Results matching “newspapers infl”

 

Do you speak Twitter? Come on, Tweeple... It's time to get with the program. Yes, you Tweeple, people of the Twitter universe, or Twitterverse. Whether you are a newetter (a new tweeter), an occasionitter (an occasional Tweeter) or a seasoned reportwitters (you guessed it, reporter-style twitterer), an entire range of Twitter vocabulary has arrived. 

There is a crisis in trust and communication between the British public and the mainstream media, a new report has concluded. The gulf between public expectations of news provision and the actual nature of articles, which oscillate between esoteric or irresponsible, leaves readers feeling confused and excluded.

The report, entitled 'Public Trust In The News' was conducted by researchers from Manchester and Leeds Universities and was published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. It investigated the dynamics of news production and consumption, to ascertain if there is a difference in what "the public expects from news media and what journalists mean by serving the public".  The paper highlights the underlying causes of an apparent widespread disenchantment with the media and the detrimental effects this is having on the standards of reporting and civil participation in democracy. Thankfully, the report offers several propositions for a new journalistic direction, which could refresh the reader-writer compact.

Seventeen of the top 30 US newspaper websites showed a decline in the average time users spent on their sites in May versus the same period last year, according to an exclusive article in Editor & Publisher. The data come from Nielson Online, which keeps track of the most widely read newspaper sites based on number of unique visitors.

On the bright side, that means nearly half of the sites posted gains year-over-year, some of them fairly significant. The Star Tribune of Minneapolis, a paper struggling to get out of bankruptcy, added 20 minutes to the time readers spend on the site - at an average of over 47 minutes per user, it's also the newspaper site that users stay on the longest. The San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate.com also recorded sizeable gains, jumping to 21 minutes this year compared to 12 minutes in May 2008.

The adventure has come to an end for Robert Ménard in Qatar.  Less than a year ago, he founded the Doha Centre for Media Freedom (DCMF), with the support of Shaykha Muzah, the wife of the Emir.  He had grand ambitions to show that it was possible to talk about the freedom of the press in the region of the Gulf which practices the most state and self censorship.  

Robert Ménard will resign this week from his post as Director General of the Centre, and several of his colleagues are likely to follow him. How did this situation develop?

The National Union of Journalists has published its reaction to the Digital Britain Report, which was released yesterday. The most significant components of the review for the printed news industry concerned merger laws, for which the policies were formulated in conjunction with the Office of Fair Trading and alterations to the BBC licence fee.

Merger Laws

The OFT review, published simultaneously with Digital Britain, advised that the existing laws regulating media ownership should not be revised.   The calls for modification had come from the big regional press companies, desirous of more malleable merger laws.  

Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger and Labour MP Tom Watson go head-to-head on Twitter, as Watson and the Daily Mail accuse the centre-left paper of going too far. Last week, the newspaper went ahead with a front-page editorial urging the British PM Gordon Brown to resign.

Daily Mail obsessed with idea of Guardian 'putsch' (in collusion with BBC?). A question of media ethics, apparently. http://tiny.cc/7Wp3M"

And so went the tweet that started it all, with Rusbridger linking to the Daily Mail article, in which Stephen Glover asks "Was it [the Guardian] trying to orchestrate events so as to secure the resignation which it had called for in its editorial?"

In an interesting article published on the Guardian Media website, Jeff Jarvis (right) talks about the changing nature of journalism and advertising, with content generated not just by journalists but - thanks to the Internet - also readers.

"Advertising is failure," declares the American journalism professor in his opening sentence, adding that advertising is a last-ditch attempt to win over customers. "The media pray for such failure because it is advertising that will support them," he notes.

Michael Kinsley has offered his insights into what type of ownership model is preferable for a newspaper. He discusses how US newspapers often used to be owned by "grandees: wealthy and civic-minded individuals or families," but many of these sold out to large chains. As newspapers make less money, these chains cannot afford to keep them, so Kinsley considers whether ownership by a 'grandee' or a nonprofit foundation is the solution.

"Which will be most likely to provide the combination of financial security and editorial freedom that newspapers need?" he asks. Having experience of both different arrangements, he believes that "being owned by or dependent on a nonprofit foundation is the worst possible solution." Kinsley was editor of Harper's Magazine when it was set up as a non-profit foundation with money from the MacArthur Foundation. He reported to the board of directors, and had to comply with their "ruthlessly conventional views" and the tendencies of their friends to "take offense at any attempt to be interesting." He mentions that he had to publish a board member's wife's poetry.

Pess freedom in Italy has come under international scrutiny in recent weeks as a down-grading of the press's freedom status by US non-profit Freedom House has coincided with an increase in prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's aggression towards media outlets which oppose him. Leading left-leaning daily La Repubblica has even attempted to take on the premier directly, publishing a list of questions concerning his relationship with a young girl, to which it believes he owes answers. A Dutch politician has threatened to take action in the European parliament against the Italian leader because of journalistic constraints. Should a newspaper be demanding such information which concerns a politician's private life? Is the press freedom situation as bad as it seems?

The La Repubblica crusade

On May 14 La Repubblica journalist Giuseppe D'Avanzo published ten questions directed at the prime minister concerning his involvement with 18-year-old Noemi Letizia. Berlusconi's relationship with the girl gained mass media attention when, four days after the prime minister dropped in on the girl's 18th birthday party in Naples, his wife issued a press release accusing him of "consorting with minors" and pressing for a divorce. Berlusconi promptly went on a late-night political chat show to defend himself, but the holes in his story which have gradually emerged have attracted even more attention than the original incident. D'Avanzo's questions address these holes and ask the premier to come clean about the nature of his encounters with the girl. Berlusconi has not yet answered the questions and has given no indication that he intends to. The paper has put a timer on its website to indicate the days, hours, minutes and seconds since the questions were issued, and even offers them in English.

