Results matching “the poll that a”

The Times head honchos realize that they must innovate to create a desirable and competitive product before they can put up paywalls. 

Media consultancy group Oliver and Ohlbaum interviewed (not just polled) 2,600 UK adults in early November and concluded that paywalls alone would not improve newspapers finances, but a mixed strategy of micropayments and subscriptions would be necessary. 

In a public poll conducted by One News Page, 89% of respondents said that the proposed News Corp partnership with Microsoft's Bing search engine for exclusive news access was a good idea, or 'a winner' in the words of the poll.

It has been a rough couple of years for the newspaper industry with the recession taking its toll on the financial stability of many organisations. In the past year alone at least ten publications have filed for bankruptcy and many have been forced to close their doors. With newspapers treading fast to try to keep their heads above water many have cut back funding for more costly types of news. One of the first things to go has been investigative journalism, considered by many publications to be a luxury. The time and investment of multiple resources in a single issue is something that many publications simply can no longer afford.

These cuts have raised alarm bells. The potential loss of 'the fourth estate' and 'government watchdog' have united many in the cause to protect the practice of journalism, even if the business and profitability of it is doomed to fail.

One method suggested to preserve this type of journalism is to run as a non-profit organisation. Seeking the status under the claim that journalism is a 'public good' publications are free from commerical pressures and the disappointment of dwindling circulation figures, relying only on donations from those who feel the cause worthy enough.

It is at this point that the Texas Tribune enters the scene. The online-only news site launched early last week as a non-profit venture in an attempt to fill a gap in quality local journalism in Texas. The Editors Weblog spoke with editor-in-chief, Evan Smith to look at Tribune's website and non-profit ambitions in closer detail.


The inspiration:
The big name in non-profit news is ProPublica. Led by former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger, the organisation began publishing in June 2008 and has consistently drawn in large sums of donations, with key sponsor the Sandler Foundation contributing annually. ProPublica, which will write an article then offer it to a newspaper to publish, has carried out some impressive investigative feats to date, most notably its collaboration with the New York Times, published in August. The 13,000 word article which cost an estimated $400,000 to produce examined the events that took place at the Memorial Medical Centre following Hurricane Katrina. The piece highlighted the importance of such investigative journalism and made the need to save it even more apparent.
 
The Texas Tribune aims to achieve something similar on a smaller and more political scale, offering Texans a news source designed to compliment local newspapers that already exist: "We've made a point of not presenting this as a binary choice: A or B. We believe it's additive: A and B. Read your local paper and read us. In fact read as much stuff as there is out there" says Smith.

"We're simply presenting ourselves as one in a series of things that you need to read and listen to and view and access if you want to be a thoughtful and engaged Texan." 

In his first posting on the website Smith talked about what the Tribune was attempting to achieve: "What we mean to do on an ongoing basis is right there in our stated mission: to promote civic engagement and discourse on public policy, politics, government, and other matters of statewide concern."

In ProPublica fashion, the Tribune has said that all the information published on its website is up for grabs for other media organisations as part of a content-sharing plan designed to aide other reporters who might not have the time to look into an issue in depth.  Matt Stiles, one of the Tribune's staff reporters writers told Poynter Online in an interview: "Ultimately, we'd like to tell every paper in the state, 'If you like this data set, just take it'."

"I hope reporters will come see the information, download it, remix it and be creative with it."

The build up:
In July this year Smith announced he was leaving his position as editor-in-chief of established Texas Monthly magazine to take up the post as CEO and editor of the Tribune. A few months later, the Tribune added Elise Hu, Emily Ramshaw and Matt Stiles to its list of experienced journalists.

In an interview with Poynter in September, Ramshaw talked of her decision to join the project: "I feel, and still feel, that the newspaper business is in serious crisis. I'm not content to cling to a deck chair and go down with a sinking ship."

