Results matching “news site regis”

True/Slant is a recent arrival on the online-only news scene, aiming to offer a voice not only to its 100 or so contributors, but to the reader and the advertiser also. It is not a typical news site offering breaking news, but rather features commentary, opinion and some original reporting. Based in New York, the start-up has just six full-time staff, led by founder and CEO Lewis Dvorkin who has a total of 35 years of media experience, the last 12 of which has been in online news. The other employees have a similar mix of traditional and new media backgrounds, he said. T/S is a privately held company funded by Forbes Media and Velocity Interactive Group. The Editors Weblog spoke to Dvorkin to find out more.

The five differences

Dvorkin stressed the five ways in which T/S is "very different from any other news site." Firstly, because of the tools that it gives its journalists to create their own original content in real time. Second, because of its approach to copyright: contributors are encouraged to offer their perspective "around a piece of content that might have been produced elsewhere." Third, the relationship between the contributor and the audience is different because the contributors are contractually obliged to interact with their community. The last two differences are that the journalists have a variety of salary options and that the site has adopted an unusual approach to advertising.

For entrepreneurial journalists

True/slant offers "entrepreneurial" journalists their own homepage on the web, or as Dvorkin put it, "we enable them to create their own brand of one." They must be "experienced" in a specific field such as finance, politics or health but do not have to be a journalist from a traditional background: bloggers, authors or academics are also welcome. True/Slant is not a typical news publication with an editorial line, rather the work of a collection of individuals. "We don't have any ideology here, we have 100 different contributors, 100 different voices and 100 different perspectives," Dvorkin said.

Interaction with the audience is compulsory. Apart from that, it is up to each contributor to decide what they write and when. Much of what they write is opinion and commentary, but some also do original reporting. It is easy for them to comment on other news, by simply highlighting a section of an article they find on the web and clicking a button, the highlighted text will be placed on their post with a link to the contributing site. They are able to publish photos, audio and video as well as text and can self publish in real time. Their content can be automatically posted to Twitter and Facebook at the time of publishing. There is no traditional editing process in place, Dvorkin explained. Contributors are welcome to discuss their article ideas with a member of the T/S team, but they are not edited before publishing.

Different payment options are available, depending on the amount of risk that an individual contributor wants to take: journalists can choose to receive a monthly stipend, to participate in revenue sharing or they can actually have stock in T/S. Contributing to T/S is more likely to be one of several projects that a writer is working on, rather than their main source of revenue.

Promoting journalist-reader dialogue

Readers who want to interact with journalists must register and then they can 'follow' their chosen contributors and comment on articles, being drawn into a dialogue. Contributors highlight the user comments that they feel "further the conversation." A selection of these highlighted comments are then be integrated on the home page, amongst contributors' content. Dvorkin believes that this is very important to today's news reader, who enjoys "engaging with and being part of the news life of a professional media person." He believes that the True/Slant environment can be a "powerful experience" in the way that it encourages dialogue between contributors and users, as well as between fellow users.

A voice for advertisers

True/Slant is currently relying on advertising as its sole source of revenue. As well as display advertising, the company is incorporating "a very unique feature" called T/S Ad Slant for corporate marketers. They too can have a voice on True/Slant: they can pay for their own page and have access to the same tools that a contributor has to interact with a community. "It's a more direct and engaging approach," Dvorkin commented. He explained that such pages are integrated into the larger network in a "contextually relevant way," but stressed that the pages are clearly labelled as from marketers. Will this prove more lucrative than traditional advertising?

What's next?

Dvorkin said that the site has plans to grow, hoping to add more contributors and enhance its features. He believes that True/Slant is offering consumers a different way to experience news, one that is "more in line with how they want to access and interpret information today." Breaking news can be found in abundance throughout the web. What readers do need, is experienced, knowledgeable journalists to analyse and explain the news that they find, and this is where True/Slant steps in. It is indeed likely that many readers will appreciate the chance to be part of a conversation and form a relationship with their favourite writers. And from a writer's perspective, considering the growing number of out of work journalists today as traditional media outlets are forced to make cutbacks, a site that provides them with the tools for successful freelancing could be very welcome.

Leading Russian news agencies and media outlets have come to an agreement concerning proposals for a draft law which would grant news reports the legal status of goods and allow for the imposition of fines for the illegal publishing of copyrighted material.  The announcement was released today in a news release from the news agency RIA Novosti.  

The Mass Communication Council at the Russian Communications Ministry met on Wednesday to discuss measures to protect intellectual property. Participants included RIA Novosti, Interfax, the Kommersant publishing house, Vedomosti and Gazeta.ru.  

Alan Mutter has confirmed that he was one of three people who made a presentation at the 'secret' newspaper executives' meeting in Chicago last week. The product he was discussing, which he has developed in conjunction with tech entrepreneur Ridgely Evers is ViewPass: a single, industry-owned brand that would enable consumers to access paid content on websites and mobile platforms from all participating publishers.

Mutter compared ViewPass to a Visa card, and clarified that it would consist of a "simple, one-time registration system that would remember users as they moved among participating websites." It would support micropayments, subscriptions and bundles of content, similar to Journalism Online. "To address the concern that many consumers may rebel against pay walls," reads the document given to publishers at the meeting, obtained by NiemanLab, ViewPass also gives publishers the option of letting users "pay" for content with time or information rather than just cash.

According to the New York Times, American television network CBS has joined efforts with live video web site, Ustream, to have its news video content and special reports streamed live on the site, in a bid to draw in a younger crowd.

"Seeking a younger audience more accustomed to watching the news on the Internet than on television," reports the Times, Ustream will show the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, as well as a variety of real-time news reporting and other coverage, including news conferences and speeches.

Will people voluntarily pay to read news that they could easily read for free? Cynthia Typaldos, founder of Kachingle is convinced that they will. Kachingle proposes a novel solution to the news industry's revenue problems: encourage people to donate money to their favourite sites, whether these are major news outlets or small-time blogs. The Editors Weblog spoke to Typaldos to find out more about the scheme, which is due to launch in late July or early August.

How it works

Kachingle users, who the company are calling Kachinglers, need to sign up once to set up their subscription, which, via PayPal, will charge them $5 a month. When they go to a news site that is participating in the venture, it will display a Kachingle 'medallion', which the user can click on to indicate their support for that site. The reader can choose to highlight as many or as few news sites as it wishes, and Kachingle will track the number of times that they visit that site in a month. At the end of a month their $5 will be divided and distributed proportionally between the sites which they have flagged, according to the amount of times visited (with a 15% cut going to Kachingle and 5% to PayPal.) "The algorithm is meant to be a proxy for value received the consumer," Typaldos explained.

Why will people pay?

The main reason Typaldos thinks people will be prepared to offer this $5 is not because they have a strong desire to help save newspapers but because of the social advantages of using Kachingle. Contributors create a profile that shows which sites they are supporting, which they can post to their Facebook profiles or send on Twitter, Typaldos suggested. There will even be a Facebook application. "It becomes a very real view of the things I value, part of my online persona," she explained: something which she believes is "very important" to people as their online existence becomes more and more complex. Essentially, "there's a very powerful peer pressure recognition element to Kachingle" which is what she thinks will drive people to become involved, she feels that users will be "getting something back" in the form of social recognition. The more altruistic wish to help support news would come second to this, she believes.

