JP Digital Digest

Logging Off

2009-12-28T11:04:00.004Z

As you may have noticed, updates to the JP Digital Digest blog have come to an end -- as will, shortly, my term as Johnston Press Chair of Digital Journalism at the University of Central Lancashire. It has been a pleasure.

Many thanks to our loyal followers, at JP and elsewhere around the world. We hope the information and ideas provided here over the past three years have been useful, helpful and even occasionally provocative!

Many fabulous blogs and other websites also track developments in digital media. An assortment of the ones we like best are featured in our blogroll on the right side of this page, including:

* Paul Bradshaw's Online Journalism Blog.

* Martin Stabe's MartinStabe.com.

* Alf Hermida's reportr.net.

All best wishes for the coming year, everyone. And keep those innovations coming!

Jane

BBC: Decade of road deaths mapped out

2009-12-17T13:00:00.003Z

With winter well and truly here and the Christmas party season in full swing, a road safety or anti drink-driving campaign may be on your news agenda.

In which case the BBC has devised a rather handy, if not a little gruesome, interactive map, which may prove an excellent source for facts and figures.

Using data between 1999 and 2008 provided by the Department of Transport, the BBC has produced the map which, by plugging in your postcode or local police authority, displays where road accidents have taken place in that area, that involve at least one fatality.

So, for example, if I wanted to know how many people died in Lancashire in 2008, I can enter my post code and see that there were 74 deaths of which – bad news fellas – 59 were male and 15 were female.

I can also see that the majority involved a car and that the largest number of deaths occurred in the group of those aged 30-59 years old.

If this is just a bit too morbid for you, you want to get into the Christmas mood, or find out if it’s likely to be safe to travel to a story location then you could try the UKSnow map.

It’s a simple app that searches Twitter for real-time snow reports and then – you guessed it – marks them on a map.

At the time of writing, the snow seems concentrated in London and the South East as well as just north of the border, in Scotland.

Anyone wishing to report snow fall can tweet with the tag #UKSnow.

(Links via Cybersoc)

Could a "Mobile first" strategy work for your newsroom?

2009-12-16T09:58:00.005Z

Here’s a little experiment – next time you’re commuting on a train or bus, or waiting for a flight, look at your fellow travellers. How many are reading newspapers? Now how many are fiddling with their mobile phones?

Steve Buttry of Poynter Online would argue it’s probably more of them and this is one of the reasons that led him to call for a mobile-first news strategy.

Since writing that first article, he’s now devised an actual plan on how a mobile-orientated newsroom could operate. Those toying with iPhone apps and SMS subscriptions may want to pay attention.

Says Buttry: “A successful mobile-first strategy will require effective work by reporters, photojournalists, designers, technologists, sales and marketing people, and management.”

So far, so obvious.

But he adds: “The mobile-first strategy needs to embrace new relationships with the community”, as described in his blueprint for the Complete Community Connection.

“That principle,” he says, “is fundamental to mobile-first success.”

What then follows is an incredibly detailed breakdown of each aspect of the mobile news strategy, broken down into Reporting, Writing and Photojournalism, Design, Technology, Sales and Marketing, Leadership and Training.

For example journalists, he argues, need to become fluent in metadata, giving the mobile phone the context of the story so it knows what to give the user when and where.

As for the moneymen, Buttry advises them that any service needs not to be too intrusive, especially location-based advertising, lest the audience devise ways of turning it off.

He also suggests that organisations must be careful not to use just a single mobile tool, such as a mobile website or iPhone application, and therefore miss opportunities such as local business sponsorship for breaking news alerts or e-newsletters.

Even if “mobile first” isn’t for your newsroom, there is certainly enough here to enhance whatever use you do want to make of mobile technology.

Times Online: Comments service = better reader interaction

2009-12-14T08:45:00.005Z

One of the oldest, most basic forms of reader interaction on news sites is the trust comments box, the “letters to the editor” of the 24/7 digital age.

But, reports journalism.co.uk, one technology firm behind such tools for newspapers Pluck claims there's still plenty of opportunity to improve and increase this facility.

They would be expected to say that, says the report. Otherwise they’d be out of work pretty quickly.

However, it also points out that recent figures back up the company’s suggestion that news sites can do more.

Following the implementation of Pluck's social media platform on Times Online in July there was a 30 per cent increase in user comments over the first three months.Numbers from Pluck suggest that more than 170,000 comments were made on the site during this period.

Journalism.co.uk have spoken to Times Online assistant editor Tom Whitwell to find find out how the Times making use of this commenting community and what can it offer in return.

Whitwell told the site that one of the key benefits of Pluck’s features was “simple customer service” with comments being moderated more efficiently and quickly.

Readers also get feedback on their comments via the “recommend” button, which Whitwell says is clicked 40,000 times a day.

The dizzying numbers from a national paper may seem academic to local publishers but Whitwell says that it has created an active, dedicated core readership who are more valuable in the long term than “drive by visitors”.

He also told the site: “We're learning that all the time, finding ways to create a closer connection between journalists and readers.

“Journalists often want to contact commenters to follow up their stories and we're increasingly seeing Times journalists in the comments responding directly to readers.”

Whitwell says the planned relaunch of the Times Online site in the new year will see a more prominent comments service.

The full Q &A can be read here.

2010 - what will it hold for you?

2009-12-11T09:20:00.011Z

Christmas is coming, the goose is on a credit-crunch inflicted diet and as the journalism world licks it wounds from this year's squabbles, many are starting to look what next year is set to bring.

Firstly, Patrick Smith brings a tale of caution on PaidContent – if you thought hyperlocal news was going to be your big thing of 2010, you may want to have a quick re-think.

He reports that whilst the promise for hyperlocal’s place in UK news is there, the boundless optimism is not in doubt and there’s even hints of a local business model emerging, the delivery of quality post-code level news across most of the country still a long way off, and sustainable revenues and—dare we say it—profits are even further.

He also says how unless the ifs and maybes surrounding the use of hyperlocal models do not turn into certainties the Digital Britain project won’t be up and running till 2012 and that includes any role that public money would play.

So, he says, 2010 will not be hyperlocal’s year. But, he counters, the signs are auspicious: increasing levels of online literacy and broadband connections mixed with more inevitable local newspaper closures mean it’s natural that readers—and advertisers—will shift to new outlets.

Next, acknowledging that talking about journalism and its future is the “lifeblood of Academia”, there’s a nice piece by Harvard’s Nieman Lab writer C.W. Anderson on what we have learnt from 2009 and what new squabbles will arise in the new year.

The article jokes how bloggers and journalists seem to have finally made peace and accepted their perceived war is over; that we realise not all content will be free but the new business models may not be enough to counter the financial losses many news organisations have suffered; and that, because of this, journalism will be produced in a different way – by smaller, niche publications.

Instead, our attentions will turn to the kind of politics facilitated by the digital world and the policies and laws that will govern this world (and whilst the focus of the article is on the US, it is still relevant to the UK as the government faces up to a growing campaign to reform libel law, something it has been considering because of the impact of the internet).

It also talks of the type of networks that might emerge in the new “media ecosystem” – that we may see that it is large media companies that have diversified and created a local branding – and how journalism schools will need to adapt as the industry itself mutates.

It also talks about what the increased use of a semantic web may have for the future of news in a world of Demand Media and computational journalism. Big questions indeed but something new to think about at least.

Finally, for any of those curious to know if the Manchester Evening News’ launch of an iPhone app was worth it – HoldtheFrontPage has the numbers.

They have reported that over 6,700 readers have downloaded the app to follow the latest updates from the paper.

This means that it has been downloaded at a rate of approximately 900 a week since its creation.

There are section for news and show business, among others, while fans of Manchester United and Manchester City can keep in touch with dedicated sections for the two teams.

New research set to show users' local news sites habits

2009-12-10T13:13:00.005Z

In the ongoing discussion of finding innovative ways of using digital media and trying to generate income from such methods, it can be easy to quickly lose sight of your audience.

But, as freelance journalist Jon Slattery blogs, new research is set to reveal how, when and most importantly why people use local online news services.

He has reported on an announcement by The Newspaper Society that they have appointed Connect Insight to conduct the research.

The study, wanted ads Digital, will take place in January with results expected to be announced by the end of February. It is intended to complement the local media print and online planning tool Locally Connected which was launched by the Society in November.

According to The Newspaper Society, the project will use focus groups and in-depth interviews which will include accompanied web surfing sessions in which respondents will be quizzed by researchers while surfing news websites.

Keith Donaldson, NS head of research and insight, said: “Locally Connected has enabled us to see and quantify the unduplicated reach that local media websites add to the print product.

“Building on this, the wanted ads Digital will provide valuable insights into why people log on to their local media websites as opposed to any other news outlets, and how they use them.”

The study will look at usage of different areas of websites and services such as video, blogs and podcasts. It will also examine how local media online fits within the overall picture of online media and how it relates to its parent print product, the local newspaper.

It will certainly prove interesting for digital editors and journalists looking to refine their online product to generate much needed traffic.

What removal from Google could mean for your news site

2009-12-08T09:19:00.002Z

Thinking about removing your content from Google?

Press Gazette’s Wire blog has reported on a story in the Telegraph giving tips on how to survive your website no longer being indexed by the search engine.

The advice comes from Neil Boom, PR Director of technology company KTS who own Onepagenews.com - a website that The Wire suggests may be seen as a rival to the web giant’s own news service - which was quietly dropped from indexing by Google.

According to the Telegraph, the move by the site saw Onepagenews’ traffic tumble from around 18,000 per day to around a paltry 700 (aspiring Murdochs may wish to pay attention to that particular statistic).

The company was then forced to set about rebuilding its online presence whilst investigating why Onepagenews was suddenly absent from Google.

Boom’s tips include setting up news alerts and stories by email functionality and making registration as simple as possible, also flagging up the extra benefits for readers who register.

"Focus on events under your own control. We looked at content, distribution, added value features and site promotion," he says.

And, he adds, don't panic.

Reuters straw poll reveals media execs (mostly) read free news

2009-12-07T11:06:00.004Z

When Reuters reported that consumers would have to face up to the fact that the digital content they’d enjoyed for free would eventually come with a price tag, journalist Robert MacMillan asked media executives how they read their news.

He found that plenty of them – those, he reminds us, who are trying to find the ways to generate money from what they produce – still read free news.

Whilst they still pay for some of their news, he suggests that perhaps the “romance with free content” isn’t quite dead yet.

Below are the responses he included in his story, when he approached the execs at Reuters’ Global Media summit, which interestingly suggest that perhaps the execs aren't entirely ready to practice what they preach:

Nikesh Arora, president of global sales operations and business development at Google Inc (who, MacMillan notes, despite Google’s despised status among newspaper defenders, pays for some of his news):
“I read my news in a combination of Twitter, Facebook, Google News and The New York Times. I get my New York Times delivered to my house. I have it before I wake up. I scan through it. I get my newspapers in planes and whenever I have a sort of down moment, I am following CNN, the BBC, Reuters, TechCrunch and a whole lot of other relevant people at Twitter… If I have a free moment at my desk, I will go onto the Google News site to see what’s happening in the world. For some reason, I feel as informed as I used to be when I used to read two newspapers every morning.”

Mike Fries, CEO of Liberty Global:
“I may not read my local paper much anymore, but I never miss reading the Journal. Primarily because I want to know what I’m missing. I’m looking at it more like a student than a consumer. I need this information — I don’t want it, I need it.”

Andrew Barron, chief operating officer of Virgin Media:
Multiple sources: Internet, Blackberry… the Financial Times, The Times of London and the Daily Mail. He gets home delivery, but doesn’t read the papers until evening.

Gary Bettman, commissioner of the National Hockey League:
“I start in the morning, first thing, like somebody in their mid 50s, by going through traditional newspapers. And then I go from there to online. Obviously because of the nature of our business, I get news flashes instantaneously through my Blackberry.”

Mark Greenberg, president and CEO of Epix:
“I have to admit, I still watch the evening news. I’m sort of an old-fashioned kind of guy, a dying breed, an avid reader of the Times and the Journal. I will admit, though, that when I travel, I take my Kindle with me, and I prefer to download it. So it’s been an interesting change for me as a person who always liked reading paper, to now all of a sudden the Kindle, which has changed how I read a newspaper.”

Hilary Schneider, executive vice president of Yahoo North America (and an alumna of Knight Ridder, an extinct newspaper publisher):
“I’m a mixed-media consumer of news. I start every day on Yahoo, as you would expect, to get the highlights. I am a Kindle reader so I also, when I’m traveling, keep up through the Kindle. And I am a hard-core, old-fashioned newspaper reader on the weekends or when I’m on airplanes.”

(Via Cyberjournalist.net)

Agencies collaborate online for Copenhagen

2009-12-04T12:29:00.004Z

An interesting story from Holdthefrontpage rounds off this week in online journalism news.

It reports how The Press Association has teamed up with ten other international news agencies to interact with the world during the UN Climate Change Conference.

The group has is using Facebook to bring news directly from the event, which runs from 7 to 18 December in Copenhagen, and has set up a page called 'The Climate Pool'.

Holdthefrontpage describes how the agencies hope that it will allow readers directly communicate with journalists covering the event, sparking a global conversation.

The other agencies involved are Agence France-Presse, ANP of the Netherlands, Associated Press, APA of Austria, APcom of Italy, Canadian Press, dpa of Germany, Kyodo of Japan, Lusa of Portugal and RIA of Russia.

According to the report the Facebook page will feature a blog format, providing a behind-the-scenes view of the conference, and link out to coverage of the talks from the agencies and the media outlets they serve.

It will be produced in English and incorporate content from the participating agencies, along with links to coverage from around the world.

The group will also use Twitter to attract followers.

PA's head of digital development Chris McCormack told HTFP: "Everyone is wondering whether there are new opportunities for news and information flow across social networks, and that's what we are exploring with this blog and fan page.

"Social networks are where the digital conversation is, so that's where we need to be but we are also counting on the Facebook fan page to direct a highly engaged global audience to the best news stories and analysis among our UK media customers."

Thinking about paywalls? Read this first...

2009-12-03T13:11:00.004Z

With the paywall debate having no end in sight, it is sometimes nice to step back and examine the lay of the land, particularly for regional and small publishers.

Having been accused by his most prolific critic as suggesting solutions that only work for large-scale, national publishers, and with a close friend finding himself the Managing Editor of a local newspaper in Montana, Steve Outing (pictured), of EditorandPublisher.com has done just that.

Whilst his tips come from US case studies there is still plenty there for panicking publishers to step away from the paywall, at least for a little longer.

He argues that a recent American Press Institute study demonstrates that paywalls only work in certain markets. One newspaper, he states, could maintain a paywall because it was the only paper in town. Another, though, couldn’t sustain the model due to competition from a local free website.

So what is the alternative? One suggestion, with his editor-friend in mind, is a five-point plan of generating revenue from the digital output whilst protecting the print product, particularly of use to those publishers who operate within tourist towns:

1. Offer paid subscriptions to the newspaper that also include free access to a digital-replica edition.

2. Offer paid digital-replica edition subscriptions that mimic the paper in electronic form, for those second-home owners in the area and others who want to keep up with...news and developments and prefer not to receive the print edition by mail when the news is several days old.

3. Continue to keep all your Web site content -- including locally produced news -- free to all. And yes, that includes print subscribers who might be tempted to save money, cancel the print edition, and rely on the free Web site.

4. Have your Web manager focus on better ad targeting, in order to identify out-of-area users as potential tourists interested in hotels, camping, excursions, etc. and show them relevant ads.

5. Most importantly, devise other reasons for paying print and/or digital subscribers to keep paying -- primarily by value-added online, digital, mobile and even physical extras not available to non-paying users of the Web site.

This is expanded for those who may not have such a tourist trade to include advice on finding other incentives for people to subscribe to your newspaper, such as a free breaking-news mobile service that would otherwise be charged for.

Outing will have to wait if his advice satisfies his critic but it is certainly worth a look by anyone who has a Google-sized headache from the paid-content debate.

Has Google caved to pressure from Murdoch?

