WAN-IFRA launches World Newspapers Congress in India

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.

Can Google Wave transform journalism?

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)

Social Media: selling to your "friends"

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.

Facebook tip-off leads to front-page story

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."

Facebook Makes Friends -- and Money

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.

News Media & Facebook Strategy

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.

Indy Unveils Politics Twitter App

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.”

Top Of The News Tweets

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

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.

Interactive Coverage For Jacko Tribute

Social media sites joined with mainstream news groups on Tuesday to offer interactive coverage of the Michael Jackson memorial concert.

Live video was accompanied by real-time comments from fans on the websites of many broadcasters – including CNN, ABC News and msnbc.

Twitter was the social media tool of choice for msnbc.com, which aggregated tweets (powered by Tinker) alongside streamed video footage from the Staples Center in Los Angeles.



New product development director Cory Bergman said that the online coverage represented “a first for both Twitter and msnbc.com on a large-scale news event”.

Meanwhile, both CNN and ABC News opted for Facebook Connect to draw fans to their live video stream.



According to Mashable, the interactive coverage on CNN.com attracted a total audience of almost ten million and thousands of updates from Facebook users.

In an interview for CNN, Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg talks about her company’s involvement in the broadcaster's coverage of the event.

Northcliffe Unveils Local UGC Sites

The first batch of Northcliffe’s user-generated content community websites has gone live.

A total of 23 areas in the south-west of England are covered by the network of websites listed on the localpeople.co.uk hub page.



Towns covered by the UGC sites include: Newton Abbot, Falmouth, Dorchester and Weston Super Mare.

HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk reports that the new sites are devoted entirely to content from users and are monitored by paid community publishers rather than journalists.

The community publishers are tasked with encouraging visitors to submit their own news and notices and with moderating content.



The director of strategy at Associated Northcliffe Digital said the new sites will complement the company’s established network of news websites, which cover larger areas.

“Our view is that while these sites are quite complementary to the thisis sites they are actually quite different,” said Roland Bryan.

“They are not news-led propositions, they are community-led propositions.”

He also stated that the websites will “create a genuinely user-generated approach to local content, giving local people an online forum to discuss and debate relevant issues with other locals, and shape opinion in their community”.

The network launch was announced by Northcliffe back in May, when the company also revealed that a further 20 sites are to be unveiled later this year.

Find out more about the network of community sites at localpeople.co.uk.

Next Step Journalism

The death of Neda Soltani, the young Iranian woman who has become the tragic human face of the nation's post-election turmoil, demonstrates the process involved in what Bill Mitchell of the Poynter Institute calls "next step journalism."

A distraught bystander captured video of the killing on his phone and e-mailed it to a friend in the Netherlands. Within five minutes, the video was on YouTube and Facebook -- and became international news.

Mitchell says our news increasingly will be shaped by a similar process, one that begins with an event and is characterized by the collective sharing and enhancing of information. The process "provides lots of opportunities for journalists and non-journalists alike to assess what a story needs next, figure out what he or she is best equipped to contribute, and move the story along."

In Soltani's story, he identifies seven elements of this kind of storytelling, some more in need of professional journalism skills and values than others. Their common thread is the importance of collaboration.

* Documentation: Two cell phone videos captured the crucial moments after Soltani was shot Saturday evening, including the frantic efforts to save her. The low resolution of the videos and chaotic movement of the cell phone cameras did not get in the way of telling this critical part of the story, Mitchell points out.

* Context: The videos left many questions unanswered. But Soltani's fiance provided some context in an interview broadcast by Aljazeera, describing her views on recent events in Iran and explaining why she happened to be on that street corner.

* Transmission and Distribution: It was initially unclear how the videos made their way from the street corner to Facebook and YouTube. The Guardian filled in the details above. Other information came from The New York Times and the CBS Evening News, among others.

* Verification: Some of the initial postings about the shooting included a message from someone identifying himself as a physician who said he witnessed the shooting and tried to save her. A series of tweets and re-tweets from around the world confirmed this information and identified the doctor.

* Correction: Some of the details distributed on the day of the shooting, such as the identity of a man standing near Soltani, turned out to be wrong. Within two days, a Los Angeles Times correspondent had tracked down the man and identified him as her music teacher.

* Analysis: Mitchell says the best analysis he has seen of the significance of Soltani's death has come from journalists, particularly highlighting an essay on Time.com by Robin Wright.

* Sense-making: "It's still too early in the Neda story for anyone to be able to provide the perspective and wisdom required by this stage the process," Mitchell writes. "Who will do it best? Journalists? That physician who tried to save Neda? Historians?"

More important than the who is the what, he concludes. This tragic story "has taught us plenty about what this kind of storytelling will require -- and what it can produce."

Twittering from Tehran

What the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 was to blogs, Iran's election crisis may be to Twitter: the moment when the value of a new publishing platform as a vital source of on-the-scene updates becomes clear.

