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

The La Repubblica crusade

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Considering the nonprofit model

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

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

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

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

Relaxing antitrust could help publishers charge for online content

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

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

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

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

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

Experimentation and innovation rather than government intervention

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

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

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

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

What will the Senate decide?

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

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

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

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

Appearing before MPs earlier this week, a number of editors from some of the country's most
established newspapers warned of the "chilling" costs of legal action which were discouraging many newspapers from the business of investigative journalism, the Guardian has reported.

The editors were invited to demonstrate how privacy, libel and press standards were impacting the day-to-day business of running their newspapers, as part of a review on the part of the culture, media and sport select committee.

Writing two separate articles, firstly in the Evening Standard and then in the Guardian, Roy Greenslade denounces councils for their proliferation of council-run newspapers.

According to Greenslade, "the phenomenon of papers published by local councils" poses a real threat to local titles which are already struggling with advertising losses and dwindling circulation figures.

During a Quarter 1 earnings call yesterday, New York Times Co. President and CEO Janet Robinson addressed the newspaper industry's paid-content debate as well as the company's financial situation. She maintains that the Times' current ad supported business model is still working and that the company is exploring payment models.

Robinson revealed that after examining the business models of more than 30 online organizations to discover the most effective way to generate online revenues, executives concluded that the Times is doing well in comparison. She also points out that while digital advertising declined 8% compared to last year, the company's main website showed significant growth in display advertising. The company prefers to proceed cautiously with respect to charging for content, as blocking content could disturb progress of its online advertising advances.

The International Journalism Festival took place in Perugia, Italy from April 1-5. The festival addressed the differences between old and new media and the necessity to integrate the two, and many other widely discussed issues affecting the media today, such as integrating print and web news in light of readers' migration online, the necessity to finance journalism as a watchdog, and hence the need to make readers pay for online news.

The Huffington Post's latest business model combines the for-profit online publication with the nonprofit Huffington Post Investigative Fund. This week founder Ariana Huffington announced the launch of the Investigative Fund with an initial budget of $1.75 million partially funded by the HuffPost in collaboration with The Atlantic Philanthropies and other donors.

The investigative group will be lead by American News Project founder Nick Penniman, and though the group's investigations will be published on the Huffington Post, it will both remain a separate legal entity and also make its work available to other publishers. These provisions are absolutely necessary to maintain the Fund's nonprofit status.

Walter Isaacson, ex-managing editor of Time magazine and current CEO of the Aspen Institute yesterday addressed the current conundrum of the printed press: how to make money.  The crux of the dilemma is that printed news costs money, yet identical content online is given out for free.  This combined with a decrease in advertising revenue due to the global economic crisis has left many newspapers and magazines struggling.

In a Time piece entitled 'How to save your newspaper', Walter Isaacson bluntly reveals his attitude to the printed press; "Even an old print junkie like me has quit subscribing to the New York Times, because if it doesn't see fit to charge for its content, I'd feel like a fool paying for it."  His logic is indisputable; very few people would pay for that which they can have for free.

Isaacson is struck by the irony of the situation; news publications have a higher readership that ever when you consider both print and online figures, yet they have never been more under threat.  He links the problem back to the online advertising boom which at the time looked like its revenues would be more than sufficient to carry both online and print editions of any newspaper.

For the first time since the creation of the World Editors Forum in 1994, WAN and WEF have been obliged to postpone the 62nd World Newspaper Congress and 16th World Editors Forum until later in the year. The conference was originally to be held in March.

The economic crisis has had a devastating effect on participation numbers for the events, which are simply not viable at this stage. Our belief is that newspaper companies will, by necessity, learn to live with the crisis over the year and will be more willing to invest again in conferences and travel by the end of 2009.

This is a management decision based on facts. A newspaper association is at the end of the chain of the newspaper industry: when managers and editors cut costs and ask not to travel, evidently conferences and seminars are the first to be threatened.

We are currently in talks to fix new dates for the period 30 November - 3 December 2009. The exact new schedule will be confirmed shortly. We sincerely hope that many of our planned participants will still be available and willing to come at the Forum on the new dates!

Remember that the theme of our 2009 Editors Forum is "Doing More with Less": how to produce more content with fewer resources. We believe that this will still be a relevant and applicable topic in November.

For further updates on progress please see:
http://www.wanindia2009.com/articles.asp?ID=114

To mark the relaunch of the Editors Weblog, the World Editors Forum is running a special series entitled "Doing More with Less." The series highlights major trends that editors-in-chief are using to steer their newsrooms through the difficult economic climate. The fourth of the series takes a look at the hugely successful online-only news site, the Huffington Post.

The Huffington Post was a runaway success in 2008; with 8 million readers during the US election campaign, it is now the most 'linked-to' blog on the Web and is valued at up to $200million. It only employs around 50 staff, just a handful of which are editorial. To do so much with so little, is an impressive feat indeed. The Editors Weblog spoke to HuffPost's Founding Editor Roy Sekoff, and National Editor Nico Pitney, to examine the crucial elements that contribute to its success and look at how it plans to maintain that success post-elections.

HUFFING AND PUFFING TOWARDS SUCCESS

Content
To explain HuffPost's huge popularity, Sekoff pointed to the mix of different content you can get on the site. "It's a very vital and dynamic blend of breaking news, aggregated news and real-time commentary," meaning that you can find out the information you want and immediately see what people have been saying about it. It offers a bit of everything, both "esoteric and pedestrian," And a crucial factor is the mix of people who write on the site, from Hillary Clinton to Larry David to Arianna Huffington herself. Sekoff explained that it is "not just a certain kind of writer. You could get an actor, an architect and a politician all weighing in on the same issue."

Speed
The speed at which news can be reported in an online model is invaluable for HuffPost's success and for the news industry today. "The Internet has enabled us to get what we want, when and how we want it," Sekoff declared, "and it turns out they want it fast." He described the moment when the benefits of online really hit home in HuffPost's early days. It was the day of the July 2005 London bombings and HuffPost had been covering the story from the early hours of the morning, with bloggers sending in information and pictures from London. Then the morning New York Times appeared, with London on the front page but topped with the wrong headline: about the city hosting the 2012 Olympics. "It literally was yesterday's news," Sekoff stressed. Pitney was enthusiastic about how HuffPost can provide "instantaneous coverage about what's happening," and can immediately try to get comments from people involved in the story.

Interconnectedness
The HuffPost team have also made a considerable effort to make the whole site as appealing and user-friendly as possible, as while it was originally envisaged that readers would purposefully come to the home page and then move around the site, now many people end up landing on other pages through links from searches or social media sites. Sekoff explained that they had been "working to make each landing page full of as much content as possible," with images, related stories, or recommendations for further reading, "to make much content intuitively available for people who are interested in certain topics." There is extensive "interconnectedness" between elements of the site, which both reduces the chances of readers missing things in the vast array of stories available, and makes the site more 'sticky,' increasing traffic.

Links
Sekoff was confident that the HuffPost was a financially sustainable endeavour. Its revenue largely comes from advertising, and this is based on its high traffic as a result of being the most linked-to blog on the Web. "It has become a link-based economy. You are not being paid in dollars any more for your piece, but rather you are being paid in traffic." So from a financial standpoint, the main focus is simply to get good content onto the site, which will encourage people to link to it, increase traffic and then generate more advertising revenue. The HuffPost does syndicate some of its content but Sekoff stressed that this was not an element of the site's business model.

"It has become a link-based economy. You are not being paid in dollars any more for your piece, but rather you are being paid in traffic."

Free contributions
HuffPost has invited over 2000 people to be part of its group blog. These successful, influential leaders in their fields are not paid but many still regularly offer their insight and comments to the virtual pages of HuffPost. So in terms of getting good readable content onto the site, this is a very cost effective way to do it. Sekoff explained why he thinks so many people are willing to write for the site: "we offer our bloggers a tremendous platform." The most obvious reason is simply the volume of readership HuffPost can offer: "on the HuffPost, stuff gets read." Very few people receive more than a few thousand readers on their individual blogs, while on HuffPost they can get millions. The "engaged readership" is a related factor, Sekoff believes. "People are always struck by how immediate the response is and how reasoned and interesting the comment section can be."

Another simple but important reason people like to blog for the HuffPost is the lack of commitment and deadlines. "People are free to write what they want when they want," Sekoff clarified, "so it's great for people who have something to say but don't have time to maintain their own blog." As most of the people who blog for HuffPost do other things - and in fact it is these other things that they do that make them so interesting - they appreciate the freedom to be able to speak out when they want to but have no obligation. "Nobody is carrying the weight themselves," he added, one of the advantages of having so many contributors.

Citizen reporters
HuffPost has also been embracing the free resource of citizen journalism and is confident of its potential. During the campaign the Off the Bus initiative, in conjunction with pro-am journalism venture New Assignment, used readers as reporters and was very successful. It was actually used to break stories, such as the 'Bitter Gate' scandal, and Sekoff described how readers continue to be excited about contributing to the site. In a project called 'Blogging the Meltdown,' people recount how the economic breakdown is affecting their communities, "putting flesh and blood on the statistics." He believes that tapping into the "storehouse of information and knowledge" provided by readers could be the future of much journalism.


