April 2008 Archives

The Online Journalism Blog (OJB) has created the European News Interactivity Index, adapting Joanna Geary's analysis of interactivity on UK business news websites to newspapers across Europe.

The index itself is interactive; in a feature created by Nicolas Kayser-Brill, users can compare head-to-head the interactivity ranking of different European countries (go here to see the tool). The results look like the image to the left of a comparison between BBC News and El Pais.

The European Index conserves most of Geary's original interactivity indicators, including RSS, Bookmarking, Twitter, and easy to find contact information. By morphing into a group blog, the OJB has recruited contributors from various countries across the continent. In order to expand the service, it is continuing to invite further contributions and analysis about any European paper.

Source: Online Journalism Blog through IFRA Executive News Service  

Press freedom appears to be shrinking in eastern Europe, as evidenced by a series of recent laws constraining free speech rights.  

The latest repressive legislation comes out of Slovakia, where a new media law, set to come into practice on June 1, will give anyone named in an article "sweeping rights to an equally prominent rebuttal," reports the Economist.  Media watchdogs have condemned the law and Slovakian newspapers are protesting by publishing issues with blank, black-framed front pages.

Right-of-reply rules are common in some European nations, but Slovakia's is the most punitive. While the Slovakian government insists the law will make the media more responsible, the concern is the potential exploitation of the law by Slovakia's Prime Minister, Robert Fico, who has a tumultuous relationship with the media.  

Bulgaria and Romania as well have laws on the books that criminalize defamation of public figures. In 2007, 100 cases went to court in Bulgaria for attacks against "honor and dignity," up from 60 the year before. And as of last year, Romania's constitutional court restored legislation making "insult" illegal, although press freedom is also curtailed by the ownership of mainstream media by politically active tycoons.   

Moreover, the annual report of Freedom House, a New York-based lobby group, shows the sharpest decline in media freedom in the world in eastern Europe, behind Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Granted the situation is not as bad as in Russia, where Vladimir Putin shut down a paper after it ran a scandalous story on his love life. It is though a worrisome trend in a region has prided itself on its newfound freedom.

Source: Economist   

When the Telegraph recently posted a sizable online traffic surge for the month of March, the paper attributed the success to better new stories and successful multimedia strategy.

That may be part of the explanation, but the Telegraph figures are also an example of the imprecise nature of online traffic measurement. According to MediaGuardian, audit certificates published by the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCe) reveal that the site switched its internal measurement tool between February and March this year, replacing HBX SiteCatalyst with WebTrends 7.

A source said that the site had been under-reporting its figures for sometime because certain page views were not being recorded. Richard Foan, the ABCe managing director, did not directly comment on the Telegraph's audit but confirmed that a publisher could be under-reporting its traffic if it had not tagged all the pages on its site.

Edward Roussel, the digital editor for the Telegraph Media Group, maintained however that the different measurement system had little effect on traffic figures because "both systems use the same methodology."

"The old measurement system missed some users, as did the new system. But the new system still showed rapid growth in user numbers," Roussel said. "There was leakage on both systems because we weren't able to tag everything with WebTrends during March."

Source: MediaGuardian

Northcliffe-owned daily newspapers in the East Midlands are pooling together resources to publish a new regional business website, thisisbusiness-eastmidlands.co.uk.

Participating papers The Evening Telegraph in Derby, Leicester Mercury, Lincolnshire Echo, Nottingham Evening Post and The Sentinel in Stoke will all provide business stories to the site in an effort to give readers a complete picture of the business events across the region.
 
The main focus is local, allowing users to search stories by region and providing access to a special commercial property section. The site, however, plans to balance out frequent updates on East Midland business news with a dose of national and international news, which is in line with the recent caution by a Washington Post business columnist that too much local news can be unsophisticated.

Source: HoldtheFrontPage

Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post business columnist Steve Pearlstein has a word of caution for newspapers that are planning to jump on the hyperlocal bandwagon: "Too much local news is not sophisticated."

Speaking at the Society of American Business Editors and Writers annual conference, Pearlstein maintained that while local news was important, it can't come at the expense of a business section.

"Every newspaper should have a business section. If your business page is not as good as USA Today's business page, there ought to be a good reason for that."

Pearlstein questioned why editors would choose to run copy written by a "young journalist writing about a local news story" in lieu of a syndicated business column from a well-respected source.
 
"You may feel good as an editor because you're localizing a story... and you have done the best with the resources you have, but it is a mistake to confuse what you can do with the resources you have with what your readers want and need," Pearlstein said. "And what they want and need is a single source every day, basic comprehensive file of news and analysis from a credible source in convenient form."

He also offered up an assessment of the newspaper industry and more specifically the business news field, contending that "there are too many newspapers." In Pearlstein's view, a reduction in the number of newspapers will lead to improvements in business journalism because, in a hyper-competitive journalism market, business sections are the first to go in the name of cost-cutting.
 
"Things will probably get worse [for newspapers] before they get better, but they will get better," Pearlstein said. And they will get better because people will pay for news. Not everyone. We won't have as many customers as before, I suppose. But we will have customers, and they will pay more."

Sources: Poynter Romenesko,  Talking Biz News

A FAITHful voice blog details "The 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism, a step-by-step approach in dealing with the changing landscape of journalism by integrating the professional with the amateur."

1) Opening up to public comment: This gives the newspaper an interactivity and enhances the news story with things the reporter may have missed or with additional sources. 

2) "Citizens add-on approach:" Citizens can add personal experiences or information to a story. These can be made into a side bar.

3) Open source reporting: Citizens can be part of the reporting process by researching, interviewing, reporting, and writing.

4) "Citizen Bloghouse:" Invite "outstanding and prominent bloggers to blog for your news website." Then your news site will not only have quality blogs, but your online traffic will  probably increase. 

5) "Newsroom citizens transparency blog:" An online ombudsmen who will respond faster to you.

6) "The stand-alone citizen-journalism site - Edited Version:" For more localized and specific news, let citizens blog with minimal editing.

7) "The stand-alone citizen-journalism site - Unedited version:" Citizens have complete freedom to blog and moderate themselves

8) "Add a print edition:"  Publish the best stories and photos in different sections, like a newspaper. This may motivate the bloggers to work harder.

9) "The hybrid:" Both professionals and citizen journalists work together on news website content.

10) "Integrating citizen and pro journalism under one roof:" Both professionals and citizen journalists "work alongside each other to complement the content of the paper."

11) "Wiki-journalism": Horizontal structure where everyone is an editor and journalist.

A FAITHful voice concedes that these layers are truly ideal and questions if they will work in reality. A citizen journalist site Scribblesheet had shut down earlier this month because of financial troubles.

Source: A FAITHful voice

Next Monday, 24-page Indonesian newspaper Koran Jakarta will be available at newsstands with a target of selling 80,000 copies.

The paper is published by PT Berita Nusantara and will have a special economics section.

"We're not head to head with any other newspapers because ours is unique. It is a morning newspaper with more news on the economy," said chief editor Marthen Selamet Susanto.

According to Selamet, 40% of the paper will focus on business.

"We have a concept and we offered it to businessmen. There are at least 10 businessmen providing us with capital, but they don't determine our editorial," he said. Instead, Selamet says the paper belongs to its reporters.

The newspaper's readership would be people "with salaries above Rp 1 million with at least a high school education," according to Selamet.

The newspaper will be available in Greater Jakarta, South Sumatra's Palembang, and West Java's Bandung.

Source: JakartaPost.com through IFRA Executive News Service

Last week, Nebraskan newspaper the Grand Island Independent used live blogging tool CoverItLive after the relaunch of its site for a live Q&A session between readers and web staff. It remained available for an additional two days because of its popularity.

The feature was advertised in the print edition of the newspaper and as a link on the site's homepage. It garnered a lot of reader feedback, including reports of glitches in the new site, which were quickly fixed, according to Stephanie Romanski, web editor of the Independent.

"The whole errors issue surprised me and was an unexpected bonus to holding the Q&A. I mostly expected either 'Love it/Hate it responses or a lot of 'I can't find...' questions. I think we impressed some readers by being able to respond to their issues so quickly," said Romanski.

The Independent may be experimenting with other tools for sports and political coverage and for setting up a regular weekly chat with staff.

"I believe that newspapers that embrace the web and the awesome and often free tools available out there will be the newspapers that make it through the current slump the industry is experiencing and will thrive in the future," Romanski remarked.

Source: Journalism.co.uk through IFRA Executive News Service

The Norwegian press is experimenting with innovative Google news mash-ups and online databases, an effort that is spearheaded by, among others, Epsen Anderson, who is charged with modernizing NRK 's (Norway's public broadcaster) flagship program Brennpunkt,  the Norwegian equivalent of Panorama.

Andersen, who regularly designs new technology methods for "doing journalism", feels that "computer programming is also journalism." He is a strong advocate for making programming know-how a necessary and commonplace skill in a newsroom. 

His latest project for NRK is Politikerdatabasen (see image), a database that currently contains information on all members of parliament in Norway and will expand to include information on the country's 11,000 local politicians in May, reports Journalism.co.uk's Kristine Lowe.
 
"I think it is absolutely key to bring programmers into the newsrooms so they can get involved in journalistic projects at an early stage," Andersen said. "Programmers can create solutions to process large quantities of information, e.g. from public sources, and present it in an engaging and orderly manner."

Before working with NRK, Andersen created several high-profile online databases and mash-ups for local newspaper Budstikka, discovering along the way that maps which touched on issues close to readers found the most success. Examples included a map of parking fines showing the parking lots with the highest fines, and one detailing which parts of the region were troubled by snails killing off plants, a concern for gardeners.

Andersen is not the only Norwegian on the cutting edge of multimedia journalism; two journalists at VG were recently honored for a complex multimedia project focused on domestic homicide.

Source: Journalism.co.uk

During the week, Florida's St. Petersburg Times will drop its stand alone business section but will combine its Sunday business section with the paper's metro section.

The paper will have a full page for business news, but will cut its stock listings and use three-quarters of a page for market data, modeled after the Associated Press. The bottom of the market data page will be used for jumps and briefs.

The St. Petersburg Times will also cut its Floridian features section during the week and combine it with the metro section.

The changes is expected to occur with the May 19 paper.

Source: Talking Biz News through LA Times News Alert

Twitter, which Jeff Jarvis calls the "next evolutionary step in blogging," has been put to good use for a variety of different types of reporting. Add sports coverage to the list, thanks to an initiative from local UK newspaper The Evening Leader.

The Leader used Twitter to provide live coverage of Wrexham FC's April 26 home match against Accrington Stanley, reports Journalism.co.uk. The tweets, texted every few minutes by deputy editor Martin Wright, appeared both on a widget on the Leader website and on the paper's Wrexham Twitter account.

"I go to as many Wrexham home games as I can, but inevitably I end up missing some," Wright said. "When I'm at work this can be a bit of a problem because I want to know the score and what's happening all the time - not just when the final whistle goes."

Source: Journalism.co.uk through IFRA Executive News Service

BBC's first phase of integrating their news operation across media was completed on Monday with a common newsrooms in which journalists from the corporation's television news service started to work with their colleagues from radio and television news bulletins.

This move is due to a  "smaller than expected lisence fee settlement," according to Press Gazette journalist Martin Stabe, which made BBC want to "reduce duplication of its newsgathering operations."

"The number of roles has been reduced significantly because we've had to make these big savings," said BBC head of newsroom Peter Horrocks. "We've introduced some multimedia roles, but as people develop multimedia skills and once we've got all the platforms sitting alongside each other they can work together most effectively."

There is a a centralized "Media Wire" desk, which monitors audio and video feeds, then transfers stories to the most appropriate outlets, and there is also a centralized planning desk that controls assignments. There will also be a senior editor who will be the "multimedia editor," who will coordinate the different media and mediate conflicts. Each desk will also have a "web conversion producer," who will be responsible for extending stories that were originally produced for online platforms.

The next steps include integrating journalists from the BBC's international news channel, BBC World News, and those responsible for the text-based sections of the BBC News website.

In June, BBC Online journalists will join the converged newsroom, then the online news operation will split into two sections: one will cover world news and move to the second floor of the newsroom with the BBC World News television team, and the other will be the UK operation on the first floor, producing domestic radio and television bulletins.

Most journalists will "continue to work primarily in the media that they have traditionally worked," says Horrocks, "though over time, producers will increasingly work across television, radio and online as staff are put through a training program."

Source: Press Gazette through IFRA Executive News Service

Figures released on April 28 by the Audit Bureau of Circulations show a 3.6% drop in U.S. newspaper circulation over a six-month period from October 2007 to March 2008, reports Reuters.

Reflecting the readers' move to online news, most of the top 25 American papers experienced circulation reduction, although Gannett Co. and the Wall Street Journal reported gains of less than one percent. 

According to blogger Alan Mutter, the figure represents sales of around 50 million, the lowest level since 1949 when newspapers moved 50.9 million copies. The latest report also shows that Sunday papers, which have thus far been fairly resistant to circulation drops, were more affected than weekday papers, experiencing a decline of 4.5%. 

