Results matching “majority of ame”

Yahoo News Japan reports it has now joined the likes of Wikipedia and Google's Knol in offering user-generated content in its "Editable related section", allowing other readers to suggest and edit material using their "expert knowledge", reports the European Journalism Centre.

The sources may be outside of Yahoo and may even be in other languages. However, Yahoo's influence in Japan implies that the majority of referenced content "is its own anyway".

The way in which Yahoo Japan differs from its US counterparts is that user editors have to apply for the non-paid position and take a test to distinguish the "sheep" from the "goats".

Japan's Yahoo only retains the name in common with US Yahoo.

Source: European Journalism Centre, Tech Radar

See also:

Yahoo! aims to be "number one" independent news source
Opinion: Is Google closer to becoming a media company after releasing Knol
Knol could learn from predecessors

More than half, or 53%, of PR professionals see print coverage as more valuable than online. This is suprising as the majority of consumer surveys indicate that online is the more  influential mediun.

Furthermore, it is not only the PRs who prefer print, but so do their clients. Nearly 64% of PRs believe their clients prefer print coverage to online, television or radio. 53% of PRs believe their stakeholders are more influenced by print coverage than television, online or radio.

According to the survey performed by Parker, Wayne & Kent survey. They prefer the permanence of print. The fact you can hold it in your hand and turn the page.
 
PRs strongly believe that print coverage is still highly relevant, with only 11.7% seeing it becoming less relevant to PR campaigns.

Parker, Wayne & Kent's results seem to conflict with a recent report by PR company Fleishman-Hillard which said that online is eight times as influential as traditional print media and twice as influential as TV.

Source: Brand Republic
 

Al-Akhbar, a daily newspaper that "refuses to be a collection of political statements without any clear criteria of value," according to its business editor Mohammed Zebib, stands out on the newstands in Lebanon. While the majority of newspapers have political photgraphs on the front page and a traditional format, Al-Akhbar's innovative design makes it eye catching.



Al-Akhbar, which started as a thin 24 pages daily in 2006, has now taken the format of an attractive 40 page tabloid newspaper. However, its main differentiation with other Arab publications is its content. Instead of focusing exclusively on political issues, it deals with social, cultural and economical matters.

There are other fundamental differences between al-Akhbar and the rest of the Lebanese newspapers, in terms of work structure, content and style, editorial line, and financial issues. Mohammad Zebib says that Al-Akhbar is the only Lebanese newspaper that works according to a strict layout, which requires more work and is similar to the way Western newspapers work.

The newspaper avoids using agency news and instead fills its pages with signed articles, investigations, and features. "It's a new way of doing journalism", says editor-in-chief Khaled Saghieh.

Al-Akhbar also distinguishes itself from the Arab written press with a clear separation between the financial side (advertising, marketing and finance) and the newspaper and editorial aspect.

In two years time, the daily has become the third most read newspaper in Lebanon. However, the Lebanese market is small and their readership does not reach 10,000 readers a day. Al-Akhbar claims that its online edition has over 300,000 unique visitors per month.

The daily's next project is to expand its market to Qatar in order to reach the Gulf countries.

Source: Menassat

Nicolas Kristof, of the New York Times, recently posted in his On the Ground blog, "Here at The New York Times, we still have all of our foreign bureaus -- partly because our strategy is to compete for readers who seek international news and analysis -- but most newspapers and TV networks have been pulling back. Only four American newspapers now have foreign desks."

Demotix, a new citizen journalism site, has been launched to fill the gap created when the vast majority of news outlets rely on press releases and wire services.

The site, somewhat uniquely, is trying to position itself as an intermediary for photojournalists, a source bank where media outlets can select images, buy them (for between $80-$1,600) and the site splits the revenue from the photo with the citizen photographer who uploaded it.

Source: On the Ground, New York Times blog

Freelance journalists and the UK's National Union of Journalists (NUJ) criticized magazine publisher Bauer's new contract, PressGazette.co.uk reported. The contract, which deals mainly with copyright issues, was called one of the "harshest" to-date by NUJ.

The document obliges freelancers to sign away their copyright and may leave them fully responsible for the work in a legal context.

