Results matching “5 lessons from”

Mobile advertising is not yet a source of revenue that publishers can bank on, according to Constantine Kamaras, CEO of the Greek sports portal Sport.gr, speaking at the WAN-IFRA conference 'Using sports news to optimise your revenues'.

His publication Sport.gr has around 500,000 unique users per month, with about 15000 registered users. Advertising makes up 77% of their revenue, and mobile 8%. He says that users are less reluctant to pay for mobile content, but warns that mobile advertising will make up at best 6% of interactive advertising in 2010 globally, and will be only 2% in the US, lagging behind social media and online video.

"It's not news that drives the uptake of smart phones," he warned, pointing to other important trends such as search and online communities.

A new platform that allows online news publishers of 'all shapes and sizes' to charge for their content was launched by San Francisco-based startup, Bitcents, last week. The company, which claims to provide the first fully-fuctional micropayment service, enables publishers to charge on a per-story basis and to determine their own prices.

The concept is fairly simple : Publications looking to charge for online content can create subscriber networks using the Bitcents technology, which readers then pay to join. Subscribing to a network grants users access to all of Bitcents' partnering Web sites, and the subscriber network receives a portion of the revenue that they helped their partner organizations earn.

News organizations signing up with Bitcents are assured they wont lose traffic generated by search engines such as Google, a flaw in current paywall models, which are automatically weeded out from search results.

"The advent of news micropayments will reward those who provide their readers original, high-quality content at a reasonable price," Bitcents' founder Andrew Brennan said in a statement. "The lessons are clear: for paid content to work, the payment system must provide breadth of coverage and ease of use, but consumers must also feel they are paying a fair price."

Bitcents is just the latest to suggest a micropayment scheme to solve revenue woes, and joins other such as Journalism Online, a service founded by Steve Brill which proposes an iTunes-style approach to the payment of news.
Brill, who has consistently argued that readers should pay for content, reiterated his point at a debate at the Paley Centre on Tuesday. Brill argued that :"People have been exchanging cash for newspapers and magazines for decades - they just need to get back into the habit of doing so online." 

Reporting by Cecilia Campbell

With the ever increasing popularity of mobile reading devices such as mobiles phones, net-books, and e-readers, many publishers are seeing the value in producing an e-paper alongside their print editions in order to boost subscriptions and readership. Speaking at the 2nd WAN-IFRA conference on e-readers in Paris last week, Charles Lansu, Marketing Manager for NRC Handelsblad and Olivier Delteil, Business Development Manager, Digital edition, for Groupe Les Echos gave the attending publishers their insight on developing an e-paper.

***********************
NRC Handelsblad: the first Dutch newspaper on electronic paper

Dutch financial daily NRC Handelsblad is currently the only newspaper in the country offering it's readers an e-reading edition of its publication, following its launch in early 2008. Whilst the actual editorial content is the same for both the print and digital versions, the latter also employs it's own team of designers and publishers to negotiate how the content might be presented best on the reduced screen size or devices such as e-readers and mobile phones.

Acting independently of the daily print publication is essential to the success of an e-paper, stressed  Charles Lansu, and there must be a seperate digital strategy. For NRC Handelsblad this strategy meant being available in a popular format (for example PDF, which is suited to both iRex and iLiad e-readers), offering all the content available in the print editions as well as some 'added benefits' and emphasising the 'infancy' of the product to customers, inviting them to offer feedback and help to improve the e-paper.

PPF Media has been getting a lot of international attention lately for its hyperlocal news project in the Czech Republic that is built around Starbucks-style "news cafes" in local communities. CEO Roman Gallo provided an update Friday at the 2015 Newsroom Conference, and the project seems to be working.
 
Thirteen weeks after launch in four Czech regions, circulation of the paid-for weeklies is growing, as it web traffic. And the cafes are quickly becoming a centre of community life, with meetings, concerts, dance lessons and other events organised for local residents.
 
Editorial staff sit in the middle of the cafes, without walls or doors, allowing regular interaction with local residents. Fifty percent of new subscriptions come from people who come in for coffee and conversaton.
 
 "The readers can go there and be in contact.," said Gallo.  "For the editorial team, they're much more open to talk to people, to understand the problems of the people in the region."
 
If the success continues, the company expects a year-long nationwide rollout of 220 weeklies, 89 news cafes and 700 websites.
 