2009-12-02T09:54:00.005Z

Google have announced that newspaper publishers will now be able to set a limit on the number of free news articles people can read through their site, reports the BBC.

This action follows claims from some media companies that the search engine is profiting from online news pages.

Under the First Click Free programme, publishers can now prevent unrestricted access to subscription websites.

Users would now start to see a registration page if they click on more than five articles in a day.

"Previously, each click from a user would be treated as free," Google senior business product manager Josh Cohen said in a blog post.

"Now, we've updated the programme so that publishers can limit users to no more than five pages per day without registering or subscribing."

The BBC describes how Rupert Murdoch had earlier accused firms such as Google of profiting from journalism by generating advertising revenue by linking readers to newspaper articles.

BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones told the website that the concession was relatively minor but Mr Murdoch might see it as vindication of his decision to take on Google.

Cohen also stated in his blog post how, besides First Click Free, Google would also offer publishers the option where they would index and treat as “free” any preview pages that were made available to them – generally the headline and first few paragraphs.

He said that because the content would be identical to what a normal user would see, this would not breach Google’s strict “no cloaking” policy – where the page that a web crawler sees and indexes is different to the one seen by the end user.

Northcliffe to trial topic pages

2009-12-01T09:58:00.004Z

ThisisBristol.co.uk has become Northcliffe Media's first local news site to use topic pages, reports Journalism.co.uk

During the two week trial, articles on the site will now include inline links from key words, such as places, names and issues, to a web page gathering stories, relevant information and multimedia linked to that topic, according to the report.

Robert Hardie, content strategy director at Northcliffe, told the website how the pages are created using a process called data-mining, which uses technology from OpenCalais and Nstein to analyse stories semantically and suggest subjects for topic pages.

"We've already been data-mining our archive and automatically data-mine every live story as part of the normal publishing cycle," he said.

"Once a topic is mentioned more than three times a topic page is created for that topic and an email alerts the site publisher. They can then decide to unpublish the page if they don't want it; allow it to stand unenhanced or gather the extra images, video and static content for it.

"We're starting the enhancement process with the most popular topic pages."He also said how the sites with topic pages will have to carefully monitor the level of sensitivity employed by the semantic technologies so that users are not bombarded with links from every word.

Northcliffe plan to roll out the pages across the rest of the Thisis network following the live testing.

Hardie added how the pages will help drive more traffic to Northcliffe’s websites, saying that they are 'brilliantly indexable' via Google.

WAN-IFRA launches World Newspapers Congress in India

2009-11-30T12:29:00.005Z

Today sees the start of the 62nd World Newspaper Congress and 16th World Editors Forum in Hyderabad, India, hosted by WAN-IFRA.

Interestingly, the overall theme for the conference is 'Newspapers: A Multi-Media, Growth Business', something that may raise eyebrows of those watching their newsrooms struggle with plunging advertising revenues and shrinking circulation for their print products.

Naturally, how to tackle these hurdles is at the forefront of most of the keynote speeches and panel discussions.

Already, according to WAN’s own Shaping the Future of the Newspaper blog, Are Stokstad (Norway), executive vice president at A-Pressen, suggested that e-readers now make it necessary for newspapers to build strategies that combines both the traditional newspaper and the business model for e-reading.

He described how large investments have been made to expand the opportunities for online newpapers. Social networking sites have become a large part of the generation of these new online papers.

"This past year 3,000 print pages originated in social media. Next year we hope to increase this number to 30,000," he told the conference.

Social networking sites create groups of people interested in similar topics and activities. Many online newspapers are targeting their articles towards these groups, increasing online readership.

Meanwhile Martha Stone (USA), director of Shaping the Future of the Newspaper Project (pictured), talked about the opportunities available to newspapers through mobile phone technology.

"Text message advertising has become one of the hottest new ways to advertise," she said.

Stone also explained how mobile phones have become more than a way to just communicate with others.

She described how phones are becoming more advanced and can now be used not only for talking and texting, but also for online searching, television, blogs, advertising, alerts, and much more.

World Digital Media Trends, created by the SFN project, conducts research each year to show the latest revenue and newspaper trends. This year's study was posted in June and predicts the continued growth of digital media.

The Shaping the Future of the Newspaper blog will continue to bring full coverage of the conference, which will include discussions on Google featuring Kees Spaan, President of the Dutch Newspaper Publishers Association and Gavin O’Reilly, CEO of Independent News and Media as well as a presentation on what newspapers need to know for the digital future by Les Hinton, CEO of the Dow Jones newswire.

You can also follow the conference via the following Twitter feeds @NewspaperWorld and @WANindia2009, using the hashtag #WANindia09, or on Facebook at the conference page. There is also a dedicated congress blog.

Online Journalism round-up

2009-11-27T09:50:00.007Z

Independent to charge for bulk printing

The Independent is living up to its name by trying a different approach in the battle to generate revenue.

The blog UpYourEgo has written how the newspaper is set to charge users for printing stories from their news site.

It describes how you get the choice of a ‘free print’ where you can make up to five copies using your home or office printer for free (with an ad).

You could also make an Instant print on your home printer with six or more copies from 25p to £1 per copy without ads.

You can get a quote for customised prints with your own logo for more than 100 copies on high quality paper.

Or you can have 50+ copies printed by them and sent to you within two business days, these cost 75p to £1.10 per copy – again with no adverts.

But, suggests the blog, the system from iCopyright which offers options for printing within a popup wouldn’t stop you just copying and pasting.

There are no paywalls, so on-screen content is still free and the newspaper will have to wait and see if this makes any difference to their finances.

But, as the blog says, it is different.

(via Martin Stabe)

New guidelines published on using UGC

Alfred Hermida’s Reportr blog has an interesting story on new guidelines that have been issued by the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association, in partnership with UNESCO on how to handle user generated content.

According to Hermida, apart from covering the usual issues such as quality and any legal questions, it has sought to press the idea of UGC promoting greater media democracy.

The advice, he says, focuses not just on how to handle UGC, but also on the issue of media and information literacy.

It argues that news organisations would benefit from promoting greater media literacy, by strengthening relationships with audiences and countering claims that UGC is just a way of getting free content.

NYT app for Blackberry

Finally, whilst developing an app for an iPhone may seem old hat now, Editor and Publisher has reported that the New York Times has developed an app for the latest models of Blackberry Smartphones.

With advertiser sponsorship by UPS, the app application formats content for optimal navigation and display on BlackBerry Smartphones, offers automatic synching and allows users to store articles directly to their devices for offline reading.

"Mobile continues to be a very popular way for Times readers to access our content," Marc Frons, The New York Times Co.'s chief technology officer/digital operations, said in a statement.

"With this new application for BlackBerry Smartphones, we are offering BlackBerry users with the latest models a faster, more dynamic and more personalized experience for reading up-to-the-minute news, analysis and opinion from NYTimes.com."

The app is available here.

Will JP's plunge into paywalls pay off?

2009-11-26T13:12:00.006Z

The eyes of the local news industry will be on six small weekly newspapers owned by Johnston Press, as their websites are used in a paywall trial, Holdthefrontpage has revealed.

Since the story - which was followed up by the Guardian and Press Gazette along with other journalism blogs - broke, JP has confirmed the names of the six paid-for titles involved in the ground-breaking trial, which will run for three months.

They are the Worksop Guardian in Nottinghamshire, the Ripley and Heanor News in Derbyshire, the Whitby Gazette in North Yorkshire, the Northumberland Gazette, the Ayrshire-based Carrick Gazette and the Southern Reporter in Selkirk.

Visitors will now be unable to access content beyond the homepage unless they pay £5 for a 3-month subscription (the equivalent of 40p per week).

HTFP stated how four of the six have average weekly circulations of under 10,000 and one, the Carrick Gazette, sells just 2,572 copies a week.

JP's digital strategy director Lori Cunningham told HTFP: "It's a small scale trial so we can better understand what the consumer dynamics are around paid-for content.”

She added that the company currently had "no plans" to extend the trial beyond three months or to roll it out to other titles.

However HTFP reported that they have seen an internal company memo which makes clear that the trial will be extended if it proves a success.

"The switch to a paid-for model is part of a broader roll-out across Johnston Press and in line with industry moves in this area to find a sustainable business model going forward. Customers are used to paying for content in-paper and we are simply transferring this thinking online," the memo stated.

Meanwhile, Trinity Mirror indicated it would not rule out introducing a paywall on its titles although it has no current plans to do so.

Digital director Chris Bunyan said: "Now is a time when a lot of publishers are experimenting and over the years we'll see some failures and successes. We wouldn't rule it out."

Whether the trial is a success remains to be seen. Kevin Ward, editor of the Newsquest-owned Worcester News has previously suggested that local titles are enough of a “niche” product to be able to successfully charge for content.

However some of the comments on HTFP would suggest otherwise. One reader stated how he “wouldn’t visit for free, let alone pay for it,” complaining about the lack of interactive content on one of the sites involved in the experiment.

Another suggested that all such a trial would prove is how readers would be unwilling to pay for a “poor product” unless JP invested in quality copy.

Newspaper Society uses new system to measure combined print and online reach

2009-11-25T09:28:00.004Z

The Newspaper Society has launched a new way of measuring integrated print and online audiences, blogs Jon Slattery.

The society claims that the scheme, Locally Connected, reveals that local media websites increase the unduplicated reach of regional and local newspapers within their circulation areas by 14%, particularly among upmarket and core middle age groups.

Locally Connected has been embraced by seven of the largest local media groups - including Johnston Press, Trinity Mirror and Newsquest - representing 70% 0f the industry.

Slattery reports how NS president David Fordham, told agency planners, MDs, digital heads, clients, research experts and publishers at last night’s launch event: “More than 80% of adults read a local newspaper in print and ironically, at a time when our revenues have been under such challenge, local media audiences have been growing across multimedia platforms.”

He said people spend more than half their time within a five-mile radius of home and are increasingly interested in local news. “The local paper is still the first place they turn to – in print and online.”

Fordham added: “The development of a robust and reliable system of multimedia audience measurement has been one of the biggest challenges facing all media today. Locally Connected now gives advertisers a unique cross-media planning system, allowing them to effectively target local communities across the UK in print as well as online.”

Project leader and NS communications director Lynne Anderson said: “Both buyers and sellers were agreed on the need to move away from the historic focus on a newspaper’s paid circulation and towards a more meaningful measurement of total reach.

“Agency planners told us their clients were increasingly looking for multimedia solutions at a local level but that it was hard to convince them to invest without hard data to back it up.”

Bing vs Google – Microsoft considers payment for publishers

2009-11-24T12:23:00.007Z

A new phase in the war of the search engines has been entered, according to the Guardian’s PDA blog.

It reports that Microsoft is attempting to woo publishers, including Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, by looking at the possibility of paying them to put their content on its search engine Bing.

But can Bing beat Google, the most visited website in the world?*

The Guardian suggests that research shows that Google doesn’t depend on publishers’ content and that Microsoft will be unable to dent its revenue.

But, it says, making quality news on Google harder to find would certainly hurt the search engine's image.

But another article, by Joseph Tartakoff, questions whether the money offered by Microsoft will be enough to compensate for the loss of traffic news sites may suffer, if they were to remove their content from Google.

It also quotes Rupert Murdoch as questioning the feasibility of Microsoft’s plan. Asked about the possibility last week, it says, Murdoch said he wasn't convinced even Microsoft could afford it.

Speaking on the Fox Business Network, he said: "If they were to pay everybody for everything they took, from every newspaper in the world and every magazine they wouldn't have any profits left."

*Survey featured in Wall Street Journal

Can Google Wave transform journalism?

2009-11-23T10:29:00.006Z

A report on Mashable has taken an in-depth look at the impact that Google Wave is having on journalism.

The real-time wiki collaboration platform is still in its preview phase and can be used by invite only, but already some media companies are using the tool for community building, real-time discussion, crowd-sourcing, collaboration both inside and outside the newsroom and for cross publishing content, according to the report.

What Google Wave has done is to have pulled together the component Google applications that people use and allow them to converge. Users can share photos, embed videos, and add in other apps such as Google Maps and Google Calendar to create customized blocks of user-editable content.

The report has plenty of examples of how journalists in the US are using the tool in just these ways. The Chicago Tribune’s RedEye blog, for instance, now has a daily “wave” during which readers give feedback and discuss the cover story of the day.

Redeye’s web editor Stephanie Yiu told Mashable: “It’s a lot more live than Twitter because it’s like you can see people typing and everybody gets to know each other.

“It’s really about connecting with our readers on a new platform. We’re learning with our readers and moving forward together.”

Meanwhile, Andrew Nystrom, senior producer of social media and emerging platforms for the Los Angeles Times described how his own recent experiments highlighted the potential that Google Wave has for crowd-sourcing.

He said: “That experiment was definitely an eye-opener. My understanding of Wave has always been that it’s a valuable tool for small-team collaboration. So to see it succeed as a larger-scale crowdsourcing tool was unexpected to say the least.

“People quickly swarmed the wave and provided a ton of really smart insights. Things we had never thought of.”

(Via Martin Stabe)

How new technology creates "conversational journalism"

2009-11-19T13:00:00.005Z

A discussion into how much the average journalist’s working day has changed has been highlighted by the Freelance Unbound blog.

It has provided excerpts and a video of Reed Business Information editorial development director Karl Schneider’s (pictured) talk to journalism students at UCA Farnham where he compares the daily work of a “cutting edge, web-aware” journalist to one of five years ago.

Taking a typical type of story, for example a crime, he talked about how, back then, most of the work involved - calling contacts, news conferences, web browsing - was never seen by the audience, likening it to an iceberg – you only see the tip.

Now, not only are journalists working in a different way, the audience is able to read and respond to news items much more quickly. Schneider points out how journalists communicate more, particularly through the use of Twitter.

The website quotes Schneider as saying: “As [journalists] come across pieces of information, if they think it would be useful for the audience to hear it, it’s trivially easy – you can do it in seconds. If they’ve got a bit of information, why hold on to it – why wait until they’ve got five more bits and constructed it into a complete story? Why not publish the bit of information now?”

He uses the case study of Farmers Weekly which used its user forum to confirm a story of a recent outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease, providing further information and gaining feedback from the readers, creating what he calls a “conversational journalism”.

The journalist’s day, the report says, is now a continuous conversation with the audience – with some lumps of more structured forms. What looks like a lot of extra work, is actually less because of the speed of social media.

The journalistic work you would do anyway, says the blog, is now exposed to public view allowing feedback and interaction.

Says Schneider: “Imagine you’ve got your reader on your shoulder – think about what they want to know. With the web you virtually have. You can ask them what they want to know; they can tell you what information they need.”

Paywalls and Social Media at the Society of Editors 2009 conference

2009-11-18T10:25:00.011Z

Could regional news sites charge too?

One theme that dominated the recent Society of Editors conference was how to make paid content work. Whilst national newspapers look at possible dates for setting up paywalls on their news sites, regional papers were also considering getting in on the act.

Holdthefrontpage has reported how Worcester News editor Kevin Ward asked the question as to whether regionals could ever charge for their content, at a seminar on the future of the industry.

In a discussion that featured both national and regional editors as well as head of Google UK Matt Brittin, Mr Ward put forward that regional news was a sufficiently “niche” product to make the charging model work successfully.

According to the website, Mr Ward told the conference: "What we produce is niche. Nobody else sits in our courts every day. Nobody else scrutinises our public bodies.”

Mr Ward continued by asking whether, as a result, regional papers had "more opportunity to charge for the web" than their national counterparts.

Mr Brittin responded by saying: "Looking for local news is one of the biggest activities online. There are big opportunities there."

The Times: Not "if" but "when"

The Guardian states how James Harding, the editor of the Times, gave the clearest indication yet of how News International is going to start charging for its journalism online.

Confirming that The Times will indeed start charging for content, he told the conference: "From spring of next year we will start charging for the digital edition of the Times. We're working on the exact pricing model, but we'd charge for a day's paper, for a 24-hour sign-up to the Times. We'll also establish a subscription price as well."

According to the Guardian he also warned against the idea of micro-payments for individual articles.