Ramshaw worked for The Dallas Morning News for six years, the last three of which she was state investigative reporter.  "We're trying to prepare for the next incarnation of journalism. If this venture is going to work, it's going to work because serious, talented journalists were brave enough to take the risk," she said.

The Tribune has built up a selection of notable reporters willing to do this and Chairman and co-founder John Thorton had been quoted as saying: "We didn't hire journalists out of work. We hired reporters who their editors were pissed off that they lost them."

Smith and Thornton worked hard on securing donations, with Thornton himself donating $1 million to the Tribune. In early October the founders confirmed they had received a further $750, 000 in grants from the Houston Endowment and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The Tribune is now only slighty short of the $4 million target it needs to continue running for two years, with a current total of $3.7 million.

The sum is considerable for a start up website, as paidContent's Staci Kramer has noted: "Unlike some of the new crop of local and regional news startups, the Tribune is launching with enough money for a well-paid staff of 16, including 11 reporters," referring to salaries of $315K for the editor in chief, and up to $90K for seasoned reporters.

As for promotion of the site itself, Smith told the Editors Weblog just how useful social networking sites have been. Regular updates for the public on the status of the site via Facebook, Twitter and the site's own newsletter built up a sense of curiosity over what exactly they had in store for last Tuesday's launch.
 
"We've been very aggressive on Facebook and Twitter both to promote the content and also to connect with our community of followers" said Smith. "We've also used both to aggressively push for funding. We've generated quite a lot of memberships in the Tribune which are much like memberships in public radio by pushing over Facebook and over Twitter messages that relate to our fundraising campaign, and they've been very successful," he says, citing the 1400 founding members who have given between $50 and $5000 to the Tribune out of their own pockets.

What does the site look like?
The website debuted with top stories on the mistreatment of disabled children in public schools, the Democratic lean of El Paso in an otherwise Republican state, and the results of a poll carried out by the Tribune and the University of Texas.

The site itself is divided into ten pages, the organisation of which differ from your average news website. Offering 11 databases under a section titled 'Library' for further reading, the databases contain information ranging from federal campaign donations, gubernatorial appointees and lawmaker spending. In addition to this there is a complete electoral directory of every Texan senator and governor- the site essentially offers a single space for complete personal and political data on the '242 occupants of the state's highest offices'.

It is clear that a lot of time has gone into collaborating this research, and according to the Nieman Journalism Lab, the Waco Tribune-Herald has already taken advantage of the new resource and published some Tribune content. 

Aside from the databases, the site boasts eight of its own blogs and links to some 25 others; has a 'topics' section where stories can be found based on theme; a calender, where information about local events can be found or submitted; and a 'Tweetwire', a Twitter feed from all Texan politicians on the website's front page.

Compared to the recent launch of another local non-profit news website, Oakland Local, the Tribune's website is much more sophisticated. The Texan team have embraced the capacities of the internet and technology to their full, utilizing social media, widgets, videos, blogs and mobile applications- something Smith believes to be key to the way in which the use of media is changing.

"In consumption of media people are paying more attention to online media today then ever before," say Smith. "I look at my almost 13 year old daughter and how she consumes media and it's not at all in print it's almost entirely online and I think that's the trend line."

Smith suggests that publishers need to adapt to measure up to this changed method of consuming news: "You cannot simply go out and record the news, present that to people and believe that that's going to be enough. You need to give them the tools to better understand their world, to better know their state, to better know the people they elected, to better hold them accountable and that often is all not simply conventional reporting but the amassing and presenting of data that allows people to access the world in which they live from a more detailed level."

Why will the Tribune succeed where others have failed?
Whilst successful local non-profit news publications do exists, the Voice of San Diego and the MinnPost to name a few- there are also notable failures such as the Rocky Mountain Independent and InDenver Times, two online start-ups founded by Steve Foster earlier this year. How will the Tribune ensure that it doesn't suffer the same fate?

Smith says that the Tribune essentially has a better business plan, arguing that the RMI and InDenver Times failed because they were run by journalists, not business people and "didn't really have a plan for how to make the model sustainable."

