Results matching “bloggers future”

Seattlepi.com, the website of the now-defunct Seattle Post-Intelligencer, turned one last Thursday, marking the survival of one of the nation's first experiments in transforming a print newspaper into online-only journalism.  The website's success indicates that the internet may be a possible refuge for many papers across the nation facing bankruptcy and closure.

The 146-year-old print newspaper once stood as a strong competitor to Seattle's current top newspaper, the Seattle Times.  But with the fall in advertising revenues that came as a result of the recent economic recession in the U.S., the Seattle P-I began to bleed as much as $14 million each year with no end in sight.  The newspaper's owner, New York-based Hearst Media, decided to cancel print publication last year, with the last print and ink version of the P-I appearing at doorsteps on March 18, 2009.

After the first efforts to get reporters on the ground in Haiti and to get vital communications infrastructure up and running, a fuller picture of the importance of social media in the disaster has emerged. Journalist Cristina Romero, writing for the European Journalism Centre, has explained the role of social networking in the earthquake's aftermath.

Social media provide both a way for those on the ground to connect with emergency relief workers, and a way for reporters and bloggers to access authentic information about the impact of the disaster, Romero writes.

Some of the first footage of the wake of the earthquake came from civilians shooting video on their mobile phones. SMS was the primary method of reporting at first, while the landlines and other traditional channels were down.

After months of much hype and speculation, Steve Jobs finally took to the stage to unveil Apple's new highly anticipated tablet computer - the iPad.

With its official introduction at an event in San Francisco yesterday, Steve Jobs has finally laid many rumors about what the electronic device can do to rest, while igniting hopes about the iPad's ability to bring new life to 'old media' and to revamp the e-reader market.
 

 

Much of the transformation in the newspaper industry is led by the big western players: The New York Times has announced it will charge for content, The Guardian has launched a paid news app for the iPhone, and the Apple tablet is eagerly anticipated.

But these changes affect other parts of the world, as the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram reminds us. "In Egypt, we are also experiencing a seismic media evolution," Tarek Atia writes, in a considered op-ed on the state of the newspaper industry in Egypt and the future of media.

The Telegraaf Media Groep has the advantage of already having a significant presence in the news landscape of the Netherlands, and Brouwers hopes that his new network can collaborate with Telegraaf's more traditional properties. He realises, however, that his platform is going to be very different, and also that the Telegraaf newspapers will be careful about how much of their content they give away. 

A recent post on Alan Mutter's Reflections of a Newsosaur blog has rasied concerns over the potentially devasting impact the current financial crisis in the newspaper industry could have on the willingness of students to choose journalism as a profession.

Mutter argues that in a time where employment opportunities are shrinking and those who do manage to secure jobs are paid a pittance, a 'substantial percentage of the next generation of professional journalists' could be wiped out in a movement he dubs 'journicide'.

CNN has decided to go local. The news channel will invest in hyperlocal news aggregator Outside.in as part of the site's $7million series B funding round. CNN will begin displaying feeds from Outside.in on its newly revamped site early next year.

Outside.in aggregates news from blogs and news media sites into feeds of specific neighborhoods- there are currently 57 830 neighborhoods available (sorry, US and Canada only)- creating a personalized aggregation feed for the user. CNN, which is owned by Time Warner, will assumedly use the feeds to personalize the site for each reader.

The Huffington Post Los Angeles local news site has gone live, a year after HuffPo's Chicago local site and its NYC site that was launched this summer. 

Media heavyweights Arianna Huffington and Mathias Döpfner went head to head on Thursday in a debate concerning the future of paid content at  The Monaco Media Forum, the Financial Times has reported.

Döpfner, CEO of German media giant Axel Springer, opened the debate with a message of hope for traditional media: "I don't share the cultural pessimism that media is dying. I think it is the opposite." In its latest results, out this week, Axel Springer's German newspapers
bought in a tidy 25.4% profit margin. "If print is dying, this death feels pretty comfortable," Döpfner quipped.

Oakland Local is one of many non-profit community news websites currently springing up across the globe as the need for quality local news coverage becomes more obvious. The recession has seen the local news industry suffer staggering financial blows and several news organisations, small and large, have had to heavily cut back on resources or close altogether.

The situation has caused many to express concerns about the dangers of not having a local media watchdog to keep those in power in check: "It makes me worry about all of those public authorities and courts which will in future operate without any kind of systematic public scrutiny. I don't think our legislators have begun to wake up to this imminent problem as we face the collapse of the infrastructure of local news in the press and broadcasting," Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger has said.

The guardian.co.uk is calling for local bloggers in Leeds to apply for a freelance position to help to cover news in the area, reports Mercedes Bunz in The Digital Content Blog. "Guardian Local is a small-scale experimental approach to local newsgathering. We are focusing on three politically engaged cities and we expect to launch in early 2010," said Emily Bell, the director of digital development at Guardian News & Media.

The news project will initially launch in three cities, Leeds, Cardiff and Edinburgh, and expand if successful. The job description states: "The successful candidate will be a confident blogger, know their yelps from their tweets, have a passion for local news and understand how to build relationships with the local community." Whilst a journalism qualification is desired, it is not required and direction and support will be received from the project's editor at the Guardian's London headquarters.

