Results matching “us the dying ne”

According to the Washington Post the Japanese newspaper industry is doing well for now, but doomed in the future because of its aging population and the fact that Japan's youth do not read newspapers.  In addition, Japan's population is declining; in 50 years the government estimates that Japan will have one-third the population of its 127 million today.

Although the end of newspapers in Japan is in sight, Japan's newspapers are doing very well despite all odds.  They have avoided large-scale layoffs and have retained readership figures. 

FollowTheMedia.com's Philip Stone suggests that it media outlets may benefit from holding back web content either by waiting until after it is published or broadcast in traditional media or making people pay for "the really 'good' stuff". In response, The Guardian's Roy Greenslade thinks that Stone has "fallen into the that trap of seeing journalism only in business terms", assuming that unless news get advertising revenue and make a profit, there is no "commercial sense" to diffuse them.

 

Eric Beecher, former editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, says that Australian politicians have to support the idea that journalism may be vital to a democracy, while pointing out that quality journalism risks dying out.

"We can cherrypick. We can do the commentary and a little bit of investigative journalism and that kind of thing, but I can't see a business model for independent journalism funding hundreds of journalists to do the bigger things that you have to do to fulfil the democratic mission," said Beecher.

According to The Australian, Fairfax Media's recent decision to cut 5% or 550 workers from papers like The Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne's The Age may "blow a hole" in Australia's traditional quality media that new online media like blog sites would not be able to fill since the number of staff employed at such outlets may be about 10 times smaller than at traditional ones.

Beecher thinks that Fairfax is sending a message that its duty is to shareholders and "not to maintaining quality journalism and its place as the fourth estate".

Rupert Murdoch's News Limited remains as the "sole" commercial source of serious journalism, The Australian writes. The future holds "celebrity-driven pap" as paper and magazine content, for which advertisers are moving to the Internet, according to Beecher.

Source: The Australian

In his Digital Deliverance blog, Vin Crosbie outlines his arguments, predicting that numerous US newspapers would go out of business in the future because print is dying, with regional papers folding in first, and that the industry will go through a "gray age."

Advertisers aren't the "primary customers" of papers. Readers are the "root of the business", because readers appeal to advertisers who will in turn bring profits to newspapers.

Crosbie mentions that the declining newspaper industry isn't cyclical. The situation might not necessarily get better in the future, The Guardian blogger Roy Greenslade points out.

Britain's newspaper industry may reach the same tumultuous state as in the US, according to Greenslade.

Source: Guardian.co.uk

In a memo to his staff Mike Leary, Philadelphia Inquirer's managing editor, announced that the paper would now publish "signature investigative reporting, enterprise, trend stories, news features, and reviews" online only after they have been published in print, but that the paper wouldn't stop publishing immediate breaking news online.

Bloggers may be the ones who have to adapt the most to the new policy, since they may work on content that may "end up as subjects of stories or columns in print first", according to the memo.

"What's long held back the newspaper industry and gotten it in the current mess has been holding back online innovation that might impact the legacy product (print)," said Steve Outing in his blog, after calling the new policy "backward".

In his BuzzMachine blog, Jeff Jarvis criticized the editor's memo, saying that "even the slowest" in the "dying" newspaper industry would not do something like this.

"They know that the Internet is the present and the future and the paper is the past. Protecting the past is no strategy for the future," said Jarvis.

On the other hand, citizen journalist Bill Dennis said, "By offering for free what their would-be competitors would have to offer for a fee, newspapers' free Web sites are an anti-competitive act."

Source: Poynter Romenesko, BuzzMachine, SteveOuting.com

"All the talk about 'saving newspapers' is focused on finding new business models to keep doing what they've always done," writes blogger Scott Karp. "Which is like GM looking for a new business model to sell the kinds of cars they made in the 50s and 60s. What the newspaper industry, if it is to survive as such, must find is a radical new value proposition for news -- something so audacious, so self-evidently valuable that, if they can find a way to deliver it, would lead to the rebirth of newspaper journalism."

And that, the premise that journalism needs a fundamentally new model, means betting the farm, innovating - not to try to be the competition, but to be something not yet imagined by the competition, and in the process, perhaps learning from another "dying" industry.    

"Jonathan Rausch's piece on GM's last ditch effort to transform itself by producing the world's first mainstream electric car (after it failed to do so in the 90s)," writes Karp. "Is a tale of do or die innovation that everyone in the newspaper industry -- and media generally -- must read."
 
General Motors, after languishing for years in Toyota's shadow, following the mishandling of the EV1, and repeated cases of over-promising and under-delivering, needed not to create their own Prius, but get out of the catch-up game and write the rules to a new game.

"When one of the world's mightiest corporations throws everything it's got at a project, and when it shreds its rule book in the process, the results are likely to be impressive," writes Rausch.

