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One of the latest products to appear on the market for newspaper publishers looking to improve their revenue is Circulate, from new start-up CircLabs. The Editors Weblog spoke to co-founder and executive vice president Martin Langeveld, former newspaper editor and executive who now also writes for Nieman Journalism Lab, about the project.

The CircLabs team decided to look for a user-centric solution to monetise online content through improving the user news experience, as opposed to what Langeveld sees as publisher-centric solutions that focus on how to charge users for content. Charging users for content could indeed be incorporated into Circulate, but he does not see it as the main source of revenue. Rather, what Circulate hopes to do is essentially make it easier for people to find the news they are interested in, hence encouraging them to read more and therefore increasing traffic to and engagement time on newspaper websites, offering greater advertising opportunities.

The Circulate concept evolved out of research carried out by Bill Densmore at the Reynolds Institute of the University of Missouri into a project he called the Information Valet. This, Langeveld explained, is a more "comprehensive and very complex system" and Circulate hopes to be a starting point for something similar. The founding CircLabs team consists of four: Langeveld and Densmore plus Jeff Vander Clute and Joe Bergeron. The University of Missouri offered initial funding and Langeveld is confident that the company will soon announce its first round of seed funding, which would include investment from the industry and private investors as well as from the university.

What Circulate actually is

As the consumer will see it, Circulate will consist of a narrow strip that will appear within the user's browser window that will be branded and recommend journalistic content throughout the user's time online. The bar will be along the top of the window and generally narrow enough to include one line of type, though would have the ability to expand when necessary. A small programme must be downloaded to install the strip, but a user can log in to their account on any computer that has the programme. There will also be a destination URL that users can access on computers on which they cannot download the software, and the team plans to develop applications for smartphones, and offer email alerts.

When the user installs it, it will ask them some questions about them and about their interests and preferences. The user is not obliged to enter any information, but the more that they do, "the better Circulate can bring content to you," Langeveld explained. He added that his team understands how important privacy is to consumers and stressed that Circulate will be very clear with regards to the amount of information it stores about its users and will give them an easy option to access or delete this.  "It won't just be buried in one of those user agreements that everybody just clicks through," Langeveld clarified.

The programme will also track your movements online and make recommendations for content based on these and the information you provide. Article suggestions will appear as links in the Circulate strip, and it might expand to offer the user three or so recommendations on a specific topic, or to ask or answer a user's question. As the technology develops, it will be able to gather new applications, so additional icons might appear on the bar that could offer a user access to their Twitter feed, for example.

A home base for users

Users will sign up for and download Circulate via a 'home base' which is likely to be their local newspaper. The Circulate strip will be branded according to the home base, so this newspaper brand will 'travel' with the user throughout their online experience. The user would be free to change their home base at will. Eventually the local newspaper, as a Circulate partner, would be able to sell advertising and do other kinds of marketing and promotion through the strip.

How it can make money for publishers

Although Langeveld does not believe that revenue from charging users will be "more than the smallest fraction of the total potential of Circulate," it will be possible to do that within the Circulate framework. If newspapers decide that they do have premium content which is unique and valuable enough that people are willing to pay for it, Circulate will facilitate this through a universal subscription to all multiple papers' premium content, or on a per item basis.

However, as stated above, Circulate's main aim is to increase traffic to newspaper websites. Langeveld pointed out that his team's research shows that in the US, web users spend only about 1.2% of their time online on newspaper websites, and traffic to newspaper sites accounts for only 1% of page views. "That really is the challenge for newspapers, to increase that percentage," said Langeveld. And Circulate hopes to do this by "constantly recommending journalistic content from newspapers and other news outlets the other 99% of that time."

The possibility for the papers acting as homebases to brand the strip also "has value" for local papers, according to Langeveld, as it means that their brand travels round the web with the user whenever they are online, thus constantly reminding them of their relationship with the paper. Circulate also intends eventually to include advertising on the bar itself, although the format has not yet been developed. Langeveld believes that there are opportunities for both national and local advertising. There would be the possibility to target users and therefore create more value, and participating papers could sell space to local businesses. He sees this as a good selling opportunity: "now you can reach our readers all the time when they're online rather than just the one or two percent that they're on our site."

Will it work?

Software development has already started and the Associated Press has agreed to allow Circulate access to its content. Langeveld confirmed that the company is planning a beta rollout with a group of newspapers and users in autumn. Could it be the solution that newspapers have been waiting for?

Many publishers seem to be concretely moving towards charging online, and others seem to be contemplating it as a solution to their financial difficulties and in an attempt to restore value to news and prevent it from becoming a commodity. The fact that Circulate would be able to incorporate this is thus a point in its favour. When asked if it could be compatible with Journalism Online, a start-up aiming to facilitate charging for content that has reportedly been in talks with many publishers, Langeveld said that it is something that his team has not explored, but that it was "certainly possible."

Increasing engagement time does indeed seem to make sense, although in terms of monetising it means that newspapers are still dependent on the advertising market. It is clearly something that newspapers should be working on themselves or through companies like Apture that try to keep readers on news sites through multimedia enhancements, but it does seem that Circulate can help in actually getting readers onto a site. Persuading readers to sign up could be tough, most likely requiring an aggressive marketing strategy, and the CircLabs team is wise to anticipate privacy concerns. Assuming that users do sign up, it is hard to say how many people will click through links and how often, but it seems as if it could well contribute to an increase in traffic. 

Twitter asks its users one question: "What are you doing right now?" It is a simple enough concept; 'tweeters' answer this question and their response enters the real time feeds of those who follow them, but it is becoming increasingly useful for reporters and papers as the social network attracts more and more users. Essentially, journalists can use Twitter in three ways: to find stories and other information and to track events, to publicise their work, and to connect with readers.

A real time feed of breaking news and thought

Twitter is an extremely useful journalistic resource: reporters can use it to watch for breaking news, follow sources and search for information. "It's like monitoring another wire service," said Robb Montgomery, CEO of Visual Editors. It can be used to get an idea of which topics are attracting interest and what people are talking about right now. There is a list of top 'trending topics' on the Twitter home page. It is a real time search, ahead of even Google in terms of timeliness.