Why the circulation fall? In addition to online migration, the lower figure is also partially the fault of newspapers, who have tried to cut costs by no longer shipping to far away locations.

Mutter also brings up PR-related issue: "Will the tailspin in circulation and ad sales be accelerated by the growing accumulation of bad press about the press?" It is a legitimate concern given the publication of doom and gloom stories like Advertising Age's latest cover story, "The Newspaper Death Watch."

Sources: Reuters, Reflections of a Newsosaur

With elite papers, such as the New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times cutting staff, the few "No. 2" papers left are struggling to survive.

A No. 2 paper "usually keeps the dominant daily on its toes," writes Washington Post columnist Howard Kurtz, by reporting overlooked stories, which are typically more popular in poorer neighborhoods.

The only major cities left with head-to-head competition, excluding those where two papers have the same owner or share business operations with federal approval, are New York, Washington, Chicago, and perhaps Los Angeles, according to Kurtz. The Cincinnati Post is the latest second-place paper to close, when its operations shut down last year.

The Boston Herald's, Boston's No. 2 paper, daily circulation shrunk to 203,000 and on Sunday, it fell to 113,000, in comparison with the Boston Globe's 384,000. The Herald only has 10 city reporters left in addition to those in the feature, business, and sports sections.

"It's almost as if Boston doesn't have a place for its second daily anymore," Boston magazine columnist Joe Keohane wrote, "particularly one that features a constant parade of pervs, solons, swindlers, bums and punks."

Kevin Convey, the Herald's editor says, "The Globe is more likely to write a story about how some government program is going to assist the poor and downtrodden. We're more likely to suggest it's a boondoggle that ought to be bounced off the face of the Earth."

Tabloids are more irreverent and prone to report on big names and scandals (a headline for former governor Mitt Romney's withdrawal from the presidential race was "MITT HAPPENS.") But with blogs unconcerned about newsprint costs, there appears to be little room left for tabloids. And with cities such as Boston becoming more "upscale," it is a question whether tabloids are desired anymore.

"Tabloids in some cases say what other papers only think," says Convey. But, "a lot of people find tabloids to be beneath them. In Boston, where the air is a bit more rarefied and you're closer to Harvard, some people have a problem with tabloids. I think there's a certain nobility in tabloids."

"I don't think it's that Massachusetts has become snootier. The old Herald readers are just leaving the state. The blue-collar exodus has affected the paper," says Herald columnist Howie Carr.

The Herald depends on street sales for three-quarters of its circulation. It shut down its Washington bureau, has old presses that break down, and a 125 person staff that struggles to cover the suburbs or out-of-town reports. Moreover, the Herald plans to outsource its printing and move out of its headquarters into rented space. However, it does not plan on changing its snarky tone.

"I don't think it's time to give up the ghost," Convey says.

The Globe, which won a Pulitzer for arts criticism this month, is not thriving either. The paper, has already cut jobs and accepted buyouts. Its only remaining foreign and domestic correspondents are in Washington.

"We're facing the same challenges everyone else is, trying to figure out what the future of the newspaper is going to look like," says Globe editor Martin Baron. "We have become more local. We have significantly scaled back what we do outside the Boston area. We're realists here. We realize the business is changing."

Source: WashingtonPost.com

The Local Media Group has published eight issues of the Burton Local News, a new monthly free newspaper in Staffordshire, and is planning on launching more editions due to the paper's success.

The exact locations for the new papers is unknown, but Doug Price, who co-owns Local Media Group with Kevin Curtis, revealed that "the five-year business plan could see a total of ten new monthly titles."

The title had an initial print run of 33,000 copies, but it has now increased by 2,000 copies because of its popularity. Readers are also able to download an electronic version of the paper on Burton Local News' website.

Price and Curtis began the Local Media Group last year when they decided to combine their experiences at local newspapers for a new business venture. The Burton Local News is produced by a team of ten in Derby, but receives its content from local councils, the police, freelancers, and volunteer photographers and writers in the town.

"It's all voluntary and freelance which keeps cost down," says Price. "But we would never carry any overtly political stuff or spin - and we're not trying to rival the Burton Mail or Burton Trader."

Source: Hold the Front Page

PicLens is a plug-in that transforms browsers such as Firefox into "a 3D environment where you can search, drag, and zoom around thousands of images and videos across the web," according to Alec Jeong from Cooliris, the company that developed PicLens.

Journalist can use this plug-in to search and view thousands of online photos and videos instantly instead of browsing and clicking through web pages and search engines.

The photos can be viewed through thumbnails or on a full screen and can the page the image is on can be automatically accessed. In the future, PicLens plans to allow users to save images directly from the plug-in and to view the images on the users' local hard drives.

PicLens is a free plug-in and available for Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari. The "3D Wall" interface is available now for Firefox and IE and will soon be available for Safari.

Source: Journalism.co.uk

Last week, Thomson Reuters established an ethics code that forbids its staff from using blogs for internal communications and from communicating with competitors.

Mentioning the company in a personal blog is allowed, but blogging about "confidential info and company clients" is not. Also, a personal blog should not be used as a platform to express differences with co-workers, the company, or those that Thomas Reuters does business with. Furthermore, the staff cannot take gifts.

The code includes suggestions to make sure that people nearby will not be able to see employees' laptop screens, such as: "a nondescript bag will draw less attention than a traditional laptop bag."

Thomson Reuters also has a section devoted to fair competition. It states that employees who attend a conference, trade show, association event, or meeting  should "limit informal contact to the extent possible and keep a written summary of any discussions that may have taken place."

Source: Paidcontent

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

The Sunderland Echo has teamed up with local commercial radio station Magic to give radio listeners an opportunity to come up with headlines in a weekly competition.

Every Friday morning Steve Colman, radio presenter and Echo columnist, gives listeners a teaser from one of the day's stories, so that they can come up with a witty headline.

"It gives us chance to say what's in the paper that day and it's a nice way to work hand-in-hand with the station," said deputy editor Richard Ord.

Some of the entries are printed in Saturday's Echo and the Echo's editorial team decides if their headline or the listener's headline is better. As of now, the radio listeners are winning with a score of 11 to the Echo's 8.

"It's a great marketing tool and gets the readers' names in the paper," said Ord. "It's just for fun, no prizes, but it's causing much consternation among the subs.

Ord adds that the Echo plans on working with the radio station on many more projects.

Source: Hold the Front Page

Earlier this month, Mayhill Fowler, a citizen journalist, had reported comments made by U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama, describing rural, white voters as "bitter," to Huffington Post's blog "Off the Bus." Guardian America editor Michael Tomasky believes there is a need for blogging rules and questions the ethics of citizen journalism, while Jeff Jarvis of the blog Buzzmachine has similar beliefs as Robert Niles that "nothing is off-the-record anymore" and that citizen journalists are now necessary.

Jarvis: "Openness for all"
Jarvis begins by saying that rules are "corrupting" for journalism. Journalists should not engage in off-the-record talks and list unnamed sources because they should not help public officials hide anything from the public. Though some exclusives may be lost, there will be more stories with more openness and more reporting, "and politicians will learn that anything and everything they say and do can (and should) be reported," according to Jarvis. 

Furthermore, Fowler knew Obama's remarks "would be newsworthy," says Jarvis, and though she is an Obama supporter, she chose to let the public know about those remarks so that they could form their own opinions. Also, even if Fowler did not blog for the Huffington Post, she could have reported the story through YouTube or other platforms.

Essentially, journalism is evolving, says Jarvis, with coverage expanding from journalists, witnesses, readers, bloggers, etc.  "Journalism becomes less of a product and more of a process," he remarks.

Tomasky: "Call them "witnesses" and drop the whole conceit that they're journalists"
Though he embraces blogs, mostly for elevating debate, Tomasky cannot see the importance of knowing every single word public people say, since people misspeak and say things they don't really mean.

He argues that though "rules" may cause corruption and secrets, anonymity is sometimes the only way a source with important information will come forward, for example, the Pentagon Papers and intelligence assessments about Iraq before the war

Also, he concedes that most journalists would not be for "hiding" things from the public, but they would favor verifying something before it is published, which is "scarcely complicity in secret-keeping," but rather,  "just being responsible."

As for the Obama incident, Tomasky points out that Fowler got through the doors because she donated money to Obama's campaign, but "veteran journalists" were not allowed in the door. Had those journalists been allowed, they would not have kept those remarks secret.

Jarvis counters, "There's also a difference between verifying such a tip with reporting - which we'll all agree is necessary - and playing that tape-recording, which itself was the verification anyone needed. Obama's words and voice spoke for themselves."

He says that these "witnesses," or citizen journalists, now start the story with papers expanding on them and doing more in-depth research. Because veteran journalists may not be allowed through the door, they must rely on "witnessing," which "will still add up to journalism in the end."

Tomasky remarks that "it's a little sneaky and sleazy to be a citizen ... and then getting to be a journalist for the purposes of writing it up."

Source: Guardian.co.uk

Early February, The Capital Times announced that would reduce its print to and shift most of its content to its website. On Saturday, the paper published its final printed edition with the headline "Beam Us Up."

WISC-TV reported that The Capital Times is down to a daily circulation of 17,000.

"(The circulation decline) really brought into focus for us a conversation about irrelevancy. How can we still be relevant if we have so few printed copies, particularly in a market of this size," said editor Paul Fanlund.

Its free publication will print twice weekly distributed within the Wisconsin State Journal with about 48 pages of in-depth stories, analysis, and commentary on Wednesdays with a circulation of about 80,000 and a revamped Rhythm arts and entertainment insert on Thursdays, with a distribution of at least 115,000.

"The sad part is being able to hold that newspaper in your hand, which for me, is going to be a big loss, personally," said Dave Zweifel, the newspaper's editor emeritus.

The Capital Times, printing since December 13, 1917, is believed to be the first daily newspaper to "make this kind of a transition to the Web," according to WISC-TV. "If it's successful, it's likely other struggling papers will follow suit."

For more information, visit our partner blog SFN.

Source: WISC-TV, Madison.com

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 Dan Bogler, Managing Editor of the Financial Times in the UK.

Click here to view all interviews in this series. Other titles include The New York Times, the Guardian, Fairfax Media, the Hindustan Times, etc. (full list at the bottom of the interview).


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?

We see ourselves as a news organization and we're becoming much more agnostic about our distribution channels. We're becoming much more interested in creating relevant information for our readers and much less interested in how it gets to the readers. Pearson, the parent company, clearly is an education company with a print publishing arm and an information division, which includes the FT. At the FT level, we consider ourselves to be a financial news business more than a newspaper. Our mission is to be the gold standard for global business news in print and online - and in any other formats.

- 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?

Largely but not completely. 10 years from now - 2014 may be slightly too short a time frame - we will still have printed newspapers, because people like reading  things in print. Newspapers, just like the book, are convenient to read in places you can't do with a computer; but my belief is that a lot of what will be printed will be analysis, comment, analysis and opinion. The actual news will be more or less online or in other more timely formats. In a way the FT will split in two, with FT.com for all the news that's breaking and some immediate reactions and  opinion. The more considered analysis will be almost an Economist-type publication. Maybe it wouldn't have to be broadsheet anymore, it could be tabloid or even magazine format. To put it very crudely, you'd have all the news online, and you'd have 12 pages of Martin Wolf the next day in print, and all the editorials, columnists, features and more.

- 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?

There's one thing that's old and one thing that's new. What's old and part of the continuum is that traditional companies are going online. Our journalists are now fully integrated and write online and in print. I'm sure that in 2 years time they'll all be carrying video cameras. We've gone from zero videos website to over 100 per month in the last 18 months. That's part of the continuum: it's us doing the same thing in different distribution channels.

What's new is the blogosphere, citizen journalists and the idea that anyone - people who are not qualified journalists, either experts in a narrow field or just interested citizens - can start a blog or website and distribute it. For the FT, you would think it's negative in the sense that there's more news and opinion and more competitors. In fact, that's not really true, it almost enhances the position of leading media brands for several reasons. One is we are trusted, people believe the news they read with us. Secondly, we select and edit, which becomes an increasingly crucial function as there is more information out there. The more 'over-informed' people are, the more likely people who want to know what's actually going on will turn to a few sources that tell them what s actually important. That's what professional newspapers do really well.

- 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?

I do believe in their increasingly active role of users: very often readers are more informed than us. If you look at an old format like the letters page in the newspaper, the amount of expertise that our readers have, who are often professionals in the City, is just incredible. They know more about it in certain aspects than our journalists. That's why we get CEOs, academics, lawyers, heads of accountancy firms and more writing in to us to say what's actually happening. They can do this online with comments or take part in Q&As, or print their views in the pages of the FT and FT.com. That sort of content is very helpful. We also have a function for any user to comment on the website's stories.

Is it a threat? Sure, to some extent. But as long as it's happening on our site or in the pages of our newspaper, it's been bundled, monitored, checked for quality and therefore is important. We're not going to turn into a place where we just repeat hundreds of readers' letters and have no journalists of our own. It's more of an opportunity for our journalists to become more informed and build contacts among readers. And it's amazing that all these readers are willing to give this information for free.

