Results matching “newspapers infl”

Australian sponsorship firm The Newspaper Works, established by the country's five major newspaper publishers, announces the launch of a website in order to promote print publications, reports proprint.com.au. The site is geared towards advertisers, media outlets and creative firms.

In a recent article in the American Journalism Review, Philip Meyer, Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, discussed the survival strategy for newspapers of the future.

Meyer beings by noting that just as printing changed everything, so has the Internet.  Print "made the size of the audience theoretically limitless and, by the creation of multiple records, enabled more reliable preservation of knowledge."  

Meyer believes that 'the Internet wrecks the old newspaper business model in two ways. It moves information with zero variable cost, which means it has no barriers to growth, unlike a newspaper, which has to pay for paper, ink and transportation in direct proportion to the number of copies produced.  And the Internet's entry costs are low."

Bertrand Pecquerie wrote in an article in Le Monde yesterday that the French newspaper industry is in crisis and, worryingly, turning to the State for help. Newspapers have been subsidized in France for the past ten years and, in those ten years, the situation has not improved, it has actually worsened.

Pecquerie believes that there are four core problems facing the industry and these are not being addressed. The four core issues are method, diagnosis, objective and means.

India's government created a committee to promote the survival of small newspapers, according to Dr. Rajendra Shingane, the Minister of Information and Public Relations. He mentioned that the increasing number of news channels in "principal" languages should not decrease the credibility of newspapers, wrote The Hindu Business Line.
 
Manisha Patankar-Mhaisekar, Director of Information and Public Relations, pointed out that the government continued to have the "policy of co-operating" with smaller-sized newspapers, reported The Hindu Business Line.

As inflation grows and printing and producing papers becomes more costly, the committee looks into the possibility of augmenting advertising rates.

Source: The Hindu Business Line

Rupert Murdoch was recently declared one of Esquire's 75 most influential people of the 21st Century, in an issue of the monthly magazine that included a special e-Ink cover.

In an interview with Esquire, Murdoch discussed his personal history, the effects of growing up in a journalistic family, and his first foray into the US market with the purchase of the tabloid daily, The Star.  He also talked about the challenges faced by newspapers, competition between the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, and the age of the Internet and social networking.

The Future of Newspapers

Murdoch admitted that he "did not know the future" but that he was sure that knowledge is going to become increasingly more valuable.  He went on to discuss the changing business models of old newspapers and even admitted that "if you look at the readership of newspapers...its worrying."  But went on to talk about the future of the Internet and its "tremendous" use. 

The World Association of Newspapers and World Editors Forum have called for the repeal of a punitive "luxury" tax on newspapers that are imported into Zimbabwe, which is preventing independent newspapers from reaching their audience.

The tax was imposed in early June in the run-up to the widely condemned presidential election won by Robert Mugabe after his opponent quit the race in the face of escalating violence against his supporters. It aims to reduce the influence of South African-based news sources, which have been extremely important to Zimbabweans.

"Restricting access to information by punitive taxation constitutes a clear breach of the right to freedom of expression, which is guaranteed by numerous international conventions, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," the Paris-based WAN and WEF, which represent 18,000 newspapers world-wide, said in a letter to President Mugabe.

The two organisations called on Mugabe to remove the luxury tax on foreign publications and to end state intimidation of the independent media. All domestic independent newspapers and broadcasters in Zimbabwe are banned.

The new Wall Street Journal debuts today. WSJ owner Rupert Murdoch has redesigned it to expand its "traditional, pin-striped base," according to Johnnie L. Roberts, Newsweek reporter. Murdoch still believes that "newspapers are the most influential media for shaping the public discourse, even in this new-media century."

The new Journal will feature:
- An increased focus on politics, international news, culture, and sports.
- A refocused front page.
- A relaunch of the A section that will cover general news.
- Marketplace, the second section, which will cover corporate America.
- Money and Investing, the third section, which will continue to report news of financial markets and investing.
- A weekly sports page.
- An additional op-ed page, so that it has 3 pages instead of 2.

Also, a culture section is being developed in the Journal's weekend edition for the fall.

The redesign of the paper is also Murdoch's challenge to The New York Times.

But many media and communication experts argue that the Journal will not be a threat to the Times even with all the changes; in fact, the changes may damage the Journal brand.

