Results matching “us the future o”

The founding director of a Political Management master's degree program at the George Washington University surveyed 371 print and web journalists from September to October of last year, with the aim of establishing to what extent social media tools are used in the research and distribution of articles.

The results of the online survey, reported on the university's newspaper website, found that 56 percent of those surveyed said that social media was important or somewhat important for reporting and producing stories, with the overwhelming majority citing the internet as the starting point for their research- despite the fact that 84 percent said news and information delivered via social media was slightly less or much less reliable than news delivered via traditional media.

The Newspaper Guild of New York has accused Thompson Reuters of imposing illegal pay cuts, the New York Times reports. The news comes just two months after the agency made clear its plans to cut some 240 jobs in its legal divisions across North America.

According to a complaint filed by the union on Friday, the news service is wrongly cutting the pay of some 420 employees by an average of 10 percent through various measures, including no longer contributing to staff retirement plans, health care, out of pocket expenses, as well as increasing the number of hours staff members must work in order to receive overtime. Automatic annual pay increases will also no longer be guaranteed.

The launch of Apple's iPad has garnered much optimism in the newspaper industry, driving hopes that the innovative tablet computer will be able to breathe some new life into an industry battered by an advertising downturn.

Much speculation has placed very high hopes on the capacity of the iPad and a slew of new generation e-readers to revamp the industry and bolster its business model. But, as Poynter Online's Bill Mitchell reports, the iPad will probably not be the solution to all of the newspapers' woes, but this sleek electronic device could play a substantial role in the migration of users from a cost-heavy past to a more efficient future.

Jake Dobkin, co-founder and publisher of the local New York blog, Gothamist, gave New York Times' executives an idea of what to expect during their Thursday morning panel discussion with him with some provocative comments published via his Facebook page last Tuesday.

In preparation for the panel, the moderator, the Times' media critic David Carr, sent Dobkin the following question in advance: "Jake, you've competed with the NYTimes in the metro space. It has formidable resources, but how do you see the newspaper landing in the local market? Do you think that the incoming cohort of consumers see the Times as a credible editorial resource in New York political and cultural affairs?"

In a time where newspapers seem to be losing more and more revenue, figures from Gannett Co. Inc.'s fourth quarter released today, showed potential positive results for the months ahead.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Gannett swung to a profit in the fourth quarter following $5.6 billion in prior-year write-downs. Lower declines in advertising sales combined with much lower expenses helped the newspaper publisher show improvement.

Although only 35 people have signed up for Newsday subscriptions since it was put behind a paywall last October, these dismal figures hide the Long Island daily's grander scheme: a paywall that nobody notices because it is bundled with a cable television subscription.

The owners of Newsday also own Optimum Cable, according to Guardian, which supplies cable TV to 75% of Long Island homes, Newsday's backyard. Newsday.com was offered to these subscribers at no additional charge, bundled with cable and high-speed Internet services. Therefore, the number of people who signed up for to the Long Island daily since October was not 35, but 1.5 million, the people that currently have Optimum Cable subscriptions.

Dubbed the "brown paper envelope for the digital age" by the Guardian when it launched in 2007, Wikileaks, "the online clearinghouse for leaked documents", has been forced to temporarily close in order to raise the funds it requires to continue operations.

Committed to remaining ethical and independent, the website refuses to accept government or corporate funding. Having leaked some 1.2 million sensitive documents online, Wikileaks is the force behind the publication of the British National Party's membership list and attracted attention when it hosted the Minton report - a report detailing oil trader Trafigura's activities at a time when the company's legal representation was desperately trying to keep its contents secret from the press.

Twitter has introduced a 'Local Trends' filter, which allows users to see what others are posting about on the site in their area.

The official Twitter blog explained that the trends function began as a way to see what was popular on a global scale in real-time, but this would create another way for members to discover relevant topics to them.

