Results matching “new partnership”

The Press Association has undergone a senior management restructuring to reposition the agency for its increasingly digital future.

PA's focus today is as much about video as photographs and text, and the company needs to position itself as a versatile producer of content of all forms.

Tony Watson, the former Yorkshire Post editor who was promoted from his editor-in-chief role on Tuesday, said that while text, pictures and listings would remain a core function of PA, it expects customers to require more digital content in the future.

He told the Press Gazette in an interview: "Text and photos are still very much part of our proposition. But with the advent of broadband and the huge public uptake means the possibilities of online are so much greater than they were only a few years ago.

"You used to watch a video online, go away and make a cup of tea whilst it loaded. But it is so high-quality now that it's opened the possibility of integrating text, photos and video in a way that tells a story in the best possible way. It's not either/or, it's all of those things."

PA has hired three consultants as part of a government-backed knowledge transfer partnership with the London College of Communications; a two-year project to find commercial opportunities for original story-telling methods for the agency.

Source: Press Gazette

BBC News is experimenting with external links within the main body of its text to provide users with more external information. The trial will last for four weeks and is only available on the UK website.

The 'in-page links' direct users to background information about the topic of the article from across the BBC News site  and to other external sources, such as, YouTube, Wikipedia, Flickr, and external news organisations' sites.

External links are identified by symbols and open up a separate window previewing the linked-to page.

Steve Herrmann, BBC News website editor says of the trial: "We wanted to include these sources because they promote sharing of content, have a huge array of material of potential editorial relevance, are technically easy to work with and also we wanted to gauge your thoughts about us linking to these user-generated sources."

He went on to say, "We're not taking an exclusive approach to which sources we link to, the whole idea is to try out and develop a system that is flexible enough for pretty much anything."

The system has been developed in partnership with multimedia technology firm Apture, which implemented a similar feature for the WashingtonPost.com.

Source: Journalism.co.uk

After The Capital in Annapolis, Maryland announced a "partnership" with the Anne Arundel Medical Center (AAMC), where AAMC paid the paper to provide all the content for the newspaper's health page once a month, two major journalism groups have responded, issuing a joint warning to news outlets on the ethical complications of creating to cozy of a relationship with hospitals, according to Editor & Publisher.

In March, on the Capital's website, the paper explained, "... Partnering with the hospital on the Health page seemed to make sense. We don't have a health reporter to write about medical issues and often use stories from syndicated services that quote doctors from other cities.... Instead of generic stories originating from another city, the reader will have local news featuring people they recognize (and) doctors they use."

In their release today, the Association of Health Care Journalists and the Society of Professional Journalists state they "are concerned about news media that publish or broadcast stories, reports, news releases and interviews prepared or paid for by hospitals."

"The ethics codes of the Association of Health Care Journalists and the Society of Professional Journalists call for fair and accurate reporting and editorial independence. But editorial cutbacks, along with pressure on hospitals to market profitable services, may be eroding these standards."

Despite these challenges, the groups asserted, "our journalistic mission requires us to hold doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and government agencies accountable to the public. In doing so, we commit to fair and transparent reporting of medical issues.

The statement also included these guidelines of media outlets to abide by:

• News organizations should fully disclose the source of any editorial information not independently gathered, whether video, audio, photograph or print material.

• News organizations should not run prepackaged stories produced by hospitals unless they are clearly and continuously labeled as advertisements.

• News organizations should not favor advertisers or sponsors over competing health-care providers when choosing sources or story topics and should strive to employ a wide variety of sources.

• News organizations should develop guidelines for the public disclosure of sponsors and advertisers.

• These guidelines should prohibit news personnel from appearing in or participating in sponsored programming or advertisements.

Source: Editor & Publisher

In January, Thailand's English-language daily, The Nation, redesigned to focus on finance and politics and updated with a "lively design, uses color in headlines, capital letters, and has a special weekend front page with a colorful navigator to the inside." Additionally, the Daily Xpress, a paper covering general news, sports and entertainment began to be inserted as a free broadsheet inside The Nation; the Daily Xpress is Thailand's first free paper.

Eight months later, Garcia Media reports on the success of the redesign and partnership.

"What Thailand has been dearly in need of is a dedicated local English daily business newspaper. Recognizing this, The Nation has stepped in to fill this gap, changing from a general-news paper to one that lays emphasis on business news," said Leroy Sylk, design director.

Source: Garcia Media

What if we left journalism to journalists and the technology to Google?

Jeff Jarvis contemplates such a partnership, sparked by a recent discussion with Edward Roussel, head of digital for the Telegraph.

Jarvis paraphrases Rouseel's argument, saying, "Google already is the key distributor online... Google is great at technology and newspapers aren't and for the future, where are the best technologists going to go? Google. Google is also brilliant at selling ads and Edward even wondered where the best sales talent would go in the future: there or a paper? So why not hand over those segments of the business to Google and concentrate on what a newspaper should do: journalism?"

