Results matching “printing techno”

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costs, waning circulations and fragmented audiences continued to challenge a business model that seems increasingly outdated.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.

Hewlett-Packard has designed a digital Inkjet Web Press especially for newspapers, book publishers and commercial print shops.

The printer runs $2.5 million and can print full-color, newspaper-sized pages.  It also prints wider than other editions.  The goal of HP was to "expand the business model for publishers by driving down the cost of small-volume press runs.  And because the press is digital it allows publishers to tailor their content to specific audiences."

SignOnSanDiego gives several examples of what this could mean for the print industry, "for a book publisher, the digital press might allow it to print small volumes of currently out-of-print books. For commercial printers, it opens the door to printing personalized ads on bank statements, telephone bills and other transactional documents."

As the media landscape changes, seven longstanding competitors in the French newspaper market have been working together in an unprecedented way to test whether e-paper is a viable device to take newspapers forward. However, now that the test is over, each seems to have formed a different opinion on how to take this new publishing platform to the next level.

Electronic paper, or e-paper, is a portable display technology designed to mimic the appearance of ordinary ink on paper. It can be refreshed or rewritten countless times, thus negating the need for dead-tree paper. With rapidly rising paper, printing and distribution costs, such a device could be a boon to newspapers everywhere - if readers accept the device.

To gauge public demand for e-paper, the three main national French dailies, Le Monde, Le Figaro, and Libération; the sports paper L'Équipe; the tabloid, Le Parisien; the business paper, Les Échos; and the entertainment-magazine Télérama, joined forces with telecommunications company France Telecom to test the Read&Go e-paper device. The survey group consisted of 120 people and took place over the course of the past few months. Having recently ended the test, Le Monde, Les Echos and Le Figaro revealed their findings.

Le Monde's sceptical optimism

According to General Director of LeMonde Interactif, Dao Nguyen, newspapers have felt compelled to design their own e-paper device. At the IFRA International E-Reading Conference in Paris, Nguyen said that the reading experience of newspaper content on the current devices in the market - for example the Kindle and Sony E-Reader - is unsatisfactory, going so far as to say, "There is no newspaper experience on a Kindle. They have shoved a newspaper into a book device." Nguyen feels that the makers of the current e-readers did not consider newspapers at all when designing the devices, commenting, "I don't blame them. Amazon is interested in selling books through Kindle."

However, despite these issues in its conception, Le Monde reported some positive findings from their e-paper trial with Read&Go. For instance, e-reader users read the device in the same fashion as they read a newspaper's print edition, ie, spending 20 to 30 minutes reading the news in one sitting. These numbers are much higher - and better for advertising revenue - than those of reader time spent with online editions, where people scan headlines and hop in and out throughout the day. Furthermore, the trial users were positive about the experience. According to an article in the New York Times, at least one user of the Read&Go device enjoyed the fact that it is both usable in direct sunlight, something difficult with a computer screen, as well as in complete darkness, which is impossible with a printed newspaper.

Following the test, Le Monde said it needs time to crunch the numbers and consider the statistics before fully committing, but that early indications are positive. Nguyen hinted that Le Monde feels confident that the relationship it has with its readers is strong enough that the paper will be able to sell a branded reader, possibly with subscriptions to Le Monde content. However, Nguyen refused to confirm if Le Monde is taking its e-paper experiment forward.

Les Echos: Want newspapers to work together

Contrary to the branded approach voiced by Le Monde, Philipe Jannet, Electronic Publishing Editor of Les Échoes believes that newspapers need to work together if they are to succeed with the new platform. During his presentation at the Ifra conference, he reported that users like to access many different news sources and therefore, a proprietary device will not work. Jannet believes that the newspapers must "own" the news they produce and pool their resources with other newspapers, thus having access to a pool of articles, much in the same way as Google News or Yahoo! News.

