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Sports betting is a very fashionable topic, says Christian Kalb, the founder of CK Consulting, France, speaking at the WAN-IFRA conference 'Using sports news to optimise your revenues'. Sports have always hoped to benefit from new sources of revenue and sports betting is one opportunity to do so, he adds.

He points out that gaming revenue, the total amount of money that people have bet, is not all profit. Gaming operators have to pay taxes, and these vary widely between countries. When this is taken into account, total sports gaming revenue is around €400-500 million globally.

Today, thanks to the internet, there are no borders, he says. People can gamble in a more interactive way with more forms of betting, including live betting, which enables bets to be placed even after the game starts. The number one target is young urban active males, a little more affluent than others and more likely to bet. Even in the most evolved markets, though, gaming operators can reach no more than 13-14% of the population. Only one country is higher - Finland at 20-30%.

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

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled in the favour of five media companies yesterday, recognising a journalistic right to protect anonymous sources, reports AFP.

The Financial Times, the Independent, the Guardian, the Times and Reuters news agency won an appeal against British courts who had ordered them to hand over documents relating to a Belgian brewing firm, Interbrew.

Government aid for newspapers is in the spotlight again, The Wall Street Journal reports. The head of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the U.S. has announced plans to examine whether subsidies and regulatory changes should be implemented.

Speaking at its workshop last week, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said that his agency will consider whether the government should exempt news organisations from antitrust laws, change copyright laws, or allow them special tax treatment.

Fifty-six newspapers in 45 countries have published the same editorial today, calling for delegates at the climate summit in Copenhagen to take action on climate change.

The editorial is published in 20 different languages. Most of the participating newspapers feature it on their front page.

Olivier Creiche, CEO for Six Apart, a company that provides low cost, easy-to-use media platforms such as Movable Type, spoke this afternoon during the second session of the World Editors Forum. 

In an interview with David Baird, a professor at Anderson University, Rob Durst, a Boston-based business and technology consultant spoke of the ways in which he believes newspapers can remain viable in the digital age.

"Magazines and newspapers should stop treating their publications as fixed products and start thinking about them as valuable, branded interfaces to online content and services," Durst told Baird, continuing on to say that publishers generally need to move faster and keep abreast of technological developments.

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

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

Two German entrepreneurs are setting up a new kind of home delivered newspaper among worldwide news print failures. On November 16^th the brave young businessmen are venturing into the industry with an innovative newspaper service - the first of its kind in Europe - at arguably the worst time, and for a limited Berlin-only market. But its very unorthodoxy, the essence Wanja Oberhof's and Hendrik Tiedmann's Niiu personalized newspaper, could be its saving grace.

Niiu Beginnings

The Niiu started with an idea, two and a half years ago, ultimately about information convenience. Having grown up in a newspaper-reading household, Mr. Oberhof became used to reading multiple papers to pursue the news and information he was interested in.  Having to juggle multiple national, local, and international papers to find one's interests would inevitably become a chore, especially vis-à-vis the speed and convenience of internet news. The same behavioral phenomenon is in fact the very reason why the internet seems to be ruining traditional newspapers; people, especially young adults and students, are tending find their news and information from a variety of sources on the internet rather than a single source that marked the newspaper's monopoly and success in the 20^th century. 

Oberhof's resulting idea was simple and clear: an individualized newspaper, composed of selected pages and sections from papers, delivered each morning to one's door just like a regular paper. This combination of paper format and internet convenience and accessibility found Oberhof a business partner in Hendrik Tiedmann, who shared the same idea. Together they founded InterTi GmbH, Niuu's parent company, funded out of their own pockets, and began doing their homework.

"The whole idea was based on our own behavior research and experience; [as young people] we're used to very different information sources. The main idea was to combine all the varying sources of news and information, because it is normal for young people who have grown up with the internet to have not one source of information but many," Mr. Obherof said in a telephone interview with The Editor's Weblog. But why a newspaper format? Surely a less risky and lower-cost alternative would be setting up a personal news aggregator.

Oberhof disagrees. "We asked this target group which is the most comfortable and which is the best distribution channel; is it an e-paper, is it only on mobile, is it printed or online? The feedback was that for now, paper is still the best distribution channel." Hence the simple combination of the internet and printed paper that is the essence of Niiu.

Interestingly, the founders have no particular allegiance to print, it just happens to be the currently favored distribution channel. "The vision that we offer is all the information that is relevant for the reader. As a next step it is the reader's choice which distribution channel they will use, whether it's a mobile phone, e-paper, the internet, or whatever else." Their focus is information amalgamation and distribution, the particular channel being largely irrelevant and ultimately the client's choice. This is quite an unusual position for a company entering the print industry, which these days seems to require a great deal of faith.

