Results matching “how exactly does a”

Newspaper websites saw the average time spent per person on their sites dwindle in May year-over-year comparisons.

The Wall Street Journal online fell to about 8-and-a-half minutes last month, from 15 in May 2007. Boston.com's average time spent per visitor dropped to 9 minutes and 39 seconds versus more than 18 minutes in May '07. And the website of the Chicago Tribune is down to about 8 and half minutes -- from 17 minutes a year ago.

There were some notable exceptions: the average time per person more than doubled at the Detroit Free Press website to almost 13 minutes. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer web site also doubled from about seven minutes in May 2007 to more than 15 minutes in May 2008.

You can view more complete results of the May Nielsen numbers here.

Nielsen Online measures the average time spent per person over the course of month (a change from their previous measure of page views), however, not all agree that this is the best metric for assessing news sites.

Primarily, because "time spent" doesn't gauge engagement. "Anybody who browses with several open tabs, or walked away from their computer knows how big a mistake it would be to assume that, just because the website is open, someone is actually paying attention," said Bryan Eisenberg, an online marketing and marketing analytics expert.

Limor Peer, research director of the Readership Institute, wrote about the conundrum in May.
 
"In our recent work with teens and young adults we heard many times that they go to news sites to get the news. That's it. They're not interested in spending time on these sites doing anything else. If that's the case...newspaper sites are at a disadvantage compared to many other sites when it comes to how much time people spend on them," explains Peer. "Shouldn't these sites be measured in terms of how well they serve their audience? How quickly people can find what they're looking for? How well they lay out issues, or provide added value to the news of the day with digests, timelines, maps, data banks, etc.? Just because you can measure time spent...doesn't mean you should, or that you only rely on that measurement. Newspaper sites are in essence trying to compete in a race that is not their own, and risk handicapping themselves by letting others define them."

Sources: Editor & Publisher, Readership Institute

SÜDKURIER, a regional newspaper in southern Germany, is experimenting with new technologies of news-distribution. Apart from the daily newspaper and its Internet platform containing a news ticker, SÜDKURIER offers a news-feed, an E-paper in pdf-format and a daily television program (suedkurier.tv) from 4 pm onwards. The television news is either presented as moving images or with a newscaster reading the information in front of a camera. “We want to be number one in all distribution channels,” says editor-in-chief Thomas Satinsky. Furthermore, SÜDKURIER has developed its own mobile phone news service (SÜDKURIER-Blitz/SK-Blitz) in order to inform its readers on the latest news immediately. The Editors Weblog spoke with Thomas Satinsky about his experience so far with the mobile phone service.

The aggressive UK newspaper market has embraced online news, making developments quick to stay ahead of the game. Editors Weblog has spoken to top executives at two quality and two tabloid newspapers to try and garner the key themes and learnings from potentially the most competitive newspaper market in the world.

The Politico is the new, multimedia, Capitol Hill, political news title. The Editors Weblog spoke to executive editor Jim Vandehei. He describes Politico’s multi-platform structure, and how it could be a working model for newspapers in the future, which he foresees as being both niche and expertise-backed.

One of this year’s major trends in newsrooms was the generalized evolution of the newsroom itself, into what was dubbed ‘integrated newsrooms’. Gannett came up with its own innovative version though, the Local Information Center (IC). The Editors Weblog interviewed one of the main engines of this venture, Jennifer Carroll, Vice President of New Media Content at Gannett Corporation.

It's no secret that the Internet is rapidly and radically changing the traditional news landscape of top-down journalism. For over a century, the pipes through which information is distributed have generally been one-way. Now that everyone has a voice on the Internet, the pipes have been siphoned and the flow has become reciprocal, causing a monumental change in news production and consumption. Having tracked these transformations, New York University professor Jay Rosen and PressThink blogger has embarked on an ambitious project to mold a new form of journalism adjusted for the digital media world.

After being commanded by a Belgian court to remove all French and German-language newspaper content from its Belgian Google News site, Google is counteracting with an appeal. The world's most popular search engine company has agreed to take down all of the cited content instead of paying the daily €1 million fine. But is there enough evidence to uphold the court's original decision?

With all this talk about ethical lapses in photojournalism, one thing is clear: it is easier to pledge yourself to a value system than it is to live by one, especially in a fiercely competitive, mercurial industry.  Such is the environment facing the code of ethics proposed by the US-based Society for News Design (SND) earlier this year.  For, although commendable, I can’t help wondering how it is going to trickle down to the newspapers and websites who need it most.

 

Citizen journalism, a concept at which mainstream news organizations used to turn up their nose, has been documented and praised enough that they are now paying attention. But do professional journalists and news organizations really have anything to be worried about?

Despite their short existence, podcasts are one of the fastest growing new media of Web 2.0. Having only emerged in mid-2004, by the end of 2005 'podcast' was the New Oxford American Dictionary's word of the year. Newspapers looking to innovate have rapidly adopted podcasts as part of their everyday news production, some providing morning news summaries to which readers who may not have the time to read during their commute can listen. The Editors Weblog spoke with three editors in charge of their respective paper's daily podcasting to find out the steps they're taking in integrating podcasting into their newsrooms.

Lately, the newspaper industry has been worried about the 18-34 demographic, one that they are losing to new media and which advertisers, who consider this generation their primary target, are following. But have newspapers been concerned with the habits of the next age group down, 12-17 year olds? According to a new study, they should be.

If you've read articles about a man named Craig and his free online classifieds, you've probably noticed Craig's smiling face in the accompanying photo. Well, Craig has a lot to smile about. He now has classified sites in almost every major US city and in about 100 cities around the world. Newspaper execs hate this guy. And for good reason. According to a London consulting firm, in its relatively short existence, Craigslist has "destroyed" approximately 75% of US newspaper classified pricing, rates on which just last year newspapers depended on for over 35% of their revenue. Danny Meadows-Klue in the UK's The Guardian writes, "The list is not bad news; it's terrible news. The business model cuts at the heart of newspaper profitability and does so with such elegance, and is so intrinsically orientated to the new economy, that you can't help but shrug and say 'this is the future.'" Well, yeah! Every article written about the San Francisco based .org cites the impossibility of newspapers to compete with such a phenomenon.

If you've read articles about a man named Craig and his free online classifieds, you've probably noticed Craig's smiling face in the accompanying photo. Well, Craig has a lot to smile about. He now has classified sites in almost every major US city and in about 100 cities around the world. Newspaper execs hate this guy. And for good reason. According to a London consulting firm, in its relatively short existence, Craigslist has "destroyed" approximately 75% of US newspaper classified pricing, rates on which just last year newspapers depended on for over 35% of their revenue. Danny Meadows-Klue in the UK's The Guardian writes, "The list is not bad news; it's terrible news. The business model cuts at the heart of newspaper profitability and does so with such elegance, and is so intrinsically orientated to the new economy, that you can't help but shrug and say 'this is the future.'" Well, yeah! Every article written about the San Francisco based .org cites the impossibility of newspapers to compete with such a phenomenon.