Source: BuzzMachine

Web audiences outside the UK helped move The Telegraph online to beat The Guardian as the UK's number one news site, and now, The Telegraph is looking to turn those numbers into pounds - by finding advertisers in the territories of new readers.
 
Telegraph.co.uk, whose readership has grown 153 percent in the last year, has a more international audience than guardian.co.uk and draws just 34 percent of their online readers from the UK. The Guardian online, which has grown just 22.5 percent in the last year, draws more than 41 percent of users from the UK.

Despite numbers suggesting the majority of readers are from outside the UK, "Newspaper groups have traditionally tied themselves to a single ad network to sell all of their international online inventory," said Cameron Yuill, AdGent 007's founder and chief executive.

As worldwide audiences grow, the Telegraph Media Group's partnership with AdGent 007, a global digital advertising services company, means the Telegraph will no longer be tethered to UK advertisers and will be able to exploit their audience's advertising potential to its fullest.

Source: Guardian.co.uk
 

Part 1 discussed how the planned changes at The New York Times and International Herald Tribune will help the NYT's continuous news offerings, and how these changes could affect the organization and interaction between both newsrooms.

Part 2 examines how The New York Times intends to:
- Further compete against the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal internationally, and ways in which newspapers can reinforce their international reach.
- Use the strength of its online brand while safeguarding the IHT's popular print brand name.

The Weblog spoke to Jim Roberts, Digital Editor at The New York Times, and Martin Gottlieb, who was appointed to the newly created position of Editor, Global Edition.

How newspapers can become international brands, the NYT joins the race

Until now, the Times hasn't specifically catered to overseas advertisers and readers.

"We need to be agile," said IHT publisher Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, "to compete much more aggressively, nose to nose, with The Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and anybody else who is competing for our readers and advertisers."

No doubt that the Times actually borrowed the continuous news outpost idea from the aforementioned competitors, which have been relying on their foreign bureaus to provide round the clock coverage.

The staff memo reaffirmed the NYT's "ambitious plans to expand in the region (Asia), particularly in India." In June, the IHT announced a partnership with the India-based Deccan Chronicle to print the Tribune's world business section in the Financial Chronicle.

With the rise of digital publishing, many news organizations are seeking to grow a previously inaccessible international readership by:

- launching a print edition abroad: several papers have rolled out editions away from home this past year, such as the FT's recently launched Middle East edition in Abu Dhabi, WSJ's partnership with business paper Mint in India, the Daily Mail's partnership with India Today to publish the Mail Today, or The Times of London's Polish edition.

- investing in an online international section: In Germany, referential weekly Der Spiegel launched an English-language International edition on its website in 2004. Five fulltime staffers are dedicated to translating Der Spiegel's content and rewriting it with an international perspective, as well as doing their own international-minded original reporting (the full case study is featured in Trends in Newsrooms 2008). The Guardian adopted a different approach, by launching a separate, foreign-based, US website, Guardian America. The Guardian is reportedly considering similar ventures in other regions.

- simply reinforcing their focus on international news in their regular coverage: the Daily Telegraph's website in the UK, which was neck to neck with the Guardian in terms of traffic in April, claims nearly two thirds of its visitors are from overseas. A well-indexed website helps to brings in a significant number of 'light' international users through search engines.

Merging "co-branded" websites but not print: a branding issue

The NYT's approach is a combination of the first two strategies: the print IHT now serves as The Times' 'global edition' (see picture), while maintaining its trademark brand name. With the proposed online merger, the NYT could also follow the second route, by hosting an international edition online, without having to extensively change its workflows (see Part 1).

The rationale to merge the websites is clearly explained in the memo: according to WebTrends, NYT's website boasts a strong international audience and 58 million global users, compared to iht.com's seven million.

"The global landscape for online news is highly competitive, making scale, speed and resources essential to success. Therefore we have determined that the best future online for the IHT and the NYT globally is through a joint international presence," said the memo.

However, the memo doesn't explicitly say why this won't be the case in print:

"The IHT should become the international print edition of the NYT, whether it is formally branded that way or not."

The main issue at stake is one of branding. "In print, there have been at least a couple of studies that show that among Tribune newspaper readers there is a great identification with the brand, that the brand means something to readers," said Gottlieb.

"More than the name, what accompanies the name, an international perspective, a sense of calling the best stories from The Times and augmenting them with unique reporting," was a combination that many readers liked.

As news organizations seek to grow their international reach, this consideration probably holds true for many that have established a reputable brand name on a local or national scale. However strong the brand name, its association with a particular place or country can potentially play against that news outlet on the international scene.