Les Échoes, according to Jannet, wants newspapers to group together to "sell articles", for example if a user is interested in the Cannes Film Festival, the news sources can provide the client with all the information they have on it in bulk. He expects a future where newspapers do not necessarily just sell newspapers with the new technology, but sell individual articles.

Le Figaro: E-Papers are the "Third Possibility"

In the same way that Jannet feels that newspapers should bundle content with other providers on e-readers, Clement Courvoisier, Digital Marketing Director of Le Figaro, was happy to have joined forces with the group of seven newspapers in order to test the device. Not only did it allow Le Figaro to share the expense of the experiment, but it also showed Le Figaro that there exists a "third possibility" to print papers and online editions.

Courvoisier does not expect a significant amount of extra work for newsroom staffers if the platform is introduced, as content is uploaded to the e-reader device much like it is to Le Figaro's website. Courvoisier stated that the there had "not yet" been any newsroom reorganisation due to the experiment, but he stated that it is still only in test phase.

During the test, no extra content was produced for this platform, Le Figaro used online articles for Read&Go; once again this could change further down the line if the product is released.

As at Le Monde, the visual style will be closer to that of the print edition. This is interesting as the news will be electronically provided making it conceptually closer to online, but perhaps because of its "hand-held" nature, the newspapers want it to reflect the print edition.

One consumer, multiple reading devices?

Despite the positive trial results, the path ahead remains unclear. A limited release of the product to test the waters seems the most sensible way to go - and a comprehensive advertising campaign - this is the type of product that consumers will either fully embrace or completely reject.

During her speech, Le Monde's Nguyen envisioned a future in which individuals have many devices for reading, but this seems an inconvenient and expensive prospect. What is more likely is that one device that meets all consumers various needs, including newspaper reading, will be the most successful.

Source: IFRA International E-Reading Conference, New York Times

In light of the recent the Associated Press (AP) vs. bloggers conflict, automated software known as "content recognition systems" is becoming more practical for companies seeking to keep track of their content, and even to maximize revenue.

To track down its articles in the DR, the AP used a content recognition system from California start-up company Attributor, which tracks copyrighted content on the Web.

Other companies that provide fingerprinting technology include Audible Magic and Vobile.

Pros of online content-tracking software:

- Tracking technology will let publishers know which ssites are using their content, thus "flowering information on the Web."

- For Sarah Chubb, CondéNet.com president, tracking software may be used to track down sites that could feature cooking or golf content. She said she is not interested in copyright violations but in "revenue opportunity." 

However, the blogosphere is concerned because "the software could act as a kind of ever-present police," according to BW.

BW also reported that the technology has flaws since it cannot identify when a clip or an article is used for legally protected things like book reviews.

Source: Business Week, Editors Weblog

See Also:
Associated Press vs. Drudge Retort and blogosphere: facts and outcome
US: AP admits to being "heavy-handed", will define standards for fair use on blogs
US: Associated Press vs. Drudge Retort "matter closed"

Prominent South African newspaper Mail & Guardian (M & G) recently revamped its website with social networking and Web 2.0 functions. New features include a new layout, the ability to save article clippings, StoryHistory, StoryPredictor, the ability to comment and debate, semantic tagging, and the implementation of NewsSwarm.

In an interview with the Editors Weblog, the M & G Online general manager Matthew Buckland said that the aesthetic aspect of the redesign includes "a wider layout, top navigation instead of left", use of mixed fonts and more white space.

The new site attempts to "build networking features", Buckland said. The ability to see other people's news clippings allows a user to "meet users based on similar interests."

NewsSwarm allows users to see who is viewing what at a given time. "It's interesting from a user perspective to see what articles are important," Buckland mentioned.

StoryPredict will forecast what stories a user will be interested in based on the browsing history, which is in turn saved.

In the past, users were not able to comment but this was due to technical restrictions, according to Buckland. Now comments to the news site are enabled for registered members. "We ensure comments. We encourage users to post under real names. We ensure a high level of intelligent debate," Buckland said.