PERFECTING POST-ELECTION PLANS

After its tremendous success during the election campaign, HuffPost is making plans for the future. Sekoff said that main areas of focus now are the presidential transition and the world economic downturn, and Pitney explained that much of the original reporting the Washington team are doing now is centred around the bailout plan. However, the site has already diversified from its original political focus and plans to continue doing so. A $25 million funding injection from Oak Investment Partners was announced in December last year and HuffPost has been looking at how to spend it.

One major area of expansion is localizing - HuffPost Chicago began in August 2008 and is described by site founder Arianna Huffington, as "part local news source, part resource guide, part virtual soap box." It includes a roundup of local services. San Francisco is coming next. A world section, in partnership with new international news service GlobalPost was recently launched. HuffPost has plans to create an investigative journalism fund, which will fund both daily breaking scoops and longer pieces, according to Sekoff, in an effort to make sure that this vital aspect of reporting is not lost due to a financial downturn. HuffPost will hire editors, but most of the writing will be done by freelancers, Pitney explained. He added that they will try to take advantage of the skills of some of the "great journalists" who are having trouble finding work due to the current financial situation in the newspaper world.
 
Although aggregation still very much forms the basis of the news reported on the site, HuffPost's original reporting team is expanding, according to Pitney, who added that a full time congressional reporter had just been hired. There are no photographers or videographers, but all reporters have been issued with a Kite phone, allowing them to take short videos at events which "almost instantly upload to an 'embed-able' video player online."

TRUMPING TRADITIONAL MEDIA?

Arianna Huffington insisted in an interview with Iwantmedia that HuffPost is not contributing to the demise of US daily newspapers in any way. Sekoff agreed, and Pitney stressed that newspaper journalists "are vital to what we do, and hopefully we are helping their work in the sense that we send them lots of readers, and we try to highlight their best work." Sekoff mentioned that he foresees a "hybrid future" for media operations, in which people will still get their information in a variety of ways.

"Newspaper journalists are vital to what we do, and hopefully we are helping their work in the sense that we send them lots of readers, and we try to highlight their best work." 

HuffPost is just one way in that variety. It has come up with a ground-breaking formula that involves minimum expenditure but provides maximum coverage: up to date, comprehensive aggregation combined with insight from famous names and readers, all of which is obtained for free. And although reader numbers have fallen from their peak during the US election campaign, what HuffPost offers is still original and effective enough to make its continued success very likely. Its expansion into local sites could be particularly popular considering the well-documented troubles of US metropolitan newspapers, and as investigative journalism is cut at newspapers, this could be area in which HuffPost excels. One potential threat comes from the fact that more and more newspaper websites are offering aggregation services themselves, But being first off the mark, HuffPost has a significant headstart.

In the run-up to the 16th World Editors Forum being held in Hyderabad, India March 22-25, 2009, the Editors Weblog is running a special series entitled "Doing More with Less." The series highlights major trends that editors-in-chief are using to steer their newsrooms through the difficult economic climate. This week, we looked at how The Guardian and Finland's Kauppalehti have integrated their newsrooms. Below, editors from around the world share their own thoughts about INTEGRATED NEWSROOMS.

AFRICA
Azubuike Ishiekwene, Executive Director, Punch Nigeria
The question of integration is not optional - it's functional. The speed and timing of integration may differ from newsroom to newsroom in countries and even within regions. But we at the Punch have found that the only way to remain relevant is to anticipate and follow the readers. A good example of this is mobile phones. With over 50 million people in Nigeria now using mobile phones and one out of every four phones being WAP enabled, our newsroom has been preparing for our next major step - delivering the news through mobile phones.

As for our journalists, we are not creating separate boxes for print and digital. We're starting with print journalists who already have a flair for the digital platform and encouraging the rest to join in the fun. At entry level, however, our preference now is for digital natives! Fortunately, we are not yet at the stage where we're compelled to fire staff for lack of digital enthusiasm. We're hoping we can convert the dinosaurs before the curtain falls!

Most importantly, as we aggregate platforms hard-nosed journalistic skills, including of course, a stubborn passion for truth, will remain valuable professional qualities.

LATIN AMERICA
Marcelo Rech, General Product Director, RBS Group, Brasil
For us, in Zero Hora and the other RBS Group newspapers, the discussion about integration is outdated. By now, we are trying to fuse, 100%, the digital and print operations inside the newsroom. We still maintain some specific jobs for print and digital, like print page designers, but whole departments have already merged.

We don't demand that someone work for the digital operation if she or he is uncomfortable with it, but the truth is that we have much more good, multimedia and innovative digital content produced by our reporters, columnists and editors than we could imagine. 

This is due to two simple reasons:
1) People know that if they avoid experimenting with digital media their careers will be under threat sooner or later.
2) I believe the first task of a journalist is being relevant - being read, watched or listened by the highest number of people, and making a difference. When our journalists realized they were becoming more relevant due the internet, they largely volunteered for work with the digital side on a routine basis.

By now, no less than 70% of the about 230 journalists of Zero Hora work with eyes on both operations. For a minority of that 70%, the unofficial group leaders, we can no longer describe their tasks as purely digital or purely print.

EASTERN EUROPE
Roman Gallo, Director of Media Strategies, PPF Financial Group
The benefits of integrating print and online journalists is that you can reach more readers and affect more users from different target groups that you could not touch through traditional media. You can use your current power (brand, loyal readers group....) to extend (or minimally defend) your position in the whole media market. And of course it is a more effective way how to run your media company.

On the other hand, the dangers of joining print and online journalists is that you can destroy your original brand. Why? To be able to succeed in different media fields you have to change the way you reach readers. Here I sense a hidden risk. During the integration process you can gradually lose losing the main characteristics of your brand. For example, if you write for the internet and your goal is speed, you may quickly lose your sense of accuracy. Step by step, this bad habit can reach your newspaper.

In conclusion, no matter which medium you use, the quality of your journalism has to correspond to your brand.

WESTERN EUROPE
Espen Egil Hansen, Editor-in Chief, Verdens Gang Multimedia, Norway
I'am generally sceptical of the idea of one media house, one newsroom. When was the last time anyone won both the 100 meter dash and marathon during an Olympic game?

Newspaper and internet are by nature so diverse that they demand completely different working methods and organizations in order to succeed. This applies at all levels: in the editorial department, sales, distribution and management. To argue that "newspaper" and "online news" are the same because both are news, makes as much sense as saying that a roaring river and a glass of water are the same because both are water.

The idea of integration is in my opinion a threat both to the printed product and for the online news site. To the printed product because the integration in a way conceals a level of costs and way of working that is not sustainable in the long run. And the threat to the online site is that it will inherit the way of working, organizing and a level of cost that is not competitive in this market.

In the publishing house of VG we have, with success, chosen the model of focus. We have two companies, two boards, to editorial departments, to chief editors, two managing directors and so on. We cooperate where appropriate for both organizations (which means a lot), but at the same time we are free to choose whatever necessary in order to succeed on our own platform. We've made some tough choices. While down-sizing by 100 people in the print organization we hired 40 more online. No one was moved from print to online. With this model of focus we've achieved the number one position online and in the print market. Both editions have for the last couple of years been very profitable.
READ ESPEN'S FULL TEXT HERE

NORTH AMERICA
Ed Greenspon, Editor-in-Chief, Globe and Mail, Canada
So far, I have not seen a single danger in joining print and digital journalists.  Like any kind of exercise that brings together people with different skills and dispositions, it seems to do nothing but generate greater creativity all round.

There is also no better way to sell digital in a traditionally print newsroom than by letting those doing it day to day serve as the ambassadors.

In fact, I would say that most journalists in our newsroom consider themselves hybrids; they are story tellers who use different media and the inherent strengths of each to convey their stories.  That said, just as there will always be the need for certain journalists dedicated to producing the print product, such is the same for our digital products, especially given the rapidly-developing technologies and story-telling techniques.

Newsroom integration can be linked to redundancies and reductions in staff, but it can also be used to meet the demands on us to produce greater volume and variety of content to satisfy more sophisticated audiences. In any case, it would be counter-productive to resist.

Terry Eberle, Executive Editor and Vice President, Fort Myers News Press, Florida
The information world is rapidly changing and will continue to change at a more rapid pace for a long time. This makes it imperative for today's editors to look forward and to put systems in place to assure we remain relevant. Information is our product, the platforms we distribute this information on are less important. We must understand the audiences and we must get our needed information to them on the platform they want it. This all means that we can no longer have a staff for the print and a staff for online. One staff for print photos and one staff for video. We must be one and we must act as one. I believe to do anything less would doom us to failure.

To say the least, 2008 proved a difficult year for newspapers in many nations. Rising printing and distribution costs, waning circulations and fragmented audiences continued to challenge a business model that seems increasingly outdated. And despite many promising advancements made by newspaper companies in Internet and mobile, revenues remain far behind those of print.

