paper has made strides to increase newsroom diversity in recent years, and said that of the paper's 30 to 40 top editors, "white males are in the minority." But he said the paper needs to hire more minorities and to improve its coverage of the area's increasingly diverse population. Downie and Bennett will hold a meeting to address diversity issues early next month. "

Source: The Washington Post

France: Le Figaro will go through changes in 2005

"Nicolas Beytout, Le Figaro's editor-in-chief announced yesterday that the daily would go through a change in formula starting from September 2005," reports Libération's Catherine Mallaval. The change will mainly be based on a readership survey that should be completed by December. Nicolas Beytout is also launching a reflection on deontology during which the following topics will be debated on: "press-travels" to which journalists are invited, their outside collaborations, gifts received from companies. The French daily should also see its moving plans to Haussmann boulevard confirmed at the end of the month, and its new personnel listing by thursday."

Source: Libération (in French) through Ifra

Sun Media Investment Launches Digital Financial Newspaper With Circulation of 24 Million

Sun Media Investment Holdings Ltd announced "major developments with its Hong Kong based subsidiary, The Observer Star Global Publishing Holdings Ltd, and its Chinese-language premium business newspaper, the Observer Star," according to their press release on Tuesday. The Observer Star, which publishes informed business information and insight on business in China, was launched in August 30th. "SMIH unveiled the digital edition of the Observer Star, which will be delivered to 24 million global Chinese readers from Nov 18th, via a readership database collected by its US partner since 1997. The e-version of the Observer Star will be released on a weekly basis, with over 20 thousand words, instantly becoming one of the world's leading digital newspapers. ''We are delighted to be launching the digital version of our newspaper, creating a global electronic footprint for the Observer Star,'' said Yang Lan, Chairman of Sun Media Investment Holdings Limited."

Sun Media Investment Holdings Ltd. (''SMIH'') is a media investment company that was founded between 1998 and 1999 by renowned TV programme host Ms. Yang Lan and her husband Dr. Bruno Wu. Currently, SMIH invests in four key areas of activity: television, publishing, sports marketing and new media. SMIH has direct interests in 11 media companies, through which it holds shares in more than 30 media operations, controlling no less than no less than 60 media brands in 9 countries and 15 cities.

Source: Yahoo News through Ifra

Axel Springer: Great expectations for the future

Werben und verkaufen reports that Axel Springer , the largest European publishing company, has announced a 2.4% rise in profits due to increased circulation and advertisements income in 2004. Axel Springer's CEO Mathias Döpfner elaborates that the company is content with the performance of their newly launched magazines "Jolie," "Audio Video Foto Bild," "TV Digital," and most of all "Welt kompakt." Döpfner said, "the tabloid newspaper has attracted the targeted group of young readers, who did not read newspapers before." The publishing company regrets lower profits in the area of women's magazines due to strong competitors on the market. For the future Axel Springer envisions the launch of several magazines in China, in an attempt to outdo their successful entry into the Eastern European market.

Source: Werben und verkaufen through IFRA Executive News

Why are news sites so weak at night?

Mike Coleman (Senior Manager, Digital Media, azcentral.com) presented an interesting business solution at the Ifra, WAN and FIPP Conference "Beyond the Printed World". Coleman explains how his newspaper has taken the off-peak hours of their online-newspaper and adapted the contend of their site accordingly. "Mr Coleman and his team believe [the readers] still want breaking news [during off-peak hours], but they also want offbeat news, entertainment, sports, classifieds, shopping, photos and multimedia. This differs quite a bit from day hours, when the emphasis is more on hard news and utility features like traffic, maps and calendars."

Source: Ifra, WAN and FIPP Conference "Beyond the Printed World"

Creating the Online "Daily Me"

Al Lieb (founder, Innovive Technologies, USA) attempt to compile personalized news, as outlined in his speech at the Ifra, WAN and FIPP Conference "Beyond the Printed World". Lieb's company Gixo compiles a personalized profile of news preference for their clients, in order to recommend news stories according to their interest when they visit gixo's website. Gixo does not attempt to challenge established news providers, relates Lieb, instead they see themselves as a "personalization technology provider."

Source: Ifra, WAN and FIPP Conference "Beyond the Printed World"

"Newspapers are the media of the future"

German newroom.de reported the outcomes of a conference on the future of the media in Leipzig last Saturday. In an interview with the German Press Agency Dpa, the media-expert Michael Haller summarizes the results of the conference as follows: "Newspapers are the media of the future, but to survive in the struggle against radio, TV, and internet; they have to undergo changes. Editors have to learn to please the changing demands of the public." He further illuminates that it is important to be more flexible when it comes to closing dates for the newspapers. "Readers want to find in-depths analysis of the news the saw on the TV the night before in their morning paper," says Haller. The expert also suggests to switch to a tabloid format, in order to attract and involve new readers through compact format and pertinent writing.

Source: newroom.de

European companies team on flexible display research

We have been following the progress of flexible displays for a few months now. This article written by Spencer Chin of EETimes reports on "a group of 20 European companies, research institutes and universities which have banded together to research, develop and demonstrate the viability of high-performance flexible displays. The cooperative project, called FlexiDis, is partially funded under the European Union's 6th Framework Program as part of the IST (Information Society Technologies) priority. The project hopes to leverage the infrastructure and manpower of existing companies to move flexible display technology forward. The FlexiDis group plans to develop a flexible and low-power electronic paper (e-paper) display that enables mobile access to newspapers, e-mails, and maps and could eventually be rolled up to fit inside a tubular container. The FlexiDis project will run for three years. Participants include the University of Cambridge , University of Stuttgart, ASML, Nokia Research Center, Philips Center for Industrial Technology, Thomson, and STMicroelectronics. "

Source: EETimes.com through IFRA

US convergence study suggests lack of cross-media cooperation

In Editor&Publisher, Jennifer Saba covers a study released Saturday from Ball State University, which tried to capture convergence at newspapers, TV stations, and websites. According to the study, although almost 30% of daily newspapers in the US have partnerships with a local TV station, only 13% of that have sister TV stations owned by the same company. Mostly, newspapers are not taking full advantage of their partnerships with TV stations, the study found. According to Larry Dailey, assistant professor of journalism at Ball State University, it is important that newsrooms cooperate with TV stations: "Research has shown that two companies that do things differently and get together to accomplish a strategic task will grow faster than on its own. They need to redefine themselves and design a third product that incorporates skills from both backgrounds"."

Source: Editor&Publisher through IFRA

Denmark: e-mail to fight declining circulation

Interesting initiative related by Mickey Alam Khan in DMN News: "EkstraBladet, the largest circulating single-copy newspaper in Denmark, is using e-mail questionnaires to unearth readers’ interests and opinions as a means to foster loyalty to the brand. Readers were invited to fill out a questionnaire printed in the newspaper and mail it back at their own expense. Or they could visit a particular area on the newspaper’s site at www.eb.dk and enter the details. The sports section was chosen for the pilot CRM program. A sports panel of readers was the goal. The feedback enabled analysis of buyer behavior. The newspaper now communicates with the opted in readers on a one-to-one or segmented basis. About 400 e-mails have been sent to the entire database in the past two and a half years. The success of the sports panel actually encouraged EkstraBladet to extend the same CRM approach to its entire newspaper. Readers now get their own personalized front pages via e-mail newsletters. Loyalty did breed circulation, as the newspaper found out. “Newspaper circulation was going down 5 percent, but members in the sports panel bought 10 percent more papers,” said Sven Michelsen, CRM manager at EkstraBladet.

Source: DMN News through the IFRA newsletter

India: Maharashtra Times poised to be No 1 in Mumbai/Bombay

It comes from a press release, but it is interesting: "Maharashtra Times (from the Times of India group) continued its march towards the position of the No 1 Marathi daily in Mumbai (Bombay) Metro. It has added 77,000 readers in the just released IRS report (IRS ’04 R2). While Maharashtra Times has been continuously adding readers since ’02, its competitor Loksatta seems to be on an unstoppable decline.

Source: Publicitas

Interactive News as way to bond with young readers

CyberJournalist.net covers an interesting suggestion from the Readership Institute : "A recent study by The Readership Institute says that a key to forging stronger bonds with younger and more diverse newspaper readers is "showing news can be fun and engaging and interactive." To that end, the Institute has developed an idea for a "populist" Weblog that is moderated by experts (i.e journalists). It's a combination of selected news posts with commentary, and interactive features and the targets is 18-34 year-olds who like to discuss current events." A few examples of interactive features: readers forecast outcomes to current issues or events, readers put themselves in the shoes of political, judicial, business, sports decision makers who currently face a tough issue. The best of this Weblog would then be run daily in the print newspaper."

Source: CyberJournalist.net

US: new weeklies website

From Cyberjournalist.net "The Association of Alternative Newsweeklies recently launched a new website, featuring the best stories from 125 americans weeklies, including L.A. Weekly, Boston Phoenix, The Village Voice. Altweeklies.com gives readers an easy way to browse scores of in-depth stories the mainstream media may not cover." By clicking on an article, the reader will be linked with the specific weekly from which it was extracted. The website also enables alt-weekly editors to find and seek permission to reprint significant stories written by their counterparts in other parts of North America. A good way to monitor what is happening in different parts of the US, the idea of Weeklies website can also be inspirational to some newspapers.

Source: Cyberjournalist.net

Online Media impact on traditional business reading

From Media Week: the European Business Readership Survey results now include figures for online media and TV. What are the online Media and TV impact on traditional business reading? The projected results are designed for agency planners and advertisers, but are quite interesting to read. According to Julia Martin, "Europe’s top executives are an exclusive breed – high earning, hugely influential and increasingly time-poor." And yet the latest survey into readership habits shows that nearly half of Europe’s top dogs are still finding the time to read the business press, whether it is traditional daily titles like the Financial Times, weeklies such as The Economist or the more weighty monthly titles like Harvard Business or National Geographic. While people are certainly switching on and surfing, it’s the daily newspapers that still hook in the biggest share of bigwigs."

According to FT's Ben Hughes, "People use the two (online media and printed press) in different ways. What I do myself is go for the breaking news and the immediate changing world on the website, and I use the FT for analysis ? and our research shows that?s what our readers are doing."

Source: Media Week

Irish newspaper readership rising

Most Irish newspapers saw their readership increase significantly in the year to end-June, according to the latest Joint National Readership Survey (JNRS) from Lansdowne Market Research. The research showed that the number of adults reading at least one newspaper a week rising from 2.8 million to 2.9 million, or 92pc of the adult population. Readership of The Irish Times grew from 305,000 to 347,000, an increase of 42,000 or 13.8pc. Readership of the Irish Independent rose from 522,000 to 607,000, an increase of 85,000 or 16.3pc, the highest level since 2000.

Source: Business World

Circulation growth is focus of World Editor & Marketeer conference

The World Association of Newspapers is offering a discount to readers of editorsweblog.com who wish to attend the World Editor & Marketeer Conference in Lisbon , Portugal, end of November. The benefits of this conference are apparent: WAN has been searching the globe for the best ideas, strategies and tactics for increasing newspaper circulation and retaining readers, and will present the results in Lisbon.

Through its Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project, WAN has studied some of the world's most successful newspapers and identified the common
elements that has led to their circulation success. The Editor & Marketeer Conference, to be held on 25 and 26 November at the Sheraton Lisboa Hotel, will build on that research, providing studies from around the world to
illustrate the key elements of sustainable circulation growth.

Hundreds of publishers, senior marketing executives and editors are expected to attend the event, which is jointly organised by WAN () and the World Editors Forum. The special discount for our blog readers can be found at:
https://www.wan-press.org/lisbon2004/index.special.offer.html.

A list of participants is available at
http://www.wan-press.org/article5269.html.

Conference speakers include:

- Eduardo Danilo, a partner in the renowned newspaper design firm Danilo Black, who will examine new format success stories. Has the move from
broadsheet to tabloid and other format initiatives been successful, and what are the long-term prospects for the new formats?

- Jim Chisholm, Director of the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project
(http://www.futureofthenewspaper.com), who will conduct a "master class" that will include a step-by-step guide on how to build and implement a successful circulation strategy. The class will be complemented by an international report on circulation trends by Aura Iordan, Business Analyst for WAN.

- Ole Munk, Managing Director of Ribergaard & Munk Graphic in Denmark, who will examine how easier-to-read newspapers increase reader satisfaction and purchasing frequency.

- Pelle Anderson, Creative Director, A4 Newspaper Design in Sweden, on ways to make "navigation" easy and enjoyable, enabling the reader to consume more content and the newspaper to deliver greater value.