What Niiu is and How it Works (The Technical Bit)

On the client's side the process is very simple. After signing up for a short-term subscription (more on that later), they have until 2 p.m. to choose their news sources for the following morning's paper. On Niiu's website they can select from a wide variety of publications and online sources; from national, local or international newspapers like the New York Times, or internet news sources and blogs. A 24-page personalized paper, researched from and composed of their choices, then appears on the subscriber's doorstep the next morning.

"At this first step, for the reader it is only possible to select whole pages or sections," says Oberhof. From newspapers the readers can select pages or sections, from the internet providers they choose from over 600 very diverse rss feeds, from "Women's tennis blogs to local garden pages, we have lots of special interest content available." Clients currently cannot access their personalized paper online, as this would basically defeat the purpose of the delivered print format.

On Oberhof and Tiedmann's side, however, things are a bit more complicated. It is no easy feat to compile, print, and distribute thousands of individual papers. Over the past two years, InterTi GmbH has had to create a specialized software for compiling sources and setting the layout, arrange digital printing deals, close licensing contracts with news sources, attract advertisers, create a new business model and work out delivery schedules. So how did they do all that?

"We outsource everything," says Oberhof. "We don't have an editorial team, we don't have the printing machines, we don't have a delivery structure; we have partners. First we had to create software, so we got a partner with a Swiss web and print specialist service. They produced our software that combines all the pages and articles and news for each reader into a print-ready .pdf that is sent to the digital printing machines from the Netherlands, and a German copy house takes care of the actual printing. Then we have an agreement with a Berlin delivery service that delivers all the international newspapers that will also now deliver Niiu." Given all this outsourcing and subcontracting, one wonders whether circulation revenue will cover the costs.

Luckily there is another revenue source, the very one that is ruining traditional papers, and where the Niiu shines most brightly: it offers a space for highly targeted advertising, something already optimistic advertisers will pay dearly for. At first, during the 'trial phase' of the first few months, advertising will be more general because the Niiu is new and won't have a large circulation. But with an expanded subscriber base ads will become more targeted, focusing on neighborhoods their corresponding socio-economic groups.

Oberhof is confident of his advertising model. "We have had large amounts of positive feedback from advertising clients, and they have several different ideas such as at first only distinguishing between male and female readers, then differentiating by neighborhood and age in Berlin. Some big German car players are interested and have said 'different cars for different people' based on the interests of the readers, like the family man being interested in the new X5 or the young student being shown the BMW 1." Who the people are and more particularly what their interests are would be clear from their choice of news sources for their Niiu's composition.

Ignoring that their proclaimed audience is exclusively young students and not old people and family men, this raises some questions about whether using personal information for advertising violates some privacy protections. But this is doubtful as various advertisers and distributors have used similar techniques for years: think about those supermarket coupon promotional catalogues, also known as 'junk mail,' which you might get at your front door. They differ per neighborhood using the same concept (in my experience, I got Pioneer Supermarket rice coupons up in Harlem, while my friends downtown got brochures for Citarella).

Of course, a paper cannot live on adverts alone. In terms of subscriptions, Niiu continues to be innovative. The subscription packages are aimed towards young readers and students, the paper's perennial target audience (and probably one of the more difficult market sectors to enter, especially in media and technology).

Mr. Oberhof explains: "We have several different packages, not a traditional subscription but a pre-paid system. You load up money for packages, like the one-day trial, or the longer-term packages over 25, 75 or 150 days. It's not a classical subscription at all, that's an important point for us, because many young people, according to our feedback, don't want a subscription for a year because they do not know where they will be in the near future, whether studying in a different city, or doing an international internship or living at home, so they want short-term packages." Currently Niiu is priced at €1.80 per issue, €1.20 for students.

Is this really a good way to build subscriber loyalty? There is a risk of high turnover, potentially running through the market potential before they get established. However this model makes sense for their target demographic. Personally I find this an appealing arrangement. Not really knowing where I will be in six months has prevented me from subscribing to my publications of choice, so I read online news while I would prefer the print editions.

Challenges

One of the biggest questions I had for Mr. Oberhof was regarding the licensing and use of articles and content from news providers. In the context of the current debate over paid online content and the associated problem of the cost of news and journalism, this is quite a pressing concern and I was most interested in what Niiu's arrangements were. Surprisingly, it was unsurprising and rather simple.