"To grab the freelancer's copyright for a one-off fee is bad enough, but to expect the freelance to then indemnify the publisher simply adds potentially ruinous injury to injury," said John Toner, NUJ's freelance organizer.

The document also requires that the freelancers ask interviewees to sign away the copyright for any photographs they provide.

The NUJ approached Bauer, and the publisher is trying "to clarify the concerns that have been raised". The firm also mentioned that the rights issue that the contract addresses is not uncommon and may be found in the "Terms & Conditions" of the majority of publishers.

Source: PressGazette.co.uk

Nielsen Online has reported that more than 80% of online newspapers in the top 30 recorded increases in the number of unique visitors for the month of June, compared to the same month a year ago.

There were some exceptions, including the Houston Chronicle -- which fell 44% in June -- and Ottaway Newspapers, falling 30%, however,  the majority enjoyed significant increases. New York's Daily News Online jumped 109% year-over-year in June to 3.8 million uniques. Newsday increased uniques by 73% to 3.0 million visitors, and monthly uniques at Village Voice Media was up 70% to 2.2 million.

Below is the list of the top 30 newspaper Web sites provided by Nielsen. The percent change compares June 2008 uniques with June 2007 uniques.

NYTimes.com -- 17,650 -- 41%
USATODAY.com -- 9,626 -- 12%
Washingtonpost.com -- 9,062 -- 11%
Wall Street Journal Online -- 6,441 -- 52%
L.A. Times -- 6,190 -- 21%

Boston.com -- 5,226 -- 23%
Chicago Tribune -- 4,920 -- 58%
New York Post -- 4,617 -- 51%
Daily News Online Edition --- 3,803 -- 109%
SFGate.com/San Francisco Chronicle -- 3,621 -- (-8%)

Newsday -- 3,031 -- 73%
Atlanta Journal-Constitution -- 2,733 -- (-4%)
Chicago Sun-Times -- 2,669 -- 34%
International Herald Tribune -- 2,454 -- 54%
The Politico -- 2,437 -- 43%

Village Voice Media -- 2,217 -- 70%
DallasNews.com - The Dallas Morning News -- 2,213 -- 26%
The Houston Chronicle -- 2,158 -- (-44%)
Seattle Post-Intelligencer -- 1,925 -- 4%
The Seattle Times -- 1,924 -- 42%

Star Tribune -- 1,844 -- 55%
MercuryNews.com -- 1,669 -- 48%
Azcentral.com -- 1,621 -- (-8%)
tampabay.com -- 1,579 -- 16%
MLive.com -- 1,578 -- 80%

The San Diego Union-Tribune -- 1,554 -- 51%
NJ.com -- 1,539 -- 0%
Ottaway Newspapers -- 1,485 -- (-30%)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel -- 1,450 -- 33%
KansasCity.com -- 1,447 -- 33%

Source: Editor & Publisher

Web audiences outside the UK helped move The Telegraph online to beat The Guardian as the UK's number one news site, and now, The Telegraph is looking to turn those numbers into pounds - by finding advertisers in the territories of new readers.
 
Telegraph.co.uk, whose readership has grown 153 percent in the last year, has a more international audience than guardian.co.uk and draws just 34 percent of their online readers from the UK. The Guardian online, which has grown just 22.5 percent in the last year, draws more than 41 percent of users from the UK.

Despite numbers suggesting the majority of readers are from outside the UK, "Newspaper groups have traditionally tied themselves to a single ad network to sell all of their international online inventory," said Cameron Yuill, AdGent 007's founder and chief executive.

As worldwide audiences grow, the Telegraph Media Group's partnership with AdGent 007, a global digital advertising services company, means the Telegraph will no longer be tethered to UK advertisers and will be able to exploit their audience's advertising potential to its fullest.

Source: Guardian.co.uk
 

The Los Angeles Times' website drew 115 million page views in June, just short of its all-time traffic record of 120 million PV set in May.

A quick glance at the list of most-read stories and most-viewed multimedia features in June gives a good idea of readers' favorite topics of interest - namely a push towards celebrity news and away from global issues and traditionally important topics such as the general elections. The lists also show that, despite newspapers' widespread emphasis on blogs and videos, these platforms still account for a minimal share of total traffic.