Berlusconi himself has tried to present the left-leaning paper's campaign as a left-wing plot to undermine his authority, accusing the paper of lying and adding in an interview on TV-channel Sky that he believes many readers will abandon the paper because of this. His office issued a statement saying referring to the "campaign of denigration" and saying that the paper is driven by "jealousy and hatred."  The prime minister has fought back as the story developed, with his lawyers applying for the seizure of photos taken at his Sardinian villa (where Letizia reportedly attended parties with other young women) before they could be published, and a journalist from Berlusconi's brother's Milan-based daily Il Giornale posing as a member of the foreign press to get an interview with Ms Letizia's former boyfriend in an attempt to discredit him.
 
 
The international reaction 
La Repubblica has defended its actions, with editor Ezio Mauro saying that "There are contradictions here and when the powers that be don't explain something, journalism has a job to do." And foreign journalists seem to agree. The paper also featured an interview with Bill Emmott, former editor of the Economist, who said that "for a newspaper, asking a political leader questions is not only legitimate, but part of its mission to inform the people." According to the International Herald Tribune, "for the first time in recent memory, the Italian press is shining a bright light into the dark recesses of a politician's personal life." The Times wrote that the premier's campaign against La Repubblica "looks ominously like an attempt to cow dissent rather than protect a private reputation" and that "his newspaper critics are performing a public service for a badly governed populace." A Financial Times editorial criticised the way that Berlusconi turned on La Repubblica following the questions, and stressed that part of the "danger of Berlusconi... is that of the media sapping the serious content of politics, and replacing it with entertainment."

Berlusconi has reacted with anger and scepticism to such foreign criticism. He seems to refuse to believe that papers might be acting of their own accord, announcing that "the international press's campaign is being orchestrated by an Italian group" and referring to it as a left-wing "plot." He insists that the foreign press is misrepresenting the Italian situation, and a rift in his relationship with Rupert Murdoch seems to be further deteriorating following the Times' article and others. He has accused the Times of writing critical editorials about him because his government is in dispute with News Corp. Il Giornale, owned by the prime minister's brother Paolo, ran a story discussing the FT editorial entitled "The left has also enlisted the Financial Times."

One of a newspaper's main goals should be to act as a watchdog over the government, but it is unusual for a paper to take on a country's leader so directly, particularly over a matter which is largely private. In the UK, the Daily Telegraph's recent campaign over MPs' expenses was firmly in the public interest, as it dealt with public money being used by members of parliament for personal gain. Berlusconi has been derisive of the media discussing what he says is his private life. Should a paper be putting so much focus on an issue that is arguably unrelated to the prime minister's ability to govern the country? Is this indicative of media trivialisation?

The Times editorial does not see the questions as intrusive, as they relate to Berlusconi's "public roles as politician and media magnate". The Independent's Peter Popham said that the media "cannot be accused of muck-raking on the issue because it was Mr Berlusconi himself who drew attention to the relationship" by attending the 18-year-old's party and not only posing for photographs but publicly giving the girl a 6000euro gold necklace. And the fact that a politician might have lied to the public is probably enough of an incentive to investigate.
 
Press freedom in Italy
 
Italy has a fairly unique media situation, which makes confrontation between a newspaper and the prime minister even more pertinent. The country's press freedom status is clearly in question. A Dutch politician who is leader of the Green Left party in the European Parliament, Judith Sargentini, has said that her party is considering taking legal action against Berlusconi because of the press freedom constraints in his country. Amongst her complaints is the fact that the premier blocks critical questions at press conferences. If a majority of the European Parliament were to agree to the initiation of legal proceedings, then the matter would come before the European Court of Justice.

US-based nonprofit Freedom House recently downgraded Italy's press freedom status from 'free' to 'partly free' for 2008. In conversation with Karin Karlekar, editor of the report, she explained that the main reasons given for this were the unusually high level of media concentration, particularly in broadcasting, threats from organised crime and others, and attacks on journalists, mainly from far right groups. During Berlusconi's former term as prime minister, the country was also given partly free ratings, and Karlekar added that the media concentration was "one of the highest levels anywhere in the world."

Daria Gorodisky, a veteran Corriere della Sera journalist who is also a union representative for the paper, told the Editors Weblog that she believes there is a "truly enormous press freedom problem in Italy" which will be "extremely difficult to resolve." She does not place blame for this directly on the government but on the fact that there are no "pure" newspaper owners, rather, those who publish newspapers also run other businesses and therefore have aims and interests aside from their papers. She also believes that the quality of Italy's journalism schools have deteriorated as more and more have sprung up. She did, however, point out that this is not the first time that Berlusconi has threatened the press.

Internet penetration is low in Italy in comparison to that of its Western European neighbours: about 48%, compared to 72% in the UK or 66% in France, for example. This low figure would suggest that many people are more likely to get their news from television and one or two newspapers, rather than the range of sources that online readers might visit. Despite this, however, Karlekar noted the country's "very vibrant and influential" blogosphere, particularly politically-orientated blogs.

Gorodisky commented that although some journalists were "very worried" by the situation, she did not think that there was enough widespread concern about Italy's press freedom status. Karlekar said that her organisation's report had sparked considerable debate and she had received both praise and hate mail from Italians. Niccolo Ghedini, lawyer to Berlusconi, dismissed the report on a TV show called Anno Zero, saying it was a private organisation and took its information from only two sources, La Repubblica and Corriere della Sera. Karlekar responded that she was "not sure where he got that" and was clear that "the range of sources is large and our authors would never just rely on one or two." She added that it was "interesting that the government felt compelled to respond in some way."
 
