Results matching “if the vice pre”

Human Rights Watch has released a guidebook for the estimated 25,000 journalists traveling for to China to cover the Olympic games. The "survival guide" covers reporters' risks and rights, human rights issues outside the arena, tips on dealing with censorship and the police, protecting Chinese contacts, and the "Great Firewall" of internet censorship.

In 2001, Wang Wei, vice president of the Beijing Olympics organizing committee, said, "We will give the media complete freedom to report when they come to China."

This commitment was central to Beijing's successful '08 Olympic bid, having failed to win the 2000 Summer Games; however, China remains the leading jailer of journalists and continues to censor the internet and retaliate against citizen sources critical of the government.

The guidebook is available as a free download here.

Source: New York Times' Olympic blog, Rings

According to News & Record editor John Robinson, Kubler-Ross' model of accepting death can be applied to the current state of the newspaper industry in the US: it is time for acceptance.

In Kubler-Ross' model, the five stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

In April, Terry Heaton, AR & D's Media 2.0 senior vice president, said the industry was at the depression stage.

Now is time of acceptance - not of death though, but of the need for change.

Reporter and blogger Doug Fischer wrote that although it may seem that newspapers are dying, they would continue to "exist in radically different frequency and content."

Journalists need to deal with the economic reality and think about the challenges ahead, Robinson wrote.

"That means we understand how the world has changed, and we understand how our journalistic skills and assumptions must change. For instance, learning what it takes to be a digital journalist is vital. Reaching readers -- information consumers, really -- where, how and when they want it is good for journalism. Listening to and learning from them is even better," he said.
 
Two years ago, the Economist published a special report in which it said that the newspapers might survive in the long term if they "reinvent themselves on the Internet and on other new-media platforms such as mobile phones and portable electronic devices."

The situation of the US newspaper industry does seem critical, in light of the massive wave of layoffs in recent weeks and the overall advertising decline. But Robinson pointed out that future journalistic opportunities lie in microblogging, beat blogging and social networking. Journalism is, in his opinion, on the verge of attracting different customers.

Source: News-Record.com
 

Advertisers continue to spend a fraction of their online ad expenditure on video ads, even when millions of people watch online videos every day, but the business model for online video is starting to emerge. Editors are still seeking the most effective formats for online advertising.  

According to MediaShift, online video ads are "ready to bloom" thanks to:

-audience and ad inventory exploding on sites like Hulu or CNN Online
-standard advertising guidelines created by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) that would unify advertisers
-Google allowing longer independent films on YouTube to increase professional quality of content and allowing video producers to sell their ads
-small and medium businesses (SMBs) began using video ads, thanks to online Yellow Pages, Google's AdSense and video production start-ups like PixelFish and TurnHere

Short one-minute videos, similar to TV ads and infomercials, may sometimes be more effective for small businesses that don't have the resources to produce their own video ads. Video production companies like TurnHere provide documentary type video profiles created by independent producers.  

PixelFish, a popular video production company, has had 20 % average revenue increase every month in 2008, according to John McIntyre, CEO.

Video ad formats: pre-roll or not?

Video ads are interesting for newspapers, according to Eric Janssen, online director of Memphis newspaper Commercial Appeal. His newspaper has used various advertising formats but he said "advertorial formats work better from a selling perspective."

Bur advertisers "cringe" at the thought of investing 10 % in online video ads, even though they spend "thousands of dollars into TV without any real way to measure the effectiveness."

Short clips tend to work better with "non-interruptive" interactive overlays while longer clips tend to work better with pre-rolls.

Steve Safran, senior vice president of media consultancy group AR & D's Media 2.0 division, said that "pre-roll is dying." He mentioned that "overlays are an improvement" since they target viewers based on what they watch. "The way to sell video is by the demographic, one viewer at a time," he said.

As internet revenue for newspapers grows and their Web-based audience increases, it seems strange that advertisers don't follow, especially during the current newspaper ad revenue crisis.

Source: MediaShift

See also:

Ad-blocking software may threaten $40-billion-a-year online ad industry
US: The troubled economics of online advertising

In an innovative ploy, MySpace and NBC News are recruiting citizen journalists to cover the Democratic and Republican national conventions.

Anyone over 18 years old can apply by submitting a short video piece answering one of three reflective questions: "Why do you vote?" "Why are you the best person for this job?" Or "How will you stand out in the crowd and get the scoop no one else can?"