Furthermore, these lists provide some indications about how reader interests may vary from one platform to the other (news, blogs, videos, picture galleries).

If one supposes that latimes.com readership isn't too significantly different from average online newspaper readership, then these numbers hint toward which formats work best for different topics (Skip to 'Insights' for a brief summary).

Text - Top articles:

1. Alex Kozinski suspends L.A. obscenity trial after conceding his website had sexual images (Scott Glover)
2. Mega-mansions are L.A.'s really big show (Jessica Garrison)
3. Oliver Stone and 'W.,' a story of President Bush (John Horn)
4. Fourth day of triple digits sends crowds to L.A. pools, beaches  (Tami Abdollah)
5. Packing in public: Gun owners tired of hiding their weapons embrace 'open carry' (Nicholas Riccardi)
6. Envisioning a world of $200-a-barrel oil (Martin Zimmerman)
7. Judge orders TMZ to remove sex tape of actor Verne Troyer (Harriet Ryan)
8. Lakers have a collapse for the ages (Mike Bresnahan)
9. Offshore oil drilling opponents are rethinking (Richard Simon and Bob Drogin)
10. Obama leads in battle for Latino vote (Peter Wallsten)


The first thing that strikes us when looking at the list is how few stories relate to 'global' issues or to the general elections in the US: ranked 6 is a column about rising oil prices and the only story directly related to the elections is ranked 10. The majority of stories have mostly local relevance about Los Angeles.

(Only) one of the top 10 stories concerns sports - a usually strong section for most newspaper websites although June isn't the biggest season for sports in the US - and the Lakers' basketball team's demise in the championship finals.

The top three stories (and 7) revolve, more or less closely, around issues of sex and the cult of celebrities and entertainment. Number 3 is a story about the making-of Oliver Stone's latest movie about President George W. Bush. Granted, considering Los Angeles' prime location in the movie and celebrity industry, it isn't particularly surprising that many latimes.com readers are going for those stories.

But this doesn't necessarily mean that readers of latimes.com news articles prefer 'softer' content compared to readers of other online newspapers. In fact, this distribution is probably representative of a move towards celebrity news by mainstream media and the audience in general.

Limitations: This is a very cursive overview of readers' favorite topics for news stories only looking at the top 10. A more in-depth study would possibly show that while a few select individual stories about sex and celebrities receive many hits, the sections for 'hard' news (World, Business, National) on the whole generate substantially more traffic than Entertainment.

Top blogs:

1. Top of the Ticket  -- 1,743,178 PV
2. The Dish Rag  -- 1,437,462 PV
3. L.A. Land --  652,605 PV
4. Lakers Blog      
5. Show Tracker                
6. L.A. Now         
7. Technology Blog (first month out, and in the top ten)       
8. Gold Derby      
9. Web Scout      
10. Countdown to Crawford (launched June 17)


Now a look at the top-10 list of blogs gives a more intricate perspective: compared to news stories, the blog format seems to draw more readers to 'serious' topics such as politics and the general elections.

The political blog Top of the Ticket is in the lead, and Countdown to Crawford (a blog that covers the final steps of the elections) has made it to the list although it was only launched in mid-June. Ranked 6, L.A. Now covers general news about California.

It may seem counter-intuitive that readers prefer the blog format, usually associated with a more conversational tone and less formality, to read stories about politics. On the other hand, this preference could also be explained by the fact that those readers precisely prefer a format open to opinion and debate to read about those topics. Since blogs typically allow for more author disclosure, they can also be seen as a more transparent medium.

The last two blogs revolve around technology and developments in the digital landscape, a thematic that was absent from the Top 10 news stories.

Limitations: Again, this is hardly a scientific procedure, and the top 10 blogs on latimes.com account for less than 5% of total page views on the site. To put this in further perspective, five of the ten blogs relate to 'softer' content - three revolve around celebrities and the movie industry - one is about the Lakers and number 3 is a blog about real estate (note the parallel with the news story about mansions ranking 2).

Furthermore, The Dish Rag, ranked 2, is edging close to Top of the Ticket, so that in reality the number of users consulting LA Times blogs for soft and hard news is probably equivalent.