Karp argues the journalism industry should be asking these same questions, "How can newspaper companies surpass the competition? How can they be better than Google?... and then pursuing bold answers... Newspapers need to stop trying to save the old business or searching amorphously for new business models and instead figure out what needs are going unmet in the market for news -- and then be first in the market to deliver breakthrough solutions."

Perhaps the "GM lesson" is to not fear ourselves and the capabilities within our industry, but also not fear the competition. Innovate, and do so openly.
   
If they fail, they will fail publicly, painfully so, but it is only in letting go that fear of failure, that they allow themselves grow beyond the industry they were, into the industry they will become.

Source: Publishing 2.0
 

"Lie by Lie," is Mother Jones' "history of the Iraq War." The editors explain the project was created to be "a resource we hope will help resolve open questions of the Bush era. What did our leaders know and when did they know it? And, perhaps just as important, what red flags did we miss, and how could we have missed them?"

In his Web 2.Oh... Really? blog, Craig Stoltz makes some key observations about the interactive graphic, what follows is an edited version of his original post:

Why I love this work of journalism:

It's nothing fancy, hardly a data visualization at all. It's essentially a timeline navigation of information on the Iraq War. The only visual grace note is the roulettey spin of the date slider as you move it around. But the tool is functional: It permits navigation of the same data by topic, tags or search. It engages and it works.

It is an aggregation of content reported by others... Smart people knowledgeable about public affairs paid close attention to a huge amount of information, made careful selections and used available digital technology to make it accessible and flexible in a way no print publication could.

By virtue of its form, it surfaces new understandings that a reader of the original reports would not achieve. For instance, noodle around with the "Dick Cheney" tag and you'll discover, right at the top, this entry dated . . . over 15 years ago:

Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, speaking to the Discovery Institute in Seattle, says the first President Bush was right not to invade Baghdad: "The question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many. So I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that...we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq."-Aug. 14, 1992

Stoltz also makes the necessary point that the reporting used in this project came from traditional media - The New York Times, The LA Times, The New Yorker. "The rub," Stoltz points out, "Is this original reporting cost a fortune. It was produced under the old, dying model of journalism, wherein investigative reporting is funded by advertisements for cell phones, new subdivisions, mattress-chain mega-sales, designer clothing, and so on....As Mother Jones has shown, people who are passionate about telling a story have powerful new tools at their disposal to do so. But without high-quality content-difficult, time-consuming, intellectually demanding, butt-numbing, sometimes actually dangerous reporting-the tools are just toys."

Source: Web 2.Oh...Really?

Claims that the newspaper industry will die out are wrong, according to a special adviser from the House of Lords Communications Committee. Just like in the past, traditional media has to find a way to fit in and coexist alongside newer media forms such as the Internet and mobile technology.

Westminster University's Prof. Steven Barnett, the Committee's adviser, said that the sole way in print media can survive is by going online.

The Committee previously mentioned that as media focus shifts online, quality journalism is key to online reporting. The Committee pointed out that the online reporting environment is not as strong, since news tend to be recycled and repackaged.

In the UK, the Internet surpassed newspapers in ad revenue, according to Guy Phillipson, Internet Advising Bureau CEO. Newspapers declining print circulation may also be an indication that the Web might be seen as a more popular media platform.

"We're not saying that newspapers are going to die, but we are saying that the only way they will survive is to fully embrace online to reinvigorate their brand and take advantage of all the additional revenue that it can generate. Any newspaper that does not embrace online and extend its offering on the Internet could have a very uncertain future," said Phillipson.

The word of mouth is that newspapers are dying, but Barnett said that is hardly true. Online versions of papers and magazines seem to gather more revenue and audiences online, PressGazette.co.uk reported.

"Each time, the pattern is exactly the same - those traditional media adapt and defy expectations by becoming as integral a part of the new media scene as the old. The reason each time is that they serve a need that no other media can serve," he said.

Source: PressGazette.co.uk

See also:
UK: Lords report calls for more quality journalism online

Stephen Glover of the Independent does not deny newspapers' bleak economic condition, but believes the industry is "not as troubled" as some think it to be.

Glover opens with a stream of negative information concerning newspapers: plummeting profits, battered circulation numbers, and increased layoffs. He says, however, these numbers are more fairly attributed to cyclical economic conditions rather than to the decline of the newspaper.

"No one could deny that there are problems ahead but my message is that the whole picture for newspapers is not as dire as fevered minds in the City appear to believe," Glover writes.

As proof Glover offers examples of several newspaper organizations experiencing financial success, such as News International and Pearson. These organizations, he says, "should not be tarred with the same brush."

And though Glover admits some papers "have structural problems", he insists investors are overreacting.
 
"The sudden level of panic is hardly justified," he writes.

Source: The Independent

According to News & Record editor John Robinson, Kubler-Ross' model of accepting death can be applied to the current state of the newspaper industry in the US: it is time for acceptance.

In Kubler-Ross' model, the five stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

In April, Terry Heaton, AR & D's Media 2.0 senior vice president, said the industry was at the depression stage.

Now is time of acceptance - not of death though, but of the need for change.