Karlekar did say that Berlusconi did not seem to be "exerting the same amount of influence over the broadcast media" as he did during his previous term as prime minister; there seems to be less "overt political manipulation." She was also clear that she did not think that the high media concentration had "stifled" the whole media, and drew attention to the diversity in terms of political opinion in the print sector.

Arguably there are far more important questions that the Italian press could be asking its country's leader, rather than focusing on the somewhat sordid details of his involvement with a teenage girl. But as a vital part of the press's role in a democracy is to play watchdog on the government, the fact that a paper is challenging the prime minister to clear up inconsistencies is something that must be welcomed. And even though the original issue may not be crucial in itself, the other questions it has brought up concerning use of government planes for private use, for example, are very pertinent. Given how much of the media the prime minister does control, and the fact that even the journalists who do not currently work for Berlusconi know that they may well some day, the press freedom situation could undoubtedly be worse than it is, and it is important that journalists keep fighting.

According to an investigation conducted by Princeton economists Sam Schulhofer-Wohl and Miguel Garrido, print journalists can bask in the knowledge that their work is sill important, the American Journalism Review maintains.  

The spring report, "Do Newspapers Matter? Evidence from the Closure of The Cincinnati Post" found that "even underdogs such as the Post, which had a circulation of just 27,000 when it closed - can have a substantial and measurable impact on public life."  The researchers qualify that the results are "statistically imprecise", but conclude that local newspapers have an important role in the civic life of a community.

A new court ruling in Madrid has exclusively granted intellectual property rights to newspapers, giving them total control over their own content.

The case first came to court more than two years ago when a total of 55 newspaper editors challenged a company called Documentación de Medios, for using content as part of their press-clipping service.

In an article on the Guardian.co.uk, Peter Wilby asks if popular UK tabloid, the Sun, still has what it takes to sway popular opinion.

"In the name of God ... Go!" were the Sun's carefully chosen words to prime minister Gordon Brown last week, as it called for an early general election.

A new report, "Analyzing the Australian Media & Advertising Industry" has concluded that the Australian newspaper industry is currently outperforming its British and American counterparts.  

The May 2009 report, published on the business intelligence website, Report Buyer, focuses on the importance of advertising revenues to the health of the newspaper industry. In order to clarify the dynamics, the researchers drew clear lines between its components, the top spenders and service providers within a global framework.

Clark Hoyt, New York Times public editor, has written about the difficulties a newspaper faces when writing about its own parent company in an article entitled "when your sister is the story." His piece is prompted by complaints from readers of the Boston Globe, which has been faced with closure threats from the struggling New York Times Co, about how the Times Company's flagship paper handled the story.  

He described how the company's first threats to close the Globe made the Boston paper's front page, but in the Times, the story was short and buried in the business section. NYT Co Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr and spokeswoman Catherine Mathis refused to comment or confirm the report, so the paper did not manage a follow up for several. Hoyt mentions how media reporter Richard Pérez-Peña has had his requests for an interview with Sulzberger turned down: Times journalists did not have advantages over others.

Former industry analyst and media commentator Lauren Rich Fine wrote a strong criticism of the growing consideration of not-for-profit status as an option for newspapers. Last week she took part in the Duke Conference on Nonprofit Media, where she saw her role as "to remind everyone that the business model wasn't working and that philanthropists don't typically give funds to organizations that have yet to find stability."

Rich Fine believes that the best way to preserve good journalism is to "let the market figure it out on its own." She asserts that successful not-for-profit start-ups such as ProPublica or MinnPost are surviving not because of their philanthropic support, but because of their "entrepreneurial spirit and lean cost structure, two things most newspaper companies are lacking."

A large proportion of the discussion and innovation with regards to monetise newspapers' online content has come out of the United States, possibly unsurprisingly considering the intensity of the economic downturn there, and arguably the American entrepreneurial spirit. But the US is not alone in its contemplation of the issue, which could potentially 'save' newspapers, and the Editors Weblog took a look at the situation in France and the ideas that are emerging, based on two recent studies.

Masters student Matthieu de Vivie carried out a major research project entitled "Can online news be profitable?" in which he analysed the sectors' sources of income, along with debates that have taken place on French media blogs over the past few months. The Institute of Audio-visuals and Telecommunications in Europe (IDATE), a market analysis and consulting firm, has produced several reports on online strategies for the press.

The French situation

In France, printing and distribution costs are high, partly due to state regulation and to a very powerful printing union, meaning that print profits tend to be lower. However, papers do benefit from much public aid, and this was increased in January when president Nicolas Sarkozy offered the press a 600million euro bailout. Many media outlets are owned by groups which do not actually specialise in media, but are looking for "prestige and influence within it," according to de Vivie. He gives financial daily Les Echos as an example, which is owned by Bernard Arnault, LVMH. Groups such as Dassault which owns national daily Le Figaro, or Lagardere which owns the magazine Paris Match, Journal du Dimanche and part of Le Monde, have leaders who are friends with Sarkozy. Many journalists have protested at what they see as threats to the independence of their papers.

Related to this issue of possible government influence, the French press is suffering from a lack of reader confidence, similar to that in the US. A 2008 survey showed that 46% of people did not believe a large part of what they read in newspapers. The Internet has "done away with journalists' monopoly over the production of information," states de Vivie. The increased presence of other fonts of information and aggregators has encouraged people to look far and wide for news, as in other countries.

