Results matching “us paid product”

Google has announced last Wednesday the launch of its Knol feature, a website dedicated to providing user-generated articles on a range of topics, similar to Wikipedia. 

Jack Schofield, a Guardian blogger, warned that Knol may harm the media industry since writers not only have the chance to sidestep editors but also be able to earn money from the ad revenues on their pages.



A "knol" or a "unit of knowledge" will offer articles on a wide range of topics, written by experts on those subjects. Individual knols will be treated like web pages, indexed in Google's search engine.

"The ultimate goal is: we want to improve search," said Cedric Dupont, Knol product manager.

The difference between Knol and Wikipedia is that the latter has anonymous articles that are edited a multitude of times, reported the Guardian. Knols stress authorship, according to Dupont.

Knols may be edited if the author opts for the "moderated-collaboration" mode, but he or she has the right to chose what changes may be made, reported ZDNet UK.

Google partnered with the New Yorker magazine to let authors add cartoons from the publication to their knolls, ZDNet UK wrote.

Source: CyberJournalist.net, The Guardian, ZDNet UK

Mark Potts, author of the Recovering Journalist blog, recently wrote about the ten changes he thinks newspapers need to make to thrive. What follows is an edited transcript of his post:

What would you do if you ran a newspaper?

Somebody asked me that question recently, and it made me pull together some of the thoughts I've had recently about the problems that newspapers are having and what they might do to pull out of their current spiral. This is hardly a complete list, but here's a 10-point prescription for ailing newspapers:

1. Make the Web the primary product.
Stop pasting the newspaper onto a screen. Reorganize the newsroom so that its work appears online as quickly as possible. ... And embrace the technology: news Web sites should be full of Web 2.0 goodness like interactive maps, social networking tools, RSS feeds, distribution to mobile devices, etc. Use the medium to its fullest.

2. Local, local, LOCAL!
There are a zillion places to get national and international news, in real time. But newspapers are virtually the only source of truly local news. ... Local news is the last unique franchise that newspapers own, and too many newspapers don't seem to understand this. ... (Why do you think local community newspapers are thriving when big metro dailies are shedding circulation?)

3. If it's widely available elsewhere, don't waste time re-creating it.
Does every newspaper really need its own movie critic? A TV critic? ... Book reviews? Stories from Washington that the AP already has? ... the answer is unequivocably no. Those resources are just wastd.

4. Zero-base the news operation.
Pretend you're starting from scratch. Look at everything that's in the paper and ask tough questions about whether it's still necessary in an age when readers have multiple sources of news and information.

5. Get the readers involved.
As Dan Gillmor has elegantly argued, the audience knows more than news people do. Much more. Tap that knowledge by encouraging reader participation in as many ways as possible: contributing news and information about their communities, sending in photos and videos, commenting on everything. This can't be a token effort, and you absolutely cannot be scared or controlling about it: let the readers get involved at every opportunity. It will greatly improve the product and increase readership.

6. Lose the editorial page.
Unsigned editorials are a relic of a bygone era when newspaper barons exerted power in their community... Here's a thought: Replace it with reader opinions!

7. Expand the advertising base.
In any market, there are thousands of small advertisers that would never consider advertising in the big local newspaper. It's too expensive and covers too broad an area. But those advertisers want to reach the same people the newspaper does. Find a way to make this happen: more focused zoning, cheaper ads, ad rep pay structures that encourage selling to smaller advertisers. This is another area where community papers are running rings around big dailies.

8. Rethink the classifieds.
Craigslist, Monster.com and countless other news competitors have decimated the newspaper classifieds business. ... Anybody who's used craigslist knows how much more effective it is than paid newspaper classifieds. Look hard at your classifieds ... Yes, that may include shifting most of the classifieds online and giving them away for free, in order to keep the critical mass of classifieds that makes them useful.

9. Find new ways to serve advertisers.
What newspapers offer advertisers--display ads, classifieds--really hasn't changed much in a century. Look for ways to change that. Get into the Yellow Pages directory business online. Aggressively offer contextual advertising. Use idle newspaper delivery resources to help local businesses with their delivery needs. Use subscription lists to help businesses find customer leads. Explore interactive advertising forms that go way beyond boring banner ads. Offer data services to help businesses manage their inventories or sell things online. It's not enough to simply sell space in the paper or on the Web site. Help advertisers make their businesses more successful.

10. Take chances. Innovate. Be fearless about trying things--and killing things.
...A wise editor once said to me, there's virtually no history of research and development in the newspaper business, which is odd considering that covering the news is a daily act of research and development. Let's face it: The single biggest innovation in print newspaper journalism in the past decade or so is...Sudoku. Newspapers can and must do better than that to survive.

Source: Recovering Journalist

Geoffrey Pereira, Head of Editorial Systems at Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), will explain why the group has chosen ATEX Hermes and IBM's Nica platform to be its content management system at the upcoming World Editors Forum, to be held in Gothenburg, June 1-4.

SPH began its long process of adopting a CMS in 2002-2003. After a year of evaluation, SPH chose ATEX, which was implemented in the last newspaper last October. (Note that some of these delays weren't related to SPH or the CMS, but to external factors such as the general elections in Singapore or changes in IBM's system).