Reporter and blogger Doug Fischer wrote that although it may seem that newspapers are dying, they would continue to "exist in radically different frequency and content."

Journalists need to deal with the economic reality and think about the challenges ahead, Robinson wrote.

"That means we understand how the world has changed, and we understand how our journalistic skills and assumptions must change. For instance, learning what it takes to be a digital journalist is vital. Reaching readers -- information consumers, really -- where, how and when they want it is good for journalism. Listening to and learning from them is even better," he said.
 
Two years ago, the Economist published a special report in which it said that the newspapers might survive in the long term if they "reinvent themselves on the Internet and on other new-media platforms such as mobile phones and portable electronic devices."

The situation of the US newspaper industry does seem critical, in light of the massive wave of layoffs in recent weeks and the overall advertising decline. But Robinson pointed out that future journalistic opportunities lie in microblogging, beat blogging and social networking. Journalism is, in his opinion, on the verge of attracting different customers.

Source: News-Record.com
 

Advertisers continue to spend a fraction of their online ad expenditure on video ads, even when millions of people watch online videos every day, but the business model for online video is starting to emerge. Editors are still seeking the most effective formats for online advertising.  

According to MediaShift, online video ads are "ready to bloom" thanks to:

-audience and ad inventory exploding on sites like Hulu or CNN Online
-standard advertising guidelines created by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) that would unify advertisers
-Google allowing longer independent films on YouTube to increase professional quality of content and allowing video producers to sell their ads
-small and medium businesses (SMBs) began using video ads, thanks to online Yellow Pages, Google's AdSense and video production start-ups like PixelFish and TurnHere

Short one-minute videos, similar to TV ads and infomercials, may sometimes be more effective for small businesses that don't have the resources to produce their own video ads. Video production companies like TurnHere provide documentary type video profiles created by independent producers.  

PixelFish, a popular video production company, has had 20 % average revenue increase every month in 2008, according to John McIntyre, CEO.

Video ad formats: pre-roll or not?

Video ads are interesting for newspapers, according to Eric Janssen, online director of Memphis newspaper Commercial Appeal. His newspaper has used various advertising formats but he said "advertorial formats work better from a selling perspective."

Bur advertisers "cringe" at the thought of investing 10 % in online video ads, even though they spend "thousands of dollars into TV without any real way to measure the effectiveness."

Short clips tend to work better with "non-interruptive" interactive overlays while longer clips tend to work better with pre-rolls.

Steve Safran, senior vice president of media consultancy group AR & D's Media 2.0 division, said that "pre-roll is dying." He mentioned that "overlays are an improvement" since they target viewers based on what they watch. "The way to sell video is by the demographic, one viewer at a time," he said.

As internet revenue for newspapers grows and their Web-based audience increases, it seems strange that advertisers don't follow, especially during the current newspaper ad revenue crisis.

Source: MediaShift

See also:

Ad-blocking software may threaten $40-billion-a-year online ad industry
US: The troubled economics of online advertising

In an interview in Portfolio, Jared Kushner, the 27 year-old owner of the weekly New York Observer, assured readers that newspapers aren't dying, but rather "reinventing themselves." Kushner also offered an interesting comparison between weekly and daily newspapers, likening the weekly to a country home, and the daily to a primary residence.

"You need a primary residence so people may choose one primary residence over the other...You're only going to buy a country house if you know you're going to use it. You're only going to buy a country house if you want to go to it.

"The way I look at it is, there's obviously a lot competing for readers' attention these days, but the goal of the Observer is to be something very unique. It's a hyper-unique product. I'd like to think that our editorial mission is to give our readers every week one or two things that they just can't get anywhere else that would make them smile, or a little bit smarter," Kushner said.

Allegory aside, newspapers daily and weekly would be prudent to observe Kushner's remarks. As the market grows thinner, and the Internet continues to lure readers away from the traditional print medium, quality journalism may end up being the newspaper's savior.

Source: Portfolio through MediaBistro.com

New York Times Editor Bill Keller spoke Monday at the Chronicle of Higher Education's Executive Leadership Forum, delivering an optimistic, lighthearted address on the future of the newspaper.

Keller stressed that the newspaper is not a dying industry, but rather a transforming one.

"I believe in my heart that newspapers will be around for a long time," Keller said, though in the future they may not be identifiable "as that lovable old-fashioned bundle of ink and cellulose."

Keller was confident about the newspaper's role in the evolving media landscape. Blogs and news aggregators recycle news, Keller said, but they don't report: "Google News and Wikipedia don't have bureaus in Baghdad or anywhere else."

Keller also emphasized that budding digital media forms are stimulating innovation. Combining the Times' print newsroom with its web site staff, he said, has resulted in "an explosion of creative energy."

Quick to joke with the crowd of over 250 college and university presidents and administrators, Keller teased his audience about their concern for the future of higher education.

"At least you have endowments. Why didn't we think of that?" Keller said.

Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education