Part of the reason the Tribune is choosing to remain online-only is because "the cost of printing a print publication for postage and paper and print facilities is so expensive that you reduce your overhead dramatically and therefore make it much more likely that your business model will sustain."

Of course the Tribune's has also managed to raise a healthy budget, further insulating itself against some of the problems faced by other publications. "Money is, as in all things, the mother's milk of your operation," Smith says, continuing on to mention that the having the financial capacity to buy the latest technology and hire top journalists will "go a very long way to allowing us to do our best work."

Smith's views bear resemblance to industry commentator Alan Mutter, who recently critized many online non-profit publications for not being business-minded enough. Mutter accuses these publications of "a suicidally stubborn determination on the part of the organizers to be in the business they want to be in, instead of attending to the business they need to attend to," and he argued early last month that, "A business, especially a start-up, requires far more than passion for the work. It requires close attention to the nuts and bolts of raising money, making sales and controlling expenses."

How will the Tribune navigate ethical issues?
A nagging question over the non-profit model is how publications will be able to resist influence from major donors. Smith argues that the seperation between donors and the editorial team is no different to the situation between advertisers and editorial: "I edited a magazine for nine years in which we had big advertisers who also happened to often be the subject of stories and the transactional economy that supports the operations of a for profit publication has no relationship what-so-ever to the journalism inside, or it shouldn't anyway, not at a good magazine and not at a good newspaper."

"Just because someone advertises doesn't mean you go easy on them or you go hard on their competitors."

Nevetherless, the non-profit news model is still in early stages and very dependent on the income from donors. Even for-profit news publications have not been immune to advertsing clients flexing their muscles in tough financial times, with a Detroit paper recently being accused of reporting on private health care following a request from client Humana (who subsequently purchased an ad next to the story).

What would Smith do if he was approached by a donor to cover a particular story? 

"Donors don't expect that were going to write about their issues or about their enemy's issues in a negative way, they're not looking for us to take sides- they're supporting the principle that hovers above all this activity: that journalism in the public interest has value."

"Any donor who is unhappy with the coverage we provide because of such an expectation is welcome to his or her money back," he says, adding: "I'd rather lose my funding then lose my integrity."

So are non-profits the next incarnation of journalism?
The wider debate on whether or not non-profits are the future of journalism has been raging for a while. Online magazine, Slate's Jack Shafer has weighed in for the negative: "In the current arrangement, we're substituting one flawed business model for another. For-profit newspapers lose money accidentally. Nonprofit news operations lose money deliberately."

Thornton, the Tribune's chairman, hit back at the remarks: "I call it the Stockholm Syndrome. They are sympathizing with their advertiser-captors."

So who is right? Is the non-profit model the future of journalism?

Yes and no. It is unlikely to become a general solution for newspapers simply because of the huge sums of money involved, but for nieche reporting and more time/fund consuming journalism such as investigative reporting, it could definiatley be a viable option.

The idea compares favourably at least to the suggestion of government bailouts. As Thorton wrote of the "obvious fox-in-the-henhouse issues that arise--to mix animal metaphors--from government watchdogs funded out of government coffers."

As the first serious, state-focused news site with a decent enough amount of money behind it and what seems to be the right attitude toward embracing the capacities of the digital age and the changing face of journalism- whether or not the Texas Tribune succeeds will be key to the way in which the non-profit model is viewed.

As Tribune reporter Christe Hu suggests: "Journalism is at a crossroads right now. We're seeing not just survival of the fittest but a 'mutation of the species.' "

"I think the non-profit model has just as good a shot as anything else."

Mobile giant Ericsson has moved to fill the void between publishers' desires to charge for online content and the infrastructure to actually do so with its Internet Payment Exchange system. 

ABC Managing director Mark Scott has announced that the Australian national news service will never charge for its online content. Speaking at the annual AN Smith Memorial Lecture in Journalism in Melbourne, Scott said that a fully paid online content model for media organisations was doomed to fail and that the ABC would not bow to pressure from commercial media outlets to go down this path.  