Another reason Typaldos gave for why Kachingle will work is simply how easy it is: a crucial factor for such a venture. Registering involves providing just basic details, and thereafter, a Kachingler's job is straightforward, marking the sites, without having to consider how much they would like to contribute to it. "There just can't be any mental transaction costs," as Typaldos put it. And the system still allows people to move freely around different publications without encountering pay walls, which Typaldos is firmly against. "Pay walls are just the kiss of death for newspapers," she claims, "we just think it's the wrong economic approach." Those who are trying to implement them "are trying to take the old business model and stick it on the Internet," which she believes is a doomed approach.

To start with, anyone who registers as a Kachingler will make a $5 a month payment. It is fixed thus because Typaldos did not want the decision of how much to contribute to be a barrier for users. The company plans, however, to allow people to give larger amounts in the future, and to encourage them to do so by suggesting amounts based on how many sites they have chosen to support. Typaldos hopes that the typical amount given will rise to about $20 a month. Unsurprisingly, content providers would like people to contribute more money, she said.

The start-up has been in contact with many major news publishers, Typaldos clarified, and these have been by no means only US based: publishers in Germany, the UK, France, Italy, Brazil, Hungary and across Scandinavia, for example, have been in touch. "We are not country specific," she confirmed. For news organisations, the benefits are clear, and the medallion button is extremely easy to install: a simple Java script widget which "you can put on your site in three minutes."

Will it work?

So how much could Kachingle actually raise for newspapers? Could it make a difference? "I think that we will bring enough revenue to sites that are very high quality with original content," Typaldos asserted. She is not under any illusions that such an effort could save a major newspaper that has "debt, so many overheads, print, a huge staff," but she is confident that Kachingle could have a highly significant impact on smaller publications such as MinnPost, which has low overheads but respected journalists. "We will be very powerful for them," she added.

The idea is a good one in the sense that it manages to combine the notion that people should and can pay for news, without putting up paywalls that would block off sections of newspapers and seem incompatible with the idea that news readers should be able to jump around as they please online. It is also compatible with an advertising model. Typaldos described it as "not like tipping, not like micropayments, but we have taken the best elements of both." The fact that readers can choose what they think its worth paying for is likely to appeal to many, and the cost is sufficiently low to not be a deterrent. It does seem that quite a substantial marketing campaign will have to be carried out to spread the word and persuade people that it is worth making the effort to sign up: social pressure alone might not be enough. Once they do so, however, they will probably appreciate the service.

According to researchers from City University London's Graduate School of Journalism, going online only could cause a newspaper to lose 75% of its revenue and web traffic can actually fall. For their report 'Taking the paper out of news,' Neil Thurman and Merja Myllylahti studied Finnish financial daily Taloussanomat which dropped its print edition at the end of 2007, due to declining readership and heavy losses. They interviewed the CEO and Editor-in-Chief, as well as several other editors and journalists.

The researchers state that "logic might suggest that if a newspaper's content ceases to be available in print form, the title's website would start to register a significantly higher number of visitors." But in fact, following an initial rise, the paper's unique users started to fall months after the paper went online-only, and "compared with the websites of three newspapers who retained a print version, Taloussanomat's performance looks very poor indeed." One such website is that of its main competitor, Kauppalehti, which runs an integrated print-online operation.

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.

As more and more readers get their news online, the problem that news providers are all contemplating, according to Eduardo Hauser of the DailyMe, is, "How do we address the overwhelming amount of content on the web and how do we deliver it to the right audience?" People today have too little time to sift through the vast amount of content they have access to online, and as a result, many different services are springing up which provide some kind of filtering. Hauser and his team decided that personalisation was the route to follow, and the DailyMe was founded: a site that offers users the chance to easily locate the sort of news that they want to read, and to read it within the site, as content is licensed.

How does it work?

Registered users are invited to choose what sort of stories they are interested in, and once they have started to use the site it will track their preferences with the aim of providing them with appropriate recommendations and advertising, through what Hauser described as "dynamic personalisation." DailyMe offers three different strands of articles: Top News, which is the same selection of breaking stories for all users, DailyMe, which allows users to select their news preferences by topic and Daily We, which is community-driven, and allows users to rate stories. Within the DailyMe section, users can choose from subjects such as world news, science, travel, or industry-specific. The DailyWe area both charts the most read stories and gathers reader feedback. Registered users can assign one of six different descriptions to rate a story: infuriating, amazing, important, sad, uplifting or odd/funny: "six emotions consistent with people's reactions when they read the news," according to Hauser. So as well as looking through the most viewed news, users can browse the most important, or the most infuriating stories.

News is sorted largely by topic rather than by source: so readers easily compare many different stories in the fields that interest them. DailyMe licenses and "processes" about 10,000 stories a day, which come from 500 different newspapers and wires, such as the Associated Press, the Chicago Tribune, the Seattle Times and the Detroit Free Press. "We have chosen newspapers because we go after an audience that is loyal to brands," Hauser stressed, adding that he believes the target audience appreciates the "value of professional structured content." He also stressed that DailyMe's sources are not chosen with any political angle in mind.

Limited editorial agenda

Due to the overwhelming amount of news and ways to find it online, Hauser believes that "the editorial role has come under enormous pressure and may be structurally unable to handle that demand." Relying on people alone is not enough any more, and stories in the personalised section of the site are chosen algorithmically DailyMe's proprietory algorithms. However, an editor's hand undoubtedly remains important, and the DailyMe's editorial team do pick what appears in the top news section, and which articles appear higher up.

Problems with personalisation?

One recent criticism of the personalisation trend, as voiced by New York Times op-ed columnist Nicolas Kristof, stems from the very idea that it allows people to focus primarily on just the news that they want to read. Is it responsible to support people going online just to look at entertainment news, for example, and skip politics and current affairs altogether? Hauser agreed that on principle, it is "probably better for people to be exposed to diverse perspectives on a variety of topics." However, he pointed out, "people have always been selective about their media," it is not just the Internet or personalisation services that have led to this; people have always skipped articles, or changed television channels. There are still opportunities for news discovery within DailyMe, and the Top News section includes articles on all topics. Hauser explained that as there are recommended links alongside each story, the site encourages readers to branch out. "We don't necessarily see personalisation as an end point. We see it as the starting point," he clarified. He believes that it makes sense to start with news within your fields of interest from many different sources, rather than "news chosen by someone else based on a common denominator of an undetermined audience."