De Vivie concluded that today, it would be impossible for a major French newspaper to survive online-only, due to the abundance of information available online and weak advertising revenue. IDATE's reports also suggest that traditional advertising is not going to support a newspaper on its own. So what are the options for newspapers as their readers migrate online?

Charging readers

The most basic option is to charge readers for online content, as newspapers have done in print for many decades. IDATE believes that the pay wall model is extremely limited. However, leading newspaper Le Monde seems to have successfully adopted a part-paid, part-free model online. It is a rare feat for a general interest paper, at least compared to the English-speaking world, where only financial giants such as the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal seem to have accomplished this. Articles are free for three days after publication, after which they go behind a pay wall. They can then be purchased individually, or basic and premium subscriptions are available, the premium option including access to digital copies of the print paper. Subscriptions represented about 35% of LeMonde.fr's revenue, while advertising accounts for 65%, according to figures obtained by de Vivie in November 2008. LeMonde.fr still has high readership, suggesting that the site's traffic has not been damaged too much by the pay wall, and that the model makes sense.

De Vivie also looks at French site Mediapart, a participatory, paid venture without advertising, launched in 2008 but Edwy Plenel, a former Le Monde editor. It is free to read other citizen participation, but a subscription gives users the right to write articles or leave comments, and to read articles from the Mediapart team. The site, however had not captured its target number of subscribers in 2008.

Alternatives to advertising?

But if papers do not succeed in persuading users to pay for their news: what are the other options? In terms of advertising, the Internet has allowed new measures to develop, as well as the CPM, pay-per-click and pay-per-action rates offer a more accurate assessment of an advertisement's effectiveness. It also allows for targeted advertising, however this is not much used in France. CPMs are also considerably lower in France than in the UK or US: according to de Vivie, a CPM of $10 is considered good in France, compared to $30 elsewhere. Part of this is due to lower investment in advertising, as well as lower Internet penetration.

IDATE's report on the future of the press considers below-the-line advertising as "essential" for a newspaper's online advertising strategy, and also recommends e-commerce as a distinct possibility: "the media now have the opportunity of developing into veritable media stores by incorporating e-commerce offers into their editorial content. IDATE suggests that newspapers form alliances with book sellers to market the books that they review, or with ticket sellers to market plays or other events. Another option is to get involved with products that target a newspapers' readership, such as the Wall Street Journal's partnership with Wine.com. The Lagardere group has signed an agreement with Sumitomo, a Japanese leader in online commerce. The firm sees advertising and e-commerce as the main revenue streams from mobile news, rather than making users or telecoms operators pay for content.

De Vivie also believes that for larger media groups, diversifying online can be profitable. He cites the example of the Washington Post's ownership of profitable education service Kaplan Inc. which he feels "is allowing the Washington Post to survive." The French Le Figaro group includes numerous commercial websites such as Evene, Sport24, Cadremploi, BazarChic ou TickeTac, which represent "an important source of revenue." LeFigaro.fr is not currently profitable but it has an important audience. One of the problems with such a strategy, however, is that it risks diluting the brand's value, which is already a fear of many papers as reading habits change online.

Potential of online-only

De Vivie is does see some potential in online-only sites, but only in certain conditions. Firstly, he believes that small "supple" organisations which offer content with significant added value, focussed on specific niches and gathering a large community, are a good approach. "This equilibrium is nonetheless precarious," he added, particularly in France where advertising brings in less revenue than in the US and it is often necessary to develop alternative sources of income.

One French success story is Rue89, which combines the skills of journalists with the knowledge of experts and the participation of citizens. Amateur contributions are checked and edited by the site's reporters. De Vivie explains that the site quickly acquired "strong journalistic credibility," offering exclusive stories and investigations. He estimates that the site could quite feasibly become profitable, especially as Rue89 does not make all of its income from advertising, but also develops websites for others, which makes up an estimated one third of its revenue. He believes that other online players also have potential to break even, due to their low fixed costs and overheads.

The impression that emerges from the studies is that online news has great potential and possibilities continue to evolve. It is therefore advisable that newspapers continue to innovate and do not resign themselves to relying on print income for as long as possible.  

London Mayor, Boris Johnson, has publicly criticised the press for its coverage of the G20 summit earlier this month, the Guardian has reported. Speaking to Jon Gaunt on Sun Talk radio, Johnson expressed concern over sections of the media which had "engaged in a very unbalanced orgy of cop bashing."

Many of the country's national newspapers and related websites have dedicated a significant amount of print and digital space to reporting police manhandling of newspaper vendor, Ian Tomlinson, who died after an unexpected encounter with the police. Since a Guardian video emerged demonstrating what appear to be unprovoked officers shoving Tomlinson on the ground, the story has dominated headlines, with the Metropolitan Police on the receiving end of harsh criticism.

The Rocky Mountain News published its final edition on Friday 27 February, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's last print edition before its move online was printed on Tuesday 17 March. The demise of these two publications, despite the P-I's continued existence online, left a hole in both Seattle and Denver. However, in both cities, online only publications have emerged. Both staffed by writers for the respective former newspapers, INDenverTimes and the Seattle PostGlobe are now up and running. The Editors Weblog spoke to INDT co-founder Kevin Preblud, and Kery Murakami who is leading the Seattle PostGlobe's effort, to find out more.