"The big events that come up around the world will always become a global conversation," a spokesperson writes, "but what about the big events that only happen in your world that only matter to those around you? Or the slight differences in the way Californians perceive an event, like Obama's election victory, versus those (in) São Paulo, Brazil?"

As world leaders plan the future of the global economy at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, journalists are using social media and other innovative ways to bring the discussion closer to the people.

Time's James Poniewozik has suggested that the significance of the New York Times's paywall is symbolic, rather than a sign that paid online content is the future for news. "Any pricing scheme that can raise actual money risks chasing away actual readers," and this why the NYT's charging method "probably won't make much difference to the Times's coffers or its readers at first."

As Poniewozik  says, there are many people who won't end up paying for an online subscription to the New York Times. Print subscribers will get free access, casual readers won't have to pay, and those directed via other websites won't pay. 

After months of much hype and speculation, Steve Jobs finally took to the stage to unveil Apple's new highly anticipated tablet computer - the iPad.

With its official introduction at an event in San Francisco yesterday, Steve Jobs has finally laid many rumors about what the electronic device can do to rest, while igniting hopes about the iPad's ability to bring new life to 'old media' and to revamp the e-reader market.
 

 

Deseret Management Corp., the parent company of U.S. newspaper Deseret News in Utah, will launch a Spanish-language newspaper called El Observador February 9, publishing three times a week, with editions on Tuesdays and Thursdays featuring hard news, while a weekend edition will focus on family-oriented features, Editor & Publisher reported.

"The Hispanic/Latino community in Utah is a very important part of our future, of our 'now,'" said Jim Wall, the publisher of Deseret News, according to a Deseret news article. "They are under-represented. They have no voice." He said in the past, other Spanish-language newspaper efforts in the area had not been credible. "When we decided we would invest in this (endeavour), it was really out of a need to have a voice of trust and credibility."

For more on this story, please see our sister publication www.sfnblog.com

The Amaury group, responsible for both Le Parisien and L'Equipe, has given its publications a face life this week, with all 48 pages of the former appearing in colour for the first time on Tuesday, and divided into five new sections: Fact of the day, News, Local News, Sports and Leisure.

L'Equipe is set to integrate three new pages into its design, the first appearing today, the second in Thursday's edition and the third in Friday's, as a response to reader surveys. From March the publication will introduce a motoring section, which will appear every Monday- intended to deal with the production of cars as opposed to buying and selling.

Journalists should be willing to fight for strong freedom of information and open records laws, said the president of the Associated Press in a speech on Friday.

Speaking at the Kentucky Press Association, AP president Tom Curley stressed the importance of these laws as part of the "journalistic tool kit" to help reporters access information in the public interest.

"It's vital," he said. "A strong FOIA in the hands of strong journalists with strong legal support breaks news."

A new non-profit news website has launched in Connecticut today, Poynter Online reports, with the dual aims of reporting the news and providing its readers access to resources that are hard to find online.

The Connecticut Mirror bills itself as "an independent source of news and information about our state's government, politics and public policy". It comes in time for an important state budget and an election year.

Editor Michael Regan writes that the Guide to Politics and Government his site offers provides "the most comprehensive information available any where on the state's elected officials".

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has launched an initiative to examine the future of media in the digital age and to "help ensure that all Americans have access to vibrant, diverse sources of news and information that will enable them to enrich their families, communities and democracy."

"The Future of Media and the Information Needs of Communities in a Digital Age" lists 42 questions the project is seeking to answer through research and asking for input from the public. Submissions for the project closes March 8. Quoting the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, the project states that the "digital age is creating an information and communications renaissance. But it is not serving all Americans and their local communities equally. It is not yet serving democracy fully," according to the Huffington Post.

For more on this story, please see our sister publication www.sfnblog.com

The holding company for MediaNews Group, publisher of The Denver Post, San Jose Mercury News and 52 other daily publications, has filed for bankruptcy, Editor and Publisher reports.