The social networking site "has shown itself perfectly suited to a fast-moving situation where there is a thirst for snatches of information in real time," writes the Guardian's Esther Addley.

Foreign journalists have been expelled from Iran, confined to their hotel rooms or forbidden from covering the protests. But web users around the world have turned to their counterparts in Iran, who have become "the eyes of the world."

Twitter has been at the heart of Iran's resistance since last Friday's contested election -- so much so that earlier this week, the site's owners postponed routine maintenance until a time when Iranians, rather than Americans, would be in bed. The U.S. State Department had asked for the change, though Twitter officials say they made the decision independently as awareness grew that "events in Iran were tied directly to the growing significance of Twitter as an important communication and information network."

However, the crisis also has highlighted some of the problems with Twitter. Iranian authorities have been closing servers through which the site is accessed. And the risk of impersonation is high. People outside the country are pretending to be inside, while rumours suggest Iranian authorities are posing as ordinary citizens sympathetic to the government. It is nearly impossible to verify the provenance of Twitter feeds, Addley writes, "and traditional media have used unsourced material from the site with extreme caution."

In addition to Twitter, YouTube has been a critical tool to disseminate videos from Iran, New York Times reporters Mark Landler and Brian Stelter write. The BBC’s Persian-language television channel said that on Tuesday, it was receiving as many as five videos a minute from amateurs, even though the channel is largely blocked within Iran.

"We’ve been struck by the amount of video and eyewitness testimony," said BBC World News Editor Jon Williams. "The days when regimes can control the flow of information are over."

Savvy Socialising

Journalists' rapidly increasing use of Twitter and Facebook is making editors at some newspapers a little nervous, Editor & Publisher reports.

The Wall Street Journal this week expanded its conduct guidelines to include a number of online-related restrictions, including warnings not to "friend" confidential sources or get into Web-based arguments with critics. Other newspapers also have issued new ground rules. For instance, the Los Angeles Times has a lengthy list of "social media" guidelines emphasizing that staffers are linked to the paper when they engage in online activities. "Assume that everything you write or receive on a social media site is public and knowable to everyone with access to a computer," states one guideline.

The L.A. Times actually is among the most active U.S. newspapers on Twitter, with nearly 150 accounts, half of them by individual reporters and other news staffers. "We understand people need to be more casual to fit in to that culture," says Andrew Nystrom, the Times' senior producer for social media. "We encourage them to say what is on their minds, and that gets a better response."

Other editors also say they want staffers to have a casual, open approach. And still others admit they aren't sure how to police social media outlets without curtailing their usefulness.

"I have asked people to use common sense and respect the workplace and assume whatever they tweet will be tied to the paper," said Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, who started tweeting (sparingly) himself just last week. "Even when they are tweeting personal information to their followers, they are still representing The New York Times."

Keller's paper has not established specific rules for Twitter and Facebook, but staff workshops have been held to teach reporters the best use of Twitter. Perhaps the reporter who posted information from an internal staff meeting to her own Twitter account earlier this week -- Tweets that turned into stories for, among others, the Guardian -- missed that meeting.

Social Media Matter

Use of social media in the UK has skyrocketed over the past year, and using it wisely can mean big boosts to website traffic, according to presenters at the Digital Editors Network meeting in Preston this week.

One in 10 UK internet users now visits a social networking site -- they have overtaken both porn and shopping! -- and the sites account for about one in every five page views, Robin Goad of Hitwise said. Facebook is by far the most popular, with a 41.2% market share.

Patrick Altoft, the director of search for Leeds-based Branded3, stressed the use of applications such as Digg to boost the number and quality of links to a website. Those links can significantly enhance search engine rankings and overall traffic; for instance, he said, the Guardian has nearly 16 million links pointing to its content.

Altoft, whose DEN presentation is available online, highlighted the emphasis on Digg at successful national news websites such as the Telegraph's; he said telegraph.co.uk gets around 2.2 million users a month -- more than 70,000 a day -- from social media links and another 8.3 million from searches.

Twitter also can be extremely influential. Altoft said CNN.com has 1.4 million followers; other major media, inluding the BBC and the Guardian, have hundreds of thousands.

Being first to post a story makes a difference -- Google News, for instance, includes a "freshness" algorithm that gives priority to the latest version of a breaking story -- but so does promoting it. The first 30 minutes are critical, Altoft said; he urged media organizations to create an automated promotion network that draws on social networking tools to boost visibility and interest.

Northcliffe Set to Trial Hyperlocal Sites

Thirty new local Northcliffe sites combining citizen journalism, blogging and Facebook-style social networking will go live next month, according to an item posted to journalism.co.uk.

The initial six-month trial of hyperlocal websites will target towns with populations of 10,000 to 40,000 people that currently have no dedicated local newspaper or website, said Seamus McCauley, strategic analyst at Associated Northcliffe Digital.