He said: "You have to be very careful with article-only economics," he said. "You will find yourself writing a lot more about Britney Spears and a lot less about Tamils in northern Sri Lanka."

6,200 comments following transfer day coverage

Social media was another key area of discussion at the conference, according to reports on Holdthefrontpage. One editor who championed its use was Hull Daily Mail boss John Meehan, who described how their use of it to cover transfer deadline day for the local football team Hull City, led to an “avalance of interactivity.”

He stated how the paper’s use of live blogging functionality and social media, as part of their coverage, led to 6,200 comments from readers – one every five seconds.

"The immediacy of the web has made timed newspaper editions obsolete," Mr Meehan told the conference.

Holdthefront page reports how fellow panellist Martin Wright, associate editor of NWN Media which publishes the Leader in North Wales, said Twitter was now the tenth biggest referrer to its main website, leaderlive.co.uk.

Trinity Mirror head of multimedia David Higgerson said the Liverpool Echo had used Twitter to break the news of the result of the trial of the killers of Rhys Jones.

Youtube Direct: Bringing news organisations and citizen journos together

2009-11-17T11:23:00.006Z

The Guardian’s PDA blog this morning has described how a new service from Youtube has created a link between news organisations and citizen journalists.

According to the blog, Youtube Direct allows news and media organisations to request, review and rebroadcast clips directly from Youtube users.

It also stated how, following the established use of camera phone footage and PCs, this is the next step in an important part of the future of local news, which partly relies on the contributions of what it calls engaged citizens.

YouTube's head of news and politics, Steve Grove, told the Guardian: "People around the world are taking up cameras and covering news in ways big and small - from documenting global events, to filming local town halls in neighborhoods. YouTube Direct empowers news and media organisations to easily connect with these citizen reporters, and use the power of our platform to cover the news better than ever before."

The move by the Google-owned service has been embraced in the US, with it being beta-tested by the Huffington Post. They used the feature that allows users to upload a video to YouTube directly whilst staying on the news site.

The Post is currently using the tool in a competition to find a citizen journalist to cover the Climate Conference in Copenhagen. National Public Radio and the San Francisco Chronicle are also planning to use the service.

One hope is that the deeper interaction between users and news organisations will make the task of verifying the content and its source much easier.

Said Grove: "As we are trying to meet a need that news organisations have, we created an ecosystem between the news audience and YouTube. Think of it like this: YouTube Direct is like a loop between a news website and YouTube. It wraps up YouTube's upload site in a box and places it on the site of news organisations."

The Guardian described how this open-source application lets media organisations use customised versions of YouTube's upload platform on their own websites.

In addition, it said, the tool offers a virtual assignment desk in which news and media organisations can ask YouTube users to submit breaking news videos, user-generated reports, or reactions to questions or news events of the day.

Are you tweeting for the right reasons?

2009-11-16T16:17:00.005Z

Twitter and other social media sites have previously demonstrated value in terms of breaking news and raising public awareness of certain stories.

But the BristolEditor blog has raised a different argument, questioning whether people are jumping onto social media because they have something of genuine contribution to make or because they feel they should.

“When was the last time you contributed something useful, valid and valued to the stream of social media editorial?” asks the blog. “Is it all second-hand news, no real voice, nothing authentic or genuine?”

It also draws on Sarah Hartley’s experiences, detailed in her own blog, of a possible North-South divide in the uptake of social media based on Hartley’s interactions with bloggers, tweeters and other media users.

In London at the #1pound40 "unconference", Hartley writes how she found everyone was saying the same thing: “speaking the social media speak. The digerati in full flow – agreeing with one another.”

This left Hartley feeling that she had contributed and learnt nothing new to the debate on social media.

However, at the Leeds Social Media Surgery, where NGOs and charities had the chance to see how they could use Social Media sites, they engaged with the ideas, questioned why they would take part in social media and considering them as what they were intended to be – tools to be used as part of a wider aim.

The BristolEditor says how it’s seen lots of media and marketing types observing, re-tweeting, idea-stealing and copying the work of others online and across various social media platforms.

“Yes, the old ‘nothing is original’ argument is true to a point,” it says “but the copiers and plagiarisers still appear on social media spaces too.”

Social media, it reminds us, is about what you put in, not take out.

Online journalism news round-up

2009-11-13T10:46:00.010Z

Is Video the solution to online advertising woes?

Good news from the States – news organisations there are seeing an increase in traffic and revenue from video advertising.

According to a report in the New York Times, highlighted by Betsey Reignsborough on editorsweblog, many publications and broadcasters are leaning more heavily on video reportage on their websites, creating more opportunities for advertisements.

Advertisers are becoming more willing to buy space on videos rather than just on static pages because of the increase in traffic as well as the ability to use dynamic advertising, reports Reignsborough.

Readers have indicated that they are more willing to click play on a video then read a whole article, she continues and sites are posting more video footage to keep up with the demand for video advertising space.

She cautions that there is controversy over "autoplay" - videos that begin playing automatically as soon as the web page has loaded – which means that a viewer did not press play and is not necessarily watching the video.

This, she says, tallies up totals of video streaming without legitimacy.

Students launch hyperlocal news site

Meanwhile holdthefrontpage has covered news that MA Online Journalism students at Birmingham City University have set up a new hyperlocal website focusing on news from around central Birmingham.

The multimedia site, Hashbrum.co.uk, features maps and slideshows in its coverage of the news.

Editor Andrew Brightwell told the website: "I think we see it as a way to learn about how online news can engage and be informed by its audience.

"So we're interested in experimenting in ways of finding, creating and presenting news. We've tried to have some fun with the way that we've covered stories.

"I can't say exactly how it will develop, but I hope it evolves a life of its own, in a sense.

"By this I mean that it'd be really successful if we feel that much of the news we're creating is being led and developed by the site's audience."

Top 50 Journo Blogs

Finally, the US website Journalism Journeyman has released a list of the 50 best journalism blogs.

The list has been divided into various categories, including citizen journalism, school-supported and new media focused. See if your favourites made the cut here.

News alerts: keeping audiences coming back for more

2009-11-12T12:05:00.003Z

Newspapers maybe missing out if they don’t make full use of alerts and tools, especially when it comes to exclusive materials, argues Dorian Benkoil of Poynter Online.

He uses the example of the Times’ story of tennis player Andre Agassi’s autobiography - in which he admitted to the use of the drug crystal meth - of which they would then be publishing exclusive excerpts.

Because the Times did not have an alert system (using, say, Twitter or Facebook), which would have encouraged Benkoil to go back to the excerpts when they went live, he eventually started checking Google news and the Guardian, and didn’t return to the original source for some weeks.

This, he argues, is a missed opportunity that could lose newspapers valuable page views, advertising and other opportunities, stating that this is backed up by masses of Web analytics data.

Every little impediment, says Benkoil, is an opportunity for a visitor to leave, go somewhere else, forget they can get what they want from you.

Over time, he adds, that means the loss of real money and all the other metrics people like to use, such as "stickiness" and "engagement."

He continues by saying that if The Times had offered the chance to be alerted when the excerpts were published, not only would they have had his subsequent page views (and ad impressions), they would have had his contact info and valuable information about his interests.

Benkoil suggests that every site should have sharing apps, like the AddThis module at the bottom of the Agassi story that links to dozens of social networking and bookmarking options, amongst many other apps.

But, he concludes, publishers also need to tailor their links and offerings as much as possible.

Sometimes, he says, that will mean human intervention, such as a smart editor saying, "Hey, we've got the Agassi excerpts, they'll be big, so let's make it easy for everyone to find them and get alerted to them."

This will also increase the ability of new Semantic Web applications to place relevant alerts and adverts alongside them and it should be as easy as possible for someone to find what they are looking for on the publication’s site.

Execs: Are your readers as loyal as you think?

2009-11-11T08:35:00.003Z

If your readers can’t access your newspaper content online, don’t be so sure that they will come back to your print product.

That is the stark warning arising from a study by the American Press Institute on the attitudes of newspaper executives to digital content, highlighted by Professor Alfred Hermida on his Reportr.net blog.

According to Professor Hermida, the study (PDF) shows a shocking disconnect between the attitudes of executives and those of readers.

75% of execs thought that readers would return to the print product is they could not access the newspaper content online, in sharp contrast to only 30% of readers who said they would return to print.

68% of readers said they would actually go to other websites if their local newspaper website was no longer available.

The findings are all the more relevant, says Professor Hermida, given the current debate about locking content behind paywalls.

The API study found that nearly 60 percent of execs were considering charging for news, with 25% expected to start doing this in the next six months.

It also gave clear recommendations to execs considering putting content behind such a paywall, saying:

“For paid content to succeed, it must go well beyond repurposed print content and old models. Audiences are most likely to pay for unique content that is not available elsewhere for free. Fully paid blocks of repurposed local area newspaper content have not proven to be a significant revenue source for news websites that have tried this strategy.”

Professor Hermida argues that if a news organisation is going to consider charging for content, it needs to view it from the perspective of the audience.

The value of news and information is not determined by execs in a newsroom/boardroom, says Professor Hermida, rather, the value is determined by the audience.

Berlin Wall project: a lesson in multimedia?

2009-11-10T13:39:00.004Z

If you have been watching coverage of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, chances are you may have seen the multimedia project by City University graduates that they have dubbed "a documentary on online journalism".

As reported on journalism.co.uk, the Berlin Project, which was launched on the 5th November, plans to provide 7 days of initial coverage (till the 12th November) using a variety of tools, including audio service Audioboo, Twitter and mobile video service Qik.

The article states how the project will assess how free services can be used to create, consume and distribute multimedia reports.

The project has been partnered by Reuters who, according to team leader Alex Wood, have been using the team to cover more unusual stories surrounding the anniversary in a range of media.
The team previously collaborated to provide coverage of the G20 summit protests in April using Twitter and Qik.

G20 Live attracted more than 80,000 unique users to a site only built the night before, but the Berlin Project will be about more than using mobile and mixed media for journalism, said Wood.

"It's about connecting the dots [between different mediums]. It's all about context rather than just content," he added, explaining that how a reader of viewer watches the team's work will inform their choice of tool and medium for covering an event. The quality of video streaming offered by Qik, for example, would be used to cover events that might be watched back on mobile.

Think of it as a documentary on online journalism. For online journalism the rules aren't written, so we're trying a different thing."

Interestingly, the team have kept navigational features to a minimum in order to allow users to 'get lost' and discover new reports and features. Content will also be published on Facebook and Reuters.

Social Media: selling to your "friends"

2009-11-09T08:50:00.005Z

A new survey has indicated that social networking sites could be the best medium to advertise your brand, according to a report on the Shaping the Future of Newspapers Blog.

They cite a survey reported on by BtoB Online and Mediaweek that reveals that social media users are open to marketing on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

The survey found that thirty-four percent of respondents used a search engine to find a product or brand online after seeing an ad on a social networking site, and 46 percent said they would recommend or talk about a product on Facebook.

Meanwhile, 44 percent said they have already done so on Twitter, according to the survey, conducted in partnership with ROI Research.

Scott Haiges, president of ROI Research, told Mediaweek: "Brands have a bigger opportunity than people would think - consumers are open to receiving promotions and offers from brands that they've connected with through social networks.

"Social networking between a consumer and a brand has created this interesting dynamic where you're making a brand your friend and you're treating like a friend."

The survey was conducted online, with 3,000 people responding.

It may be digital journalism, but is it good journalism?

2009-11-06T09:57:00.004Z

While newspaper sites experiment with new technology and new ways to generate revenue, it is always good to step back and take stock of what works and what doesn’t.

How do we define whether any of [digital media] is good or not asks Mark Briggs on his Journalism 2.0 blog. It is great to get started, but how do you maintain the quality of your digital products?

Briggs chaired a panel discussion recently at the National College Media Conference in Austin, Texas, where this issue was tackled.

The panel featured Gary Chapman, director of The 21st Century Project at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, the graduate school of public policy at the University of Texas at Austin, Bryan Murley, director for innovation, Center for Innovation in College Media, and assistant professor, Eastern Illinois University and James Wickett, general manager, Community Impact Newspapers, a growing hyperlocal publisher based in Austin.

Briggs stated that all three agreed that a sense of urgency was needed in defining what’s good in digital journalism.

According to Chapman: “Journalists need to discover their sense of mission. Otherwise it’s just going to be a bunch of cats flushing toilets.”

He continued by describing that even as methods for sending and receiving communication are changing rapidly, the “continuum of information isn’t going to change”. He suggested that journalists are still not using analytics as effectively as they should be and recommended more effort be focused on them.

Wickett added that it was important to split the media from the medium and not to write-off print products, saying there was still a place for it. His company is print based but has a growing digital presence.

According to Briggs, Murley provided the closest thing to a rigid definition for quality, suggesting that technical merits on multimedia and additional components to a package (timelines, maps, etc.) can help steer us toward a standard definition and a goal to shoot for.

Briggs finished the panel discussion with a short slide show presentation on how to take a practical approach back to a newsroom for standards in defining what’s good.

Build your own iPhone app

2009-11-04T10:43:00.005Z

With the Manchester Evening News launching its own iPhone app, other newspapers may be considering their own next move in attracting wider audiences.

A report by Business Week has highlighted how easy it now is to follow in the MEN's footsteps. For those who are tech-savvy, there are dozens of guides on how to create your own iPhone app on Youtube.

But what do you do if you're not so confident?

According to Business Week, there has been a new crop of services to help non-techies and those who may have concerns about quality, distribution and security of DIY methods, to create their very own iPhone app, no matter what business they're in.

Led by the likes of Swebapps.com and MyAppBuilder.com, they can help create the apps often in less time and for less money than it would for the company to develop the app from scratch.

Clients could create downloadable games, travel guides, quizzes, blog feeds and, as with the MEN, breaking news headlines, sometimes as simply as by plugging specs into online templates.

Business Week describes how the already expanding market for these apps is likely to grow at a faster pace. It states how the number of apps downloaded through the likes of the Apple App store and Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows Marketplace for Mobile may surge to 18.7 billion in 2014, from about 491 million at the end of 2008, according to consultant Ovum. That may result in sales of nealry £3.5 billion in 2014, up from over £222 million last year, Ovum says.

(via cybersoc.com)

Linking overload: how newspapers still haven’t got it right

2009-11-03T09:41:00.006Z

News sites now average around 450 links on their homes pages compared to the meagre 12 they offered 10 years ago, reports the Guardian.

According to an article that Nick Bilton, lead researcher for the New York Times, has written for Wired magazine, the average news website has 335 story or section links on their homepage compared to four to six stories on the front page and maybe eight to 10 references to other stories in the average UK or US newspaper.

Speaking to the website, Bilton said: "It is a fascinating fact is that if you go online and visit 200 web pages in one day - which is a simple task when you could email, blogs, youtube etc - you'll see on average 490,000 words; War & Peace was only 460,000 words."

“We're showing people online 300 more options on one page than we show them in print. And we wonder why people have information overload of content."

According to the Guardian report, its own starting page confronts the reader with 1,941 words, 350 individual links and 1,222 linked words.

The Mirror Group has the most intensified use of links, with nearly as many linked words as total words on the homepage 1,182 v 1,117 or 94%.

The Sun's website displays, with 578, the highest number of individual links, and the homepage of the Daily Mail features the highest number of words with 5,447 words compared with the BBC News site's 879 words.

The Guardian also points out how external linking still remains poor, as was highlighted by the Nieman Journalism Lab back in March.

"The link economy works if you're going to offer something rich to the page but just random links to random stories in the hopes that people will click is not fair to the consumer.", says Bilton.

Facebook tip-off leads to front-page story

2009-10-30T09:23:00.008Z

A regional daily newspaper is celebrating after a tip-off on their Facebook page led to a front-page splash this week, reports holdthefrontpage.co.uk

The tip-off was posted on the North West Evening Mail’s page, set up by reporter Amy Fenton, by one of the group’s 2000 ‘friends’, saying a body had been found on a Barrow Street.

This meant that the CN Group-owned paper was first on the scene, giving them the front page story, along with pictures and video footage.