Affiliated Media Inc., the privately held parent company for the publisher, expects to emerge from bankruptcy in one or two months. It has said that it has a deal with creditors to reduce its $930 million debt to $165 million. Lenders including Bank of America would get most of the company's stock, wiping out shareholders such as Hearst Corp. A bankruptcy court in Delaware still has to approve the plan.

The BBC will not try to compete with local publishers, according to director of BBC news Helen Boaden, MediaWeek reported.
`
Speaking at the Oxford Media Convention, Boaden said that BBC websites would not become more localised in the future.

Around 40 editorial staff have taken voluntary redundancies at The Guardian this week, as part of a package of 100 layoffs announced late last year.

Staff who have opted for the redundancies include Media Guardian reporters Stephen Brook and Chris Tryhorn and deputy production editor Aly Duncan, as well as the San Francisco-based technology reporter Bobbie Johnson.

Much of the transformation in the newspaper industry is led by the big western players: The New York Times has announced it will charge for content, The Guardian has launched a paid news app for the iPhone, and the Apple tablet is eagerly anticipated.

But these changes affect other parts of the world, as the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram reminds us. "In Egypt, we are also experiencing a seismic media evolution," Tarek Atia writes, in a considered op-ed on the state of the newspaper industry in Egypt and the future of media.

Yesterday, following months of deliberation, the New York Times announced that it was to go forward with charging online, with a plan to implement a metre system in 2011. It is the biggest publisher yet to lay out paywall plans, and the move is undoubtedly highly significant for the newspaper industry as it struggles with a failing business model. Will this save the New York Times? Could it signal the end for free online content?

Similar to that used by the Financial Times, a metered payment system would allow readers to access a certain number of articles free per month, and then request payment for more: a flat fee for unlimited access. Print subscribers will continue to have free access, even those who subscribe to just the Sunday paper. An online subscription will also cover access via smartphones. The first click free from search engines, which is used by the Wall Street Journal, will also apply. More details such as pricing have been released yet, and the publisher's statement said that the next year will be used to build "a new online infrastructure designed to provide consumers with a frictionless experience across multiple platforms."

A metered system rather than a more fixed paywall has the advantage of not alienating the casual reader who can still visit the site free on occasion, and not angering journalists by blocking off specific articles (an issue with the Times' previous attempt at charging online, TimesSelect). "It allows NYTimes.com to remain a vibrant part of the search-driven Web," reads the Times memo sent to staff by executives Arthur Sulzberger and Janet Robinson, published by Poynter.

It does have potential flaws, however. Before the NYT's announcement, Reuters writer Felix Salmon criticized the way that the FT's flat fee system does not actually work like a metre: suggesting that instead the New York Times should implement a payment process under which readers are charged depending on how much content they consume. And presumably those who are determined not to pay will find ways around the paywall, using multiple accounts, for example.

The Financial Times welcomed the New York Times' decision, according to the Guardian, with CEO John Ridding saying "We welcome the New York Times' new online business model, which is similar to the FT's. We believe in the value of quality journalism and we are pleased that others feel the same way." The FT recently announced that for the first time, its content revenue was greater than its advertising revenue in 2009, after raised cover prices and more online subscribers signing on.

The FT now has 121,000 subscribers. Going by the pricing on the FT's website, it seems that they pay between €186 and €363 per year (depending on whether they choose a standard or premium subscription). Working on the assumption that about half of subscribers pay for each (and that the FT is not counting joint print-online subscribers in this figure), that would mean that the paper could be bringing in something in the region of €33 million from its paywall in direct revenue from readers. And the Wall Street Journal, which offers a different kind of paywall, has an estimated one million paying online subscribers.

This figure is encouragingly high, but how much encouragement can the NYT take from this? As a general interest paper with the most popular website out of all US papers, the Times has a far bigger pool of potential subscribers. But the FT's specialist financial content is something that more people might see as worth paying for. Indeed for some, it is news that is necessary for their business. And with the FT's main international rival the WSJ also charging, there is not an ubiquity of similar news free on the web.