Other features include:

- A panel of leading editors who will discuss how to identify what readers want and how best to deliver content to match.

- A session on increasing reader loyalty which will examine single copy versus subscription issues and the most lucrative strategies for increasing reading frequency.

- An examination of how to generate readership from digital media and mobile.

- A session on "creating the readership habit" using audience research and new distribution practices.

For the evolving conference programme, and to register for the event, consult http://www.wan-press.org.

The Paris-based WAN, the global organisation for the newspaper industry, represents 18,000 newspapers; its membership includes 72 national newspaper associations, individual newspaper executives in 102 countries, 13 news
agencies and ten regional and world-wide press groups.
Inquiries to: Larry Kilman, Director of Communications, WAN, 7 rue Geoffroy St Hilaire, 75005 Paris France.
Tel: +33 1 47 42 85 00.
Fax: +33 1 47 42 49 48.
Mobile: +33 6 10 28 97 36.
E-mail: [email protected]

Switzerland: 20 Minutes becomes the most popular daily

The free newspaper 20 Minutes has overtaken the Blick tabloid to become the most popular daily in Switzerland...20 Minutes – the 30-page tabloid which carries Swiss and international news in short, easy-to-read articles – saw its readership grow 13 per cent last year, from 692,000 to 782,000, following a 40 per cent increase in the previous year. It was followed by Blick with a readership of 736,000, and the “Tages-Anzeiger” with 573,000 readers. The top-selling French language paper was “Le Matin” with 331,000 regular readers. Readers are increasingly favouring papers which adopt a lighter format, said the Zurich-based media research firm, WEMF, which carried out the research... In recent months Blick has also gone tabloid. But Bernhard Weissberg, who oversees the newspaper division of Blick publisher Ringier, declined to comment on how that had affected circulation. Weissberg told swissinfo that 20 Minutes could not be compared with the traditional dailies. "It’s a free newspaper, so naturally it is read, but it’s very different from what we do. We draw a distinction between a free newspaper and a newspaper which offers depth.”

Source: SwissInfo through IFRA newsletter

You’d believe this article more if it was in your local paper

A good synthesis by The Times about the real success of regional and local newspapers in the UK. Accuracy and credibility seem to be the best words to describe regional press. Just one article's quote: The disparaging cliché “You can’t believe anything you read in the papers” has become disturbingly common and sufficiently justified for the national newspaper industry to be urged to recognise it and address it as a problem. Not so the weeklies. Readers actually believe what they read in their local paper."

Source: The Times

Discuss journalistic style online

I didn't know this site launched on December 2003 by BBC training and you can recommand it to your young (and older) journalists. In fact, it is a follow-up to the BBC online Styleguide for journalists, providing a dedicated online space for a debate on journalistic style. The guide has already been downloaded more than 100,000 times. John Allen is the author of the Styleguide and the moderator of the site. Here are the main sections: - Jargon and fashion (What usages of language dismay you?) - Imported words (Which words would you prefer not to hear?) - Clichés and journalese (Are there phrases that should be dropped?) - Improving writing (What else can we do to raise writing standards?) dotjournalism.co.uk also reports that "Delegates to the 2004 International Broadcasters Conference in Amsterdam next week can take advantage of free training sessions, courtesy of the BBC. The corporation's training and development department will be offering 40-minute training courses including investigative research on the net, basic editing of self-shot material and interactive TV."

Source: BBC training / Stylebook through dotjournalism.co.uk. See also BBC training

Fund raising as a priority in NIE programs

A good synthesis on NIE programs (Newspapers in Education) in North America with this new challenge: fund raising becomes more and more important as papers count on readers of the future. An estimated 950 newspapers in the United States and Canada have NIE programs, which provide newspapers as teaching tools to educators, along with training materials and goodies like posters and activities for students that are often underwritten by sponsors.

Source: Newspaper Association of America

US: less and less cartoonists but who cares?

According to Los Angeles Times, "Fewer cartoonists are employed by newspapers now than a decade ago, virtually everyone familiar with the craft agrees. But how many fewer is not so easily determined. In conversations with cartoonists and sundry experts, one hears estimates that about 80 to 90 men and women are employed full time as editorial cartoonists today, down from maybe 150 to 200 in the 1980s and '90s. But these are not figures from a survey or census, and they generally exclude freelancers and sometimes don't account for part-timers, such as newspaper graphic artists who also contribute to the cartoon supply..." "What's obvious is that newspaper executives, in keeping with corporate trends, have become ever more earnest in their determination to hold rein on budgets for the sake of earnings. Modern technology and syndication allow newspapers to offer a range of high-quality editorial cartoons without payroll expenses, bad news for the craft in which fewer than one in 10 newspapers employs an editorial cartoonist now..."

"Newspapers are, more and more, being run by corporations, by people who don't always understand the value of generating dialogue," said Bruce Plante, cartoonist for the Chattanooga Times
editorial page.

Evidence of changing priorities is as handy as the nearest newspaper. While holding the line or cutting budgets for cartoons, executives have poured resources into visual makeovers. The aim is chiefly to attract and hold younger readers whose tastes have been shaped in an age of imagery. Cartoonists fume at being largely left out of the action since their work provided the original visual punch to a newspaper."

Source: Los Angeles Times

UK: newspaper CD giveaways attacked

According to BBC news, English "music managers and retailers have spoken out against the growing practice of putting CDs inside weekend papers. "The music industry is just helping the tabloids fight their war against each other," an HMV spokesman said. "But it's difficult to see how the industry is doing anything to protect its own interests in the long term." The scale of the promotions has recently grown, with some papers now giving away double CDs including big hits by established artists... It sends a message that music is cheap and disposable, undermining an industry campaign that music should be paid for and not downloaded for free, critics say. The Music Managers Forum (MMF), which represents 650 managers in the UK, has asked its members not to allow their artists to be used in the promotions.

Source: BBC news

Wall Street Journal tentatively embraces Google News

Rafat Ali at PaidContent.org reports that the Wall Street Journal has begun to take advantage of Google News by opening up a few articles a day for free, no-registration-required access. These articles will be indexed on the news aggregator. "Good for them," Ali writes, "a hybrid strategy always works best, as I've always maintained." We might compare the Journal's strategy to the New York Times, which because of its required site registration and deal with Lexis-Nexis, has failed to clock in on Google News with any regularity. The Times has, however, developed dozens of RSS feeds.

Source: PaidContent.org

New Yorker articles saved from Internet oblivion

From L.A. Brain Terrain: This is groundbreaking and perhaps lawsuit inducing. New Yorker magazine usually removes its articles from its website each week without archiving them, but now some guy named Greg Allen has created a database of New Yorker articles. Here is an example from Allen's site. It's probably only minutes before someone starts doing this for the New York Times (to get around paying for archived stories) and scores of other publications. We'll see how the attorneys react.

Source: L.A. Brain Terrain

How should corrections be made on news web sites?

From Online Journalism Review: It seems hard to believe, but some journalists seem to think it a bad idea to change the text of stories published online if a correction is necessary, and prefer instead to leave the original error in place and attach a correction box on the web page. Seems like just another example of newspapers replicating the print format on the web when they should be thinking in terms of the possibilities of a new medium. Why leave an error in place? Mark Thompson covers the debate around online corrections in great detail in this article, and profiles how several different American papers have chosen to approach the issue.

Source: Online Journalism Review

Barron's editor: Print media should prepare for a "long goodbye"

From Barron's: Here's a depressing column from Barron's online editor Howard Gold, who says "the print media's malaise runs deep. ... In fact, we may have reached a tipping point: The long, long decline of print media (especially newspapers) may soon pick up speed, while the Internet has continued to make huge strides -- even through the dot-com crash -- and will increasingly occupy the high ground." Gold says advertising revenues won't pick up for most newspapers and magazines and that's why desperate American papers such as Newsday, Hoy and the Chicago Sun-Times have resorted to inflated circulation figures. Meanwhile, he writes, Internet news sources are gaining more readership and advertising bucks with the spread of broadband technology. Gold doesn't discuss at all why the majority of newspapers are doing such a poor job of interesting readers, in terms of editorial content. But he does give this prognosis: "I still think newspapers and magazines are doing some of the best journalism around. They have the resources, the talent and the experience, and the print medium lends itself to in-depth reporting. I'd hate to see that change, because we need more, not less, thoughtfulness in our public discourse. The top names in print will surely survive the coming shakeout. Some of them, like ours, saw the promise of the Internet early and established strong presences online. But for others, I'm afraid it's going to be a long goodbye."

Source: Barron's

You say you want a revolution...

From The Times of London and Media Guardian: Media columnist Brian MacArthur of The Times argued Friday that the web is the saving grace of a newspaper industry beset by declining readership. He used The Guardian as an example, noting that of about nine million unique visitors monthly to the paper's web site, only one third are British, another third are American and the rest are international. These huge numbers indicate that The Guardian is becoming the "English language’s global liberal voice," MacArthur writes, paraphrasing Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger. He concludes, "I wonder which of the major developments in the broadsheet newspapers of the past decade will history judge to be the more significant — the switch to a compact format, or the investment they have made online?"

Meanwhile The Guardian itself has given Independent editor Simon Kelner a platform to boast about the transition to compact form. Kelner says, "We've certainly made people think seriously about how their newspapers are packaged and delivered, and we've challenged the prejudices and preconceptions about whether it's possible to do an upmarket, quality tabloid. Whether we've revolutionised the entire newspaper market we'll only know when the revolution is over. It's just the beginning." Which do you think the history books will remember...newspapers' size and shape transition, or the transition in medium?

Source: The Times of London and Media Guardian

Scotland: Another daily goes tabloid

From North Tonight: Following The Scotsman's decision to transition to a tabloid design on Saturdays, the Press and Journal, a regional newspaper in Aberdeen, Scotland, will also change format, promising to listen to feedback from readers in the process.

Source: North Tonight

Chinese paper launches mobile edition

From China Daily: The newspaper China Women Daily has launched a "mobile newspaper" available to readers via their cellular telephones. Articles from the print edition will "simultaneously be available on the subscribers' mobile phones. A single handset can store a whole year's worth of the newspaper. Subscription fees are around $2.50 per month, about the same as the price of the printed edition."

Souce: China Daily

Innovative ideas for better news web sites

From Steve Outing at Editor and Publisher: In this column, Steve Outing provides a "checklist for a better news web site," including scroll-less homepages, larger photographs, fewer and better placed advertisements, group blogs written by journalists and increased RSS feeds. I like the ideas, but many might be labor intensive to implement - do reporters at your paper have time to write blog postings each day? And scroll-less homepages require a major redesign. Check out the whole list for links to some news sites already using these features.

Source: Steve Outing at Editor and Publisher

Call for contributions for the WAN Task Force on the Quality of News and Information

The World Association of Newspapers has established a Task Force on the Quality of News and Information, the most valuable asset of newspapers. See below the letter sent to the World Editors Forum members (WEF is a division of WAN) . It is a call for contributions and all the weblog's readers who are editors (or academics and consultants involved in editorial quality programmes) are invited to participate to this Task Force. Send us all relevant information about "best practices" related to editorial quality and we will contact you by return mail.

LETTER SENT TO EDITORS WHO ARE MEMBERS OF THE WORLD EDITORS FORUM:

From Bertrand Pecquerie, World Editors Forum Director and Henri Pigeat, Task Force Coordinator

Dear Editor and dear WEF member,

As you know since our latest Istanbul conference (30 May - 2 June 2004), the World Association of Newspapers has established a Task Force on the Quality of News and Information.

A forum of discussion for eight to ten publishers and editors, the aim of the Task Force is to establish a dialogue and develop an understanding about the importance of editorial quality in newspapers. The most valuable asset of newspapers, quality of news and information is also one of the principal means of increasing readership and defending the market place of the newspaper.

1) On behalf of the WAN Task Force, we would like to ask you to write - in the "comment area" below - a few brief lines about case stories in your own newspaper, or in other newspapers around the world, which are success-stories in terms of the promotion of quality. The Annex below gives some theoretical examples. Kindly also indicate who we should contact for further information.

2) By mid-September, a preliminary examination of these cases will be completed and six to eight of the most interesting examples from around the world will be selected for future discussion in the Task Force. Each selected newspaper will be asked to develop ? with the help of the Task Force - a short report describing how editorial quality was improved and the impact these changes had on readership.

3) Newspapers who participate in the Task Force studies will automatically receive copies of the other cases prepared for the WAN Task Force on Quality of News and Information. Membership of the Task Force will be finalised in Winter 2004 and a written report of the conclusions of the Task Force is intended for publication in 2005. Another possibility would be to dedicate a special session to this report at the WEF Seoul Conference to be held from 29 May to 1 June 2005.