"The public pays for the ABC to deliver distinctive, quality content to them - and if it is content we are creating and packaging for them now, they are entitled to view that content free of charge," he said.

A government-owned public news service, the ABC has not felt the post-crisis pain of many commercial publications who depend wholly on advertising, sales and subscriptions to survive. None-the-less, it's refusal to charge for content makes it harder for other publications to do so. For people to accept paying for content, it has to become the norm for all news publications. If there is a respected alternative source that remains free, readers will continue to seek this out, as a recent PCUK/Harris poll found.

Something the ABC is not immune to, however, is the challenge to stay relevent. In his speech, Scott talked of the difficulties currently facing the media industry to continue to prove it's value when there is so much other content available. He emphasised the need for publishers to adapt if they are to endure the emerging climate saying that the only organisations that will survive are the ones that accept that "all the rules have changed."  

A Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey has found that a slight majority of Canadians would support a government bailout of the newspaper industry, and that 87% of those polled believe newsprint has an important role in the media.

According to the survey, approval was highest in Atlantic Canada and Quebec, among women, younger people and lower-income earners. The poll was conducted just before the announcement of Canwest receiving parital bankruptcy protection yesterday.

Doug Anderson, senior vice-president at Harris-Decima, notes that "In fact, there is a very high degree of respect for the newspaper industry and a widespread sense that it matters to people."

News Corp has decided to stay the course with Murdoch's plan to charge for online news despite the recent paidContent:UK/Harris Interactive poll that found only 5% of people would pay if their favorite online news source started charging. News Corp cites their own research claiming to have found support for paid digital content.

A memo from Richard Freudenstein, CEO of News Digital Media (the online arm of News Corp's Australian subsidiary News Limited), leaked to the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the 'second phase' of development for online content in Australia was under way, and that the corporation is confident of their plans. "News has conducted some audience research here in Australia and in the UK and US, which gives us confidence that, if we get the product and delivery system right, people will happily pay for news content online, on their computer, mobile, e-reader or other device," claims Freudenstein, careful to add the nuances of proper delivery and product.

This comes right after the rather dour outlook of the paidContent:UK/Harris Interactive poll, which cast only 5% as willing to pay, overwhelmingly preferring annual subscriptions, but more open to pay for online and print subscriptions bundles. However New Digital Media's chief commercial officer, Ed Smith, claims that it really depends on what kind of question is asked (paidContent/Harris Interactive has taken this as an issue with their methodology). "If you ask them yes or no, everyone says no," Mr Smith said. ''But if you do more in-depth research about what they consume, where and why and how they would be prepared to pay for it, you see very different results in line with our strategy."

Murdoch and News Corp have been quite vocal about their paywall plans, but rather hushed about the specifics; micropayments v. subscriptions, bundles v. stand alone payments, and have been reserved about divulging detailed information on The Wall Street Journal's successful pay scheme. In this case it would be safe to assume that they will charge according to the results of the paidContent:UK/Harris poll, enacting some sort of annual subscription bundle.

Sources: Sydney Morning Herald
paidContent

John Sturm, President of the Newspaper Association of America has announced in a  committee hearing on The Future of Newspapers, that: "The newspaper industry is not seeking a financial 'bailout' or any other kind of special subsidy," reports AFP.  

The US newspaper industry is feeling the pinch of lost advertising revenue as more and more clients move into Internet-based services. The effects are obvious- seven major companies have gone bankrupt and some 30,000 jobs have been lost since 2007.

Yesterday we commented on the first three parts of the paidContent:UK/Harris Interactive poll on newsreaders' willingness to pay for online content, and today the fourth and final set of results are available. Following general feedback that very few would be willing to pay for online content (5% of 1,188 UK adults) and that annual subscriptions were the overwhelmingly favorable method of payment, comes the somewhat more encouraging data indicating that if online content were bundled with a discounted or free print subscription, a total 48% of respondents would be willing to pay. However they still remain a slight minority against the 53% who still would not pay.