A panel of judges will select five finalists, and the Myspace Community will vote on the two winners. One winner will cover the Democratic National Convention; the other will cover the Republican National convention.

"In an election that has so engaged people," said Mark Lukasiewicz, vice president of digital media at NBC News, "It's right that we try to find ways to get original voices in the conversations around politics."

Source: THR.com through I Want Media

A New Yorker identified as Rick752 has come up with EasyList, Washington Post (WP) reported, which allows web users to filter and block all ads that may appear on their computer screens. While the situation is not "doomsday" just yet, there is a possibility that ad revenue from websites would decline if further improvements in ad-blocking software continue.

EasyList and Adblock Plus do not allow for any Internet ad form to seep through, including pop-up ads, in-page displayed ads and video.

Rick mentioned that it isn't a question of wanting the Web publishers to make less money and that he wouldn't have created the list if ads were less "annoying". According to him, "people really hate ads."

Both Rick and Wladimir Palant, who put Adblock together, did so for free.

Although ad-blocking software allows for de-cluttered Web surfing, it may pose a serious threat to web sites being financially sponsored by ads, according to WP.

For example, once ad-blockers are detected, the Daily Kos website says, "You're getting all the benefits of our site but we're not getting any of the advertisement revenue associated with your visits."

Rick faces a challenge when companies hide their content as ads, in which case he resorts to "whitelisting" addresses, the WP reported.

Vice President of public policy at the Interactive Advertising Bureau, Mike Zaneis, said that he doesn't think that the situation is problematic, because only a small percentage of Web surfers currently use ad blockers, WP reported.

Source: Washington Post

See Also:
2 unrelated observations related to the American newspaper industry


 

Electronic paper technology, one of the newspaper industry's most exciting innovations, could be available to newspapers as early as 2009. Ryosuke Kuwata, vice president of E Ink Corp's Asia Pacific region, revealed today in an interview that developers are getting close to unveiling the technology.

According to Kuwata, newspaper companies have made "significant moves over the past year" toward investing in the electronic newspaper. The first commercial e-paper, he says, will be tested toward the end of 2008 and launched sometime in the second half of 2009.  

Kuwata says US newspaper companies have been ahead of the game, pursuing electronic newspaper technology before Japanese companies. European papers, he says, have "just began to move."

Click here to read about electronic paper and how it could revolutionize the newspaper industry.

Source: TechOn.com through I Want Media

Google News cannot be compared to other news sites like Yahoo News or CNN.com, according to PaidContent.org.

Google News gathers content with the help of computers who scan news on the Web and does not contain any ads. Meanwhile, other news sites like CNN.com create licensed material that passes through editors.

Google News groups articles by subject and ranks article by importance based on factors like  authority of publisher or placement of article in site. NYT writes that Google "packages the results as a set of links, sending readers to the sites where the articles appear."

According to the New York Times, Google executives claim that traffic is not the primary aim but that Google News "helps the company produce better search results and helps users find news sources that they might not know about otherwise."

According to the NYT, the growth rate of Google News is only 10 %, compared to MSNBC.com's 42 %, which got the site 10.4 million in traffic.

Dan Gillmor, who is director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at the Arizona State University School of Journalism, said that he is surprised "how little" Google News "evolved, at least on the surface", NYT wrote.

Marissa Meyer, vice president for Google search and user experience, said that Google News is one of "the most innovative" Google features and that its users actively employ the  Google search engine  and other services, NYT wrote.

She also mentioned that news results do emerge on the main Google search page, alongside adverts.  According to Meyer, "it directly feeds the main business."

Google News is sometimes seen as a competitor to other news providers, even if it brings traffic to the news site. Industry executives, according to NYT, think that because Google News links to a remote article, the readers are not likely to stay on the news site.

According to Braig Moffett, a Sanford C; Bernstein & Copany analyst, the Internet "made it possible to aggregate news cheaply". Consequently, news providers stopped charging for content. "Google may be doing more to accelerate this trend than anyone, but they are not doing it out of malice,"  Moffett said.

Tribune Co. owner Samuel Zell accused Google of stealing news stories for their own gains. In Europe, Belgian prosecutors said that Google News had "violated copyright laws" without asking for permission to link to the articles, NYT reported.

Google said that the company wishes "to help, not hurt, journalism", NYT wrote. Its chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, said that the company has "a huge moral imperative" to aid news outlets in becoming more "successful online", NYT wrote.