The useful information can sometimes be hard to find amongst multiple messages about what users had for breakfast, or what they thought about last night's TV show, but as Noam Cohen said in Global Journalist "it turns out that when a million people stare at their navels, more than a few of them will also notice that the ground is shaking, the plane is nosediving, the police are shooting." Twitter is particularly relevant during events that involve large numbers of members of the public, and a shining example of its effectiveness arose after a US Airways flight landed on the Hudson River and the first picture of the plane was posted to Twitter by an observer. Online news editor at Sky News Jon Gripton, discussing his reasons for appointing a Twitter correspondent, said "it is effectively another news feed. It helps us source eyewitnesses and photos and other people who are on the scene of an event." It is also crucial for following conferences, for example.

Applications such as Tweetdeck allow users to sort their contacts into groups and to search more and more easily for Tweets on specific topics. The custom of adopting hash-tags to make searching easier has been widely adopted: if a user is tweeting about a particular subject they can add a tag into their tweet, such as #IranElection, #Mumbai, #Gaza. The hash or pound symbol distinguishes the tag from random mentions of the same word, and is a custom developed by Twitter users.

Twitter's fame as a news source grew curing the terrorist attacks on Mumbai last November, and during the ongoing conflict in Iran following the election on June 12, Twitter has come into its own, with those inside Iran using the social network to stay in touch and communicate with the outside world while phone networks are down and many websites are blocked. News outlets turned to the service for the latest updates, as they were forced to abandon the principle of only relying on their trusted sources for information due to what the New York Times described as a "news vacuum."

Questions about the reliability of Twitter have also been highlighted by events in Iran. Clearly, it is impossible to judge the authenticity of Tweets from a non-trusted source. During 'normal' circumstances, a journalist would be able to contact the 'Tweeter' for more details and verification, but that is currently overwhelmingly difficult. Journalists who incorporate news obtained by Twitter into their reporting should always be careful to stress their uncertainty about the source.

Publishing: one-to-many

According to a Harvard Business study, there is a small group of very active Twitter users: it found that "the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets."  Researchers Bill Heil and Mikolaj Piskorski concluded that "Twitter resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network": in other words, perfect for journalists looking to publicise their work. It is simple enough to use as a publicising tool: send a link to the story with a Twitter-friendly headline, which should generally be casual and chatty, even more so than web headlines.

It is without doubt a good way to attract extra readers. One of the advantages of Twitter to spread the word is that it is viral, users frequently "re-tweet" the links that they have enjoyed. A CNN breaking news feed, not actually started by CNN but purchased by the news outlet when it gained substantial recognition, was the second Twitter feed to reach one million followers and now has well over 2 million. The New York Times main feed has 1,238,673 followers at time of publishing, and the Guardian has 25,009 on its main feed, though far more on its Guardian Tech account: 782,662. Many news organisations now have multiple Twitter feeds for their different sections. Montgomery stressed the need to "explore" the best policy for your newsroom when deciding whether to stick to one or split them

Some feeds are generated automatically, and for many journalists and bloggers it has become second nature to 'tweet' an article immediately after publishing. Robb Montgomery believes that the "more successful Twitterers have moved beyond auto-tweeting their RSS feed" to make their tweets more personal. "You want to show that there's a real person there."

A social tool for branding

As well as using Twitter as a one-to-many publishing mechanism, journalists can also take advantage of the social element of Twitter, using it to connect with their readers and to receive feedback on articles. It is a contact point between reporter and reader, making the journalist more accessible. "You can run quick polls, get a pulse, get some ideas," said Montgomery. Twitter can be used as part of a journalist's own personal branding, to develop their own network of followers, depending on their personality as well as their reputation as a journalist. This could be particularly helpful for freelance journalists and bloggers.

Newspapers' advice to staff

Many news outlets have become concerned about the way that their employees use social networks such as Twitter. New York Times executive editor Bill Keller called for a "zone of trust" after reporters Jennifer 8. Lee, Michael Luo and Brian Stelter sent 'tweets' on what executives were saying about the how the paper might charge for online content, amongst other things during a staff strategy meeting. Shortly after, the New York Times announced the appointment of social media editor Jen Preston via Twitter. She is to concentrate "full-time on expanding the use of social media networks and publishing platforms to improve New York Times journalism and deliver it to readers," including, it seems, policing Twitter use.

The Wall Street Journal's advice on Twitter in a staff memo is that "business and pleasure should not be mixed" and although "common sense should prevail," staff meetings should not be discussed on social networks. The Washington Post's guidelines also mentions its reliance on reporters' common sense. The AP's new rules tell reporters "Don't report things or break news that we haven't published, no matter the format, and that includes retweeting unconfirmed information not fit for AP's wires."

Embracing Twitter seems to be essential for journalists and newsrooms in today's media landscape. This does not mean that all reporters should be tweeting all day long, and certainly does not mean that they should believe everything they read, but they should familiarise themselves with the site and work out how they want to use it. A newsroom policy might be necessary to encourage or warn journalists with regards to how the paper would like to see it used, and if possible, a social media expert could monitor and coordinate the paper's efforts. It is not necessary for journalists to embrace every aspect of Twitter, but most who try it find something beneficial.

On Tuesday 30 June at 15.00 London time, Robb Montgomery, CEO of Visual Editors will be speaking at a WEF webinar on "How the real time web can improve your newspaper's journalism." More details here.

The New York Times Company has released a statement declaring that it does not foresee closing the Boston Globe "at this time," but has apparently hired investment bank Goldman Sachs to manage the possible sale of the paper, reported the Globe's website Boston.com. The company plans to request bids for the daily in the next couple of weeks, the Globe has learnt from people who say they might make an offer on the paper.

One of the Globe's sources said that this does not "mean they have said they are going to sell it. They've just said they are willing to entertain bids. But it sure indicates an interest." Ever since the first closure threat in early April, speculation has been rife that the company might be preparing to sell the paper. The proposed wage cuts and moves to end lifetime job guarantees would make the paper a more attractive purchase. Times Co and Globe executives have declined to comment on the matter.

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

The La Repubblica crusade

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This week Microsoft unveiled its new search engine, Bing, aimed at challenging market dominator Google as the world's second most popular search tool after Yahoo and AOL.