Whilst some newspaper groups ban their journalists from looking at the social networking site, Fenton has been encouraging as many of her colleagues as possible to use it, saying that the Facebook page has generated countless stories.

She has also visited sister newspapers in the CN group to give a presentation on the site and how it can be used as a journalistic tool.

Speaking to Holdthefrontpage she said: "Using Facebook is a great way to source stories, get contacts and receive tip-offs."

Deputy editor Phil Pearson added: "Through her own initiative Amy has shown everyone in our newsroom, and across the group, what a multimedia operation can achieve.

"She has embraced Facebook as a source of news and used it as a great way of communicating and interacting with our readers. Her work has benefited both our website and the paper. She has made our operation more immediate and relevant."

Manchester Evening News launches iPhone app

2009-10-29T07:51:00.004Z

The Manchester Evening News (MEN) has become the first regional news publisher to launch an iPhone application, reports journalism.co.uk.

Readers will be able to follow headline stories in categories such as news, business and showbiz, as well as dedicated sections for Manchester United and Manchester City.

According to the MEN, more that 1,000 users have downloaded the application since it was created earlier this month.

The MEN already has a mobile website but says that this new app will provide an enhanced service for iPhone users, as well as allowing them to share stories on Facebook and Twitter.

Users can also download stories to be read offline later.

iPhone users can get the application from the App Store on their device, by searching for Manchester Evening News and iPod Touch users can get it from iTunes.

A short video of the app, developed by Spreed Inc - who also created Canadian newspaper the Globe and Mail's iPhone app - can be seen on YouTube

How should web traffic be measured?

2009-10-28T10:31:00.003Z

A key factor in attracting advertisers is to be able to deliver an audience. So what is the best way to measure traffic to a newspaper’s website? This is something discussed in an article on the Guardian’s PDA blog.

According to the report, methods of evaluating data online are always changing. It describes how, initially, the most important web traffic measurement was page impressions.

This however prompted some publishers to try and boost ratings by using picture galleries and a move to counting unique users on a monthly basis was made.

This method counts the unique device – a computer or mobile phone for example – that requests content from a website. This monthly count does not account for the individual user, however, only the device used.

Daily newspapers, however, would prefer a daily figure so a discussion is underway as to whether the system should change again. When last week, the ABCes were published, the statistics included figures for daily unique users for the third time.

The calculation is not as simple as taking the total unique user figure and dividing it by the number of days in the month.

As the ABC explained to the Guardian: "The total monthly unique user/browser figure is deduplicated over the period of time being measured, which is a calendar month. For example, if a unique user/browser visits a website on day five and on day 12 in the month it will be counted as a daily unique user/browser on day five and a daily unique user/browser on day 12.

"Hence, it will be counted twice (once per day present) when calculating the daily average unique user/browser figure. However, it will only be counted once within the total monthly UUB figure."

Looking at monthly users rather than daily users, says the article, can reward a site that is attracting a lot of different users rather than the same regular users and has remained the more important measurement.

But, it says, a change to daily measurements could still be on the horizon.

Newspaper sites: The "patent, leather shoe" of advertising campaigns

2009-10-27T11:33:00.008Z

Advertising managers look away now: a New York Times story has stated how newspaper sites may be overlooked as brands seek to increase their online advertising efficiency, according to a report on SFNBlog.com.

It describes how newspaper sites experienced a temporary boon when Mercedes-Benz USA introduced its updated E-Class cars this summer.

According to the report, Mercedes bought out the ad space on the home pages of The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and had those sites create special 3-D ads for them, at an estimated cost of $100,000 a site.

However, the company then tightened its aim and shifted money to cheaper ads from networks, which bundle ad space from many Web sites.

A further blow was dealt when digital media specialist for Mercedes-Benz USA Beth Lange said that they would avoid newspaper sites in the future, when advertising more basic models, and rely on networks.

That lets Mercedes “be very targeted and efficient with our dollars,” said Lange.

The New York Times claims that this explains why newspaper sites are missing out on online advertising revenue even though internet advertising is increasing, describing the sites as the “patent-leather stilettos of the online world: they get used for special occasions, but other shoes get much more daily wear.”

These “shoes” include exchanges like Advertising.com from AOL and DoubleClick Ad Exchange from Google, which dominate the buying and selling of extra space.

There is some hope for newspaper executives. McClatchy Newspapers (whose portfolio includes the Miami Herald) seems to be bucking the trend, experiencing a rise in revenue from online display ads which Christian A. Hendricks, vice president of interactive media at McClatchy, attributes to the rise to the company’s focus on online-only ads and its selling of local ads, rather than national brand campaigns.

The Times counters this however by explaining that one reason newspaper sites do not appear to be bouncing back as much as the overall Internet is price: after advertisers introduce their splashy campaigns on news sites, they can follow up with cheaper ads all over the Web.

If newspapers hope that online advertising will be the end of their financial woes, it seems they may need a new strategy.

News wire criticised for inaccuracies

2009-10-26T10:57:00.005Z

As debate focuses on how to make online content pay, it is important not to forget about reporting standards.

Journalism.co.uk highlights how this was raised at a recent debate hosted by Thompson Reuters, titled 'What Price the News?', which saw the wire service coming under fire from former employees for apparently favouring speed over accuracy in an increasingly competitive market.

They cited two examples where the company reported inaccurate stories from other media without checking primary sources first.

The first example was from this month, when Reuters initially published a report, first broadcast by Sky News, that the Lockerbie bomber, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, had died, until his lawyer corrected them.

The second example was CNN's report on a US Coast Guard training exercise on the anniversary of September 11 this year, which was wrongly claimed to be a gun battle.

Audience member Paul Iredale, a former Reuters journalist of 30 years, said he was 'deeply concerned and sad' about what he heard during the debate.

"In Reuters it seems to have gone to speed rather than accuracy," he said. "What we used to say about Reuters was we got it last, but we got it right. I don't think that is the case now."

Reuters' political and general news editor Sean Maguire defended the news wire, saying that it was completely transparent when the stories were found to be untrue.

He said: "When we saw it was wrong, we said we were wrong."

"Because Sky had been a good source on the [al-Megrahi death report] story we reported it. We very quickly said what they said was nonsense."

Study shows that Journalists want quicker change to digital

2009-10-23T14:00:00.008+01:00

Nearly half of all print newspaper journalists think their newsrooms are moving too slowly in the transition into digital news reporting reveals Editor and Publisher.

A study from Northwestern University's Media Management Center (MMC) finds that whilst publishers and sales directors are searching for ways to make digital news pay, newspaper journalists "have no trouble envisioning a career where news is delivered primarily online and to mobile devices instead of in print," according to the study "Life Beyond Print: Newspaper Journalists' Digital Appetite."

Study authors Vickey Williams, Stacy Lynch and Bob LeBailly surveyed almost 3,800 journalists in print, online, or hybrid jobs at 79 U.S. newspapers, asking their attitude towards shifting from print-only to multimedia.

The majority were still working in print, but did not want to continue doing so forever, according to the study. In fact, when dividing participants into six categories, depending on their level of enthusiasm for the transition into digital, just 6% of journalists fell into the category characterized as "Turn Back the Clocks," who wish the digital era would just go away.

"For several years we have heard that it is the journalists' resistance to change that was holding newspapers back," said MMC executive director Michael P. Smith. "What this study shows is that they are ready -- and some are even impatient -- for change."

Fully half of newsroom staffers fell into the category the study called "Moderately More," journalists who would prefer to work as much in digital as they do in print.

Another 12%, dubbed the "Digitals," are already doing most of their work in the digital space, and wish their paper were transitioning quicker from print.

The study also found that it was heavy use of the Internet outside of work and knowledge of online audiences and their preferences that drove digital appetite and it was there were no particular age groups, or levels of experience that distinguished those keen on digital content and those reluctant to change.

Finally, even in the face of job losses and employment uncertainty in the wake of the recession, the survey reports that journalists are surprisingly upbeat.

More than three-quarters, 77%, say they are somewhat or very satisfied with their current jobs, and 67% think it somewhat or very likely they will be in the news business two years from now. Most, 59%, even think they'll be working for their present newspaper.

The full report is available here.

The end of the road for paid content?

2009-10-22T09:33:00.006+01:00

Bad news for struggling newspapers: nine out of ten UK consumers would never pay for online news, reports Press Gazette.

They highlight a survey of more than 2,000 consumers by Lightspeed Research which asked what content users wouldn’t be prepared to pay for online.

It found that 91 per cent of respondents would never pay for news online and 90 per cent would be unwilling to pay for news analysis.

This follows a Harris Interactive poll, commissioned last month by Paid Content, which found that just five per cent of readers were willing to pay for online news.

The survey, says the article, is yet further evidence against publishers, like Rupert Murdoch, who intend to start charging for access to their websites.

But, reports Press Gazette, News Corp claims to have conducted its own audience research in Australia, the UK and US, which gives it confidence that people will happily pay for news content across a range of digital devices.

Surprisingly, the Lightspeed survey found that it is the older age group that seems the most unwilling to pay for news content.

Of those aged 16 to 24, 86 per cent would never pay for news online, while in the 45 to 54 age sectors, 96 per cent said they would not pay, according to MediaWeek.

Mobile Journalism: the tools you need

2009-10-21T10:19:00.005+01:00

Twitter, iPhones, Flips, Flickr, Geotagging, Facebook, MP3s…the influx of technology now involved in digital journalism can be overwhelming.

Every journalist is looking out for the next thing that will give them the edge when reporting the news, especially when they’re out on the street.

So what are the best tools for the job?

This is a question asked by Paul Bradshaw, Course Direct of the MA in Online Journalism at Birmingham City University’s School of Media, on his blog.

He has considered just what hardware, software, systems and mindset today’s mobile journalist needs and will be presenting his ideas in a lecture tomorrow (Thursday 22nd) which, as he says, in the spirit of mobile journalism, he will be streaming live on Bambuser from 9am UK time.

Some of the essentials Paul suggests include:

Smartphone with camera, video, audio, unlimited data plan

Digital camcorder, e.g. Flip, Kodak Zi8

Digital dictaphone or Zoom

Applications such as Spinvox – a blog via voice – Audioboo, Twibble – GPS twitter updates – and Zyb – which synchronises contacts and your calendar

Map of wifi hotspots, mobile and 3G coverage

Embedded players for livestreaming/liveblogging

Geotagging information for mapping

An ‘Always-on’ approach – tweet on the go; share images; stream quick video. Think humour, art, quirky, as much as ‘news’. Prepare yourself and users for when you need it.

Being part of a mobile community – follow people on Twitter

Being creative with mobile, not formulaic: the rules aren’t written yet

For anyone who can’t watch the session live (which lasts approximately 45minutes), Paul will be embedding the lecture onto his blog.

Got your facts right? The student blog that says otherwise

2009-10-20T10:42:00.004+01:00

Journalists across Europe may start dreading answering their telephones lest it be one of a group that Columbia Journalism Review’s Craig Silverman has dubbed the “Tilburg Checkers”.

It’s a new initiative from the Tilburg School of Journalism in the Netherlands where fourth-year journalism students participate in three-week long fact checking programmes, the results of which they publish on a daily blog.

Each morning, the students gather in a room to review the day’s news and identify stories that seem questionable. Then they go to work, hitting the phones and other sources to pull suspicious stories apart and see if they hold up to scrutiny and then, having spoken to the journalist in question, publish online.

According to the programme instructor, Dutch journalist Theo Dersjant, as of today, roughly 80 percent of the stories checked have contained some form of factual mistake.

He also describes how, whilst some journalists are happy to co-operate, others have refused to take their calls anymore, stating that they only have an obligation to their readers (which, Silverman points out, suggests they do not feel obliged to provide accurate stories to their readers).

Whilst the students’ work is largely within mainland Europe, (and the blog itself is in Dutch) Dersjant is hoping that other j-schools across the globe will repeat this format, not only to teach students about accuracy, but to keep local media under check.

So tread carefully next time you wish to report on the latest opinion poll, or science item. The students did such a good job of revealing the bogus data behind some of these “news” items that Dutch news agency ANP has stopped publishing them.

A business model for Twitter?

2009-10-19T12:15:00.000+01:00

Champions of Twitter and its influence in public debate have had a lot to celebrate recently; the overturning of the Trafigura super-injunction and Jan Moir’s reputation being torn to shreds following her column on the death of Stephen Gately, for example.

But, as described in a blog article by Mark Potts, Twitter has another area of excellence – its ability to break news. Twitter, argues Potts, through its broadcast, real-time, 140-character headline nature makes it a perfect vehicle for the latest news, whether it's being generated by on-the-spot observers or news organisations.

Whilst many media organisations have attracted a large core of followers (such as the New York Times, with 1,995,199 followers), one feed that is keeping up with the “big guns” is a Twitter-only headline service Breaking News Online, that boasts over 1.3million followers.

Run by 19-year old Dutch entrepreneur Michael van Poppel, the Breaking News team scan the major news sites and use them alongside their own reporting to produce the feed.

What is particularly interesting about Breaking News notes Potts – besides its ability to hold its own alongside major news organisations – is that Poppel may have found a way to monetize Twitter. They have developed an iPhone app that sells for $1.99—plus a 99-cent-per-month subscription fee - to send followers the latest headlines.

It will be interesting to observe whether the company which prompted PaidContent to write: "Hey Media Company. Buy BNO News. Now. Really” will be able to make this particular business model work. The organisations that Potts succinctly describes as: “taking a backseat to a clever 19-year-old kid” will almost certainly be watching.

Huffington Post: better headlines from real-time testing

2009-10-16T10:12:00.004+01:00

A/B testing - where you show half of your audience one version of something, the other half a different version and adjust accordingly based on the results - is a highly valued method of user research, from Google’s testing of its design tweaks, to Dustin Curtis’ experiment with direct commands and clickthrough rates.

Now the Huffington Post has got in on the act, according to a report by Zachary M. Seward at Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab, randomly showing one of two headlines to readers before permanently offering the headline that attracts the most clicks, something that, as a high-traffic site, they can determine within several minutes.

Considering the role that headlines play in attracting readers, Seward argues that it only makes sense to apply the best tools of market research to their crafting, likening the process to "a more rigorous version of magazines adjusting their covers based on newsstand sales."

Speaking to Seward at the Online News Association conference in San Fransisco earlier this month, Huffington Post's Chief Technology Officer Paul Berry said that the system was created inhouse, but wouldn’t disclose much else about how or how often it’s done.

He did tell Seward that Huffington Post editors have found that placing the author’s name above a headline almost always leads to more clicks than omitting it.

(Via Martin Stabe)

Mapping the news

2009-10-15T09:53:00.007+01:00

North Wales-based newspaper publisher NWN Media has launched a series of websites using mapping technology to highlight news and advertisers by location, reports Holdthefrontpage.

Editorial content from the publisher’s 12 newspapers, along with advertising from that area, will be automatically plotted onto Google Maps, a system the company believes to be the first of its kind in the UK.

Speaking to the website, NWN Media digital editor Christian Dunn said: "We had been experimenting with geotagging stories for a while – adding a latitude and longitude to an article and plotting it onto a digital map – and wanted to make more use of this when we re-launched our websites.

"Our readers can now easily see all the news that's happened in their neighbourhood or village.

"By linking our editorial system in with our advertising system we can also make sure we deliver tailored adverts with every article."

The new-look websites will also feature third party applications while Twitter feeds, Flickr image slideshows and YouTube videos will be embedded on the company's main website leaderlive.co.uk.

The newspapers include the Powys County Times, the Chester Standard and the Wrexham-based Leader.

The "unheralded" benefits of paid-for content

2009-10-14T09:28:00.010+01:00

With Rupert Murdoch describing some aggregators as "content kleptomaniacs" and with regional media organisations looking for potential business models for their hyperlocal journalism, the debate over paying for content continues to rage.

Dorian Benkoil at Poynter Online has provided an interesting argument for the benefits of charging for some content.

Recalling a calculation he made on the effects of making the Wall Street Journal free, he explains how by charging, the Journal (and other publications) can say to an advertiser that they have a "committed, consistent" audience. A free Journal, he calculates, would potentially result in a 60% drop in its ad rates.