We look forward very much to hearing from you and to receiving your suggestions.

Best regards,

Bertrand Pecquerie, Director, World Editors Forum, World Association of Newspapers

Henri Pigeat, Coordinator, WAN Task Force on Quality of News and Information

Contact: [email protected]

ANNEX 1
Theoretical case studies illustrating improvements
in editorial quality

1. New writing and new storytelling processes.

2. New fact-checking processes.

3. New ways to present sources and to follow a ?code of ethics?.

4. Creation and/or regeneration of new title formats or features.

5. Development of new markets (such as suburban, young readers, etc.).

6. Examples of successfully overcoming serious editorial difficulties, especially in dialogue with readers.

7. Corporate or organisational restructuring resulting in improved relations with editorial teams, commercial services and management.

8. Training of journalists having direct impact on editorial quality.

9. Innovative research projects facilitating quality improvement.

10. Developments linked to the new needs of the community: (for example: environment; health; etc.)

11. Examples of editorial innovation which strengthen the position of the newspaper within the community.

12. Uses of internet services which improve editorial quality and reinforce links to the readership.

Source: [email protected]

Germany: Success for Welt Kompakt, not for Die Welt

In Germany, Die Welt lost 12,000 buyers in twelve months (208,000 sells in 2004). But Axel Springer Verlag (Bild, die Welt, Welt am Sonntag...) has reported successfull start for  Welt Kompakt, its daily newspaper in compact size, in Berlin and Frankfurt/Main. In addition, Welt Kompakt will be tested in the major German cities of Bremen, Dresden, Dortmund, Dusseldorf, Essen, Hamburg, Hanover, Cologne, Leipzig, Munich and Stuttgart. Starting dates are not known. The test sales in Berlin began on May 24, 2004 and those of Frankfurt on June, 14.

Source: Publicitas and former postings in May and June.

Web aims to standardise non-European alphabets

From BBC news: "A meeting is being held in Malaysia aimed at helping web users who do not use the Western alphabet. The Internet Company for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), which oversees the system of web addresses and domain names says Asians will make up most of the net's users within a few years. While Western letters are largely standardised, those used in some alphabets vary from country to country... Although the internet was developed in English-speaking countries, the net's centre of gravity is moving East. Icann says that more than 100 million people around the world have high-speed broadband connections to the net, and that nearly half of them are in Asia. The company believes that within years most internet users will live there, and they predict it will have a huge economic impact on the region... Much of the work that this week's conference will focus on agreements on standards for languages and the characters in which they are written, so that internet users who write in Chinese, Arabic, Tamil or other scripts can communicate more easily.

Source: BBC news

Europe: Divide in broadband quality creates differing online experiences

From the BBC: According to Jupiter Research, 13% of European households have broadband access in 2003, and that figure is expected to rise to 39% by 2009. But a divide is emerging between broadband users with cheap and slow connections and those who have paid more for super-fast connections, allowing them to access a variety of online content, including streaming video and music. The infrastructure for fast broadband will be built up in some areas and neglected in others, said report author Ian Fogg. "It will lead to a kind of digital patchwork, where some areas have high quality broadband and others have much more limited services, even within the same country." It will be important for content providers such as newspapers to monitor these developments, as what users can do on the web is dependent on the type of Internet connection they have.

Source: The BBC

California paper undertakes ambitious participatory journalism project

I am very impressed by Jonathan Dube's article at Cyberjournalist.net: " The Bakersfield Californian has embarked on one of the most ambitious participatory journalism efforts to date in the United States, launching a community newspaper and Web site in which nearly all the articles and pictures are contributed for free by people in the community. Since the first print edition of The Northwest Voice was launched May 13, more than 200 individuals have contributed articles, pictures and events, and revenue has grown 33 percent. In all, about 90 percent of the content on the Web site and in the newspaper is contributed by the community."

"In a world in which a growing number of readers are becoming publishers, we ignore this trend at our own peril," says Mary Lou Fulton, the publisher of The Northwest Voice and the New Product Development Manager for The Bakersfield Californian. "The open source model offers us a new way to connect with readers, to better understand their worries and joys, and to enable them to share some of themselves with the world. It gives readers a personal and emotional stake in our products, and I believe that is critical to the future of our industry."

The newspaper is published every other Thursday and delivered free to all 22,000 homes in Northwest Bakersfield. Another 6,000 copies are distributed via free-standing racks.

The revenue model relies primarily on display and classified advertising in the print edition, though online advertising also is available. In particular, the Voice is focused on selling ads to small businesses who can't afford the daily Bakersfield Californian or prefer a more targeted product. More than half of the advertisers are new to the company and 76 percent of sales are in smaller, more inexpensive sizes - 1/8 page ads, coupons and directory listings...

The Voice has developed four content streams:
1. Core contributors. The Voice identified a lead person at every school, larger churches, youth sports organizations and the parks district. This "Top 25" group is contributing about 50% of the content
2. Columnists. Six columnists write about community interests (off-roading, horses, pets, gardening, parenting and restaurants). About 25% of the content comes from them.
3. Occasional contributions. About 10% of the content comes from occasional contributors.
4. Editor-created. Editors write a cover story and some inside items, which makes up about 10% of the content.

To make this process as simple as possible, all content is contributed through northwestvoice.com, using a online content management system iUpload of Ontario, Canada. This allows all content to flow into a single queue for approval and archiving.

Most contributions are screened by editors before being published to the Web. Nevertheless, all articles include the disclaimer: The opinions and accuracy of information in this article are the responsibility of the contributor."

And now read the whole article!

Source: Cyberjournalist.net

Though free, "subway tabs" may not give young readers what they want, columnist says

Speaking of the success of free dailies, Village Voice press columnist Richard Goldstein has written an essay on how "subway tabloids" such as Metro and amNewYork are affecting newspaper readership habits in the city, especially among the young. Free dailies actually may not be the future of young readership, Goldstein argues, because although they earn points for being easily accessible, they don't provide what young readers continually say they want in their news coverage -- strong, opinionated writing. In fact, Goldstein's column reminds me that amNewYork has been known to shy away from controversial opinions being expressed on its pages -- see this posting about the brouhaha that ensued when the paper's publisher refused to run a column critical of Israel.

Goldstein also reports that advertorial could soon be part of the free daily reading experience: "Metro's mission statement boasts of allowing ads to intrude on the content, with company logos appearing as shadows behind the classifieds, or products protruding into a story," he writes. "One foreign edition of Metro, displayed in its media kit, has the nose of a plane jutting into the type. That hasn't actually happened in New York ? and it may never, says (Henry E. Scott, managing director of Metro New York) ? but I'll wager that the 'integrated' ad is coming soon to a subway stop, if not a newsstand, near you."

Source: The Village Voice (New York City alternative weekly) and a previous posting

Netherlands: newspapers record large circulation losses

Very bad news from the Netherlands. According to Expatica News - Novum Nieuws 2004, "Dutch national newspapers experienced large losses in circulation in the first quarter of 2004 compared with the same period last year, media institute HOI said on Tuesday. The biggest loser was liberal Christian daily Trouw, which saw its circulation fall 9.6 percent to 110,686. The Rotterdam-based Algemeen Dagblad lost 8.6 percent and the daily circulation of De Volkskrant fell 6 percent. The best-selling newspaper De Telegraaf saw its circulation decline 3.8 percent to 732,455, while Amsterdam's Het Parool recorded a 5.5 percent fall to 85,101."

"Financial newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad (4.4 percent) and quality evening paper NRC Handelsbad (2.3 percent) also recorded losses. Among the free commuter tabloid, the Spits emerged the clear winner, recording a 6 percent increase in circulation (second largest newspaper), while the Metro's circulation fell by 2.3 percent. Regional newspapers generally performed badly, as the Rotterdams Dagblad lost 11.4 percent of its circulation and the Gooi- en Eemlander lost 8.4 percent."

Source: Expatica News - Novum Nieuws 2004

Small papers face challenges in maintaining news websites

From Newspapers and Technology: Maintaining a news website can be a technological, staffing and financial challenge for small newspapers. This article looks at how two small-circulation American papers have chosen to meet those challenges, the Idaho Falls Post Register (circ. 23,179 daily) and the Aitkin Independent Age (Minnesota, circ. 6,000 weekly). When the Post Register founded its website in 1995, it posted 100% of its content online. That amount was gradually reduced to 30% until the paper decided to make the site a paid subscription service. Registration costs $6 for non-print-version-subscribers and $3 for subscribers. The Independent Age, on the other hand, got around staffing limitations by outsourcing its web hosting and providing free content. For more information on each site's content and technology, check out the whole article.

Source: Newspapers and Technology

AP to improve content management for clients

According to Editor and Publisher, "The Associated Press will use software from Convera Corp. to categorise, search and distribute its multimedia news content as part of a major technology initiative at AP, the companies announced Monday. Under their agreement, AP and Convera also will work to tailor the software, called RetrievalWare, to address broader needs of the publishing industry. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed. AP, the world's oldest and largest news agency, said its initiative, called "electronic AP" or "eAP," is expected to produce a new generation of content management and distribution systems for newspaper publishers and other subscribers.

Source: Editor and Publisher through EJC newsletter

The best (and worst) video feeds online

Good idea from Mark Glaser: a review of the top video offerings to tell us how some have improved while others are still lagging. Twelwe sites are under scrutiny including MSNBC.com, WaPo, New York Times, CNN, Fox news, ABC.com, some video agregators like RealOne Superpass and FeedRoom... and only two non-American sites, CBC.ca and BBC;co.uk. And in conclusion, one lesson: more broadband users will imply more video offerings. Source: Glaser Online / OJR

Newspaper Association of America honors Honolulu Advertiser's adoption of RSS

Would a mainstream newspaper industry association give an enthusiastic thumbs up to RSS (Real Simple Syndication), amidst all the fears of losing homepage hits and the resulting advertising revenue? I would have thought no, but Presstime, the magazine of the Newspaper Association of America, has given a 2004 Best Practices Award to the Honolulu Advertiser based solely on its adoption of the RSS format. Presstime's A.S. Berman thought of an excellent metaphor for explaining what RSS can do to help newspapers: "Running a Web site — as any online newspaper manager will tell you — is a lot like managing a bed-and-breakfast in the middle of the desert. No matter how wonderful an experience you have to offer, potential visitors will never find you without a few good billboards to direct them to your door." The Honolulu Advertiser has also used RSS as part of a partnership with the University of Hawaii, which uses the software for course registration. Therefore, when 25,000 college students open their RSS program to register for classes, they also see headlines from the Honolulu Advertiser. What a great way to attract young readers!

Source: Presstime at the Newspaper Association of America

Is online registration an invasion of privacy, or the natural evolution in providing online news?

Here's an article from USA Today about the backlash against online registration for newspaper websites. Among the interesting tidbits: about 15% of email addresses submitted to newspapers in registration processes turn out to be fake, and a website exists, BugMeNot.com, that allows users to access news sites such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Los Angeles Times and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution through "communal" logins and passwords. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's ombudsman, Mike King, told USA Today, "We've got to pay for what we do, we've got to convince advertisers into looking at us and tell them that these are the demographics we now know about our readers." But analyst Eric Peterson of JupiterResearch said, "You'll always lose people when you put up a barrier for them to get information. We'll eventually see companies get smarter about what they can ask and how to ask, or see their customers go elsewhere."

Source: USA Today

Are American journalists capable of quenching America’s thirst?

Interesting commentary by Thomas Guzman, Washington Dispatch. it's about the relationship between the White House and the press, but it could be extended to many governments around the world: "There is little doubt that history will remember the Bush administration as the "what-did-they-know-and-when-did-they-know-it" gang.  Ironically, it will also remember how the media apparently looked the other way and gave the president a free pass regardless of the abuse of power, the challenges to the constitution, the pre-emption of human rights, and the seeming deception of Congress and the American people..."

"... It is not easy extracting information from this administration, it has operated so secretly and manages information so tightly that it is no wonder many ex-insiders have had tremendous responses with their tell-all books. The White House?s information vacuum has created a major market for books written by people like O'Neal, Woodward, Clarke, and Zinni. But despite the revelations in these books the people's thirst for facts and transparency has not been quenched. Will the media be there with a glass of clear insightful news, or will they continue to present them with a bucket of recycled administration propaganda?"