The New York Times does seem to have a better shot at making charging for online content work than other US general interest newspapers. Its status as the number one national paper is largely unquestioned. It has always made a greater proportion of its revenue from content than most newspapers do, receiving 55-60% of its income from advertising compared to a typical figure of 80-85%. The current price for a print subscription is high, at between $550 and $770 a year, depending on location and offers, but many people are still prepared to pay this: more than 800,000 continue to renew their subscriptions, according to the NYT's David Carr.

Given the paper's financial situation, it is unsurprisingly that the paper is looking at changing its business model. Despite its reputation and high number of website visitors, financial constraints have pushed the New York Times into carrying out lay-offs and pay cuts. Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim came to the publisher's aid last year with a $250 million loan, but if the paper is to continue to produce top-quality journalism, it needs a steady revenue stream.

Poynter writer Rick Edmonds maintains that the NYT's decision to charge "makes business sense." He believes that the Times will not "lose any meaningful number of unique visitors," and agrees with Ken Doctor that paying users represent a significant targeting advertising opportunity. The Times' memo sent to employees said that executives expect that "digital advertising will continue to be the major contributor to our success on the Web."

Slate editor Jack Shafter is critical of the NYT's strategy, judging it "too easy for freeloaders to game their way around it" and "a waste of the gargantuan audience they've attracted." He suggests that looking into improving web advertising would be a better way to go forward. Jeff Jarvis argues on his blog BuzzMachine that the NYT's plan will end up charging "the readers who are worth the most while serving free those who are worth least," which he believes does not make sense. 

With the New York Times on board, efforts to charge online are likely to speed up. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp publications are expected to introduce paid online content in coming months, and there is an increasing sentiment that it just doesn't make sense to give away content that should be seen as valuable. Not everybody agrees, however, and over at the UK paper with the most popular website, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger has said that his publication will remain free online. Others will undoubtedly stick to a similar course and provide free alternatives, making it harder for those who do charge. Which business model will eventually prove more successful? 

The Financial Times has launched a series of new iPhone apps for its FT-branded travel guides, Brand Republic reports. `

The newspaper publishes the Little Book of Business Travel series. Content from the guides to Beijing, Hong Kong, Macau and Shanghai will be available on the new apps. And their content will be primarily the work of FT journalists.

Editor of The Guardian Alan Rusbridger ruled out erecting paywalls around The Guardian's website, expressing optimism about the future of the newspaper, Journalism.co.uk reported.

Speaking as part of the Coventry Conversation series, run by the Coventry University journalism department, he said the newspaper had no plans to put up paywalls, as Rupert Murdoch has planned to do for News International titles. "It would be crazy if we were to all jump behind a pay wall and imagine that would solve things," Rusbridger said. He did agree, though, that it was good that journalism was "trying different things".

Journalists might be doing more harm than good in Haiti, suggests Noam Scheiber in a polemical piece published yesterday in the New Republic. While many journalists initially struggled to get to Haiti amid the chaos, nearly all major news outlets have a presence in Port-au-Prince by now. The New York Times and Washington Post each have ten staff in the country, not to mention CNN and CBS with their fifty-person production crews.

In some ways, he feels the mere presence of the media is hindering the rescue efforts they came to report. An excess of news staff puts an unfair burden on the country's already meager resources, with reporters "mooching off supplies intended for earthquake victims." On top of that, he dismisses the bulk of the news reported back as "redundant."

At least some of the bankrupt newspapers owned by Canwest may have found a buyer, Editor and Publisher reports. A group of investors is preparing bids for three of the largest dailies: The National Post, The Montreal Gazette and The Ottawa Citizen.

The consortium includes Beryl Wajsman, editor of Quebec's largest English-language weekly, The Suburban; Raymond Heard, a former Montreal Star managing editor and former editor of the London Observer News Service; and Jerry S. Grafstein, a former Canadian senator and founder of the Toronto television station CITY-TV.