Bertrand Pecquerie, Director of the World Editors Forum, which organised the 2015 Newsroom Conference, said hyperlocal news was a clear trend for newspapers. "Print isn't dead, and hyperlocal news is the future of newspapers, with new players," he said.
 
Community newspapers have been around for decades, but there are several innovations, in addition to the news cafes, that make PPF's Nase Adresa project different:
 
- About a third of the content is provided by local communities - fishermen, firemen, mothers with young children etc. - but none of it goes into the paper or websites without input from a journalist, called a "community manager."
 
"This is a total change for journalists," said Gallo. "Our journalists are not traditional journalist who see something and tell the community about it. We changed the job - they're trainers, coaches, they work with the communities."
 
- The weekly papers and websites are standardized in terms of layout, graphics and features. "We call it 'Media MacDonald's', we have very strong rules, that must be fulfilled at the local level," said Gallo.
 
- A central editor oversees all publications, and support is also centralized through the Futuroom media training complex, which not only provides training but also infographics, data mining and other services (the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers is a partner in Futuroom).
 
While the news cafes and other innovations makes the project worth watching, the strategy is, in fact, based on something very traditional for newspapers.
 
"The advantage of the publishing company is unique content, which you can't find anywhere else, and it has to be credible content," said Gallo. "That's the model that worked for newspapers for 100 years, and I have no doubt it will work for another 100 years."
 
Follow the 2015 Newsroom Conference on Twitter.
 

A new course offering from DePaul University in Chicago will teach journalism students how Twitter can be used in the newsroom. The class's objective will be to instruct future journalists how to sift through all the information that is available through social media sites like Twitter, specifically as it relates to uncovering breaking news and verifying the authenticity of amateur sources.

The course will be taught by alumnus Craig Kanalley, a digital news intern at the Chicago Tribune and founder of the web site Breaking Tweets, which manually aggregates tweets related to news stories. Not surprisingly, Kanalley's students will also be contributing to Breaking Tweets.

The winners of the 2009 World Young Reader Prize have been announced: Zero Hora of Brazil and Express & Echo of the United Kingdom have been named World Young Reader Newspapers of the Year for two vital kinds of excellence in the annual competition organized by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA).

The awards are part of WAN-IFRA's annual World Young Reader Prize competition, which honours innovative newspapers that have devised the best project or activity to attract young readers. The awards are made in six categories: branding, public service, press freedom, editorial, and in "making the news".

The backwards-thinking yet futuristic idea of taking content from the Internet and reproducing it in printed form has not been the overwhelming success The Printed Blog hoped it would be. Founder Joshua Karp announced in a blog post yesterday that the publication would be put on hold indefinitely after running out of capital and failing to attract investors.

"Creating a new breed of newsprint publication from scratch was an amazing experience," Karp wrote, "and it was humbling to have been so prominently included in the global discussion on the future of journalism and the print media."

The regional press in America is in the midst of a whirlwind of stylistic, managerial and media development, to the extent that its face is changing beyond recognition.  That evolution is a necessary but merciless concept has been demonstrated by the disappearance of many regional daily newspapers and the unpredictable life span of modern ventures.

Michelle Ferrier, the former managing director of the development team of the soon-to-be late hyperlocal community site, MyTopiaCafe.com, laments the failure of the initiative of the Daytona Beach News-Journal. The experiences of the Daytona project have been shared by other now redundant initiatives of media organisations eager to offer new services while drastically cost-cutting and downsizing. Hyperlocal, however, is not necessarily a prematurely defunct form of community news provision. The problems were symptomatic of the approach, warns Ferrier, yet lessons can be learned.

YouTube today launched its Reporter's Centre, an online educational platform where journalists offer advice on reporting and news gathering techniques to would-be citizen reporters.

The centre offers a selection of how-to videos with some of the industry's leading figures giving seminars on core reporting methods, such as how to conduct interviews, how to verify facts and, lessons on maintaining standards and ethics. (See below for a list which reads like a who's who of the news sector.)

The media coverage of the shock death of Michael Jackson has served to highlight press dynamics, raising interesting questions concerning the nature of breaking news reporting, the cult of the celebrity and the relationship between newspapers and their online news rivals. Has the fact that most newspapers were delayed in the initial reporting of the death emphasised the widening gulf between print and digital channels of breaking news? Conversely, has the death been exploited by the printed press as a facile, reader guaranteeing hit?