Source: Washington Dispatch

Google to possibly support two news feed platforms, develop internet searching on mobile phones

From cnet.com and Reuters: Google innovates as it prepares to go public. The company had chosen to support news feed aggregator Atom over its competitor RSS, but Google may now be preparing to support both platforms, cnet.com reports. "Were Google to support both RSS and Atom equally, it might help ease growing pains for a swiftly rising movement of Web publishing. It would also restore Google to the status of a neutral party in the midst of a bitter fight between backers of RSS and Atom, who have been divided since last summer when critics of RSS banded together to create the alternative format. Since then, many blog sites and individuals have rallied behind Atom." In related news, Reuters reports that Google is planning to develop internet searching and shopping via mobile phones...

"Relatively few people use phones to view the Web, but market researcher Yankee Group said Internet access will be available on most of the 552 million mobile phones it expects to be sold worldwide this year. As the wireless Internet grows, Google and rivals Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. hope to benefit. Google itself said in April that if it doesn't launch products that improve Web searches on handheld devices, it will fail to win a significant share of an increasingly important part of the online market."

Source: cnet.com

Newspapers approach RSS feeds with caution

Here's the flip side of the opinion posted yesterday on why RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feeds would not negatively affect newspapers' internet ad revenues. From Online Journalism Review, an article detailing how different newspapers are dealing with RSS feeds - most of them very cautiously. I think the subtitle of this article sums it up nicely: "Industry decision makers still have concerns about public acceptance of a technology with no standardization or brand identity. They also worry about losing ad visibility on their own index pages." Read the whole article to find out how RSS-savvy consumers are "scraping" headline feeds from papers who do not provide them, and how newspapers are packaging their RSS feeds in order to encourage maximum clicking and minimum revenue losses.

Source: Online Journalism Review

New designs at the Seattle Times and the Financial Times

There was a lot of talk at the World Editors Forum in Istanbul this week about design and format changes for daily papers - particularly the trend of switching from broadsheet to tabloid. Here are articles from The Guardian and Editor and Publisher about redesigns at the Seattle Times and the Financial Times that are sweeping in scope, but stop short of abandoning the broadsheet format.

Source: The Guardian and Editor and Publisher

Times of London Editor Elected President of World Editors Forum

George Brock, Managing Editor of The Times of London, has been elected President of the World Editors Forum, the global association dealing with issues of professional concern to senior news executives -- and the parent organization of this weblog. Mr Brock succeeds Gloria Brown Anderson of the New York Times. "WEF is the only global organisation devoted to raising and maintaining the quality of journalism in newsrooms," said Mr Brock. "In addition to joining in press freedom campaigns with the World Association of Newspapers, I would like to build up WEF's role as a network of editors who meet to exchange and debate best practice, trends and changes which affect journalists everywhere."

The WEF, the organisation for editors within the World Association of Newspapers, provides senior news executives with an arena in which to exchange ideas and information about the business of editing newspapers. Its flagship event is its annual conference, held in conjunction with WAN's World Newspaper Congress, the premier annual event of the global newspaper industry.

Mr Brock's election was announced at the the WEF Annual General Meeting, held on Wednesday during the World Editors Forum summit in Istanbul, Turkey.

As Managing Editor for The Times, Mr Brock, 52, is responsible for editorial strategy and planning, recruitment, resources and media regulation. He was the launch editor of the compact edition of The Times.

He joined the Times in 1981 and has been a features writer and editor, Opinion Page editor, Foreign Editor (1987-1990), bureau chief in Brussels (1991-1995), and European Editor (1995-1997). He has contributed to newspapers across the world and broadcast frequently on the BBC.

He has been a member of the board of the WEF since 2001 and he sits on the British committee of the International Press Institute. He is a governor of the Anglo-American Ditchley Foundation.

At Denmark's Berlingske Tidende, success is about making content applicable to readers' lives

At the 11th World Editors Forum today, Niels Lunde (bio below), Editor-in-Chief, Berlingske Tidende, Denmark, and Ole Kahrs, Director of Communication and Content, Bearing Point, discussed how to get closer to today's reader. How do you define the newspaper of the future in Denmark, they asked? If you are 255-year-old Berlinske Tidende, you conduct six separate readership surveys, test three different formats and send 80 of your staff to editorial workshops. This process produced a focused editorial mission:

-Readers must identify with the newspaper, so "we have to give them confirmation of their values in life," says Mr. Lunde. "This is very controversial. Journalists want to do the very opposite -- they want to challenge the reader. Our newspaper is conservative and our journalists are anything but."

- Readers want "news you can use."

- Editorial priorities must be very clearly defined both to staff and to readers too. Readers don't read everything in the newspaper, "so if you want the reader to understand what you are doing, you have to make it very visible."

- The newspaper has to be easy to read, with good navigation.

- It is important to promote upcoming features. Readers, even loyal ones, don't necessarily read the paper every day. "If we can promote stories and get them to read tommorrow or the day after tomorrow, it is very important," said Mr. Lunde.

Niels Lunde, 41, has been the Editor-in-Chief of Berlingske Tidende since 2002. Prior to that, he served the paper as an editor, business editor and journalist. He is also the current president of the Copenhagen Editor's Confederation.

Lunde was the economic advisor to the Danish Employer?s Confederation from 1988 to 1994. He is the author of several books and holds a Master's Degree in Political Science.

Guardian site to expand RSS Services

From Dot Journalism: Here at the Editors' Web Blog, we've been transitioning to a great new way to keep up to date on the news - RSS, or Real Simple Syndiaction. With RSS, it is possible to view all the latest headlines from your favorite websites in one window, through news feeds provided by the sites themselves. Individuals or businesses can sign up to receive the feeds by clicking on a site's XML link. More and more newspapers are reaching internet users in this way and now, according to Dot Journalism, the Guardian will be using XML to stream not only main page headlines, but also feeds from specific sections of the online edition. The Guardian asks consumers to pay for the XML feeds, but other papers and news aggregator type sites are providing the service for free.

Source: Dot Journalism

From the 11th World Editors Forum: How (and why) should newspapers make use of mobile phone technology?

Here are the summaries of presentations from the Digital Media Roundtable, a mini-conference held on the eve of the World Newspaper Congress and World Editors Forum that opens today. If you've been following the blog coverage of how newspapers can make use of mobile phone technology, this discussion is sure to interest you. More information about the events can be found on the WAN web site at http://www.wan-press.org/istanbul2004/.

"The Digital Renaissance"
Torry Pedersen, Managing Editor, VG Multimedia, Norway

WE are in a second renaissance - but this time it's a digital one, said Torry Pedersen, managing editor at VG Multimedia of Norway.

"The printing press was the invention that enabled the distribution of the ideas of the Renaissance," he said. "Digitalisation will enable a cultural transformation of similar dimensions."

It means newspapers will have to be audacious. If they do not prepare for the future they will risk losing business.

Pedersen argued that newspapers will have to exploit the digitalisation and use it as an opportunity to:

-Increase revenues;
-Cut costs;
-Strengthen and expand brands;
-Interact with their readers; and
-Improve their reporting.

Pedersen warned that newspapers have to deepen their relationships with their customers.And mobile phones, through WAP and SMS, will allow them to do that.

"If there is one thing that young people want to do it is to interact,? he said. "My generation hears, listens and sees. This generation wants to interact."

"Mobile Needs Newspapers"
Frode Ugland, Telenor, Norway

Mobile telephone operators are keen to partner with newspapers, said Mr. Ugland.

They need newspapers' content to keep subscribers loyal and to make more money from them, said Ugland.

He warned that newspapers were facing new challenges: with new players entering the media business; media usage changing; young people reading less and watching less television.

But surveys showed that most young people are never without their mobile phones. In the 24-hour media cycle, mobile phones follow people all round the clock. Other media come and go.

But mobile operators still need the content that only newspapers can provide. Newspapers have a broad media reach, exciting content and an existing sales force - all advantages they can bring to the mobile world.

But he warned newspapers not to delay. "Don't wait. If you have something to sell, start now," Ugland said.

"Multimedia Multiplies Money"
Jan Lamers, Media Consultant, Belgium

A newspaper can transform itself into a profitable multimedia model, according to Mr Lamers.

Lamers explained how a small newspaper publisher managed to embrace the digital age so that now 30 per cent of its revenue comes from the multimedia division.

Voralberger Medienhaus publishes newspapers in a part of eastern Austria that borders Switzerland and Germany and is separated from the rest of Austria by a mountain range. The newspaper company has exploited this "hot valley" to the maximum, Mr. Lamers said.

The company's digital expansion, through its subsidiary Teleport, includes a regional portal, an Internet service provider and telecom provider.

Now, 76 percent of net users in the region go through Voralberg OnLine. Its newspaper web site receives 40 million page views and two million visits per month. And it has 35,000 clients for 1036hello!, the telecom operator.

Revenue from the multimedia operation now totals 17 million euros a year. Traditional business models are based on two revenue streams: advertising and circulation. But the long-terms trends are for circulation to decline and advertising to fall in market share at least. "Maybe it's time to rethink our business model," Mr. Lamers said.

"Using SMS to Get to Know Readers"
Ian Haywood, Digital Media Business Manager, Associated Newspapers, UK

MOBILE phones can help newspapers get to know their readers better, says Mr. Haywood.

His company runs competitions through mobile phones and SMS messages rather than through the traditional post.

"What you get back is that you get to know who they are - you can profile them," Haywood said.

The Evening Standard in London, which is part of Associated, gets up to 50,000 entries to competitions via SMS.

Over six months that can build into a database of 100,000 unique users, Haywood said. From that, the paper can tell what its reader s are interested in: whether it be cars, holidays or visiting restaurants.

Armed with that information, the newspaper can send prompts via SMS to go and buy the paper when it contains relevant material. And Mobile can also help to make money out of people who read the paper but do not buy it,
Haywood said.

"If you can get them to interact with your paper through the mobile phone then you can take money from them," he explained.

"Extended Reach with Electronic Editions"
Shaun Dail, Olive Software, USA

Electronic editions are bringing a host of benefits to newspaper publishers, said Mr. Dail.

Electronic editions provide the ability for newspapers to leverage their core business. They also let them to increase their circulations - now that auditors are coming around to allowing electronic editions to count as sold copies. And they extend the reach of a newspaper, both geographically and demographically.

Electronic editions can also help publishers to target elusive young readers.

"We have some customers that have sold bulk subscriptions through colleges and universities and have them billed into student activity fees - and are able to count them on the audited figures," Dail said.

Geographically, people like to maintain ties with their communities whether they move regionally or globally. E-editions help people to maintain those ties - and they are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Electronic editions allow newspapers to find out more about reader behaviour, Dail said. "We have the ability to track exactly what stories they read, what advertising they look at and how many pages of the newspaper they turn to. It's very valuable information."

As a whole, Dail said, e-publishing means that newspapers can expand their advertising markets, enter the field of non-traditional publications such as newsletters, profit from sale of archive material, gain from internal
economies, and extend their core values into new media.

Posted by Dana Goldstein on May 31, 2004 at 03:39 AM in b. Alliances and partnerships: consequences for newsrooms, d. Making newspapers easier to read , h. New readers: how to involve them, l. Editors conferences, training sessions and awards, r. What new revenues and new business models? | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Saturday, May 29, 2004

World press trends: advertising rebounds, circulation down slightly

Newspaper advertising revenues are finally on the upswing as the world economy rebounds, but global newspaper circulation is slightly down, according to the annual survey of World Press Trends published Monday by the World Association of Newspapers. The survey, presented to more than 1,300 publishers and editors from 88 countries at the 57th World Newspaper and 11th World Editors Forum in Istanbul, Turkey, showed that: - Global newspaper advertising revenue rose 2 percent in 2003 from a year earlier and is forecast to continue a steady increase through 2006. - Global newspaper circulation declined 0.12 percent in 2003 compared with a year earlier but was up 4.75 percent over the five-year period from 1999 to 2003. - The number of newspaper websites has doubled since 1999 and the global internet advertising market continues to grow steadily. - The number of free dailies is growing dramatically -- a 16 percent increase in 2003 from a year earlier and a 24 percent increase over the past five years in countries for which data was available.

"2003 was yet another year of great changes and challenges for newspapers," said Timothy Balding, Director General of WAN. "The pressures on the circulation of newspapers continued, but newspapers showed a greater willingness than ever before to innovate and experiment with strategies to win new readers.

"Many newspapers worldwide changed their formats to satisfy reader demand and many others are still studying the opportunities that exist in compact formats," he said. "Many more newspapers converted to full colour, with benefits both for advertising and editorial. There is evidence that newspaper internet operations are capturing new audiences. And the growth in new free commuter dailies is also expanding the reach of the written press to a younger generation."

