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"Papers facing worst year for ad revenue" screamed the New York Times yesterday, a headline topping an article about a "double-digit drop in advertising revenue" at American newspapers. But apart from the information detailed after the obvious headline, two observations can be taken from the article.

1. The general public is catching on
The headline enticed enough people to click through to the story that it was driven up to #7 on the most read stories list of nytimes.com and #3 on the 10 most blogged stories. Although media bloggers have been enthusiastically documenting the ups and downs of American newspapers for several years, the fact that the article reached both of these lists shows that the general public, or at least the audience of nytimes.com, is more aware and interested in the plight of the industry. Perhaps newspaper readers, recognizing the seemingly dire short-term financial  futures of US papers, are becoming genuinely concerned about their favorite papers, the journalism they produce and the democracies which they keep in check. As the industry struggles through tough economic times, will their readers come to the rescue by buying more subscriptions or even contributing money to help keep the newshole deep?

2. Dailies vs. weeklies
What was also interesting about the NYT article was what preceded it; a full-browser window advertisement for the analytical UK-based weekly, The Economist. Whereas the print circulation of the New York Times has remained relatively stable over the past decade (while the circs of its brothers in many American markets have decreased substantially), the circulation and revenues of the Economist have doubled.

Although the Economist is recognized as one of the smartest newspapers in the world and has undergone an ambitious global marketing scheme over the past few years, some analysts attribute its recent circ and revenue success to changes in the habits of readers. A growing number of newshounds scan the headlines on the Internet or mobile devices constantly throughout the day and thus have little need to purchase the daily paper which is often a rehash of news they already know. But weeklies such as the Economist have more time to reflect upon current events and get to the "What does it mean" aspect of news, something that is very difficult to accomplish on a daily basis. This aspect seems to be a near perfect fit in the busy daily lives of people. Where they once may have taken a couple of hours to read the newspaper front to back, now, news reading habits seem to more like this:
1. scan the headlines and first paragraph almost immediately after something happens
2. skip the details in the rest of the article
3. wait a few days for a comprehensive story that tells readers what incidents mean for the world and themselves.

In this sense, it has been suggested that newspapers scale back the frequency of their print editions to 3 or 4 days a week to adhere to readers' busy lifestyles. Even US weeklies seem to be decreasing their publishing frequency to bi-weekly in order to allow more time for reflection.

Back to the Economist advertisement. It would be curious to see what kind of success rate the Economist receives from advertising in NYT and if they'll receive converts from the NYT print daily to the Economist print weekly. On the other hand, any defectors will more than likely continue reading nytimes.com for their daily headlines. The problem seems to be that brief headline-reading visits to daily websites like nytimes.com aren't encouraging for advertisers, and in turn will not help any revenue losses from downturns in print advertising.  

Publishing 2.O's Scott Karp argued in his article "What Newspapers Still Don't Understand About The Web", that online newspaper formats are inhibiting viewers' ability to find the news they want.

His article outlined a simple test that he had completed to support his argument. While a storm hit the Washington area, Karp searched The Washington Post's homepage for information about the storm. But editors, Karp argues, did not find the story worthy of a prominent position on the homepage. Instead Karp found an article about the storm on a list of most viewed articles in the corner of the homepage. Still, the article failed to give Karp the information he sought.

He then decided to use Google. His search included the Washington power service provider called Dominion Power, who had posted maps and information Karp deemed more practical.

He decided to try the Washington Post again only this time he searched further than the homepage. Finally, in the weather section, he found everything his Google search had given him but more: real-time radars, warnings and updates, and even a link back Dominion Power's website.

Karp essentially contends that online newspapers are flawed because they are structured like traditional print newspapers. Online news sites expect users to think and do as they would with the morning paper. Google's design, Karp feels, offers users various websites whose content relates to the specificity of the search. This format appeals to Karp so much that he believes online newspapers should be "just a search box and a list of blogs."
This conclusion is extreme, although it could contribute to the premise behind future newspaper website designs.

What Karp did learn from his experience is that the Washington Post's website is actually an innovative, dual-website; one aimed at national and international readers, the other at local readers. The website reads users' IP addresses and sends users in the Washington area to local site. All users have the option of customizing their experience, making either the national or local version their preferred Washington Post homepage.  