Launched on Wednesday, the European version was available to use in Beta mode while in the States the decision was made for Bing to go live. Bing was coined thus for it is supposed to represent the "sound of found," although some say it is already floundering.

In response to criticism from some of the UK's leading journalism pundits, editorial staff who
work on East End Life, a weekly newspaper based in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, have penned a passionate letter defending their right to work for council-run newspapers, according to the Guardian's Roy Greenslade referring to a post on blog site FleetStreetBlues, which in turn says the letter was originally sent to the National Union of Journalist's (NUJ) Journalist magazine.

Last Wednesday, May 6, the US Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet held a hearing to review the plight of the newspaper industry, to better understand new media and the new model emerging, and to assess the role that government should play in the media as it evolves. The Future of Journalism hearing was presided over by Subcommittee chair Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, who called the hearing in response to the threatened closure of his local paper, the Boston Globe, and the troubles facing newspapers across the country as advertising and circulation decline and the Internet replaces traditional media.

In his opening statement, Kerry says the committee has met to discuss not only the jolting condition of the newspaper, but also its implications for the future of journalism and the country. He believes it is important to "preserve the core society function served by independent and diverse media" and questions whether online journalism will "sustain the values of professional journalism the way the newspaper industry has." The committee invited five prominent representatives of various types of media to express their views about the Future of Journalism and offer their solutions.

"Why is the government interested?" asks Kerry. "We do have a responsibility for the licensing of broadcast. We have a responsibility for the regulatory oversight of ownership of cable, satellite, other issues with respect to communications; and needless to say, how the American people get their information--what the structure of ownership is--is of enormous interest to all of us because it is the foundation of our democracy." Is there even any government role at all, he wonders, or is this simply a normal transition in the marketplace?

Considering the nonprofit model

Before it heard from the media representatives, Maryland Senator Ben Cardin spoke to the committee about his Newspaper Revitalization Act, which proposes a nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) status for newspapers. Cardin stresses that online journalism does not supply the in-depth reporting and investigative journalism provided by traditional newsrooms that are essential to a free and democratic society. His bill would provide an opportunity for local supporters--whether individuals, foundations, or educational institutions--to come together to preserve their community newspaper.

The major criticism of Cardin's bill is that it could threaten a newspaper's freedom of speech: 501(c)(3) status allows editorializing but prohibits a paper from endorsing political candidates. The independence of journalism from government is crucial to its role as watchdog, and it is undesirable for a newspaper to have the government involved in judging its content. However, in their addresses to the Committee, both Steve Coll, former managing editor of the Washington Post, and former newspaperman David Simon, say that while they seriously oppose government interference in newspapers, they are intrigued by the nonprofit model.

Newsrooms provide an important public service, so why shouldn't the government give them the tax exempt benefit of becoming non-profits? After all, the danger of government interference in content could be exaggerated. Any single politician or political party attempting to manipulate a publication would be immediately exposed through other media outlets, and the threat is not much greater than private ownership where powerful investors might maneuver the paper to serve their own interests. Nonetheless, the greatest issue faced by nonprofit newspapers and their investors will be where to draw the line between endorsing and editorializing. If a newspaper's responsibility is to provide the public with unbiased information, then blatant political endorsements seem in violation of that role anyway, but nonprofit status could limit criticism and commentary on politicians and legislation that might reduce the media's role as watchdog.

As Coll and Alberto Ibargüen, President of the Knight Foundation, point out, nonprofit is not a universal remedy nor will it solve newspapers' profit problems. The initiative could be viewed less as a savior of the newspaper entity and more as a bridge to preserve local journalism during a transitional period. Ibarguen says that relieving profit pressures with nonprofit status might help newspapers "extend their useful life until we figure out what's next and what online model can afford professional journalism."

Relaxing antitrust could help publishers charge for online content

The other great appeal for government intervention in newspapers has been the request for changes to media ownership and antitrust policy. Last month the Justice Department rejected House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's request to change the boundaries of media antitrust to include all media in a geographic area--including radio, TV, and newspapers--when deciding whether a sale is anticompetitive.

Pelosi's antitrust proposal raised obvious criticism about the independence of newspapers and consolidation of ownership. However, at the Senate hearing, Simon and James Moroney, publisher and CEO of the Dallas Morning News, approached antitrust from a different angle: they urged the Committee to give newspapers an antitrust exemption so that industry leaders could convene to discuss copyrighting from aggregators and charging for content online.

Unable to foresee the digital future, at the advent of the Internet newspaper publishers made the mistake of offering content free online. Now readers are accessing that content for free, not through the publisher's site, but through aggregators like Google News, which also does not pay publishers for content. Marissa Mayer, vice president of Search Products and User Experience at Google Inc., defends Google to the committee, calling it a "conduit" for journalism that provides a free service to online newspapers by driving traffic to their sites.

However, Simon and Moroney argue that aggregators do not provide adequate compensation for the revenue generated from publishers' original content. They contend that as of now, the profits publishers make from online advertising are not enough to sustain the quality journalism newsrooms have been providing. There must be an industry wide initiative to charge for content online, says Simon, as no individual can swim against the tide. According to Moroney, under the current antitrust laws, publishers cannot even begin to have a conversation about possibilities for pricing or charging aggregators.

If the government does relax antitrust to allow for this industry wide "conversation," it could possibly lead to major publications placing a pay wall around content, charging users and aggregators, but does such a pay wall threaten the free market? One of the virtues of the Internet is the accessibility of information, so where do pay walls and content hoarding fit in? A generation of Internet users already views information as a free commodity, and charging online users for content will significantly reduce traffic, which will in turn reduce advertising revenue. Even if industry leaders can convene and discuss, they still might find themselves at a loss for a viable solution.

Experimentation and innovation rather than government intervention

The hearing's last speaker, Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post, opposed antitrust exemptions, paywalls, or really any government intervention. In fact, she countered some speaker's doom and gloom position with the opening statement, "Journalism will not only survive, it will thrive." Her main point is that the industry has changed and moved forward and there is no going back.

Huffington says, "The future is to be found elsewhere: it's a linked economy, it's search engines, it's online advertising, it's citizen journalism, and the foundations supporting investigative journalism. That's where the future is, and if you can't find your way to that, then you just can't find your way."