But the news is far from all negative. Below is some food for thought for newsroom executives everywhere, ways in which newspapers began adapting to the modern media landscape in 2008 that will continue through 2009.

INTERNET TRENDS BECOMING NEW TOOLS FOR JOURNALISM
2008 saw the continued proliferation of social and professional networking sites Facebook and LinkedIn, with newspapers and journalists, with newspapers and journalists, such as the New York Times well-known columnist Nicholas Kristof, creating their own profiles, applications and connecting with new audiences. User-Generated Content (UGC) continued to gather speed as well, with CNN's iReport in the US and LePost in France among many others around the world. A December report by the Bivings Group also noted that 58% of US newspapers now use some form of UGC.

But the biggest social media revelation to journalists came in the form of 140 characters. The social site, Twitter, which allows users to post short messages for all to see, officially became a widespread tool for journalists in 2008. For example, journalists covering the US Presidential Elections took live notes from conventions and rallies that readers could follow and that also helped to shape those journalists' main story. During the Mumbai terrorist attacks, "tweets", or Twitter messages, appeared as the first news of the attacks. Twitter feeds can also be aggregated, bringing all angles of those covering a certain event into one, comprehensible, instantly-updated record.

Another Internet trend is the "Personalized Web", evoked by newspaper experiments such as MyTimes and start-ups such as Netvibes that provide customizable pages based on RSS feeds and widgets. Arguably the boldest example of personalized news is the BBC's revamped homepage, released in March 2008, which allows users to create their own page based on the BBC information they use most. But personalized news seems to be picking up more slowly than social media. For one thing, Internet users are used to getting the information they seek from many Web pages and may not yet be ready to create their own pages. Secondly, search engines still rule, meaning that traffic to most news sites continues to come through Google, its competitors and their various news and alerts functions. So a customizable homepage like the BBC created, which could ultimately prove a competitor to search engines, remains to become a habit of the general Internet public.  

Personalized news and social media are just two examples of all of the innovation that is occurring in digital media. As technologies continue to rapidly develop, how are journalists and publishers going to keep up? Is it worth learning to use all of these tools if six months down the line they prove to be a fad? Are these technologies hurting or helping newsrooms gather and report news?

Chances are, in 2009 journalists everywhere will continue to experiment with the latest digital fads, and smart newsrooms will set aside R&D funds to play around with new ideas. Who knows? Despite predictions that 2009 will be a difficult year for newspapers, with a lot of hard work, calculated risk and a bit of luck, the industry could find the online golden egg that it has been seeking.

PROLIFERATION OF ONLINE-ONLY NEWS SITES
Perhaps filling in for the difficulties of the print product, more high-profile Internet-based sites began popping up in 2008. Perhaps most notably, The Huffington Post, launched in the summer of 2005, has already jumped to one of the US' top-30 news sites, bolstered by the US Presidential Elections, according to Nielsen Online. Media pundit, entrepreneur and Rupert Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff trumpeted the late-'07 launch of his news aggregator Newser as a "revolution in how people get their news." One year after Wolff's launch, he gained a competitor in Tina Brown, a former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor, who launched her own, rapidly growing online-only site, The Daily Beast, a mixture of aggregated and original articles. And these are only the high-profile, American examples. The relatively low overhead costs of launching an online-based site combined with the ease of aggregating content and news commentary means that this trend will surely continue in 2009. But there is one problem with the sites mentioned above. Aggregation and commentary can only go so far: in an online environment, what happens to the investigative journalism that newspapers have provided for the past two centuries?

NOT-FOR-PROFIT JOURNALISM
Investigative journalism is expensive to produce. Money-wise, it has always been a loss-leader for newspapers. But with modern-day information ubiquity, investigative journalism is just a loss. Whereas once newspapers could claim ownership of a groundbreaking piece and sell papers and advertising around it, now readers are often unaware of the original source of the story they are reading on the Web. So what is going to happen to the type of watchdogging we need for democracy?

Several non-profit start-ups have begun to answer that question. In late 2007, former newspaper editor, Joel Kramer, took his print expertise and moved it online with the launch of the non-profit Minnpost.com. Former WSJ editor Paul Steiger did something similar with ProPublica. The Voice of San Diego, and other similar sites around the US, are making a name for themselves as "serious, original reporting by professional journalists," with the New York Times declaring the sites "stand out" amongst Internet news sites. Crowdsourcing site OfftheBus, a partnership between the Huffington Post and the non-profit NewAssignment.net, helped capture the 2008 Elections and the Knight News Challenge winner Spot.Us is collecting donations from the public to fund investigative stories. Even former Merrill Lynch newspaper analyst Lauren Rich Fine backed the non-profit model in 2008.

With this in mind, are the days of major metropolitan and national newspapers digging up the dirt on businessmen and politicians over? For the time being, no. But newsrooms everywhere are under extreme economic pressures and have been cutting core staff, making it even more difficult for newspapers to conduct the type of investigative journalism their communities need. Don't be surprised if more non-profit (no dividends to shareholders), Internet based (low operating costs) ventures spring up to fill the gaps.

COMPETING NEWSPAPERS PARTNERING UP
As many newspaper newsrooms are cutting staff, wire services should be in greater demand than ever. But 2008 saw a backlash against the world's biggest news agency, the Associated Press, by its members. Several publishers handed in their notice to the non-profit agency partially in response to price hikes and complaining of low value for their money.

In response to the AP mini-exodus, some papers, even those in competition with one another, began joining forces. Papers in Ohio and Florida whose geographical coverage overlaps are swapping stories and even combining bureaux. Not only will this help the papers save money, but it frees up time for reporters to cover issues not being covered elsewhere. In the current economic climate, this trend will continue, but not without its effects on the industry.

Some traditional news hounds would argue that two papers covering similar stories in a certain region add depth and uncover more facts that may otherwise be lost to readers. This may be true. But is it really worth having two reporters on the scene to gather one or two more different pieces of information when there may be other stories elsewhere? And what about the multitude of photojournalists that different organizations send to press conferences and like events where the story subjects don't move much? Is it really worth sending all of those photogs? Couldn't photos just be shared? Without a doubt, these are questions that cash-strapped publishers and editors are asking themselves right now. Expect to see more cross-corporation cooperation in 2009.

IS PRINT REALLY THREATENED?
We've said it before and we'll say it again: print is not going to die. But, considering the trend of the past year, print's reach will be considerably reduced, at least in Western nations.

During the last few months of 2008, publishers' struggle to maintain the high costs of printing and distribution has become apparent. In October, The Christian Science Monitor, a beacon of quality American journalism, announced that it would stop printing its daily edition. In mid-December, the Detroit Free Press, which recently won a broadcast award, decided to limit home delivery to Friday's and weekends while trimming the daily single-copy sale paper to one section. Most recently, the American Society of Newspaper Editors is considering dropping "paper" from its name.

What do these cuts mean for the news"paper" industry? As circulations drop across the Western world, it could mean substantial savings. Weekday papers often make a loss to begin with, so cutting the costs of printing those papers should cover any lost advertising revenue in those same papers.

Perhaps the question publishers should be asking themselves is "Do cutbacks on the paper product matter to readers"? Well, cutbacks will certainly change the face of the newspaper industry. But in the end, media houses are in the news "distribution" business, not the news"paper" business. As long as their news is published, media houses will have completed their service to the public.

Brian Till, one of the US's youngest syndicated columnists, had an epiphany during his discussions about the decline in American journalism.  

Although he spends "hours a day reading news," and has countless resources at his disposal, he has only purchased "bout a dozen American papers in the last year." Till finds that, ipso facto, his actions have helped diminish the newspaper industry.  

"I am the murderer of news," he writes, along with his generation, who has failed to recognize the role they've played. Growing up with free news, Till writes, has left his generation clueless to the fact that they were the "free riders killing the industry."

Is the recent Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich scandal proof that the newspaper industry still has relevance?    

Blagojevich's efforts to remove editorial members of the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times' David Carr argues, show that the newspaper still has an impact--if a governor is willing to allegedly extort money in return for favorable press, then the paper must be doing something right.  

The scandal, he says, is justification for investigative journalism through a print medium.  A daily paper is a "civic necessity." If a community lacks a proper outlet, or was "too diminished" for full reporting, then what would have been the result in Illinois?

"Who says the modern American newspaper doesn't matter?" Carr asks.

TJ Sullivan.  In his LA Observed column "Native Intelligence," Sullivan argues the opposite point.

"Newspapers don't matter," he writes. "Otherwise people would be reading them."

"Google has now conceded, with a very large payment, that information is not free," said Peter Osnos, Senior Fellow for the Media at The Century Foundation, after a $125 million payout for publishers and authors who sued the major search engine for rights to digitize copyrighted books.

Despite the "myriad" of issues left to be resolved for the publishing industry, the event has called into question the use of news on search engines.