Niiu has a contract with each newspaper and online provider, in which "we have a little license fee which we pay for every used page," Oberhof explains. The licenses, and thus the copies of Niiu itself, are based on pages: "we pay a fixed fee for each page we use...because we take one-to-one pages from each newspaper," meaning the pages of Niiu are exact replicas of the original page from the source. This setup will be the working model for the first few trial months.

"The newspapers give us access to everything they have. That means every page and article that is used in the New York Times we can have the next day in Niiu," although details on how blogs and internet sources would be presented are a bit fuzzy. It would be safe to assume that they would appear in Niiu as they would in your browser, albeit reformatted and resized.

An obvious question regards how newspaper publishers feel about Niiu and why they would allow access to their articles, when this could very well cannibalize their own sales. While some certainly think so, the majority of publishers approached by Oberhof and Tiedmann have embraced the idea and accepted licensing contracts.

"Most of [the news publishers] think it's an interesting new project for a target group which doesn't read much newspapers. The young people, the students, in Germany don't read that much newspaper so for [the newspaper publishers] it's an experience; they want to have a look at the feedback and to test it out. Most of them also don't think that we will take the long-term single paper reader away from them, since our audience is the reader who doesn't know which paper is right for them or likes a variety of news sources," Oberhof asserts.

So, in theory, there is no direct competition because they target different audiences. However, the Niiu provides the same service as the internet but in print form; it is hard to see why publishers who would blame the internet and the news aggregators (which is basically what Niiu is doing) as the newspaper's bane would embrace that service in their own industry.

Some industry experts are not so optimistic. Joachim Blum, a digital media consultant, voices 'considerable doubts' over Niiu's future. He says the idea is interesting, but it just won't work because the target audience has left paper behind: "People who read newspapers are office workers, not students," Blum tells Spiegel Online. This is similar to the problem discussed above, where it seems that the assumption has been made that students who are used to getting news quickly and for free online will suddenly start paying for it to be physically manifested; they surely won't be paying for the service, as they can do it themselves. They would therefore be paying for the physical product, the newspaper, and its aesthetic appeal. But we all know how fickle young people and students are when it comes to aesthetics.

Another issue is more topical as to how Niiu relates to traditional newspaper and the internet, its status in between and bridging these media forms. For all its supposed innovation, "Niiu shares the same dilemma of print journalism in the age of the Internet: every paper you read in the morning only contains yesterday's news," says Stephan Weichert, a journalism professor at the Macromedia University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg. "The Web offers news every second and gives the option to link to blogs and other websites. Why would people read and even buy a story or information, which they select on the Internet the day before? It's old-school journalism," he tells Time. Again, the same underlying problem is pointed out; the combination of paper and internet has great potential, but it also combines the weak points of both and confuses the primary audiences of both mediums.

Time will tell whether these criticisms will stand or whether Niiu will live up to its potential.

The Future!

For the time being it seems like the main challenges for Oberhof and Tiedmann have been surmounted. They are looking forward to the November 16^th launch, for the time being to serve Berlin only. The circulation scope for now is limited because of the high quality but rather slow digital printing. "You can't compare it to a classical offset machine that could print 200,000 copies of Niiu in an hour; our digital printers can only do about 2000 in an hour," Oberhof explains. "That means it is not possible to deliver from one printing machine to several cities, so we start in Berlin. But obviously it's planned to expand to other cities in Germany and Europe," if the paper gets off the ground with the aim of around 5000 subscribers by the first 6 months.

However Oberhof knows there is much to be done, and that the work is far from finished. "For the next month the biggest challenge will be whether the whole work flows as we want it to. The first actual non-test paper will [hopefully] have around 5000 subscribers and this will be a lot to handle since every newspaper is individual. We might not actually know or can't imagine what the real work flow will be, what will come, and that's definitely the hardest thing." Meanwhile, he already has plans for future products and services once Niiu gets going and is established in the market.

Oberhof and Tiedmann's mission is more about giving the market what it wants, i.e. providing whatever information the reader desires in whatever format they prefer, rather than innovating the newspaper industry (which seems to be a side effect of their project). So if the market preference shifts, so will their products and services.

Having recognized that newspaper may only be around for so long, InterTi GmbH is planning "to offer an e-paper as a second step, probably by the end of this year," Oberhof revealed. Other editions are in the works, but no plans have been formally announced given that the formal launch is still a few days away. "For the future, I think that things like the Kindle will be very interesting for our product developments, but for now its not actually enough, not many people use e-readers at all," Oberhof confides. However, given the company's service-oriented vision, we can reasonably expect an e-reader version once the market for them takes off.