Funding

The two publications have taken very different routes in terms of funding. Fighting back against the mentality that information is free online, INDT is charging for subscriptions. Whilst much of the news will in fact be free, "it's really the premium content that we want our subscribers to pay for", explains Preblud. Initially, an target of finding 50,000 subscribers by April 23 was set, in order for the full launch to go ahead on May 4. However, the decision will now be based upon a combination of subscribers, users and page view figures.

Subscribers will have access to the INsider Channel, "where you can have a direct, real time conversations with our editors and writers" as well as a number of other applications and tools. "Insight, perspective, live blogging, live chatting, commenting, interactivity with writers and other readers" are amongst the benefits offered to paying readers.

Preblud believes that "business model is currently not working", largely due to the drop in advertising revenue and the decline in print readership. It is for these reasons that INDT is trying something different, and in terms of its model Preblud believes that "the cost structure is reasonable, the revenues are up, and with advertising and subscriptions I think we could make this work."

The Seattle PostGlobe, on the other hand is aiming to run as a non-profit, free to access publication funded by donations. Murakami presents the project as "for the broader civic good, as opposed to trying to make money." He added that "Seattle has a rich history of community efforts." Discussing INDT's decision to sell subscriptions, Murakami thinks that "it could work" - but his reluctance is attributed to the fact that he does not like the idea that only the people who could afford to pay would have access to information.

Citing the VoiceOfSanDiego and MinnPost as influences for the project, Murakami laments that "the big difference between us and them is that they were lucky enough to find some big pocket donors". He explains that the largest single contribution the Seattle PostGlobe has so far received is just $500. To increase revenue, the SPG has reached a deal with the Seattle Weekly, whereby the Seattle Weekly sells the SPG's advertising space and split the proceeds 50/50.

"We hope it will make the community feel empowered and they will respond - it's going slow so far but we'll see."

Murakami explains that they are giving readers the choice; "What we have done is said, 'We're going to volunteer and we're going back to you, the community, to put this in your hands. If you want us to do the work that we do, then support us. But really it's your choice.' We hope it will make the community feel empowered and they will respond - it's going slow so far but we'll see."

Coverage

Both the SPG and INDT have chosen, somewhat inevitably, to narrow their coverage from that of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Rocky Mountain News respectively, and place more of an emphasis on local coverage than statewide reporting. Murakami points out that "with a much smaller staff we have to be much more focussed, in terms of what we do," whilst Preblud concedes that "because we're an online-only news resource we just can't cover everything that the Rocky was covering."

"The Seattle P-I didn't go under because of a lack of interest or of readership, which is ironic."

Murakami hopes that the SPG will recapture the market that the P-I once held - because, as he explains, "the Seattle P-I didn't go under because of a lack of interest or of readership, which is ironic." There isn't, however, necessarily a call for a more hyperlocal approach to the news in Seattle because of several blogs already in existence which focus on specific neighbourhoods.

"We will be emphasising Seattle coverage as opposed to broader Washington coverage. We are focussed on issues that affect people in the city," Murakami explains. Similarly, Preblud describes how INDT believes "that our purpose is to cover the local market and the local community of Denver in a much more focused manner. We're unfortunately leaving out some of the more statewide coverage".

Both the Seattle PostGlobe and INDenverTimes will be looking at potential content-enhancing collaborations in the weeks and months to come. The SPG is investigating partnerships with public TV and radio stations, namely KCTS-TV. "We could be a demonstration project here in the state, showing how merging a public TV station, a public radio station and former newspaper reporters could work. The idea that we are pursuing is for the three entities to remain separate yet join to create a news organisation." INDT, meanwhile, could "end up partnering with some of the other local news outlets in the smaller cities".

Reception

"It seems that we really were valued and left a void that people appreciate us trying to fill."

The response to the new publications in both Denver and Seattle has been positive. "They've all been positive, keep up the good work, they're all rooting for us, and hoping that we can continue and that we can succeed," says Preblud. Murakami describes the reaction to the SPG as heartening: "It seems that we really were valued and left a void that people appreciate us trying to fill."

Personal impact

Preblud explains that his desire to launch INDT stems from his Denver roots, where he grew up reading the Rocky. He explains that he found it difficult to watch its demise, and that "nobody stepped up and was willing to buy the Rocky." It was this which prompted him to co-found INDT, "I just felt there was an opportunity there with part of what the future solution might look like," he clarified. Working on such a project is unlikely to be the same as working at an established paper, however. Murakami, discussing his new role, comments, "It's weird, I have been a newspaper reporter for 20 years. And now I am part-salesman, part fundraiser, part photo editor, part editor, part IT guy. And I haven't had time to do any stories."

How closures are affecting American cities

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Rocky Mountain News are two of the most high profile American newspaper closures, but there has been speculation that more could follow. Whilst the P-I is now published online, the Rocky in any official form disappeared completely. In reference to the situation Seattle now finds itself, Murakami says "The paper left a big hole in the community and nobody in the community was ever asked if that was OK. The community had no voice, in terms of this thing that happened".

"I think there's a risk at the moment and there are places where they are losing coverage."

There has been speculation in the New York Times over which American town could become the first to lose both of its newspapers, and Michael Wolff of Newser recently, and somewhat controversially, suggested that all newspapers could have disappeared in 18 months time. In terms of communities losing valued newspaper coverage, Preblud says "I think there's a risk at the moment and there are places where they are losing coverage. A vehicle like INDenverTimes hasn't been put in place to cover the losses. It's critical that we as an industry figure out what the right model is so that we don't lose the core of journalism, which starts with local coverage."