Besides obvious benefits such as minimal production and distribution costs for digital subscriptions, he also looks at some of the "less intuitive" benefits, as described by Gordon Crovitz, former publisher of the Journal.

He says: "charging for online subscriptions can help increase the perceived value of the print subscriptions, spurring more sales. Presumably, the psychology of saying "this is worth money" works across media.

"Bundling print subscriptions with online can help sell both. Crovitz found after data analysis that WSJ readers preferred buying online and print as a package over buying one or the other separately for less.

"Selling print subscriptions online greatly decreases the cost of acquiring new subscribers. This makes perfect sense. When someone uses an online form and payments system, he or she doesn't require phone agents or mailings or other costly infrastructure to handle it.

"The cost of sales goes down, too. You don't have to pay as much for advertising if people reading your material online then click to subscribe."

Benkoil acknowledges that getting the mix right is tricky and publishers must consider the risks, such as driving away core audiences or losing valuable page-view statistics, and shouldn't "plunge in" to payment systems.

But he believes that with incremental experiments and continuous improvement it should be possible to create a digitally-based business model that bolsters the print product as well.

Citizen Journalists to be syndicated

2009-10-13T10:07:00.008+01:00

Citizen journalism site AllVoices has launched a syndication programme to bring professional and amateur newsgatherers together, according to a report on Journalism.co.uk, following in the footsteps of the likes of AssociatedContent.com, who already pay fees to their contributors.

Content providers will now receive 75% of the money paid for non-exclusive and exclusive images and video content whilst retaining copyright of the material.

AllVoices' Chief Operating Officer Aki Hashmi told the website that they are in talks with 'traditional' media groups in the US, Europe, Middle East and south Asia.

"The syndication programme is very good news for the community; it’s very good news for traditional media, because they’re looking for global content and most of them have been very dependent on Reuters and the AP," said Hashmi.

"These have become the global providers of news, but, if you look at it, in 40 per cent of the countries they have no coverage.

"If you have a platform where you can bring professional and citizen journalists together you can have global reach."

The programme has been developed after content providers expressed an interest in monetising their material.

According to Hashimi, the technology powering the site makes publishing and distributing contributors' work online low cost, enabling the site to give the majority of any sale fee back to the user.

This follows an incentive scheme that was launched earlier this year for contributors and is the next stage in marketing the site's content, which attracts more than 3.2million unique users per month.

News Apps Build User Loyalty

2009-10-12T14:48:00.004+01:00

People who download news, weather and reference apps tend to use them relatively often and for a long time compared with other kinds of applications, according to a recent study conducted by mobile application analyst Flurry and reported by WAN's Shaping the Future of Newspapers blog.

Flurry studied user retention across 19 categories, looking at whether consumers returned to use a downloaded app within 30, 60 or 90 days, as well as how frequently they used it over those time periods.

The study found that continually refreshed news apps, which provide consumers "nearly infinite value over time," were used an average of 11 times per week.

The least-used apps were those in the "entertainment" category, a collection of "gimmick" apps such as Lighter, Fart and IQ Test. Such apps are typically used only a few times and then abandoned, Flurry found.

Social media monitor Mashable observed that though silly apps might have the most initial downloads, they also are easily uninstalled. In other words, 'farts win the battle, but news wins the war,' as Mashable put it.

No More Free Ride for Aggregators?

2009-10-09T14:08:00.005+01:00

The leaders of two of the world's major news organizations said today that search engines and others who use news content for free must pay up, Editor & Publisher reports via The Associated Press.

Many news companies contend that sites such as Google have reaped a fortune from their articles, photos and video without fairly compensating the news organizations producing the material.

"We content creators have been too slow to react to the free exploitation of news by third parties without input or permission," Tom Curley, the AP's chief executive, told the World Media Summit, attended by 300 media leaders in Beijing.

"Crowd-sourcing Web services such as Wikipedia, YouTube and Facebook have become preferred customer destinations for breaking news, displacing Web sites of traditional news publishers," Curley said.

"We content creators must quickly and decisively act to take back control of our content," he added. "We will no longer tolerate the disconnect between people who devote themselves — at great human and economic cost — to gathering news of public interest and those who profit from it without supporting it."

Rupert Murdoch also told summit attendees that content providers would be demanding to be paid.

"The aggregators and plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content. But if we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid content, it will be the content creators — the people in this hall — who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs who triumph," the News Corp. chief executive said.

Curley said earlier this week that the AP was considering selling news stories to some online customers exclusively for a certain period, perhaps half an hour.

The AP already plans to roll out a system, called a news registry, that will track its content online and detect unlicensed uses in ways that could help boost revenue for the not-for-profit news cooperative and its member newspapers.

A Look Ahead from `Oasis of Optimism'

2009-10-08T14:08:00.006+01:00

Last week's Online News Association convention in San Francisco (see post below) was "an oasis of optimism," reports Jacqui Banaszynski, a long-time journalist and currently the Knight Chair in Editing at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

The crowd gazing at the relatively near horizon identified a variety of "Web 3.0" tools and trends that seem to hold enormous promise for journalists. Banaszynski summarizes a few of them:

* GoogleWave, which observers think could be the next ... well, Google. ChicagoTalks.org publisher Barbara Iverson says Google’s soon-to-be-released real-time sharing tool is "the latest blockbuster in the communications journey that has taken us from phone to Napster to Facebook to Twitter," Banaszynski reports. "It will apparently make the hiccup of time spent waiting on Twitter or IMs seem limiting."

* Facebook Connect is seen as a powerful tool for building online communities around a product or message. It will let people log in to a website directly through their Facebook accounts. Those users will then have real identities, which the optimists say should boost transparency, accountability and even civility.

* Twitter, "already the stud of the online world, is taking steroids," Banaszynski says. Co-founder Evan Williams mentioned three specifics: Twitter lists to let you more easily aggregate and organize the Twitterverse, as well as send group messages; location information embedded into every tweet; and a still-in-the-works “reputation system” designed to make tweets more transparent and verifiable.

Other predictions include more video, less podcasting -- and a surge in online initiatives by and for women.

Hyperlocal Aggregator Debuts in 12 UK Cities

2009-10-07T14:14:00.006+01:00

The hyperlocal news aggregator Fwix, which offers feeds in 80 U.S. cities, debuted in the UK this week, according to the Guardian's PDA blog.

Fwix launched in 12 British cities, including Belfast, Edinburgh and Leeds.

Fwix brings together pro-amateur blogs and professional content. Founder Darian Shirazi, 22, says he has identified an average of 45 local blogs and news sources for each UK city feed.

He also says he is willing to share ad revenue with each of them.

"When I look at the UK, I see a lot of local media, but people are struggling to find content that's written by small bloggers — the extent of local media in an aggregated form is from Thisisbristol.co.uk or those types of sites," he said. "So the focus is to find those really good bloggers and show people what's really happening in these areas."

Readers of the Fwix -- via web, mobile, Twitter or iPhone app -- can browse the news and suggest additions.

Many of the U.S. Fwix feeds, which currently attract a total of around 9 million unique users a month, have newspaper and magazine content as well as grassroots bloggers.

"The professional media sources, we still publish content from them because some of it's very good," Shirazi said. "They cover crime and big local stories very well, but some things that are niche and more interesting don't get covered at all."

Journalists Coach Contributors at `News Cafe'

2009-10-06T09:42:00.005+01:00

A hyperlocal news project in the Czech Republic, built around Starbucks-style "news cafes" staffed by journalists, appears to be working, Larry Kilman reports for the World Association of Newspapers' Shaping the Future of Newspapers blog.

Roman Gallo, CEO of project sponsor PPF Media, told the 2015 Newsroom Conference that 13 weeks after launch in four Czech regions, circulation of the company's paid-for weeklies is growing, as is web traffic. The cafes are quickly becoming a centre of community life, with meetings, concerts, dance lessons and other events organised for local residents.

Editorial staff sit in the middle of the cafes, without walls or doors, allowing regular interaction with local residents. Gallo said half the newspapers' new subscriptions come from people who come in for coffee and conversation.

"The readers can go there and be in contact," he said. "For the editorial team, they're much more open to talk to people, to understand the problems of the people in the region."

If the success continues, the company expects a year-long nationwide rollout of 220 weeklies, 89 news cafes and 700 websites.

About a third of the content for the newspapers is provided by local people - fishermen, firemen, mothers with young children and so on. But none of it goes into the paper or websites without input from a journalist, called a "community manager." A central editor oversees all publications.

"This is a total change for journalists," said Gallo. "We changed the job - they're trainers, coaches -- they work with the communities."

He said the key is to provide "unique content, which you can't find anywhere else, and it has to be credible content. That's the model that worked for newspapers for 100 years, and I have no doubt it will work for another 100 years."

Outstanding Online Journalism Reaps Awards

2009-10-05T10:26:00.005+01:00

A collection of linking tools enabling journalists to complement their original reporting, a hyperlocal site covering a Seattle neighborhood and a small site that covers a big city were the winners of the three newest categories at the 2009 Online Journalism Awards Banquet last week.

A complete list of winners is available here.

Publish2, a two-year old startup of collaborative journalism tools, won $5,000 and the first Gannett Foundation Award for Technical Innovation in the Service of Digital Journalism at the 10th annual awards ceremony.

My Ballard, a hyperlocal site covering Seattle's Ballard neighborhood, won the first Community Collaboration award, while the Gotham Gazette was recognized for General Excellence, Micro Site, a new subcategory.

The awards acknowledge the important role of emerging technology, the influence of the independent digital journalist and the growth of community reporting efforts.

My Ballard, for example, is "exactly what newspapers are trying to do with hyperlocal content." the judges wrote. "It's extremely useful for the neighborhood and because it lists cool places to go, it works for others."

"These honorees demonstrate the vitality and innovation of online journalists in a time of tumult and transformation in our industry," said Anthony Moor, deputy manging editor/interactive of the Dallas Morning News and co-chair of the Journalism Awards Committee. "We continue to be impressed by the way journalists are pushing the envelope and serving the public interest at the same time."

ProPublica, LasVegasSun.com and The New York Times also won General Excellence Awards, which include a $3,000 cash prize, also courtesy of the Gannett Foundation.

The Chauncey Bailey Project, a collaboration of more than two dozen reporters, photographers and editors who investigated the death of the Oakland Post editor, won the Knight Award for Public Service and a $5,000 cash prize from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Just a few of the other winners -- and there are lots more, all well worth checking out -- at the 2009 awards ceremony were:

* Breaking News, small, medium and large sites: Pressconnect.com /(Binghamton, New York) Press & Sun-Bulletin for Massacre on Front Street; Knoxnews.com (Knoxville News Sentinel)for coverage of a church shooting; and BBC News for its coverage of the Mumbai attacks.

* Multimedia Feature Presentation, small, medium and large sites: National Film Board of Canada for Waterlife, described by the judges as "crazy good," with a "user experience unlike anything we've seen"; LasVegasSun.com for Quenching Las Vegas' Thirst, with an "awesome coordination" between graphics and video; and Washington Post Digital for Sacred Ground: The Building of the Pentagon Memorial, which makes "excellent use of the technologies and the tools."

All A-Twitter Over Post Policy

2009-10-02T13:57:00.005+01:00

The Washington Post has been the target of considerable squawking recently over its guidelines for journalists' use of Twitter and other social media. This week, Post media writer Howard Kurtz offers his own tongue-in-cheek guidelines.

They include:

* Don't say something that makes you look like a blithering idiot.

* Don't appear to be in the pocket of [insert your favourite political party or cause here].

* Stick to subjects on which you actually have a clue.

* Refrain from boring people with the minutiae of your daily life.

* Don't say anything you couldn't defend as fair analysis in print or on the air.

OK, that last one was actually a serious point. Although his column includes an interesting array of views from around the media blogosphere, Kurtz says he actually finds his paper's contested policies to be quite reasonable.

"There's plenty of running room to be insightful and entertaining -- within the confines of 140 characters -- and engage in dialogue with people who care about politics and journalism," he says. "It all comes down to using a bit of common sense."

Input Sought on Libel Law

2009-10-01T09:38:00.004+01:00

The British government is seeking public input on the multiple-publication rule, under which each publication of defamatory material can form the basis of a new legal claim, the World Association of Newspapers' Shaping the Future of Newspapers blog reports.

The proliferation of online archives has prompted the review. The current rule facilitates "libel tourism," or forum shopping, in which plaintiffs with few or no ties to the United Kingdom bring suit here -- where libel laws are more likely to be in their favour -- because the material in question is available online.

Comments for and against adopting a single-publication rule are being collected online through December 16.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw has called for an update to existing defamation law to make it "fit for the modern age," according to a recent summary of the issue inThe Times.

In March, The Times took a test case to the European Court of Human Rights, arguing that the multiple publication rule was so onerous a burden for newspapers in the internet age that it had a chilling effect on their right to free speech.

ECHR judges dismissed the case but noted the need for restraints.

Apps for BlackBerry-Wielding Journalists

2009-09-30T09:29:00.008+01:00

The Orlando Sentinel's technology reporter, Etan Horowitz, offers a Top 10 list of (mostly free) Blackberry apps for journalists at PoynterOnline.org.

(Coming later this week from Horowitz: A list of iPhone apps, followed by a comparison of Blackberry and iPhone. Check Poynter's "Online and Technology" site to keep up!)

Both the iPhone and Blackberry offer online apps stores. You'll need to download "BlackBerry App World" if it didn't come on your phone. If you can't find an app you want there, Horowitz says, it can be downloaded from the developer's Web site on your BlackBerry browser.

Here's his list:

* Qik: Enables you to broadcast live video from your phone. Qik videos are embeddable, and a live stream can be posted on Twitter, Facebook and other sites. Qik is an easy way to cover breaking news visually.

* UberTwitter: Faster and with more features than TwitterBerry, this free program makes it easy to promote your work, crowd-source and stay on top of breaking news. It also lets you e-mail tweets and upload both photos and videos.

* BlackBerry Messenger: The instant messaging programme (allowing you to communicate with other BlackBerry users) includes the ability to group messages and to see when the other person is typing -- helpful when you need to know if someone is about to respond. Horowitz says Sentinel photographers and photo editors use BlackBerry Messenger because it allows them to send information quickly without interrupting a photographer on assignment.

* Google Mobile App: This app allows journalists who use Google products and services, such as Gmail or Google Maps, to get easy access to them on their BlackBerry.

* Evernote: You cannot edit or create new Google Docs on a BlackBerry, but Evernote provides a handy way to write notes that are accessible on the Web. For instance, you could start writing a story on Evernote on the BlackBerry, then pull it up on Evernote.com when you return to your computer. Evernote also enables you to record audio notes and to store documents or photos.

* Google Voice: For journalists who don't want to ever miss a call from a source, or who want to screen calls, Horowitz writes, "Google Voice is a godsend." The app also transcribes voice mails, enables you to record conversations and lets you switch from your cell to your office phone in the middle of the conversation.

* Opera Mini: The Web browser installed on your BlackBerry may not be a full HTML browser, so some pages won't load and others will be displayed in a text format. Opera Mini is an alternative browser that displays Web pages in an easier-to-view format on your phone.

* Facebook: The social networking site has become a valuable tool for journalists who want to find sources and story ideas, promote their work and engage readers. The BlackBerry version sports a basic interface; it enables you to upload photos (but not video) to Facebook.

* Tethering: Rather than an app, tethering is a feature that gives the BlackBerry an advantage over the iPhone, Horowitz writes. Depending on your rate plan, you can connect it to your computer and use it as a modem to get online.

* Vlingo: This app lets you use voice commands to perform such tasks as sending text messages, opening applications, and updating your Twitter or Facebook status. Both free and paid versions are available.

Four Steps to the New News Organization

2009-09-29T09:53:00.004+01:00

Local newspapers are in the best position to form the profitable "New News Organization" envisioned by Jeff Jarvis and his colleagues, Judy Sims, former vice president of digital media for the Toronto Star Media Group, writes for PaidContent.org.