Licensing not linking

Hauser identified several main motivations behind the decision to license newspaper content and host it on the site, rather than just offering links that send users away. Firstly, because the DailyMe is targeting an audience of 'integrators' as identified by a Pew Research Center report last year on the US audience for domestic news. This section of news readers are more accustomed to staying within one domain rather than jumping around between sites, so DailyMe intends to offer "a deeper experience, one that drives greater engagement," and allows readers to get all their news within the site. Also, for the purpose of providing an effective personalisation service which learns from readers' habits to make "the best possible content recommendations" it is necessary to keep people within the site. This is also crucial for making money from targeted advertising, as the more you know about your users, the more precise the targeting can be.  

Another aspect of licensing was the desire to enter the news market as a friend to publishers, rather than a foe. Hauser pointed out, correctly, that "we need to find a way for journalists to be properly compensated for their work," and paying the content providers evidently helps to do that. This is in contrast to many aggregation services, which newspapers often blame for loss of revenue due to the fact that people use these sites just to read headlines and do not bother to click through to the paper's actual site.

Adding to advertising

Hauser's original business model was based purely on advertising. As it is hoped that people spend a considerable amount of time on the site, an advertising model seemed appropriate. However, due to the decline in online advertising rates, Hauser and his team have realised that unless rates recover swiftly, the site will not become profitable in the next two years. So at the end of February the DailyMe started talking to newspaper publishers about licensing its technology in order to give them the ability to "deploy content personalisation and recommendation products on their own sites." As yet, Hauser could not give details of which publishers were in talks.

The future

DailyMe is in the process of developing a third version of the product, which will be "more comprehensive" in the way it applies the learning process by which it makes recommendations to users. Within the DailyWe section of the site, users will be offered the tools and environment to aggregate the best content they can find on particular topics. Having founded the company in 2006, Hauser is "happy with the product from a technological perspective" and added that funding is currently sufficient. The challenge, however, is developing a strong audience. At present, the site has 20,000 registered users, and although many more visit it, the base must grow considerably before advertising revenue will truly take off.

DailyMe has considerable potential: delivering news by topic from many sources will certainly appeal to many readers, and paying for the content that is offered keeps publishers and journalists happy. Obstacles to widespread adoption of the service however, may well arise from many people's innate reluctance to provide information about themselves or to allow their activity to be tracked.

The New York Daily News has teamed up with Toronto-based SaleSpider.com to launch a new social networking platform that will enable 500,000 small businesses to connect and interact with one another.

The New York Daily News, America's fifth largest newspaper and the most-read paper in the New York metropolitan area, will also facilitate readers with finding sales leads - namely by way of government tenders - and obtaining government grant information, as well as being able to access a number of additional business tools at no extra cost.

According to Arsenio Escolar, editor of free Spanish daily, 20 Minutos, "free papers are able to confront the crisis better than paid-for ones."

Escolar made these and other comments whilst attending a working breakfast as part of the Foro de la Nueva Comunicación in Madrid on Wednesday 4 March. His comments overlapped with some points presented in an article published by Newspaper Innovation blogger, Piet Bakker, just one day earlier.

Following increased discussion in the media world of the non-profit model as a potential saviour for newspapers, the idea of paid online content has returned to the forefront of the debate, and different ways to implement this have been proposed. What most of the arguments are lacking, however, is an acknowledgment of the free spirit of the Internet and the necessity to maintain this. If the tides are to be reversed and people are to be persuaded to pay for information again, any online payment program that is established should not erect pay walls between publications. Paid online content would be a huge step for newspapers, and a reversal of current policy, so great thought and care are required to ensure that it is a step taken in the right way. But as online advertising revenue slows, and newspapers' very survival is threatened, could paid online content indeed be the solution?

The current micropayment debate

Walter Isaacson's article in Time which first spurred the debate makes the valid and interesting point that maybe returning to paid content would actually be a positive change for the industry in terms of the way that journalists work. Charging readers for content is based on very different principles to charging for advertising. When seeking income from advertisers, readers become less of a priority: "eventually you will weaken your bond with your readers if you do not feel directly dependent on them for your revenue." Isaacson believes that the key to attracting online revenue "is to come up with an iTunes-easy method of micropayment," that would allow impulse purchases of individual articles, rather than having content available purely by subscription. As many newspapers have already tried and failed to generate income via paid subscriptions, it would seem that micropayment is definitely worth considering.  

Steve Brill's memo to the New York Times that was published in Poynter, advises the paper on "how to get off the free-content treadmill", calling for the NYT to lead the way in establishing a new paid content model. He points out that "getting an average of just $1.00 a month (3.3 cents a day) from each visitor [who currently uses the site] would yield $240m in new annual revenue." He outlines a plan whereby online articles will cost 10 cents each, a day pass for all articles would cost 40 cents, a month would cost $7.50 and a year $55. Passing on an article would cost 5 cents. This combination of subscriptions and the possibility to purchase individual articles makes sense, but there are flaws in this proposal.

All newspapers in one payment plan?

First, an industry-wide simultaneous switch would undoubtedly be a preferable solution, and arguably the only one that has a chance of succeeding. Any newspaper that unilaterally decides to start a paid content system for information that can be found elsewhere is bound to suffer from a lack of readers, as people will simply go elsewhere. Few people who get their news online have undying loyalty to one or two individual publications any more. Brill suggests "a new marketing campaign would promote the fact that the Times alone among daily newspapers (until the others follow) is charging for its content because 'you get what you pay for.'" Obviously it is possible that this would work, but it would be a huge risk and it is likely that many readers would immediately be lost, and content would be isolated, as TimesSelect content was during its brief period behind a pay wall. The idea of paying to forward an article further fortifies this wall. Forget traditional concepts of competition: newspapers need to come together so that paid content will work for everybody.

Along similar lines, offering subscriptions to each individual paper is unlikely to work anymore. Online readers have become accustomed to looking at many different sources of news each day: one of the greatest advantages of online news is that you can move freely between publications, and papers are becoming more willing to link to each other's content. This is something that should be maintained, setting up walls around individual papers is inconsistent with the benefits of the web. So papers should join together and implement a system by which users can use the same payment method for many, or ideally all, publications, whether subscription-based or micropayments. In discussion with Isaacson, Daily Show host Jon Stewart suggested a cable TV style model, whereby newspapers group together to form packages. This would definitely be preferable to individual publications proceeding alone, and might provide some healthy competition. But the user would benefit more from just one universal system, as it would be simpler to access more publications in a way that is more coherent with the current way that people use the web. Choosing between different 'packages' could be a confusing and frustrating exercise and there is the risk that media companies would align along partisan lines and further polarise the industry politically.

In line with the idea of free movement, costs would have to be lower than Brill suggests for individual articles. An ideal system would be one where costs are so low that people will not hesitate to read as many articles as they like. Any payment system developed will have to be created with the less tech-savvy user in mind. It must be extremely easy to use, unobtrusive and transparent with regards to costs. The importance of ease cannot be over-estimated; it is essential not to put people off by making registration too complicated.

iTunes or iNews?