The news of the performer's death, in terms of rumour, confirmation and reaction has been overwhelmingly 'digital' in expression. The scoop belonged to the Los Angeles based celebrity website, TMZ, which confirmed the death an hour after it aired whispers of a suspected heart attack. The reporting was rapid fire: time of death: 2.26pm, LA time, time of update: 2.44pm. 

As the controversy over the recent election in Iran and the subsequent media response have made abundantly clear, social media like Twitter are playing an increasing role in the world of journalism. While today's working journalists must learn how these tools will affect their jobs on the fly, j-schools have a great opportunity to instruct the next generation of journalists before they enter the newsroom.

In a column on Mashable, Vadim Lavrusik - himself a journalism student at Columbia University - outlines "10 Ways Journalism Schools Are Teaching Social Media." Lavrusik spoke with professors and deans at some of the top j-schools in the US, who told him how their respective schools have integrated lessons about how new technology can assist in reporting and provide a tool for promotion and self-branding on the web. The questions Lavrusik raises regarding ethics and social media are perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the article, and could have real consequences for students.

A little over a month ago, msnbc.com celebrated its first anniversary as America's #1 news site. According to Nielsen Online, the MSNBC Digital Network (msnbc.com) experienced record-breaking traffic for the past twelve months, with May marking a full year of dominance in the online news space.

"The success of msnbc.com is the result of a remarkable collaborative effort by some of the most innovative journalists in the business," said NBC News President Steve Capus. "These extraordinary numbers prove that if you provide your audience with quality journalism, offer it in a compelling, easy to use way and make it timely and accessible, they will respond."

A new daily newspaper serving the Detroit area will be launched within the next 60 days, it was announced Tuesday. The Detroit Daily Press, a project of the two experienced publishing brothers, Mark and Gary Stern, arose to compensate for the reduced home delivery of the city's two main daily papers earlier in the year.

"There is a definite need here," Mark Stern asserted at a news conference in the Detroit suburb of Southfield. "People are used to having a newspaper in their hand. ... That's what we're going to do -- provide a newspaper."

The legal problems that could arise in the US from newspapers banding together to charge for and track online content have been discussed at some length. The Wall Street Journal has looked at the way that news publishers are seeking inspiration from the way that music publishers collect money every time one of their songs is played in public as they consider how to go about charging online.

Antitrust law forbids competing businesses to attempt to join forces in any way that might limit consumer options. Clearly, if newspapers were to collaborate on price-fixing for online news, for example, it would be limiting. The music industry has managed to fight off claims of anticompetitive practices and managed to preserve its system, according to the WSJ, partly by limiting any single entity's control over access to songs.

Yesterday, the recently founded Media140 held its first Twitter and microblogging conference. Held at London's Southbank Centre - a venue in the heart of the UK capital synonymous with innovation - the event largely focussed on the effects that Twitter and micoblogging are having on the news gathering process and was attended by journalists from Guardian.co.uk, TimesOnline, TechCrunch, BBC, Aljazeera, Reuters and Sky News.

Kicking off discussions, associate editor of the Sunday Herald and author of 'The Play ethic', Pat Kane, opened up the conference with a keynote presentation on the way breaking news services were dramatically changing the face of journalism: "Reading a newspaper on a street corner might be seen as banal. What's becoming just as banal is producing news on that street corner," said Kane. You can access his slideshow from the presentation here.

It would seem that student newspapers in the UK are beset by the same problems as their mainstream counterparts - perhaps even more so. According to a survey by the Leeds Student newspaper, over 45% of UK student newspapers have had to cut their print run or cancel issues, 60% haven't hit their advertising target for the year, and over 25% of their editors "have serious concerns about their financial future."

A similar situation from a different perspective on the other side of the Atlantic: a Bloomberg report claims that the outgoing writers and editors of student publication the Harvard Crimson rarely end up at newspapers. Moreover, those current employees with journalistic ambitions "avoid mentioning it in front of classmates, wanting to avoid expressions of concern, if not ridicule" according to Abigail Phillip, 20, a junior editor at the Crimson.

According to the New York Observer, the New York Times is considering two different proposals for charging for content. Executive editor Bill Keller told staff about the ideas that the paper is looking at.