Jarvis envisions a local news ecosystem that includes blogs, niche sites, non-profits -- plus a profitable news organization, capable of curating, aggregating audiences and producing original reporting.

Local newspapers are best positioned to do this because of their relationships with local advertisers, Sims suggests. "For small businesses, advertising is, was and always will be about return on investment. If the cash register doesn’t ring, the model won’t work. And metro newspapers know, understand and are trusted by local advertisers more than anyone else in their markets," she says.

Sims offers "four easy steps" for local newspapers seeking to become the New News Organization:

* Step 1: Create a separate organization. Put an online product person in charge of a small (at first) team that includes an online advertising sales person, an editor and a web developer -- and put them "in an office someplace far, far away from the print organization." This team, she writes, "will discover that the best business/editorial/advertising model is considerably different from what the print folks would come up with. And, it will very likely cannibalize the core business." Sims admits this is a "doozy" of a first step, but she feels it is necessary.

* Step 2: Build verticals. Local advertisers want audience and context. Sims urges an analysis of market data to identify categories with the greatest potential advertising revenue, such as homes, health, parenting and entertainment. "Use everything at your disposal to make these sites the ultimate online destinations in their subject-area for the residents of your city," she urges. They should combine news, resources links, data, business and event listings, and input from users, as well as advertising and shopping information.

* Step 3: Curate the ecosystem. Engage local bloggers and encourage experts to start new blogs to fill any gaps. For instance, ask an OB/GYN to write for the parenting site or an interior decorator for your homes site; in general, "make it easy for the passionate to be heard." In addition, Sims urges, news organizations should create widgets and other apps that allow other sites to publish their content. "The news media of the future is about distribution, not destination," she writes.

* Step 4: Create a Glam.com-style advertising network, using the ecosystem described above. Link extensively: Push traffic from the verticals to the blogs, and the blogs to the main news site, and the main news site to the verticals. And create packages around commercial content.

NY Times Explores Twitter Search Tool

2009-09-28T09:00:00.006+01:00

The New York Times is experimenting with search tools to sift through Twitter feeds and pull together commentary on thousands of specific topics, Mediaweek's Mike Shields reports.

The company already has built one such product, for its popular fashion-themed blog The Moment. The Moment, which has more than 1.2 million followers on Twitter, aggregates commentary about the high-end fashion industry from editors and readers, Times Senior VP for Digital Operations Martin Nisenholtz said.

Nisenholtz says the Times has a unique opportunity to play a prominent intermediary role on Twitter, as part guide and part editor.

“If you go out and search Twitter, it doesn’t work very well,” he said. “It’s very literal.” But if the newspaper can build multiple search products for Twitter that better understand context, there “is a lot of power in organizing and curating this world.”

Overall, the Times’ core Web site is enjoying a Twitter-driven traffic boost, adding roughly 15,000 followers each week, Nisenholtz reported.

Facebook also is a solid source of social media traffic; the Times has accumulated half a million followers since extending its presence on the site in 2007. Unlike NYTimes.com, the newspaper's Facebook followers are predominantly female, and 80 percent are under age 35.

A Special News Relationship

2009-09-25T09:16:00.003+01:00

American visits to UK news and media websites have soared 54% over the past year, according to a Hitwise report released this week.

BBC News was the 21st most visited news and media website in the United States during August. Other British sites in Hitwise's US News and Media top 200 last month included the Daily Mail (47th), the BBC home page (65th), the Telegraph (71st), the FT (115th), The Sun (117th), Times Online (131st) and the Guardian (134th).

In Australia, BBC News ranked 13th in the news and media category, and the BBC home page was 18th. However, UK news sites have long been popular in Australia, so August traffic represented just a 6% increase over 2008. Among UK internet users, visits to British news and media websites were up 8% year on year.

In the U.S. market, Hitwise reports, the Drudge Report is the key traffic driver to British news sites. In fact, Drudge was second only to Google search -- but ahead of Google News -- in sending visitors across the Atlantic for their news. Drudge accounted for nearly 11% of visits during August, compared to 13.5% for Google search and 5.3% for Google News.

E-mail also has been a key traffic source for UK websites, including Yahoo! Mail, Gmail and Hotmail. Digg also has been important in driving U.S. traffic to the Telegraph site, in particular.

More than a quarter of the American visitors are from California, with another 6.6% from New York. Forget about the cowboys in Wyoming, though; they're just not into British media, according to the Hitwise data.

Wealthy Americans, households earning more than $150,000, are the most likely to visit British news websites -- but the least affluent, earning less than $30,000, are the second most likely. This group may include students.

Pay to Read about the Play?

2009-09-24T11:12:00.002+01:00

The Minneapolis Star Tribune has begun charging users for "premium" online coverage of the city's professional American football team, the Vikings.

For $5.95 for three months (not quite a whole season), or $19.95 a year, subscribers to Access Vikings get additional "insider" information not available anywhere else. This includes:

* Chats with a reporter from inside the locker room after every game.

* The ability to ask well-known Vikings reporters "probing questions" before the game each week.

* "Insight and analysis" from the newspaper's Vikings columnists.

* Access to a blog by a former all-pro player, who will "blog his impressions of the season."

* Photo galleries of game images from Star-Tribune photographers.

The Star Tribune tried something similar seven years ago, Staci Kramer points out in a post on PaidContent.org. It didn't work -- but the price was higher in 2002, costing $4.95 for just one month's access then, $29.95 for the year. The newspaper shut the experiment down after attracting only around 1,000 subscribers.

"Put in fan perspective, the [2009] three-month pass is less than one beer at an NFL [National Football League] stadium; the annual subscription would be two or three beers," Kramer helpfully points out.

Publishers Turning to Mobile

2009-09-23T15:29:00.002+01:00

Print publishers are extremely interested in mobile strategies for content distribution and advertising, according to a new survey by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, MediaDailyNews reports.

More than half the 375 print publishing executives surveyed said they are already distributing content via mobile devices. Among newspaper publishers, 58% said they have formatted their Web sites to make them mobile-friendly or have created dedicated mobile Web sites.

They expect the services to be financed through both subscription and advertising; so far, however, users have shown more interest than advertisers in mobile content, the survey found. Publishers also commonly report that mobile use drives traffic to their Web sites.

In addition, three-quarters either have a "smart phone" application already in production or plan to create one in the next two years.

The publishers widely expect print distribution to diminish, but not vanish, over the next decade.

Winning Ideas from "Creative Technologists"

2009-09-22T09:59:00.004+01:00

"Creative technologists" and their terrific ideas for imaginative journalism were on display this month at the 2009 Knight-Batten Symposium and Awards for Innovations in Journalism, J-Lab Executive Director Jan Schaffer reports.

“Technology is not a slice of the pie of what we do. It’s the pan,” said Ellen Miller. Her Sunlight Foundation is making data available on everything from government contracts to foreign lobbyists.

Among the trends Schaffer highlights this year:

* Making information easy to access, visualize and use. The winners built ways to track changes on government Web sites, fact-check assertions in political debates, find and annotate documents, and mash data sets. “Transparency is the new objectivity,” Miller said -- sounding a lot like the BBC's Richard Sambrook, quoted in in yesterday's Digital Digest post, below.

* Helping citizens track what their elected officials are up to. For instance, The New York Times’ “Represent” feature lets users track New York state and congressional officials by such things as their floor appearances and Twitter comments.

* Engaging in collaboration and open sourcing. The source codes for winners such as ProPublica’s ChangeTracker are intended to be available to all. "Could we put together a recipe so any reporter could do this?" asked ChangeTracker developer Scott Klein.

The tools these creative technologists are building for citizens also are valuable to reporters. For example, participatory blogs such as Vaughn Hagerty’s MyReporter.com, which collects and answers questions from readers of the regional Star News in North Carolina, gives journalists a real-time window on the interests of local readers.

Is Transparency the New Objectivity?

2009-09-21T15:49:00.002+01:00

The impact of social media on breaking news is overestimated in the short term -- and underestimated in the long term, according to BBC Global News Division Direction Richard Sambrook.

Sambrook said at last week's Oxford Social Media Convention that mainstream media are adopting social media such as Twitter but failing to discuss its long-term effects, Mercedes Bunz reports for the Guardian.

He suggest a new objectivity may be evolving. Objectivity, he said, was designed to deliver journalism that people can trust. But today, it is transparency that creates trust. News still has to be accurate and fair, but it is as important for the public to see how the news is produced and where the information comes from, he said.

Information is not journalism, Sambrook added. Journalism needs discipline, analysis, explanation and context; its "added value" comes from judgement, analysis and explanation. Journalism, therefore, has a future, he promised.

'Tangible' Mobile Apps Will Sell, Outing Advises

2009-09-18T09:27:00.001+01:00

News publishers expecting to make money online will need to figure out how to offer something tangible -- and mobile represents big-time opportunity, especially for phone applications, advises veteran digital media observer Steve Outing in his latest Stop the Presses column.

Outing has long believed that non-niche news content is better off being free, supported by advertising and other revenue streams. But after talking recently with two mobile gurus, he said, he realized that people seem to prefer to spend money on things they can "keep." A phone app may not be a physical thing, but it's there on your phone every time you turn it on, he writes. It's "yours."

Consider the iPhone, for which Apple CEO Steve Jobs boasted last week that 1.8 billion apps had been downloaded in just two years. An estimated 13% of those apps carry a price tag, according to a February 2009 presentation by Pinch Media; the figure is likely higher today.

For years, Outing points out, publishers had no trouble selling a physical product, the printed paper, which readers got to keep as long as they liked. Efforts to charge for the intangible online product, in contrast, have nearly all failed miserably.

Perhaps, he says, one of the main reasons is that when online news consumers were asked to pay for news, many felt that they weren't getting anything, because they received nothing tangible -- just information (most of which is free online anyway).

The same goes for general news content on mobile phones, Outing says. But, he added, "Fortunately, mobile phones now have something that people will buy: apps. And mobile is poised to become the next growth area for content publishers."

Publishers, he says, should create an iPhone app (followed by apps for other devices such as Blackberries) that offers a better news experience than viewing a website on a phone's browser, as well as other valuable features. And they should charge for it.

"Non-niche, non-unique digital news has no monetary value to most readers. News providers, if they are to make money directly from consumers in the online and mobile worlds, need to come up with non-ephemeral offerings," he says. "The key to getting paid for news in digital format is that what's being sold is not fleeting."

For instance, he suggests:

* Paid news memberships. With a membership to a news organization, you get something -- perhaps including a membership card (physical or digital) to be used repeatedly to get special privileges, such as discounts from advertisers or access to premium content.

* Access. Charging people to read the regular column from a star writer, for instance, may not work, as The New York Times discovered during its TimesSelect paid-subscription experiment. But publishers might take a hint from Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly, who offers a paid "Premium Membership" Among 16 extra benefits, it includes special access to O'Reilly, including "preferred e-mail" that gets your message bumped to the front of the queue, and a weekly live chat during which Premium members get to ask O'Reilly questions.

* Special Web applications for PCs. If apps sell so well on mobile phones (albeit at generally low prices), news companies may want to consider selling applications for the PC that offer consumers an enhanced online news-reading experience. Readers get to "keep" the software.

More thoughts and ideas can be found in Outing's column, available free for a limited time.

Perspectives on the Great Pay Debate

2009-09-17T10:32:00.001+01:00

As newspapers scramble to decide how best to increase revenue online, editors are desperately trying to figure out what content to charge for, while still keeping print viable and their Web numbers up.

In a special report published this week, U.S. newspaper trade magazine Editor & Publisher summarizes the current thinking among American newsroom leaders.

Most of those interviewed by reporter Joe Strupp said no decisions have been made. But they said they welcomed a paid approach to online, noting that readers seem to be willing to pay for Web content that is useful, exclusive and/or in-depth.

However, the definition of marketable content varies. Some editors believe everything is chargeable. Others point at sports, or find blogs and analysis the most sellable.

"The model that most think is worthwhile is a hybrid of free and paid," says Gordon Crovitz, former publisher of The Wall Street Journal and co-founder of Journalism Online, which is helping newspapers transition to paid content. "For most, the vast majority would continue to access online without a payment. But the challenge is finding what you would charge for."

Few editors disclosed any specific plans, but most cited "news you can't get anywhere else" as the elusive element they'd place behind a pay wall. That includes local sports, community news, exclusives, breaking news, and investigative projects. Others said Web-only staples such as blogs, pages of data, documents and statistics, and video are also key.

Other dismiss the whole idea of charging for the web as "delusional," such as Tampa Tribune Editor Janet Coats: "People have lost their minds. They need to have a cold cloth on their heads and go lay down for a while."

For Coats, a more aggressive approach to getting online ad revenue is the answer. "We have spent 15 years in this industry getting newsrooms to change," she said. "By God, they have changed. How much have things changed on the ad side?"

The E&P article offers extensive quotes and other ideas from editors of U.S. papers large and small.

Facebook Makes Friends -- and Money

2009-09-16T10:58:00.003+01:00

Facebook, the social networking phenomenon, announced this week that it now has more than 300 million users worldwide -- having added 50 million just since July -- and has become "free cash flow positive," the Guardian reports on its Technology blog.

That means it is finally making money after five and a half years and an estimated $716 million of investment.

Facebook now has as many users as the entire internet population of China -- or of Europe's 10 largest countries combined. It is still growing in Britain and the United States, and its recently launched Facebook Lite is designed to appeal to users with slower internet connections in countries such as Brazil and India.

The news prompted speculation that the company could prepare for a stock market launch as early as next year, a rumour that senior executives have tried to squash in the past.

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, 25, seem to have settled on several key ways to bring in the money, the Guardian reports in a sidebar post:

* Self-serve advertising allows marketers to buy ads to put in front of users who precisely fit a desired profile. This has proved appealing for some big brands.

* In addition, almost anyone can walk up and buy space on the site if they have the cash -- including other Facebook users, who try to direct people to their profiles, fan pages or elsewhere in order to promote a cause or pitch a product.

* Users also can buy gifts and other virtual property to give to each other. This still seems like a crazy idea to some people, but it can be profitable. Think of ringtones, for instance.

* In addition, the company is working on a micropayments system that likely will allow it to take a slice of any transaction conducted through the site.

Google Micropay Platform Could Help Newspapers

2009-09-14T14:27:00.000+01:00

Google is developing a micropayment platform that will be available to "non-Google properties" within the year, according to a document the company submitted to the Newspaper Association of America (NAA).

The system, an extension of Google Checkout, would be a new and unexpected option for the news industry as it considers how to charge for content online, reports the Nieman Journalism Lab, which offers the Google document for download.

The revelation comes in an eight-page response to the NAA’s request for paid-content proposals, extended earlier this year to several major technology companies and startups -- including Google, with which the industry has had a rather tenuous relationship in the past.

In the document, Google outlines its "vision of a premium content ecosystem" that includes subscriptions across multiple news sites; syndication on third-party sites; accessibility to search; and various payment options, including micropayments.

"The idea is to allow viable payments of a penny to several dollars by aggregating purchases across merchants and over time," Google says.

Google has sought to position Checkout as a competitor to eBay’s PayPal service, the leading system for online payments. Although the company says the process for merchants currently is "fairly rudimentary," it "could be improved to be more relevant for news and media companies."

The NAA asked Google, along with other technology companies, to submit ideas for how newspapers could use technology to generate more revenue from their digital content. Google has been experimenting with new ways to highlight news content and new ways to display it.

Regionals Make Top Blogs List

2009-09-03T14:30:00.001+01:00

A chart of the top 40 political bloggers in the media features a significant number of entries from the regional press.

HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk reports that Joe Watts from the Nottingham Evening Post is among the regional journalists with a Westminster blog who have made the list, voted for by blog readers.

Another lobby blogger in the top 40 is Torcuil Crichton from Glasgow’s Herald newspaper for his Whitehall 1212 blog.

Scottish politics bloggers are also represented in the chart by The Steamie, a blog from Scotsman.com city editor David Maddox.

The list has a few newcomers too, including David Bartlett from the Liverpool Daily Post who has been writing his blog for less than a year.