The survey, which WAN has published annually since 1987, this year includes data on all countries where newspapers are published -- 208 in all -- an increase from 74 countries last year. In addition to providing a broader picture of the world newspaper market, the increase provides a wealth of unusual and interesting facts about newspapers from around the world, such as:

- Though literacy in Afghanistan is only 20 percent, an estimated 265 newspapers were published in 2002, with 150 distributed in the capital, Kabul.
- Only about 8 percent of Paraguayans believe that the press is trustworthy. This public cynicism, combined with a recession, has drastically reduced circulation at most daily papers.
- In Senegal, one newspaper costs the same as one kilo of rice. Sixty percent of readers borrow the newspaper rather than purchase one.

The 2004 World Press Trends survey reveals:

1 - On circulation
- Newspaper circulations were up in 35 percent of the countries surveyed year-on-year in 2003, and up in 28 percent of the countries from 1999-2003.
Some developing markets showed strong circulation gains, while many mature markets saw sales decline.
- In the 15 countries of the "old" European Union, 13 reported circulation losses in 2003 compared to 2002 and in the five years from 1999. Circulation in the 15 was down 2.2 percent year-on-year and 5.9 percent over the five years period, representing a loss of 1,415,000 daily sales in one year and 4,507,000 daily sales over five years.

The two countries in this group which showed growth in 2003 were Belgium (+0.2 percent) and Spain (+0.1 percent). Those reporting losses were: Austria -1.2 percent; Denmark -3.7 percent; Finland -1.7 percent; France -1.51 percent; Germany -3.0 percent; Greece -1.0 percent; Ireland -7.8 percent; Italy -1.7 percent; Luxembourg -2.4 percent; Netherlands -2.5 percent; Portugal -4.03 percent; Sweden -0.1 percent; and the United Kingdom -4.7 percent.

Over the five years 1999-2003, circulation declined in: Austria -12.9 percent; Belgium -5.5 percent; Denmark -9.6 percent; Finland -2.7 percent; France -4.98 percent; Germany -8.1 percent; Greece -8.0 percent; Ireland -3.8 percent; Luxembourg -7.12 percent; Netherlands -6.2 percent; Portugal -16.76 percent; Sweden -1.3 percent; and the United Kingdom -3.4 percent.

Two countries increased circulation over the five-year period: Italy (+0.1 percent) and Spain (+0.6 percent).

- In the countries which entered the EU in 2004, total circulation fell -2.3 percent in 2003 compared to 2002. In the five year period from 1999, circulation was down -2.8 percent.

- Elsewhere in Europe, Iceland saw a drop in circulation of -7.79 in 2003 and -23.08 percent over five years, Norway recorded a drop of -2.9 percent year-on-year and -6.4 percent over five years, Switzerland saw a decrease of -2.1 percent in the year and -6.2 percent over five years, and Turkey saw a decline of -23.2 percent in the year and -42.7 percent over five years.

- The circulation of US dailies remained almost stable in 2003, according to preliminary data provided by the Newspaper Association of America, and was down -1.42 percent over five years.

- In Japan, newspaper sales fell -0.67 percent in 2003, and sales have decreased by -2.60 percent over the past five years.

- Circulation in China was up +4.17 percent year-on-year and +35.69 percent over the five-year period. China also has the largest total daily circulation of any country in the world with more than 85 million copies sold, followed by India (more than 72 million copies), Japan (70,339,000 copies), and the United States (55,185,000 copies).

- In Russia, the number of daily titles is growing rapidly: from 222 in 2001 to 428 in 2003, or nearly double in two years.

-In Latin America, where it has been difficult to obtain reliable data, the Brazilian newspaper market declined -10.7 percent in terms of sales in 2003 and was down -7.2 percent over the last five years; Costa Rica reported circulation losses of -3.1 percent in 2003 and -2.4 percent over the last five years; while Uruguay suffered a -26.6 percent drop in sales in 2003.

-Indian newspaper sales increased +9.16 percent in 2003 and were up +23.21 percent over five years. Singapore's newspaper sales declined -0.5 percent in 2002 (the latest figure available) and were down -0.6 percent over five years. Malaysia newspaper sales increased +4.1 percent in 2002 and were up +9.7 percent over five years.

- Australia recorded a decline of -0.79 percent in sales in 2003 and -4.4 percent over five years, while New Zealand newspaper sales were down -0.8 percent year-on-year and -5.3 percent over five years.

-The Norwegians and the Japanese remain the world's greatest newspaper buyers with, respectively, 684 and 646.9 sales per thousand population each day. Sweden comes next with 590 followed by Finland with 524.2.

- Japan is home to 20 of the world's top 100 largest newspapers in circulation terms. The United States is next with 18, followed by China and India at 16 each.

2 - Readership

- Global circulation figures indicate that the figure for world-wide newspaper readership is well over one billion.

3 - Advertising

North America is the world's largest advertising market for daily
newspapers, with 57 percent of the world's advertising share for dailies, followed by Europe with 23 percent, the Asia-Pacific region with 16 percent and the rest of the world with four percent.

In the "old" European Union, newspaper advertising revenues were up +2 percent in 2003 and +4.5 percent over five years. Nine of the 13 countries for which figures were available in 2003 recorded increases in advertising revenue: Austria (+1.9 percent); Belgium (+16.7 percent); Denmark (+4.2 percent); Finland (+1.9 percent); Germany (+2.8 percent); Greece (+54.3 percent); Luxembourg (+4.6); Netherlands (+14.2 percent); and the United Kingdom (0.7 percent).

Advertising revenues decreased in France (-3.6 percent), Italy (-0.5 percent), and Spain (-27.5 percent). Advertising revenues did not change year-on-year in Sweden.

Over the past five years, advertising revenues were up in eight of the 13 EU countries for which figures were available: Austria (+0.8 percent); Belgium (+22.6 percent); Denmark (+12.8 percent); Greece (+32.7 percent); Italy (+7.1 percent); Luxembourg (+25.2 percent); Netherlands (+6.9 percent); and the United Kingdom (7.3 percent).

In the countries which entered the EU in 2004, advertising revenues increased +11.4 percent in 2003 and rose in six of the seven for which figures were available. Advertising increases were recorded in Poland (+44.7 percent); Czech Republic (+6.1 percent); Slovakia (+23.1 percent); Hungary (+11.3 percent); Estonia (+12.5 percent); and Latvia ((+5.2 percent). Revenues remained stable in Lithuania.

Over the five years, advertising revenues were up +24.6 percent in the region and rose, sometimes spectacularly so, in six of the countries: Poland (+102.9 percent); Czech Republic (+51.9 percent); Slovakia (+69.8 percent); Hungary (+42.5 percent); Estonia (+25.4 percent); and Latvia (+24.9 percent). Advertising revenues were down in Lithuania by -11.1 percent in the same period.

- In the United States, newspaper advertising revenues grew +1.9 percent in 2003 compared to a year earlier, but were down -2.9 percent over the past five years. In Japan, the figures were down -1.0 percent and - 8.5 percent respectively.

- Advertising revenues in China increased +11.7 percent year-on-year in 2003 and +87.0 percent over five years.

- In Russia, advertising revenue grew +17 percent in 2003.

- In Latin America, advertising revenues rose +4.5 percent in Brazil year-on-year and +11.4 percent over five years . In Chile, advertising revenues were up +5.2 percent in 2003 but were down -10 percent over five years. Advertising revenues in Uruguay rose +16.5 percent last year.

- Advertising revenues fell -6.2 percent in Turkey over one year and -26.15 percent over five, in constant terms.

- Although newspaper advertising revenues are increasing in many markets, newspaper's share of the world ad market declined from 31.2 percent in 2002 to 30.8 percent in 2003. But newspapers remain the world's second largest advertising medium, after television, which took 38.8 percent of world advertising expenditure in 2003.

Sixteen countries saw newspaper advertising market share growth in 2003: Argentina, Belgium, Chile, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, Iceland, Ireland, Malaysia, Netherlands, Peru, Poland, Romania, Serbia-Montenegro, and South Africa.

Over five years, newspapers in 16 countries increased market share: Argentina, China, Hong Kong, Iceland, Indonesia, Ireland, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Burma, Pakistan, Romania, Russia, Serbia-Montenegro, United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.

4 - Internet

- The growth of the number of on-line editions has slowed since 2001, but is more than double the number in 1999.

- Internet advertising revenues topped 10 billion US dollars in 2003, and are forecast to grow to more than 13 billion by 2006. The growth has been steady from 1999, when it stood at over five billion dollars.

In the United States and Canada, internet advertising revenues increased 7 percent from 2002 to 2003, while in the Asia-Pacific region, internet advertising revenues grew 11 percent in the year. European internet ad revenues grew 5.9 percent.

- A WAN study of internet classified advertising shows a gap between expectations about internet advertising and reality. Publishers questioned in the study said that jobs ads would be the first to migrate from print to internet, when in fact automobile ads are now, on average, providing the greatest percentage of online classified revenues.

5 - Free Newspapers

Free newspaper advertising revenues have increased 1.5 percent over one year and 22.6 percent over five.

- In some markets, free dailies have been growing distribution; in the United Kingdom, free newspaper distribution grew from 237,000 copies in 1999 to 864,000 copies in 2003.
- Metro International, the Swedish-based publisher of free commuter dailies, is publishing 5.5 million daily copies in 16 countries.

The World Press Trends 2004 edition is now available at the World Association of Newspapers website or by contacting WAN, 7 rue Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, 75005 Paris France. Tel: +33 1 47 42 85 00, Fax +33 1 47 42 49 48. E-mail: [email protected].

Source: World Association of Newspapers

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on May 29, 2004 at 03:01 PM in b. Alliances and partnerships: consequences for newsrooms, d. Making newspapers easier to read , e. Tabloid vs. broadsheet, h. New readers: how to involve them, i. What is newsworthy or how to reshape the future of the newspaper, q. Global/Local trends, r. What new revenues and new business models? | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Friday, May 28, 2004

The death of the feature?

In this article, Roy Peter Clark of The Poynter Institute defends the Pulitzer Board's decision not to name a winner in the feature writing category, despite the nomination of three finalists. Clark argues that the nominated feature series were too long, did not focus enough on specific scenes and characters, and were not written well-enough to live up to the Pulitzer's standards! Ouch! That's some pretty harsh criticism. For Clark, the chief culprit seems to be the prevalence of series, which he thinks encourage verbosity of the least interesting kind. The lesson? Cut, cut, cut those long stories until there are characters and scenes that stand out to readers and a well-paced narrative. Interestingly, Clark's criticism of series completely contradicts the message I heard two months ago at a conference at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, where many of the speakers - reporters and editors alike - were series-happy. Have feature-writing and series been differentiated from one another at your paper?

Source: The Poynter Institute

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on May 28, 2004 at 02:54 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read , i. What is newsworthy or how to reshape the future of the newspaper, l. Editors conferences, training sessions and awards, m. From editorial quality to editorial measurement | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, May 27, 2004

Should newspaper websites adopt the writing style and presentation of blogs?

From Dan Froomkin at Online Journalism Review: These comments from Washington Post columnist Dan Froomkin could be controversial - not only does he believe newspapers should be using blogging techniques on their websites (such as including relevant URLs within stories), but he also believes online journalists should write more like bloggers, in a lively, even "outraged" style he calls "webby." Here's an excerpt: "The most successful blogs all have something in common. Their authors are unashamedly enthusiastic about the topic at hand. (Often, of course, they're outraged.) The lesson: There is no virtue in sounding bored online...

"Online, journalists should not conceal their fascination for the topics they cover. They should not hide behind the traditional bland construction of news stories. They should still be fair, of course, but they should also have voice and passion -- and sometimes even outrage. There is a risk here that the line between news and opinion may get blurry, but so be it. We should be turning our online journalists into personalities -- even celebrities -- rather than encouraging them to be as faceless as their print colleagues. The Internet demands voice."

Froomkin also writes about how newspapers can use the web and "newsroom blogs" to solicit reader participation, collect geographical information on visitors to their websites and even attract more readers by featuring news that may be a funny, scandalous or sexy. Editorially, his message is to "have more fun" online. Definitely check out the whole article, it's chock full of interesting ideas.