This suggests that the value of a physical product, the printed news, has a higher economic value than digital news, presumably because of people's awareness of production costs and the aesthetic pleasure of reading and holding the printed word. Furthermore, publishers can use this openness to bundling to expand their core readers, who seem to currently be their best and possibly last hope. Although the study was only conducted in the UK with a relatively small sample size and the numbers don't necessarily match up to American statistics (see our previous article), publishers could use people's willingness to pay for digital/print bundles to push print sales and circulation, potentially killing two birds with one stone. The result could be a larger core audience, more loyal readers, and higher value advertising targets.

Source: paidContent:UK

    A paidContent:UK/Harris Interactive poll has found that only 5% of online news readers would pay for what they read, those that would pay prefer an annual subscription plan rather than controversial micropayments or daily payments, and that for such annual subscriptions 72% polled would not pay more than £10. Of course there are minor fluctuations in the numbers when broken down by class and age; interestingly enough the youngest group polled, those between 16 and 24, would actually be the most likely to start paying to continue reading their favorite news source. This could be because this age group is more internet-literate so many have already found a niche or specialized news source (which is why they would want more than just headlines) that they had compared to other sources, and who would have had the experience of higher quality that comes with a pay wall.
    

As the revenue generated by news media falls on hard times, so too has its reputation; that's  according to the results of a poll released by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press on Sunday, as reported by the Associated Press.

Almost two-thirds of US citizens interviewed in the recent poll are now of the opinion that both written and broadcast news stories are often inaccurate, bringing the level of public distrust in news media to an all time low since 1985, when the first study of public perceptions of the media was conducted.

Rupert Murdoch might want to rethink the plan to fold thelondonpaper next month. The latest data from the National Readership Survey shows the free daily gained the most readers of all UK newspapers for the year ending in June, jumping 14 percent to 1.1 million.

And in spite of the boost from its scoop of the MP expenses scandal, the Daily Telegraph was one of the biggest losers in the survey. Readership dropped 218,000, a loss of 11 percent.

Today marks the launch of USA Today's e-Edition, a new offering that looks exactly like the print edition in online form but with embedded links and videos. The e-Edition, which can be read online or downloaded for later, will be free for print subscribers or as a standalone subscription of $99 a year.

The newspaper has also introduced its first regular weekend product called USA Today Extra, which will only be available to e-Edition readers. Extra will serve largely as a lifestyle supplement, with content devoted to movies, sports, technology and travel.

Curious about The New York Times' reader feedback site Insight Lab, Robin Wauters over at TechCrunch decided to register and see what it was all about. She was surprised to find the top poll asked readers whether or not NYT editors and reporters should be on Twitter. Even more surprising: 73 percent answered "no."

Twitter has redesigned its homepage in a way that emphasises its real-time search capability and intends to make the social networking site more accessible to first-time users.

The site's former home page simply asked users "what are you doing ?" and described itself as a communication service based on answers to this question, which did not give new visitors much of an idea about what the site could offer them. Now, the most prominent section of the page is a search box with the tagline "See what people are saying about..." The Twitter blog highlights the new home page's attempt to attract more users as "demonstrating the power of Twitter as a discovery engine for what is happening right now" is likely to prompt more interest. 

It is seeming increasingly likely that charging of online general news content may well become commonplace in the immediate future; 'within a year' according to Financial Times editor Lionel Barber. The New York Times has been surveying its subscribers to ask how much they would be willing to pay for online news, and Guardian blogger Steve Busfield pointed out that listeners of the London Times' The Bugle podcast have been asked whether they would be prepared to pay for the 'season' each week. But can a pay strategy work online? The answer has been debated at length.

The big question is, will enough people be prepared to pay enough money, via a subscription scheme or per article, for online content to compensate for and exceed the revenue generated by advertising? The answer to this was thought to be definitively negative for quite some time, but the global economic slowdown and subsequent falls in advertising revenue, particularly online, has started to change this.