Whether you think newspapers are doomed or just in a rough spot right now, there is no denying the simple ingenuity and appeal (however limited) of Niiu. Its combination of the strengths (and unfortunately some of the weaknesses) of printed news and online news could make it a product to be reckoned with, even for those newspaper publishers who feel no competition from it. The potential for newspaper innovation through individualization is huge, and it remains to be seen whether Niiu will capitalize and profit from that potential

The Editor's Weblog wishes the best of luck to Oberhof and Tiedmann. It is now up to the Berlin public to decide the fate of Niiu.

Mr. Wanja Oberhof will be speaking at the WAN 2009 16th World Editors Forum in Hyderabad

Sources: Personal interview with Mr. Oberhof.

Spiegel Online

PrintWeek

Time

Portugal's newest daily newspaper, i, was launched in early May and has attracted a significant amount of attention due to its rising circulation figures and innovative approach. It recently won a design award from the Society of News Design. The Editors Weblog spoke to editor-in-chief Martim Avillez Figueiredo, managing editor for online Mónica Bello and art director Nick Mrozowski, to find out more about i's approach and the reasons behind its success.

I's circulation in August was over 16,000 copies, up from just under 11,000 in its first month, May. As a comparison, the country's top selling papers, Público and Diário de Notícias, sold 36,000 and 30,000 respectively that month. So for a new paper, i seems to be doing well. How, when the newspaper industry is struggling worldwide from falling income as readers move online and advertising rates fall, is a new newspaper seemingly thriving?

What i is doing differently

I is not structured like a traditional paper. The paper's team worked with media consultancy Innovation to come up with a new way to organise the product. "Our feeling was," said Figueiredo, who came on board at an early stage, moving from Diário Económico, "that people were not concerned about traditional sections any more. Traditionally, journalists have to fill a politics section even if there is nothing relevant going on in politics. We wanted to come up with something different." So the team came up with five key needs that they wanted the paper to address, with five key words.

• 1. Opinion is the first section of the paper, based on the key word think. No other Portuguese paper starts out with opinion.
• 2. Radar is the second, accompanied by the key word know. Figueiredo said the assumption was that readers will already know a lot from other sources, but Radar aims to offer a quick overview of everything that has happened in the past 24 hours. The section is eight pages long, and the longest article is half a page.
• 3. Zoom is the third section, connected to the key word understand. The 22-26 page section looks at between eight and 13 topics in depth, with articles taking up one to ten pages. "We deal with these subjects with a lot of care, and we use the best teams," Figueiredo said.
• 4. The fourth section is called More, linked to the key concept feel. This is where anything about people's private, cultural, social lives goes. Figueiredo explained that the team did not want to give the section a more specific name, or the content would be limited. More encompasses the fifth need that the paper wanted to address: sports, about 80% of which is focused on football - "this is very important in Portugal," Figueiredo said.

Design...

Nick Mrozowski, i's American art director, said that "I think the overriding concept, not just in the design but in the newspaper as a whole, is that we want to try to set out to produce a magazine every day." The 56- to 64-page paper is tabloid size and stapled, so looks as much like a magazine as a newspaper.

A huge amount of work goes into designing the paper every day. At first, Mrozowski explained, the idea was that the paper would have a template that would leave some pages fixed each time, meaning that some pages would require no design work on a daily basis and that editors would simply put their content into the pre-designed format. "But from day one that strategy fell apart," he said. "We realised that the sort of paper we were making had a lot of very specialised content and each page would have to be custom-made to the needs of a reporter or editor."

"From a design perspective it's a little intense," Mrozowski said. The design team are challenged to find magazine-quality visual solutions every day. For example, unlike most daily newspapers, i strives to include high quality portrait photography rather than just that for events, which means finding the time to sit down with sources. The paper also has a lot of illustration, something which many newspapers have been cutting back on in recent months, Mrozowski pointed out. "I think people notice this," he said. "You can't go a day reading i without coming across at least one commissioned illustration, rather than just back art."

I has a team design team of seven, two infographic artists and a group of photographers. This visual team is "like one unit," Mrozowsi stressed. "We all sit at one big arching table, so it's very easy to communicate."

Despite the strong focus on the visual side of the paper, Mrozowski stressed that this is never at the expense of the content. He was trained as a journalist as well as a designer, so "I've always worked in newspapers with a journalistic eye." And he makes sure that his design team also understand that "the design should come from the content."  He clarified, "it's not enough to design a page, you have to know what's going on it, what type of photo is going to be there and how it should best be played." The designers and editors therefore work very closely together, requiring the design team to have a journalistic understanding of each page that they work on.

Not just print...