Source: Dan Froomkin at Online Journalism Review

Posted by Dana Goldstein on May 27, 2004 at 02:20 AM in a. Is blogging journalism?, d. Making newspapers easier to read , h. New readers: how to involve them | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, May 25, 2004

Free dailies turn profits and expand: Metro International answers its editorial critics with a new Internet ad

I've only been in Paris for a week, but I can attest to the fact that the new, free, tabloid-format dailies distributed in metro stations are as ubiquitous here as they are in New York (my home town). In both cities, one need only to hop onto the subway during the morning rush hour to witness how quickly this relatively new phenomenon has caught on among commuters who don't leave home with a big-name paper already tucked under their arm. In fact, Le Monde reported last week that according to Pierre-Jean Bozo, president of free daily publisher 20 Minutes France, 76% of 20 Minute's readers did not previously read a daily paper. The article reported that although the Parisian free dailies had major losses in 2003, they are currently experiencing their first real wave of profitability, allowing them to expand into the provinces. All in all, it is estimated that one in five French people read a free daily newspaper regularly. And now, free daily publisher Metro International is answering its critics on the editorial side with a new Internet advertisement...

Free dailies have been renowned for their 24-page brevity - but critics allege that's just a nice way of saying coverage isn't complete or challenging. The new ad fights back, portraying Metro papers as simultaneously youthful and serious. In several flashing panels, we learn that Metro International employs 400 journalists around the globe (sounds like a direct response to complaints that too many of its articles are culled from wire services) and that unlike traditional dailies, Metro papers boast real results in attracting the young adult readers so prized by advertisers.

The message? That Metro papers do real journalism, and even if they do cut some corners, you can't complain, because they are delivering on readership. It will be interesting to see if and how regional and national papers will compete for the free dailies' growing readership - without adopting the "news-lite" style that has garnered little respect from more traditional editorial communities.

Source: Le Monde and also see this older article from Slate on the French editorial community's reaction to free dailies

Posted by Dana Goldstein on May 25, 2004 at 08:31 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read , e. Tabloid vs. broadsheet, h. New readers: how to involve them, i. What is newsworthy or how to reshape the future of the newspaper, k. Newspapers launches and results, m. From editorial quality to editorial measurement, q. Global/Local trends | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

British Independent reaches the stars

Thanks to Mediaweek for this exclusive news about the British press: "According to the latest National Readership Survey figures for October last year to March 2004, the paper has seen a massive increase of 31% in the number of readers. Full details of readership levels will be released by the NRS next week, but the Indy’s fellow tabloid convert, The Times, has also seen a fall of 17% over the same period, according the figures released this week. The figures are all the more impressive, and a justification to Indy bosses, as the total newspaper market has fallen by 10% for the six-month period. Detailed areas in the latest figures also revealed the Indy’s 40% increase in readers aged between 15 and 44 years old, an area the paper claims in highly significant for the advertisers."

Source: Mediaweek

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on May 12, 2004 at 05:39 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read , e. Tabloid vs. broadsheet, h. New readers: how to involve them | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

T.i.P.: just for teens and just in Boston

It looks as if the Boston Globe Foundation in the US is concentrating on its youth market with the launch of a new newspaper for teenagers. According to Boston.com/The Boston Globe “WriteBoston, the City of Boston’s two-year old writing initiative for high school students, wants to launch T.i.P, Boston Teens in Print, a citywide newspaper for Boston Public High School students. The new publication will be written by teens, for teens, and delivered to 33 Boston public high schools. T.i.P. is published in partnership with the Boston Globe Foundation. Teens reported in surveys and focus groups that they would read a newspaper if it was about Boston teens and featured news that was interesting to them, said Betty Southwick, WriteBoston Director.

Source: Boston.com/The Boston Globe

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on May 12, 2004 at 03:32 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read , h. New readers: how to involve them, k. Newspapers launches and results | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, May 11, 2004

Europe: alliance to promote newspapers to the young

An alliance has been formed with the aim of promoting newspapers to the youth and taking newspapers into schools. Irene Hdez Velasco at El Mundo writes that English newspaper The Times, French newspaper Le Monde, German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera and Spanish newspaper El Mundo have signed an agreement to take the press into schools. Looking at the current state of European press Velasco highlights that many of the young do not understand the “complicated” way in which articles are written and believe too little space within newspapers is dedicated to the interests of the youth. The new alliance aims to tackle this problem, under the signature ‘To grow between the lines.’

http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2004/05/09/comunicacion/1084072319.html

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on May 11, 2004 at 03:34 AM in b. Alliances and partnerships: consequences for newsrooms, d. Making newspapers easier to read , h. New readers: how to involve them | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What should newspapers do to attract younger readers?

Henry Scott, managing director of the free paper Metro New York (and ex-NYT), which is targeted at 18 to 34 year olds, has given a - short but strong - interview to I want Media. He said that "to attract young readers, newspapers must understand this formula: Time + Money – Relevance = Lost Reader. Newspapers must offer quick reads for time-pressed young people, and they must tailor their content for relevance -- which doesn't mean 'dumbing down,' but does mean acknowledging that young readers have different interests than their parents. And finally, newspapers must adopt differential pricing, where the readers they most want get a paper for free, while their parents pay full freight." And all my apologizes to Patrick Philips for having mislinked this posting today morning.

Source: I want Media.

Read also the comment made by Jeff Jarvis in its buzzmachine. And see Metro New York website. The newspaper was launched last week in New York. It's the 39th edition of Metro since its first launching in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1995.

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on May 11, 2004 at 03:27 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read , e. Tabloid vs. broadsheet, h. New readers: how to involve them, k. Newspapers launches and results | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Monday, May 10, 2004

Should you say coalition forces or occupation forces?

"On our American networks here, we talk about 'coalition forces.' On Arab media, they talk about 'occupation forces.' On CNN (on Friday), they talked about '16 insurgents killed.' In the Arab world, they call them 'resistance fighters.' Those are little nuances. Someone is manipulating something on both sides" said Jamal Dajani, producer of WorldLink TV's "Mosaic," which rebroadcasts Arab news segments on satellite television stations in San Francisco and other US communities.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle / SFgate

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on May 10, 2004 at 02:41 PM in d. Making newspapers easier to read , o. Ethics and Press Freedom | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Monday, May 03, 2004

Thanks to the Readership Institute, newspaper readership steady in US top 50 markets

Even if some bad news will come from important American newspapers, the ABC audit to be released today is expected to show a certain stability according to the Newspaper Association of America. To NAA President and CEO John F. Sturm, newspapers have worked hard over the last few years to put into practice readership recommendations from the Readership Institute. "We are beginning to see progress well beyond what many expected," he said. "Newspapers of all sizes are incorporating innovative approaches to increase readership and they're beginning to pay off. At this time, the industry has gone from understanding readership to doing something about it."

Please find below the whole NAA Press release:

" Newspapers in the top US 50 markets are reaching nearly eight out of 10 adults (78.6 percent) over the course of a week (five weekdays plus a Sunday), according to the spring 2004 Competitive Media Index from the Newspaper Association of America. The CMI is an NAA analysis of market data from Scarborough Research covering the period from August 2002 to September 2003. NAA also reports that more than half of all adults in the top 50 markets are reading a newspaper every weekday; 53.4 percent reported by the spring 2004 CMI, compared to 54.1 percent in the fall 2003. Each Sunday, 62.0 percent of adults in those markets read a newspaper, down slightly from 62.5 percent reported in the fall 2003 CMI.

"The good news is that each week newspapers in the top 50 markets reach 79 percent of adults, and more than half of adults on a daily basis," said NAA President and CEO John F. Sturm. "Over the last six months, the economic outlook may have changed from week to week, but newspapers remained a constant for advertisers, delivering a steady reader base they have come to value."

In addition, Sturm said, newspapers have worked hard over the last few years to put into practice readership recommendations from the Readership Institute. "We are beginning to see progress well beyond what many expected," he said. "Newspapers of all sizes are incorporating innovative approaches to increase readership and they're beginning to pay off. At this time, the industry has gone from understanding readership to doing something about it."

Readership Stories:

Tampa Tribune (As of March 31, 2004: daily: 238,877, Sunday: 315,811)

In 2003, the Tampa Tribune added 45,800 daily readers and 49,500 Sunday readers, increasing core market penetration by more than 1 percent for both. Daily circulation increased by nearly 4 percent, and the newspaper has demonstrated increases over three consecutive reporting periods. "There is no silver bullet for circulation growth," Publisher Gil Thelen said. "We attribute our success to content improvements aimed at reader interests and needs, targeted circulation sales efforts, better brand definition and related brand marketing, smart third-party programs and flexible pricing." Tampa launched a new branding campaign in October with the tag line "Life. Printed Daily."

Contact: Amy Chown, 813-259-7767, [email protected]

The Commercial Appeal (Memphis) (As of March 31, 2004: daily: 177,723, Sunday: 240,712)

Through retention efforts, geographic pricing and product enhancements, The Commercial Appeal continued to grow circulation after a decade of sinking sales. Recent readership research showed that average daily adult readership increased from 41% to 46% from 2001 to 2003, while Sunday gained 62% to 64% during that period. Within their designated market area, they added nearly 59,000 weekday readers and 61,500 on Sundays. Among the product enhancements are seven new community editions consisting primarily of content submitted by readers.

Contact: Elena Calinas, 901-529-2285, [email protected]

Jackson County (Fla.) Floridan (As of March 31, 2004: daily: 6,924; Sunday: 6,926)

The Floridan has grown daily circulation more than 26 percent since 2002. The paper attributes its success to heavy focus on more local news, improving carrier routes, aggressive attention to retention and a partnership between editorial and circulation. "Editorial is excited about the growth and watches the single copy numbers with anticipation each week," according to Publisher Roger Underwood. "The editorial staff knows they are part of the reason for the circulation growth."

Contact: Ray Kozakewicz, (804) 649-6748 [email protected]

Knoxville News Sentinel (As of March 31, 2004: 123,047; Sunday: 156,158)

The Knoxville News Sentinel saw a 1 percent jump in daily circulation because of aggressive strategies to drive readership. Among their new efforts include a "World Class Service" campaign, improved navigation and more legible fonts, daily briefs in all sections, reader-generated stories, increased focus on ethnic community coverage, a content sampling program targeted to non-subscribers, re-designed classified sections and more.

Contact: Lara Edge, 865-342-6295, [email protected]

The Tifton Gazette (Ga.) (As of March 31, 2004: )

The Tifton Gazette grew circulation by 3 percent in 2003 and has averaged 5.3 percent increases so far in 2004. Gazette Publisher Frank Sayles credits growth to an improved editorial product (including increased local coverage and more content targeted at youth and other special interests), more daily promotion and event sponsorship, regular reader contests, increased customer service training, and weekly cross-departmental meetings focused on circulation and readership growth.

Source: Newspaper Association of America

NAA is a nonprofit organization representing the $55 billion newspaper industry and more than 2,000 newspapers in the U.S. and Canada. Most NAA members are daily newspapers, accounting for 87 percent of the U.S. daily circulation. Headquartered in Tysons Corner (Vienna, Va.), the Association focuses on six key strategic priorities that affect the newspaper industry collectively: marketing, public policy, diversity, industry development, newspaper operations and readership. Information about NAA and the industry may also be found at www.naa.org

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on May 3, 2004 at 07:58 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read , h. New readers: how to involve them, m. From editorial quality to editorial measurement, q. Global/Local trends | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Wednesday, April 28, 2004

Targeting younger readers

Take a look at this article, written by Barbara Kiviat, about the launch of the New York newspaper amNewYork, which has been designed to target younger readers. According to its founder Russel Pergament "What these kids like is fast, blather free and unbiased." "Something to give them a good, comprehensive scan of the country in 20 minutes." Its worth a read as it also looks at how other publishers are trying to appeal to younger readers.

amNewYork is a daily paper and has a circulation of 209,000

Source: TIME (online edition)

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on April 28, 2004 at 01:29 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read , h. New readers: how to involve them, k. Newspapers launches and results | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, April 22, 2004

Young readers want more features in papers

A good synthesis in The State (South Carolina) of what was said by John Lavine, director of the Readership Institute. He described the research to a joint session of the annual conventions of the ASNE and NAA. "Newspapers can gain a wider audience among the young and minorities by paying more attention to their interest in lifestyle coverage, features and ads, editors and publishers were told Wednesday. The study said newspapers can't rely on the conventional wisdom that young adults will read more as they age, so it's important to deliver content that appeals to them. The study found that readers 35 and older look for hard news, editorials, lifestyle stories, "my community" features and service articles. People 18 to 24 are attracted to lifestyle stories and features on such subjects as home, health, food, fashion, recreation and science. They're also interested in advertisements. "They tend to be selective in what they read, looking at less than half of the Sunday paper and less than one-third of the weekday paper," the institute said.

Source: thestate.com and the Readership Institute.

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on April 22, 2004 at 07:48 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read , h. New readers: how to involve them, m. From editorial quality to editorial measurement | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Has the sun set on network evening news?

