May 2008 Archives

Press freedom is under serious threat from many sources -- gangs and corrupt officials in Latin America, autocratic regimes in the Middle East, conflicts in Africa, hostile governments in Asia, and from death threats and prosecutions in central Asia and Europe, the World Association of Newspapers said in its half-year review of press freedom.

The report, presented Saturday to the Board of WAN on the eve of the World Newspaper Congress and World Editors Forum in Göteborg, Sweden, painted a grim picture of attacks, imprisonment and murder facing journalists in many countries.

Twenty-eight journalists have been killed since November 2007. Iraq remains the most deadly country, with 9 killed.

The report, with region-by-region details, is available here.

Source: WAN

Washingtonpost.com introduced Wednesday a housing widget that enables users to search for apartments near Metro stations. The widget is the Post's latest effort to spread its content beyond its domain site.

Ken Barbieri, director of business development at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, says that such expansion is necessary. According to Barbieri, it is vital to "get your content to the place where people are consuming information."

The widget, the Post's 25th in 18 months, will utilize Google maps to provide users with customized visuals. It will be available on Washingtonpost.com, and distributed on Google's content network.

Washingtonpost.com's future projects, Barbieri suggests, will target the iPhone and Blackberry.

"Whether the consumer is on a social network or a mobile phone, we want to be there," said Barbieri.

Source: The ClickZ Network, through I Want Media

Lawrence Pintak, director of the Kamal Adham Center for Journalism Training and Research at the American University in Cairo recently completed a survey of 601 journalists in 13 Arab countries in North Africa, the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula.

When asked to name the top 10 missions of Arab journalism, participants named human rights, political reform, poverty and education as the most critical issues, trumping hot button topics like Palestinian statehood and the war in Iraq.

"Overwhelmingly, they wanted the clergy to stay out of politics. And, aside from the ever-present issue of Israel, they ranked 'lack of political change' alongside American policy as the greatest threats to the Arab world," wrote Pintak in an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times this week. "Many see themselves as agents of political and social change who believe it is their mission to reform the antidemocratic regimes they live under."

The results of Pintak's research will be published in The International Journal of Press/Politics in July.

Source: The New York Times

24/7 Wall St. has looked at the top 25 US newspapers and ranked their online business and finance sections, on an A-F scale.

Business and finance sections were selected because advertisers are often willing to pay a premium for space in a section read by readers "(that) have money that the readers of the sports sections may not." Given the readership and advertising potential, this should presumably be one of the best online sections of a news site.  

Overall, the results indicate there is room for improvement, with the news sites receiving a median grade of B-. 24/7 Wall St. reported many of the sites were difficult to navigate, lacked on content and were poorly designed. Of one they commented the site, "appears to have been designed giving no thought to the fact that the reader is looking at content on the internet and not in a newspaper. "

Yet among the 25, several stood out as having used their resources well to create straightforward site navigation, quality design and content - particularly content which catered to their readership, and foster interactivity through blogs, video and online forums.

Among the best, The Houston Chronicle was noted for excellent navigation, relevant blogs and columns and mix of major stories from wire services, coupled with "local touches like the Houston Stock Index and several Top 100 features." The St. Petersburg Times was also a stand out, with superb graphics and lay-out and interactive features on local companies.

Robb Montgomery commented earlier this year that in moving our focus online, "We are in a transition and transitions are bumpy and disorienting." Montgomery advises that digital journalism needs to be seen (and created as) its own product, unique from both traditional print journalism and traditional ways of consuming film and television.

Sources: 24/7 Wall St.

The Guardian's website drew 3 million online users in April, maintaining its position as UK's most popular newspaper website, according to Nielsen Online.

But its grip on the top spot is slipping.

Telegraph.co.uk, which holds second-place with 2.7 million unique users, experienced a traffic growth of 77%, dwarfing the Guardian's 24% increase.

Trailing Telegraph.co.uk were, in order, the Sun Online, the Times Online, and the Daily Mail.

Telegraph.co.uk owes its surge in popularity to a proliferating number of "light" visitors, users who spend less than five minutes on the website, said Stephen Brooks, UK managing director of Nielsen Online. According to Nielsen, light users now constitute 81% of all traffic.

"Analysing the Telegraph's audience by heavy, medium and light visitors reveals their dramatic growth in popularity is concentrated around light users, which could be due to the site's improved visibility in search results," Brooks said.

Nielsen's announcement follows recent studies by ABCe and comScore Inc., each of which crowned a different newspaper - Telegraph.co.uk and Sun Online respectively - as most popular. PaidContent UK's Robert Andrews' advice: "You can pretty much pick your own winner."

Source: PaidContent UK, Brand Republic

Newspaper Le Figaro and mobile phone service Orange have partnered to offer a unique feature: it is the first live daily show about politics, entitled "The Talk," to be conceived exclusively for the Web and mobile phones.
The show will launch on Monday June 2 with French Prime Minister François Fillon. Every day, at 6pm, a political or financial celebrity will be interviewed by Figaro's star political reporter Anne Fulda or by Figaro.fr managing editor Laurent Guimier.
The show will be shot in the Figaro's own video studio (see the interview about their video studio) and will be broadcast live and for free on figaro.fr and on the news portal of Orange, both on the Web and on Orange mobile phones.
Truly innovative, this service will also be interactive, as Internet users can submit questions before the show and react to it live on the blog of "The Talk."
The show's business model is entirely based on its audience, thanks to banner ads sold on the sites of both the newspaper and mobile operator, for which both partners will share revenues.
The show's time, 6pm, was also geared to fill a 'news void' for the French audience, as they  are still at work or on their way home.
"There's on one side the best of content with Le Figaro, on the other the best of distribution with Orange. It's a win-win situation," said Orange President and Director, Didier Lombard.
Source: Figaro (here and here, links in French) through IFRA Executive News Service

The Chicago Tribune has partnered with digital video recorder specialist TiVo, for the video service to carry content from the Tribune's TV critic Maureen Ryan.

The recommendations of Ryan will only be available to those who sign up, among the roughly 100,000 TiVo subscribers in the Chicago area. TiVo's chief executive said he was in talks about similar partnerships with other print media outlets.

The Tribune could benefit from the deal in several ways, including increased visibility of its brand name, but also potentially additional subscription revenue.

"Maybe we'll get a few people to do the unthinkable and subscribe to the newspaper," said James Warren, managing editor for features at the Tribune. This partnership comes as the Tribune is reshuffling its TV print digest, whose value is diminishing with the rise of online or on-screen guides. "He said the TiVo partnership seemed like a no-lose proposition," reported The New York Times.

The Tribune will also get a share of revenue from newly-subscribed TiVo users, if these came through one the newspaper's advertisements for TiVo.

 

 

Source: New York Times through I Want Media

Newspaper editors have a new reason to emphasize their video offerings - a ten-figure reason.

 

The number of people who watch online video could rise to one billion within the next five years, according to a study released Tuesday by technology research group ABI Research.

 

This means that the study expects the number of online video viewers to quadruple by 2013.

 

"As my boss, Jim Kerstetter, points out, it's unwise to put too much faith in predictions like this, but this isn't too much of a stretch," writes CNET News blogger Greg Sandoval.

 

Source: CNET News through I Want Media

Starting on Sunday June 1, the 15th World Editors Forum and 61st World Newspaper Congress will kick off and run through Wednesday June 4.

All of next week, read all the latest news, watch the videos and get exclusive summaries and interviews from one of the industry's biggest events.

The Editors Weblog team is currently travelling to Göteborg, Sweden, for the Forum. We will continue to give a share of our regular news coverage until the end of the conference.

The Washington Times unveiled Tuesday a preview of its revamped website, tailored to facilitate user interaction and allow readers a more personalized experience. The renovation marks the Times' switch from a "newspaper enterprise to a full media company offering news 24/7," said the Times' press release.

Most prominent among the new features is the News Cube, a design that enables readers to flip through articles in two ways: vertically, through general topics (Business, Sports - traditional news sections), or horizontally, through news themes adapted to specific interests (family issues, video games, the military). These news themes will include all stories written by the Washington Times since 1999.

The Times will also introduce a question forum and social networking communities monitored by citizens "who function as the bloggers-in-chief and moderators," said the release.

The prototype launched today will enable the paper to get feedback from readers before the print edition is relaunched on June 2, along with an e-edition of the print newspaper.

Source: Business Wire, press release

Copiepresse, a copyright group for Belgian newspapers, is suing Google for up to €49.1 million for displaying links to the publishers' content on Google News, the company's news search engine.

Copiepresse additionally requests that Google publish the court's ruling for 20 days on Google's Belgian website and news.Google.be. For each day Google fails to do so, Copiepresse seeks a €1 million fine.

Google News compiles links to news stories customized to fit users' searches, a service, Copiepresse complains, that allows Google to steal advertising profits away from the newspapers.

This is the second time in the past two years Copiepresse has sued Google. A February 2007 court ruling mandated that Google remove all links from its website and pay Copiepresse damages.

In related news, Google responded today to another grievance being brought against the company, Viacom's lawsuit against the Google-owned YouTube, calling it a "threat to the flow of information on the web."

Click here for further coverage of Copiepresse's lawsuit.

Source: Bloomberg News through EJC, Boston Globe

Two magazines, published by 8020 Publishing and based on an experimental user-generated model, are drawing the attention of traditional newspaper editors.

Everywhere, a travel magazine, and JPG, a photo journal, rely on citizens to create their content, greatly reducing the price of production, while managing to maintain a standard of high quality.

The magazines receive thousands of submissions online, which are then voted on by readers for publication. A small editorial team makes the final decision.

"Even in this Twittering digital age in which tens of millions of self-publishers have created their own blogs, there is still enough of a thrill in being published in a bound print publication," reported the San Francisco Chronicle.

"After doing this for a bit, I'm still not seeing what professional travel writers do that our people aren't doing better," Everywhere Editor in Chief Todd Lappin says.

"Think about it. There's only one of them going to a place and there's potentially hundreds of our people already there."