I also has an increasingly significant web presence at www.ionline.pt: online editor-in-chief Mónica Bello said that the site recently passed 900,000 uniques per month. The paper's print and online operations are broadly integrated: journalists write for both platforms. "It's a work in progress," said Bello, "it's getting better and better all the time." Two editors are just focused on the website, and many journalists work on breaking news online for a few hours and then move on to writing for the paper.  40% of content from the paper also goes online, explained Figueiredo, with the other 60% being exclusive to the print product.

I's website is an aggregator as well as displaying original content. Figueiredo described how the paper is happy to link to competitors' content, and how aim is that people come to I as a base for their news exploration. "We want to make sure that people on Facebook and Twitter are using i as their main information source," he said, adding that i has a presence on many social networks. The paper has, in effect, six different homepages online. One is a portal of general news, one is focused on Portuguese political news, a third is economic and financial, a fourth is world news, fifth is sports and the last is the 'good life' homepage

There seems to be a general acceptance at i of the fact that online news is not profitable, at least for the moment. "You can't make any money there," said Figueiredo, "but you have to be there in order to grow your brand." Bello said that "the print edition is of course the priority, and will be at lease for the next few years." This means that the designers do not contribute so much to the website, which has a far more fixed template compared to the paper.

The advantages of youth: potential for constant innovation

Being a new newspaper, part of a new brand, gives I the freedom to experiment and it seems that this freedom has been passed on to all the staff. Mrozowski and Bello were extremely enthusiastic about their working environment and what it allows them to do. "There's this motivating feeling," Bello said. Mrozowski said that the two senior editors, Figueiredo and André Macedo, "have imparted this feeling of accomplishing the impossible at every step... There is no cap to how big these guys will dream and it presses you to do things that you wouldn't do at another newspaper."

One of Mrozowski's favourite projects at the paper so far was for the European elections: with the help of an outside illustrator, the team produced a double page spread the night of the election depicting the politicians involved as fish in the ocean, with their position in the water showing how well they had done. "It worked out beautifully, and speaks to this ambition that we have," Mrozowski commented. "It's something that I don't think another newspaper would try."

"We told them that they have the responsibility to be innovative because they don't have a set newspaper in which they have to fill the gaps, rather it is a newspaper that they have to create everyday in order to focus on the real issues," Figueiredo said.

The paper chose to hire not just experienced professional journalists, but decided to bring in some young people who did not necessarily have any experience in the field but who were technologically adept and very knowledgeable about social media.

So who is the audience?

I's specialised focus on politics and economics attracts educated, ambitious readers, Figueiredo said. 69% of readers have a university degree, 39% are top management. What is particularly exciting, he added, is that 22% of i's readers had not been regular newspaper buyers before. A key target audience, "that we are still learning to deal with," is aged between 23 and 29: they have a university degree, they have started their professional careers and have ambition, they are unmarried, they travel frequently and have a full social and cultural life, Figueiredo explained. "And they want to know what's going on. We have been dedicated to studying this new audience that nobody else has."

Why do they like it?

According to Figueiredo, "we've created a product that goes directly to the way they think and interact with news." Most of these readers are well informed via other media and already know a lot about what's going on, but they look to i to "help organise all the mixed and disparate information that they have to deal with." He believes that the in-depth articles on politics and economics, providing essential background to current issues, are one of the main reasons why people like the paper. The sports section is "very creative," unlike those in most newspapers, Figueiredo added. He does not think that the rest of the More section is a key motivation for buyers to choose i specifically, pointing out that one of the paper's competitors, Público, was very strong on culture.

Finally, he suggested that the format of the paper was particularly attractive, being small and stapled means that "people can read it anywhere," even on the beach. Lisbon is not a major commuter city, however, meaning that this audience, crucial to the success of many papers in many countries, does not exist.

What's next?

The i staff seemed excited about the paper's future. Mrozowski plans to further improve the work of his design team, to take it "to the next level." The team has mastered the basics, he feels, and is now "going to start focusing on certain areas of the paper one at a time and try to make them better so that we are at the highest level."

Bello said that one of her hopes for the website is to expand readership outside of Portugal. Currently 80-90% of traffic comes from within Portugal, the largest percentage of the remainder coming from Brazil. She would like to reach Portuguese immigrant communities around the rest of the world.

Figueiredo intends to work on strengthening the paper's brand, to "create a fantastic dynamic around the brand." Distribution of the paper is something that Figueiredo said i was hoping to improve. "It's a nightmare in Portugal," he explained, "but we are trying to come up with some more good ideas in order to be very efficient in terms of distribution."