"Turning a paper into an old-fashioned variety show--we have a little of everything--I don't think is the route to success," said a former senior Dow Jones executive. "The risk you run is that you are not best at anything." 

Arthur Siskind, senior adviser to Murdoch, remarked that "the need to bolster and broaden the Journal's production and delivery is one reason [Murdoch's] battle with the Times will have to unfold gradually." Murdoch is in talks for local newspaper publishers to print the Journal, so the paper can be printed earlier and story deadlines can be extended.

Even so, the Times has faced some difficulties. Advertising has fallen almost 11%, (Read more at our sister blog SFN) "the sharpest drop in memory," the Times wrote. While it is cutting its staff by 100 (Read more at SFN), Murdoch has been spending money on WSJ's Washington bureau, seeking additional printing capacity, and developing the weekend magazine, WSJ.

"The New York Times has had broad coverage for 156 years now," New York Times CEO Janet Robinson said, "and from that perspective we are far advanced in the type of journalism we create and the type of advertising we bring into the paper."

Source: Newsweek through Paidcontent.org

Website traffic is measured by several factors: page views, unique visitors, time spent on a page, etc., but David Cohn of Columbia Journalism Review writes that there is no precise way to calculate web readership or traffic.

Cohn asks: Why would advertisers choose a news site over one like Google, which obviously garners thousands of viewers, if there is no accurate way to measure web traffic? And how can they agree on rates?

"This may be the most measurable medium in history, but the measurements all suck," says Steve Yelvington, an Internet strategist for Morris DigitalWorks, which manages websites for more than sixty newspapers and thirty radio stations.

Most publishers know their statistics through census data from web servers that count how many times a site is visited. However, the data includes "bots" and "spiders" that search engines send out to index content for searchers, and they inflate the number of visitors counted by internal servers, mostly because of "cookie deletion." Cookies allow a page to recognize a viewer, so unique visitors can be counted. But with users constantly emptying their cookies, a site's traffic can be increased by 150%, according to Andrew Lipsman, a senior analyst at comScore Inc., a global Internet information provider. Essentially, 10 million viewers is probably closer to 4 million.

Organizations such as comScore and Nielsen/NetRatings will share traffic numbers within a plus-or-minus 2% error margin from panelists of randomly selected sites who agree to be monitored. Cohn writes that these sample-based numbers can underreport, especially since these panels don't account for international traffic or traffic from work computers.

Though the panel and census system aren't perfect, publishers and advertisers can make relative comparisons within their market with the two.

George Ivie, executive director and CEO of the Media Ratings Council (MRC), wants to reconcile the two systems with his not-for-profit trade association. The council began with TV and radio audience size, but turned its attention to the Internet in 2002 and wrote standards for audience census data, including page views, clicks on a page, and time spent on a site, all new measurements with the Internet.

MRC requires news organizations that want their traffic counts to be approved by the ratings council to adopt the council's standards, such as counting only content that is accessed through an end browser.

Only a few organizations have been audited by MRC, such as Yahoo, msn, and AOL and advertisers like Atlas and Doubleclick, giving them an advantage when negotiating advertising rates, according to Cohn.

In 2006, MRC began auditing comScore and Nielsen/ NetRatings. Nielsen/Net-Ratings had decided that time spent on a site was more important than total Web page views because visitors spend more time on a page when watching videos and new programs allow visitors to interact with a page (like voting in a poll) without having to reload an entirely new page. But, having a window open does not necessarily mean that the visitor is engaged the whole time, thus this measurement is also inaccurate.

Because the Internet is always changing, there may be new metrics in the future to retrieve more accurate statistics.

Source: CJR

Despite the slim down of newspapers, Birmingham, Alabama-based Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. (CNHI) is continuing to pay for investigative stories in its 90 plus daily newspapers using corporate resources, since the small papers would not be able to supply in-depth reporting themselves.

This program, started two years ago, is called the Elite Report-ing Fellowship Program, and is headed by Bill Ketter, CNHI's vice president of news. The first report was on April 2006, a three-part series on gambling addicts. Following series dealt with topics such as the "Interstate Highway System's crumbling infrastructure." All stories have a national focus, "a direct relevancy to communities," according to Ketter, and emphasis on human interest.

"We felt very strongly that good journalism is good business," says Ketter. "There's been so much negative publicity in our craft about the demise of in-depth journalism, and this more vigorous journalism has almost been eliminated. [The fellowship] creates a regular flow of high public service journalism."
 