Found in Real Media Riffs. This interesting article allows you to understand new trends of media consumption in the US (and maybe in the rest of the world): "Because of the introduction of new technologies and cable television, consumers are taking control. They are telling us that 'we'll consume the news when we want and the shows or networks we want to watch,'" says Bob Papper, a telecommunications professor at Ball State. "If they want to watch the weather, they can tune into the Weather Channel at any time of the day," he said. "Why should they wait for the local news if a cable channel has it when they want to watch?" The study found that people now watch more news between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m. than at any other part of the day. The findings were released this week to maximum effect during the Radio Television News Directors Association conference in Las Vegas.

Source: Real Media Riffs.

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on April 22, 2004 at 01:54 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read , i. What is newsworthy or how to reshape the future of the newspaper | Permalink | TrackBack

Tuesday, April 20, 2004

Hispanic Americans consume media in both Spanish and English

Paul J. Gough, MediaPost staff writer reports that a study, released Monday by the Pew Hispanic Center, shows that it is not the case that English-speaking homes choose English-language programs and Spanish-speaking homes choose Spanish-language shows. Many Hispanic Americans, regardless of language preference, receive news in both Spanish and English. Nevertheless, more than 62 percent of Hispanics get their news from English-language newspapers, compared to only 21 percent for Spanish-language papers. The study also found that English-dominant Hispanics still turn to Spanish-language media for news about their communities and from Latin America. And even among the Latinos who were born abroad, about half receive at least some of their news in English.

Source: Mediapost's MediaDailyNews (and the Pew Hispanic Center).

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on April 20, 2004 at 08:27 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read , h. New readers: how to involve them, k. Newspapers launches and results | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, April 15, 2004

Quotation of the day

"Begin sentences with subjects and verbs, letting subordinate elements branch off to the right. Even a very long sentence can be clear and powerful when the subject and verb make meaning early" says Roy Peter Clark, Senior Scholar at the US Poynter Institute in a paper called "Fifty writing tools". And He immediately adds: "Each week, for the next 50, I will describe a writing tool that has been useful to me. I have borrowed these tools from writers and editors, from authors of books on writing, and from teachers and writing coaches. Many come from the X-ray reading of texts I admire." So, a lot of reading by March 2005!

Source: Poynter Institute.

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on April 15, 2004 at 03:10 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read , m. From editorial quality to editorial measurement, p. Quotation of the day | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday, April 14, 2004

Your readers like multiple media usage

The US Media Center and BIGresearch have joined forces to analyse the Simultaneous Media Usage Survey published end of 2003: "listening activities seem most agreeable to newspaper readers as 52.4% say they watch TV and 49.6% say they listen to the radio when reading the newspaper. Likewise, more women (52.4%) than men (49.6%) prefer reading the newspaper and listening to the radio simultaneously…In addition, 60.6% television watchers and newspaper readers say television is an important or very important influence on their purchase decision."

Source: Media Center.

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on April 14, 2004 at 09:03 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read , h. New readers: how to involve them | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, April 13, 2004

News Map, a new way to look at the news

Maybe I'm totally behind the times, but I didn't know this site: News Map. To say it in few words, the site is a virtual representation of the huge amount of news displayed by Google News. The information can be selected country by country (USA, UK, India, France, Spain, Germany and some others) and is related to a time scale: "less than ten minutes ago", "less than hour ago", etc. After ten minutes on this site, you understand better what "information's hierarchy" means. Thanks to Markos Weskamp for this initiative and this sensible remark: "It is not thought to display an unbiased view of the news, on the contrary it is thought to ironically accentuate the bias of it."

As said in the site's about page, "News Map is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator. A treemap visualization algorithm helps display the enormous amount of information gathered by the aggregator. Treemaps are traditionally space-constrained visualizations of information. Newsmap's objective takes that goal a step further and provides a tool to divide information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe.
Newsmap does not pretend to replace the googlenews aggregator. It's objective is to simply demonstrate visually the relationships between data and the unseen patterns in news media. It is not thought to display an unbiased view of the news, on the contrary it is thought to ironically accentuate the bias of it."

Source: News Map.

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on April 13, 2004 at 02:19 AM in c. Converged or diverged? The multiplatform newsroom, d. Making newspapers easier to read , n. New sources for Editors, q. Global/Local trends | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, April 06, 2004

Reaching Spanish-speaking audiences in the US

Some quotes from O. Ricardo Pimentel, columnist, Arizona Republic: "Perhaps you realize that the fastest growing segment of your market may very well be non-English speaking. Most probably, Spanish-speaking. More importantly, Spanish-reading... Los Angeles is shaping up to be the next big newspaper battleground. And the fight will be waged in Spanish... The national scope makes the upcoming Tribune/Hoy - La Opinión battle significant... By 2050, the entire Latino population will have grown 188 percent to 102.6 million. So Spanish-language media will be in no danger of lacking readers or viewers in the United States for the foreseeable future... If you don't reach out to the first generation, what chance is there that the second generation will adopt the news-reading habit in either language?"

Source: Poynter online.

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on April 6, 2004 at 01:30 AM in b. Alliances and partnerships: consequences for newsrooms, d. Making newspapers easier to read , k. Newspapers launches and results, q. Global/Local trends | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Monday, April 05, 2004

Paris-based task force on the Quality of News and Information

The World Association of Newspapers has created a Task Force on the Quality of News and Information. Henri Pigeat, former President of the Agence France-Presse news agency, has been asked to lead the initiative, which will seek evidence and research that demonstrates that quality is a critical issue for the future of newspapers. WAN represents 18,000 newspapers and publications around the world.

Contact: Timothy Balding, WAN Director General ([email protected]) and Henri Pigeat ([email protected]).

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on April 5, 2004 at 03:20 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read , h. New readers: how to involve them, m. From editorial quality to editorial measurement | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Wednesday, March 31, 2004

What kind of news do we need for democracy?

A friend of mine just gave me this info about a book published in 2003. "Journalism can do little to reduce the political imbalance between citizens and the economic, political and other organizations that dominate America" said Herbert J. Gans in a very well informed book dedicated to the American journalism in the twentieth century. The sociologist is not 100% pessimistic... if journalists succeed in changing their current news practices. Few weeks ago the "2004 State of the Media" report said more or less the same thing.

The book: Democracy and the News, by Herbert J. Gans, Oxford University Press.

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on March 31, 2004 at 07:46 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read , m. From editorial quality to editorial measurement, o. Ethics and Press Freedom | Permalink | TrackBack

Friday, March 26, 2004

Future of journalism: multi-lingual journalists versus translators

"Our impression is that the need for translation is actually increasing," said Dr Joy Sisley, lecturer and research fellow for the Translation in Global News project at the University of Warwick in England. "Obviously publishers need to balance what is local and what is global news, but our initial hypothesis is that translation can be a way of maximising markets." The Translation in Global News project was established in September 2003 to explore the role of translation in the production of global news. Interesting links at the end of the paper.

Source: dotJournalism.uk and Jemima Kiss.

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on March 26, 2004 at 01:43 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read , m. From editorial quality to editorial measurement | Permalink | TrackBack

Thursday, March 25, 2004

Ireland: attitudes to newspaper readership are very positive

Good news from Ireland! More and more Irish people are reading newspapers, the National Newspapers of Ireland (NNI) revealed last week, following the release of the latest Joint National Readership Survey (JNRS). The 2003 report showed that more than nine out of ten adults now read newspapers in an average week. Daily newspapers have picked up 37,000 new readers in the past six months, said NNI, while Sunday newspapers attracted 38,000 new readers.

Source: INMA newsletter and Waterford News and Star.

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on March 25, 2004 at 01:40 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read , h. New readers: how to involve them | Permalink | TrackBack

Wednesday, March 24, 2004

How to deal with the simultaneous media consumption

Odd American readers: three quarters of television viewers read the newspaper while they watch TV, and two thirds of them go online while they watch TV, according to a study of simultaneous media consumption released today by The Media Center at the American Press Institute. The Simultaneous Media Usage Survey (SIMM), conducted by BIGresearch in October 2003, reveals a higher-than-expected level of media multi-tasking. With 70 percent of media users saying they at one time or another try to absorb two or more forms of media at once, the SIMM results have far-reaching implications - technology and content providers, editors, marketers and advertisers have to wonder: Who is paying attention to what, and when?

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on March 24, 2004 at 08:34 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read , h. New readers: how to involve them, i. What is newsworthy or how to reshape the future of the newspaper | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

France: 62% of young people don't believe media news

I'm back in my office and I have to apologize to begin with bad news. But if what is happening in France is the same in other countries, editors can be worried: 62% of the 11 - 20 don't believe media news! According to Mediametrie and the CLEMI, they trust first in the TV networks (45%). Printed press is at the second rank (30%), internet at the third one (15%) and radio at the last one (10%).

Source: CB newsletter.

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on March 24, 2004 at 01:18 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read , h. New readers: how to involve them, q. Global/Local trends | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday, March 17, 2004

Only for journalists outraged by the amount of mails they receive

Problems with your countless daily e-mails? You need to read the Mark Glaser's last article: "You bet it is, if you work at one of the growing number of newspapers and their Web sites that are publishing the addresses with each story. Not all news organizations agree on their benefit, and some reporters are downright outraged by the amount of junk mail and spam they receive." The answer of the main American editors...

The whole article on Glaser online (Online Journalism Review).

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on March 17, 2004 at 03:22 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read , m. From editorial quality to editorial measurement, n. New sources for Editors | Permalink | TrackBack

Monday, March 08, 2004

Strategy problem: contact "The Key"

Philippe Starck, the worldwide known designer and Romain Hatchuel, the former newbusiness director at Euro RSCG have launched "The Key". This agency in "strategy and integrated communication" will help European and Asian companies for a better understanding of new trends and communication tools. It's not directly linked to the newspapers industry, but if you want to be trendy, ask The Key.

Source: CB newsletter, France.

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on March 8, 2004 at 07:54 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read , g. Visual strategies and photojournalism | Permalink | TrackBack

Friday, March 05, 2004

USA: more people read papers, but spend less time on them

More people are reading newspapers today - but spending a little less time with them when they do - according to a survey released by the US Readership Institute, a division of the Media Management Center at Northwestern University. The study notes that reader behaviour scores (RBS) rose in 2003 to 3.56 (on a scale of 1-7) from 3.24 in 2002. The number one denotes someone who does not read the local daily newspaper and seven represents a reader who spends a lot of time with the paper. Not surprisingly, age is a primary factor for readership.

Despite fresh efforts by many papers to reach younger readers, the RBS continues to drop among the youngest age group polled, those 18-24, with a score of 2.68 in 2003. That number was 2.95 in 2002. Young people that do read papers tend to purchase single copies. RBS numbers among those 65 and older have the strongest showing among all age groups and increased the most sharply, 4.44 in 2003 from 3.91 the year prior. However, the average time that people spend with newspapers is down. Readers spend 26 minutes per day during the week reading the paper (down from 27 minutes in 2002) and 57 minutes on Sunday (down from 64 minutes).

Source: the European Journalism Centre and Editor & Publisher.

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on March 5, 2004 at 08:41 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read , q. Global/Local trends | Permalink | TrackBack

Surprise! What people say and what they do may be different

EMarketer reports that Ball State's Center for Media Design "shadowed" American adults to monitor their media intake, collected individual media diaries and interviewed people over the phone to see how far off phone surveys are from "reality." Specifically, the study determined that adults said over the phone that they watch two hours of TV per day, but when they were observed by researchers, they were logged watching five hours and 19 minutes of TV each day. As for the Internet, over the phone adults told researchers they spend 29 minutes per day online, but when actually observed, researchers determined adults spend over an hour each day online... About newspapers, the phone survey gives a 15 minutes result and the shadow observation a 17 minutes result: here, the difference is negligible.

Source: Center for Media Research / Mediapost and EMarketer.

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on March 5, 2004 at 01:21 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read , i. What is newsworthy or how to reshape the future of the newspaper, q. Global/Local trends | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday, March 03, 2004

Gannett tests a Hispanic-oriented, English language section in Arizona

Gannett Co. Inc. is preparing to launch a new section in The Arizona Republic geared toward the English-language Hispanics. Gannett made a strong push last year into the local Spanish-language market by buying Ashland Media, owner of La Voz, a weekly newspaper. The Republic's move is testimony to the growing portion of the Hispanic population who remain close to their culture but will consume more media in English.

Excerpts of the article:

A shift of the Hispanic market toward a majority speaking English affects local marketing agencies and national and local advertisers, say industry observers. It also will result in the growth of media oriented toward the new, emerging demographic, they add.