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

I don't know. That's a really hard one. I might say it's already past.

There's so much more information out there and it's so much harder for companies to hide information. Take the Northern Rock story, which was broken by BBC journalists, and there was a bank run as a result. It's harder to hide information. The idea that journalists have to do long-term, deep, undercover investigations where they reveal something months later - I don't think it works like that anymore. Journalists still have scoops and still break important stories, but it tends to be in a much shorter time frame. It tends to be a single development that they're breaking rather than a long series of connections.

But frankly, newspapers and media organizations are under pressure. It's hard for us to send a journalist or a group of journalists off three months investigating something - and if nothing works that's a shame but nevermind. We don't have resources to let people go off and do that for such a long time. I think The Golden Age of journalists working undercover, developing sources and breaking big scandals is less likely; but revealing news that people don't want out there, on a short term basis, uncovering a scandal and having it come to light, that's more likely. As soon as a tiny thing breaks now, it gets distributed so quickly that it's hard to see a journalist working undercover for a long time and gradually piecing something together without having it go public much earlier in the process.


Stay tuned for more interviews in our series. Among the other titles that have been asked to participate in these interviews are:

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

Newspapers are currently very good at text and photography.

But, said Chet Rhodes, Assistant Managing Editor for News Video at washingtonpost.com: "I think of the news organization of the future as being a stool with three legs, the third leg is video. Right now we're all learning how to build the third leg of that stool so we can sit on it."

Will video ever be more important than text on the Post's site? No, he said. But the combination of all three media will make the news organization stool stable.

The Post currently has 175 print reporters trained to shoot news videos. All training was done in-house, on the online side, with Rhodes and his team of three dedicated video staffers.

The reporters use handheld Canon AS 570IS cameras, about 50 of which are deployed across the various desks. On a typical day, washingtonpost.com can get 3-5 videos, although sometimes there are none. Washingtonpost.com also has a department for documentary, enterprise-type video, with staffers using Sony HDDV professional equipment.

So here are a few tips and strategies from Rhodes and the Washington Post for effective news video training and shooting.

Shooting and organization:
 
- At the beginning, in order to make people comfortable, "We're willing to accept 'bad' quality as long as the content is interesting," said Rhodes. Within three years though, he hopes to have 300 trained print journalists who produce high quality video.
- "We keep editing expertise here (at washingtonpost.com) because video doesn't appear in the newspaper," as editing for reporters remains a challenge and specialized skill.
- "We don't want reporters to try to shoot documentaries." One minute video interviews and a few simple shots of a breaking news scene are perfect.
- In fact, on the Web, videos featuring a standup reporter in TV fashion don't work.
- The "WP, WH, WN" rule: Videos should be introduced by a presentation of the outlet, in this case the Washington Post. Then comes the story and "WH" (what's happening). Lastly, reporters conclude videos by giving their insight on "what's next." "Our reporters can tell people what's next in a way that no television reporters can do," because for the most part they don't have the same deep knowledge as do newspaper reporters," said Rhodes. And few broadcasters can afford to have journalistic staffs comparable to those of newspapers.

Training:

- keep training on a voluntary basis. If the newsroom culture is open to the requirements of digital reporting, there will be many volunteers.
- the bulk of training isn't about teaching reporters to do good journalism: it's about them learning which stories are good for video. So reporters learn to pick up a camera on their own when they go on an assignment and file the videos.
- Print reporters come in for a hands-on, personable, four-hour training session. But importantly, this short session should be "the start of a conversation that lasts several years."
- Reassure reporters worried they'll miss out on traditional reporting: "if you feel you're going to miss something, don't do the video," Rhodes tells reporters. Video shouldn't come in the way of text reporting: "Let them decide that, give them the power."

Is video in itself currently profitable for the Post? He couldn't say, but video is costly to produce: consider that washingtonpost.com has a team of four dedicated staffers just for news videos, including Rhodes, as well as contracted shooters. Videos bought from the Associated Press and other outlets are also expensive.

However, looking at US industry standards, a typical video pre-roll ad brings the equivalent in revenue of 7-10 page views (typical pre-roll ad CPM is $20-50, compared to 2-5$ for a typical web Page).

Therefore, on paper, the future of newspaper Web video is viable. Up to newspapers to make the third leg sturdy.

These tips were gathered during the World Editors Forum study tour in the US. More videos, tips and interviews will be published soon.
 

Trinity Mirror will shut down eight free weekly newspapers in Derby and Peterborough due to a lack of a buyer for its Midlands division last year. 23 employees, six in editorial, will reportedly be made redundant.

Trinity reported that it had no plans to close any other publications in the division, including the Birmingham Mail and the Coventry Evening Telegraph.

"It is a very sad day when newspaper titles close and we looked hard at alternative measures to try and prevent this decision," said Steve Brown, the regional managing director of Trinity Mirror Midlands.

"However, the remaining titles in the Trinity Mirror Midlands marketplace remain strong and the management team is focused on continuing to grow audiences and products across the rest of the region."

The eight papers that will close are: the Derby Trader, the Peterborough Herald and Post, the Ilkeston Trader, Ripley Trader, Belper Bugle, Stamford Herald and Post, Whittlesey Standard, and Deepings Standard.

Source: Guardian.co.uk

Are newspapers always objective in their reporting, giving their readers all the perspectives  so that the readers can developed an informed opinion of their own? The Hoot, based in New Delhi, looked at four Indian newspapers, the Times of India, the Hindustan Times, the Hindu, and the Indian Express, from March 15 to April 7 to examine the coverage on the Tibetan protests in Lhasa and other places and the Chinese and international response.

The Hoot found that the Hindu and Indian Express were "narrower in their breadth of coverage and less inclined to give all sides of the story." The Indian Express had catchy headlines that supported Tibet, but did not cover other aspects of the story. The Hindu had less than half of the number of items on this story than the Times of India and was the only paper that did not have a story on Tibet everyday and that had a pro-China headline.

The four papers also shaped each story differently, evident on the March 17 headlines: Hindustan Times: "Unrest spreads to Sichuan.", Times Of India: "Lhasa lockdown, violence continues.", Indian Express: "Beijing declares  'peoples war', troops pour into Lhasa", and the Hindu: Lhasa returns to normal.

Examining the bias in each paper through their editorials, the Hoot found that The Hindu was "the most unequivocal one."  On March 26, they ran a story called "The question of Tibet," which included a statement on the violence by Tibetans in Lhasa, critics of China's handling, and a look at China's options. The story concluded with a negative slant toward New Delhi for giving the Dalai Lama and his followers too much freedom for their political activities in India. The Hindu also described the Tibetans as "rioters," while the other three papers called them "protesters."

The Indian Express was also explicit in its stance, by writing that democracies must allow peaceful protests on their soil in their Olympic Torch editorials on March 29 and April 5.

The Times of India "urged China to talk to the Dalai Lama, and urged India to stand up to Chinese threats and ensure that "Beijing respects the differences between the political systems in the two countries."

The Hindustan Times highlighted India's interests by reminding its readers that the conflict was taking place on Indian ground. It recommended "deepening Sino-Indian relations through economic engagement."

On April 14, The Hindu's readers editor acknowledged that the paper's coverage lacked balance, and "that there was a surprising absence of letters to the Editor on the issue," according to the Hoot. He quoted from readers' complaints on the type and amount of coverage on the issue, wrote his own thoughts on the situation, and gave the chief editor space to respond.

The Hoot also found that what is newsworthy for some, is not for others. For example, The Hindustan Times had three stories on the disruption of the Olympic torch ceremony in Greece on March 25, while the Times of India had two. The Hindu and Indian Express chose not to cover this incident.

A survey conducted earlier this year found that 70.8% of the respondents believed that stories were "sensationalized" by the media and that 57.1% felt there were "many obstacles to practicing value-based journalism. All news stories have an angle, but should newspapers be completely objective or should newspapers have strong opinions? "

Source: The Hoot through AMF
 

The Telegraph Media Group's websites had a big rise in traffic last month with almost 5 million more unique users from February to March, according to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations.

Guardian.co.uk was the most popular UK national newspaper website, though it fell from 19.5 million users in February to 18.7 million in March, a 4.18% drop. Year-on-year, it was up 35.92%.

Mail/Mail on Sunday gained 5.50% from February, moving from 17.0 million to almost 18 million unique users.

The Telegraph had a record 17 million unique users in March, a 38.69% month-on-month increase up from 12.2 million in February. It is now the third most popular UK national newspaper website, behind Guardian.co.uk and the Mail/Mail on Sunday.

The paper partly attributed to this success "to a string of major news stories" and "in depth coverage of the Budget for which it built a micro-site and commissioned exclusive videos on Telegraph TV," according to journalism.co.uk.

"March has been a tremendous month for us, with UK and global traffic more than doubling year on year," said Barry Flanigan, marketing director, Telegraph Media Group. "We are extremely pleased with the way our multimedia strategy has helped drive performance and our Budget coverage is a great example of this."

Mirror Group Digital debuted its ABCe figures this month with 4.4 million unique users for March.

For more statistics, go here and here.

Source: Guardian.co.uk, Journalism.co.uk

Digital Journal has relaunched its citizen journalism site, where regular contributors are now eligible for a share of the "moneypot," an initiative comprised of advertising revenue.

Being the first online community to share a portion of revenue to users distinguishes Digital Journal from competitors such as Newsvine and Norg.

The initiative applies to news stories instead of blogs, journals, groups, photos or video. Also, rather than the popularity of individual posts, the initiative calculates the number of news stories uploaded by each citizen journalists.

That system is interesting since it could encourage quantity instead of quality, but the Digital Journal board must approve the work of each citizen journalist who wants to be paid, in order to check spelling and grammar, as well as to judge the journalist's ability to "find and research relevant news,"  according to Journalism.co.uk.

The site has reportedly doled out $38,000 to citizen journalists.

Source: Journalism.co.uk

In a joint venture, free daily De Pers and Internet business platform IEX.nl launched De Financiële Pers, a business daily spin-off on Thursday.

The first issue counted 32 pages and is handed out in business centers in major cities.

This is the fifth national free daily in the Netherlands.

For more information, visit our partner site SFN.

Source: Newspaper Innovation

The Boston Globe has accepted at least 23 applications for buyouts from the newsroom and editorial staffers, according to a memo from editor Martin Baron. The paper has avoided layoffs and has reduced staff through "ordinary departures and frozen positions," reads the memo.

Baron writes that the list of those taking the buyout will not be disclosed "out of respect for employees who prefer not to have their names widely disseminated."

Adam Reilly from the Boston Phoenix concedes that this move is sensitive to the employees, but does not fully consider the readers who "may be wondering which of their favorite writers might be leaving."

Boston Daily has revealed some names: Steve Bailey left the Globe, though not through the buyout, and Jackie MacMullan took the buyout to spend more time with her family. The Daily also speculates that Gordon Edes will move to Yahoo! Sports, and that basketball writer Peter May will also leave.

The next few weeks, the Globe anticipates to internally fill positions that are necessary, giving "new opportunities for staffers," but also creating "some additional uncertainty," writes Baron.

Sources: Poynter Romenesko, Boston Phoenix through Poynter Romenesko, Boston Daily, Editor & Publisher

The new Wall Street Journal was rolled out earlier this week with some significant changes. Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) examines how the 119-year-old WSJ has changed since Rupert Murdoch took control, focusing on the front page every other weekday, and how the WSJ stands up next to The New York Times, Murdoch's declared competitor.

- The front page changed focus in the first four months from business coverage to domestic politics and international issues.
- From Dec. 13, 2007 to March 13, 2008, the front page covered politics and the presidential campaign three times as much, from 5% (four months before Murdoch) to 18%.
- Consequently, coverage of corporate American decreased more than half to 14% of front page space, compared to 30% pre-Murdoch.
- Coverage of foreign events that "do not directly involve the U.S." jumped from 18% to 25%. 9% of that relates to overseas economic and business affairs.
- Health and medicine dropped from 5% to less than 1%.
- Transportation issues dropped from 3% to 0%.
- Environmental topics dropped from 3% to 1%.

Categories that seemingly remain unchanged:
- Economics stayed at 15%.
- Coverage of foreign events "in which the U.S. played a major role" remained at 4%.
- Lifestyle coverage stayed at about 4% as well as education at 3%.

An example of the "changing news agenda" was the front page on April 21, the day before the presidential election Pennsylvania primary. There were two campaign stories and the headline: T "Latest Attacks Roil Democrats." A "more traditional Journal story," about problems at smaller-to-midsize banks was pushed to the bottom half of the page with a story about "easing tensions between China and a small island controlled by Taiwan," according to PEJ.


PEJ observes that the front pages of the WSJ and NY Times from Dec. 13, 2007 to March 13, 2008 are "not the same, certainly not yet."
- Politics: WSJ devotes 18% of the newshole to politics, but the Times filled 27% of its newshole with politics.
- Business: WSJ still gave more coverage with 14%  than the Times with 4%.
- Economics: WSJ covered it more with 15%, compared to the Times with 9%.
- Foreign affairs involving the U.S.:  The Times at 8% produced about twice as much coverage as the Journal at 4%.
- International events not directly related to the U.S.: The Journal had more coverage at 25% to the Times attention at 17%.

For the complete list of statistics, visit PEJ's website.

Source: PEJ (photos) through LA Times News Alerts

Now German speakers don't need a computer to look up something on Wikipedia. Major German publisher Bertelsmann, whose divisions include Random House Inc. and Sony BMG, is publishing "The One-Volume Wikipedia Encyclopedia," a collection of the most popular German language Wikipedia entries.

The project is not meant to be a re-creation of the site in book form, but rather "as an attempt to harness the collective wisdom of Wikipedia's users," according to Bertelsmann.

"We think of it as an encyclopedic yearbook," Dr. Beate Varnhorn, the editor in charge of Bertelsmann's reference works said. "A yearbook really can be a documentation of the zeitgeist."

There are more restrictions in a printed version: Wikipedia online features hyperlinks that takes a user from topic to topic, but a reader of the printed version will have to manually get to different entries. Whereas the German version of the website has more than 750,000 different articles, the 992 paged printed version will have 25,000 articles with about 1,000 photographs.

On the other hand, a staff of 10 condensed and verified the online material, so that the printed version will be an accurate, credible source.

Varnhorn is optimistic because of Germany's "strong encyclopedic culture." She hopes to especially target a younger audience.

There will be entries on French first lady Carla Bruni, Nintendo Wii, and German writers and musicians.

"The approach of 'Wikipedia in One Volume' is to give the people the information they are looking for," Arne Klempert, the group's executive director said, contrasting that approach to "the process of publishing a traditional encyclopedia put together by a select group of people behind closed doors."

"This is the most important difference from traditional encyclopedias," he said. "It's also an important thing in that the sense of the Wikipedia spirit will go into this printed volume."

If the 2008 version is successful, there is a possibility of other editions. The printed Wikipedia will go on sale in September for €19.95, or $31.80. Bertelsmann will pay €1 per copy sold for use of the Wikipedia name, which will support the site's operations, according to Klempert.

Source: New York Times, Yahoo News

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
 
 

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

One of Scotland's largest contract publishing agencies, Connect Communications, will distribute Fife Life, a new 16-page quarterly community paper, for free to 170,000 homes in Fife, starting this summer.

The paper will include articles and advertisements from public sector bodies such as local councils, the NHS, and the police, and will not carry commercial advertising or classifieds as of yet, according to senior editor Jim Byers, formerly of the Herald and Scottish Sunday Mirror.

"It's a completely different entity [to paid-for newspapers]. It's a community newspaper, it's free and it's designed for a different market," he said.

Fife Life, had previously been published before under the same name by another publishing company, and will now be printed at Newsquest's Glasgow plant.

Source: Press Gazette

Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of The New York Times Company, outlined the company's four-pronged turnaround strategy at the company's annual meeting on Tuesday, which includes developing online and mobile platforms:

1) New print and online products, such as expanding the T style magazines, which "brought in revenue of $45 million in 2007," according to the New York Times.
2) Cost-cutting: The company set a goal of reducing costs by $230 million by the end of 2009.
3) A "rebalance of assets", for example the sale of broadcast media group last year and investments in technology providers like Epsilen.
4) Research and development: adapting content for mobile devices and other products.

Chief executive Janet L. Robinson noted that online revenue growth declined to 11.6% for the quarter, while a year earlier it was at 21.6%. She said that the company had invested $500 million in new media since 2005 and is now "experimenting with different online advertising formats to attract advertisers," such as working with Google's AdSense to text ads on its science, home and garden and dining sites.

Also, the company's regional group has joined Yahoo's newspaper consortium, and the company has joined quadrantONE, which sells advertising space on sites owned by the Hearst Corporation, the Tribune Company, and the Gannett Company.

Source: The New York Times through Poynter Romenesko

Though there are economic strains on the journalism industry, Paul Myners, chairman of Guardian Media Group, remarked that journalists are not driven out of the industry, but instead are working on other mediums, such as blogs, radio, and local television, which reinforces a previous statement by Mediashift.

"The type of people doing work which might broadly be described as journalistic, may not have necessarily decreased to the extent of the proportion who are working in the newspaper industry," said Myner.  "Someone who was previously described as a journalist who sat at a typewriter, now podcasts, now speaks to video, now blogs online. It is a more challenging and appealing job.

Jeremy Dear, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), said otherwise: "The plight of staff in the newspaper industry should not be overshadowed by increased new media opportunities for journalists."

He argued that staff "are spread ever more thinly across more media" and that there are "a lack of resources and understaffing." with a smaller number of journalists trying to deliver more content in more platforms.

Concurrently, the U.S. has suffered the biggest staff drop this year. Our colleague Robb Montgomery from Visual Editors has captured the hard times through images here and here.

However, Myners noted that in the last 12 months, the Guardian Media Group appointed 60 new journalists to its national titles in order to further their digital content, since their readership is moving online. According to Myners, more people read the Guardian's US website than read the print versions in the UK, Guardian.co.uk  was the most popular UK newspaper website in February with 19,519,923 unique users, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCE).

"We have gone from being a provincial newspaper... to an international, liberal voice on the web," he said.

He added that "the proportion of journalists at the Observer and Guardian covering international news has increased."

But Myners cautioned that the declining economy will lead to more regional newspaper mergers and more free sheets, which does not rule out the Manchester Evening News from being completely free in the city center yet being sold on the outskirts.

"It is an economic model which accurately reflects the cost of distribution," Myners said.

However, the freesheet model does not seem to be doing significantly better than traditional newspapers.

Source: Journalism.co.uk ,Press Gazette

The Telegraph Media Group has appointed Adrian Michaels, the Financial Times' Milan correspondent, to the newly created position of head of foreign operations in another step towards print and online integration. Michaels will oversee the group's network of correspondents and will run world news output across the Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph and Telegraph.co.uk.

"Adrian has been a subeditor, news editor, and foreign correspondent, making him ideally suited to lead our new integrated world news operation. He will be a real asset to the Telegraph's executive team," TMG editor-in-chief Will Lewis said.

Daily Telegraph foreign editor Mike Smith will leave the foreign desk and will assume a new role, while Sunday Telegraph foreign editor David Wastell will not change positions.

The Telegraph Media Group has made several staff changes, including laying off home news journalists, as well as arts correspondent Nigel Reynolds. They have also changed people's roles, such as giving former Sunday Telegraph deputy editor Iain Martin the new role of head of comment and community for both newspapers' comment sections and the Telegraph's online blogs.

Source: Guardian.co.uk through IFRA Executive News Service

Free dailies had attributed most of their success to the amount of time people spent in public transports, but are now facing the same problems as traditional newspapers: drops in advertising revenue and competition from other freesheets. They are particularly affected by declines in advertising since they rely heavily on advertising for their revenue.

Metro International SA, the biggest publisher of free daily papers around the world, which has a daily circulation of 23 million copies in 23 countries, had their revenue fall 6.1% to €73.4 million, or $116 million, in the first quarter from a year earlier.

"The U.S. market is probably the worst it has been since the 1930s for media companies," Metro chief executive Per Mikael Jensen said.

Metro is now cutting jobs (eliminating 27 jobs in January, leaving a staff of 100 in the U.S.), closing some papers, potentially selling its New York, Boston and Philadelphia papers to another media company, and trying to improve their Metro website, which was launched last month.

Jensen noted that "Metro made some mistakes in the U.S. by not expanding quickly enough into enough cities. As a result, it wasn't big enough to get the attention of major advertisers."

Another daily free paper that has been affected by financial reasons was BostonNOW, which shut down, even though its circulation was on the rise.

Source: Wall Street Journal (photo) through IFRA Executive News Service

Publisher and managing editor of FT.com Ien Cheng believes that publishers need to model themselves on technology companies, by working quickly and being more responsive.  

"Change is hard for anyone, and I think it's a historic challenge for traditional publishers now," says Cheng. "The challenge for us is to become not just a publisher but a technology company in order to support that publisher."

Cheng's strategy involves, according to Guardian.co.uk blogger Jemima Kiss: "
- improving the development of new editorial products
- refining the subscription model
- changing the way the business works internally."

FT.com had 7.1 million unique users last month and a 72% increase in page views, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

"We need to learn from the web start-up and pure play web company approach that has technology much closer with the business. Publishers can't just think it's the it department over the wall that they throw stuff to. You've got to have the right platform, approach, mindset and processes to keep up," says Cheng.

Cheng remarks that there are technical changes, such as making the site run faster and appointing a new chief technology officer, but there are also editorial changes, such as expanding video coverage to about 150 reports a month. Last month, the site had over 1 million video views.

Though video and mobile are a priority, the most important thing is "remodeling the company to become more agile and to launch products in a more iterative, webby way," reports Kiss.

Cheng notes that advertising grew 40% this year and subscriptions 11-12%, with 10-15,000 people subscribing registering each week. The Financial Times newspaper also boasts an increase in circulation.

"Frankly, [every traditional news brand] shouldn't all survive," says Cheng. "But the ones that provide a sustainable value to users will not only survive but will be stronger. That will be good for consumers and good for journalism."

Source: Guardian.co.uk

While the Olympic athletes race around the track to cheering crowds, policemen outside the stadium race after a man carrying a placard that reads, "Freedom of the Press."

The animated cartoon, like the still image above, can be downloaded here. It is just one of the cartoons and other editorial materials being offered for publication in newspapers, on websites and for broadcast on World Press Freedom Day, 3 May.

The cartoons, both the animated and print versions, were created by noted French cartoonist Michel Cambon exclusively for the World Association of Newspapers, which is making them available for world-wide publication.

The theme of the World Press Freedom Day initiative is "The Olympic Challenge: Free the Press in China!" and the campaign is dedicated to holding Chinese authorities to the pledges they made in their successful Olympic bid to allow greater press freedom.

Despite the promises of reform made ahead of the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese authorities have intensified their crackdown on journalists and others who seek to exercise their right to freedom of expression. With at least 30 journalists and 50 cyber-dissidents in prison, China is the world's largest jailer of journalists.

Chinese journalists continue to face censorship and repression and authoritarian laws, including subversion, disseminating state secrets and spying, are used by the government to control and restrict newsgathering and information and to jail journalists.

Foreign journalists now reporting from China are regularly harassed and even expelled, as was the case during the March 2008 events in Tibet. This violates the Organising Committee for the Beijing Olympic Games pledge that foreign media would have "complete freedom to report when they come to China".

In addition to the cartoons, the materials available for publication on 3 May include advertisements, essays, infographics, photos, and materials for young people. The materials are available in English, French, Spanish, German, Russian and Chinese here.

Source: WAN

A source reveals that Tribune Co. is very close to selling Long Island based Newsday to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp for about $580 million.

The terms state that "Newsday would be part of a joint venture with News Corp's money-losing New York Post, allowing the two publications to combine back office operations", the source said. The Wall Street Journal said the deal "is expected to wipe out as much as $50 million in annual losses that News Corp now incurs on the Post."

News Corp would own most of the company, while Tribune would retain a very small part but would receive "anywhere between $500 million and $600 million", under News Corp's terms.

Selling Newsday would help Tribune chief executive Sam Zell cut debt at the company, which is over $10 billion.

"The combined operation would be profitable," newspaper analyst John Morton said. "There would be some administrative and production cost savings but the real goal would be to combine the advertising appeal and sell that jointly for advertisers that want both Long Island and New York City coverage."

Analysts said "a combined operation would also place News Corp's New York Post in a much stronger position against [the New York Daily News]."

Mortimer Zuckerman, owner of the Post's newspaper rival, the Daily News, is reportedly planning to submit a new, formal bid by the end of the week for Newsday.

Because the U.S. government restricts the number of papers that media companies can own in markets where they also own television stations, the deal could be hindered with Murdoch owning The Wall Street Journal and Fox affiliate WNYW-TV, in addition to the Post.

Source: Reuters

On Monday, RedEye, the Chicago Tribune's free communter daily tabloid, launched a Facebook application that gave readers an opportunity to be one of the five in "Five on Five," the daily mock sports quiz.

The quiz features five regular RedEye writers or fictional characters, such as Bag Boy, who wears a shopping bag over his head. They irreverently respond to five sports-themed questions.

Readers can give their own responses on the Facebook page, which will be voted on by other Facebook users. The winner receives a chance to appear in the paper as one of the five.

On Monday, the question on Facebook was: "Danica Patrick winning a race against men is like ... ," which received the response "... Martina Navratilova winning a tennis tournament against women," from RedEye columnist Jimmy Greenfield. The top-scoring reader entry came Thursday afternoon from Jonathan Ozeran: "...is like Hillary winning...oh, never mind."

Many newspapers are turning to social networking sites like Facebook to gain more readers and to receive more reader participation.

Frequent "Five on Five" contributor Bag Boy said, "Facebook is for delusional people with too much time on their hands. That's why I'm confident all Chicago sports fans will join me on it."

Source: Editor & Publisher

A new global study of social media use shows that the consumers in the U.S. and Western Europe are more likely to be "passive social-media participants," sharing videos and reading blogs, while those in emerging markets "often create content through blogging, social networks and video and photo sharing sites."

The Interpublic Group media agency had found in its first survey, which was conducted in 2006, a little over half of respondents said they read blogs. Their latest survey found that over 70% did.

Universal McCann conducted surveys to 17,000 Internet users to "track the global rise of consumer-generated content and online communities" over a period of time:
- Their first survey found that 30% watched video online, while this year over 80% had. Video watching platforms such as YouTube has caused watching video clips to become mainstream.
- In 2006, less than 30% said they set up a social network profile, while this year over 60% had. The survey shows big increases in listening to podcasts, subscribing to RSS feeds, commenting on news items, and most other online sharing activities.

Though social media is a global phenomenon, UM found that the way people use social media is more of a cultural difference.
- A little over 60% of Internet users in the U.S. said they read blogs, whereas 26% had created one. Over 70% of Internet users blog in South Korea and China, and about 90% of South Koreans read blogs and 88% read blogs in China.
 
"By and large, in the U.S. we're a country of voyeurs," said David Cohen, U.S. director of digital communications at UM. "We love to watch and consume content created by others, but there's a fairly small group that are doing that creation -- unlike China, which is a country of creators."

Source: Adweek

VIDEO: Robb Montgomery chats with Michael Cooke, Editor-in-chief of the Chicago Sun-Times about the dramatic design treatment he used to draw attention to the sharp rise in shootings in Chicago's inner-city neighborhoods. In a phone interview, Cooke explains the paper's campaign and the inspiration for deploying this arresting design approach to the start of the paper's coverage of the story.

COOKE: "Chicago's children are dying. The statistics are undeniable, and they are staggering," said Sun-Times Editor in Chief Michael Cooke. "The point of today's front page was to grab readers and agree together that we can no longer turn our backs on this problem. We need to, as a city, pull together and put an end to the killing."

Robb Montgomery is the CEO of Visual Editors and trains journalists in multimedia. He blogs at www.robbmontgomery.com

Marcus Brauchli, top editor of the Wall Street Journal is stepping down after less than five months since Rupert Murdoch took control of the paper.

Brauchli had been in the job for a year, Last month, he said in an interview that Murdoch was "very engaged" but "set broad objectives" to maintain the paper's independence.

Part of the agreement that allowed Murdoch to buy the WSJ stated that Murdoch could not remove three top-ranking editors, including Brauchli. With Brauchli's resignation, Murdoch can now choose a successor, but a special committee must approve of that person first, according to the agreement.

Some Journal staffers say that "Brauchli felt overshadowed by the paper's new publisher, Robert Thomson, a former editor of another Murdoch property, the Times of London."

Thomson said Murdoch is "clearly interested in challenging the journalistic establishment" by broadening the Journal's coverage. Washingtonpost.com's Howard Kurtz wonders if "the sense of anxiety [of Murdoch's political interference] could return if Murdoch names an editor, whether Thomson or someone else, from outside the Journal culture."

Source: WashingtonPost.com

UPDATE:
Brauchli wrote a memo to his staff that stated his reason as "now that the ownership transition has taken place, I have come to believe the new owners should have a managing editor of their choosing."

He acknowledges that "change was necessary" in the newspaper industry, but also when News Corp. bought Dow Jones, an editorial agreement was made to "block commercial or political interference in our journalism," read the memo.

Though Brauchli concedes that the new management has adhered to the agreement and that the "journalistic integrity remains intact," WSJ.com reports that Brauchli had difficulties being a mediator between the paper's traditions and News Corp's new vision. He had complained that "he wasn't always in the loop about new ideas" in the past few weeks, according to WSJ.com.

Reuters reports that the resignation could "reignite worries about editorial independence that were voiced during Murdoch's takeover bid when some staffers feared the Journal's reputation as the top U.S. business newspaper would be threatened if Murdoch became proprietor."

With Brauchli's resignation, current WSJ publisher Robert Thomson may take on a more active role in the newsroom, but isn't expected to be the interim managing editor, according to WSJ.com. There already is a search for the next managing editor. Brauchli, however, is likely to stay in the company, possibly as a consultant, says WSJ.com, guiding senior management, including "whether News Corp.'s Star-TV service in Asia should launch a business-news channel."

Murdoch said he believed Brauchli's experience "will be a great asset, especially in Asia -- a region where we see significant growth potential and where he has particular expertise."

Dean Starkman of CJR writes that "with Brauchli gone, the Journal newsroom loses not just a topflight editor and bureau chief, a great Asia hand, and someone who was a real, live reporter, [but also] loses a surprisingly savvy internal diplomat who, I thought, might just have been adroit enough to manage the inevitable tensions that would arise from the takeover, at least enough to preserve some of the Journal's great journalistic heritage."

Sources: Poynter Online, Wall Street Journal, Columbia Journalism Review, Reuters
through Poynter Romenesko

BBCWorld Service has teamed up with blogging platform Livejournal.com for Live Report, a global project that provides a blogging platform for the Russian-speaking blog community. This project aims to strengthen user-generated content, connecting bloggers with the BBC Russian website bbcrussian.com.

Stephan Grootenboer, BBC World Service business development manager, Russia, said, "The BBC is keen to expand engagement with social media and reflect user-generated content in its output. Partnership with LiveJournal manifests the changing nature of BBC Russian as it uses new platforms to reach its audiences. With Live Report project, we are breaking new ground which will help us reinforce links with Russia's vibrant and quickly growing blogging community."

There is now a BBC-branded area on Livejournal, which will link the blogging community to stories on bbcrussian.com. Users can read the stories, then return to Live Report to post comments, articles, photos, videos, etc. on their blogs.

The BBC will also keep their eye out for budding reporters, no matter their location, and select the most compelling blog posts for publication in its output.

"We hope their contributions will bring us news and insights that are often bypassed by mainstream journalism. This new community will present us with witness reports and personal views from across Russia which may be selected for publication on bbcrussian.com and the BBC's other international news and information websites," said Zoya Trunova, editor of bbcrussian.com.

Livejournal has over 9 million users per month and over 1.5 million registered accounts in Russia. The community has 365 new members since last month's pilot launch of Live Report.

Source: Media Network

Vladimir Putin had shut down Russian paper Moskovsky Korrespondent when it reported that the president had left his wife to marry 24-year-old former Olympic gymnast Alina Kabaeva. (Read more on our sister blog SFN). However, the tabloid's website reappeared on Monday, three days after Putin suspended operations.

Whether or not the paper will remain in publication is still in question.

Artyom Artyomov, director of National Media Company, which publishes the paper, said, "Chances that publication of this newspaper would be resumed are small."

Owner of National Media Company Alexander Lebedev said that the "reasons behind closing of the newspaper are purely economic."

Source: Moscow Times

Last week, journalists Anne Stine Saether and Anders Sooth Knutsen from Norway's VG's online arm were awarded with the Skup-diploma, an investigative prize, for developing the newspaper's biggest multimedia project ever.

The idea for the online project about domestic killings in Norway was born in mid-2007 after a murder case that had been buried in the back pages of the paper. It took six months to complete, but on, Nov. 12 the front page of VG's print edition featured portraits of women killed by their men. The story was planned and executed on all platforms simultaneously, and included online blogs, articles, chats, and video interviews with some of the murderers, next of kin, psychologists, and others.

For the project, VG took on the task of extensively researching anonymous homicide statistics, using all the archives and registers they could access for the multi-media project.

"The idea for the project came as a result of my own anger and feeling of impotence half a year ago. Yet another woman had been murdered and the story was buried far back in the newspaper, I thought, dammit, this happens all the time, which lead to the idea to spray the front page with the faces of women who'd suffered such a fate," said Kjersti Sortland, the managing editor of the award-winning journalists.

The project took half-a-year to finish, but the completed coverage was "groundbreaking" and "led to a change in how murders are reported in Norway," according to Online Journalism Scandinavia's Kristine Lowe.

The Norwegian government plans to map domestic murders, and starting in 2007, the Norwegian police had began to register the relationship between the murderer and victim in their reports.

"In contrast to other countries, we did not know how many women were killed by their husbands, partners and boyfriends in Norway," said the jury who awarded the prize.

Source: Journalism.co.uk (photo)

Pearson PLC, publisher of the Financial Times newspaper, hopes to boost its name in India, with plans to start a new daily business newspaper there.

The newspaper industry has been expanding in India thanks to advertisers trying to reach India's increasingly wealthy middle class.

India already has at least five business dailies, including HT Media Ltd.'s Indian business daily Mint, which receives exclusive content from The Wall Street Journal. But Pearson hopes that a paper backed by respected names in journalism will be able stand out and expects the new paper to launch as early as December.

Pearson's local partner is Network 18 Media & Investments Ltd., which controls India's largest business news television channel, CNBC-TV18.

The Financial Times has ended its 15-year relationship with the Business Standard, which will have access to FT content until the end of this year, because of Pearson's new focus of developing the FT as a global brand, thus departing from its other ventures in continental Europe.

Source: Wall Street Journal, Guardian.co.uk

France Telecom's Orange has announced its trial of 150 ePaper devices, Read&Go, in France this year for a two-month pilot period. It will have 1 GB of storage, will be WiFi- and 3G-enabled, and will offer a range of books and the French newspapers Le Monde, Le Parisien, Les Echos, L'Equipe and Télérama. Content will be updated every hour between 6am and midnight.

A spokeswoman from Orange said the ePaper service is "in competition with paper, not with the Internet." She explained that Orange can succeed because they are able to put the costs of providing a device and network and content charges onto a single bill unlike Sony and Amazon.

A model has not been chosen yet, but Orange is looking into "advertising supported" offerings, using geolocation to embed ads.

The spokeswoman also said that ePaper devices "are particularly important for the newspaper industries in non-English speaking countries, where newspapers are expensive to distribute and difficult to get hold of." She added that "the company expects ePaper services to take off more quickly in non-English speaking countries [but] we will study the UK market very carefully ... but it is too early to say."

Les Echos, a French paper, had launched an e-paper in 2007, and Korean companies have made steps in developing ePaper devices. Analysts "believe that ePapers will ultimately hold the dominant position when it comes to downloads," according to Printweek.com.

Watch a Youtube video on how Read&Go will work here (in French).

Source: Printweek.com through IFRA Executive News Service, PaidContent.org

Today, Journalism.co.uk has introduced PressGo, a new targeted media release distribution service to the journalism community.

"We understand that journalists do not want to be bombarded with badly targeted material. PressGo puts journalists back in control, allowing them to filter the noise to suit their needs," said John Thompson, publisher of Journalism.co.uk. "That also means organizations can get their stories across in a much more targeted way, while at the same time taking advantage of our high visibility online to reach journalists and publications they might not have otherwise been aware of."

Public relations companies and other organizations can purchase a subscription to publish an unlimited number of media releases on PressGo areas of Journalism.co.uk with tags and keywords to optimize search engine results.

Journalists can subscribe to RSS feeds on 37 different subject categories and customize their own feeds based on keyword searches. They can also rate each individual release to "highlight the best examples of PR craft," according to the Journalism.co.uk. Journalism.co.uk's daily email newsletter will also feature links to the latest press releases.

Journalism.co.uk aims to "further build bridges between the PR and journalism industries" in the upcoming months, "by publishing guidelines on best practice from both sides of the fence."

Source: Journalism.co.uk (photo)

Though the Financial Times has been having success with circulation, it is "refreshing" its weekend paper this weekend to increase sales, especially on Sundays.

Andrew Neil, editor of the Sunday Times from 1983 to 1994, had transformed the paper to have several sections in order to dominate weekend sales, but he now feels that "market people are beginning to feel that there is too much froth on a Sunday."

FT Weekend editor Andy Davis oversaw the paper's reorganization and redesign. Book reviews will move from the magazine back to the newspaper in the Life & Arts section, the "Lunch with the FT" interview section will also move to the Life & Arts section, and the main news section will be merged with Companies & Markets. House & Home and Money will be redesigned A new magazine, FT Weekend Magazine, and new columnists, such as Merryn Somerset Webb from the Sunday Times who will write a column about personal finance, will also be included.

"We can create something new and exciting in terms of our color magazine because we think it is slightly under-powered. The key is photojournalism," says FT's editor Lionel Barber. He says that the word count for articles will be decreased so that the photos will speak for themselves.

The weekend FT is more popular than its weekday counterpart, selling 30% more copies, according to industry estimates, and it raised its price to £2 earlier this year.

"It's a big market, the weekend market," Barber says. "That's why we are calling it the FT Weekend. We think we can get a bigger slice on the Saturday and a little bit on a Sunday. I am not suggesting that the FT is going head to head with the larger Sunday newspapers, but at the margins we can nibble ferociously."

Alan Brydon, head of press at the media buying agency Media Planning Group, questions whether the paper will pick up many more sales on a Sunday. "Habit and human nature have a lot of play in our world and I just don't think people will think of the FT as a Sunday paper. The topicality has to be an issue."

Barber responds, "How much news in a Sunday paper happens on a Saturday?"

Source: Guardian.co.uk

Google has revamped their search feature in Google News, so that searching and browsing through quotations in news articles are easier. Users can now keep track of what his/her favorite politician, actor, or sports star is saying, as well as search within their quotes for a certain topic.

Type a person's name in the search box on Google News, and recent quotes from that person will show above the search results. For more of a speaker's quotes, click on his/her name. There, users will have the opportunity to search within the quotes. For example, entering "Iraq" in the search box of John McCain's quotes will produce his quotes on Iraq.

This feature can be useful in finding original quotes from a huge amount of commentary pages and in finding specific quotes through many pages of transcriptions. 

Source: Google

The new Wall Street Journal debuts today. WSJ owner Rupert Murdoch has redesigned it to expand its "traditional, pin-striped base," according to Johnnie L. Roberts, Newsweek reporter. Murdoch still believes that "newspapers are the most influential media for shaping the public discourse, even in this new-media century."

The new Journal will feature:
- An increased focus on politics, international news, culture, and sports.
- A refocused front page.
- A relaunch of the A section that will cover general news.
- Marketplace, the second section, which will cover corporate America.
- Money and Investing, the third section, which will continue to report news of financial markets and investing.
- A weekly sports page.
- An additional op-ed page, so that it has 3 pages instead of 2.

Also, a culture section is being developed in the Journal's weekend edition for the fall.

The redesign of the paper is also Murdoch's challenge to The New York Times.

But many media and communication experts argue that the Journal will not be a threat to the Times even with all the changes; in fact, the changes may damage the Journal brand.

"Turning a paper into an old-fashioned variety show--we have a little of everything--I don't think is the route to success," said a former senior Dow Jones executive. "The risk you run is that you are not best at anything." 

Arthur Siskind, senior adviser to Murdoch, remarked that "the need to bolster and broaden the Journal's production and delivery is one reason [Murdoch's] battle with the Times will have to unfold gradually." Murdoch is in talks for local newspaper publishers to print the Journal, so the paper can be printed earlier and story deadlines can be extended.

Even so, the Times has faced some difficulties. Advertising has fallen almost 11%, (Read more at our sister blog SFN) "the sharpest drop in memory," the Times wrote. While it is cutting its staff by 100 (Read more at SFN), Murdoch has been spending money on WSJ's Washington bureau, seeking additional printing capacity, and developing the weekend magazine, WSJ.

"The New York Times has had broad coverage for 156 years now," New York Times CEO Janet Robinson said, "and from that perspective we are far advanced in the type of journalism we create and the type of advertising we bring into the paper."

Source: Newsweek through Paidcontent.org

An international conference on press freedom in China has called on Chinese authorities to honour their Olympic pledge to respect freedom of expression and to release all jailed journalists.

More than 30 journalists and 50 cyber-dissidents are being held in prisons in China, the world's largest jailer of journalists. The call for their release was made by the "Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom" conference, which was co-organised by the World Association of Newspapers, the World Press Freedom Committee, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, Human Rights in China, Asia Presse and the Knight Foundation.

More than 10,000 athletes will be going to Beijing for the Summer Olympics in August. Thirty thousand  foreign journalists will be covering it all - three journalists for every athlete.

Chinese authorities promised in their successful Olympic bid that media would have "complete freedom to report when they come to China." They haven't lived up to that promise, notably is their harassment and expulsion of journalists trying to cover the Tibetan events in March.

Chinese journalists have it even worse:  31 have been jailed since the successful Olympic bid in 2001, and 16 of those remain in prison - half of all Chinese journalists currently in prison.

The two-day conference, which ended Saturday, called on Chinese authorities to respect their pledges to improve human rights and press freedom conditions, and for the International Olympic Committee and others in the international community to press them to do so.

More conference details can be found here.

The view of award-winning Chinese journalist Gao Yu can be found here.

Source: World Association of Newspapers

Online Journalism Review's Robert Niles writes that "there's no such thing as 'off the record' anymore," with the Internet making it nearly impossible to keep anything private, and with citizen journalism gaining popularity.

Political comments, drunken party pictures, anything can end up on the Internet thanks to Facebook, Myspace, discussion boards, etc. Niles compares the web to "life in a small frontier town, where everyone knows everyone else's business."

Case in point: U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama made comments on "a popular view among many progressives, notably articulated by author Thomas Frank four years ago in his book, "What's the Matter with Kansas?"," according to Niles, which in turn caused rival Hillary Clinton and other right-wing supporters to call him "elitist." Though this gathering supposedly didn't allow journalists, these comments reported for Huffington Post's "Off the Bus."

With citizen journalists and bloggers,  "any professional news reporter who agrees to respect an "off the record" request at a meeting is committing an act of unilateral professional disarmament," writes Niles. 

So why can't a professional journalist be a "citizen" journalist and gain access to events closed to professionals? After all, all journalists are citizens, argues Niles.

Ultimately, there really is no way to enforce an "off the record" request anymore. People may be forbidden from future events, but there are several other potential "citizen journalists" to fill in the shoes.

Do people now have to resort to watching what they say in public and censoring themselves? Niles seems to think so and while the Internet might increase formalities and cautiousness among people, it might "lead us in the opposite direction, where we deal with all this information about each other by ignoring it, in the way many people have learned to ignore public cursing, kissing and other displays that would have offended many more people a generation or two past."

As for journalists, Niles suggests that they keep reporting since the information will end up on the web anyway, and consolidate the information in a "smarter, sharper perspective than anyone else does."

Source: Online Journalism Review

"Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom"  is a conference organized by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) and a coalition of leading press freedom groups, held on April 18-19 in Maison de la Chimie in Paris to raise the consciousness of the journalistic community, especially sports journalists, to the press freedom conditions they should expect to encounter in China.

A Chinese journalist jailed for her reporting told the conference today that press freedom and human rights have worsened in China and that conditions for journalists in the run-up to the Olympics are "considerably more catastrophic" than they were when she was arrested 15
years ago.

"Freedom of the press and human rights constitute the most serious problem currently facing China," said Gao Yu, who was arrested in 1993 and sentenced to six years in prison for sending two articles on current affairs to a Hong Kong review. She was charged with "divulging state secrets", a catch-all charge often used by Chinese authorities to stifle independent reporting and dissent.

Her arrest came weeks after China's failed bid to host the 2000 Olympics. It was her second jail term; she had previously served a 15-month sentence in 1989 for her coverage of the Beijing democracy movement.

She compared her case to that of Hu Jia, a human rights campaigner and citizen journalist who was sentenced to three years in prison earlier this month. "As the Olympic Games approach, this case demonstrates in a terribly emblematic fashion the position of the Communist Party in confrontation with freedom of expression," she said. "It also shows the riposte of the Chinese authorities to the demands of the international community."

Despite promises of reform made ahead of the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese authorities have not only failed to respect them, but they have intensified their crackdown on journalists and others who seek to exercise their right to freedom of expression. Foreign journalists now reporting from China in the run up to the Olympics are regularly harassed and even expelled, as was the case during the March 2008 events in Tibet. This violates the Organising Committee for the Beijing Olympic Games pledge that foreign media would have "complete freedom to report when they come to China".

Ms Gao, the 1995 laureate of the WAN Golden Pen of Freedom and the first laureate, in 1997, of UNESCO's World Press Freedom Prize, said:  "At the approach of the Olympic Games, all Chinese who have suffered oppression hope to be able to utilise the occasion to seek justice; the international community hopes that the Chinese government will improve the situation of the press and human rights in line with the promise made in 2001.

"But the Chinese authorities see these internal and external pressures as 'politisation of the Olympic Games. Unhappily, counterattacking against these criticisms by repressing the freedom of the press only underlines this contradiction."

"The experience of China and the Olympics is, in fact, yet one more example of the terrible naivety and short-sightedness of those in leadership of our governments, our sports organisations and our businesses as they deal with repressive regimes like the one in place in Beijing," said Timothy Balding, CEO of WAN, who opened the session featuring Ms Gao.

"History, if nothing else, amply demonstrates that dictators do not voluntarily and spontaneously give up power, do not loosen the chains, do not remove the gags, after sudden illumination and conversion to belief in freedom and other human rights. They do so when they are forced to, generally through a combination of intense internal opposition and dissent," he said.

The full program can be found at here.

For more information on WAN's international campaign, in the run-up to the Olympics, to hold China to the promises it made in its successful Olympic bid to improve the press freedom and human rights conditions in the country, please go here.

Source: WAN

In a step to improve its Internet search service, this week Microsoft launched a redesigned Live Search, their news search service bringing together stories, photos and video from around the world.

According to a senior product manager Justin Osmer,  searches will initially be limited to "reputable news sources," which includes newspapers, magazines, broadcast and cable shows, and websites, but may eventually include blogs. Live Search will have improved searches for popular topics and content areas, such as shopping and entertainment.

"News is another one of those areas where there's a lot of searches," said Osmer. "And we've had a news category or a news vertical for a while, but to be honest, hadn't put a lot of effort to it."

Based on a user's IP address, the service will also feature a strip of results of local news from the local papers and television stations and a traffic-tracking feature for Live Maps.

Microsoft aims to release major updates to Live Search twice a year, in spring and fall.

Source: Seattle Times

David Hiller, publisher, president and chief executive of the Los Angeles Times, talks the paper's future to Forbes.com.

Hiller assures that the LA Times, being one of the few U.S. papers left with a strong number of foreign correspondents, will continue "to keep a strong foreign report," and over time, "gauge what size should it be, where those correspondents are allocated, and also look at how we do collaborate with, for example, our sister paper the Chicago Tribune."

He says that there may be a chance in eliminating overlap between the two staffs to cut costs while still maintaining quality coverage.

Three areas that are in the most need of change are:
1. Continuing to grow and build Internet business. They just launched an online entertainment product, The Guide, that's built on a platform that allows for hyper-local news and user-generated content.

2. Finishing the integration of the print and online operations. "You're always going to have specialists, people who do different things," says Hiller. "[But] particularly in this environment, we need to make sure there's no redundancy, that all the players can write for both print and online and editors can edit for both, etc., etc."

3. Continuing the redesign or re-imagining of the main print newspaper. In the 24- hour continuous news cycle, the LA Times' mantra is to break news online and do something else in print.

As for the synchronization between the newsroom and the business side of the paper, Hiller says that they are "getting there."

"Life is a journey. I think we make headway every day," he concludes.

Source: Forbes.com through IFRA Executive News Service

Many newspaper editors are beginning to work more closely with advertising departments in order to increase revenue.

Several factors that have hampered the newspaper industry: the easy availability of news and on the Web, the rise of  and other online ad platforms, the slowing economy, but mostly, "the insufficient communication between the editors and writers generating content and those on the business side charged with selling it to advertisers," according to Louis Hau of Forbes.com.

 "We all have to realize that we're on the same team. We haven't developed that trust," says John Kelly, vice president of advertising for The Palm Beach Post in Palm Beach, Fla.

Des Moines Register editor Carolyn Washburn says "cooperation between the news and advertising staff at the Gannett newspaper now runs far deeper than in the past." For example, before key state high school sports tournaments begin, the paper's sports editor and advertising determine what they can do together.

"It wouldn't have happened 10 years ago,'' Washburn says. "Five years ago, it wouldn't have happened."

Newsrooms must develop an understanding of how online advertising works, argues Todd Brownrout, former advertising executive at The Los Angeles Times. Online advertisements are now the driver of revenue.

But editors and advertisers must agree on the most important revenue factor, since there is no precise measurement for online traffic. Is it more clicks or the length of stay on a webpage?

Brownrout argues, "it's the utility of the content being offered that presents the greatest opportunities. For example, travel Web sites often offer little in the way of original editorial content, but they provide huge function and utility to consumers, which appeals to advertisers."

Source: Forbes.com

Two reporters for the United Daily News and one colleague from the China Times were subpoenaed to testify at the Ministry of National Defense tribunal, which was investigating Taiwan Goal, but they chose not to appear in court since they would have been asked to identify their sources for their stories. Thus, Kuomintang lawmakers proposed an amendment to the Code of Criminal Procedure that would allow press workers to refuse to release sources of information.

The Taiwan Goal, founded last year, is the now-disbanded government-owned company responsible for purchasing weapons and equipment from abroad. It had signed contracts to "upgrade Lafayette frigates and purchase sophisticated arms from France before the scandal came to light in the run-up to the presidential election on March 22," according to AsiaMedia.

The three reporters believed that freedom of the press is guaranteed by the Constitution, but such protection does not cover immunity to prosecution if reporters withhold their sources of information.

The proposed amendment, which would give that immunity to press workers and other professionals including medical doctors, midwives, priests, and attorneys, will be acted on next week.

Wu Chih-yang, a Kuomintang lawmaker, said "reporters should be protected against intimidation."

 "A few reporters have been held in contempt of court and fined for refusing to reveal their news sources. That goes against freedom of the press upheld in the Constitution," Wu said.

Source: AsiaMedia

The US edition of the Wall Street Journal went on sale in London on Wednesday alongside the 25-year-old Wall Street Journal Europe as part of News Corporation's global expansion plans.

Les Hinton, the chief executive of Dow Jones, WSJ's parent company, Dow Jones, which became part of News Corp in December, suggested the US edition "could become available across Europe, going hand in hand with the European version."

According to Hinton, the WSJE "would continue to meet a specialized and local need while the US version would attract a loyal core of readers in London and I hope eventually other financial centers in Europe."

The paper has launched a new Monday to Friday London column, "Letter From the City," in the international finance pages of the Money & Investing section.

U.S. WSJ costs £2.50 and is available via subscription and at 250 newsstands across central London and the capital's airports including Heathrow, published five hours ahead of the U.S.

For additional coverage, visit our sister site SFN.


Sources: Guardian.co.uk, IHT

Roanoke Times has launched a website commemorating the one year anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings.

"The sights, sounds, and events of April 16, 2008 as captured over a 24 hour period by The Roanoke Times. Get a view across the region, from hour to hour, through the eyes and words of those in our community," reads the website.



It features videos and photos of the 24 hour vigil, an interactive map to find various memorials on and around the Virginia Tech campus, an archive of relevant articles, a blog of the vigil, and more.

Jeff Jarvis, Buzzmachine blogger, writes about the new ecosystem of news: a press-sphere, in which the press may be involved, but "any of many sources can, thanks to links, add up a story and to fulfilling the need or desire for news and information." Newspapers aren't just news anymore, according to Jarvis, they are more complex with endless sources and handlers.

People do not just receive their news directly from the press anymore; they may have found the news through their peers "who tell us it's news." The definition of news has changed as well, from a story with text and photos to incorporating background information, commentary that may add perspective, and data. "A story never begins and it never ends," writes Jarvis. "[The story] - in whatever medium -- is merely a blip on the line, a stage in a process, for that process continues after publication."

According to Jarvis, the public should replace news as the center of the press-sphere, surrounded by all news sources: the press, peers, non-press media  (e.g., Jon Stewart), search, links, original sources, companies, the government. "It's all information and we curate it and interact with it with the tools available," writes Jarvis. Even readers themselves can be sources now.

One of the commenters on Jarvis' blog didn't agree with "the idea that we can continue to maintain a story alive indefinitely when in fact the story has died or it is no longer relevant..." According to the reader, "Even if [it] was relevant, we would be looking from 20/20 hindsight, which by definition, would put the story in historical context and not within the journalistic purview."

The newsroom has already evolved with the emergence of online. "In print, the process leads to a product. Online, the process is the product," writes Jarvis. Thus, whereas newsrooms were arranged by sections (sports, business, etc) and job descriptions (reporter, editor, photographer, etc.), now there is a print newsdesk and online newsdesk. With the new model, Jarvis believes newsrooms should be organized around topics, tags, or stories "because the notion of a section is as out of date as the Dewey Decimal System." 

Other changes that Jarvis notes, in his own words,:
- The separation of content from presentation on web pages means that design, navigation, brand, and medium can change and are not necessarily controlled by an editor's design.
- Feeds also have an impact on -- and can reduce the value of -- packaging and prioritization (also known as editing).
- Live reports from witnesses also reduce the opportunity to package and edit.
- The ecology of links motivates us to do what we do best and link to the rest. It fosters collaboration. It changes the essential structure of a story (background or source material can be a link away).
- Links also turn our readers into our distributors.
- Links turn our readers into editors.
- Aggregation, curation, and peer links become our new newsstand.
- Search and SEO motivate us to create repositories of expertise (topic pages) and make news stories more permanent.
- Search reduces the power of the brand.
- We see ourselves not as owners of content or distribution but as members of networks.
- These networks can be about content, trust, interest, or advertising relationships or all of the above.

Jarvis concludes that "When we rethink this ecology of news, we'll be in a better position to plan for what's next."
 
Source: Buzzmachine.com through IFRA Executive News Service

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

On Wednesday, Tom Curley, president and CEO of Associated Press, spoke at the annual conference of the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) and the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) and stated that "the news cooperative hasn't changed its fundamental mission, but must have a more flexible business model to meet the changing dynamic of the media industry."

In order to help struggling newspapers, AP has already offered price cuts for fees paid by members, expanding video and business coverage, and creating a digital archive database that members can search.

The AP also plans to re-price and re-package its news for its 1,500 daily U.S. newspapers, which would entail a core service for all national, state, and international breaking news with separate add-ons of premium service, instead of offering news feeds defined largely by the volume of news delivered.

Many newspapers are unreceptive to this plan due to the lack of specifics, but Curley assures that more details will be available in July.

"I can't sit here today and tell you that we at The Boston Globe are going to save any money from this program because I quite frankly have a hard time understanding the program,"  Martin Baron, editor of The Boston Globe, said.

David Shribman, vice president and executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, remarked that his paper is getting too many enterprise stories from the AP and not enough of the day-to-day coverage it needs. "I think you vastly underestimate the resentment and anger in this room over the AP's policy," he said.

Curley said "the company is trying to respond to member needs and wants to hear from member newspapers about AP services."

Another service AP is adopting, in addition to tracking service Attributor, used to monitor content, is iCopyright, a copyright protection service, for online users of its content.
 
Every AP-hosted story will include links to the iCopyright service, which will allow AP content users to email content, request copies, purchase photos or publish to their own websites. It will also "guide users through the appropriate licensing arrangement or payment process for aggregating content."

The system will faciliate monitoring copyright compliance and identifying pirated and misappropriated stories, according to Bruce Glover, AP deputy director of business development.

Mike O'Donnell, founder and CEO of iCopyright, encourages news sites to add the links to AP stories on their own websites "to promote an industry-wide standard for online copyright protection."

Source: Associated Press through IFRA Executive News Service, Journalism.co.uk (photo)

The website of French business daily La Tribune has opened the near-totality of its online archives, reported Rue89 and AFP.

The only remaining paid-for articles are those of the current day's print edition and the nine previous ones.

"Globally, we made a little revenue with the sale of our archived content, but relatively little. Since we have a model of a free online site paid by advertising, we hope that the increase in the number of page views will translate into a mechanical increase of ad revenue," said Olivier Provost, Editor-in-Chief of latribune.fr.

La Tribune's move comes as a growing number of newspaper websites move to a free online model (or rather, a model paid by advertisers rather than by users directly) and open up their archives.

Even the monthly publication The Atlantic opened its paywall in January. Last year, nytimes.com removed its TimesSelect paywall, and since then user traffic has soared, further putting into question the viability of the online paid-for model. Yet some papers have gone the other route, such as the Guardian and Observer, or the Wall Street Journal, which has kept its paywall despite initial talks to remove it.

La Tribune was acquired from luxury group LVMH by NextRadio TV chief Alain Weill at the beginning of the year.

Source: AFP Mail

ProPublica, the non-profit investigative journalism project funded entirely by charitable donations, aims to recruit the largest team of investigative journalists in the US, employing 25 full-time reporters and editors by the end of the year. They have just added five new members to its editorial team.

Eric Umansky, former Slate columnist, will be senior writer and lead daily contributor to the site, and Susan White, former enterprise editor of the San Diego Union-Tribune, will be site editor. Also joining the team as reporters are freelance writer Sheri Fink, Christina Jewett from the Sacramento Bee, Abrahm Lustgarten, former staff writer for Fortune, and Joaquin Sapien, former reporter for The Center for Public Integrity.

"The soul of a great investigative team is its reporters and we've been fortunate to attract a very high level of reportorial talent," said Stephen Engelberg, managing editor of ProPublica.

With investigative journalism struggling to survive in papers, this model seems to be giving it a boost so far.

Source: Journalism.co.uk, eMedia Wire through Poynter Online

Paul Bradshaw of The Online Journalism Blog had posited that the editorial process and workflows must change with the online world, following the "news diamond," which is based on speed and depth.

Here's how a news site implemented this process in practice.

Editor of NME.com, a news publication about the music industry, David Moynihan, said his own team has worked towards adopting the news diamond, describing his work as "a buzzing cross-platform environment that mirrors [Bradshaw's] theories."

Though he writes that print staff is trying to be more involved with web publishing, as a web editor, Moynihan finds "that the change in processes, skill sets and attitude is still much too slow. The theories abound, but the practice is much more sluggish!"

Moynihan gives an example of how the news diamond was applied, not only to NME's print magazine, but online as well: The Raconteurs rush-released a new album without the typical promotional and marketing moves, including reviews.  "It almost makes journalism redundant," Moynihan writes. "Fan can simply listen to the album online at legal Mp3 download sites - why do they need NME?

Said Moynihan: "Except they do, it turns out. To mark the release of the album we have done all of the following on NME.com and the traffic speaks volumes about users' needs:

       1. Daily news stories in the run up to the release, covering a number of angles from album artwork, to release details to lyrics.
       2. A Photo Gallery of the band to mark the release.
       3. An instant review online, written by our writers in 'blog' format during their first listen. The full in-depth review and a feature about the unusual method of release will be in (yep, you guessed it) NME magazine, out this week.
       4. Updated our Artist page.
       5. Streamed the album online with our radio media player.
       6. Video to go online as soon as it's released"."

Source: Online Journalism Blog (photo)
 

Canada's Thomson Corp. and Britain's Reuters officially completed their integration today, creating Thomson Reuters Corp., now the world's biggest provider of financial data to trading floors according to AFP, which launched on the London stock market today.

Reuters' former chief executive Tom Glocer is heading the new company, headquartered in New York with around 50,000 staff in 93 countries across the world.

"Thomson Reuters will benefit from the value created by more diversified revenue streams, a larger capital base and synergies resulting from the acquisition," Glocer said. "Our leadership position and global footprint will give us opportunities to grow faster than either Thomson or Reuters could have on its own."

Thomson Reuters will strengthen its financial news and data, but Glocer stated that a general and political news division, including entertainment coverage will also be included because it is all "so incredibly intertwined into the economy."

Source: AFP, Yahoo through IFRA Executive News Service

World Association of Newspapers (WAN) and Reporters Without Borders are working with The European Commission this year to organize the 16th edition of the Lorenzo Natali Prize, which is awarded to journalists defending human rights, democracy and freedom of speech.

Journalists using any of the 21st century media: radio, television, written press, and the Internet, can enter up to June 30, 2008. Prizes will be awarded in November in Strasbourg.

Click here for more information.

Later this week, Kluster.com will launch a community-driven online newspaper, Knewsroom.com, publishing content once a day with sections such as politics and sports.

Users will vote on which original content runs each day with links to relevant articles on other sites. A writer will receive $150 if his/her original article is chosen, and Kluster will split advertising revenue with those who submitted them -- all of the money distributed on Mastercards.

Source: Media Bistro, Mashable

The Mail Online has launched a beta version (see first image) of its redesigned website for the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday.

The new version at the moment features only content from the Mail's news, sport, entertainment, and Femail features section. The masthead has also shifted from the old Daily Mail design to a new Mail Online brand.



The redesigned site, which has been in the pipeline since last summer, is more reader-friendly with larger font and a less cramped layout.

Click on the second image for a look at the old version.

Source: Guardian

The Newspaper Association of America reported this week that the number of unique visitors at its member's websites increased by 12.3% in the first three months of the year.

That's certainly excellent news for newspapers. However, blogger Alan Mutter has pointed out a worrisome finding behind the growth: more people than ever are visiting, but they are sticking around for shorter than in 2007.

The chart depicts the movement of the four key metrics of online newspaper growth.

In the first three months of 2008, the average amount of time spent by website visitors dropped by 2.9%. Though not a dramatic drop, it becomes more noticeable after factoring in the 6.6% loss in the average number of page views per unique user,

According to Mutter, "the decline in the average duration of sessions at newspaper web pages suggests that visitors are not utilizing the industry's sites as primary destinations, but, rather, as places to episodically view individual articles highlighted by Google News, Drudge, Digg, blogs or any of the thousands of other places they might be."

The concern for newspapers with what Mutter terms "drive-by surfers" is a potential loss in advertising revenue, which would come as particularly hard hit in an industry that is relying more and more on online revenue. It is also likely that these latest figures will increase newspaper's opposition to Google's new "search within a search," which had started to curry favor following a controversial debut.

Source: Reflections of a Newsosaur 

CBS has launched a citizen journalism website where users can upload video and images of news events with a brief text description from their mobile phones by sending an MMS to the short code "85888" or by email. Citizen journalism is becoming more popular, with some papers such as the Chi-Town Daily, singing its praises.

CBS also has some of its own content on the site, hoping to attract more uploads. They are looking for content covering breaking news, weather, sports and politics.

Others have experimented with multimedia citizen journalism: CNN with iReport, The New York Times for the election, and The Sacramento Bee with the Olympics.