Pictures - Top photo galleries:

1.  Celebrity and sports collide in L.A.
2.  Universal Studios fire
3.  Celebrities' real names revealed (Denise Martin and Stephanie Lysaght)
4.  Hollywood hunks before they were hot (Elizabeth Snead)
5.  Celebrities by The Times
6.  Celebrity shots
7.  Midwest flooding
8.  Top 9 cars women buy more than men
9.  Hollywood's unwedded bliss list (Elizabeth Snead)
10. R-rated firsts (Susan King)

Unsurprisingly, the list of most popular photo galleries is also dominated by celebrities, even more so than for news stories or blogs (seven out of ten).

Of the three remaining picture galleries, two are big general news stories with obviously strong visual content: ranked 2 is the Universal Studios fire and ranked 7 is a gallery about floods in the Midwest.

Video - Top videos:

1. Dogs orphaned in China's quake find a home - 132,239 streams - AP
2. LAPD goes green: Maya Sanchez reports - 112,375 streams - KTLA
3. Tsvangirai on Mugabe - AP
4. Local update: Moe the chimp escapes cage -  KTLA
5. Amanda Beard heads to Omaha for her fourth Olympic swim - LAT
6. 17-year-old decapitated by Six Flags ride - AP
7. Australia marks Iraq withdraw with parade - AP
8. Evening update: USC student sentenced to time served in baby's death - KTLA
9. Fires grip parts of California - AP
10. Bush pleased with war spending bill - AP

The top-10 list for videos also delivers its share of lessons. First of all, despite newspapers' wild rush to boost video content, videos generate a limited amount of traffic compared to most text stories.

Many of the videos in the list are 'soft', but don't relate to entertainment especially. Instead, they are often emotionally-driven (dogs orphaned in China, 17-year old girl decapitated at a fair park). A lot of these popular videos are visual anecdotes with a potential for virality (Moe the chimp escapes cage).

'Hard' news, ie. a Congress debate about legislation or a business acquisition, does not typically constitute a popular pick for videos, as it is often poor visually.

The majority of successful video content is syndicated, generally provided by the Associated Press (only one of the top 10 videos was produced by the LA Times). Considering the average PVs for videos, and although CPMs for video ads are usually higher than for regular PVs, it is still often (too) costly for newspapers to produce their own quality videos.

Insights

In short, here are some of the insights brought by latimes.com's Top-10 lists:

- The Los Angeles Times has strongly emphasized 'soft' news, which is becoming increasingly popular among regular news stories.
- On the other hand, its blogs seem to attract many viewers interested by politics - although half of the blogs in the list deal with lighter content.
- The blog format is also popular when they deal with technological issues.
- To an extent, it could be inferred that the latimes.com is fulfilling its role as a newspaper by focusing on 'local' stories: Hollywood, celebrities and the entertainment industry being part of that local context.
- The photo galleries are overwhelmingly dominated by pictures of celebrities. The only two 'hard' news stories are obviously visual: a fire and floods.
- Video content must also be visually rich, but the most popular videos are those that are emotionally-driven and potentially viral (ie: humorous anecdotes, shocking stories).

The purpose of this piece was simply to make some observations as to the types of topics preferred by online users, depending on the format they were published in. The goal wasn't to quaintly warn editors against the risks of chasing eyeballs at the expense of news judgment.

However, these Top-10 lists are clearly representative of the trend, adopted both by editors and by the audience, towards more celebrity-type news, or 'soft' news in general. In January and April, when the Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times announced that they were beefing up coverage of Britney Spears, at the same time as newsrooms across the nation couldn't afford the expenses of covering the elections, many newspaper editors were outraged by this rush towards more catchy, entertainment-driven, stories.

According to others, celebrity is a cultural currency that fulfils a role in the press. But at what cost?

The largest media center in Olympics history was formally opened yesterday in Beijing.

The Main Press Center (MPC), accessible to media with official accreditation, holds 971 workstations, a majority of which are "equipped with electrical and network interface features to provide media crews with optimal communication capabilities."

The MPC also boasts a bank, post office and pharmacy, among other amenities.




Click here to view a slideshow of images from the MPC.








A workstation in the newly established Main Press Center.