One is a "meter system" which would allow the reader to surf the site without charge until reading a predetermined limit - words or pageviews - after which a metre will start running and the reader is charged for the rest of their movement on the site. It is not clear whether readers would be allowed a certain limit per day, or how else this would be measured. Keller apparently warned staff at the meeting that this pay model would be "tricky" as a fine balance would have to be found: if the limit of free content was too small, readers could be discouraged and traffic would fall, while as if it was too high, there would be little improvement in revenue.

"It's the online world where large Czech media companies see the future now," so writes Czech News in an article describing the state of the Czech press. According to the national news agency, in the first three months of 2009, almost 20 print titles have closed, that more closures are soon expected and that even television stations are slashing budgets to keep pace with falling demand and plummeting advertising sales. But does the solution lie with the Internet?

Financial Times editor Lionel Barber's Poynter Fellowship lecture at Yale University focused on whether the financial media should have been able to predict the global financial crisis, an issue which has already been discussed in some depth in the UK. "These are the best of times and the worst of times to be a financial journalist," he announced: "The best, because we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to report, analyse and comment on the most serious financial crisis since the Great Crash of 1929." The worst, not only due to the severe suffering of the media industry but because the "financial media find itself accused of missing the global financial crisis... failing to warn an unsuspecting public of impending disaster."

Barber addresses whether these charges add up, whether the press was "an accomplice or merely an innocent bystander." He explained that he had been questioned, along with other senior journalists, by the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee on the topic. He believes that the quality of questioning fell short, and mentioned one of the more "improbable" accusations: that the British financial press "had deliberately buried the bad news because bad news did not sell newspapers."

The National Newspaper Association today revealed that 4th quarter results confirm that local papers in the States are faring better than regional and national news titles.

The data put together by the NNA in conjunction with the Suburban Newspapers Association (SNA) showed that whilst the industry averaged a 21% fall in advertising revenues at the end of 2008 compared to the previous year, the figure was just 6.6% for community newspapers.

Tim Armstrong, a Google Executive, revealed in a blog post on Tuesday, that his private investment company, Polar Capital Group, is the force behind the hyperlocal website, Patch.com.

The news has led to speculation about the presence of big names like Google and Jeff Jarvis, who is on the editorial advisory board, influencing local news businesses. With their headquarters in New York city, the team is bound to apply the lessons learned to Google's possible chances of an opening into the local product's group.

Journalism 2.0 reported that Patch currently has 20 journalists and plans to hire one in every town it expands to. Currently, Patch is in Maplewood, Milburn and South Orange, in New Jersey.

Sources: journalism2.0

Following increased discussion in the media world of the non-profit model as a potential saviour for newspapers, the idea of paid online content has returned to the forefront of the debate, and different ways to implement this have been proposed. What most of the arguments are lacking, however, is an acknowledgment of the free spirit of the Internet and the necessity to maintain this. If the tides are to be reversed and people are to be persuaded to pay for information again, any online payment program that is established should not erect pay walls between publications. Paid online content would be a huge step for newspapers, and a reversal of current policy, so great thought and care are required to ensure that it is a step taken in the right way. But as online advertising revenue slows, and newspapers' very survival is threatened, could paid online content indeed be the solution?

The current micropayment debate

Walter Isaacson's article in Time which first spurred the debate makes the valid and interesting point that maybe returning to paid content would actually be a positive change for the industry in terms of the way that journalists work. Charging readers for content is based on very different principles to charging for advertising. When seeking income from advertisers, readers become less of a priority: "eventually you will weaken your bond with your readers if you do not feel directly dependent on them for your revenue." Isaacson believes that the key to attracting online revenue "is to come up with an iTunes-easy method of micropayment," that would allow impulse purchases of individual articles, rather than having content available purely by subscription. As many newspapers have already tried and failed to generate income via paid subscriptions, it would seem that micropayment is definitely worth considering.  

Steve Brill's memo to the New York Times that was published in Poynter, advises the paper on "how to get off the free-content treadmill", calling for the NYT to lead the way in establishing a new paid content model. He points out that "getting an average of just $1.00 a month (3.3 cents a day) from each visitor [who currently uses the site] would yield $240m in new annual revenue." He outlines a plan whereby online articles will cost 10 cents each, a day pass for all articles would cost 40 cents, a month would cost $7.50 and a year $55. Passing on an article would cost 5 cents. This combination of subscriptions and the possibility to purchase individual articles makes sense, but there are flaws in this proposal.

All newspapers in one payment plan?