Barely a day goes by at the moment without a raft of stories on the financial crisis, the US election and... the Associated Press. The Associated Press's communications team have never been so in demand, and the venerated news agency is moving dangerously close to becoming the story rather than being the one that writes about it.

The Editors Weblog spoke to Tom Brettingen, Chief Revenue Officer and Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing at the AP, to discuss bad publicity, editorial content, price structure, and editorial cuts at the agency.

EW: Have you been surprised at the reaction to the price structure changes?

TB: "Generally, and for most of the industry, what we were offering was much more content for less money and a broader license to use it. We expected people to be happy, and most people were happy, the people you are seeing in the news were people, as the economic situation got worse, who were expecting larger decreases in their rates."

EW: Why were these changes necessary?

TB: "In the beginning, the goal was not drastic rate cuts, it was more about content. We wanted to help newspapers find the content that was specifically right for them in their markets and keep rates flat in doing that. We did all the work to devise the specifics and as these discussions went on the situation in the market became a lot worse and the global economy got worse. So, now the pricing and packaging that we started off with has run into this buzz of newspaper challenges and general economic challenges and that's why you find today all the stuff in the news about us"

EW: Is the AP having the same financial difficulties as the rest of the industry?

TB: "If our customers, who are generally ad supported, are hurt by the challenges that all newspapers are facing, compounded by the global economy, then of course it affects us as well"

EW: Looking back, would you have done anything differently with regard implementing the price structure changes? Do you think communication was an issue?

TB: "Some of the clients found the new packaging unnecessarily complicated. We created one level that contained all of the Breaking News, and then separate to this we had additional levels, Premium vertical segments, such as Sports, Business, Lifestyle, Entertainment and Analysis. Our thinking was "Breaking News" would satisfy a lot of customers, but some of our clients with more specialized newspapers might want to buy additional sports and business. Breaking News did have a huge amount of sports and business, but some of it was separated into Premium categories, so only those newspapers that wanted it needed to buy it."

"If we had foreseen how much more difficult the economic situation was going to get, we probably would have jumped ahead farther and skipped some of the intermediate steps. Things were not great 2 years ago, but they weren't nearly as bad as they are now.

"I am sure that (sic: communication) was part of it.... We were making this brand new separation from Breaking News, which on its face seems straightforward enough. However, say you are looking at Sports; you get the baseball results and match report, but what about analysis and sidebars? We had that planned, but we didn't have it live in the new web platform, so newspapers hearing from us couldn't go immediately to the website and see what we were talking about."

"If we'd had more time to announce it so that we could have finished the programming so that the distinctions between Breaking News and Premium would be clearer.... yeah, we could have timed that better. We were racing to get the program built and explained so people could make their choices in time for 2009. Newspapers didn't have the ability to see the differences to Breaking and Premium, and that would be something we could have done better.

"There was a huge amount of communication, it just wasn't necessarily what everyone wanted to hear"

EW: What was AP's reaction to the business-wide and economic crisis?

TB: "Last week, as the economic situation worsened and newspapers wanted a further reduction in their pricings from us, we did two things, for the small percentages of newspapers that saw a price increase in 2009, that was called off, and then we decided to abandon the two tier model. We made it part of one package, so premium is available to everyone."

EW: What is in the future for the AP?

TB: "We are undertaking a major review of what we need to do beyond changes in 2009. That will be a wide-ranging review. There are some benefits to membership of the AP, you vote for the board, you have an ownership stake; however, maybe some newspapers would prefer to not support the co-op to that level. Maybe some newspapers would prefer to be a more straightforward customer and buy a small content package for less money. That will be something that we will be examining."

EW: Do you expect to increase prices after 2009 for US newspapers?

TB: "Unless something miraculous happens and turns things around, if newspapers get to where they need to go with much more success on the web, that is theoretically possible. But no, I don't see any rate increases in the foreseeable future."

EW: Why has the AP changed its tone in some AP copy? Some of AP's content is now quite opinionated, are you moving away from neutral ground?

TB: "It's an area that can be debated, but we are certainly not moving from a neutral position. We remain committedly neutral, but that doesn't necessarily mean you can't have a voice, it's a more distinctive voice. It's a different voice to that which we may have had on some of our content in the past, but there is no leaving the neutral middle ground in terms of political leanings. We are providing value to the reader, we don't go to the consumer of course: we're a wholesaler. However, if we don't interest the reader, our customers aren't going to find that much value in our content. It's not a decision to be outrageous, or voicing off... it was an incremental change to be a little more distinctive in the market place."

EW: Does the AP have any new projects or innovations in the pipeline?

TB: "If we're not going to have all the revenue that we've had in the past from US newspapers and, more than likely, a few US broadcasters, we need to replace that revenue. We have several initiatives to help us do that, and they will be in content areas. Any more detail would be premature at this stage."

EW: Do you expect staff cuts at AP? If so, can you confirm that these will not happen in editorial?

TB: "Its clearly a company where the expense is largely people, if you're going to reduce expenses, you've got to look there. We need to be sure that the cuts are done very carefully because damaging the product and damaging the quality of the product starts a spiral that we clearly have no intention of starting.

"There is no decision on not cutting editorial, but depending on the levels of cuts that is required, its unlikely that you could do that entirely without looking at where the majority of our expenses lie, which is news staffing"

EW: What do you see in the future for newspapers? What do you think they need to do to their business models?

TB: "If I had the secret potion I would get very wealthy in a hurry. There are lots of good ideas floating round out there and they almost all revolve around targeting users with information, content and services, not expecting a single product - be it print or web - to be fully satisfying to everybody you want to reach in your market. A lot of customization and niche kinds of products are the things on most peoples minds."

See also:

Exploring the content sharing model: Is this the future of the US newspaper industry?
Opinion: Is the AP threatening its own future?
US: AP suspends rate hike
US: More newspapers to drop AP
US: Tribune Co. to drop AP

US newspapers have recently begun working together on content sharing deals on an unprecedented scale. There has been much speculation that the driving force behind these agreements is dissatisfaction with the recent changes at AP. The most recent announcement came from five papers in the Tri-State area of the US last week.  

Content sharing deals vary and although many are just starting, a group of three papers in Florida - the Sun Sentinel, Palm Beach Post and Miami Herald - started content sharing about three months ago.  However, there is one group of five papers in New Hampshire who have had an agreement in place for the past 15 years.

In an effort to understand the inner workings of content sharing, how it will affect the future of newspapers and journalism, and if these deals are related to AP's actions, the Editors Weblog spoke with Dave Solomon, the vice president of The Telegraph of Nashua in New Hampshire, and Anders Gyllenhaal, senior vice president/executive editor of the Miami Herald.

The Florida Method

Three months ago the Palm Beach Post, Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald began to share content. What is most striking about this deal is the complete shift in mentality that has accompanied it. These three papers have been fierce competitors for the past 100-years and now they find themselves posting each other's stories.  According to Gyllenhaal at the Miami Herald, the shift is not designed to change the competitive relationship between the three, but it has changed the way they work together.

What was the trigger for such a change after so many years? Gyllenhaal believes that the increasingly challenging newspaper market has necessitated a more mutually supportive relationship. For the Herald, it began on the business side, "with a distribution agreement. In the case of the Herald and the Sun Sentinel, the Sun was circulating the Herald in its prime territory, and we were circulating their paper." After this, "the newsrooms began to talk, and we have come up with the initial step, a way of trading routine content between the three papers."

The papers follow a strict guideline of what content they can and cannot use. Gyllenhaal believes that "websites are where the news competition exists" so in an effort to preserve this, "you cannot pick up a story from another website and put it on your website but you can put in the paper the next day." Gyllenhaal goes on to say, "It's a defined group of stories, which are events that happened in the last 24 hours or are about to happen, and as a rule we are picking up a couple of items a day from each others websites."

Gyllenhaal reports, "What we can't pick up are things that kind of define an individual paper - in the sense of their franchise elements, their personality elements, you can't pick up columnists, major investigative pieces the things that define, the more important pieces."  This aspect of the agreement maintains the competition, therefore Gyllenhaal does not see this changing anytime soon.

What next for the Florida method?

As for the future, Gyllenhaal confirmed plans for individual departments to start working with each other across the three titles for specific stories.  He gave the example of when a sports department cannot make it to a game; they will make arrangements to get the story from one of the other papers who would be at the game. 

When asked about the possibility of expanding partnerships statewide or across the nation, Gyllenhaal believes that it is possible, but complicated.  He notes that in order to grow such a partnership it would require a different system than they have put in place.  However, there are plans to extend the content-sharing deal to two papers north of Palm Beach, but he confirmed that it is probably as far as they will go for now.

The New Hampshire model

The Nashua Telegraph has been content sharing with five of their neighbor newspapers since 1993. The deal here is different to Flordia's method as the papers are not in direct competition with each other. However, their approach does provide some insight into how such a system can work for a sustained period of time.

 
According to Solomon at The Telegraph of Nashua the system started as a means, "to get feature stories and in-depth stories from the other papers for our then-new Sunday editions that we were struggling to fill state copy."