Source: New York Times - Media Bistro - Jim Roberts, Digital Editor The New York Times - Martin Gottlieb, Editor, Global Edition

The International Herald Tribune (IHT) announced today that starting from June 20 it will be printing its 4-page world business section inside India's Financial Chronicle (FC).

In a news release, IHT said that this would provide FC readers with "daily news and analysis on what is happening in companies and deals and in the financial markets around the world, alongside the latest business news in India."

Deccan Chronicle Holdings (DCH) has published FC in Hyderabad, Chennai and Bangalore since April 16. The IHT release date was chosen to be on the same date as the first FC release from Mumbai.

According to Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, IHT publisher, the development is "exciting" because India 's market has "tremendous potential". By teaming up with DCH, "a dynamic partner with a proven track record", the "appetite for high quality content" will be met.

DCH will be advertising the FC/IHT partnership in Mumbai, Chennai, New Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad through "billboard, television and print" while the IHT will be selling international ads.

Other examples of the West teaming up with the East include the daily paper Mint, a partnership between the Wall Street Journal and Hindustan Times. The Financial Times is also investing in India's business media market by planning for an Indian version of its daily.

Source: iht.com

The Chicago Tribune announced this week a new partnership with Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to create a student-generated weekly, under the direction of Tribune editors.

The new weekly, under the working title "The Mash," will feature editorial content created for and by students, who will receive on-the-job journalism training by Chicago Tribune editors. The Tribune plans to distribute 100,000 copies of the new weekly to all CPS high school students come September, which will also include ads sold by the Tribune advertising department.

"This partnership brings great opportunities for our students to get invaluable work experience alongside professional journalists," said Arne Duncan, CEO of the Chicago Public Schools. "It also will be a useful tool to improve students' reading and writing skills, while keeping them connected to current events."

The paper's web site will also host much of that content, "serving as an interactive vehicle that allows students to post stories and photos and interact with one another between editions."

Source: Editor & Publisher

94 more newspapers have joined the Yahoo newspaper consortium, raising the number of newspapers in the partnership to 779, or 41 percent of total Sunday circulation.  

The consortium's most prominent new member is the Sun-Times News Group, owners of the Chicago Sun-Times. Other new companies include Black Press, Stephens Media Group, and Independent Newspapers.

Newspapers in the consortium are allowed access to Yahoo's services, most notably to HotJobs, the job recruitment site, and to new advertising technology. Nearly 600 newspapers have added HotJobs.

"We have been impressed with how Yahoo and the newspaper consortium have jumpstarted the newspaper industry's digital presence," said Rich Surkamer, chief operating officer of the Sun-Times News Group.

Source: Editor & Publisher through EJC

The Chicago Tribune has partnered with digital video recorder specialist TiVo, for the video service to carry content from the Tribune's TV critic Maureen Ryan.

The recommendations of Ryan will only be available to those who sign up, among the roughly 100,000 TiVo subscribers in the Chicago area. TiVo's chief executive said he was in talks about similar partnerships with other print media outlets.

The Tribune could benefit from the deal in several ways, including increased visibility of its brand name, but also potentially additional subscription revenue.

"Maybe we'll get a few people to do the unthinkable and subscribe to the newspaper," said James Warren, managing editor for features at the Tribune. This partnership comes as the Tribune is reshuffling its TV print digest, whose value is diminishing with the rise of online or on-screen guides. "He said the TiVo partnership seemed like a no-lose proposition," reported The New York Times.

The Tribune will also get a share of revenue from newly-subscribed TiVo users, if these came through one the newspaper's advertisements for TiVo.

 

 

Source: New York Times through I Want Media

After a tour of The New York Times this week, blogger Robert Scoble discussed some interesting additions at the Grey Lady.

Gadgets coming out of the Research and Development department included:

-a prototype newspaper rack that could print out a customized version of the paper

-a thin book reader following a discussion of metadata being collected by the Times. Scoble writes, "They have these gadgets so they can develop new ways of delivering content to those devices."

-a display featuring the results of NYT's new partnership with Google Earth

He reports that The Times' new archive initiative, the Time Machine, which debuted late February in beta, will be released soon. Scoble also learned that a Mac version of the Times Reader will be available in the next few days.

Source: Scobleizer through Journerdism 

Further upping the local news stakes, Google has combined its news channel with Google Earth, mapping Google News articles according to location.  

The new initiative, announced on Google's Lat Long blog, will automatically take new articles from Google News and update the map. Using Google Earth, users can choose how far to zoom in on a given part of the world, thereby regulating how local the content of the displayed articles will be.

"By spatially locating the Google News' constantly updating index of stories from more than 4,500 news sources, Google Earth now shows an ever-changing world of human activity as chronicled by reporters worldwide," said Google product manager Brandon Badger.

Google has a similar service in partnership with The New York Times, which maps NYT stories onto a Google Earth map.

Sources: CNET, Journalism.co.uk