First, an industry-wide simultaneous switch would undoubtedly be a preferable solution, and arguably the only one that has a chance of succeeding. Any newspaper that unilaterally decides to start a paid content system for information that can be found elsewhere is bound to suffer from a lack of readers, as people will simply go elsewhere. Few people who get their news online have undying loyalty to one or two individual publications any more. Brill suggests "a new marketing campaign would promote the fact that the Times alone among daily newspapers (until the others follow) is charging for its content because 'you get what you pay for.'" Obviously it is possible that this would work, but it would be a huge risk and it is likely that many readers would immediately be lost, and content would be isolated, as TimesSelect content was during its brief period behind a pay wall. The idea of paying to forward an article further fortifies this wall. Forget traditional concepts of competition: newspapers need to come together so that paid content will work for everybody.

Along similar lines, offering subscriptions to each individual paper is unlikely to work anymore. Online readers have become accustomed to looking at many different sources of news each day: one of the greatest advantages of online news is that you can move freely between publications, and papers are becoming more willing to link to each other's content. This is something that should be maintained, setting up walls around individual papers is inconsistent with the benefits of the web. So papers should join together and implement a system by which users can use the same payment method for many, or ideally all, publications, whether subscription-based or micropayments. In discussion with Isaacson, Daily Show host Jon Stewart suggested a cable TV style model, whereby newspapers group together to form packages. This would definitely be preferable to individual publications proceeding alone, and might provide some healthy competition. But the user would benefit more from just one universal system, as it would be simpler to access more publications in a way that is more coherent with the current way that people use the web. Choosing between different 'packages' could be a confusing and frustrating exercise and there is the risk that media companies would align along partisan lines and further polarise the industry politically.

In line with the idea of free movement, costs would have to be lower than Brill suggests for individual articles. An ideal system would be one where costs are so low that people will not hesitate to read as many articles as they like. Any payment system developed will have to be created with the less tech-savvy user in mind. It must be extremely easy to use, unobtrusive and transparent with regards to costs. The importance of ease cannot be over-estimated; it is essential not to put people off by making registration too complicated.

iTunes or iNews?

Countless parallels have been drawn between the newspaper industry and the music industry. Obviously the two industries are very different and purchasing a song is not the same thing as buying an article: not least because you are likely to listen to a song again and again while as you would often only read an article once. Consequently, any pricing structure for newspaper content must reflect this difference, with articles costing a tiny fraction of the 99 cents that iTunes, for example, charges for a track. But there are some lessons that newspapers can learn. A crucial point to understand is that a site such as iTunes is so popular because you can buy a huge amount of music there, from many different record labels, and the pricing strategies are very simple. Once a user has set up their account and entered payment details, it is very easy to make purchases. Although newspapers may not want to lump their articles all in one place, but rather retain their individual websites, one payment scheme for all definitely seems as if it would be the most usable. A pre-paid account, or a system whereby you just needed to register your card details would probably be easiest to use.

One issue that people have often pointed to when comparing the newspaper and music industries is that many people are still prepared to buy songs legally even though they can frequently be downloaded free. According to NewspaperDeathWatch, it is the artists themselves who "drove transformation" and persuaded their fans that their music was worth paying for, and made clear the damage they cause to the industry by downloading free songs. "It's up to reporters and the emerging breed of online news organizations like Talking Points Memo to convince their fans to fork over a few pennies to consume their stuff." People feel guilty about getting free music from their favourite artists, maybe people's consciences can be evoked over consuming newspaper content free if it is damaging their favourite journalists?

The value of newspaper content

So is a return to paid content the answer for newspapers? Not everybody thinks so. New York Times op-ed contributor Michael Kinsley compares the amount of money to be made from charging online NYT readers of the $2 a month to that currently made from advertising and circulation, and as the paid online sum is so much smaller he concludes that "$2 a month is not going to save newspapers." But with more and more readers moving online, and advertising and circulation revenue dropping, it is something worth considering. Advertising can still be used to generate additional income, as long as it remains relatively unobtrusive and inoffensive.

A world-wide, newspaper-wide paid content system would undoubtedly be complicated and costly to set up, but if it could provide the vital extra income needed to save the industry, it might well be worth it. A system that allows people to move freely between publications in the way that they can now, and encourages newspapers to link freely to one another so as to make best use of the advantages of the web, is essential. And hopefully readers will not only think that newspaper content is worth paying a small amount for, but learn to value this content more.