Unlike the Florida papers, "anything and everything is available for reuse," whether on the website or in the print edition, a routine story or an in-depth investigative piece as long as they credit the newspaper of origin.

The five papers involved in the deal extended the agreement to two other papers in the state that are not part of the full open-content sharing deal.  

As for their readers, Solomon believes that they, "appreciate the better reporting." He gave the example of a hypothetical airport accident in a near-by town, Concord.  If it were to happen, the "Concord Monitor is going to write a very thorough story. They are going to give it to AP and AP is going to flatten out the language, neutralize the tone and convert it to about eight inches. I think our readers are better served by the Concorde Monitor coverage."

Are these agreements a reaction to the changes at AP?

Such content sharing deals seem to be becoming increasingly popular just at a time when a growing chorus is criticising AP: are the two related?

Gyllenhaal said that the Miami Herald's agreement had, "nothing to do with AP. We are taking a different route than those other papers, so this is unrelated to that."

The Telegraph filed a termination notice with the AP in April, so between now and 2010 the Telegraph is looking for alternative vendors.  

Solomon explained that the Telegraph's reason for terminating their AP contract was monetary, it spends around $130,000 a year on AP copy. However, this expenditure does not correlate with the amount of syndicated material that they actually use since they are so, "intensely local."

In addition to the AP, the Telegraph spends another $30,000 on syndicated copy from Scripps Howard, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. Soloman is, "convinced a newspaper our size should only be paying half of that or less given the amount of syndicated material we use.  So unless I see a package where we can get AP and combo of other syndicates for half as much as what we are currently paying, I don't see any alternative but to move forward.  I don't expect that by canceling AP we will have a net savings of 130k, but expect to come out of it spending about half as much."

For Solomon, the AP is a "great institution that does remarkable work." However, he believes that "there has been a deterioration in state report over the years. Through no fault of AP personel, but through the continued reductions in staffing at the state offices."  

Solomon believes that the AP has, "demonetized world and national news because they give it to the pure play sites like Google and Yahoo."  

Solomon also pointed out that the daily news reports from most AP bureaus are 50 percent member contribution and 50 percent AP staff generated. Solomon further highlighted that this "is certainly not the case in New England, I would estimate its 80 percent member generated and 20 percent AP staff generated."  So for the Telegraph, this is another reason why the AP is not a vital contributor to its news operation.

Where will these newspapers get additional content from?

Since the Telegraph has been content sharing for the last 15 years, it is nothing new to them; however, now that they have terminated their contract with the AP, things are going to change for them.  

Solomon emphasized his hope that the Washington Post and LA Times will "seize the opportunity and become more aggressive in realizing breaking news, where they are certainly not comparable to AP at this point.  But they have the capabilities to do it."

The Telegraph will also have to find sources for sports news, photos, world and nation coverage, Nielsen ratings, top ten movie releases and so forth.  In order to do so, Solomon said the Telegraph is looking into other options that can provide content for them and even expanding upon "the state-wide cooperative that has been in existence for so long."  

What can other newspapers learn from the Miami Herald the Telegraph?

The two models for content sharing demonstrate that anything is possible when it comes to expanding a newspaper's coverage capabilities.

For some newspapers the AP will continue to be an essential part of their operation, but for others this relationship will end or significantly change. According to Solomon, the AP must not see content sharing as a threat, but what happens if this system grows?

To compound to the woes at the AP, many have voiced opposition to its new "boldness" when reporting, with some headlines that stretch far from the AP's position as a "a neutral arbiter of the news".

Whether AP sees content sharing as a threat or not, it is certainly an innovative and positive step for newspapers in the US. These newspapers are demonstrating a willingness to break down old rivalries in pursuit of more comprehensive coverage; content sharing may well be a key step on the long and difficult road to restructuring the industry for the changing industry-wide and global economic climate.

On Monday, European Union antitrust regulators announced that they are looking into the proposed advertising deal between Google and Yahoo!.  Plans to launch a "preliminary investigation" were announced in mid-July.

Under the ad revenue-sharing deal, Google will provide Yahoo with ads that will run on Yahoo's search site for a share of the profits.  The deal is limited to Yahoo's US and Canadian sites.  However, this does not mean that the probe into the proposed agreement will be limited to the US and Canada because the deal will inevitably affect European competition.

According to Reuters, companies ruled to be in breach of the EU's competition rules can face fines of up to 10 percent of their global revenues.

Critics claim that the deal will force newspapers to become even more dependent on Google by handing over control of 90 percent of paid search and content advertising.  

In a statement released yesterday by WAN, "Perhaps never in the history of newspaper publishing has a single, commercial entity threatened to exert this much control over the destiny of the press."

Newspaper Association of America, which is a member of WAN, has issued a statement confirming that its board has taken no position on the proposed partnership between Yahoo and Google.

Sources: Brand Republic, CNet News, New York Times, Reuters

He may be an investigative journalist by trade, but Guardian (UK) writer Nick Davies is not shy to criticize his own profession. Davies made headlines across the globe with the February 2008 publication of his book, Flat Earth News, a searing indictment of investigative reporting and modern journalism. The book, which details issues such as illegal acts committed by journalists on the job and "churnalism", or barely fact-checked information rehashed from PR professionals and spin-doctors, turned the spotlight on the news industry, launching a debate within the ranks of news professionals about the challenges facing the industry.

Davies is the author of five books, has been named Journalist of the Year, Reporter of the Year, and Feature Writer of the Year. He was also the first winner of the Martha Gellhorn award for investigative reporting in 1999.

To launch our series on the Future of Investigative Journalism and the challenges ahead, the Editors Weblog spoke with Davies to see what all the controversy was about and to ask Davies his views on the future of his profession.

EW: What skills does it take to specifically be a good investigative journalist? How is it different to being a beat reporter or is it similar?

ND: In principle, the skills of investigative reporting are exactly the same as those of any other kind of reporting - because all reporting is investigative, all reporting is an attempt to get at the truth, so the distinction is a false one.

There is a sub-set of reporting where somebody is actively obstructing the reporter's access to information, which means the job will be more difficult and so the skills will be more obvious, but the key difference is not in the skills required but in the time that is required. The beat reporter is liable to be under pressure to produce several stories every shift and, therefore, will be unlikely to have the time to dig into anything which is being deliberately concealed.

EW: How has the business changed over the past 10 years, ie, skills necessary, training, and so forth?

ND: The big change in the business over the last ten years is precisely the reduction of time available for almost all reporters to do their work. The beat reporter as much as the 'investigative' specialist suffers from this, because so many news rooms have been taken over by profit-hungry corporations who have cut staff and increased output and thereby made it extremely difficult for any of their reporters to work effectively. The required skills have not changed (apart from the minor technical skills of dealing with websites).

The training, however, is in decline along with the industry as a whole, primarily because colleges now train students to fit with the demands of time-starved newsrooms, eg, the quick re-writing of press releases, the recycling of agency copy; and also because colleges set up courses with 'media' or 'journalism' in the title because they know it will attract student numbers even though they have nobody qualified to teach the course, so you have sociologists and literary specialists teaching the skills of a profession which they do not understand.

EW:  Is your job harder or easier with the advent of multi-platform news? Do you see podcasts and video content as useful?

ND: Multi-platform news has tended to make it more difficult for all reporters - beat, specialist, 'investigative' - to do their work because filing for audio, video and print
a) consumes precious time, and
b) dilutes concentration.
And I am not at all sure that our consumers are particularly interested in or attracted to the vodcasts and podcasts that we make available to them. Occasionally, there are stories where the print version is hugely enlivened by video - for example, the passenger video of the scenes inside the Qantas flight which blew a hole in its fuselage last month. But to make the production of audio and video versions a standard requirement for all stories is bad management and highly likely to accelerate the declining standard of our product.

EW: Do you use any of the new technologies in your reporting, ie, video, and mobile? Have these new technologies made your job easier or harder?

ND: As a reporter, I'm not concerned with the way in which my words are used. What I file may go into the print edition or onto the website or be subbed down for emails or mobile messages.

The one way in which electronic technology does impact me is my access to the worldwide web. That is a wonderful research tool, and I use it all the time. It is no substitute for dealing with human sources, but it enormously increases the amount of information that is available in the public domain. Personally, therefore, it has made my working life much easier.

However, for 'beat' reporters or for any reporter who has not been able to negotiate the time to do the job, the web does also represent a threat because it means they no longer have the benefit of a deadline at the end of the day: for most of them the deadline is always here and now because even if the printed edition is not calling for copy, the website is. Time - reporters can't do their job without it.

EW: What are your thoughts on lobby groups, such as the Taxpayers' Alliance, setting up investigative reporting units themselves and sending their articles direct to newspapers?

ND: The danger with funding by lobby groups is clear - that, at best, they will select story subjects and/or angles which suit their agenda and, at worst, that they will inject outright falsehood and distortion directly into them. But not all dangers are realised. I think most reporters would say that if they could find a lobby group which was prepared to back genuine journalism without imposing its agenda, they'd take it in a heartbeat.