National media bloggers feature heavily in the 40 with the Spectator Coffee House blog taking the top spot and the BBC’s Nick Robinson and Daily Mail’s Peter Hitchens also making the top ten.

Visit totalpolitics.com for the full list.

Awards To Honour Breaking News

2009-09-02T12:00:00.004+01:00

The finalists for the Online Journalism Awards have been announced and a total of ten sites have been nominated for breaking news coverage.

Award nominees compete in categories with websites of a similar size and this year sees three titles up for the breaking news prize for a small site.

They are: The Daily Astorian for coverage of the Gearhart Plane Crash; The Desert Sun for the Desert Hot Springs Gang Sweep; Pressconnects.com/Press & Sun-Bulletin for the Massacre on Front Street.

In the medium site category, the shortlist of four includes LasVegasSun.com for coverage of a snowstorm and the Dallas Morning News for its breaking news reports on the collapse of an American football training stadium.

Finally, the nominees in the large site category for breaking news are: The BBC for the Mumbai terrorist attacks; the New York Times for the plane crash on the Hudson river; chron.com for Hurricane Ike.

Run by the Online News Association, the awards also honour investigative journalism, multimedia, blogging, video journalism and general excellence – the full shortlist is available to view in the press release.

“We were regularly awed, inspired and delighted by the quality and innovation evident online today,” said Anthony Moor, co-chair of the awards committee.

The winners will be announced in October at the 2009 ONA Conference.

Three Compete For Digital Title

2009-09-01T12:00:00.003+01:00

Three journalists from Lancashire have made the shortlist for an inaugural digital award.

William Watt (The Gazette, Blackpool), Paul Cockerton (Lancashire Telegraph) and Martin Hamer (Lancashire Evening Post) are in the running for the Digital Journalist of the Year prize at the first O2 Media Awards for the region.

HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk reports that the new awards for Greater Manchester and Lancashire represent O2’s third regional journalism contest.

The telecoms company also runs competitions for newspapers in Cheshire and Merseyside, and Yorkshire and The Humber regions.

O2’s director of communications, Glenn Manoff, said of the new awards: “This is a region rich with quality journalism which has been reflected in the high level of entries we have received from writers, broadcasters and photographers working in the area.

“Local and regional journalists provide an important service in their communities, keeping people connected to the world around them and supplying important news and information that otherwise may have remained hidden.”

The winners will be announced at a ceremony in Manchester on October 1st.

See HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk for the full shortlist of nominees.

Sun Tops Site Stickiness Chart

2009-08-31T12:30:00.001+01:00

A chart comparing the stickiness of British newspaper websites gives the top spot to thesun.co.uk.

Compiled by blogger Michael Coles, the table uses data from Alexa to compare the page views and bounce rates of national news websites.

Leading the pack is thesun.co.uk, with an average of 4 page views per user and a bounce rate of 48.5%.

Coles places guardian.co.uk second with 3.1 average page views and a bounce rate of 59.2%, followed by Telegraph.co.uk with 2.9 page views and a 65.2% bounce rate.

See Coles’s blog for the full post and table.

Google Voice – Newsroom “Game Changer”?

2009-08-28T12:30:00.004+01:00

Google’s new telecoms service could become the next big thing in the ‘digital toolkit’ for reporters.

According to Etan Horowitz, Google Voice is “a game changer for journalists” with many of its features helping to improve the way they keep in touch with sources, the public, and each other.

Writing on Poynter Online, the tech columnist for the Orlando Sentinel discusses some of the service’s key selling points and how they can help reporters.

Here are some examples of its main features:

* Google Voice allows users to select their own number.

* You can choose which phones (mobile phone, office landline, home landline, VOIP etc) ring when people call and set it to change at different times of day.

* Users can sort callers into groups and select different phones to ring depending on which ‘group’ calls.

* Incoming calls can be switched between phones.

* The ID of the caller is stated before you answer.

* If the caller is unknown, an automated message asks them to give their name which can then be heard by the user before answering.

* Voicemail messages are automatically transcribed and sent as an email.

* Incoming calls can be recorded and then accessed through the user’s Google Voice account.

See the Poynter Online article by Horowitz for more about Google Voice.

At present, the invite-only service is limited to users in the US.

Echo Readers Create Unique Gallery

2009-08-27T12:30:00.001+01:00

Life in Dorset is captured by the impressive collection of photos posted in response to an appeal from the Daily Echo.

The Bournemouth newspaper is encouraging readers to contribute to its Flickr group - A Dorset Year - as part of its aim to create a gallery showing a year in the life of the county and its residents.

All the photos are also published on the Daily Echo website and selected pictures feature in the newspaper.

Digital project co-ordinator Sam Shepherd told HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk that the gallery represents the newspaper’s efforts to interact with people in the area.

“There are so many people out there on the patch using Flickr so it was a way of getting them to engage with us,” said Shepherd.

So far, the group has attracted over 1,000 photos to its photostream and has more than 150 members.

Six Ways To Make Video Pay

2009-08-26T12:30:00.001+01:00

How to generate revenue from online videos is one of the challenges facing news publishers in the digital age.

A recent blog post addresses this issue by listing some of the ways that news websites in Minnesota have been trying their hand at making money from their videos.

Here are the six suggestions from Vadim Lavrusik, writing on the Online Journalism Blog:

1 - Internal hosting:

“News sites with a significant interest in monetising video content should move away from hosting content on sites like YouTube, which provide little opportunity for profit from revenue sharing.”

2 - Pre-roll advertising:

Lavrusik points out that this has been the most effective strategy so far and is becoming increasingly popular too.

3 - Complementing ad forms:

“Incorporating a banner ad that complements the video ad provides more exposure on the page and is usually more attractive to advertisers.”

4 - A 15-second rule:

Lavrusik notes that displayed ads on the sites he studied all lasted less than 15 seconds as research shows that longer ads can lose people.

5 - Search:

“If local news sites incorporate specific video searches, they could sell sponsored links to appear at the top.”

6 - Producing advertisements:

Lavrusik spoke to the chief executive of Borrell Associates, who said that news publishers need to be more creative with their online advertising in order to tap into the video market.

See the full post on the OJB.

MEN – Raids Reported In Real-Time

2009-08-25T12:30:00.004+01:00

The Manchester Evening News has used social media to keep its website readers up to date with the progress of a series of police raids.

HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk reports that the MEN had a reporter stationed in the control room, where he used Twitter to post updates about the massive police operation.

The tweets were collected under a gmpraids hashtag on Twitter and appeared in a live blog on the web pages of the MEN.

And the newspaper had one of its journalists following police officers as they carried out arrests across Greater Manchester so reports ‘from the field’ were also fed back to the CoverItLive blog.

“CoverItLive was useful for this because it allows our readers who are not on Twitter to follow the reports and also add their own comments,” said Paul Gallagher, head of online content at the MEN.

He added: “I think this has been a good example of our journalists using new online reporting tools to bring a fresh approach to the MEN’s coverage of a live news story.”

See HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk for the full story and visit the MEN website to view the coverage and to replay the live blog.

News Media & Facebook Strategy

2009-08-24T12:30:00.001+01:00

News sites must consider their Facebook strategy as the social networking site goes from strength to strength.

That’s the view of Dorian Benkoil, who has written on Poynter Online about the necessities of having a Facebook strategy.

According to Benkoil, the popular website has made a number of advances recently that make it a must-use social media tool for online newspapers.

He writes: “As Facebook ramps up its offerings and takes on both Twitter and Google, you may need a hefty presence there to capture an audience you might not easily reach other ways.”

These changes are Facebook’s acquisition of FriendFeed, the trial of Facebook Lite and the launch of a real-time search facility.

Benkoil notes: “The basic idea is that once you’re in Facebook, you’ll stay there - to communicate with people, get information, post photos and videos, play games, maybe even consume music and videos, or shop.

“So, if you, as an editor or publisher, want to reach the audience that’s in Facebook you may have to make sure your content is there, as well.”

The Strategy

But what is the best way for news sites to get their content in front of Facebook users – and is there any way to make money from it?

Benkoil suggests creating a fan page – see New York Times fan page – and a profile page via which a newspaper can push its stories as news feeds.

As for making money, Benkoil spoke to a viral marketing spokesperson who pointed out that news sites can put ads on their fan page and will soon be able to sell merchandise to Facebook users without them having to leave the site.

See Poynter Online for the full story.

How To Make Money From News

2009-08-21T12:30:00.001+01:00

Four new business models for journalism have been presented by a research team in the US.

The group from the City University of New York put together the proposals after conducting interviews with industry insiders, studying media data, and carrying out a survey of hyperlocal websites.

Visitors to the New Business Models for News site can examine these in depth as they are presented in the form of a spreadsheet detailing costs and projected revenue.

The team was tasked with providing business models for a sustainable form of journalism for a city without a notable news offering in print.

Here are the four business model proposals:

1 & 2

Hyperlocal & Ecosystem Framework Models

“Incorporates two models: hyperlocal and the sales, support, and technology framework that we believe is necessary to optimize businesses in the ecosystem.”

3

New News Organisation

“This model envisions a new, metro-wide news organisation ... that operates on a smaller scale and performs a wide variety of tasks.

“It will produce original unique beat and investigative reporting and it will also work collaboratively with the other members of the ecosystem and its readers to add value.

“Advertising will remain the key business driver, but to maximise profits the new organisation will diversify its revenues.”

4

Not-for-Profit News Organisation

“We want to show the level of resources that might be available in a given market to augment local news gathering efforts.

“Researching the available charitable money in a market, we picked a hypothetical bottom line of $3 million and built one possible organisation to augment journalism in the market.”

Have Your Say

Each spreadsheet can be downloaded by users who can then alter figures such as staff numbers etc and add their own ideas.

See Paul Bradshaw’s Online Journalism Blog for his thoughts on the viability of the proposals.

Debating Journalism’s Big Questions

2009-08-20T12:30:00.002+01:00

An online resource now holds over 90 interviews and op-eds discussing the future of news in the digital age.

The Future of Journalism project is featured on the OurBlook website, which proclaims to be a cross between a blog and a book.

It is a collaborative resource which has dozens of interviews with industry experts sharing their thoughts on some of the biggest challenges facing journalism.

The site also has opinion pieces from journalists and academics pondering subjects such as citizen journalism and business models of the future.

Writing on the Online Journalism Review, OurBlook staffer Sandra Ordonez says: “The website is a collaborative, Web 2.0 platform created for the exchange of research, information and dialogue on national and global issues.”

She adds that the interviews and pieces have been compiled into an online book and can be viewed on OurBlook’s Future of Journalism pages.

Local Sites Up For Media Award

2009-08-19T12:30:00.001+01:00

Four local news sites are in the running for the title of Website of the Year with the EDF Energy Media Awards.

The shortlist for the London and South East awards has been announced, and competition for the digital prize is fierce.

Here are the nominations:

* bournemouthecho.co.uk - Daily Echo, Bournemouth

* getsurrey.co.uk - Surrey & Berkshire Media

* dailyecho.co.uk - Southern Daily Echo, Southampton

* thisiscroydontoday.co.uk - Croydon Advertiser/The Post

The winner will be announced during the ceremony at London’s Globe Theatre at the end of October.

See HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk for the full awards shortlist, which includes categories such as Sports Journalist of the Year, Columnist of the Year and Daily Newspaper of the Year.

Hull Paper Offers Live Match Reports

2009-08-18T12:30:00.001+01:00

A Northcliffe newspaper is on the ball with its football coverage offering live and interactive match reports.

Fans can follow every minute of Hull City’s Premier League season thanks to a new match day service on sporthull.co.uk, reports HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk.

Using software from CoveritLive, the Big Match Live coverage is available in real-time during games and can be replayed in full after the final whistle.

The live blog also encourages comments from City fans, which then appear alongside posts from journalists at the Hull Daily Mail.

This season has seen sporthull.co.uk introduce a number of other new features, including an aggregation service providing links to Hull City coverage elsewhere on the Web.

“All of these new features enhance the service we give to web users and further differentiate our digital offering from our in-depth and analytical sports coverage in the paper,” said John Meehan, editor at the Hull Daily Mail.

He added: “We will also use the sports sites to promote our print-only sports content.”

Northcliffe has also introduced a new look and new features at three of its other sports sites - sportgrimsby.co.uk, sportscunny.co.uk and sportsecho.co.uk.

Social Media Revolution

2009-07-31T10:00:00.000+01:00

Social media represent "a revolution in communication that no journalist or news organization can afford to ignore," says journalist and self-described change advocate Michele McLellan.

She offers three lessons in social media for news executives and entrepreneurs: Understand how it works. Understand how people (not journalists) use it. Use it strategically.

Specifically, she has three suggestions for how to proceed:

1. Try it. Start with Facebook. Set up an account, link up with friends and family members, and locate groups that reflect your interests. Start posting once a day. Share links to interesting articles. Ask friends to comment. Comment on others' posts. Devote 10 minutes a day to this for several weeks.

Next, she advises, start a Twitter account and repeat these steps. If you want to drive traffic for a certain subject on your site, Twitter will be a better tool than Facebook, she adds -- advice supported by JP Digital Digest posts earlier this week on the rapid growth of Twitter as a content-sharing tool.

"Resist the urge to create a litany of reasons you don’t like Facebook or Twitter or any other network you join," McLellan cautions. "You are not the point. Understanding how social media works is Job 1. Just talking about it or dissing it won’t get you there."

2. Watch how other people use social networks. What are people sharing and how do they share it? Don’t look at social media through the eyes of the journalist, she says; instead, focus on how people communicate with each other. Check out people who have a lot of followers on Twitter. How do they write, and what do they offer that appeals to you? Learn as much as you can about how people in your community use social media. Use search and check out sites such as PlaceBlogger to identify and connect with social media leaders. Ask the people around you how they use social media, too. Start thinking about how the news you produce might improve their experience -- which, she adds, "is different from trying to get them to read your news."

3. Be strategic. There’s no point in being on all the networks all the time, McLellan says. "Figure out a strategy, try it out and stick with it long enough to figure out whether it works, and learn from your mistakes if it doesn’t."

She says news organizations should not expect to get immediate revenue from social media. The applications are about community and conversation; they are valuable for journalists who want to increase their community connections. "It is those connections that may eventually yield revenue, from advertisers who want to speak to those communities, from services the news organization discovers those communities want, and from loyalty that will help keep the users coming back," McLellan concludes.

Facebook Is King of Content Sharing

2009-07-30T10:00:00.000+01:00

Facebook is the primary content-sharing method for internet users, though e-mail remains popular and, as reported here on Wednesday, Twitter is rapidly gaining ground.

Recent findings by AddToAny, provided as a Business Insider "Chart of the Day", broke down the various ways that people share content on the Web, finding that nearly a quarter of them use Facebook.

Applications such as Digg, Delicious, Reddit and StumbleUpon are among other options, but each accounts for less than 6% of the content-sharing usage, according to the chart.

Poynter Online's Will Sullivan points out that knowing how people use the Web to share information is important for news organizations, but accurately tracking the extent to which content-sharing sites drive people to their websites can be difficult. Analytics programmes may significantly under-report the number of referrals from sites such as Twitter, for instance.

Twitter Drives Traffic to Media Websites

2009-07-29T09:39:00.000+01:00

Micro-blogging site Twitter has become a key source of traffic to other content-driven websites, including news and entertainment ones, Hitwise reports.

UK use of Twitter has increased 22-fold in the past 12 months, making it the nation's fastest-growing major website.

One consequence of its phenomenal growth, Hitwise's Robin Goad writes, is Twitter's new role as a traffic driver. During May 2009, Twitter was the 30th biggest source of traffic for other sites in the UK, accounting for 1 in every 350 visits to a typical website. And nearly 56% of this traffic went to other content-driven online media sites.

Twitter was the 27th biggest source of traffic to News and Media – Print websites in the UK during May, and all the main newspaper websites now have multiple Twitter feeds.

The key to a successful Twitter presence is to engage the community, Goad says.