Whilst neither the Seattle PostGlobe or INDenverTimes are claiming to be a replacement for the newspapers whose demise lead to their creation, they are undoubtedly trying to help fill the gap that was left. In the future, will the situation in Denver and Seattle repeat in other towns and states in the US? If there are further newspaper closures, it is somewhat inevitable that sites such as INDT and the SPG will emerge - but can such sites provide a service to the community that is in any way comparable to that of a city paper?

The Associated Press' recent announcement of its intention to crack down on misappropriation of its content online and to create new search "landing pages" has been met with much commentary and criticism, with many interpreting it as a direct attack on search engines, Google in particular. The not-for-profit cooperative, whose ownership base is US daily newspapers and which has recently been faced with warnings from members that want to drop the service, also announced rate cuts at its annual meeting in San Diego but these did not attract nearly as much interest. The Editors Weblog spoke to the AP's director of strategic planning Jim Kennedy to find out more clearly what the AP's plans entail and what their implications are.

Search landing pages: creating a map that will direct readers to local sources

There are two main aspects to the AP's current new strategy. One is to start creating pages of aggregated content based around news stories and topics, which would allow readers to find the most authoritative local sources for the news they are searching for. The pages will contain some content and links to other stories from both the AP and its member newspapers, and although it will not actually be a 'wiki,' (a source of information that can be updated by users), Kennedy explained that Wikipedia's design is a "rough model for it," with pages driven by topics or keywords. Such a page will be a "map for the user to access other links," commented Kennedy.

He emphasised that the plan is all about giving the user "an improved news experience," as the AP believes that currently, the mechanisms provided to consumers for news searching are inadequate. Kennedy asserted that "people are using search as a remote control for news and it's not working," as it is like a device with only "a couple of buttons; it's a remote with directional arrows and no channels." If a user does not find the information they want on their first search, they usually reach a dead end and just go back to the search homepage and try again. Also, he asserted, search engines "point people indiscriminately" towards sources, rather than towards the news' local paper which should have the most authoritative article. The AP hopes instead to offer more of a guide to a topic, with sources that are more intelligently chosen.

Pages will be largely automatically produced, a necessary tactic as the organisation plans to have hundreds, even thousands of them, but there will be a certain degree of human editing for big stories. They will have URLs so that they can be 'tweeted' or linked to on social networking sites but they will not be a destination in themselves: "This is a distribution strategy, not a destination strategy," Kennedy confirmed.

Tracking content to stop misappropriation

The second aspect is the AP's mission to "keep up the fight to protect content from misappropriation and protecting it from those who don't pay." He clarified that the he was not talking about "small time bloggers who post a link to a story," rather "people and entities who come along and scrape content systematically and have no intention of licensing it." He claimed that the AP has already been fighting this successfully for many years, and this new strategy is a continuation of that in conjunction with its members. The new mechanisms that the AP plans to put in place include new formats for news content which would carry rights information, and tracking services that follow each piece of content. "Ultimately," Kennedy explained, "we'll get better and better at tracking where the content goes, and that will help us enforce the terms and conditions of its use."

So how will this affect its relationship with Google and other aggregators?

Kennedy was clear that these moves are not being made as an attack on Google or any other specific aggregator, despite widespread reports to the contrary. He said that the AP will continue to license its content to Google, Yahoo and others, but that it wants to "introduce new ideas into the relationships over time and try to influence their search mechanisms, in particular to help us point to authoritative sources." Essentially, the AP wants to discuss search optimisation in order to know how to ensure that their landing pages appear high up on users' search results, and "may want to talk to them about having some kind of advertising relationship." The organisation has accepted that widespread use of portals and is not hoping to turn the clocks back, he clarified, rather the AP's goal is to "harness the traffic that goes through them and use the portals to move traffic to more in-depth coverage."

Selling content to open portals is old news

American Journalism Review's Paul Farhi recently argued that the AP may well be partly to blame for the industry's current difficulties in finding a way to charge for online content, as by selling its content to portals such as Yahoo, the organisation helped to make news a commodity. Kennedy responded that the decision to sell content to commercial websites was justifiable from a competitive and financial point of view, as the AP was being "outpaced by Reuters in the Internet space" and "we weren't realising any significant new revenue from the web." The board of directors hired the Boston Consulting Group to assess the situation, and it was concluded that licensing some AP content, national and international coverage rather than local, to commercial customers on the web would be an appropriate response to both issues. And indeed, it has "accomplished both goals," Kennedy affirmed: "it has put us in the position of major news wire service on the web and it has brought in hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue over the course of that decade." That has meant that the members have had to pay less to support the cooperative's newsgathering, and that the AP has been able to increase its presence worldwide, "grow our video operation and expand employment around the world."


The future of news: mobile and paid-for premiums?

Currently, Kennedy insists, the AP is not trying to dramatically alter the news landscape. "This doesn't affect the current eco-system at all, it adds to it," he stressed. But he believes that the situation will be different in the future, and that "many different models will evolve," as well as the current ad-supported model which has dominated media across the board for so long. He suggested that in the future, the AP will definitely be looking to charge consumers for some services, but not all, explaining that this is what CEO Tom Curley meant when he said that "Free is not a business model."  Rather than being defeatist about the way that the Internet has changed news, Kennedy insisted that "we believe that there is still a frontier and there is still opportunity to create new models, new experiences and attract new advertising and new spending from the consumer because we can offer them something that they want."

"We are not going to put up pay walls around existing content but we are going to go forward and try to look at opportunities for premium content," he explained. "It's about creating something new:" words that echoed advice given by Wall Street Journal Online executive editor Alan Murray to papers considering charging online. "We are trying to look for new ways to build our revenue base beyond strict licensing," added Kennedy.