I's shareholders have given it five years to break even financially. In a time of falling profits, when many papers are making huge losses, this is a significant challenge for a new newspaper. However, i does seem to be off to a pretty good start. The decision to move away from the traditional structure of a newspaper and provide something different definitely makes sense, as does embracing creativity and innovative thinking in the workplace. The paper has made inroads with a young, successful demographic that would often be attracted by online news rather than print, and reaching about half of the circulation of the major daily papers in a few months is impressive. However, it remains to be seen whether i can be successful over a longer period, and if it can indeed become profitable.

If i does succeed, will others follow it down the path of innovation?

To see what i's first day was like, watch:
 

The report is quite detailed, and includes various examples and covers many topics, but focuses on local news and the value of quality journalism. Beginning with a history of the newspaper industry that culminates in its weakness in the face of internet news, Downie and Schudson explain the importance of investigative and accountability journalism for a democracy, holding it as a public good. 

Despite the credit crunch, the fall of advertising, and declining circulation of newspapers in the Northern Hemisphere, Brazil continues to see rapid and sustained growth in its newspaper and tabloid industries, MediaGuardian reports.

In 2007 Brazilian newspaper circulation increased 12% compared to a world average of 2.7%, and last year's increase of 5% came among the global market crash and dire times for Europe and North American papers.

Tabloids have seen perhaps the largest growth, with colorful pages and scantly-clad women, distributed for free or very cheaply. Growth at nationally established papers remains steady as well.

The European Commission's internet chief Viviane Reding has warned of the 'dark sides' of social networking sites and behavioral advertising during a debate on the future of the internet in Brussels.

Reding said the Commission's Information Society branch will be closely monitoring all developments of social networking, targeting advertising and tracking software and hardware to ensure that EU citizens' privacy is not infringed upon.

She also threatened networking sites that do not take their users' privacy seriously with legislation to force them to enact protective measures, especially concerned with shielding minors.

"Privacy must, in my view, be a high priority for social networking providers and for their users. I firmly believe that at least the profiles of minors must be private by default and unavailable to internet search engines," Ms Reding said at the Brussels meeting. "The European Commission has already called on social networking sites to deal with minors' profiles carefully, by means of self-regulation," she continued. "I am ready to follow this up with new rules if I have to."

Big revolutions call out for big manifestos; and the on-going revolution in journalism, with specific reference to online journalism, is no different.

Kress.de has reported that a dedicated group of internet journalists and net-experts put together and published an "Internet-Manifesto"; a document that seeks to lay out a road map for the future of journalism, in consideration of the prevalence of online publications in our digital age. The manifesto, which was originally written in German, has since been translated into no less than nine further languages - and the project continues.


 

Last week Josh Cohen, Senior Business Product manager at Google, published a response to newspaper publishers' Hamburg Declaration which was made public on 9 July. The Declaration states that "going forward we no longer wish to be forced to give away property without having granted permission." It discusses ACAP, or Automated Content Access Protocol, which is a tool created by WAN-IFRA and the European Publishers Council to enable content providers to communicate their copyright terms and conditions online in a machine-readable way. Cooperation from search engines is essential for such an initiative.

Cohen contends that publishers do in fact have to give permission before their content appears on search engines, pointing to a technical standard known as the Robots Exclusion Protocol which tells search engines what can and cannot be crawled. He points out, correctly, that news organisations make their content available because they want it to be found and read via Google, which does deliver many consumer visits to newspaper websites each month.

The dilemma

The 2009 PricewaterhouseCooper report on consumer and advertising movements in the entertainment and media industry forecasts difficult times ahead for print publications as the "digital migration" gathers force. The Outlook frames the fate of the newspaper and magazine industry within the wider view of the global recession and the attendant structural changes to consumer and advertising habits. The geographical regions with the highest media development are forecast to suffer the most chronically. Marcel Fenez, global entertainment & media leader at PWC, spoke about the report in an interview with Publishing-lounge.  

The economic recession, Fenez explains, is catalyzing the process of digitilisation, as consumers are increasingly concerned to obtain better value for their content. The financial benefits of digital material for the consumer will not expire, even when the global economy picks up. As a result, it is not expected that consumption habits, nor advertising patterns will revert back to previous norms. Consequently, the current economic climate is effecting, not a "cyclical recession but one that is going to result in fundamental structural change". Significant changes in consumption and advertising patterns will inevitably have direct reverberations on the news publishing industry.

This week, a tax break for newspapers in Washington state went into effect, giving print publications a 40 percent reduction in the state business tax. One lawmaker stressed the tax cut was "not a bailout." It is interesting to note Washington already offered equal exemptions to the aerospace and timber industries, both of which are critical to the state's economy.