Ibargüen, Mayer, and Huffington all support embracing new media and encouraging experimentation and business models that promote digital possibilities. For Ibargüen that means providing universal, affordable digital action and adoption in the US and more inclusive public media that reaches every American. Neither he nor Huffington mourn the decline of investigative journalism, and both praise the efforts of nonprofits like ProPublica and the Knight Foundation supported Voices of San Diego for providing quality journalism outside the traditional newsroom.

According to Mayer, "The structure of the web has caused the basic unit--the atom of consumption--to migrate from the newspaper to the individual article," and because of the Web's ability to operate in real time, this allows for "living" instead of "static" stories that are constantly changed and updated like Wikipedia or the New York Times' "Times Topics." These changes to the way information is viewed, insist Mayer and Huffington, mean a different approach to monetization is necessary, which requires innovation and creativity. The solution for newspaper publishers is not to appeal to the government for a handout to preserve the old ways, but to adapt quickly and direct their time and resources into experimenting with the monetization of traffic through advertising.

What will the Senate decide?

Despite Kerry and Cardin's concern for the American newspaper, more than one of the subcommittee's senators held up a Blackberry during the hearing, proving themselves a part of the new digital audience. The general consensus of both the senators and media representatives seemed to be that their priority is not to save newspapers but to promote policies that sustain journalism.

How enlightening were the testimonies of the media representatives? Though certainly thorough in unveiling all the problems facing the media today, they failed to provide the government with a cure-all solution as to how it should proceed.

It seems fairly likely that the Senate could pursue the nonprofit solution as it seems basically harmless and might help some local newspapers stay on their feet at least long enough to find another answer. Relaxing antitrust could prove more risky, giving industry leaders the occasion to consolidate prices and possibly restrict information in a move that could prove more harmful than helpful to their own purpose.

The testimonies may have encouraged the Senate to do nothing at all for the newspaper but instead to accept that the audience and the market is evolving and no legislation can hold it back. If this is the case, then publishers will be faced with only one choice: innovate or fail. Instead of resisting change, they must get a grasp on technology and the new audience, paying attention to the success of others, then find ways to provide creative content and advertising solutions. As a few of the speakers said, this is still a transitional period for old media and new media, and there is still immense possibility for originality and advances. Though certain publications might lament their own fate, it is too early to be mourning the future of journalism.  

A one-off summit at the House of Commons on local media has been described as "both dull and brilliant", but nonetheless a "breakthrough moment in history" by media commentator Roy Greenslade.  In the ongoing troubles of the UK's regional media, the summit was attended by representatives of all types of UK media, and speakers included culture secretary Andy Burnham and Ofcom chief executive Ed Richards.

The main point of note from the summit has been the unprecedented level of cooperation show by all sides. Greenslade describes how the summit was "was all the better for the absence of fireworks, the lack of point-scoring and even the rather obvious and well-rehearsed contributions from some of the representatives because it revealed a welcome trend towards co-operation."

David Akin, of Canwest News Service published an article in The Windsor Star that compared Canadian newspapers to US newspapers, showing how Canada is better off. Akin makes the point that throughout the recession, Canadian businesses always seemed to be doing slightly better than the US. For example, about 73 percent of adult Canadians read the printed version of a daily newspaper at least once a week, while American readership lags a little more.

In an unprecedented step for the publication, the Financial Times has asked its readers to contribute to its journalism. The project aims to incorporate the views of the FT.com community into its leader columns through online debates, and over the course of the next week the best blog posts and comments will be selected by FT employees and added onto the main blog.

The first debate asks whether "the return of high taxes be a temporary phenomenon or should governments take the opportunity to keep them high for social purposes once budget deficits are under control?" Robert Shrimsley, the FT.com managing editor explains that the FT's "community of readers is perhaps the most sophisticated in the business world and this is a chance to draw on their expertise". The project shows how ever present citizen journalism can be happily balanced with the professional; the point at which two worlds meet.

Source: Guardian, Financial Times

New start-up company Journalism Online LLC has caused a significant stir in the media industry, and probably more behind the scenes. Founders Steven Brill, Gordon Crovitz and Leo Hindery have put together a proposal including promises to facilitate payment for online news, making it simple for publications to offer joint subscriptions as well as articles on a single basis using micropayment. They are also offering to negotiate on behalf of its members for licensing fees from search engines and other websites, and to provide member publishers with information on what tactics are working best in terms of building circulation and revenue.

In conversation with the start-up's consultant Merrill Brown, what stands out is that despite its distinguished founders, this company really is a new start-up, and although its members are in discussion with many big publishers and technology firms, details about how the business will actually operate are not yet clear. Brown stressed that Journalism Online is talking to publishers about "precisely what they want to see in this system, so that we get the specs right first:" it wants, sensibly, to have a good idea of the direction in which it is heading before proceeding. Details of which publishers the company has talked to have not yet been released, but Brown said "there's nobody on the list that you would be surprised at." It is clear that they are aiming high: "we all believe that getting some globally significant, influential publications or TV outlets or anybody who's in web publishing to come on board and embrace new strategy initiatives is going to be very important to our long term success."

Paid online content: all you can read

The decision to push paid online content is arguably the most ground-breaking element of the company's proposals. Journalism Online will create a system whereby consumers will be able to purchase "annual or monthly subscriptions, day passes, and single articles from multiple publishers" all through one website. Brill told PaidContent that the site will have "a fair amount of complexity, including, for example, publishers who want to make sure their print subscribers get a discount or don't pay for the online subscription."

"We argue that very few high quality products have ever been delivered for free, and neither should news" 

Pushing joint subscriptions would seem to be more effective than single paper offers, which have not had much success in the past for general interest papers such as the New York Times. Brill in fact proposed that the New York Times single handedly start charging for content in a memo to the paper written in October 2008, leaked to the press early this year, but it seems that the Times did not take this advice on board. Brown said he believes that it was a "natural evolution of Brill's thinking to try to create a larger solution involving more people." In fact, "we argue that very few high quality products have ever been delivered for free, and neither should this," Brown explained. And even if the income brought in from charging consumers is not vast, he added that "we think that over time, page circulation will bump up CPM and make advertising more valuable so that people will be a position to win on both sides of the coin." It is not just a US-based plan, Brown confirmed that they would like to have English language publishers from outside the US relatively early.