Last year, several features were added, such as different country and language versions of Google News. The number of "duplicate articles" is being reduced, as "authoritative" and "original" news stories are being displayed, according to NYT.

There is also the chance to personalize Google News, by focusing on local news and mapping the news event sites on Google Earth. Users can also post comments and search quotes.

Different sides to the same story are being provided by the news search engine, helping to make people "wake up and think," said Krishna Bharat, the research scientist behind Google News. "That's what makes people news junkies," she added.

NYT wrote that even if there have been some innovations, Google News "still lacks many of the flashier features that have attracted users to more conventional news sites, including interactive graphics and video."

Analysts have begun to question automated products and their limitations. Mark Glaser, PBS MediaShift editor said, "there is only so far you can go with an algorithm" because , "in the long run, people want a human touch."

Source: PaidContent.org, New York Times

See Also:

8 efficient and visual ways to present your online news
How to maximize your site's visiility in Google search ranking

The Boston Globe announced Monday plans to incorporate geotagging technology into its website, Boston.com.

The technology, to be provided by MetaCarta Inc., will tag Boston.com content according to geographic location, allowing users to "zero in on locations that matter to them," said Bob Kempf, vice president of product at Boston.com.

Users will be able to search for content geographically and create their own localized services.

Check out some other geotagging efforts at Northcliffe Media and Archant currently underway.

Source: NewsandTech.com

To best adapt to the advent of the digital age, newspapers should target mobile platforms as a means of distributing information, writes Art Howe, CEO of Verve Wireless. Howe says that newspapers are best suited to the mobile platform, and vice versa.

"The paradox of mobile content is that the more local information is (and that's what newspapers can do best), the more valuable it is," Howe writes.

Howe believes that the mobile platform and the newspaper industry could enjoy a mutually symbiotic relationship. For mobile users, a newspaper's "institutional knowledge of the community" makes it best suited to provide the timely, hyperlocal news that readers seek.

And for newspapers, accessing the mobile network would allow them to tap into the world's largest, most lucrative advertising market.

"There are now 3.3 billion active cell phones on the planet. That's three times the number of people hooked into the regular Internet," Howe writes. "And, for a vast majority of young people - the ones whom newspapers desperately need to reach - mobile is the primary communication device."

For Howe, newspapers and mobile users are the perfect match.

"The world's cell phone carriers see their future primarily as a provider of data services," he writes, "Exactly the kind of news, reviews, photos, social guidance, and advertising that newspapers happen to have available."

Source: Editor and Publisher

The Corpus Christi (Texas) Caller-Times and The Bakersfield Californian are two daily locals that, largely by supporting user-generated content, buck the trend observed by Amy Gahran, of the Poynter Institute, to move away from local coverage. The papers have developed loyal and growing audiences.

Bakersfield.com began hosting weblogs two years ago and since its launch, has become home to 1,192 individual bloggers, 314 of which are updated within the last three months. Community content now represents 18 percent of Bakerfield.com's traffic. Logan Molen, vice president of the Californian's interactive media said, "It is easily the fastest growing source of traffic for us."

The Caller-Times, in turn, garners around 560 comments a day - a number enviable by many larger papers - and especially impressive for a paper with a 54,000 daily circulation.
 
"One day earlier this month a Corpus businessman was shot while cycling before work. A check of the digital back fence showed 56 people had commented on the paper's coverage by noon. Acts of troubling random violence aside, a story on summer jobs had drawn 33 comments, and the newspaper's columnists each seemed to draw a healthy handful. In fact, of all the local stories on the website that day, more had comments than didn't," notes the Readership Institute.

Caller-Times Editor Libby Averyt addresses readers regularly in a column, and listens to their feedback. Wheen readers mourned the dropping of a popular comic strip, the paper reversed the decision and when the paper stopped printing the TV book, the paper smoothed over complaints with a compromise of a stand-alone section of trimmed-down listings.

Local-focus, with locally generated content has led the Caller-Times to be able to cite year over year increases in paid print circulation (up 0.25 percent daily, 0.18 Sunday, according to FAS-FACS).

Sources: Readership Institute, Poynter Institute
 

After the Associated Press filed take down notices against community-created Drudge Retort, arguing copyright violations for quotes from 33 to 79 words long, the blogosphere responded with vehemence.

Bloggers boycotted referencing or linking to Associated Press articles and a website for the "UnAssociated Press" was founded.