Sarah Hartley, the Guardian local launch editor said: "While researching developments at the grassroots of community journalism, I've been impressed by the range and depth of coverage from local websites and blogs. This experimental project reflects both the shifting nature of journalism and the reality on the ground."

Chris Anderson, editor of Wired and author of the recent "Free: The Future of a Radical Price," moderated the 'Free AND Paid Content: Business Models That Work' discussion on Tuesday night in the Condé Nast building in New York. The discussion, intended to focus on whether book and news consumers would pay for online content, quickly turned into a tense intellectual slugging match between John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan Publishing, and Anderson.

Anderson championed the future of free content, or 'freemiums,' explaining that free content could bring books and print back into 'cultural conversation' while emphasizing that consumers could not be expected to being paying for something they can get and have gotten for free. Anderson's 'new economy' of the freemium is based in the digital world where 90% of content is free and 10% is sold, and is a radical departure from the control of the "beneficiaries of a 20th century oligopoly" (speaking of himself and the panelists) for whom "what the Internet did is ruin our party."

While he received support from panelist Gary Hoenig, ESPN Publishing's general manager and editorial director, who offered the evidence of his own site's doubling subscriptions simply by "improving the quality of the content," Anderson was strongly opposed by Sargent, who consistently cast a grim outlook for publishers and was tepidly backed by Alan Murray, deputy managing editor and executive online editor of the Wall Street Journal. Citing the Journal's robust business coverage and successful charging for online content, Murray called the panel's central question of whether people will pay "silly." The problem he brought up is that newspapers prematurely decided they would give away content over a decade ago; readers got used to reading their papers for free, thus "devaluing their own content."

Fwix offers an uncomplicated service: it aggregates local news from newspapers, blogs and other sources, aiming to offer users an up-to-the minute guide of what is going on in their area by filling the gaps in what a local newspaper could offer on its own.  The Editors Weblog recently spoke to Darian Shirazi, the 22-year-old founder of Fwix, to find out more about what the site offers to news fans and what its goals are for the future.

"I think what we're offering is the ability to fill out the content in local newspapers with content that's written by bloggers in a local area," Shirazi explained. As newspapers suffer from falling advertising revenue, they might no longer be able to cover all verticals; hence Fwix combines local newspapers' news with content such as restaurant or movie reviews from blogs into one city feed. It is a real time feed, as, Shirazi put it, "things that are happening seconds or minutes ago are de facto more interesting than what was happening days ago." There are currently 77 different cities to choose from.

Fwix displays a headline linked to the original article, along with a snippet from the story, as permitted by fair use regulations. If a reader clicks through to an original article, it will take them to the content-producer's website but the page will have a Fwix banner across the bottom, allowing the user to quickly return to Fwix or share the article. The site also shows readers the 'Top Trends' of the moment and an Activity section indicates the articles that members are reading and sharing.

Shirazi originally built a simple version of the service for his personal use, as he wanted to stay in touch with what was going on in his city while he was travelling. "I realised that there was no good place that had all the information, from art exhibits to crime news, to events to new issues in politics," he explained. "I used it myself for a while and I really liked it. Then I thought, other people might like this. So I built it."

Sharing and connecting

If users would like to associate their activity on Fwix with their Facebook or Twitter accounts, they may sign in via these services and then if they choose to share a story, it will appear on their Twitter feed or Facebook profile page. Shirazi has no plans for Fwix to create its own account system: "that's not necessary, and it's a battle we are not willing to wage." Rather, he explained, "we levarage ecosystems that help people share information and then provide the news." A Fwix profile page saves everything a user reads, but they have the option to delete whatever they would like. "Really the profile is just for you to keep track of what you've shared and what you've read."

Reporting

Fwix is waiting for approval from Apple for its iPhone application, which would allow a citizen journalism element to be incorporated into the site as users would be invite to report news. The app will provide a 'report' button which users can click on when they see something that they think is worthy of attention. A camera will then pop up and the user can photograph and describe what they want to report and send it to Fwix. On the site, a pin on a map will show the user's precise location when they reported the news. The reported news would go straight into the activity section and into the individual's profile, and will be automatically vetted before it enters the main feed. The vetting process judges credibility based on the existence of similar reports.

The company plans to allow users to report from other devices in the future, but not from a web browser.

Monetisation

As yet, making a profit is not Fwix's main goal, Shirazi said. For now, it has funding from BlueRun ventures. However, when it does start to monetise, local advertising will be its revenue stream, he specified. Local businesses "are really looking for places to advertise," he stressed, "there will always be ad dollars out there." He sees a gap in the market that Fwix could fill: "the only places for local businesses to advertise right now are those like Yelp.com and there are way more ads than there is space," he explained.

What's in store for the future

The site just came out of beta. Fwix's current goal is simply growth, Shirazi said, meaning getting more people using the service. Currently the site has about 400,000 unique visitors per month and via widgets on other sites, the content network reaches about 8 million. There are about 8000 publications whose content is aggregated. Shirazi would like to expand the service internationally, but said that here is no telling when this will happen.