The underlying point is that the inherent dangers of allowing corporations to take over ownership of news media are certainly being realised with highly destructive results for truth-telling journalism - and so any alternative is worth considering.

Over the coming weeks, The Editors Weblog will be examining how investigative reporting has been affected by multi-platform publication and the 24-hour news culture.  

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

The Editors Weblog is running a series of exclusive interviews about the future of journalism with top editors at leading newspapers around the world. Here is the latest installment with  Emily Bell, Editor-in-Chief of guardian.co.uk in the UK.

View all the interviews in this series here. (including The New York Times, Financial Times, Fairfax Media...)


Questions: "News, journalism, newspapers: same past, different futures?"

- How long do you think you will define your company as a newspaper company or a print company?

We're not doing that already. We changed our names last year from Guardian Newspapers Limited to Guardian News and Media, so we're moving away from defining ourselves as a newspaper company.
But we are still news. We are news-oriented, we are a news media company.

- At this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, a panel of futurists claimed that print newspapers wouldn't exist by 2014. To what extent do you agree with this?

I 100% disagree with that statement. 2014 is so close, of course there will still be print newspapers; it is ridiculous to suggest that. Will there be fewer print newspapers in 2014 in certain parts of Western Europe, the US, etc? Yes, most definitely.

But clearly the futurists in Davos haven't looked at newspaper markets in emerging economies like India, etc. where print products are proliferating. They are increasing faster, in basic circulation and number of titles, than they are declining in markets with more mature print readerships. It's a sweeping and very narrow generalization, which is wrong.

We will definitely have a printed product in 2014. If you said 2024 or 2034, who knows, I would say that's far too far away to guess, and it's possible not. Don't forget Arthur Sulzberger said: "I can conceive of a time when we will no longer produce the print paper." Whether he retracted it or not, it's clearly crossed his mind.

Alan Rusbridger, the editor-in-chief here, said he could foresee a time when we will be mainly a digital company and that we don't have a printed product. He actually said that the last printed presses that we bought would be the last ones that would ever be bought.

- In journalism's multi-centennial history, do you view the emergence of digital journalism as part of the continuity, or as a complete breakaway with previous forms of journalism?

It's a complete break. Not so much what happened with the advent of the Internet, but much more what's happened with various programming protocols since, what you would know as Web 2.0, which is the ability to allow the uploading of information by the local generation.

Flickr, blogs, etc. have completely changed the game, because it means all matter of information is exposed and is available to be manipulated, uploaded, reported on, etc. by a whole set of people who are no longer in control of a distribution bottleneck. Actually, what we were doing ten years ago was exploiting a Web publishing bottleneck, which was that we had the money to have the server space, the rack space, the designers - anybody can do that now.

That's completely different, it's not just another slight development of an existing cycle.

- Do you believe in the increasingly active role of the user in the news process, and is it a threat or an opportunity for professional journalists?

Yes, the participation of users in news is inevitable. It is growing and is welcomed. It is a massive opportunity for professional journalists to enhance what they do. The closer you are, the more authentic you are, and the more knowledgeable you can be, then the more purchase you have with the community that will come to you, tell you things and point to your work in certain areas.
I think if you don't have that, in the future as a journalist, you probably don't have much of a future.

'Threat' is a good thing. It's not so much a threat. Now you've got the news event itself, and an immediate set of breaking news competitors like wire services, the BBC, or SkyNews in the UK.
There's another band of capability roundup, people who are actually experts in the kind of events that are happening and who bring knowledge and insight and can communicate near the professionals - the professionals' job is (still) to communicate the stories and make them relevant and understandable. I don't think that's going away.

But what's happening is that there are now other people who can answer who might not be professional journalists - they might be professionals working in the world that you're writing about. It's Dan Gillmor's phrase, "There's always someone better placed in the story than yourself."
If I'm a media journalist writing about what's going on at the BBC... somebody who's inside the BBC, who's not part of their press operations, could be writing with more authenticity, because I can only ever have the view of the outsider.

However, the person who's inside the BBC might not really have the requisites and right perspective to be able to draw the conclusions that perhaps an outsider might have. So I think there's some kind of a blend of insights and knowledge which skillful and professional journalists ought to be able to meld together.

The threat is journalists not being good enough at that. I think it's entirely healthy that there are specialist bloggers who are pushing journalists to be better at what they do.

- Do you consider the Golden Age of investigative journalism is already past, or just beginning?

I think it's going through a difficult transitory period. The funding now available for people to concentrate for long periods of time on single subject stories, which may or may not come to fruition, has been greatly undermined by the restructuring of professional media.

When I see institutes in the US that are funded specially for investigative journalism, those things are slightly depressing. The idea that news media can't sustain expensive investigative journalism is disappointing.

But it's not all over, there's a vacuum at the moment around serious disclosure. There are not as many (investigative) stories gaining traction, but I think in the future the tools are all there. One of the things that electronic media does is make it harder to hold onto an exclusive, because bits and pieces of the story tend to emerge from all sorts of different sources (ie: the Enron story initially broken by a Time journalist).

Once bits of the story were out there, it gathers momentum much quicker than it used to. So the value of the investigative story, as in keeping it as a brand-defining element, becomes harder and therefore a lot of businesses tend to say, "It's hard for us to keep control of the story, it's even more expensive to dig out, therefore why don't we step down our investment in it."

But there are organizations like ourselves and others such as The New York Times that are absolutely committed to making sure that doesn't happen.

View the other interviews in the Future of Journalism series here.

Source: Emily Bell, editor-in-chief, guardian.co.uk

There has been a lot of coverage of the results of the Newsroom Barometer, including Reuters' own take on the findings.

If you haven't taken a look at the main findings (namely editors' massive acceptation of the integrated newsroom model, as well as about half of them believing news will be free in the future and that online will be the most common platform for news), you can read more below:

Read Part 1: Presentation - main results, the integrated newsroom will be the norm
Read Part 2: Multimedia, multi-skilled and integrated
Read Part 3: The future of the press
Read Part 4: Who participated in the survey?
Read Part 5: Comments by John Zogby and WEF President George Brock
Read Part 6: Threats to newspapers, areas of investment, more results


But here are a few more results that may have gone under the radar.

If provided resources to invest in editorial quality, what would you do first within the newsroom?

Across all categories, the responses illustrated two clear concerns for editors, which superceded all others: their staff needs to be attuned to new media (36% of the respondents would first train their staff in new media), and they need more journalists to produce quality coverage (30%, up from 22% last year). As more newsrooms face layoffs and tight budgets, editors are increasingly seeking to safeguard one of the main conditions to quality journalism: a team of qualified journalists.

For editors from newspapers whose number of journalists had decreased, their main priority was to recruit more journalists, at 50%, while also recognizing the necessity of new media training, at 31%. Even among newspapers whose staff had increased, 26% of editors wished to recruit more journalists (36% new media training).

This clearly shows that, in the view of editors, cutting staff and journalistic resources is not a solution - to the contrary - to resolve financial concerns a newspaper may have.

Overall, what do you view as the two greatest threats to the future of your newspaper?

57% of respondents saw the biggest threat to the future of newspapers coming from declining readership among young people. One of the greatest challenges faced by newspapers today is structural, linked to a change in habits among readers, as they become consumers of alternative forms of media.
Tied to this, a good share of respondents (37%) saw the Internet and digital media as a threat. This was closely followed by lack of editorial innovation (36%) and lack of investment (29%), which are also inter-related.

The results showed a split between perception of threats as being external, due to contextual evolutions of the market (young readership decline, digital media) and internal, due to lack of newspaper innovation - or the financial means to innovate.

Now looking specifically to your newspaper's editorial independence in the future, what do you view as the principal threat?

Perceived threats to editorial independence ranged relatively closely from 13% who listed 'other' concerns, to 23% who thought the biggest pressure would come from advertisers, through 19% who listed political pressure and 20% shareholder pressure (20%). Still, a combined 42% perceived the main threat as being related to newspapers' financial dependence, whether on shareholders and advertisers.

Where newspapers were heavily capitalized in the stock market, such as in Western Europe and North America, shareholder pressure was strong, 35% and 23% respectively, but political pressure didn't pose any threat - 3% for both.

Inversely, in many other regions, financial pressures were less important, but lack of press freedom led many editors to fear political pressure.

Do you think that in the future opinion and analysis pages will:

The results were stable compared to 2006. Two thirds (67%) of the respondents believed opinion and analysis pages would increase: many foresaw the upcoming evolution of newspaper content, which will be less about factual news and more about analysis and commentary.

An astonishingly small number of respondents from North America (50%) believed analysis and opinion would increase, compared to 76% for Western Europe (and 78% Eastern). This large difference underlines a divergence in editors' perception of the function their newspapers will have in the future, whether these increasingly focus on constant breaking news or instead turn to more analytical, magazine-type content. These results also reflect worries by American editors about having the proper resources to increase their opinion and analytical content.