The choice of Hermes and Nica over competitors was motivated by several factors including:

- The main reason was that these firms could provide on-site help throughout the entire process, and customize the CMS as it was being developed. For almost two years, ATEX provided a project manager and two staffers to work hand-in-hand with SPH, up to the roll-out. "What I don't want is to specify a product and when it comes back, if I have made a mistake, to hear 'sorry, no change requests," said Pereira. "When you ask for a big system like this, you don't (initially) know what you want in very fine detail."
This contrasted with other firms that built the CMS on their own site, then returned it after completion - with little possibility for the customer to modify initial requirements.

- Flexibility: thanks to Hermes, any changes in font for example can be easily implemented. Its ouput, in XML and PDF, also gives the possibility to easily create e-editions.

- Compatibility with Adobe.

- The training period for staffers was shorter than for other CMS: one week. In fact, a group of five people from SPH were trained by IBM's staff during three long months. This paid off. When this core group of "super-users" - not technical people, two subeditors and three reporters - returned they were able to train another ten people. This group trained all other 500 staffers in-house in a year, ending last October. By the end of the process, it only took two days to teach reporters, and four days for designers, how to use the CMS.

Pereira will discuss these issues at the upcoming World Editors Forum, during the session on content management systems.

View other preview interviews here.

(Disclaimer: ATEX is a strategic business partner in the World Association of Newspapers' Shaping the Future of Newspapers project.)

Source: Geoffrey Pereira, Head of Editorial Systems, Singapore Press Holdings

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

Followthemedia's Philip M. Stone believes it's time for editorial and advertising departments to work together to increase print's revenue, so that their publication has enough money. Jobs in editorial depend on advertising, and advertising needs help from editorial to bring in money, writes Stone.

"Let's remove the stigma [of the two departments not working together] and rename the newsroom the content room," writes Stone.

He cites an example from the 1980s when United Press International brought in Max McCrohan as the new editor-in-chief. He decided that there would be monthly special projects, each focusing on a specific topic, which would allow the newspaper's advertising department to sell special sections. Each special section was delivered several weeks in advance, so, for instance, a section on gardening would be produced in February for April, and would receive ads from gardening centers, etc. The money earned from the special section paid for UPI's monthly subscription fee and more.

So Stone proposes that a newspaper's advertising and editorial departments should locally agree on a monthly topic for a special section. The editorial department would provide the copy and supplementals while advertising "sells the hell out of it," and potentially find new advertisers for those sections.

Stone acknowledges that stories should not be changed to favor an advertiser, and newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post have honored that "journalistic purity," as Stone calls it.

"But the business of newspaper journalism today is to stay in business," writes Stone. "Newspaper departments need to act as a team as never before; the newspaper needs to provide that product to the community that encourages the community to support print."

Source: Follow the Media
 
 

Zero Hora, flagship title of the RBS media group in Brazil, has had an integrated newsroom since last September, which was officially inaugurated in December 2007. In Part 1, Zero Hora’s editors, Marcelo Rech and Marta Gleich, and RBS’ CEO Nelson Sirotsky, describe how integration has changed their and their journalists’ jobs, both in theory and practice.

Is online journalism becoming a consumer product? Are paychecks ruling the editorial agenda instead of news principles? The Miami Herald’s Edward Wasserman argues so.

Economically, print publishing is very different today than it used to be. There is massive amounts of free content on the Web, content that hasn’t really changed that much in general, or in value. It’s the value of the distribution of that content that has changed.

Yahoo has partnered with Adobe PDF to create a new ad product called “Ads for Adobe PDF powered by Yahoo!” The project aims to allow publishers the chance to include contextual, text-based ads next to PDF-based content.

Several major newsrooms have chosen to integrate their print and online operations to adapt to the digital age, including the Daily Telegraph in the UK and Fairfax in Australia, and most recently The New York Times moving into its new building. But most newspapers remain non-integrated or consider – such as Le Monde in France or El Pais in Spain – that full integration is not the best choice. In light of this debate, the Weblog interviewed Bruno Patino, Vice President of Le Monde group and President of Le monde interactif, to figure out which is the ‘right’ way to rethink the newsroom, or whether or not integration should be the main concern altogether.

A few weeks ago, El Pais underwent a redesign to emphasize its renewed global reach and connect with a younger readership. In this email Q&A, editor-in-chief Javier Moreno explains everything about the paper's relaunch.

The New York Times announced the shuttering of its online subscription service, TimesSelect. The obvious question: is this the end of the paid-for online model altogether? How will the Wall Street Journal’s (WSJ) website, the Web’s largest paid-for subscription website, react? The Editors Weblog collected the insight of media analyst Philip Stone, Ali Rahnema, Corporate Development Director at the Irish Times, and Daniel Bernard, General Manager of WSJ Online.

        The print press has given lots of attention to Minnesota Star Tribune’s former editor (1983-92) and publisher (1992-98), Joel Kramer, since he announced the launch this fall of an online-only, non-profit news publication, MinnPost.com. Both print and online news organizations will be watching its first steps to answer their own existential concerns. How can editors adapt their ‘print journalism’ to make it work online? Is it streetwise to focus on quality coverage and less so on multimedia? Can the online-only, non-profit business model be sustainable?

In the UK, The Sun’s bingo website has become its biggest-earning commercial partnership online. As more newspapers – especially but not only tabloids &nd