Every site except the Thoughtleader.co.za, the Techleader.co.za and the Sportsleader.co.za sites require users to register if they want to comment.

Registered users are also able to blog, Buckland said.

The advanced printing function allows for articles to be printed in a row.  

Buckland pointed out that the new site is "tagged quite heavily". Related news stories are linked to articles, even if they are "from competitors and blogs", according to Buckland.

In his blog, Vincent Maher, strategist at the M & G, said that because the old code and the database were "messy", the developing team had to reconstruct "the site from the ground up on a completely new set of technologies."

According to Maher's blog, "the project scope and order of production" included:

- Redesigning and developing front end, designing a new strategy for ad formats, new CMS
- Developing a new data structure to accommodate real-time visualization and semantic tagging
- Integrating an advertising engine and negotiating with advertisers
- Integrating national-level navigation mapping, city-level mapping through Google Maps, "contextually-relevant" outside news sources through Google News, "contextually-relevant" blog postings through Google Blog Search
- Creating new templates for e-commerce partner sites
- Rebuilding newsletter system
(For the whole list, go to Maher's blog) 

Source: Matt Buckland, General Manager Mail & Guardian Online, VincentMaher.com

See also:
South Africa: Mail and Guardian launches Amatomu blog aggregator

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  Abdul Hamid Ahmad, Editor-in-Chief of Gulf News, based in Dubai.

The list of upcoming interviews will be updated as they are published (click here to view all interviews in this series). Among the other titles that have been asked to participate in these interviews are:

- The New York Times - Jonathan Landman (US)
- Financial Times (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)

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?

Gulf News cannot be pigeonholed as either a newspaper company or a print company. It is a content provider. This means that it supplies news to print, online, radio or any other required medium. The organization will survive and sustain in this role that is its core functionality. We do have commercial printing facilities but our focus will always be news, irrespective of where it is published.

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 strongly disagree with this point of view. Firstly, more than two thirds of the world doesn't have internet access; it perhaps has some limited access to television, which leaves print or newspaper as the main medium for receiving news. While circulation may be plateauing and in some cases declining in the West, it continues to increase in Asia and Africa for the aforesaid reasons. If internet has to make an impact, there would need to be development in infrastructure, increased investment, better education and other facilities in place. So the decline in Europe and America is compensated by growth in Asia and Africa for newspapers. The year 2014 is very close; I definitely do not see newspapers losing its significance by then.

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?

Digital journalism is part of the continued journey of journalism. When television arrived, people heralded the doom of radio. Today, radio is doing very well and moving from strength to strength. One form of media helps another. Technology has helped journalism evolve and we need to adapt to the changes.

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?

Readers or users are the support system of the journalistic process. There wouldn't be any value to our work without them. Nobody can function in isolation. The increasingly active role of the reader/user in the news process is an opportunity not a threat for professional journalists. We should use the chance to educate readers so that the quality of interaction could be more professional. Ultimately there will always be amateurs and professionals in the world; people need to choose who they deal with.

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

The Golden Age of investigative journalism is just beginning. As our world shrinks with increased connectivity and people's access to information increases, they are no longer satisfied with the superficial. They want more... they want to know in depth. They want to know what lies beneath the surface.

Can journalism survive newspapers?

Journalism is not dependent on newspapers for its survival. It existed from the time man learnt to communicate through images, words and sounds. Its root or seed lies in speech. When a tribesman climbed atop a rocky outcrop to call out to his people - that was journalism, he was giving them information. Among ancient Arab civilizations, poets functioned as journalists. They conveyed political messages, news, propaganda and other information through poetry. So journalism has existed for a while. Today it has found a home in print, online, television and radio. In the future it will find other means, but survive it will. Journalism will exist as long as man can talk.


Stay tuned for the next week's interviews, which will include The New York Times and the Financial Times.

“Can today’s j-schools (…) prepare students for the new world of New Media? Of course not.” The answer is provocative but Pajamas Media&r