Publishers decide pricing

Pricing would be decided by the publishers, Brown explained. Steve Brill has suggested a figure of $15 a month for an all-you-can-read subscription, but Brown was clear that this was just something that Brill was "throwing out there." In reality, he continued, such a price would have to be decided on by the consortium of publishers. Equally, it will be up to the different publishers to decide exactly what content they want to charge for or not. They could, Brown suggested, create "web premium products," or "some may choose to have certain vertical categories such as sports behind a wall." In fact, he commented, "that's not really up to us." Others have suggested that it is far easier to charge for new content than that which is already free. And a part free, part paid model has been widely advocated, for example, maybe unsurprisingly, by Wall Street Journal Online executive editor Alan Murray.

Investigating what works and what doesn't

A crucial part of the project that has been given less attention is the company's plan to aggregate knowledge and gather data about "what works and what doesn't" with the aim of providing consulting services to struggling publishers. With this in mind, Brown said that "we are trying to encourage our partners to try lots of different things in an effort to build data." He hopes that within a year, Journalism Online will have "the collective experience of many different publishers which offer many different kinds of products." He expressed surprise at the current lack of this kind of data: "not much has been done."

Negotiating with search engines

The company will also be pursuing a copyright initiative to "negotiate wholesale licensing and royalty fees with intermediaries such as search engines and other websites that currently base much of their business models on referrals of readers to the original content on newspaper, magazine and online news websites." Brown was clear that set decisions of what this will entail have not yet been made, but explained that the goal was to "bring the industry together under appropriate pricing schemes and distribution schemes. We think there is strength in numbers in negotiations with search engines aggregators and others." Incidentally, another organisation planning to offer a similar service based on sharing ad revenue, the Fair Syndication Consortium, has just come into existence and the Associated Press recently announced plans to track its content more thoroughly and address offences more aggressively.

"We think there is strength in numbers in negotiations with search engines aggregators and others"

The project should be off the ground in the autumn, with "some partners in place," specified Brown. "The magnitude of the experiment that we will put in place is not entirely mapped out," he added, but "we will be running a piece of our programme." Seed funding is being provided by one of the founders, Leo Hindery, and his private equity firm InterMedia Advisors. A call for a first round of funding will be a natural progression, commented Brown, "this will look like a real company before too long!" He also added that once the company has more funding, it plans to do "a lot of marketing on behalf of the publisher participants."

Inspired by iTunes?

Steve Brill suggested in the interview with PaidContent that he was inspired by the iTunes model, and indeed the parallels between the initiatives are striking: both involving the intervention of an unrelated third party into an industry struggling to make consumers pay for their work. Brown explained that "we are taking broad strategic solace" from the iTunes model and learning what they can: "there are a lot of things about it that are encouraging and instructive." One of the main ways in which iTunes is instructive, he pointed out, is for "ease of use, which is something we always have to keep our eye on." And indeed with this kind of venture, making it as easy as possible for the consumer is crucial, as many people have little patience with complex payment procedures. Another encouraging point is that iTunes managed to bring together many different contributing producers of music and entertainment: just as Journalism Online hopes to do with publishers.

Steve Jobs succeeded, overwhelmingly. Will Brill and co?

The project sounds like quite an undertaking, and media coverage has been mixed over its chances of success. It will involve an unprecedented amount of collaboration between publishers to decide on rates and other aspects of such a system, which will be a considerable challenge. Previous micropayment schemes, including one started by Brill himself in 2000, have failed, but Brown believes that the time is right, due to the "predicament" in which publishers find themselves today: "I think that there's a very clear consensus that projects like this are extremely timely right now." And indeed, many different ideas about whether to and how to charge for content have been proposed in recent months, although this has been coupled with significant opposition from those who continue to favour an ad-based model and much reticence to put content behind a pay wall.

"I think the publishing industry gets how important this is. We're really inspired by the enthusiasm"

However, the response from publishers has been positive, according to Brown. "I think the publishing industry gets how important this is. We're really inspired by the enthusiasm from lots of important publishers across different sectors who have welcomed this." One major factor in Journalism Online's favour is its founders' experience and reputation. To embark on this sort of venture with any hope of succeeding requires good contacts and much influence, as well as in-depth knowledge of the industry: all of which these men have. It seems essential that a third party should step in to organise and implement this kind of scheme, hopefully uniting publishers, and this effort has as good a chance as any. It is impossible to say whether such a project could save newspapers, but without doubt, any additional income would be more than welcome, and establishing a firm precedent for paying for news could be highly beneficial in the future.

Financial Times editor Lionel Barber's Poynter Fellowship lecture at Yale University focused on whether the financial media should have been able to predict the global financial crisis, an issue which has already been discussed in some depth in the UK. "These are the best of times and the worst of times to be a financial journalist," he announced: "The best, because we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to report, analyse and comment on the most serious financial crisis since the Great Crash of 1929." The worst, not only due to the severe suffering of the media industry but because the "financial media find itself accused of missing the global financial crisis... failing to warn an unsuspecting public of impending disaster."

Barber addresses whether these charges add up, whether the press was "an accomplice or merely an innocent bystander." He explained that he had been questioned, along with other senior journalists, by the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee on the topic. He believes that the quality of questioning fell short, and mentioned one of the more "improbable" accusations: that the British financial press "had deliberately buried the bad news because bad news did not sell newspapers."

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

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

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

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

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

Tracking content to stop misappropriation

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

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

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

Selling content to open portals is old news

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


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

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

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

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

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

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.

Speaking to the Australian, Wall Street Journal Editor Robert Thomson has explained that the demise of America's newspapers "creates a tremendous opportunity for us to gain readers". Thomson believes that one of the reasons for the increase in the WSJ's core circulation is the "diminishing" state of US newspapers. Thomson feels that the situation leads to the WSJ gaining "readers who are increasingly internationally aware and also aware of their need to be well informed about the world."

Thomson also described how changes within the News Corp owned WSJ are having a positive effect on the publication. He cites News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch's emphasis on "leveraging (content) across platforms to generate revenue". The WSJ recently launched new Asian, Indian and European sites, each focusing on the Journal news most relevant to its respective country.

A Pew survey found recently that many online journalists are worried that with the rise of the Internet, journalistic values are changing. The majority showed they think journalists are being less prudent, working faster and losing their clout. The most recent questioning of these changes was in an article by Regina McCombs, on April 1, in which she casts doubt on the presence of music in photojournalism projects.

The main dilemma lies in the fact that music usually creates an emotional pull in a story. If journalists use music is it still journalism or is it now an opinionated work of art? "The problem is not that music doesn't work, it's that it works too well," said Al Tompkins, Poynter's broadcast and online group leader. The temptation to use music is hard to ignore, it adds a whole other level to a story, but is it the correct level?

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 Ann Arbor News today became the latest American newspaper to announce its closure. Editor Laurel Champion explained that the publication has been dealing with "steep losses", but that there was nothing that staff "did or didn't do that would have sustained our seven-day print business model".

Daily print editions will continue throughout July, after which point the publication will move online and become AnnArbour.com, with print editions produced twice weekly. As well as local reporting the site will contain social networking and reader input features, and all journalists will be equipped and trained to report news as it happens.

The discussion on losing print news heated up with NPR's decision to stop all of the company's newspaper subscriptions as of April 1. A memo sent out on March 12 states:

"As of April 1 NPR is canceling all newspaper subscriptions. We are making some arrangements to get the Wall Street Journal either on line or hard copy. You have until tomorrow to appeal this if there is a solid reason why you should be exempt. This is a cost-saving measure company wide."

Newspaper Innovation blogger, Piet Bakker has explained why free newspapers are "more vulnerable than other media" during a recession. His reasoning stems from the complete dependence of such publications upon consumer centred advertising, which is in turn reliant on consumer trust - one of the first things to go during a recession. Bakker also cites competition as a problem for free publications in the search for advertisers; the distribution method does not allow for a targeted readership, and also explains that stand-alone free dailies lack the protection afforded by being part of a larger media group.

However Bakker points out that all publications suffer from a decline in advertising; to different degrees depending on their reliance upon it. He also describes how the Ukraine's two main free dailies, which were both published by commercial companies, closed down but have been succeeded by two new free publications which are surviving due the powerful business/political groups they have behind them. With regard to the competition issue, Bakker makes the point that the recession is in some ways providing a solution; from 2007 to date, 40 European free dailies have closed down - most of them stand-alone publications.

In response to industry discussion about the possibility of a micropayment system, Steve Outing has proposed a different idea to bring in revenue for newspapers: voluntary monthly payments. "The user must be given the option of whether to pay for a Web site's content (by financially supporting the site) or read it for free," Outing asserted, and explained that he believes newspapers will not be able to charge individually, rather readers would pay (if they chose) a monthly fee for all the news and blog content on the Web. They could then choose to direct part of their fee towards supporting individual publications. Outing explained the concept in great detail in an Editor & Publisher article on February 10, and pointed out a Californian start-up venture called Kachingle which is proposing to operate such a system.

Following Getty Images' decision to close its citizen journalism arm Scoopt, the venture's founder Kyle MacRae explained in an interview why "the dedicated cit-j agency model isn't the way forward." His reasoning was that even though many members of the public may well be on a breaking news scene with a camera, it is extremely unlikely that they will be a member of a citizen photojournalism organisation. But has Citizenside, a small, young company based in Paris, found a solution? The Editors Weblog spoke to co-founder Matthieu Stefani and editor-in-chief Aurélien Viers about Citizenside's work and the way they see the future of citizen photojournalism.

Citizenside operates in two different ways. On its own site, it functions in a similar way to other agencies: it gathers photos from its community - 35,000 members, close to 7,000 of which are active - which are published after thorough checking of the photos' validity. Staff receive 500-600 images a day, and those which pass the checking are categorised into sections such as headlines, showbiz, or unusual, or gathered into portfolios with others along the same theme or about the same event. Media outlets can purchase the photos from Citzenside, with up to 75% of the price going to the contributor. Agence France Presse owns a 34% stake of Citizenside, and is currently trialling incorporating the company's amateur images into its image forums, where any of the news agency's 7000 partners would be able to buy them. Content is clearly labelled as amateur, and Citizenside stressed the importance of differentiating the work of 'citizens' from that of professionals.

AFP is currently trialling incorporating Citizenside's amateur pictures into its image forums where any of its 7000 partners can buy them

Staff are proactive about finding images, "we don't just wait for people to send them," explained Stefani. Their kit allows them to locate users within a certain radius of any given spot, so if something happens which they want to know more about, they can send out an email requesting photos. "We send 3 or 4 of these a day," Stefani clarified. The company tries to avoid receiving photographs straight from mobile phones via MMS as the quality is poor and it is much harder to check an image's authenticity. Developers have however released an iPhone application, and are looking at launching similar products for Blackberry and  Google's Android phone. Staff also provide feedback when contributors send in images that cannot be used.

Mainstream Media success through factchecking

Citizenside photos have recently been on the cover of French daily Liberation, and in Le Point magazine and Le Figaro magazine, so the company is making a name for itself. The Liberation photo was of a snow storm, and Viers explained how a storm was a good example of an instance when citizen photo reporting really works: anybody can be a witness and as it might be harder to travel, professional photographers will not necessarily be able to cover the whole storm effectively. He added that Citizenside members were definitely not trying to play the role of reporters, rather they are "news witnesses."

One of the ways in which Citzenside differs from other sites that gather user photos and video, such as self-declared "unedited, unfiltered" CNN's iReport, is that all images are checked for authenticity. The company's developers have created a tool through which users can send photos, and which provides various details to staff about each photo or video that they receive, such as the camera brand and model, the resolution, and the date the photo was taken. Crucially, the programme can also alert staff to whether a photo has been modified online. Using the sender's IP address, the tool also shows from where in the world images have been sent. With this information, Citizenside staff can get a pretty good idea of whether what the contributor has told them about the image is indeed true. "I think at the moment, we are the only company who can offer such a specialised tool for the media," Viers remarked, and Stefani explained that developers would continue to refine the product to make it more and more effective. If staff still have doubts, particularly in the case of major, potentially controversial stories, they will contact the sender directly via telephone or email. "We will double check, triple check, quadruple check if it is a big story," stressed Stefani. "If someone appears to be trying to mislead us, we will expel them from the community," he added.

"We will double check, triple check, quadruple check if it is a big story." 

This emphasis on checking the authenticity of the images significantly increases the value of Citizenside's service, as amateur content with no professional input can be relatively meaningless. Citizen journalism site The Observers offers a similar commitment to fact-checking, a trend which has the potential to bring citizen journalism closer to the mainstream media in terms of respectability. Stefani asserted that he believes it is the company's focus on "quality not quantity" which makes their service so appealing to clients.  "We don't believe in the idea that everybody is a journalist, just because they have a camera and a blog," underlined Viers. Rather what he believes works is a form of professional-amateur collaboration: "an association of bloggers, witnesses, journalists and editors."

A global citizen photo network?

The most crucial difference of Citizenside, however, is its mission to share its technology. Stefani explained that he and the other Citizenside founders quite quickly understood that, as Kyle MacRae pointed out, one agency alone will never be able to get an image from every breaking story. But what if many different publications all over the world each hosted their own UGC community that was managed by Citizenside? This is what Citizenside is aiming to do by offering its 'Reporter Kit' to traditional publications, sold via AFP. The tool was released in September 2008 and the first client to purchase it was Voici, a French gossip magazine. Citizenside is about to launch the same service for Public, one of Voici's rivals and is also in talks with one of France's biggest daily newspapers, a couple of regionals and one UK paper. The Voici community allows readers of the magazine to upload their images to the site, and if Voici decides to use them in its print magazine or on its main website, then it will pay the contributor, and Citizenside takes commission. If Voici would like to sell an image to another outlet, then Citizenside retains exclusive resell rights, and the profit will be split equally between Citizenside, the magazine and the contributor. Recently, for example, a video showing Hollywood star Lindsey Lohan being showered with flour by animal activists on her way into a Parisian club was sold to US TV channel Extra TV for a considerable sum. Stefani described how he plans for Citizenside's income to be based largely on this reselling of content, rather than on sale of the technology itself. Incidentally, a years' use of the Reporter Kit tool would start at about 13,000 euros, moving to upwards of 20,000 for premium tools and tailor-made development.

What if many different publications all over the world each hosted their own UGC community that was managed by Citizenside? 

Citizenside hopes to make the checking process easier and easier for its clients, for instance by developing a system which would make automatically judge an image's authenticity based on different variables and display a red or green light. Viers stressed that he sees citizen contributions as essential in today's media environment, if news organisations "ignore UGC they are going to make mistakes, and they are going to miss opportunities." Stefani explained that "we had a hard time being understood at first because journalists would just see us as competitors." But he insisted that rather than a competitor, Citizenside aims to be "a new tool, a new source of information." They believe that particularly in a local context, such a community could be extremely valuable to their clients, who would be able to forge better relations with readers, and provide a greater level of coverage. Viers pointed out that hyperlocal news is often incredibly important to people, and it gives citizen witnesses a real chance to flourish.

Dollars for amateurs

So Citizenside believes it has found the solution to the problems raised by Scoopt founder Kyle MacRae. Stefani brought up the example of the man with the first Hudson plane crash photo previously cited by MacRae, who argued that it was the man's instinct to share the photo rather than sell it, and that he was very unlikely to have heard of a citizen photojournalism project that would help him sell it. If Citizenside achieves its goal of establishing popular image sharing community sites for major newspapers, then in the future, a similar witness to an event may well think of sending such a photo to their favourite newspaper, where it would be shared amongst the community, but could also be sold for a significant amount of cash. The project has a great of deal of potential. Obviously, the company is still very small and is yet to break international barriers, though they hope to soon. Stefani admitted that they will need a cash injection if they are to expand beyond Europe into Asian or American markets. There is likely to be some resistance from more traditional media operations to the inclusion of amateur content in their publications, and it might take time to change mindsets.

But the current economic downturn could in fact benefit the rise of citizen journalism as news organisations look for cheaper ways to obtain coverage of events. Editor and Publisher recently ran a story on World Press Photo and Pulitzer prize winning photographer Anthony Suau, who is currently struggling to find work because media outlets do not have enough money to pay him. Using photos from readers is undoubtedly cheaper than employing prize-winning professional. Citizen photojournalism does make sense, if there is a way to prove that the photos are real. A reporter can write a story from afar, but you cannot take a photo from afar. And although many photos will not be of the quality of those taken by experienced photojournalists, professionals cannot be everywhere at once, and taking advantage of the camera-armed public is definitely better than nothing.

Photo credits: Laure Bernard

Various ideas to overhaul the business model of newspapers have been debated in recent weeks, such as the possibility of a return to paid online content, or a non-profit endowment scheme. Both have potential, but both are long term solutions that would take some time to implement, and for the immediate crisis at hand, could government help be the answer? At the end of January French President Nicolas Sarkozy approved a 600 million euro package of measures to save the beleaguered French press. Ideas for some kind of bailout plan have been floated in the US for several months now, following those for banks and the car industry, and similar discussion has taken place in the UK. Is a similar bailout likely to happen anywhere else? Could it save the struggling industry, or is such government involvement in the media too dangerous?

The French way

The French measures announced came largely from recommendations in a three-month study into the industry's health that was released in early January. The proposals were largely based on reducing productions costs, but the study also recommended that newspapers restructure their finances and that journalists be better trained for multiple forms of media, including online. Sarkozy's speech instructed newspapers to improve the content of their articles, bring in younger readers and transform business models

Arguably the most controversial measure was the decision to give 18 year olds a year-long subscription to a newspaper of their choice. This is clearly a direct subsidy, and one which many people do not think will work. It does seem optimistic to imagine that thousands of teenagers are going to find the time in their day to sit down and read a broadsheet rather than scan news online, and then be inspired to continue such a subscription. The package also included a major increase in state expenditure to support newspaper and magazine deliveries: 70 million euro from 8 million last year. The government will double its spending on advertisements in print publications. The state will also defer some fees the publications face, and Sarkozy announced a freeze on the cost of postal distribution and a reduction in payroll taxes for newsagents. He also extended tax breaks for investors in online journalism.