Ryan Chittum, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review, has taken a look at newspaper companies' second quarter results and analysed revenue from advertising and circulation. He has found that although ad revenue is falling at companies such as McClatchy and the New York Times, income from circulation is actually increasing. Ad revenue at both companies was down 30% in the last quarter compared to the same period last year.

Revenue from circulation, however, rose 5% in the second quarter at McClatchy, to $69.4 million. The daily circulation actually fell, but price increases made up for this. And at the New York Times, Chittum points out, circulation revenues will pass ad revenues sometime this quarter for the first time ever, if current trends hold. In this year's second quarter, the paper brought in $185 million in ad revenue and $166 million from subscribers. So if the ad income continues to decline at a rate of 30% and the circulation revenue keeps increasing, the latter is likely to overtake the former any time now.

This, Chittum suggests, "points the way toward a new model" based less heavily on advertising. He suggests charging $15 a month for full access to NYTimes.com, and if half of paper's print readers and 2.5% of the website's visitors were to pay, the paper could bring in $189 million a year: enough to pay for the entire Times newsroom. And of course, the paper could still advertise. The Wall Street Journal is expected to bring in $120 million in online advertising this year despite its paywall, Chittum notes. If the Times was able to bring in a similar amount, it could easily survive in online-only format, he proposes.

Chittum disputes Jeff Sonderman's theory, recently outlined in News Futurist, that newspaper subscribers have traditionally paid for the delivery of the paper rather than for the journalism. Their money may have actually gone towards this, but the reason that people have always bought newspapers is, in fact, because of the content. Yes, people are also paying to have this content nicely packaged and delivered to their door, but it is the news that they are after. This contradicts the often-cited concept that content in itself has no value.

And this idea that people will in fact pay for quality content, though not necessarily a consensus, as concluded by The Wrap's Sharon Waxman, does seem to be gaining momentum in the media industry. As well as the New York Times, News Corp and MediaNews Group are looking at paid online content, and start-up Journalism Online is promising to facilitate this for any publishers. News Corp chief digital officer Jonathan Miller said last week at the Fortune Brainstorm conference that journalism will increasingly become a "paid model" online.

And this feeling is not only prevalent among newspapers: Disney just announced plans for a subscription-based product for the internet. "We have ample evidence both in traditional and new media that people are willing to pay for quality, to pay for choice and to pay for convenience," CEO Robert Iger said at the same conference. Barry Diller, chairman and chief executive officer of IAC/InterActiveCorp, also expressed his opinion that content on the Internet is "not free, and is not going to be."

So could revenue from paying readers online more than compensate for lost advertising?

The results of the Times of London's poll on whether people are prepared to pay for The Bugle is not very encouraging so far: when presented with different pricing options, 59% of those polled responded 'nothing.' However, of course this does not mean that these people might not be prepared to pay if forced to: it is a very different thing to be asked whether you would like to pay.

Chittum's figures for the New York Times suggest yes, although he does not claim that the numbers could support printing and distribution as well as journalism, and it is unlikely that the Times will kill its print product any time soon. And it is necessary to remember that the Times has always brought in an unusually high proportion of its revenue from circulation: in recent years this has typically been 30-35%, while many newspapers would rely on advertising for 80-85% of revenue. And a subscription is expensive, at about $770 a year for those in the US but outside the New York metro area. The paper has seemingly successfully increased its price twice within a year. It is undoubtedly seen as a product worth paying for: can the same be said for newspapers with less impressive reputations?

Journalism Online's co-founder Steve Brill has presented figures to potential partner publishers that suggest that participating newspapers would be able to keep 88% of page views and 91% of ad revenue. The company's assumptions are that 5-10% of current monthly unique visitors will be willing to pay for content; that 95 percent of those paying customers will choose subscriptions over micropayments; and that after subscribing, those readers will view 30-40 percent more pages than non-paying readers. If these numbers are correct, charging for content might well make sense.