Fwix clearly provides a useful service for those who are looking to keep abreast of what's going on in their local area, and Facebook and Twitter users are likely to find the ease with which they can share stories appealing. Twitter's new geo-tagging capabilities might provide competition, depending on how developers take advantage of this. Fwix could also help local news outlets by sending traffic to their websites, although of course as with all aggregators, there is always the possibility that people might visit Fwix.com rather than their local newspaper's home page if it provides a more comprehensive service. Local blogs with fewer visitors are likely to appreciate the extra exposure that Fwix offers. What Fwix offers is not groundbreaking, but services such as this are changing the way that people access news as consumers move away from traditional news reading habits.

What will the media landscape look like in five years? That's the question Media Week asked a sampling of industry insiders and researchers representing a variety of media fields. Assuming media innovation continues at the same swift pace it's been going since 2004, the average consumer's daily media interaction will look much different by 2014.

While some predictions recall high-tech fads first seen on the Jetsons - like concerts beamed around the world in 3D - others are not so hard to fathom, with early developments already starting to appear.

The backwards-thinking yet futuristic idea of taking content from the Internet and reproducing it in printed form has not been the overwhelming success The Printed Blog hoped it would be. Founder Joshua Karp announced in a blog post yesterday that the publication would be put on hold indefinitely after running out of capital and failing to attract investors.

"Creating a new breed of newsprint publication from scratch was an amazing experience," Karp wrote, "and it was humbling to have been so prominently included in the global discussion on the future of journalism and the print media."

The Printcasting model is on its way to "democratise" print publishing in more cities in the US, it was announced last week. The initiative, financed by the winnings of the 2008 Knight News Challenge, has made its first newspaper partnership with Denver-based MediaNews Group. The publishing group controls 54 daily newspapers in 11 states, including The Denver Post and San Jose Mercury News.

The project originated out of the newspaper, the Bakersfield Californian and first went public in March to cater for the town of Bakersfield, California.

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.

The Huffington Post unveiled its newest addition of the HuffPo clan this past Monday. Huffington Post New York, "The Internet Newspaper" features news, blog and video posts from Nora Ephron, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), former Mayor Ed Koch, as well as a host of well-known comedians and playwrights. The site is also welcoming of citizen journalist via its Eyes & Ears Citizen Reporting component that boasts citizen journalists of all ages from around the world.

A memo on the front page from Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, explains that the website "features our curated selection of the best New York news coverage, plus a collection of bloggers eager to share their takes on everything from local politics to the city's fashion, food, entertainment, and sports." She goes on to explain the site's partnership with 14 local news outlets in order to reel in hyperlocal coverage.

"The future of online writers and journalism in the Gulf is very uncertain," said Saudi radio journalist Samar Fatany. Fatany arrived at this conclusion based on the outcome of a workshop organized by the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) to address the challenges of mainstream media in the Gulf.

At the workshop, Gulf online writers, journalists and media professionals from Malaysia, Eastern Europe and the United States (such as senior newsroom editor of the Huffington Post) gathered to debate the role of new forms of media that are changing and reshaping public debate and discussed how to generate more revenue online. The date and location of the event is not disclosed in the article written by Fatany posted on Al Arabiya.com.

The city of San Diego is a microcosm of the current battle raging between the new and the old for the headlines of local news. As American cities struggle to maintain their regional papers, online initiatives are springing up to fill the gap left in community reporting.  Now California's second largest city is covered by three reporting projects, functioning on very different business models.   

The classic first: the San Diego Union Tribune is the city's only newspaper, which has an apparently bleak future.  Revenue from advertising has dropped by 40 per cent from 2006.  In March, a buyout shop, Platinum Equity, eager for its first publishing venture, announced that it would buy the paper.  Last month the buyers revealed that 200 of Union-Tribune staff would be made redundant.  However, it seems that the cutbacks at the Union-Tribune have not damaged its online edition, which averages 1.3 million unique visitors a month and racked in an estimated $10 million on $18 million in sales last year.

The I Want Media's The Future of Media: 2009 discussion held at NYU yesterday gathered the most renowned names in the new media world to present their visions of the future of information media.  Present were Gawker chief Nick Denton, Jack Dorsey, cofounder and chairman of Twitter; Bonnie Fuller, creator of Us Weekly and founder of Bonnie Fuller Media; Alan Murray, deputy managing editor and executive editor online at The Wall Street Journal; and Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.

Perhaps of most interest to have come from the exchange were Denton's statements about journalists' attitudes, their inaptitude for internet blogging and the pay wall debate which is currently dominating news provision dialogue.

A new right-leaning online news site will be launched in the next few weeks, it was announced Tuesday by its founder, Tucker Carlson.  

The DailyCaller, as Carlson explained to conservative bloggers assembled at the Heritage Foundation, will be "a general-interest newspaper-format style site".  The ethos of the site was summed up as such, "tell the truth, and be accurate...It's very important to live up to the basic standards of journalism."