"Twitter is a great viral marketing channel, and for many users the aim is to have their story ‘retweeted’ – i.e. passed on by other users – as many times as possible," he writes. "Although all of the newspapers have multiple ‘official’ feeds, these tend to be bland and have very low ‘retweet’ rates. Where journalists themselves are ‘tweeting’ themselves and engaging with the Twitter community, they typically have more success in creating viral stories."

BBC To Share Video News with Print Websites

2009-07-28T13:49:00.002+01:00

The BBC has struck a landmark deal with four national newspaper groups to share video news on their websites, the Guardian reports.

The deal -- described as the latest step in the BBC's plans to share content, expertise and technology in the name of public service -- will make a limited range of free BBC video news content available on the websites of the Daily Mail, Guardian, Independent and Daily Telegraph. The BBC video will supplement the websites' own material in the areas of UK politics, business, health and science, and technology.

The BBC plans to make the same video news content available to other UK-based news websites in the future. The arrangement covers only news, not other genres such as entertainment or sports.

The video will carry BBC branding, and partner media organisations are not allowed to place advertising around the clips.

The video news sharing proposal marks a significant shift in relations between the BBC and rival media companies, GuardianMedia writer Mark Sweney points out. Newspaper publishers have long argued that the BBC has used licence fee revenue to fund its expansion into digital media, an arena where it competes with content providers that do not have access to a comparable public subsidy.

The industry won a battle last November to halt the BBC from launching a £68m network of local video news websites when the BBC Trust rejected the corporation's proposals.

The BBC recently has embarked on a series of partnerships with commerical media companies to fend off government proposals to top-slice the licence fee to help support other public service broadcasters, Sweney reports.

Mobile Seen as Key to 'Future-Proof' Strategy

2009-07-27T16:19:00.002+01:00

A "future-proof" strategy for newspapers requires a strong mobile presence, according to the Winning Mobile Strategies report recently released by the World Association of Newspapers.

Mobile usage is soaring, with 3.9 subscribers expected by the end of 2009 and a billion more in 2012, according to estimates by Portio Research. Global wireless online access also is growing very rapidly -- from 70 million to 920 million in 2008. The growth is occurring in both developed and developing nations.

"There is no question mobile, although currently a small slice of the digital pie, will increasingly be a key platform audiences turn to, and newspapers must be there to meet them," the WAN report says. It quotes Anders Børde, marketing director for Oslo-based More Mobile Relations, who warns that "newspapers, as well as any other type of company, cannot take the risk of not communicating with customers over the mobile platform. It will simply be expected."

Experts cited in the report say mobile is "ripe" for the development of advertising to suit the platform, as well as offering the ability to develop micro-payment opportunities.

Mobile tagging is another promising revenue stream, the report says. By digitally linking a 2-D barcode and a mobile device, users can obtain complementary information such as coupons, product details and contests.

‘Paid Content Is The Future’

2009-07-24T15:30:00.000+01:00

Nearly all news sites will charge for content within 12 months, according to the Financial Times editor.

Lionel Barber said he did not know which particular payment models would be used, but he remains convinced they will be installed by this time next year, reports Guardian.co.uk.

Speaking at a Media Standards Trust event, Barber pointed out that his own newspaper’s website has achieved success with its pricing system for quality niche content.

And he suggested other news organisations will soon be following suit, citing the New York Times as an example.

“How these online payment models work and how much revenue they can generate is still up in the air,” said Barber.

“But I confidently predict that within the next 12 months, almost all news organisations will be charging for content.”

The full text of the editor’s speech is available on the Media Standards Trust website.

And the Guardian discussed his comments on its recent Media Talk podcast.

Indy Unveils Politics Twitter App

2009-07-24T12:00:00.002+01:00

A new Twitter application devoted to British politics has been launched by The Independent and Tweetminster.

Livewire enables Twitterers to follow and interact with the tweets of politicians, political journalists and parliamentary commentators.

Users can search by party, person or source to track feeds and will have Twitterers recommended to them by Livewire.

The service also features analytical tools which enable visitors to compile stats on topic trends and the most popular links in real-time.

“This is a great step forward in aggregating the latest whispers from the corridors of power and influence,” said Jimmy Leach, editorial director for digital at The Independent.

Alberto Nardelli, a co-founder of Tweetminster, added that his company was honoured to be launching a partnership project with the daily title.

In a press statement, he said: “Together, we’re pushing the boundaries of what newspapers do, and more importantly we are bringing people closer to politicians and to the heart of political debate, helping politicians and politics to become more approachable, open, and social.”

Times Revamps Comments System

2009-07-23T12:15:00.001+01:00

Times Online has launched a new version of its comments system and introduced some rule changes as well.

Would-be posters now have to go through a registration procedure before they can submit a comment and activate a link from an email to confirm the address.

Online editor Tom Whitwell writes that this new procedure “will enable us to highlight and reward our best commenters, and weed out our least constructive”.

He also announced that users will no longer be restricted to 300 characters as the new rules allow 2,000 characters (about 250 words) per comment.

And he added that more changes will be introduced in the coming months.

The Times receives an average of 4,000 comments a day and each is read by moderators before publication.

[HT – Journalism.co.uk]

Top Of The News Tweets

2009-07-22T15:30:00.003+01:00

A blogger has compiled a list of the most popular Twitter feeds provided by national newspapers in the UK.

Malcolm Coles found that just three newspapers account for the ten most followed feeds – the Guardian, the Financial Times and the Times.

The Guardian’s Tech Twitter account is the number one in the chart, with 831,935 followers at the time of compilation (risen to 911,143 when this post was written).

It’s then a big drop to second with the Guardian News feed, with over 25,000 followers on Twitter.

Also making up the top ten are FT finance news, Guardian Music, Times Travel and Times Money.

The full table showing the 131 official feeds and their followers is available here.

Follow Globe Video Via Facebook

2009-07-22T12:15:00.002+01:00

Fans of a news site’s sports video can now follow it from their Facebook pages.

The new application enables Boston.com to make its daily Globe 10.0 more of an interactive feature as users can submit comments and contribute ideas for the next sporting debates.

Facebook users can also win prizes for the most promoted comments and invite their friends to join in with the burning issues.

See Editor & Publisher for more on this story.

Sports Coverage Draws Record Traffic

2009-07-21T15:30:00.003+01:00

Preview coverage of an all-star baseball game has given an American news site its best-ever traffic figures.

Staff at the St Louis Post-Dispatch went all out with their multimedia reporting of the classic event and reaped the rewards after recording some 2.7 million page views in a single day.

The preview coverage included blogs, video content, photos, a round-up of the latest all-star tweets and all-star game quizzes.

Editor Arnie Robbins attributed the success to the multimedia approach taken by his team.

He told Editor & Publisher: “We had a lot of cool stuff this time on the game.

“The most interesting was a video - Cardinal Culture - a six-minute video of fans who love the Cardinals.”

He added: “We have the best coverage of the All-Star game anywhere.

“Fans from the area want to know about things like traffic around the game and events, and out of towners basically are fans of the game who want to know about this game, too.”

Visit stltoday.com/allstar to see the preview reports and subsequent coverage of the game itself.

Independent Signs Video Deals

2009-07-21T12:00:00.001+01:00

The Independent is working with two media groups to enhance its video content.

Firstly, the newspaper has secured a deal with Press Association to supply its website with 200 video packages per week.

It has also signed an agreement with Octopus Media Technology to improve the presentation and distribution of video content.

According to the Independent, PA video journalists will provide 100 voiced video reports each week as well as 100 short clips to be displayed alongside the newspaper’s own articles.

“Working with PA and Octopus ensures that we have a platform that can deliver video to our userbase that is both flexible and integrated,” said Bill Swanson, managing director for digital at the Independent.

“The range of content also enables us to position the player in more areas of the site, it is the next step in our evolution as we continue to try and enhance the user experience and relevancy of our site.”

Liverpool Paper Makes TV Debut

2009-07-20T15:30:00.002+01:00

A live debate about unemployment has become the first programme made in the Liverpool Daily Post’s new digital TV studio.

The half-hour show was streamed live on the business section of the Daily Post’s website using Bambuser technology, reports HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk.

Viewers were invited to contribute by submitting comments in real-time to an accompanying live blog.

Business editor Bill Gleeson declared the online debate to represent “a big leap forward in terms of bringing the digital age to newspaper titles”.

He said: “In the run up to the programme, I looked at how 20 other UK and US newspapers did television, in terms of the standards of presentation, production and research.

“In all of these areas, ours was the best by a long way.”

Following the success of this first digital TV venture, LDP editor Mark Thomas announced that his team is already looking to produce similar offerings in the future.

“We are now working on developing a rolling programme of business debates in the same format and I think this has the potential to bring us in some significant new revenue in the months ahead.”

Mail Recruits Video Producer

2009-07-20T11:30:00.001+01:00

The Daily Mail is to boost its online video content thanks to a new deal with ITN On.

According to a press release, the multimedia group will supply the Mail Online with dozens of video packages each week covering national and international news.

The company will also provide dailymail.co.uk with video news reports featuring the latest sports, business and showbiz headlines.

“ITN On has demonstrated to us that they have high-quality content which is frequently unique,” said James Bromley, managing director of Mail Online.

He added: “We are looking forward to working with them to add video to even more of our stories.”

ITN On recently hit the headlines itself after it was revealed that ITN.com had cancelled its contract to supply video and multimedia content to the site.

[HT – Journalism.co.uk]

Why Newspapers Should Blog

2009-07-17T12:30:00.002+01:00

We’ll end the week with a slideshow from the Courier-Post which preaches the good word about blogging.

Submitted to SlideShare earlier this year, the presentation from the South Jersey title offers some valuable insights into the advantage of blogs for mainstream media groups.

It aims to provide “an overview of the Courier-Post’s blog publishing effort”, and to show “why blogs are important to the future of newspaper websites”.

Below is the detailed slideshow, which shows the evolution and effectiveness of blogs on the Courier-Post’s website.

Why Blogs Matter

View more presentations from tedmann.

Journalists Launch InvestigateWest

2009-07-16T15:30:00.001+01:00

A group of journalists has gone it alone and set up a website dedicated to investigative journalism.

The team behind the nonprofit InvestigateWest previously worked at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which went online-only in March this year.

Now they are calling the shots at their own news organisation, which is focusing on issues affecting healthcare, social justice and the environment in the western US and Canada.

According to the press release announcing the launch, InvestigateWest will distribute its text, video and online content via a syndicate service and through partnership deals with other media groups.

“InvestigateWest is a new model of public service journalism that seeks to fill the void rapidly developing in investigative coverage,” said Rita Hibbard, executive director and editor.

“Our goal is to produce journalism that empowers citizens and changes institutions. We will measure our success by the impact of our stories.”

InvestigateWest is funded by a mix of individual donations, contributions from companies and a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

The nonprofit group is also a founding member of the new Investigative News Network, which partners together more than 20 groups dedicated to investigative journalism.

EveryBlock Makes Code Available

2009-07-16T12:00:00.003+01:00

Hyperlocal news and info site EveryBlock has released its source code online.

This means thousands of news websites around the world can now make use of the technology to power their own location-based news services.

It is this code which has enabled EveryBlock (launched in January 2008) to provide a hyperlocal news and info service for some 15 cities across the US.

Visitors can search for news by postcode or area and can get access to civic records as well as breaking news stories.

The company also has a number of partnership deals with news groups, including the New York Times.

Announcing the release of the code on their blog, the EveryBlock founders said: “We hope this extensive code base helps spark lots of great work.”

Find out more on the Editors Weblog.

[HT – Martin Stabe]

How-To Videos On YouTube Channel

2009-07-15T15:30:00.003+01:00

A YouTube channel dedicated to online journalism is building its stock of videos from industry experts and practitioners.

Launched in April, the YouTube Reporters' Center already holds more than 30 videos offering tips on key aspects of digital journalism.

Categories include Expert Videos, Interviews and Profiles, Investigative Reporting, and Ethics, Law & Fact-Checking.

Among the industry insiders offering the benefit of their experience are veteran investigative reporter Bob Woodward, CBS news anchor Katie Couric, and HuffPost founder Arianna Huffington.

In addition to these general advice pieces, there are also technical instructional videos such as this one from Reuters.com about filming effective video interviews.

And this video from Bloomberg TV gives some valuable tips on how to tell a story with numbers.

YouTube says of the citizen reporting resource: “The YouTube Reporters’ Center is a new resource to help you learn more about how to report the news.”

Users Decide Blog’s Top Stories

2009-07-15T12:00:00.002+01:00

Users are in control of a city blog as they contribute the content and vote on it to create the homepage.

New York-based bloggers submit their posts to NYC.is, where visitors can then rate articles to promote them to the homepage.

Links to the most popular articles are distributed via email and social media sites such as Twitter.

According to NYC.is, “when you decide what’s on the front page, local news stops being boring”.

Site founder Susannah Vila told Editor & Publisher that the recommendation element makes her blog stand out in the crowd.

“The idea of democratising local media is the crux of the project.

“If it were not for the front page/upcoming design, the site would not be different enough from other projects in this space to make it worthwhile.”

Daily Express Tests New Site

2009-07-14T15:30:00.004+01:00

The Daily Express is seeking feedback on its redesigned website, now available in beta.

Visitors to express.co.uk are currently directed to this new beta version, but can still access the original site by selecting it from the home page.

After comparing and contrasting the two, users can go to the short survey and give their views on the changes.

Created by Netro42, the pilot website introduces category widgets on the homepage – such as Weather, TV Guide, Lifestyle – which can be collapsed by users to suit their interests.

The beta version also introduces a web search widget and a video player offering sporting highlights from the Ashes series, the Premier League, and international football.

Reviews of the beta site can be found on the Online Journalism Blog and on e-consultancy.com.

Murdoch Talks Down Micropayments

2009-07-14T12:00:00.002+01:00

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has ruled out micropayments as a standalone business model for online news.

In an interview with TheStreet.com, the News Corp chief executive said his company is still figuring out a viable model for generating revenue on the Web.

However, Murdoch revealed he’s not confident about the potential of micropayments to answer the paid content question.

“I don’t think people will pay for it. We’re still thinking our way through this and there will be micropayments as part of it, but I’m thinking much more along the lines of subscriptions like The Wall Street Journal does,” he said.

The News Corp chairman also pointed out that “no one monetises the Web today to any extent other than search,” and said he had “no idea” how a site like Twitter could turn interest into revenue.

In May, the News Corp-owned Wall Street Journal announced a new micropayment scheme for non-subscribers.

[Picture – Coin Stacks by Darren Hester on Flickr]

Twittering Reporter Earns Exclusive

2009-07-13T15:30:00.001+01:00

A journalist has stumbled upon an exclusive story thanks to a bunch of tweets exchanged with a contact.

Journalism.co.uk reports that the Edinburgh Evening News reporter had initially approached a fellow Twitterer to find out more about their involvement in the forthcoming festival.

However, causal mention of a body discovered in their block of flats led Victoria Raimes to follow up the lead and write a front-page exclusive on the incident.

Raimes revealed that the microblogging service has become a valuable story-finding tool since she joined the newspaper.

“Each week I pick up a page lead from Twitter ... I would encourage every regional journalist to use it,” she said.

Raimes, who has made contacts via her own account and the Twitter feed of the Evening News, also noted that the website enables journalists to get feedback on their work.

Asylum Piece Wins Multimedia Award

2009-07-13T12:00:00.004+01:00

A multimedia report revealing the plight of refused asylum seekers in the UK has won a photography award.

Still Human Still Here by freelancer Abbie Trayler-Smith has received first prize in the multimedia category of the Press Photographer’s Year 2009 competition.

The video uses still photos, moving images, text captions, audio excerpts from interviews and a soundtrack to tell the story of some of Britain’s most impoverished people.

All the elements work together to produce a captivating piece of photojournalism, which was posted to video-sharing site Vimeo four months ago.

Still Human Still Here - Refused asylum seekers in the UK. from panos pictures on Vimeo.

The report was produced by independent photo agency Panos Pictures and will be on view in an exhibition of all the winning entries at the National Theatre this summer.

Among the other 15 category winners were photographers from the BBC, Manchester Evening News, Getty Images and the Daily Mail.

[HT - HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk]