Results matching “middle east two”

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 65% 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

Pearson is launching a Middle Eastern edition of its business newspaper the Financial Times to meet "increasing reader and advertiser demand for global business news in the Gulf following its emergence as a major international finance and business center," according to Brand Republic. It will be available tomorrow.

"This edition is a further step in our successful global strategy, reflecting the rapidly deepening interface between the region and the international economy," said John Ridding, chief executive of the Financial Times. ""It will provide a further boost to our global circulation and a quality advertising vehicle for businesses seeking to reach senior decision makers in the Middle East."

The staff will consist of Roula Khalaf, Middle East editor in London, and three full-time journalists in Abu Dhabi: Andrew England, Middle East correspondent, James Drummond, Gulf News editor, and Simeon Kerr, Gulf business correspondent. Other journalists will be recruited in Qatar and Saudi Arabia. 

FT already has a network of offices in Cairo, Tehran, Jerusalem and Beirut, and they hope to expand with Kerr based in Dubai.

FT also hopes to gain more coverage on the Middle East on its website, as well as revamp the webpage so that is has more video and audio content.

Former Daily Telegraph editor Martin Newland launched UAE newspaper The National about two weeks ago, thus making the FT's Middle East edition the second national title to launch in the area this month.

Source: Brand Republic

Last week, Abu Dhabi's first English-language daily, The National, debuted in UAE newsstands and sold out, carrying more advertising than planned.

Editor-in-chief Martin Newland, former Daily Telegraph editor, said the paper "has struggled to keep up with demand from readers and advertisers," and has "sold out two days running."

Newland hopes to increase the paper's frequency from six to seven days a week and a daily circulation between 80,000 and 90,000.

The first edition featured an exclusive interview with Tony Blair, now the Middle East envoy for the United Nations, European Union, US and Russia.

"The printing has been very difficult," Newland said. "We found ourselves without press capacity, so in the true style of things over here they bought a press for millions of dollars from India and flew it in bit by bit."

The National is funded by the Abu Dhabi government. Newland has hired a number of former colleagues to join the editorial team, including ex-Telegraph foreign editor Alan Philps as associate editor and former Sunday Telegraph New York correspondent James Langton as news features editor.


Source: Press Gazette

This Thursday, The National, Abu Dhabi's first English-language daily, will debut in UAE
newsstands "to bring new standards of journalism to the region," according to reporter Lynne Roberts.

The broadsheet will be printed six days a week and feature 80 pages of national and international news. It has a team of 200 locally and internationally recruited journalists and 30 foreign correspondents.

Editor-in-chief Martin Newland, former Daily Telegraph editor, described the paper as the country's "first truly quality national and international newspaper."

"Content will be designed to reflect our readers' concerns in relation to the national character of the UAE, in the context of an interconnected world," he said.

The paper also has a website.

Source: Arabian Business through IFRA Executive News Service, Brand Republic

Editor announces plans to shake up the editing culture in Washington newsroom

Why is the content for online journalism different than print or broadcast? And why are journalists confused about what work should be entered in which contest?

The assumption that text, photos and videos are merely the "same content" online as they are in print is part of the mindset that has helped cripple U.S. paper's online efforts. The change in thinking has been considerable in recent years, but these paradigms still surface in the award season.

The monopoly on information is no longer ours alone. The business models for monopolistic control over distribution and eyeballs is busted, too.  That much we can agree on now.

Still we see comments from photographers that somehow wished that online worked like a medium they know already.

But why are we segregating what we do for print versus what we do with the Internet? Why isn't the BOP (Best of Photojournalism) Web video judged against/with video produced for TV? Aren't they the same product?

- Will Seberger"> posted on Wired Journalists

This thinking is understandable, but unproductive. No, Web video is a different media experience in a different environment, completely. We can succeed first by serving small screens with sticky content than reproducing a cinema-experience for one-time consumption.

The assumption that photos need to run larger online or videos work better as full screen on the Web is old-line print and broadcaster thinking. In fact, chunky text, small images and user-scalable video windows work much better online.

Web video is not Television!

That is a seminar topic I have been delivering for two years now around the world. Why have so many editors and publishers been looking at the wrong models for Web video journalism? Because they haven't come to terms with the dynamics and story potential of the new tools and user expectations yet.

e.g. YouTube is the model for the experience and look at how smartly YouTube lets users scale up a video when THEY want to. Embed it share it, group it, rate it. How many of you let your users do this with your media?
The Web also makes excellent use of is a thumbnail gallery interfaces. Click on a thumb and get a slideshow or larger image. Done. Users get this.

If you are producing the same content and merely porting over - you can't succeed. Online works differently, the media user is in charge of the experience.

The Web is about 'now, not six months from now - when you decide to post up your 'Emmy award-winning' video project.  Who will be watching that work then? Contest judges? Maybe. But probably only if you tell them about it. Full-screen-only, bandwidth hogging HD video projects - who is that for - to impress the board of directors? The shareholders? The Pulitzer committee? Ask first - whose ego are you serving?

Placing undue emphasis on the work that is, let's be brutally honest, produced to impress primarily other journalists (AKA the stuff we produce to enter in contests) is harming our transition to meeting consumers' expectations. Why is it that we think that the big, time-consuming, far-flung, High-Def, special-section work is the best work we can accomplish?

Whenever I hear journalists praise the design or Flash quality of a big, expensive "award-winning" online project, I first go to the reader comments. l often see a huge disconnect from the people producing the work and the people who are supposed to be consuming it.

You'll be lucky to find many reader comments at all for some of the most celebrated stuff. Sometimes you'll be lucky to even find where the comments section is at all. Again, the complete opposite of the the YouTube video experience. If you are not connecting with your community then you are producing journalism in a vacuum and, tell me, why should that work win any awards at all?

We are in a transition and transitions are bumpy and disorienting. Getting to the point where newsrooms are producing everyday multimedia is the only foundation I know of that will accomplish the goals of getting to the promised land and still be able to produce a range of stories including doing large-scale projects.

It's just that in my world, the super-excellent, nine-month enterprise piece should run first online WHILE it is being reported and then perhaps a year later as a documentary film at Sundance. And in between the story gets better, it gains traction in the community because of the online engagement. Why can't newsrooms think like this? Awards? How about a chance to win an Oscar with your visual journalism? Hmm, Pulitzer or Oscar next year . . . . Is that enough drive for you to produce a new brand of "award-winning journalism?"
OK, looking forward to seeing you on the red carpet .

--
Robb Montgomery is the CEO and founder of Visual Editors. He has worked as a visual editor for the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune and currently advises editors in the Middle East, Asia, U.K., Europe and North America on techniques for digital journalism.

His blog: www.robbmontgomery.com

In light of the ombudsman's gradual disappearance from the world of journalism, Jeffrey Dvorkin has moved to defend the necessity of the position, in an article published yesterday entitled "Journalism's Last Line of Defense." Dvorkin was the ombudsman at NPR from 2000 to 2006.

Dvorkin discusses in detail his experience as ombudsman during the Second Intifada in the Middle East, a time during which NPR was heavily criticized by listeners for pro-Palestinian reporting. Although he acknowledges the rigors of the job, he suggests that having the position of ombudsman gave the NPR much more credibility.

We have discussed previously the necessity of having an ombudsman for both print and online publications, particularily to uphold a publication’s credibility.  

Interaction with readers helps the news organization understand how their reporting is being perceived by a wider public. According to Dvorkin, talking to a real person within the organization also helped to placate some enraged listeners following inevitably polarizing coverage of the Middle East.

"Overall, I think that -- for NPR -- having an ombudsman to catch the flak was better than a defensive silence, which is how many other news organizations dealt with criticism of their coverage," Dvorkin said.

Dvorkin contends that most newspapers view the position as a luxury that is not cost-effective. However, a study conducted by the Guardian in London showed that the cost of litigation actually drops whenever there is an ombudsman on staff, by as much as 30% a year.  

A Google Earth video tour of the extreme mobile journalism reporting being produced from the middle of the ARC 2007 race. (Play video)

 

By Robb Montgomery

German journalist and competitive yachtsman, Joerdis Guzman is filing daily multimedia reports for a Berlin newspaper from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Using nothing more than a laptop, a point and shoot camera and a balky Iridium satellite phone, Guzman files daily multimedia reports from the scene of the world’s largest transocean race.

France 24, an international news network based in France, backed by France’s leading commercial broadcasters, has made a worldwide deal with Nokia to offer an on-demand mobile service. The service will be available in French, English or Arabic.

FT.com has appointed its first head of video, Richard Edgar, formerly editor for Europe, Middle East and Africa Reuters Video. Yet another sign that video is the next big thing for newspapers.

The 2nd Arab Free Press Forum, to be held in Beirut, Lebanon, next month, will provide an overview of press developments in the Arab world, from the latest government policies to case studies of newspapers that combine editorial independence with commercial success.

Actually, the paperless newspaper is no longer around the corner: it’s already here and now, as web-only news publications flower, whether launched by pros or in collaboration with citizens. The question is whether – or when – this will apply to major newspapers. Business Week and Fortune investigate.

 The Pakistani federal government has banned the sale of the June 2007 issue of Octane and initiated a case against the fashion magazine under the Press and Publication Act.  The strong reaction by the federal government spawns from the issue’s cover, which features a nude picture depicting a scantily clad Adam and Eve with the caption “Apple, bone of content.”