At the fourth session of the 15th World Editors Forum the question of how online editors view user participation in making news was partly answered thanks to a study. Two persons working on this study, called "Guarding open gates:How online editors view user participation in making news", were Steve Paulussen, Senior Researcher at Gent University, Belgium, and Jane B. Singer, Professor at the University of Central Lancashire, UK.

The study was based on analyzing five different news and publishing stages; the first stage being access and observation; second being selection or filtering; third being processing and editing; fourth being distribution and finally the fifth and last stage is that of interpretation.

For the study, editors of 15 newspaper online versions were interviewed. Perhaps the most obvious finding was that user participation tends to take place at the fifth and last stage, interpretation. The newsstory is already written, produced and published before the reader has a say, which usually happens through commenting and giving feedback below the article in a special comment field. The editors of all 15 online newspapers felt this was something necessary and positive.

What is worth pointing out about this kind of participation is that most comments posted did not revolve around hyper-local news but rather "big" news like the war in Iraq, the American election, the Israel-Palestine conflict etc.

As for the first stage, access and observation, editors believe users can contribute as a source, but not actually much more than before. They also thought that most of the news sent by users were "small news", stories from the margins.

The second stage, selection and filtering is the most controversial and journalistically territorial in a sense. From an editor and journalist's view, gatekeeping is still extremely important. It's definitely not the job of the user. Mr Paulussen quoted one of the editors as having said "Gatekeeping has become a dirty word, but it's still our job".

There was mixed answers about the third stage, processing and editing. Some websites like Le Figaro and El País have let users participate in this stage quite alot. El País lets readers publish their blogs and photos on their website and Le Figaro created a special site during the French municipality election where readers could discuss and rate their mayors.
Other websites have not embraced this to the same extent .

Users participating in distribution was quite common and not deemed as negative. Readers can use recommendation tools to rate or tag articles. This could be shown internally on the news site or externally on sites as digg.com.

Elin Olofsson, News Editor at the Swedish Östersund Posten told the audience at the 15th World Editors Forum about how hyperlocal websites with reader blogs are becoming a reality at the ÖP.

In May 2007, Östersund Posten started eight hyperlocal websites called The HeartProject. Apart from hyperlocal news, the paper launched 101 reader blogs which purpose was to increase the number of online visitors and make more room for hyperlocal stories.

Today, one year from the start of the Heartproject, weekly visitors at Östersund Postens local websites have increased by 60%. Olofsson explained how all bloggers write about everyday life, politics, schools, celebrities, etc. They also help to cover local topics. The paper does not pay their contributors and has established a set of rules about what their contributors can and can't write to avoid any racy content. Every week a "Blog story of the week" is published in the print newspaper.

The project has also been a success financially, helping to increase the interest of advertisers. Overall, "The heartproject has created enormous goodwill for our brand," said Olofsson.

You think your newspaper is at the cutting edge in terms of community involvement and bridging the gap with other types of media?

But have you launched a contest calling on readers' ideas for a televised series?

This is the initiative that has just been launched by regional La Provence in France, which is inviting its readers to contribute ideas for a show about Marseille.

Authors of the most original scripts will be invited to participate in a writing workshop in the newspapers' offices. They will then each sign a contract to authorize the shooting this summer of twelve mini-episodes lasting three to four minutes.

"What interested us was the link to the people of Marseille, who will write the show," said La Provence president Didier Pillet.

Source: LeMonde.fr through IFRA Executive News Service

Local newspapers are distributed to a limited geographic region, but Scott Karp proposes that they reinvent their distribution model so that they can receive national attention, similar to how some web articles link to other related articles.

For physical national distribution, either a wire service distributes and/or rewrites the story or a national news brand re-reports and/or rewrites the story. But with the Internet, local news can be accessed anywhere in the world. The problem lies with attention, according to Karp, because people who visit the local news brand's website only know it because they know the brand locally.

Karp dismisses the idea of Google, Yahoo, New York Times, or any other national brand as a solution, and instead suggests that every local news brand links the news stories of one another on their websites.

This method is used by bloggers, which is why top blog sites have better distribution on the web than many journalists, according to Karp. For example, here is a list of top blogs that are "masters of link blogging" which journalists can emulate.

With link journalism, each journalist can contribute to the national distribution of other local journalists' reporting, which not only adds up to national distribution, but also is "content targeted distribution", directing those interested in a specific topic to other related articles.

Ultimately, Karp envisions a Digg-like site for journalists, editors, and newsrooms in which the best reporting can be shared and those reporting on common issues can be voted up. In this way, local news brands could "really drive large quantities of traffic to each other's reporting."