Source: Guardian - Greenslade

Fairfax Digital has acquired the Weather Company, owner of Australia's most popular commercial weather site, weatherzone.com.au. The deal will give Fairfax Digital a 75 percent stake in the Weather Company. Mark Hardy, founder of the Weather Company, holds the remaining share, and will be retained as managing director.

"Fairfax Digital is all about breaking news, and providing current weather information is the ultimate in breaking news," says Jack Matthews, Fairfax Digital CEO. "This acquisition confirms our position as Australia's most comprehensive news and weather information source."

The Weather Company was founded in 1988, and provides weather content to several organizations, including those in energy, insurance, and agriculture.

Fairfax Digital comprises over 30 websites, and is a subsidiary of Fairfax Media. Earlier this month, the company launched Western Australia's first online-only newspaper.

Source: Fairfax Media Press Release, PaidContent.org

Since its launch on June 1 this year, the Boston Globe's Big Picture weblog has gotten worldwide acclamation. The site is simple, includes minimal advertising and maximal visual information.

The weblog's designer, programmer and writer Alan Taylor spoke to Waxy.org about the strategy and inspiration behind the site as well as his status as "a programmer in a journalist's world."

Essentially, the Big Picture features a patchwork of large-sized photographs and minimal text, focusing on the "visual storytelling" aspect of news stories. Being a developer, Taylor was able to do tasks like building templates and formatting styles himself and the site remains as his side project.

The first thing the Globe took care of was the legal aspect of using larger-than-usual photographs. Taylor mentioned that they could not find anything in the contracts that might have prohibited that.

"The general rule appears to be (my understanding of it) that the images should not be easily reproduced in print. Big Picture images max out at 990 pixels wide at 72dpi. If you scale that up to print resolution of 300dpi, you get an image that's only about 2 inches wide, so we'd appear to be within that limit," Taylor said.

When it comes to choosing stories, Taylor searches for stories and tries "to stock up for a rainy day too" by having "stored searches, some favorite photographers, some perpetually interesting subjects."

Taylor's Browsing and Posting technique:

"I use Firefox to browse the wire on an internal site, wired up with Greasemonkey scripts to give me decent-sized thumbs, extract caption and photo ID from the IMG tags. When I find an image I like, I save it to a local folder until I get about 25 or so good ones to choose from. Then I open all 25 in Photoshop, arrange the windows in a horizontal tile and drag them around to get a rough ordering that makes sense. Then I start to edit out images that don't make the cut, run a couple of recorded Photoshop Actions to size the images, and do some hand-cropping if necessary.

I also wrote a Photoshop script in Javascript that will grab all the images in a given folder and generate HTML with proper heights and widths for the images -- that's what I use as the body of the entry. Then I paste in captions (with some editing), grab some relevant links, write a short intro and post it."

Each entry takes him about two to three hours of work and he recently minimized the number of postings to three per week instead of one per weekday.

The Big Picture's width is achieved by taking the classic 1024-pixel-wide screen and taking out 34 pixels; so that it covers the majority of browser's scrollbars without using horizontal scrollbars.

Taylor points out that even though the Big Picture is not so well-linked to the main site, "they are still working on the relationship between articles written for the Globe that are online, and content that is produced for our online property only."

News articles usually use smaller photographs and according to Taylor, photo sites that have feature photographs seem to be missing "context, depth, story." He praises msnbc.com and the Washington Post, when it comes to the use of more photographs and less links to news stories. When Taylor links to news stories, he usually tries to stick to the New York Times family but he said that if the links are good he will use them from anywhere.
 
Taylor said that even if there is a question of bandwidth, "1024 pixel screen sizes are more prevalent, more people have faster connections" and that just as much quality could be obtained from still image as from a video.

Although web programmers might have bigger salaries than journalists, Taylor thinks that is changing. There is a question of how to make journalism positions more appealing to programmers.  

Taylor said that so far, the response to the Big Picture has been "over-the-top positive" but that he hopes that the "photographers" get the credit as well. In the 20 days since it was started, the blog has gotten 1.5 million pageviews, 1,500 comments for 20 entries and international interest due to it's "visual nature", according to Taylor.

Source: Waxy.org through Journadism