He cited the AP's mobile efforts as an example of moves that the organisation has been taking to diversify its revenue streams. The AP created a free application for the iPhone, which aggregates its own and its members' content and organises it by postal code, so Americans have an efficient, accessible source of local news. The iPhone app is ad-supported, with local ads sold by the members and national sold by hired agencies, and a Blackberry application was recently launched, which phone owners must pay to download. "It's really a model for the kind of activity we want to do in the future," he explained, "where as an industry we aggregate our content and put it where the users are, and build a model around it."

Kennedy was clear that the two projects will be pursued "very urgently" and that both efforts will be launching within the next three to four months. With its new search pages, the AP is trying to take a far more active role in a consumer's news reading experience, a big step for a news organisation which, due to its lack of a commercial website, has always been somewhat distanced from its audience. It is proposing a solution which it feels will benefit the reader, and which will evidently benefit the AP and its members, if they have more control over directing traffic and can make extra advertising revenue on these pages. The intellectual property initiative seems to be similarly motivated: becoming more directly involved with where and how readers find AP news, while seeking further income to which the cooperative feels it is entitled, as the producer of such ubiquitous news content. Regardless of motivation, any effort to address the discrepancies in the relationship between content generators and search engines will be closely followed by the rest of the industry in light of recently growing controversy, and any initiative that does indeed improve the news reading experience should be welcomed.

Personalisation is one of the many avenues that the Internet has opened up to readers of news: rather than buying one newspaper with everything in it, people now have the chance to easily choose what sort of news they want to read, and from where. Back in 1995 Nicholas Negroponte, founder of MIT's Media Lab project, coined the term 'Daily Me' to describe a virtual daily newspaper customized for an individual's tastes, and since then many services have been launched to make this concept of personalised news a reality. One such successful company, which offers users the chance to create highly personalised home pages using many different widgets, is Netvibes. Founded in 2005, Netvibes now has 30 staff at its headquarters in Paris, five in San Francisco and a presence in London. The Editors Weblog spoke to CEO Freddy Mini to find out more about how Netvibes' different services work, and how they contribute to a user's personalised experience.

Netvibes operates on the principle that we should be able to feel at home in our online world. When a user creates a Netvibes page, they can change everything: they choose which widgets they want, where they are placed, how big they are, what shape they take, or what colours they use: "widgets must be fluid or liquid enough to participate in a more sophisticated layout," commented Mini. It is also possible to install Netvibes widgets on a computer desktop or on another website. There are plenty of opportunities to personalise within the widgets themselves, such as moving tabs around, or choosing a slideshow view. "There is a lot of intelligence in the product and we built it to make sure that people will try things and the product will react and surprise the user," he remarked. "It's all about making the pages really yours," stressed Mini, "as you can see, there is no prominent Netvibes logo." The interface is available in most European languages and progress is being made to translate it into others.

The platform is very user-friendly (see my 'Easter egg'-themed page, which took a matter of minutes to create), and it is easy for companies or publications to create simple RSS-based widgets, using a Netvibes 'wizard.' About half of the 180,000 widgets on Netvibes are RSS-based, Mini specified, meaning that they are essentially one or more RSS feeds in widget format, but there are many more complex ones involving video feeds or programming: searches for flights or hotels, or the possibility to access email or social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter.  Many different newspapers and news services have created widgets, often showing a list of the most recent stories.

Netvibes for newspapers

Netvibes can also help clients to develop more advanced widgets. With newspaper clients, Netvibes helps the paper to "granulize" the content into a widget and make that widget into a destination in itself, rather than just a way to "fish for an audience and drag the user immediately back to the site." Mini believes that if the widget simply links back to the site in one click, then "it is like an ad and it gives the user a poor return." So Netvibes built widgets have at least one or two clicks within Netvibes before redirecting to the paper's website, on the premise that the user feels at home within their page and will not want to be directed away the instant that they consult the news.

When asked if he has faced opposition from newspaper publishers who believe that services such as Netvibes are reducing their website traffic and advertising revenue, Mini explained that a few years ago this existed, but not any more. "If you are a newspaper you want to be in the widget game," he asserted, "now it's not even a choice: if you're not, another rival paper will be, and you will lose that part of your audience."

As well as their private page, which they can sign into from any computer, Netvibes also offers the chance to create a public page, or a Universe. It is published in real time, and can be seen by anybody who knows the URL  - www.netvibes.com/[username]. Other people cannot alter the page in any way, but can see what another user is reading. Users can search for friends and connect to set up a network within Netvibes; Mini clarified that the site was not built to be a social network, but it has "the basic capabilities" so that if people do not use another service they still have the opportunity to share what they are reading. The public pages are not necessarily just personal, publications such as the Financial Times have created one, which Mini described as a "showcase for their widgets."

Making money without advertising

No money is exchanged when papers place widgets on the Netvibes site in a standard sense. The company makes money in three different ways, notably not through advertising. The first is through promoting widgets by listing them first to make them far easier to find among the more than 180,000 options. The widget owner pays per install, and the widgets are marked as sponsored.

The second is through selling its 'Premium Universe' service, which allows companies to create their own page using Netvibes' software, but with their own branding and own URL. There is a set-up fee, and then a yearly contract to pay. The pages are fully 'personalisable,' unlike the free public pages, which are static, and consumers can create accounts and sign in. Unlike a user's personal page which they build from nothing and add content to, the Premium Universe pages come fully loaded with widgets, and they then have the choice to keep what the company is offering them or change it. The 80-90 clients include advertising agency Ogilvy, which created The Daily Influence, and French daily Le Figaro (www.lefigaro.fr/maune). The company can advertise and keeps the revenue generated. In this area, Mini explained, Netvibes is effectively being used as a publishing tool such as Wordpress, as there is the option to add "very sophisticated" notes.  