The Arizona Republic hired Teclo Garcia of Brownsville, Texas, as editor of its new section for English-speaking Hispanics. Garcia was the editor of the Brownsville Herald, a Freedom Communications Inc. newspaper. "We were set to launch in February, but we are still working out some things," Garcia said. The Republic has not set an official launch date.

The special section will contain English content for Hispanic readers, Garcia said. It will be mostly English with some Spanish words mixed in. Garcia said he argued for this approach because it reflects the reality of the way Hispanics speak.

Source: the Business Journal Phoenix.

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on March 3, 2004 at 01:18 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read , f. Weekly supplements, q. Global/Local trends | Permalink | TrackBack

Monday, March 01, 2004

Editorial quality debate divides newspaper industry

"Editorial measurement: two words that divide our industry like no others" says our friend Jim Chisholm in the latest issue of Newspapers and technology. He adds that "in the majority of cases, the quest for better performance through measurement is interpreted as a threat to quality. This reluctance by journalists to adopt more modern working practices is counter-productive because it is effectively stopping our industry from progressing." I guess a majority of editors will not agree with this provocative point of view...

Excerpts of the article:

"In one camp there is total disbelief that so little is being done to measure the output of our journalists in terms of quantity and quality. In the other there is utter disdain that anyone could associate the clinical notion of measurement with the art - or is it magic? - of journalism.

... Two years ago, I conducted a worldwide study for WAN that examined the subject of editorial measurement. The conclusion? Journalists and newsrooms could be measured easily. Moreover, the process of introducing such measures not only resulted in better newspapers produced more inexpensively, but also led to more motivated, better-directed staff.

The report identified four forms of measurement:

*Effectiveness - This relates to how well the newspaper does its job, from the perspective of its readers. Research can be used to measure the relative strengths and weaknesses of competitors, track readership by page, topic and even writer, determine which content should be expanded and what can be removed. Newspapers as distinct as those produced in Argentina and South Africa are tracking their readers? interests, reading behavior and criticisms on a regular basis. Research works, and in every case I have come across the benefits it yields - whether it?s improving product or cutting costs associated with unpopular content - greatly exceed the cost.

*Efficiency - Virtually every newspaper can improve its workflow - either by helping staff work together more efficiently, by identifying steps that can be eliminated, or by employing tools that track workflow and thus allow managers to unearth points of duplication or problem areas. In truth, a common frustration among journalists lies in unresolved inefficiencies. While journalists, as with most working people, are rightly nervous about processes that track their working patterns, they are invariably pleased when their lives are made easier or when workflow obstacles are removed.

*Economy - The third issue lies in finding cost savings. Often these are inflicted because of a need to increase profits, but more and more newspapers are trying to trim production costs in order to invest in better content.

*Enterprise - The final factor is what I refer to as enterprise, namely how well the newspaper realizes its objectives - invariably through the quality of its management and their communication.

I employ a couple of techniques that measure how realistically a newspaper is tuned into its marketplace. These techniques often illustrate a great discrepancy among journalists regarding what their newspaper stands for. Their perceptions about what people read often differ greatly from what readers actually read.

One technique, a tool I particularly favor but one that editors seem reluctant to introduce, is to send a short questionnaire to every person who appears in a newspaper story. The questionnaire simply asks those people if facts were correct, if their interpretation was fair and whether there is any more to the story to be told.

The benefits are enormous. First, it sends a strong signal to everyone that the newspaper is passionate about accuracy. It lets everyone feel they have a right to reply. It quickly weeds out any reporter who requires training. In addition, my experience suggests of the replies received, almost one in every three result in further investigation or to another story. To make this approach successful, it?s important that everyone in the newsroom is heading in the same direction.

Success also depends on appropriate appraisals. Many journalist appraisals simply follow those used across the newspaper organization. But the measures outlined above can be drawn together to tailor accurate, useable and motivating appraisals for every person in the newsroom.

Journalists, like everyone else at work, appreciate an annual, formal update on their performance and an indication where their future lies and how they can improve. Introducing measurements such as these can radically improve the process.

In the last two years, I have realized that the controversy surrounding editorial measurement relates in fact to issues of change management and - ultimately - diversification. Of course, journalists are right to defend their positions, to fight for every job, to aspire to better standards, better enquiry, more creativity and more depth. But in the majority of cases, the quest for better performance through measurement is interpreted as a threat to quality. This reluctance by journalists to adopt more modern working practices is counter-productive because it is effectively stopping our industry from progressing.

As the industry faces increased pressures to reduce costs and to move into other distribution channels, it is vital that we find better ways to work and to measure ourselves. By adopting better working practice and demonstrating a willingness to be measured and to change, we can expand our newspapers and our businesses..."

Source: Jim Chisholm, Newspapers and technology.

Jim Chisholm is a consultant and strategy advisor to the World Association of Newspapers and director of the association?s Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project, which looks at new developments in the newspaper industry. He can be reached via e-mail at: [email protected]
More information about the project is available at futureofthenewspaper.com.

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on March 1, 2004 at 09:17 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read , i. What is newsworthy or how to reshape the future of the newspaper, m. From editorial quality to editorial measurement | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Friday, February 27, 2004

Reader feedback versus editorial judgment

Just received from Felipe T. Edwards, deputy editor of El Mercurio, the Chilean quality newspaper... A sharp thinking on "finding the balance between the reader feedback and the pure editorial judgment". Don't hesitate to send us comments.

Felipe T. Edwards posting:

"Should editors listen to readers and give them what they want. Or should we exercise what many view as our professional obligation and print what we think they should read. The answer, surely, must lie somewhere between these extremes, but it seems that most of us lean too heavily towards one or the other end of that spectrum.

I suspect that most of us follow the age old practice of running what seems ?newsworthy?, what years of experience as reporters and editors tell us will affect our readers lives or pique their interest. Whether we run front pages of penetrating political analysis for a quality broadsheet or salacious revelations of a local television starlet for a mass market tabloid, our choice will be dictated by a combination of tradition and instinct.
For this group reader surveys or other market investigation tools are generally treated as background noise, toys used by administrative types to which are paid little more than lip service, lest we anger the publisher and seem uncooperative with the business side of our business.

There exists another group, smaller (dare I say younger?) who take market studies and reshape the entire content of their papers to respond to its results. Some can take extensive measurements, like the marvelously detailed Reader Behavior Scores undertaken by the Readership Institute of Northwestern University, and use them as a guide for allotting space between sections. Others have used hits on their web pages as an indicator of reader interest, and to great effect. Las Ultimas Noticias, a national circulation tabloid in Chile is in its second year of 30% circulation growth which it attributes in no small degree to a careful study of readership trends in its web page.

My point is that we need both, research and intuition, but tend to rely too heavily on one or the other. I urge the traditionalists to take a second, more serious look at those market studies: you might well find new sales in those dry pages. And survey addicts could very possibly benefit from occasionally flouting their numbers and attempting some creative destruction of their own models. The results for both could be surprising."

Felipe T. Edwards e-mail: [email protected]

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on February 27, 2004 at 09:56 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read , h. New readers: how to involve them, i. What is newsworthy or how to reshape the future of the newspaper | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Thursday, February 26, 2004

The accelerating push for new audiences

You need to read this paper written by Rick Edmonds for Poynter Online: "It's old news by now that media companies are pushing hard to capture new audiences with niche publications and broadcasts pitched at youth, Hispanics, and other special targets. But Edmonds shed some fresh light on just how fast-moving the trend has become and how thoroughly it is reshaping the news organizations themselves.

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on February 26, 2004 at 06:39 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read , h. New readers: how to involve them | Permalink | TrackBack

Tuesday, February 24, 2004

Quotation of the day

"The Readership Institute is finding that publishers (and their corporate bosses) have a lot more favorable view of progress in their newspapers becoming reader-oriented than do editors" said Rick Edmonds in a comprehensive paper on how media groups - as Gannet and Knight Ridder - improve editorial quality.

Source: Poynteronline.

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on February 24, 2004 at 08:42 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read , m. From editorial quality to editorial measurement | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Monday, February 23, 2004

USA: food journalism gains higher profile

Newspapers and magazines are dedicating some of their top journalists to the food beat to meet a rising interest in news about cuisine."They are dedicating top talent to the food beat, and they are hungry for sophisticated stories with timely angles." writes Doug Brown in the American Journalism Review. The increased attention to well-reported stories on food may have to do with changing attitudes in the US. Readers want news about what they cook and eat, according to the article. Maybe useful for non-US editors.

Source: Knight Center for Journalism.

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on February 23, 2004 at 01:39 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read , f. Weekly supplements | Permalink | TrackBack

Monday, February 16, 2004

Manual for the spanish-language press

The US "National Association of Hispanic Journalists" (NAHJ) has created its first style manual for Spanish-language journalists working in the United States. The guide, sponsored by the Knight Ridder corporation, will offer information about grammar, abbreviations, titles, and the translation of financial and legal terms, and other topics.

The first 5,000 copies will go on sale in March 2004, and the NAHJ will offer workshops based on the manual in several U.S. cities.

The guide's principal editor, Alberto Gómez Font, a copy editor of the EFE news agency in Madrid, said that the guide will help improve, and make more uniform, writing in the Spanish-language media.

The first 5,000 copies will go on sale in March 2004, and the NAHJ will offer workshops based on the manual in several U.S. cities.

The guide's principal editor, Alberto Gómez Font, a copy editor of the EFE news agency in Madrid, said that the guide will help improve, and make more uniform, writing in the Spanish-language media.

More on El Nuevo Herald website.

The whole story on the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas website.

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on February 16, 2004 at 04:21 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read | Permalink

Tuesday, February 10, 2004

Five myths about short writing

It's both funny and helpful! Thanks to Roy Peter Clark from the Poynter Institute to show that tight writing is key and to list five myths:
Myth 1. Stubborn writers are to blame for all the long writing.
Myth 2. Short writing takes less time.
Myth 3. Short writing takes less space.
Myth 4. Short is the enemy of long.
Myth 5. Short is the enemy of good.
Last: the column is about 20 inches long and takes about four minutes to read.

The whole story on Poynter Online.

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on February 10, 2004 at 07:41 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read | Permalink

Tuesday, February 03, 2004

A more creative service to clients (not readers)

Maureen Duffy, chief executive of the British Newspaper Marketing Agency, explains in Media Week why she believes the UK national press is providing a more creative service to clients than ever before. Some examples are given in the article.

Title: "Brainwaves: Battle of the mediums, National Newspapers" (posted February 3, 2004)
Excerpts of the article:

This year promises to be an interesting one for national newspapers. Executives have been pondering questions such as “To tabloid or not to tabloid?” The answer could leave the industry and the newspapers looking rather different in a year’s time.

But the question that is more important for the industry’s prosperity is: “How should we demonstrate the effectiveness of national newspapers to advertisers?” It was this question that led the industry to establish the NMA a year ago.

Our case is simply that national newspapers have been overlooked by too many advertisers. We are asking brand owners, creatives, planners and media buyers to look again at print, to recognise how papers have evolved and to reassess some of their preconceptions.

Our first task is to convince the advertising community that national newspapers can be an effective brand-building medium...

... Readers spend considerable time with their newspaper and at a time when they are in an active frame of mind. This means they are encouraged to think about what they see in newspapers, to reflect and internalise the message. This offers a powerful mindset for advertisers seeking to influence attitudes or change behaviour. The RNIB has used this to powerful effect.

It is often said that print advertising is unique because the length of engagement with the consumer through a print ad is determined by the quality of the advert. This is more than a trite observation. A great print ad will draw the consumer in, hold them, and give them something to reflect on. This intimacy is exactly what advertisers across all media are striving for. It is what allowed Häagen-Dazs to create one of the most effective brand-building print campaigns in advertising history.

To build powerful brands requires both reach and credibility. Newspapers deliver both. Perhaps striking statistics such as the fact that twice the number of ABC1 men read about the England Rugby World Cup victory in a national newspaper as actually saw it on television could lay to rest the misconception that only TV delivers mass reach.

The trust which newspapers inspire is increasingly being harnessed by brands such as Moët & Chandon which recently sponsored The Sunday Times’ Style fashion supplement...

... Recent years have seen the growth of countless supplements and inserts offering advertisers an array of environments to engage their audience. Car ads used to have to take their chance on the news or feature pages, now they can head straight for the extensive stand-alone motoring supplements. Few other media can offer such a level of targeting and segmentation..."

The wole article on the Media Week website.

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on February 3, 2004 at 02:54 AM in d. Making newspapers easier to read | Permalink