The Fellowship program accepts applications from all CNHI reporters. Once accepted, the reporter is assigned a topic and released from newsroom duties for the duration of the project, which can last from a month to six weeks. They are supplied with audio and video equipment, which their papers can keep as benefits.

The program has also influenced many of CNHI's papers to incorporate more multimedia. The Iowa based Ottumwa Courier is now listing multimedia and live blogging as a priority.

"I'm a believer in the watchdog role of the press," Ketter says. "We're a guide dog and we're a watchdog. Every newspaper, no matter how small, has to fulfill those roles."

The stories are also available on the websites, accompanied by graphics and videos.


Source: AJR through IFRA Executive News Service

The Project for Excellence in Journalism report on newspapers in 2007 stated, "Newspapers are still far from dead, but the language of obituaries is creeping in." Although there is a problem with declining revenues, there is also a crisis of morale in newsrooms, according to Peter Osnos, Senior Fellow for Media at The Century Foundation. He senses that reporters feel that no matter how good, thoroughly reported, and influential their work is, it isn't going protect the paper.

Osnos believes that reporters are unique in turning what they write about into news and determining how people are informed, a power that bloggers do not have.

According to PEJ, in 2007, the industry had its sharpest drop in advertising revenue since 195 -- 9.4%. On the other hand, on-line revenues are up: representing 7.5% of newspaper ad revenue.

If newspapers do not receive support from advertisers or circulation, they should find other ways. For example, the radio no longer is dependent on the federal government because of underwriting and individual contributors.

PEJ reports that there are a variety of locally based startups emphasizing community news, for example ProPublica and Global News Enterprises, a Boston based Web start-up.

Read more about PEJ's reports:
- Robert Niles' key lessons learned from State of the Media Report
- Journalists cite financial problems as top concern
- Internet is changing journalism

Source: The Century Foundation

In August 2007, a European newspaper aggregator venture, dubbed Imooty.eu, was launched in beta version (read background here, based on a profile by the Online Journalism Review). Over the weekend, Imooty has launched a new headline aggregator widget for newspapers to implement on their sites (pictured left - see their widget platform here).

Imooty's "plan is really to develop a powerful tool for news syndication," said co-founder Kristoffer Lassen (who founded the site with Blaise Bourgeois). "The purpose is to democratize access to the most important mainstream information sources of Europe." The site now aggregates RSS feeds with latest headlines from about 450 newspapers in 19 European countries.

Imooty.eu, a newspaper and blog aggregator

Unlike services such as Factiva or LexisNexis, which are geared towards professionals and have costly fees, Imooty aims to provide a mainstream and free news search resource. Newspapers' RSS feeds that are featured on the homepage are generally chosen for their prominent size and influence, but sometimes also for their known expertise in a particular domain (Morgenbladet in Norway for its 'Culture' coverage).

Users can conveniently view latest headlines by country, newspaper, or category of news. A tab enables users to view recent blog headlines - about 700-800 have enrolled so far. Users can also customize search fields by these same criteria.

Does it still make sense to distinguish 'News' and 'Blogs', at a time when some blogs do original reporting and some traditional news brands are turning to lighter, blog-style news?

"It's basically to make a distinction between news brands as we know them today and independent reporters," said Lassen. The line between both may be getting blurry - especially concerning newspaper blogs, but Lassen believes the news consumption and expectations are different between blogs and news sites, although both may be news.

Pros and cons of Imooty for newspapers

Imooty has launched a specific section called 'Newspaper Universe', so that partnering newspapers can directly upload their feeds and customize them. "You decide how your newspaper brand will appear on the  Imooty platform."

Pros:
- Reach: Imooty "puts newspapers in touch with users who normally wouldn't use them," said Lassen. Through Imooty, readers who are geographically distant, or on the other side of the political spectrum, can discover new titles.
- Mobile: Imooty offers a mobile platform that can be of interest to newspapers.
- Revenue share: Imooty's revenue model will be based on redirecting readers to newspapers' premium (archived) content, and it will share revenues with papers.

"Cons":
- "I can see how, under the old news paradigm, some newspaper people might feel threatened by the model, because it's possibly taking away from local focus. But then again, these are new times, and people relate to media in different ways," said Lassen.