Countless parallels have been drawn between the newspaper industry and the music industry. Obviously the two industries are very different and purchasing a song is not the same thing as buying an article: not least because you are likely to listen to a song again and again while as you would often only read an article once. Consequently, any pricing structure for newspaper content must reflect this difference, with articles costing a tiny fraction of the 99 cents that iTunes, for example, charges for a track. But there are some lessons that newspapers can learn. A crucial point to understand is that a site such as iTunes is so popular because you can buy a huge amount of music there, from many different record labels, and the pricing strategies are very simple. Once a user has set up their account and entered payment details, it is very easy to make purchases. Although newspapers may not want to lump their articles all in one place, but rather retain their individual websites, one payment scheme for all definitely seems as if it would be the most usable. A pre-paid account, or a system whereby you just needed to register your card details would probably be easiest to use.

One issue that people have often pointed to when comparing the newspaper and music industries is that many people are still prepared to buy songs legally even though they can frequently be downloaded free. According to NewspaperDeathWatch, it is the artists themselves who "drove transformation" and persuaded their fans that their music was worth paying for, and made clear the damage they cause to the industry by downloading free songs. "It's up to reporters and the emerging breed of online news organizations like Talking Points Memo to convince their fans to fork over a few pennies to consume their stuff." People feel guilty about getting free music from their favourite artists, maybe people's consciences can be evoked over consuming newspaper content free if it is damaging their favourite journalists?

The value of newspaper content

So is a return to paid content the answer for newspapers? Not everybody thinks so. New York Times op-ed contributor Michael Kinsley compares the amount of money to be made from charging online NYT readers of the $2 a month to that currently made from advertising and circulation, and as the paid online sum is so much smaller he concludes that "$2 a month is not going to save newspapers." But with more and more readers moving online, and advertising and circulation revenue dropping, it is something worth considering. Advertising can still be used to generate additional income, as long as it remains relatively unobtrusive and inoffensive.

A world-wide, newspaper-wide paid content system would undoubtedly be complicated and costly to set up, but if it could provide the vital extra income needed to save the industry, it might well be worth it. A system that allows people to move freely between publications in the way that they can now, and encourages newspapers to link freely to one another so as to make best use of the advantages of the web, is essential. And hopefully readers will not only think that newspaper content is worth paying a small amount for, but learn to value this content more.

148 of Newquest's UK regional titles have launched mobile websites: a stripped-down versions of the papers' normal sites, making them easier to load and read on a phone.

Roger Green, Newsquest's managing director for digital media, told Press Gazette that Newsquest realises that it is possible that in the future mobile phones could be the main way that people access the Internet, and it wants to be ready for that: "we will be where our audience is - it doesn't matter when or if that point is reached, we're there on print, mobile, and websites."

To mark the relaunch of the Editors Weblog, the World Editors Forum is running a special series entitled "Doing More with Less." The series highlights major trends that editors-in-chief are using to steer their newsrooms through the difficult economic climate. The eighth in the series takes a look at France24's The Observers, which provides professionally-edited citizen journalism.

The Observers is a France24 venture launched in December 2007, which combines citizen journalism with professional editing.  Only three full time staff work on the project, yet it operates two versions of its website (one in English, one in French), has just started a weekly radio show and is about to start a weekly television slot. The Editors Weblog spoke to Julien Pain, Founder and Editor of the site, about its work.

How it works: zooming in and zooming out

The Observers is a collaborative website, with "professional content and an international scope," stressed Pain. The site displays a series of documents - either photos or videos - taken by amateurs from around the world. According to Pain, "you won't see a photo taken by a professional journalist on the site." Editors, based in Paris, then provide some background information on each document and 'observers' from the country it discusses will comment. The idea is to zoom in on a small anecdote and then zoom out, placing it within a wider context.  The stories picked to follow might be connected to well-known breaking news items, or might be about something which is relatively unknown to readers. Occasionally an extraordinary item will come to light, such as a short video sent in by a policeman in Gaza, which shows the entrance to an alleged tunnel linking the Gaza Strip to Egypt.

Who are the Observers?

As well as the three full time staff in Paris, about a dozen freelancers have been taken on as 'regional editors,' and they are paid for their time but only work when required.  Most of the documents used come from the 700 'observers' around the world who essentially act as trusted contacts. The idea is to receive information from people who are on the scene of whatever story is being told. They are used as local sources, Pain explained, "we don't try to make them into reporters. We use their expertise and local knowledge." He always looks for truly local contacts, "I am not going to get somebody in Beijing to comment on something that happened 3000km away in the Sichuan province," he insisted.  When possible, Pain always tries to get people native to the country to 'observe,' rather than French or English people living abroad, as they obviously tend to have a better knowledge of the local language and culture. Anybody who goes to the Observers site can register as a "friend" and is free to comment or contact the site, and those 'friends' who provide useful information over a course of time will be invited to become Observers. Pain hopes that the already substantial network will grow further.

Observers are not reporters: "We use their expertise and local knowledge"

Blog-style site breaks down barriers

The site takes advantage of the best aspects of a blog, but maintains professional direction. The site has the informal tone of a blog; it aims to be "smooth and easy to read," commentated Pain. He believes that "blogs have broken down the barrier between journalists and readers. Now on a blog, you can talk to your readers." The Observers hopes to be part of a dialogue, allowing comments on all stories and responding to reader reactions. "We are always very clear about what we do know, and what we don't," Pain clarified: for instance if the date of a photo is known but the exact location has not been proved, and this is where readers' knowledge could come in useful. He added that readers are asked "to provide information and links to update the story," and he occasionally specifically asks if people can check or verify content. "The story doesn't stop when it's published," Pain explained, and editors will frequently go back and add or change things.

Essential professional editing

What differentiates the Observers from other similar citizen journalism projects linked to traditional media outlets, such as CNN's iReport, is that although much content is produced by amateurs, everything is professionally checked and edited. Fact checking is a time consuming process, Pain explained, but crucial to maintain the validity of the site. "Amateur content is far more valuable if edited by professional journalists," he believes, as when faced with the vast amount of citizen produced content available on the web, it is difficult to know what is reliable. The Observers is confident that is can be a trusted source, and the confirmation process often involves checking facts with more than one contact. Pain also explained that he would feel very uncomfortable about associating unverified information with The Observers' parent brand, France24.

"Amateur content is far more valuable if edited by professional journalists"

What's next?

The Observers has just started a weekly 15 minute radio show in partnership with Radio France Internationale. The idea is to take a document and analyse it, with an expert on the subject matter, and then Pain explains how the Observers obtained it. A television slot on France24 is expected to follow shortly; it will be along similar lines, but just five minutes long. The same content will be used for all three platforms - online, radio and television - but will be presented in different ways. Pain also hopes to start an Arabic version of the site soon, and possibly increase staff numbers.

Pain was clear that the Observers' work does not intend to replace professional journalism, rather it hopes to provide an alternative voice in the news media world, where so often, almost identical stories will be published countless times. The site is likely to fascinate anybody interested in international news, and the model is extremely innovative, with an impressive output considering its tiny number of full time staff. The Observers has found a way to validate citizen journalism and turn amateur content into something more valuable, and this could well be a model used more frequently in the future as news outlets struggle with limited resources.