France's press is among the least profitable in Europe, with circulation figures of around half those of the UK and Germany, and national newspapers suffering particularly. According to the Guardian, it is "stifled by rigid communist press unions, a lack of kiosks selling papers and a declining readership far below that of the UK or Germany." Sarkozy has promised to increase points of sale, and work to improve newspaper delivery to both kiosks and homes. Another major problem is high printing costs, as presses are controlled by communist union Le Livre. Sarkozy announced that the state is aiming to reduce printing costs by 30-40 per cent by negotiating with the union.  

Sarkozy insisted that the aid package was not an attack on press freedom, the Guardian reported. "I don't understand how anyone could doubt the legitimacy of the state in this process," he claimed, comparing the press to any other industry in need of aid, such as the automobile sector. Incidentally, the French car industry just received a 6.5 billion euro loan from the government. And the French state already gives 1.5 billion euro in direct and indirect aid to the press each year. The Guardian asserted in January that "the public's trust in the media is at an all-time low in a climate where politicians rewrite their own interviews for publication and the president's powerful business friends, from construction to arms manufacturing, own several major papers or TV stations." Which does not really sound like ideal circumstances for the government to get further involved in the media. It is too early to assess the effects of the bailout on newspapers, though it seems to have been received favourably by editors.

UK's regional focus

Another country where public trust in the media is at an all time low is the UK. Research by the Media Standards Trust revealed on 9 February that only 7% of the public trust national newspapers to behave responsibly. "Without urgent reform we believe that self-regulation of the press will become increasingly ineffective at both protecting the public and promoting good journalism and, without prompt action, there is real danger that it will become increasingly irrelevant," said Martin Moore, director of the Trust. The report calls for government intervention to ensure press accuracy and to limit intrusion on people's private lives. But would such government intervention be accompanied by financial aid?

In response to Sarkozy's announcement of the French plan, a spokesman for publisher Trinity Mirror said: "We don't believe that direct subsidies are a safe or sensible way forward. There are two easy things for the government to do. The first is to indicate that they will intervene and allow consolidation of regional newspapers on public interest grounds. The second is to return to using local newspapers for public notices and public sector job advertising." Many papers have called for changes to competition regulations in the local and regional sectors to more easily facilitate mergers, and the UK's Office of Fair Trading has confirmed it is to launch a full consultation on the local media ownership regime next month. Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger went a step further and raised the question of public subsidies for newspapers in November 2008, arguing that as broadcasters compete for government funding, why shouldn't local newspapers too? "There has never been less certainty about the future of local news in this country," he said. Roy Greenslade, amongst others, criticised this view, saying that information should not all be funded "through the mechanism of the state."

American opposition

Across the pond in the US, Connecticut legislators sparked debate at the end of 2008 by petitioning the state government to help local papers whose publisher Journal Register said it could not afford to keep them open any more. Journal Register has been forced to close 'dozens' of newspapers in recent months. Connecticut's Department of Economic and Community Development is offering tax breaks, training funds, financing opportunities and other incentives for publishers, but not cash. According to economic development commissioner Joan McDonald, Connecticut does not see trying to find a buyer and offering tax breaks as exerting influence on the press. In January, the publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News were in discussions with Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell about getting the two largest state employee pension funds to help bail out the papers.

But there has been considerable opposition to any such notion, as could be expected in a country which prides itself on its free market attitude. The Wall Street Journal asserted that a newspaper bailout was "the worst bailout idea so far," and stressed that "independent journalism is valuable, but only if it is truly independent."  Editor & Publisher editors warned that although it could be tempting to seek government assistance, "Uncle Sam's purse comes with lots of strings attached." Paul Janensch, a journalism professor at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, and a former reporter and editor, commented "you can't expect a watchdog to bite the hand that feeds it."

There is already some unobtrusive government assistance to American newspapers, for example the US Postal Service has offered discounted postage rates. Also, several cities have papers running under Joint Operating Agreements, created following the congressional Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970 to keep competing urban dailies viable despite circulation declines.

Can a bailout be justified?

It is possible that other European countries will follow the French example, but an American bailout seems to be extremely unlikely. The British people are used to the idea of public funding for news, given the prevalence of the BBC, so maybe they would be more open to the idea of more government subsidies. But it could also be argued that given the major presence of the BBC, there is enough government involvement in news already.

It is undeniable that as one of the main roles of the press in a democracy is to criticise the government, it must remain entirely free of any government influence, and there is always the risk that government support could lead to influence. The idea of the press relying on the government to any extent is extremely unappealing to many people. But another valid point is that given the importance to any democracy of an active press, it is the government's duty to support the press in time of need.

Making sure that press friendly laws are in place, rather than offering a cash injection, is probably as far as the government should go, in 'normal' circumstances. But perhaps given the current problems plaguing the industry, some limited, short-term government assistance could be justified, to help papers make the necessary adjustments to working online, until an appropriate business model can be found, or until the economy starts to recover. In any kind of bailout, help should be given in such a way where there would be no risk that it could be considered as an attempt to influence. It would be essential to ensure that any help offered to newspapers was offered country-wide, and that it did not give any papers advantages over others. And government support should not be a substitute for innovation, and should not stifle entrepreneurship.

It's a constant theme at the moment, but an important one nonetheless; Twitter as a journalistic tool. The question has been raised once again by Poynter journalist Dave Poulson, who last week followed the Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm's annual state of the state speech.

Whilst watching the speech, Poulson asked his followers if there had been a 'hashtag' created for the event - there had, #MiSOTS (Michigan State of the State).  'Hashtags' are keywords preceeded by a # on a particular topic, and when Tweeters are posting on the said topic they include the 'hashtag' in their post.  This allows other users to search and follow all the Tweets containing it, and effectively join the conversation.  As the speech was ongoing, people watching it were Tweeting their responses and thoughts to the governor's points as she made them.  One journalist said that the responses were helping his journalistic perception of the event by "giving him a feel for how people were reacting to a very critical speech to a very economically depressed state."

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."