Source: Publishing 2.0

Citizen journalism, long the domain of the English-language media, has caught on in the Spanish-speaking world, where the number of citizen media portals are increasing, thanks in part to initiatives from major Spanish-language newspapers.

January marked the launch of the first citizen journalism site in Boliva, AhoraBolivia.com. Boliva's issues don't receive much coverage in the international or national media, for that matter, a gap that the creators and contributors to AhoraBolivia are trying to fill, reports MediaShift.

In Argentina, would-be citizen journalists have a choice of both independent and newspaper sponsored projects. In one corner is igooh.com, founded by freelance writer Ignacio Escribano in 2006 to offer an alternative to a traditional press that he considered "narrow-minded and primitive." Users have to option to share news, but also discuss more philosophical topics such as poetry and the meaning of the death. Though mostly independent, Argentine newspaper La Nacion provides a link to Igooh on their website.

Other options include a network of blogs spearheaded by Argentine newspaper Clarin.

Similar projects have come out of Chile, with Gua 3.0 and Asociacion Atina Chile, a non-profit organization dedicated to civic participation. Spain too is in on the action, where El Pais has created a specific citizen journalism portal called "Yo, Periodista" ("I, Journalist"). Another interesting initiative is the pan-Spanish site PeriodismoCiudadano.com, ("Citizen Journalism"), provides daily news about citizen journalism in Spanish and allows for contribution as well.

 "In my opinion, the citizen journalism movement is progressing better in Latin America than in Spain," said Oscar Espiritusanto, founder of PeriodismoGiudadano.com. "A good example is the good work Chile's Asociacion Atina Chile is doing with its network of citizen newspapers, which show that citizen journalism works, covers stories that professional journalism does not."

Source: MediaShift through IFRA Executive News Service

For its relaunch, the Editors Weblog is running a series of exclusive interviews with some top editors at leading newspapers around the world about the future of journalism. We kick off the series with Jim Brady, Executive Editor of Washingtonpost.com.

The list of upcoming interviews will be updated as they are published (click here to view all interviews in this series). Among the other titles that have been asked to participate in these interviews are:

- The New York Times - Jonathan Landman (US)
- Financial Times (UK)
- Guardian (UK)
- Washington Post - Jim Brady (US)
- Globe & Mail - Ed Greenspon (Canada)
- The Times (UK)
- The Economist (UK)
- Gazeta Wyborcza - Jaroslaw Kurski (Poland)
- Le Monde (France)
- Die Welt (Germany)
- The Hindustan Times - Pankaj Paul (India)
- Asahi Shimbun (Japan)
- JoongAng Ilbo (South Korea)
- The Age / Fairfax - Mike van Niekerk (Australia)
- The Nation - Pana Janviroj (Thailand)
- Punch (Nigeria)
- El Tiempo (Colombia)
- Clarin (Argentina)
- Gulf News - Abdul Hamid Ahmad (UAE)


"News, journalism, newspapers: same past, different futures?"

- How long do you think you will define your company as a newspaper company or a print company?

To be honest, I don t think the company defines itself that way anymore. The Washington Post company made a statement about 3 months ago saying it was rebranding itself as a media and education company, since the Education division is now a bigger revenue-maker. Even within the newspaper division, which is still called 'newspaper', there is the website and the print product. There was another change last week to rename the company 'Washington Post Media'. WPNI and the print Washington Post are still separate subsidiaries within Washington Post Media.

- At this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, a panel of futurists claimed that print newspapers wouldn't exist by 2014. To what extent do you agree with this?

Statements that broad are bound to be wrong. The Washington Post will absolutely exist in 2012, as will other big newspapers like The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. I do think you're already seeing midsized and smaller papers deciding to go the Web-only route. If you look at current online revenues, all newspaper companies are still struggling to make money on the Web. But since the publishing costs online are microscopic compared to print, and with newsprint costs going up many newspapers are figuring they can save a lot of money by going online-only.

Again, such a broad statement is absolutely wrong. But there will be a lot of newspapers in the next 5 years that go web-only, in the US at least.

- In journalism's multi-centennial history, do you view the emergence of digital journalism as part of the continuity, or as a complete breakaway with previous forms of journalism?