Helium is an online company that describes itself as, "the online spot to learn what you need to know and share what you know." It combines citizen journalism with peer rating in order to provide a plethora of articles on just about any topic.

Helium brings together a system of news and information combined with a place to submit articles. It even has a "marketplace" where publishers can post topics for people to write about - sort of like a publishers à la carte classified space.

It is a place for readers to find articles that interest them, writers to write about topics that they know and understand, publishers to find articles and non-profits to voice their issues.

It is a unique system of sharing content, ideas and knowledge. It will be interesting to see what the future holds for Helium, if the current system will hold up and retain its credibility.

The Editors Weblog interviewed Peter Newton, the VP of business development at Helium.com to get a better idea of how the site works and what their goals are for the future. Newton has worked at Monster.com and The Boston Globe where he was the vice president of advertising.

EW: What is your selection process for articles and writers?

PN: Helium represents the first true meritocracy in the publishing industry. Helium welcomes anyone and everyone to join its community of writers.

We don't select writers; they naturally come to the site and write to areas in which they have an interest (in many cases, a passion) in sharing their knowledge or opinion. Once members join, their work is evaluated by other members though our peer-review rating system.  In essence, Helium brings order to the chaos of user generated content. Its patented peer review rating engine elevates the best quality articles.

After a writer submits an article, he/she is presented with two anonymous articles in the same topic area to rate in an "A versus B" comparison. Through the wisdom of the crowds, the best articles rise to the top, resulting in a rank-ordered list for every topic.

The end result is that the best writers are promoted, recognized and rewarded for their work.

New titles are introduced onto the Helium site through members, partners and directly by Helium staff.

EW: Where do you draw the line between journalist and citizen journalist?  What about between citizen journalist and blogger?

PN: Citizen Journalism is a very awkward term. Quality journalism demands its participants to be objective, ethical and methodical. Research, fact checking and skillful interviewing techniques are critical to the art. It's not obvious that what we are starting to call citizen journalism possesses any of these traits. I'm certain that the Columbia School of Journalism doesn't teach that the art of being a world class journalist is to be in the right place at the right time. Citizen Journalism seems to be migrating to each individual's "15 minutes of fame" and further and further away from journalism. It might be fun to watch - but so were the lions and Christians in the Roman Coliseum.

With that said, Helium is not really concerned with categorizing or labeling different types of writers.  We have created a platform for people to express themselves in writing across a wide variety of topics in a civilized and substantive way, and then have the community sort for quality.

Helium is a site for writers that fills a unique role in the publishing industry. In doing so, we are representing a new classification of online writers.

Our community of members includes professional writers, freelancers, subject matter experts, students and the expert next-door.

We are not attempting to replace investigative journalism or time sensitive reporting. Instead, Helium attracts and produces individuals who have the skill and insight on specific topics that they wish to share with others.

EW: Do you feel that the status of being an "expert" or a "professional journalist" is becoming less important?

PN: No, there will always be a need for professional journalists, especially in covering breaking news or conducting investigative journalism, and Helium is definitely not out to undermine established journalists or copywriters.

Instead, we are trying to expand the ranks of paid writers to include part-time talent that otherwise would be sitting fallow.

Our media solutions product offers newspapers a way for them to supplement what remains of their editorial staff, but is in effect driving down their content-creation costs. We are merely tapping into the notion of "social publishing," in which publishers ask their readership to contribute content.

EW: Do you apply any regulations for topics? style? content? etc...

PN: Yes, Helium has established regulations for topics, style, and acceptable content.

Beyond providing clarity to our members, the community is self moderating. Every new article submitted to Helium is rated by other members. The best content rises to the top. Our members often message each other with advice as to how to improve articles and items that don't fit the standards of the site are removed.

EW: Do you see a shift towards more citizen journalism in news reporting? Both online and print?  How will this affect the future of professional freelancers? Is it going to put a dent in the freelance market?

PN: When you say "news reporting", let's be clear that our focus is not breaking news or conducting investigative journalism.  With that said, there is a growing paradigm shift in content creation; publishers are increasingly sourcing content, not writers. As for how this will impact freelancers no one can say for sure but one thing is for sure-there will always be demand for quality writing.

EW: Can a person make a living from putting material on Helium the same way a freelance gains income?

PN: The short answer is no.  But with that said, there are thousands of Helium members who earn from $40-$100 each month, which is much more than chump change. In fact, some of Helium's highest earning members have made more than $3,000. It really depends on how much members use the site.

Earlier this month, Helium announced upfront payments for all new articles being written by starred writers on Helium.com. This change to Helium's Terms of Service is a move to reward the site's highest quality writers and to promote quality content at Helium.com.  In addition, the company's popular Marketplace product - used by publishers looking for top-notch content for their publications - now offers special access to the site's best writers. The move will improve content for Helium's publishing partners and help ensure that the site's best writers will be seen by those publishers.  

Many web 2.0 companies offer opportunity for incremental income. With these changes at Helium, highly-rated writers will have an opportunity to earn larger sums for sharing their expertise with the Helium community.

"Helium has grown by leaps and bounds these last two years; it has earned the respect of people and writers around the world," said Petra Newman, a 3-star writer on Helium.com "With the sky falling on our economy, Helium has again found a "pièce de résistance" for people who already have a passion for writing. Increasing the earnings for well-written articles is a win-win situation for both Helium and writers."

EW: What newspapers or websites do you work with?    

PN: Currently Helium is working with GateHouse Media's State Journal-Register(SJ-R) in Springfield, Ill. SJ-R recently begun using Helium's "Media Solutions" product to source writers for its op ed section-there are currently over 700 additional papers in the active funnel.

We also provide content for a wide a variety of other newspapers, magazines, online-only sites, etc.

EW: What about your competition? Who are they?

PN: As a producer of content and as a publisher of content, we compete with thousands of companies, yet in most ways, we have no competition.

That said, we really don't see anyone that directly competes with us, in terms of delivering a scalable solution to engage a community to produce high quality content.  

EW: Where do you see yourself in relation to news organizations such as the AP or the New York Times?

PN: The New York Times is the New York Times. Helium is not attempting to create a competitor to breaking news.  

EW: Where does a site like Helium envision itself in the future? How do you grow / expand ?

PN: Helium is rapidly building the world's largest community of writers. We plan to grow and expand the business in a number of ways over the next five years:

• Become the partner of choice to the publishing, non profit and broadcast industries for generating quality content at a low cost, while helping engage their audience in the process.

• Become the content source for any entity needing quality content.

• Expand internationally; international business represents 60% additional market opportunity

• Create a community of micro publishers

The Hong Kong Economic Journal and Hong Kong Economic Times, the two largest Chinese-language business newspapers, have launched paid websites.

The Economic Times recently revamped its online and mobile services to attract more readers. Subscribers can now view entire pages of the newspaper and subscribers - who pay HKD350 (USD45) a year - have access to real-time market news and analysis, newspaper content, archives for the past three years, amongst other things.