No editorializing, unlike major online news portals

News featured on the homepage is ranked by 'clicks' for individual newspapers and recency for headlines: there is no editorializing of content or of the RSS feeds by Imooty. But as Lassen said in his OJR interview, "readers now demand concise information that directly addresses their personal "need to know" requirements in an age when people are swamped by news sources." So why not give readers editorial guidance?

"That's the role of the big Internet brands. Google does this, by editorializing their pages," said Lassen.

"Our philosophy is to show the user the way news is from the different publications. We don't editorialize. The purpose is to give a panoramic view of what's actually out there."

News aggregation and Imooty: a resource for news professionals

In that respect, Imooty may be of greater use to news junkies or journalists than to the general public, at least in its first steps.

"You really have to be a news-interested person to be interested in Imooty, but it can be a starting point for ordinary news users as well."

"A lot of people like to have a pre-packaged news product," said Lassen. Although the trend towards news aggregation is increasingly visible, newspapers' role is also to provide their news judgment to sort news in an organized manner.

Future developments

Imooty is working to develop its multimedia offerings, including its mobile platform, podcasts and IPTV. According to Lassen, "this is also the direction newspapers are going in," because text-based content will be less prominent on mobiles. Imooty has launched a mobile site in beta.

According to Lassen, Imooty now has about 15,000 unique visitors and 50,000 page views monthly.

Imooty is still in full development and is still in the process of signing on official newspaper partners. This weekend it launched its imooty headline aggregator widget, which can be implemented by news sites that wish to open up their doors to other relevant sources.

Source: Kristoffer Lassen, co-founder Imooty.eu

Free newspaper group Metro International is planning on building "an interactive capability" for all of its newspapers to target young professionals, with Metro France as the pilot launch, according to Brand Republic.

Each city based website will hopefully become, as Brand Republic describes, an "indispensable source of news and information", with a network of blogs on relevant themes and local perspectives.

Tom Symonds, Managing Director of Metro Interactive, said: "With this investment Metro will define its own space, where we not only draw on our users' appetite for relevant news and information but provide a space that is completely focused on urban living and increases the users' influence."

Vice-president of Corporate Development Christian Toksvig, who was hired earlier this month, is in charge of launching free Metro titles in new markets. Currently, Metro publishes 84 editions.

Eventually Metro wants a website for all the 23 countries it operates in.

The blog network can distinguish Metro sites from other local news sites for users. Instead of just browsing through news, users can browse through opinions or other relevant information on local news.

Source: Brand Republic

The Editors Weblog is running a series of exclusive interviews about the future of journalism with top editors at leading newspapers around the world. Here is the latest installment with  Jaroslaw Kurski, first deputy editor-in-chief, Gazeta Wyborcza in Poland.

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)


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

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

We stopped being a newspaper-only company in 1993 when we launched our first internet discussion board. Today we have millions of boards. Our web portal website Gazeta.pl reaches now 6 million unique users per month. It is a magic figure, as it is also the total number of readers of the printed edition of Gazeta Wyborcza.

We started our company in 1989 with a newspaper, but today we are one of the leading multimedia companies in Central and Eastern Europe. We publish newspapers, magazines and books, we run networks of radio stations and an outdoor company.

And we strongly invest in digital media. Our board has an ambition that in three years time more than half of our revenues will come from other sources than print. Until now all our websites reach 44 per cent of internet users in Poland. This is an extraordinary outcome for a newspaper publisher like us.

2. 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?

Futurists like bold predictions, but as a journalist I prefer to look at facts.

Since 2003 there have been seven new national printed daily newspapers launched in Poland. So we faced a new competitor every single year. Is this rush any sign of weakness of the printed medium?

I believe that as long as we have something important to say and people here care to listen to us and talk with us, Gazeta Wyborcza will exist. The message is important, and the dialogue; and not the channel.

If print becomes irrelevant, we will spread our ideas in any other way. Newspapers will not die, they will change.

Last but not least: a Polish word for a newspaper - "gazeta" - does not have any "paper" in it. So even if futurists are right and print newspapers will disappear, Gazeta will remain.

3. 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?

Journalism is about intelligible conveying of news and about telling stories of importance that move the community. I appreciate digital tools, they are great and helpful, but they are tools only. You still need a story, a teller and a community. So has anything really changed in journalism?

4. Do you believe