In a year which saw the Seattle Post-Intelligencer make the move to online-only and the Seattle Times cut 500 staff members, many publications will welcome any relief they can get. However, others wonder whether the measure will be enough to revive struggling papers and what such aid means for the publications' journalistic independence.

The media coverage of the shock death of Michael Jackson has served to highlight press dynamics, raising interesting questions concerning the nature of breaking news reporting, the cult of the celebrity and the relationship between newspapers and their online news rivals. Has the fact that most newspapers were delayed in the initial reporting of the death emphasised the widening gulf between print and digital channels of breaking news? Conversely, has the death been exploited by the printed press as a facile, reader guaranteeing hit?

The news of the performer's death, in terms of rumour, confirmation and reaction has been overwhelmingly 'digital' in expression. The scoop belonged to the Los Angeles based celebrity website, TMZ, which confirmed the death an hour after it aired whispers of a suspected heart attack. The reporting was rapid fire: time of death: 2.26pm, LA time, time of update: 2.44pm. 

The World Association of Newspapers and IFRA, the leading international associations for print and digital news publishing, have merged into a new organisation, the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA). The combined new organisation will represent more than 18,000 publications, 15,000 online sites and over 3000 companies in more than 120 countries. WAN-IFRA is dedicated "to be the indispensable partner of newspapers and the entire news publishing industry worldwide, particularly our members, in the defense and promotion of press freedom, quality journalism and editorial integrity, and the development of prosperous businesses and technology."

The Dutch government and the Temporary Commission on the Future of the Press are struggling to reach a consensus as to the most effective manner of improving the health of the nation's press. Media Minister Ronald Plasterk reacted unfavourably to the suggestion made by the commission that his ministry should impose an Internet tax, the proceeds of which going to the newspaper industry.

The Commission, which was set up by the Minister, is concerned that 'old medias' are ill equipped to deal with the challenges raised by the increasing prevalence of new technologies, particularly webblogs.To enable traditional forms of media to ride with the modernisation of information, they apparently need greater financial support.

Following the Iranian election on 12 June, which both sides claim to have won, Iranians and the rest of the world wants to know the truth about the results, as well as wanting to follow protests and other developments. But this has proved more difficult than anticipated given the restrictions on reporting, both by Iranians and foreigners, and the occasion proved to be an opportunity for citizen journalism to show its value.

Reporting restrictions

Mainstream media has been suffering from severe restrictions in Iran, even tougher than during last year's Zimbabwean elections, foreign editor for Channel 4 News Ben de Pear told the Guardian. Foreign journalists first had to get special press cards and were closely monitored, then on the Tuesday following the election, foreign journalists were banned from reporting on the streets. The BBC's correspondent has been asked to leave the country after the broadcaster was accused of supporting rioters. And it is not just foreign reporters who are suffering: now even reporters of Iranian nationality are being confined to their offices. According to Reporters without Borders (RSF), 26 Iranian journalists, editors and bloggers have been imprisoned since June 14.

Citizen video becomes a symbol

In the absence of an abundance of professional reporters, amateurs have stepped up. One of the most watched and discussed videos to come out of the tragedy, and one which is emblamatic of the role of citizen journalism in reporting from Iran, is that of the death of Neda Agha-Soltan, a young Iranian woman who was walking near the scene of clashes between pro-government militias and demonstrators when she was shot. The video has prompted international outcry and the girl's death has since come to represent the tragedy of the conflict, a "symbol of the anti-government movement," according to the New York Times. It was taken, not by a reporter with a camera, but by a bystander on a mobile phone, and posted on Facebook and YouTube after the man sent the 40-second clip to a friend who then forwarded to friends and news sites in Europe and the US.

A Twitter revolution?

Talk of a Twitter revolution swiftly spread as Iranians and others in the country used the social network Twitter to get their news out to the world, and it has been used extensively by the media. Twitter is particularly effective as a method of spreading news as it is harder to censor, given that it can be accessed via various different applications on computers or mobile phones, as well as via the website. #IranElection has been the top trending topic on Twitter for days, with thousands of updates an hour using the hash tag to get included in the feed and direct interested observers to text, image or video content. Following a request from US President Obama, Twitter decided to delay maintenance to the site in light of the important role it was playing in keeping people informed, carrying it out during Tehran's night rather than daylight hours.

Twitter is clearly not immune to censorship, however. The following message has been passed around Facebook over the last few days amongst Anglo-Saxon users:

"FREEDOM OF SPEECH: If anyone is on twitter, set your location to Tehran and your time zone to GMT +3.30. Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location/timezone searches. The more people at this location, the more of a logjam it creates for forces trying to shut Iranians' access to the internet down. Cut & paste & pass it on."