The Economic Journal has attracted more than 8,000 registered subscribers since it launched in July. 7,000 joined in the early-bird registration campaign, paying HKD398 for a year's online access. The special early subscripton offer was closed last week and the prixce for subscription now HKD598. As an added inticement, the wall-respected Mr Cho column was also made available and a year of his archived articles. Subscribers need to pay HKD248 a year for access to Mr Cho's archive.

A number of US newspapers have submitted cancellation notices to the Associated Press (AP), announcing that they are dropping their contracts with the news service. Reasons range from the recent changes that the AP has made to its fee structure to its diversion from regional news. The Wenatchee World of Wenatchee, Washington, The Yakima Herald-Republic of Yakima, Washington, The Spokesman Review of in Spokane, Washington and The Post Register of Idaho Falls, Idaho, spoke to the Editors Weblog about their decision to cut back on AP content and future plans that they have.

The AP's new fee structure

The new pricing structure, approved by AP's board last year, includes state, national and international breaking news and allows newspapers to buy individual articles and other services, as opposed to its old structure of one bulk membership fee. The AP claims this will cause fee increases for only 10% of its subscribers,

But the Post Register's editor and publisher Roger Plothow refers to the new fee structure as "too rigid" and "too expensive", pointing out that the AP hasn't adapted too well to the changing newspaper industry.

Spokesman-Review editor Steve Smith mentions that he had to lay off 16 of the papers staff in December 2007 and choosing to unsubscribe from the AP ("even considering the cost of replacement services") would save the paper nearly USD$300,000 and permit it to keep 10 to 15 jobs.

"The AP's declining content contribution?" or "Focus on Local News"
 
"They do far less for us than ever before. This year, we would have had to pay extra for basic Olympics coverage once included in the basic rate. And the AP staff in Olympia, the state capitol, told us they were unable to provide statewide coverage of last month's primary election. That is simply not acceptable, not considering how much we pay," says Smith.
 
The Wenatchee World, apart from financial concerns, dropped the AP for similar reasons. It wishes to pay more attention to regional news and the AP's regional reports have "gone by the wayside," says the paper's editor and publisher Rufus Woods.
 
"We've started a free story-sharing service with other papers in our region to enhance our regional report. We do it for free and it works great for everyone," says Woods.
 
"I believe that successful news organizations are gonna be the ones that will have the strongest local content and the challenge for us is that it's more expensive to provide local content than anything else," says Jenkins.
 
Plothow predicts that smaller and medium-sized regional papers will rely less on the AP for content since most of it may be obtained through other sources or be less relevant to readers of papers like the Register. He says that in two years time, the Register will be 80-90% regional and local, with only the most important national and international news articles.

"We will take our savings and invest it into local reporting resources. For newspapers like ours, local is the only future," says Plothow.

Smith reflects a similar idea: that while his paper has international and national coverage, its focus is primarily on local and regional events. For this, the Review cannot rely on the AP, he says. Perhaps it is due to the news outlet's job cuts or the "restructuring and emphasis online and in multi-media." He also mentions that dropping the AP's online service, like audio and broadcast coverage, made no change to the Review's site traffic.

"The big question is what kind of news report resonates with readers. Given changing reader habits, it may be that an all-local paper is in our future. Or perhaps just a slimmed-down national/international report," says Woods.

Newspapers defecting to AP competitors?

The Register is replacing the AP with other services such as Thomson Reuters, the New York Times, The Los Angeles Times-The Washington Post, European Pressphoto Agency, sports providers like PA Sports Ticker and a  "reconfigured coalition of regional newspapers that share content," according to Plothow.

The Review is adapting a similar technique. It may also make use of McClatchy-Tribune's proposed network that would be set up "under their auspices" and would pay the paper for any Review content that it would use.

Tim Brettingen, the AP's chief revenue officer, said that an AP contract is "one of the great bargains in the industry," in an interview with PaidContent.org.

But Spokesman Review's Smith countered that opinion, saying, "Frankly, I think it's highway robbery. And obviously, I am not alone. I have heard from several dozen editors who have dropped or soon will drop the service for most of the same reasons. Most of the major papers in our region are opting out."
 
Jenkins says that submitting a two-year cancellation notice gives the paper time to look at alternatives "that are available now" and those that "are being developed".

"When you look back two years, so many more sources would have become available in that period that it's hard to tell what will be available two years from now," Jenkins adds.

The effects of AP's pricing structure on the US newspaper industry

"The industry's going through dramatic change and we have to be open to radically new ways of doing business to stay in business. AP assumes they are a necessity but more newspapers are viewing it as a luxury and are weary of the "corporate" approach of the organization. If AP wants to partner with members in this evolution, great. If not, so be it," Woods says.
 
Smith, referring to the way in which the American media landscape is evolving, said "If more regional papers begin to share their content between themselves (as has begun in South Florida), the change to our industry will be seismic. AP has been the backbone service for more than 100 years. That could change in the next few years with AP becoming less of a provider and more of a competitor in the race to survive the new information revolution." He continued, " The mere fact that once competing news organizations -- The Miami Herald, South Florida Sun-Sentinel and Palm Beach Post for one example; a growing Northwest coalition for another -- will now collaborate signals a huge and unprecedented shift in the news landscape. And any sort of mass shift is going to boost the growth of fledgling content providers such as PA/SportsTicker. There will be some entrepreneurs who will make their fortunes with these changes. And new partnerships will grow between unlikely parties such as CNN and MLB.com."
 
The Post Register's Plothow predicted, "The AP will likely become a service for large newspapers. In the U.S. 1,200 of the 1,400 daily newspapers are under 50,000 circulation - these are the papers that will begin leaving the AP en masse over the next year or so." He concluded, "This will likely only improve local journalism, and national and international journalism is rapidly moving onto the Web. Whether that's a good thing remains to be seen."

Circulation:

Wenatchee World: 22,579 daily, 24,414 Sunday
Yakima Herald-Republic: 38,000 daily
Spokesman Review: 89,000 daily, 113,000 Sunday
Post Register: 25,500
(last audit, June 2005)

User comments on websites has become standard fare for most media organizations. But according to the Poynter Institute's Bob Steele and Kelly McBride, who spoke at the Unity: Journalists of Colour Convention, news organizations must make it easy and inviting for users to comment, otherwise they may inhibit the discourse they purport to initiate.

Editor and Publisher looked into the matter in order to see the mechanisms that newspaper sites were employing when dealing with user-generated content and found a range of methods.

The research found:

-All of the top 10 US newspaper websites reviewed have mechanisms to monitor the content, be it screening comments or urging users to report offences
-Some sites require registration
-Some sites preview comments prior to their publication
-Some used both

According to Editor and Publisher, the most "liberal" policy about user's posts is from the Wall Street Journal, since neither registration or moderation are used and readers are pushed to self-police and report offences.

The Los Angeles Times had the "most stringent" and "severely worded" rules that referred to discrimination, false advertising and interrupted online access:

WARNING: A VIOLATION OF THESE POSTING RULES MAY BE REFERRED TO LAW ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITIES.