"There is a real fear in the journalism industry about the future of local newsgathering. This at the moment is our hope for the answer," McCauley told an audience at City University. "In every town, there will already be a person who writes match reports for football games, businesses who like to talk about their work, churches who host events every week. We want to co-ordinate that activity."

He said the sites will be overseen by "community publishers", whose role will be to keep discussion live and active, oversee content, and provide fresh information. "To make this work, it's crucial to have people on the ground who can find, generate and curate the content," McCauley said.

The sites will be powered by social networking software and by Northcliffe's own news generation facilities. A central moderation team will monitor output across the network and advise the community publishers.

The 30 sites scheduled to launch in June will be concentrated in the southwest of England, from Gloucestershire to Cornwall, including 10 towns around Bristol.

McCauley said the new hyperlocal sites would not compete with its existing network of regional websites under the "thisis" brand. Northcliffe also publishes a series of postcode sites, automatically fed by content from a local title.

"In every town, sooner or later a big issue comes up, and local people will try and knock up a website very quickly. We want to set up these sites so that when an issue arises, they're already there," he said. "But they will also be a place to discuss minor issues and news. Newswires don't localise to that level, and there are no aggregators that provide anything sensible for smaller towns.

"The question is, can we get a certain proportion of a town's population onto each site? This launch will show us."

Best Ways To Share Blog Posts

Social media, texting and Instant Messaging all make Mashable’s list of the Top 20 Ways to Share a Great Blog Post.

Writer Ben Parr points out that there’s a whole host of ways to share blog posts with friends and strangers on the Web, so he's put together a list of Mashable’s 20 favourites.


On the social media side, this includes microblogging site Twitter, social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, and social news sites like Digg and Reddit.

Suggestions also include spreading the word about a good blog post by blogging about it yourself, sharing the link with friends via Google’s RSS reader or sending the link to blogging platforms such as tumblr and posterous.


TwitThat, it installs a bookmarklet into a browser to enable one-click posting to Twitter feed, also merits a mention and so does ping.fm, which sends links to multiple social media accounts at once.

And not forgotten is sharing via texts – using the text share option under articles – or posting the link to friends via Instant Messaging.

Check out the full 20 on Mashable.

Telling The G20 Story With Social Media

News reporting via Twitter and AudioBoo became the norm last week as journalists used social media tools to tell the story of the G20 Summit in London.

The majority of the mainstream media got in on the action as social media software provided an ideal way for field-based reporters to provide real-time updates on events at the summit and on the streets of the City.

According to BBC tech correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones: “It does seem as though just about everyone involved in G20 - from the politicians to the journalists, from bloggers to demonstrators - has been snapping, filming recording everything in site and uploading it to the web to share with the world.”

Several online newspapers provided coverage using CoverItLive blogs, including Times Online and Sky News.

On the Sky live blog, correspondents sent text updates and links to photos uploaded to TwitPic.

Meanwhile, the Times Online’s live blog featured embedded photos and eye-witness posts from members of the public.



On Guardian.co.uk, award-winning blogger Dave Hill posted regular updates to his London blog about the action on the ground at the Bank of England.

And the BBC offered multimedia coverage through its Live Map, which linked to geotagged video, text and photographic content.



The BBC also pulled together links to all its G20 related content on a Live Text Page which featured links to news articles and blog posts from journalists as they were published.

An abundance of content from citizen journalists appeared throughout the day on content-sharing sites such as Flickr, and a group of students from London’s City University used their mobiles and social media tools to provide extensive coverage of the street protests (HT – cybersoc.com).

For more on this, journalism.co.uk and the BBC’s dot.life blog have round-ups of how social media was used by the mainstream and alternative media during last week’s events.

The Power Of Networks

Here’s an interesting slideshow about the impact of digital networking upon the ways we communicate in the modern era.

It’s taken from a presentation recently given by David Armano, the vice president of Experience Design at Critical Mass and a new media blogger.

The Micro-Sociology of Networks considers social media and networking, participatory journalism, blogging, and branding among many other aspects of the digital age.

The Micro-Sociology of Networks

View more presentations from David Armano.

[HT – cybersoc.com]

Site Launching Business Social Network

A New York newspaper is set to launch a social network channel aimed at small businesses.

The New York Daily News has announced that it is working with social media platform provider SaleSpider.com to create the service.

According to the Editors Weblog, the social network will enable some 500,000 companies to communicate with one another as part of a networked community.

“By providing an active community and business support system, it is our goal to offer a sustainable service to help them cope with these difficult economic times and help them build for their future,” said Marc Kramer, chief executive at the Daily News.

The president of its project partner added that this kind of offering will benefit online advertisers as it should give them “greater reach”.

Russell Rothstein also noted that the small business social network could become “a model for the newspaper industry to increase revenue within the digital business demographic”.