Installing Netvibes on the servers of others, effectively licensing Netvibes' source codes, is the company's third source income: Netvibes for Enterprise. This gives the client even more power to customise than with the Premium Universe, which is a turn-key solution that Netvibes maintains, and which remains on its server. For this service Netvibes sends the client one of its engineers who will spend five days installing the software and will remain for a further two days to train the relevant IT staff. The licenses are tailor-made depending on what the software is used for.

Each of these revenue streams accounts for about a third of the company's total income, said Mini, with some fluctuations. Amidst tales of financial woe throughout the industry, Netvibes' revenue is actually growing, with first quarter results significantly up compared to last year. "We should continue to thrive," Mini hopes, and confirmed that the company is on track to break even in September. The one way that the financial crisis has had an effect, he explained, is that interested customers are taking far longer to make decisions than usual: "that is the challenge."

Is personalisation the future: do people care?

One of the big questions concerning personalisation is: do people care enough to bother to do it? Netvibes has more than 3.7 million active users according to Mini, so seemingly some people do. Mini emphasised that for him, Netvibes' reason for being is to empower people, to give them the choice to make the pages that they want: he realises it is not something that everybody wants to do, but at least they are being given the chance. He thinks that in terms of news, it is unrealistic to assume that people will want to get all of their news from one source: for example if you follow several different sports based in different countries, why would you read about all of them in one newspaper?

The Netvibes service is fully driven by users: they choose what they want, there is nobody tracking what they read or use to recommend different articles or products which is the basis of some other personalisation offerings, such as the DailyMe. This avoids one of the potential problems connected with personalisation: privacy issues. Registering for Netvibes involves providing minimum personal information. However, it does mean that it is likely to only be used by more proactive, tech-savvy Internet users. There are also limitations to the service, for example, news can only be chosen by source rather than by topic or keyword, meaning that a user will still have to scour the web for information they need.  

From a newspaper owner's point of view, the proliferation of such sites cannot entirely welcome as they give readers the chance to access news without visiting the paper's website, hence generating no income. However, as Mini explained, there is now little point in resisting, and the possibilities provided to publishers, such as Premium Universe, are a valuable opportunity for those newspapers which are eager to embrace personalisation on their own sites, and there is an opportunity there for advertising revenue.

The International Journalism Festival took place in Perugia, Italy from April 1-5. The festival addressed the differences between old and new media and the necessity to integrate the two, and many other widely discussed issues affecting the media today, such as integrating print and web news in light of readers' migration online, the necessity to finance journalism as a watchdog, and hence the need to make readers pay for online news.

Following negative press coverage of his diplomatic gaffes at the recent G20 and Nato summits, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi appears to have threatened journalists with reprisals, even implying that he is considering a government-inspired boycott. The most reported faux pas were skipping an official Nato photo and snubbing German Chancellor Angela Merkel by finishing a mobile phone conversation while she waited to greet him, and shouting out to Barack Obama during a photo call at Buckingham Palace, causing the Queen to look round in annoyance.

Speaking to reporters in Prague on Saturday, Berlusconi accused journalists of "defaming me and misinforming readers," and claimed that the Italian press had "no other aim than that of saying the prime minister has committed faux pas or gaffes." He seemed to threaten a news blackout: "I will no longer talk to you... I will no longer give news conferences," and went so far as to admit that he was tempted to call for "direct and tough action towards certain newspapers and members of the press." When asked to explain further he warned, "If I say 'don't watch a TV channel' or something, do you think that no one in Italy would follow me?"

The American Journalism Review has conducted a census of newspaper reporters at state capitols - and found the number has dropped by 32% in the past six years. There are now just 355 full-time statehouse reporters in the US, and all bar six states have fewer reporters at state capitols now than they did in 2003.

These worrying figures are representative of the financial pressures placed on newspapers in the current economic climate. ARJ points out that where once newspapers would have protested against allegations their coverage of state government wasn't comprehensive enough, many newspaper editors have resignedly responded to the review with comments, admitting that they simply can no longer afford the kind of coverage they used to provide.

IRNA (Islamic Republic News Agency) reported on Monday that the pro-government, state-owned, newspaper, Korshid (Sun), was shut down as a cost cutting measure.

Korshid had a short life seeing as it was only launched in October of last year. According to Ali Zabihi, managing director of government agency Atieh it has been shut down after a new years (Persian New Year) message given by "supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei." . He said the government needed to spend money cautiously and cut costs during the global recession.

The critics of the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad showed relief to see the Khorshid gone, because it meant one less propaganda tool for the upcoming election (June 12). According to an AFP article, Other Iranian media outlets, newspapers, websites and agencies, of all political influences have also been shut down recently.

Source: AFP

Critics of Senator Benjamin Cardin's Newspaper Revitalization Act are concerned that the bill will stifle freedom of speech. On Tuesday Cardin proposed a bill that would allow newspapers to operate as tax-exempt non-profits with 501(c)(3) status. Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax-exempt and contributions to the papers would be tax deductible.

In an article in the Wall Street Journal, reporter James Taranto points out that, though the bill expressly permits nonprofits to publish newspapers, there is no existing legislation that prevents them from doing so now. Some newspapers, including the Christian Science Monitor, currently operate as non-profits, the difference being that under Cardin's bill the nonprofit papers may sell ad space free of taxation as long as sufficient space is provided for editorial content.