This is exactly the kind of unappealing, and threatening phrase that Poynter's Steel and McBride warned against, saying that they could be perceived as "hostile."

Less "threatening" in tone, the Denver Post's Neighbor forum includes the following guidelines:

Think of Neighbors as a neighborhood gathering, where conversation is lively and civil. What's important to you is probably of interest to others - if your neighbors don't know about something, they will appreciate if you share your knowledge. The community and its users will decide what the site becomes, but it is not intended to be a free-for-all.

Retaining more "civility", the New York Daily News writes:

Be nice. Think about others. People often say things on boards that they would be ashamed to say to someone face to face. Please treat other users with respect.

Source: Editor and Publisher

President Alexander Lukashenko has passed a new media law, despite accusations that it is restrictive. The new legislation means that the Council of Ministers in Belarus now control online media.

The Belarusian parliament pushed the bill through in three consecutive readings and passed it to the Constitutional Court for review. According to the local press, the court rubber stamped the bill in July and it became law on Monday, report the Committee to Protect Journalists.

News website Telegraf, report that presidential administration representative Natalya Petkevich said, "only Internet analogues of printed media will be regulated by the new law."

Apart from the controlling online media, the law requires "Belarusian and international journalists to seek individual accreditation from multiple state agencies.... It also obliges Belarusian media to seek re-registration from state authorities" says CPJ.

The Minister of Information also has full rights to suspend media outlets, the ministry and state prosecutors are allowed to shut down outlets permanently if they find their content inaccurate, defamatory, "not corresponding to reality," or "threatening the interests of the state or the public."

Source: Committee to Protest Journalists

"We've reached a point where we have to go beyond user comments as the sole means of interaction on news articles," writes Steve Outing. "It's time to integrate staff content and eyewitness reports supplied from your community."

User comments all too frequently don't add to a story. "Comment threads in many newspaper Web sites are filled with bad behavior, crude humor, and uncivil discourse, punctuated by the occasional worthwhile tidbit that adds to a story. We must do better," writes Outing. Gawker recently suggested cutting comment boxes all together; however, readers can add value - perhaps we just need to look outside the comment box.  

In his latest Editor & Publisher column, Outing argues, "most newspaper Web sites remain largely stuck in the we-tell-you mode of news," and that it's time to "get past that outdated strategy (and) integrate staff content and information from your community."

In its current form, reader-created content "is shuffled off to the side in its own area, set apart from the professional journalism."

Outing suggests that for any - and every - story, along side the reporter's piece is an "info-box sidebar ask(ing) people who were eyewitnesses to the accident to share any photos (or video) they may have taken, and to describe what they saw. Any content shared by eyewitnesses would be posted on the same page as the reporter's story."

Further, this feature should be included for all stories, big or small. "I argue that it's actually more interesting when applied to the smaller headlines," wrote Outing. "Because it serves the people for whom a 'small' story is actually big to them. Small stories often are reported by a small number of news organizations at a shallow level, so expanding them provides a powerful public service for those who want or need to know more."

For example, recently a local paper reported about a bear spotted in a neighborhood. Six users left comments, but most fell into the "smartass category." Outing writes, "By asking for eyewitness accounts... we'd actually get a look at that bear. After all, if you live in that neighborhood, you will be interested in that story... A wildlife expert reading the story might be prompted to post advice on what to do if you spot a bear foraging in your garbage cans."

Outing also suggests adding an story-specific email alert feature, so that as content is added, interested readers can stay up-to-date.

Reader involvement can even allow "big" stories to simultaneously be local, "for example, for the essential hurricane preparation story, local residents can be asked what they are doing to prepare... Retailers can be asked to report if they have essential preparedness materials like plywood available, to spare residents the hassle when trying to find something that everyone in town wants... For a personal-interest story about a specific family's losses, a call can go out -- accompanying the story -- to neighbors or friends of the family who may have additional information to share."

Outing cautions against creating "community content ghettos"  and instead highlighting user-generated photos, videos, tips and opinion. "This stuff is important and can be important to the overall coverage of a story, so don't bury it."

Last, Outing addresses quality control. "How do we know that the eyewitness account is for real? Has the user-contributed photo been doctored in Photoshop? If the submission is written really badly or is riddled with factual errors, are we supposed to run it anyway?"

Outing recommends both user registration (so editors may contact contributors to verify information) and a vetting system, perhaps run by the story's reporter, who filters any community-created content and can moderate these reports. Outing also suggests ranking incoming submissions, so that the most valuable contributions get put at the top of the page.

An interesting point Outing makes is not to "cherry-pick." "If you gain a reputation of only picking the best stuff that community members contribute (the old "letters to the editor" model), you may see contributions dry up. My answer to that is to publish everything that looks to be legitimate and doesn't violate your terms of service, but for the lesser stuff hide it behind a 'more' link for those who want to dig a bit deeper. Present the best stuff at the top layer."

Source: Editor & Publisher

Prominent South African newspaper Mail & Guardian (M & G) recently revamped its website with social networking and Web 2.0 functions. New features include a new layout, the ability to save article clippings, StoryHistory, StoryPredictor, the ability to comment and debate, semantic tagging, and the implementation of NewsSwarm.

In an interview with the Editors Weblog, the M & G Online general manager Matthew Buckland said that the aesthetic aspect of the redesign includes "a wider layout, top navigation instead of left", use of mixed fonts and more white space.

The new site attempts to "build networking features", Buckland said. The ability to see other people's news clippings allows a user to "meet users based on similar interests."

NewsSwarm allows users to see who is viewing what at a given time. "It's interesting from a user perspective to see what articles are important," Buckland mentioned.

StoryPredict will forecast what stories a user will be interested in based on the browsing history, which is in turn saved.

In the past, users were not able to comment but this was due to technical restrictions, according to Buckland. Now comments to the news site are enabled for registered members. "We ensure comments. We encourage users to post under real names. We ensure a high level of intelligent debate," Buckland said.

Every site except the Thoughtleader.co.za, the Techleader.co.za and the Sportsleader.co.za sites require users to register if they want to comment.

Registered users are also able to blog, Buckland said.

The advanced printing function allows for articles to be printed in a row.  

Buckland pointed out that the new site is "tagged quite heavily". Related news stories are linked to articles, even if they are "from competitors and blogs", according to Buckland.

In his blog, Vincent Maher, strategist at the M & G, said that because the old code and the database were "messy", the developing team had to reconstruct "the site from the ground up on a completely new set of technologies."