Following the backlash, on Saturday the AP retreated, but didn't recant, saying it was "heavy-handed," but has not withdrawn its take down requests.

The AP will now "attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt without infringing on The A.P.'s copyright," Jim Kennedy, vice president and strategy director of the AP.

"The A.P.'s effort to impose some guidelines on the free-wheeling blogosphere, where extensive quoting and even copying of entire news articles is common, may offer a prominent definition of the important but vague doctrine of 'fair use,' which holds that copyright owners cannot ban others from using small bits of their works under some circumstances," observed The New York Times.

Sources: Editor & Publisher, The New York Times

After disappointing sales in 2007, when advertising expenditures saw the tiniest uptick of 0.2%, it looks like the first quarter of 2008 will tell the same story. According to a Wednesday report from TNS Media Intelligence, spending has risen just 0.6%.

Newspapers took the biggest hit, with ad sales falling 5.2%. Radio was not far behind, with a 4.5% drop. Even typically robust sectors of the media industry showed signs of slowing. Cable television was up only 4.1%--for all of 2007, it rose 6.5%--and Internet display advertising grew just 8.5%  - a dramatic tumble from 2007's 15.9%.

In a recent interview with Forbes, Google CEO Eric Schmidt was asked how the company - which currently relies heavily on search advertising -- will continue to profit. Schmidt noncommittally replied, "The goal of the company isn't to monetize everything. The goal of the company is to change the world."

A lofty statement - and true sentiment - but for most newspapers, it's difficult to change the world without some pocket money.

Joe Swallen, senior vice president of research at TNS Media, predicted the second quarter will continue quarter one's trend, as consumers continue to cut spending and marketers follow suit.

"Consumers are the ultimate engine behind the advertising economy," said Swallen. "As long as the current economic situation is as pessimistic or cautious as it is, it's unlikely there's going to be a resumption of robust spending."

Sources: Crain's New York through IwantMedia, Forbes

It isn't a secret that the American newspaper industry is experiencing difficult times, as core print revenues and circulation are falling. Many think that online news, which has been accompanied by double-digit online advertising growth in recent years, can make up for the decline in print. But several studies and articles think otherwise.

"The Web audience is growing at a great clip, while print circulation is not. And online revenues are growing faster, too, albeit from a smaller base. If the trend continues, there's little doubt that -- "eventually" -- online becomes the main business," said Bill Keller, the New York Times Executive Editor, in a 2007 interview with IwantMedia.

But as sanguinity faces off with the numbers, perhaps we shouldn't hold our breath for "eventually."

Internet revenue is growing -- in 2003, newspapers collected a mere $1.2 billion from online advertising; last year the figure was nearly $2.7 billion. "We're growing at a double-digit rate," said Randy Bennett, of the Newspaper Association of America.

But there's a problem. Scott Karp, of Publishing 2.0, has dubbed it the "10% problem." Karp explains that looking at New York Times print and web circulation numbers, "What you find, with some modest rounding, is that print circulation is about 10% of total audience reach, while online advertising revenue is 10% of total ad revenue -- the economics are nearly the perfect inverse of what they should be."

Why, as audiences shift to the web, are advertisers not following?

Although newspaper websites are attracting a lot of visitors, they aren't keeping them there.

According to the American Journalism Review (AJR), the typical visitor to nytimes.com, which attracts over 10 percent of the entire newspaper industry's online traffic, spent an average of just 34 minutes and 53 seconds browsing its extensive editorial and interactive offerings in October. That's 34 minutes and 53 seconds per month - just 68 seconds per day online. By contrast, according to Scarborough Research, print readers report spending 16 minutes a day with their newspapers.

And as small as 68 seconds a day is -- it's actually about three times longer than the average of the next nine largest newspaper sites.

Although a minority of news hounds linger on the sites, Greg Harmon, director of Belden Interactive, estimates that as many as 60 percent of online newspaper visitors are "fly-bys," people who use the site briefly and irregularly. "Everyone has the same problem," explains Jim Brady, editor of washingtonpost.com. The news industry's continuing challenge, Brady says, is to turn "visitors into residents."
 
Thomas E. Patterson, of Harvard University, who has conducted a yearlong study of 160 news sites, also offers an intriguing, if not unsettling, theory: the web is a fundamentally different way of viewing information, and as such, web ads may not be as effective as the traditional kind. "I'm not sure [advertisers] are convinced yet about how t