I think it's part of the continuity. New forms of delivery come up and previously existing forms need to adapt to these changes. There are now new forms of journalism and storytelling through video, picture galleries, databases and more. It's just a different way to deliver information. But in the past print, TV and radio have all figured out how to adapt and reposition themselves when new channels have emerged. Digital neither compromises nor changes the standards for journalism.

- Do you believe in the increasingly active role of the user in the news process, and is it a threat or an opportunity for professional journalists?

It's an opportunity. You can want to be a journalist to do the craft, but there is also an element of public trust in the mission. One of those two words is 'public'. We are in a position to allow the public in the process a little bit, so I don t see how that can be a bad thing. In some cases the interaction is a little nasty and confrontational, but I don't see how this interaction can be bad. All things have to be explored, and have to be collected. In the future, we will have both professionals and readers who can contribute to the newspaper. There is a distinction between both and it is important that the distinction remains, but engaging the audience is crucial to our success.

- Do you consider that the Golden Age of investigative journalism is already past, or just beginning?

Two ways to answer that: if you look at how newspapers staff investigative journalism nowadays, there is lot to worry about. Investigative journalism is considered like a luxury they can't afford to have. The Post has an investigative unit and I can't see that going anytime soon. But, coming back to the previous question, if journalists allow readers, not to investigate for them, but to help them flag and acquire easily accessible information, it makes investigative journalism easier to do than it was fifteen years ago, when the journalists had to make dozens of phone calls and go down to the public library. The ability of readers to participate in collecting the sheer amount of information can help investigative journalism.

The key is matching enough journalists working to the readers to take advantage of all the information out there. Once we figure out the sticky question of revenue models for the web, hopefully there'll be a building back up of newsrooms, as well as for the investigative staff, that have suffered in past 5 years.

According to research by Neil Thurman of City University London, news websites are struggling to make the most of readers’ contributions despite their ostensible emphasis on user-generated content (UGC). Editors will have to learn how to balance between moderation of UGC and letting it organically grow.

There are at least three key findings:
- Editors and publications have no fundamental prejudice against UGC and are looking to expand that type of content. Editors understand the possible benefits of UGC to complement news coverage.
- However, editors have remained until now in a gatekeeper relation with UGC, deemed important to uphold their brand and quality standards (this may also turn out to be a brake to the unbridled nature of UGC) .
- Despite many efforts to include UGC, it is a costly operation and actual traffic has yet pay off.
“Despite the seemingly heavy emphasis on UGC at mainstream news websites, questions remain about the extent to which users are interested both in participating themselves and viewing other readers' contributions,” reported AlphaGalileo.

Exemplifying this, BBC News websites’ ‘Have Your Say’ feature only got contributions from 0.05% of the site’s daily unique audience, and generated about one fifth of the page views that a popular news story gets.

Due to UK-specific legislation, many editors have been cautious in their approach to UGC, worried over possible legal liabilities.

In most cases, editors and publications have insisted on upholding moderation because of concerns over spelling, grammar, decency, duplication, unbalanced views or lack of newsworthiness.

The high costs of moderation were another deterrent to the boom of UGC on news websites – most UGC experiments still don’t cover the costs of maintenance.

"By becoming gatekeepers of UGC, editors are on familiar territory and can protect their brand's value - a key aspect of their job. But it is a delicate balancing act. Too much filtering and control could frustrate the supply of UGC - something that is not in the interest of editors or users," said Thurman.

For his research, Thurman spoke to online editors from, among others, The Times, Telegraph, BBC News, Financial Times and The Independent.

Source: AlphaGalileo through IFRA Executive News Service

Citizen journalism has become much more popular lately, with the rise of the CNN YouTube debate, political blogs, cell phone video.

On his blog, Howard Owens says “local news is vertical” and explains that local papers need to aim for ownership of local news and information across many platforms, especially on the Web.

At AMPE, Jim Brady executive editor of washingtonpost.com and Jennifer Carroll vice president/new media content of Gannett talked about the ways in which newspapers are changing. They discussed everything from blogs to online gaming.

User-generated content websites have flourished and there is no question now that they are here to stay, and that ‘user’ content will increasingly pervade all media – ‘traditional’ media that is. Has the definition of ‘News’ changed, or deteriorated, with the Web 2.0 revolution?  Are UGC sites competitors or facilitators for newspapers transitioning to the online world? Martin Rogard, director of content for YouTube’s European alter ego, Daily Motion, answers some of these questions for the Weblog, to help newspapers that can be torn between opening to readers and keeping the old rules in place.