Amateur issues

Clearly, there are problems with relying on information generated by amateurs. Benoit Hervieu of RSF told Editor & Publisher that one of the main problems is that because many people want to remain anonymous, it is harder to verify information. And indeed, it seems that much false information has been circulating. After Twitter was hailed as the voice of the revolution, a backlash quickly emerged asserting its unreliability. There is always the possibility, after all, that interested parties might deliberately try to misinform, or might be so personally involved in the debate that they cannot maintain impartiality. And one of the disadvantages of a campaign such as that mentioned above, encouraging international Twitter users to set their locations to Iran, could end up misleading journalists searching for information on the network.

So how are citizen journalism agencies dealing with these risks and challenges?

Checking for reliability is a top priority for those trying to sell their content to traditional media companies. Citizen journalism agency Demotix has obtained many images from freelancers and amateurs portraying events in Iran, including two pictures which have appeared on the front page of the New York Times. Demotix COO Jonathan Tepper emphasised that Demotix understands the importance of reliability of sources and "believes that serious citizen journalism needs to take all the ethics of traditional reporting and build on them, such as verifiability and protection of sources." All submissions go through a vetting procedure which includes looking at the metadata in photos.

Citizenside, which specializes in citizen photo journalism, has managed to get hold of some good images which have been published by mainstream media outlets, but co-founder Matthieu Stefani said that it has been "really hard" both to establish contacts in Iran and to receive images from these contacts. "The big issue is that most of the contributions we've received were sent through proxies, with most of the time no way to contact our contributors as cellphone networks don't work really well," he explained, and therefore his team is extremely cautious about what they accept. He said that the photos that the agency has been pushing most to its clients were received from known and trusted members in the UK who were sent them by close relatives in Iran.

The Observers, a project run by TV news station France 24 combining citizen journalism with professional editing, has been active in its coverage of Iran. Founder of the initiative Julien Pain told the EW that what makes their coverage particularly useful is the fact that they already had trusted contacts in Iran before the election, and hence they have fewer problems with establishing the reliability of sources of information, particularly when using proxy servers. "We worked with these people before the situation was tense," he explained, "so we know them." He gave the example of a girl who has recorded a video describing how the censorship works, with whom he and his team had already worked. Prior to any major election, Pain added, the Observers tries to enlarge its network of contacts, which in this case proved particularly useful. Even using trusted contacts, Pain said that the Observers still cross-checks information as far as possible.

Amra Tareen, CEO of AllVoices, a project that aggregates professional and amateur news on one site, has a different approach: publish everything and let the reader decide. She said that the site has received more than 1,000 submissions, in English and Farsi, since the election, gathered via proxy servers as the AllVoices site is blocked. She stressed that submissions have tackled both sides of the issue and that this is one of the most crucial aspects of citizen journalism and of her site in particular: that anyone can be heard. "we're neutral and anyone can have their voices heard on our platform--that's key for the credibility of citizen journalism; bias will undermine the concept and keep citizen journalism and citizen journalists from ever being taken as seriously as they ought to be."

Generally it seems that such a situation where media access is severely reduced has provided citizen journalism with a significant opportunity to prove its importance. Tareen commented that "we really want to use this opportunity to show that Cit-J is not only about massive amount of non-qualified content, but also good "pro-am" work that we have been promoting for years now," said Stefani.

Getting pictures on the front page of a major daily is likely to be a huge boost to Demotix in terms of fame and credibility. Tepper was clear that Demotix is trying to supplement mainstream media rather than replace it, but said that "we think our reporting can sometimes be more accurate than the mainstream media" because "most of our users record what is known to them, in their city or country" and therefore "Demotix images provide a more accurate representation of the subject from a local perspective."

For the Observers, the situation has provided an opportunity for collaboration with the TV station on an unprecedented level. Usually, Pain said, he would publish a video on the Observers website and offer it to TV, now he has been working more with programming at France 24 to supply them with videos first before putting them online, to offer a period of exclusivity. "We've really moved a step forward here," he said. "We have learnt how to work together, and it's not going to be the same any more."

Although amateur 'citizen journalists' do not have the knowledge or expertise to analyse developments the way a professional journalist could, they can certainly witness and record events, and when traditional media coverage is limited, this is a valuable service. In terms of providing a true news service, amateur contributions must be verified so that readers can trust them, which is a priority for citizen journalism agencies. As opportunities continue to arise for citizen journalism to prove its value, the mainstream media is likely to incorporate it with increasing frequency and develop new ways of working closer with citizen journalism agencies.