Others believe, however, that paid online content would definitively not be able to make up for lost advertising revenue. Alan Mutter, co-founder of ViewPass, sees increasing the value of advertising by making it highly targeted is a better solution to the newspaper industry's problems. And start up CircLabs is working on creating a product that aims to up the number of page views to newspaper sites. Both of these would, however, allow publishers to make the choice to charge.

Persuading people to pay for something they have got free for many years is likely to be a tough challenge, and it is going to be risky. It is likely to take some time to discover the most effective way to do it. It has a far greater chance of succeeding if it does in fact become commonplace, and the idea that premium content must be paid for is firmly established in the consumer mindset. And although one can argue that the consumer will be benefiting from the quality content that would be supported by pay schemes, their online news experience is likely to suffer if they are confronted by frequent paywalls that stop them from roaming the web freely.

It's not news that in order to break into the news industry, one must take it upon themselves to complete an internship. Trouble is, journalism is somewhat of a financially exclusive profession to enter. A UK government report, published yesterday, called Unleashing Aspirations suggests that media companies provide grants and loans for interns who come from lower socio-economic classes.  Many of today's less well-off young people cannot accept unpaid internships because of the cost factor or living in cities such as New York or London which are very dense with media associations.

The NUJ (National Union of Journalists) told the panel that a Journalism Training Forum poll in 2002 revealed that fewer than 10 per cent of new entrants to journalism came from a working class background and just three per cent came from homes headed by semi-skilled or unskilled workers.

According to a recent national survey investigating the stength of consumer brands, the Times and the Sunday Times have been deemed the country's best-known newspaper brand.  Overall, the papers came in at position 131 of the top 500 strongest consumer brands in the country.

The Superbrands annual findings come from a poll of more than 2000 citizens, conducted to ascertain which brands are the best known. The list offers an interesting insight into how newspaper and magazine brands are holding their weight in the consumer world alongside commercial giants such as Microsoft, Coca Cola and Rolex.

After the Hartford Courant redesigned its format last September, the response to the front page's new look was extremely negative. The paper's decision to move the nameplate from a traditional, horizontal position to a vertical orientation displeased enough readers that management decided to do something about it.

An informal online poll asked readers to choose their preferred look for the Courant from among three options. The results overwhelmingly favored a horizontal nameplate, and the paper has since reverted to the more traditional format.

When the Ann Arbor News ceases printing in July, Ann Arbor will become the first US city with no daily newspaper. The publication as it exists now will disappear completely, although a new venture, AnnArbor.com, is set to take over local news on the web and will produce a print product two days a week.

In a column for Poynter's The Biz Blog, Rick Edmunds postulates on what factors led to the decline of the News in Ann Arbor, whose vibrant, educated community would appear to be the ideal location for a newspaper. Edmunds even goes so far as to suggest starting over with AnnArbor.com might not be such a bad idea.

Adding credence to the notion that more than ever people are relying on the Internet as their primary source of news, the latest poll by Zogby International shows a majority of Americans view the web as the best source of information. When presented with a scenario in which they had to choose only one source of news, 56% of adults picked the Internet.

Where Americans are getting their news on the web is striking. Nearly half said the web sites of national newspapers are important and 43% said the same for national TV sites. Internet-only operations fared much worse. Less than 30% stated that blogs that shared their political views were important, and just 14% said the same for blogs with the opposite political view. And social networking sites? Forget it. Ten percent of adults named Facebook as an important source of news, and a mere 4% said the same of Twitter.

According to a recent poll just out, media employees count amongst England's heaviest drinkers.A survey carried out by the Department of Health found that media professionals drank about twice as much as the recommended allowance - an average of 44 units per week, instead of the suggested 21-28 units for men (depending on build), and 14-21 units for women. This is the equivalent of more than 4 bottles of wine or more than 19 pints of beer.