If you would like more information about the Newsroom Barometer, don't hesitate to contact us. And let's not forget that the bright revelation of Barometer, as was the case last year, was that 84% of newspaper editors are optimistic about their newspaper's future, despite frequent doom and gloom reports...

In this section, John Zogby, CEO of Zogby International, and George Brock, World Editors Forum President and editor of the Saturday Times in the UK, comment on the results of the 2008 Newsroom Barometer. Both agree that the results show editors have opened to the new necessities of the digital age, while remaining strongly conscious of the possible threats to their newspapers and journalism.

(View the main results to this year's survey here.)

According to Brock, this year's survey points to the fact that "editors remain confident about a mixed-media future and have quietly got on with the business of integrating their newsrooms," but this is "tempered by anxiety that newspapers are not investing enough in recruitment and training for the future."

The path is clear for many editors: integrate the newsroom, think multimedia, train or hire a team of multi-skilled journalists. So are the threats: lack of investment, lack of training, lack of cultural change.

In the face of these deep changes for the newspaper industry and its organization, editors may often face managerial resistance to undergo these investments. But media companies must be bold. Their editors, for the most part, are ready to be. Said Brock: "I read the message of this year's Newsroom Barometer as an appeal from editors to their companies to be bold in the face of change and as a sign that they themselves intend to make the most of new opportunities."

For Zogby, who goes into more detail about the numeric results (see below), this year's results show that editors have adapted or are adapting to the current redefinition of the 4th Estate, the press, in light of the changes brought in part by the Internet.

"Perhaps the most important finding to emerge from the 2008 survey is that editors remain optimistic about the futures of their papers," as was the case for the previous edition of the Newsroom Barometer, wrote Zogby.

Yet this optimism shouldn't hide the urgency for newspapers to rethink their model. "For these editors the future is self-evident and our survey shows that they see the writing on the newsroom wall.  The evolution of the 4th Estate is no longer questions of if, when or how.  Editors now know the solution:  Innovate.  Integrate.  Or perish."

Read Brock and Zogby's full comments below.

Comments on the 2008 Newsroom Barometer by George Brock

Editors remain confident about a mixed-media future and have quietly got on with the business of integrating their newsrooms. The optimism is not universal and it is tempered by anxiety that newspapers are not investing enough in recruitment and training for the future.

Newspaper managements might reply that investment remains risky when it isn't yet clear where the income from digital publishing is supposed to come from. But newspaper businesses are made by content which creates and sustains demand. The first newspapers did not come about when someone assembled advertising platforms, distribution networks and hardware and afterwards looked for content to put into that system.

The sequence of events was the reverse. Somebody wants to tell as many people as possible something of interest or importance, discovers a sustained curiosity in that information or opinion and eventually a publishing operation grows up to supply the demand. The chain reaction is sparked by interest in the story, view, picture, interview, column, cartoon that's on offer. Without that first moment of ignition, nothing else happens.

You think this sounds a little basic? It is. But you would be surprised how often this simple reality is forgotten as today's media businesses struggle to adapt to a world in which digital technology is rewriting the economics of news publishing.

Online news and opinion has now been with us for long enough to see that no prediction about the future of news which is based on technology alone can tell us the future. Newspapers are not just ink marks on squashed trees: they are what people trust, they amuse people, in short they are a collection of ideas and information with which a reader forms a relationship. Where journalism - whether professional, citizen or any mixture of the two - creates that relationship, something lasting is born and can be sustained. You can see examples of success and failure both online and in print. As the first flush of online innovation and enthusiasm wears off, we can see more clearly that some of the online successes will grow very big indeed, but that only the best will prosper. Making information available - and the web makes it available as never before - does not make it wanted. Newspapers which innovate and adapt will also survive because their qualities are more important than the medium. Some of the failures in both online and print will be terminal.

I read the message of this year's Newsroom Barometer as an appeal from editors to their companies to be bold in the face of change and as a sign that they themselves intend to make the most of new opportunities. Most editors are clear that the essential qualities of good journalism can adapt to a new medium. They accept as a fact needing no further debate that their papers will now reach their constituency by several channels and not by one.

Redefining the 4th Estate: Opinions of the Editors by John Zogby

In the 550 years since the first pages of print rolled off the presses in the Bavarian town of Mainz, printed news evolved relatively unimpeded.  Even the invention and proliferation of radio and television failed to stymie the growth of newspapers, largely due to the ability of newspapers to provide more in-depth coverage.
    
The centuries-long hegemony of the ink and paper news model today faces its greatest threat--the advent of an independent and free Internet-based media.  This threat was evidenced at the height of the 2005 British elections with the publication of the 'Downing Street Memo' by The Sunday Times.  That short but potent document presented potentially damning evidence surrounding the planning in the run-up to the Iraq War, and while British papers seized the story, the leaked memo made only slight ripples in the American print media.  It did create, however, a surge within the rapidly developing blog community who used the lack of traditional media coverage as a call to arms.

Now, as the Internet struggles to define itself in the shadow of the Fourth Estate, the question remains: will these two mediums continue to battle for supremacy or will they find stability in an integrated symbiotic relationship? To help bring clarity to this question, Zogby International was commissioned by the World Editors Forum and Reuters to survey 704 newspaper editors worldwide for the second in a series of annual 'Newsroom Barometer Surveys.'

    Perhaps the most important finding to emerge from the 2008 survey is that editors remain optimistic about the futures of their papers.  As in the 2006 Newsroom Barometer, nearly all editors (84%) are optimistic about the future of their paper.  The editors surveyed are as aware of what the future may hold for their industry as they are unified in their recognition of the underlying threats and potential solutions.

The Future

    The majority of editors (56%) now believe that most news (print and online) will be free in the future--up from 48% in 2006.  Nearly two-in-three editors (63%) believe that within a decade the most common form of  news consumption will be some form of electronic media--whether online (44%), mobile (12%) or through newer electronic media like e-papers and tablets (7%).  Less than a third (31%) believe print will remain the most common form of consumption.

    The perception of editors with respect to the future is not limited to the news product itself.  The overwhelming majority (83%) agree that within 5 years their nation's journalist workforce will be expected to know how to produce content for all platforms (e.g., print, video, audio and web).  Still, perception of the future is but one dimension of the story -- the remainder is defined by the threats to the industry and  how editors address those threats. 

The Threats

    By-and-large editors agree on the nature of the threats posed to their industry.  The decline in youth readership (58%), the rise in Internet and digital media (38%) and the lack of editorial innovation (36%) all speak to the consensus that change is imminent.  These editors tell us their chief sources of pressure are from advertisers (22%), shareholders (20%) and political forces (19%).  All pressure, no doubt,  to confront the changing reality through innovation and integration. 

    On one issue editors paint a mixed picture--the current state of their newsroom.  For some (39%) circulation in the past year is up; for others (29%) it is down.  One-third of editors (33%) have added journalists, a quarter have lost journalists (24%) and for the rest (42%) the number of journalists on their staff remains unchanged from a year ago. 


The Solutions

    When a majority of editors (54%) report that they have an integrated newsroom, they may make such statements not necessarily based on the reality, but also out of necessity.  Regardless of whether integration has or has not occurred, nearly all (86%) agree that it will be the norm in the near future.  Editors also agree on the steps needed to address other threats.  Asked what investments they would make in their newsroom given the opportunity, the top two investments cited--training journalists in new media (36%) and recruitment of new journalists (31%)--demonstrate that editors are looking to make a commitment to the future.  And with the recognition that editorial innovation is needed, 69% of editors agree that opinion and analysis pages will play an increasingly larger role in the future. 


Yes, editors are optimistic about the future of their papers, but they are also aware of the potential danger on the horizon.  Less than half (45%) believe the quality of journalism will improve over the next year.  More than a quarter (28%) believe the quality will worsen; a finding reflected in the high level of importance editors place on the need for investment in training and recruitment. 

For these editors the future is self-evident and our survey shows that they see the writing on the newsroom wall.  The evolution of the 4th Estate is no longer questions of if, when or how.  Editors now know the solution:  Innovate.  Integrate.  Or perish.


Read Part 1: Presentation - main results, the integrated newsroom will be the norm
Read Part 2: Multimedia, multi-skilled and integrated
Read Part 3: The future of the press
Read Part 4: Who participated in the survey?
Read Part 5: Comments by John Zogby and WEF President George Brock
Read Part 6: Threats to newspapers, areas of investment, more results

Although some of the main findings of this year's Newsroom Barometer relate to trends of newsroom integration, the survey's results also revealed some major trends as to the future of the press and news in general.

The fact that a large share of editors believe the most common platform for news in the future will be online - and not print - is significant. It is also significant that a majority of them think the majority of news will be free in the future. Even more interesting though is the fact that these numbers have quickly grown since last year.