CBS has also recently updated its mobile news, making it easier for its readers to find relevant stories.

Source: WebProNews

On Monday, The Baltimore Sun launched b, a free daily newspaper and website, which targets readers from 18-34, similar to parent Tribune Co.'s RedEye. They had announced developing 'b' in February as a step to broaden the Sun's audience in times of "declining revenue and increased competition," according to the Baltimore Sun website.

The first 40 page issue featured a cover story of reader's photographs shown at sites around the city, and included a section of reader "rants" and opinions. The first issue had 75,000 copies, distributed in 1,000 bright orange boxes in 1,400 drugstores, convenience stores and athletic clubs in metropolitan Baltimore. Also, about 70 volunteer employees handed out "samplers."

"It really is going well," said Timothy J. Thomas, vice president of business development, who expects distribution to grow to 100,000. "They're kind of flying off the shelves."

Steven Duke, associate professor of journalism at Northwestern University, said similar young adult-targeted newspapers, such as RedEye, have succeeded by distributing in places where young readers congregate.

He acknowledged that the economy presents challenges for new publications. For instance, the free daily BostonNOW was just shut down due to economic reasons.

With a staff of about 20, the tabloid newspaper and website has a focus on news, sports, entertainment news, blogs, and listings geared to its readers. A third of its content is planned to be reader-generated material. The tabloid also has content-sharing agreements with local radio stations WTMD-FM and WNST-AM. Online readers will have to opportunity to upload photos and videos.

"This truly is a daily conversation with our target audience," said Brad Howard, b general manager.

Sources: Editor & Publisher, Baltimore Sun

Newspapers need to personalize their articles and display advertising in order to shore up losses from reduced classified advertising, said several newspaper executives on April 15.  

In the words of Leon Levitt, vice president of digital media for Cox Newspapers Inc., it requires "slicing and dicing" content to suit readers' particular interests, reports Editor & Publisher.

Diminishing print advertising is pushing newspapers to rely more on the growing internet advertising market (go here for the latest figures). But other newspaper execs on the panel said newspapers first needed to understand online reader behavior before they could effectively modify and personalize their content.

Certain panelists said they were leaning on social media like blogs to deliver personalized advertising. Others like Vivian Schiller, senior vice president and general manager of NYTimes.com, advocated creating multiple brands.

She cited two of the company's businesses, DealBook blog, focused on financial news, and the Great Homes and Destinations website, which caters to the luxury real estate market. Brand identity was such that she said there was "still an appetite for it."

Source: Editor & Publisher

Yesterday, following a historical newsroom strike at the print paper on April 14 (in the wake of a planned 129 layoffs), Le Monde's board discussed projects to save 1,000 pages of content per year.

According to CBNews, this will be achieved by a better distribution of pages between the mid-week and weekend print editions, as well as the "rebalancing" of supplements.

In reality, Le Monde will simply have less staff to produce content. Of the 129 job cuts, 89 will affect the newsroom, including 45 for staff in charge of producing written content.

Although many papers around the world have been forced to trim down their print editions in an effort to cut costs, the situation in France is critical: every year, quality papers cut back on content, thus giving less incentive for readers to buy them, leading to decreased revenues and further cost and content cuts...

Some of London's freesheets already carry more content than many of France's quality, paid-for dailies.

Le Monde's plan to restructure could also call on the currently non-integrated journalists to work both for the print paper, supplements and the online edition.

Update: Journalists at Le Monde voted in a general staff assembly today, on April 16, to stage their second one-day strike in a week, protesting against the planned layoffs. Le Monde is scheduled not to appear on Thursday, April 17.

Source: CB News (link in French), AFP

Tuesday morning, WashingtonPost.com rolled out a new hyperlink technology, powered by tech start-up Apture, for two of its blogs: The Fix and Celebritology. When a reader puts the mouse cursor over a link, an article, photo, or video will pop-up on the same page without clicking.

This technology not only keeps readers on WaPo's site, but also generates new advertising inventory as advertisers demand proof of engagement instead of simple page views. Also, each pop-up window contains a banner ad.

"We want to give people the ability to find related content that doesn't necessarily take you to another page," Jim Brady, the site's executive editor, said. "This allows them to keep our articles in focus as opposed to sending them to a wholly different page that requires a back-button functionality."

Problems that WaPo had to deal with were avoiding Apture links to content that might pose copyright issues and experimenting with the windows that would pop up. They decided that a "delayed hover" of the cursor instead of a mouse click, which would launch the pop-up.

"Some people don't like the action on rollover," Brady remarked. "It's something we're going to look at to see the impact on our readers. God knows they're not shy about telling us what they think of new features."

If the pop ups are well-received, WaPo plans on implementing them on all the blogs and most of the articles.

Source: Portfolio.com

Since 2007, Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner had announced plans to expand digital expansion. In line with this, between September 2006 and October 2007, the IFRA Newsplex began 20 specialized 3-day workshops on cross-media production to train more than 200 journalists from the Welt Group, comprised of Die Welt, Welt am Sonntag, Welt Kompakt, and Berliner Morgenpost.

"When we started the workshops, journalists were aware that the Welt Group was shifting to becoming a cross-media company, but they had not practiced multimedia at all - they were still working in a separated way," said Ulrich Lingnau, publishing director of the Welt Group.

The workshops were scheduled as:
- First day of each workshop provided background information for an understanding of why the shift from print to multimedia publishing is necessary.
- Second and third day practiced cross-media production, including writing and planning for the web, multimedia storytelling, podcasting and producing audio slide shows.

Prof. Joachim Blum, IFRA associate consultant and workshop leader, says the biggest challenge was "to convey to participants enough background information to make them appreciate that the change to multimedia publishing is necessary, and to get them to think in a new way about the media industry, in particular about the newspaper industry."

Thomas Exner, chief business & financial editor, says training such as this is an essential part of a journalist's job today: "..It's great to be working in an environment where there are constantly new things to learn. This is particularly true for online journalism, where things aren't as firmly established as in, say, print, where things have been done in a certain way for ages."

Source: LifePR

On Tuesday, The Aldershot Mail and other News Group-owned local editions published a bilingual edition aimed at the growing Nepalese community in east Hampshire and parts of Surrey.

Plans for the Nepalese issue began towards the end of last year. Issues included the problem that the Nepali alphabet was not recognized on News Group's computer system.

A team of Nepalese translators and proof readers put together 500 extra orders for the edition. The weekly paid-for broadsheet usually has a circulation of 9,900. News Group is planning a regular page in Nepalese.

In 2004 the government decided to allow Gurkhas who retired from the British army after 1997 with at least four years' service to settle in the UK with their families. Many chose to settle in this area of southern England, which now has an estimated 7,000 Nepalese. 

"This paper has always striven to serve all of its communities. This has traditionally included people who struggle to make their voices heard - such as young people, the homeless, and those with disabilities. With this edition we hope to do the same for our significant Nepalese population," said Elaine Cole, editor of News Group papers including the Aldershot Mail.
.
"There have been tensions, they're a growing minority and they want to reach out. They have been very willing to help us explain their culture. The reporters have learned about a group in the community which can only be a good thing."

Source: Guardian.co.uk (photo)

On Friday, the Newspaper Association of America filed comments at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), saying the FTC's "proposed privacy principles to protect consumers could be a violation of the First Amendment," reported Digital Destiny.

The FTC's proposals aimed to restrict targeted advertising features offered by QuadrantONE, the consortium of 26 newspaper companies, which is jointly owned Tribune, Gannett, Hearst, and the New York Times.

QuadrantOne advertises itself as being able to provide potential advertisers with access to a targeted audience by context, behavior, and demographics. According to its website, QuadrantOne has a total number of close to 50 million unique users.

Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy writes that "The newspaper industry should be scrupulously candid about all its data collection and targeting.... Embracing meaningful privacy policies that fully disclose prior to collection, and ensuring affirmative user consent, must be incorporated into our concept of liberty and freedom in the digital democracy era."

Source: Digital Destiny

Rafat Ali of Paidcontent.org reports that WSJ.com is in for a major relaunch and redesign in the next few weeks.

The Wall Street Journal has reportedly hired a major New York City design agency and has developed an umbrella design, a network navigational element that will go to sites in the WSJ Digital Network, including Barrons.com, MarketWatch.com, and AllThingsD.com. FoxBusiness.com is also slated for a redesign and will likely become part of the WSJ network as well, according to Ali.

The redesign is already evident in its Media & Marketing, Law, and Health sections. A separate section for sports coverage has been created, which has a partnership with Stats LLC to add sports data and information onto the site. Another new section is Campaign 2008, going hand in hand with Murdoch's vision to expand the focus of the paper and site.

It is unknown whether these changes will affect its hybrid subscription-plus-free model, but WSJ hopes to drive up even more traffic. Last month, the site reported 15 million unique visitors, a 175% increase over March 2007. For more information on WSJ.com's traffic gains, visit our sister blog SFN here.

Their site increase can partly be attributed to a more unified news desk for print and online, according to Matt Murray, the new general news editor.

Source: Paidcontent.org

UK journalism blogger Paul Bradshaw offers some tips for busy reporters and editors on how to use some Web-based tools such as RSS feeds and social media to help them along the basic newsgathering process.

According to him, why go searching for news on the Web and Google when one can let that news come to you instead?

Among his tips:

- subscribe to RSS feeds for any online sources in your area of coverage: you'll get constantly updated feeds, from a multitude of sources, on a one-stop page.
- Technorati, the blog search engine, gives the possibility of subscribing to feeds organized by tag: an easy way for a motoring journalist to keep up to date with the blogosphere's coverage of 'Ford', 'V8s' and more.
- Twitter offers features including Twitterlocal and Tweetscan, which enable users to subscribe to feeds based on location and keywords, allowing journalists to set up feeds in advance for scheduled events.
- Subscribe to bookmarking sites such as Delicious and the like: "Bookmarking sites like Delicious are a goldmine of information and leads," says Bradshaw.
- Use social networks and their feeds: "Journalism is all about contacts. Social networks are a fantastic way of finding and managing them," writes Bradshaw.
- Sign up for some Google alerts: in addition to automatically providing items that may have gone unnoticed, Google always displays 'similar' results.

While journalists should by all means learn how to take advantage of these easy-to-use Web resources, they shouldn't do so at the expense of traditional reflexes: getting directly in touch with sources and verifying the accuracy of content on their own.

Source: journalism.co.uk through IFRA Executive News Service

Le Monde's presses were cold on April 14, with an employee strike halting publication for only the second time in the 64-year long history of the paper.

Le Monde, which is distributed in the early afternoon, was not available yesterday and this morning on newsstands around France. A new edition will appear today at lunchtime.

The strike, voted by employees on April 8, was in protest of a planned 130 job cuts announced by the paper's management. The cuts represent one in four journalists at Le Monde.

Source: Guardian

Archant Suffolk has defended its plan to replace sub-editors with non-editorial ad designers, saying that "the changes will not impact on newsgathering" and is only a change to seek out efficiency.

Archant will employ 10 advertising designers to lay out pages at the East Anglican Daily Times and the Ipswich Evening Star, after cutting production staff at the two papers from 26 to 18.

Martin Chambers, the NUJ representative at Archant Suffolk stated, "Soon the company could replace all their highly trained subeditors with staff who are not journalists. These cuts are not only an attack on the jobs and living standards of Archant staff, but will put the quality of the two newspapers in jeopardy."

Stuart McCreery, the managing director at Archant, responded "that the NUJ had not had any input into discussions about the new plan."

He added, "I am confident that over the next few weeks we can introduce the new structure and workflow and continue to deliver our high quality products with improved efficiency to our valued readers."

Archant believes that they will still have quality newspapers without sub-editors. Are sub-editors essential for newspapers or is it an out-dated position?

Source: Guardian.co.uk

The Associated Press has announced plans to launch an advertising-supported mobile news network and to reduce its rates for American newspaper clients, after holding the rate steady for the past two years.

Mobile News Network, which will be organized by ZIP codes, will launch this summer. It will deliver local from participating newspapers and national and international news and photos from AP to advanced cell phones such as the iPhone. A news videos service is in the works.

The move comes in response to increased economic woes in the U.S. newspaper industry. It is predicted that members will save approximately $14m (£7.1m). The AP had previously proposed a rate restructuring that stood to save papers about $5.9 million, but decided to increase savings, reports Follow the Media.

The price cut may also serve to pacify certain member papers who had voiced protests about, among other issues, the rate restructuring plan (go here, here, and here for a look at current tensions between AP and its members). 

"We have a very simple message for you today. We hear you. We understand that these are both difficult and historic times for our industry," said Dean Singleton, CEO of MediaNews and AP chairman, at the time of AP members' annual meeting.

Sources: European Journalism Centre, Follow the Media through MediaGuardian

For the second time since 1982, the Wall Street Journal parody, Off the Wall Street Journal, is published by New York Press. The first parody and its follow-up issue sold more than 650,000 copies. Now it has been renamed to My Wall Street Journal to honor "Rupert Murdoch's ever-expanding media empire which now includes everything from MySpace</