According to Maher's blog, "the project scope and order of production" included:

- Redesigning and developing front end, designing a new strategy for ad formats, new CMS
- Developing a new data structure to accommodate real-time visualization and semantic tagging
- Integrating an advertising engine and negotiating with advertisers
- Integrating national-level navigation mapping, city-level mapping through Google Maps, "contextually-relevant" outside news sources through Google News, "contextually-relevant" blog postings through Google Blog Search
- Creating new templates for e-commerce partner sites
- Rebuilding newsletter system
(For the whole list, go to Maher's blog) 

Source: Matt Buckland, General Manager Mail & Guardian Online, VincentMaher.com

See also:
South Africa: Mail and Guardian launches Amatomu blog aggregator

Over the last couple of days the future of the printed newspaper has been discussed and debated 15th World Editors Forum. Some declare it dead, others are optimistic. Pierre Haski, Founder and Editor in Chief at Rue89.com, doesn't need to worry. He spoke at the 7th session session under the slogan "There's a life after the newspaper".

Rue89.com was launched about a year ago on the same day that Nicolas Sarkozy was elected for president. And a year later Rue89.com is doing a lot better than he is, Pierre Haski stated. The independent French news website was launched from Pierre Haskis apartment since they did not have an office at the time. Today they have 650,000 unique readers each month. The websites was founded by journalists who, just like Pierre Haski, have kept blogs in the past and really come to see the how the Internet enables journalists to connect with their readers.

Rue89.com does not have a Reuters-wire. They did a first but soon realized that it was "money for nothing", since people are overflowed with that sort of free information, and if readers came to their site it was to read something unique, and they don't feel that they've suffered from not having that kind of material.

The site belongs to the "pro-am" family, with content produced both by professionals and amateurs. Their information comes from three voices, one being the actual journalists, the other experts and the third from readers/bloggers. Approximately one third of the content is produced by non-journalists, including the experts. Already from the beginning Rue89.com decided that journalists should have the final say in what goes up on the website, since they have knowledge about ethical rules etc. The biggest challenge has been to manage the comments. In the beginning they were over-flooded by comments and they had a crisis on their hands after a few months and needed to make some changes. Now readers have to be registered to be able to make a comment. You can use a free e-mailadress which really doesn't give you a real identity, but just by introducing that they "got rid of 90% of the crap".

Pierre Haski explained how the comments really are gold-mines, even though not all of them are gold. Many of their most successful stories over this first year have come from the comments made by readers, either the comments have contained actual tips or a journalist has found a good story in the ten or so lines that the reader has written.

The Recovering Journalist recently blogged on the Norwich Bulletin's (Connecticut) brief adventure into user commenting - The Bulletin gave readers free range to comment on the site, only to find that comments that are entirely anonymous and unmoderated can quickly spiral out of control. Apparently posters were relentless even when it came to wedding announcements.

Todd Zeigler of the Bivings Group recently blogged on 9 Ways to Improve the Quality of Comments on your Website:

1. Have moderators and staff actively participate on the comment board; when staff post frequently they can help lead the discussion and improve the level of discourse
2. Require users to have one comment pre-approved before they can post freely
3. Filter out the profanity
4. Allow users to report inappropriate comments
5. Use other users feedback to bury or promote comments
6. Require registration for posting
7. Threaded comments foster discussion; when users can reply to a specific comment it allows for multiple lines of discussion to coexist
8. Let users ignore other commenters
9. Create a comment policy; transparency is always best

By following these guidelines news sites can reap the benefits of online user discussion, without the swear words.

Sources: Recovering Journalist through David-Black.org, The Bivings Report

Another newspaper catches on to the new media and social networks bandwagon: the San Diego Union-Tribune has launched a social networking platform dubbed sdBackyard.com.

Users can perform all the basic functions, including creating profiles, sharing with friends, uploading multimedia content and creating blogs.

However, unlike many previous newspaper experiments with social networks, the site seems to have thought of two key aspects:
- how to use the user-generated content within editorial packages
- how to make advertising revenues from this venture

The community print publications, which will compile content submitted by users, will be distributed on Fridays by home delivery (along with the daily). They will also be available for free at some retail outlets starting in June.

Users of the social network are required to register according to geographic location, which helps to put them automatically in touch with locally relevant content - and to serve them with targeted advertising.

"The unique geographic targeting allows small businesses, nonprofit organizations, clubs, and other community groups opportunities to promote themselves in print and online," said George Bonaros, marketing director for the Union-Tribune.

Source: Editor & Publisher

BBCWorld Service has teamed up with blogging platform Livejournal.com for Live Report, a global project that provides a blogging platform for the Russian-speaking blog community. This project aims to strengthen user-generated content, connecting bloggers with the BBC Russian website bbcrussian.com.

Stephan Grootenboer, BBC World Service business development manager, Russia, said, "The BBC is keen to expand engagement with social media and reflect user-generated content in its output. Partnership with LiveJournal manifests the changing nature of BBC Russian as it uses new platforms to reach its audiences. With Live Report project, we are breaking new ground which will help us reinforce links with Russia's vibrant and quickly growing blogging community."

There is now a BBC-branded area on Livejournal, which will link the blogging community to stories on bbcrussian.com. Users can read the stories, then return to Live Report to post comments, articles, photos, videos, etc. on their blogs.

The BBC will also keep their eye out for budding reporters, no matter their location, and select the most compelling blog posts for publication in its output.

"We hope their contributions will bring us news and insights that are often bypassed by mainstream journalism. This new community will present us with witness reports and personal views from across Russia which may be selected for publication on bbcrussian.com and the BBC's other international news and information websites," said Zoya Trunova, editor of bbcrussian.com.

Livejournal has over 9 million users per month and over 1.5 million registered accounts in Russia. The community has 365 new members since last month's pilot launch of Live Report.

Source: Media Network

What if newspapers were liable for content published by users? This could happen if the US Congress takes away the protections of Section 230, if newspapers continue to encourage anonymous - and abusive - comments.

Section 230 for Internet postings protects providers and users of an "interactive computer service" that publishes information provided by others.

"Section 230 is important to our industry. It gives us a greater latitude in creating community than we would have without such protections. Losing that protection would be a serious blow to our audience growth prospects," write journalist and media blogger Howard Owens.

However, as many newspapers open up online comments with little incentive for users to register or provide real identification, or with insufficient guardrails, they are potentially jeopardizing their Section 230 protection.

Newspaper consultant Mark Potts offers tips to promote healthy online interaction, in light of Philly.com's recent (re)opening of comments, after having shut them down at the end of last year.

"Anytime a newspaper has problems with comments, it doesn't take long to figure out why: It happens because the site managers allowed anonymity, or they didn't think to employ a profanity filter, or they didn't put "report abuse" buttons on the comments to let readers self-police the feature."

Potts also warns of excessive moderation, citing The New York Times, which screens every single comment editorially, but this can become a huge cost, especially considering that "99.9 percent of comments are fine if you have the proper protections in place."

Philly.com has established an array of new protections to safeguard it from abusive comments, including:

- Required registration with a confirmable email address.
- Unique usernames, preferably real names.
- Automated profanity filters.
- "Report Abuse" buttons that enable the community to police abusive comments.
- An explicit commenting policy for all readers.
- Enabling comments a story-by-story basis. Some items and themes, such as immigration or race, will systematically lead to abusive reactions.
- Don't moderate all comments but react swiftly when any abuse is reported.

Source: Recovering Journalist - Howard Owens through journerdism