Among the main findings:

- A plurality - 44% - believe online will be the most common platform for reading news in the future, compared with 41% last year.  Thirty-one cited print (down from 35% last year), 12% mobile and 7% e-paper. The rest were unsure.
- A majority of editors - 56%- believe news in the future will be free, up from 48% from last year's survey. Only one third believe the news will remain paid for, while 11% were unsure.
- Two-thirds believe some editorial functions will be outsourced, despite frequent newsroom opposition to the practice.
- Perhaps one of the sadder findings of this year's Barometer, as only 45% of editors think journalism's quality will improve.

Looking 10 years into the future, what do you think will be the most common way of reading the news in your country?

Editors increasingly see online as the platform of reference for news in the future (44% compared to 40% last year), now significantly more so than print (30.6% compared to 35% last year).
Overall, 63% thought a type of digital platform will be the most common format, including 11.5% for mobile and 7% for e-paper, a relatively high figure combined (18.5%) for technologies that are still relatively uncommon. Results for mobile and e-paper stayed stable, indicating that news executives perceived few major evolutions in these technologies over the last year.

Do you think that the majority of news (print and online) will be free in the future?

A clear majority of respondents (56%) believe that the majority of news will be free in the future, a significant evolution, as only 47% answered 'Yes' last year. Only a third of respondents (33%) believe news will remain paid for. The future of the paid-for model - paid by users directly - is increasingly put into question, even by those who produce it.
Respondents from Western Europe, the cradle of the paid-for model, were less likely to believe in free news (48%). North American respondents were on par with the average, at 58.5%. The shift towards the free news model is more apparent when it comes to 'emerging' newspaper markets: in South America, Eastern Europe, Russia, the Middle East and Asia combined, 61% of respondents believed news would be free.

One might have expected Western European and North American editors to be more open to the free news model (after giving birth to freesheets and free online news), but many still think that users should pay for a quality editorial product.

Do you think it very likely, somewhat likely, not very likely, or not all likely that in the future some traditional editorial functions will be outsourced?

Surprisingly, nearly two thirds of respondents (64%) believed that in the future traditional editorial functions will be outsourced, despite frequent newsroom resistance to such announcements. Granted, 44% of editors thought it be merely "somewhat likely," but this shows editors are conscious of - maybe not thrilled by - the growing trend of outsourcing.

One might have expected that North Americans and Europeans (West and East) particularly believe in the outsourcing trend (as the ones primarily concerned by outsourcing due to higher staff costs), but the results pointed in the opposite direction. On average, respondents from other regions of the world were more likely to believe in the outsourcing of editorial tasks in the future.

Over the next 10 years, do you think that the quality of journalism will:

A near majority thought that journalism's quality would improve (45% versus 27% who thought it would worsen). Yet while this is positive, it also means 55% of respondents didn't affirm that journalism would improve: the finding illustrates both the relative confidence and the uncertainties of this transitional period for the newspaper industry. Furthermore, this number is slightly down from last year, when 50% of respondents thought the quality of journalism would improve.

The hardships for the North American newspaper industry continue to be felt, as a mere 30% of respondents thought that journalism's quality would improve. Similarly, Russians and Eastern Europeans (34%) and West Europeans (45.5%) were skeptical.


Read Part 1: Presentation - main results, the integrated newsroom will be the norm
Read Part 2: Multimedia, multi-skilled and integrated
Read Part 3: The future of the press
Read Part 4: Who participated in the survey?
Read Part 5: Comments by John Zogby and WEF President George Brock
Read Part 6: Threats to newspapers, areas of investment, more results

The Editors Weblog is running a series of exclusive interviews about the future of journalism with top editors at leading newspapers around the world. Here is the latest installment with Dan Bogler, Managing Editor of the Financial Times in the UK.

Click here to view all interviews in this series. Other titles include The New York Times, the Guardian, Fairfax Media, the Hindustan Times, etc. (full list at the bottom of the interview).


Questions: "News, journalism, newspapers: same past, different futures?"


- How long do you think you will define your company as a newspaper company or a print company?

We see ourselves as a news organization and we're becoming much more agnostic about our distribution channels. We're becoming much more interested in creating relevant information for our readers and much less interested in how it gets to the readers. Pearson, the parent company, clearly is an education company with a print publishing arm and an information division, which includes the FT. At the FT level, we consider ourselves to be a financial news business more than a newspaper. Our mission is to be the gold standard for global business news in print and online - and in any other formats.

- At this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, a panel of futurists claimed that print newspapers wouldn't exist by 2014. To what extent do you agree with this?

Largely but not completely. 10 years from now - 2014 may be slightly too short a time frame - we will still have printed newspapers, because people like reading  things in print. Newspapers, just like the book, are convenient to read in places you can't do with a computer; but my belief is that a lot of what will be printed will be analysis, comment, analysis and opinion. The actual news will be more or less online or in other more timely formats. In a way the FT will split in two, with FT.com for all the news that's breaking and some immediate reactions and  opinion. The more considered analysis will be almost an Economist-type publication. Maybe it wouldn't have to be broadsheet anymore, it could be tabloid or even magazine format. To put it very crudely, you'd have all the news online, and you'd have 12 pages of Martin Wolf the next day in print, and all the editorials, columnists, features and more.

- In journalism's multi-centennial history, do you view the emergence of digital journalism as part of the continuity, or as a complete breakaway with previous forms of journalism?

There's one thing that's old and one thing that's new. What's old and part of the continuum is that traditional companies are going online. Our journalists are now fully integrated and write online and in print. I'm sure that in 2 years time they'll all be carrying video cameras. We've gone from zero videos website to over 100 per month in the last 18 months. That's part of the continuum: it's us doing the same thing in different distribution channels.

What's new is the blogosphere, citizen journalists and the idea that anyone - people who are not qualified journalists, either experts in a narrow field or just interested citizens - can start a blog or website and distribute it. For the FT, you would think it's negative in the sense that there's more news and opinion and more competitors. In fact, that's not really true, it almost enhances the position of leading media brands for several reasons. One is we are trusted, people believe the news they read with us. Secondly, we select and edit, which becomes an increasingly crucial function as there is more information out there. The more 'over-informed' people are, the more likely people who want to know what's actually going on will turn to a few sources that tell them what s actually important. That's what professional newspapers do really well.

- Do you believe in the increasingly active role of the user in the news process, and is it a threat or an opportunity for professional journalists?

I do believe in their increasingly active role of users: very often readers are more informed than us. If you look at an old format like the letters page in the newspaper, the amount of expertise that our readers have, who are often professionals in the City, is just incredible. They know more about it in certain aspects than our journalists. That's why we get CEOs, academics, lawyers, heads of accountancy firms and more writing in to us to say what's actually happening. They can do this online with comments or take part in Q&As, or print their views in the pages of the FT and FT.com. That sort of content is very helpful. We also have a function for any user to comment on the website's stories.

Is it a threat? Sure, to some extent. But as long as it's happening on our site or in the pages of our newspaper, it's been bundled, monitored, checked for quality and therefore is important. We're not going to turn into a place where we just repeat hundreds of readers' letters and have no journalists of our own. It's more of an opportunity for our journalists to become more informed and build contacts among readers. And it's amazing that all these readers are willing to give this information for free.

- Do you consider the Golden Age of investigative journalism is already past, or just beginning?

I don't know. That's a really hard one. I might say it's already past.

There's so much more information out there and it's so much harder for companies to hide information. Take the Northern Rock story, which was broken by BBC journalists, and there was a bank run as a result. It's harder to hide information. The idea that journalists have to do long-term, deep, undercover investigations where they reveal something months later - I don't think it works like that anymore. Journalists still have scoops and still break important stories, but it tends to be in a much shorter time frame. It tends to be a single development that they're breaking rather than a long series of connections.

But frankly, newspapers and media organizations are under pressure. It's hard for us to send a journalist or a group of journalists off three months investigating something - and if nothing works that's a shame but nevermind. We don't have resources to let people go off and do that for such a long time. I think The Golden Age of journalists working undercover, developing sources and breaking big scandals is less likely; but revealing news that people don't want out there, on a short term basis, uncovering a scandal and having it come to light, that's more likely. As soon as a tiny thing breaks now, it gets distributed so quickly that it's hard to see a journalist working undercover for a long time and gradually piecing something together without having it go public much earlier in the process.


Stay tuned for more interviews in our series. Among the other titles that have been asked to participate in these interviews are:

- The New York Times - Jonathan Landman (US)
- Financial Times - Dan Bogler (UK)
- Guardian (UK)
- Washington Post - Jim Brady (US)
- Globe & Mail - Ed Greenspon (Canada)
- The Times (UK)
- The Economist (UK)
- Gazeta Wyborcza - Jaroslaw Kurski (Poland)
- Le Monde (France)
- Die Welt (Germany)
- The Hindustan Times - Pankaj Paul (India)
- Asahi Shimbun (Japan)
- JoongAng Ilbo (South Korea)
- The Age / Fairfax - Mike van Niekerk (Australia)
- The Nation - Pana Janviroj (Thailand)
- Punch (Nigeria)
- El Tiempo (Colombia)
- Clarin (Argentina)
- Gulf News - Abdul Hamid Ahmad (UAE)