Some editors have expressed reluctance to embrace a model dependent upon citizens - such a system would seem to cheapen the value of professional journalists. Sree Sreenivasan, in charge of new media program at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, recognizes the value of user-generated content, but also warns against community-based 'editorial' choices:

"'Create-your-own news sites' lose some of the serendipity of journalism. You're losing the stories that you might not see if there wasn't an editor looking out for them," Sreenivasan says.

The publishers of Everywhere and JPG are considering similar magazines for car fans and food connoisseurs.

It remains to be seen whether this user-generated model can be successfully and viably applied to news and newspapers. Initiatives at the Hartford Courant, or CNN's iReport platform, which now draws 10,000 user submissions per month, point in the right direction.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle through I Want Media

Welt Online, website of referential daily Die Welt in Germany, has chosen eScenic for its content management. Oliver Michalsky, deputy editor of Welt Online, will explain this choice at the upcoming World Editors Forum, to be held in Gothenburg, June 1-4.

"We thing that eScenic is a high performance content management system," he said.

The CMS is very fast compared to Welt Online's previous system: sometimes reporters had to wait for five minutes or more before a news item was published. "It was terrible for us," said Michalsky.

With eScenic, it is now both easy and quick to publish text stories, but also multimedia content such as videos and picture galleries, or interactive features like polls, said Michalsky.

Recent upgrades in eScenic also make it easy to manage Welt Online's community platform, where users can set up profiles and upload their own content; Welt Online began this project a year and a half ago with CMS Drupal, which offered better functionalities at the time, but will soon go through the process of adapting its community platform to eScenic.

According to Michalsky, staffers at Die Welt comfortably adopted the new CMS. It took about two weeks for all editors to learn how to use it. Not all reporters need to learn how to use it, but it has been very handy for reporters outside of Die Welt's Berlin headquarters.

Michalsky will discuss these issues at the upcoming World Editors Forum.

Read other preview interviews here.

Source: Oliver Michalsky, deputy editor, Welt Online

Read Write Web reports that the New York Times is to introduce an API on its website, opening its content for users to program and structure. The Times' decision will have ramifications for the newspaper industry; the API is considered to be the next stage in the evolution of the newspaper.

"[An API] will give developers access to their vast amounts of well-researched data, and allows the paper's brand to be spread easily across the web," Read Write Web's Josh Catone writes.

The API is the latest in a series of online innovations by the Times. Over the past year, the paper has created an RSS feed, a Facebook application, and its own news aggregator, Blogrunner. But the API will give users the freedom to personalize and organize content, a major step.

"The plan is definitely to open the code up," New York Times CTO Marc Frons says. "How far we don't know."

Click here to learn more about API.

Source: Read Write Web through I Want Media

In a blog post, Al Neuharth, founding editor of the leading US daily USA Today, reassures newspaper editors and publishers: 225 years after the first daily newspaper was published in the US, the newspaper is still a robust news medium (see a recent study) - despite current struggles in the newsroom.

A lot of doom and gloom reports about the newspaper industry have come from newspapers themselves.

"Sure, the slumping economy has made times a little tough for them. But most still have profit margins well above most other businesses," wrote Neuharth.

There are still a whopping 1,422 dailies and 6,253 being published in the US, and USA Today's circulation is at about 2,28 million copies daily, increasing every year in its 25-year history.

The Wall Street Journal is second, with just over 2 million copies.  (Neuharth noted: "Under new owner/boss Rupert Murdoch, it's the most improved newspaper in the country and likely to show significant sharp future increases.")

The transition to the digital age isn't easy, but newspapers are embracing it. Said Neuharth:

"Importantly, newspaper owners and editors have embraced the Internet and now are 24/7 providers of news, information, entertainment and advertising. The hunger for all that is greater than ever in history. That's why newspaper-oriented media companies have a bright future."

Source: USA Today Blogs through I Want Media

A tornado sweeping through the Colorado area Thursday prompted Poynter reporter Amy Gahran to search online for additional information. Thanks to a friend's warning on Twitter and visits to a couple of hyperlocal news sites, Gahran was swiftly informed of the tornado's path.

"I suspected that, like me, some other locals might have Twitter running on their computers (or alerts coming to their cell phones) but not be paying attention to mainstream media at the moment," Gahran writes.

Not that it would have mattered - Twitter had "broken" the story before the mainstream media had even altered their regular programming (remember the earthquake in China?).

Gahran suggests that journalists and editors join Twitter, identify local Twitter users, and learn how to use TweetScan, Twitter's search tool.

"Twitter's popularity has reached the point that it can be a valuable early warning system to nearly anyone," Gahran writes, "Including journalists and news orgs."

Gahran's story is a good example of the potential of Twitter and the benefits of hyperlocal news in breaking news situations.

Source: Poynter

The Journal and the Durham Times were the big winners at the 27th Tom Cordner North East Press Awards.

The Journal, a Newcastle paper, was named Newspaper of the Year for the second consecutive year. The paper also won six other prizes, including Magazine of the Year and Picture of the Year. The Durham Times, barely a year in print, was named Weekly Newspaper of the Year.

In other awards, the Northern Echo (picture left) won News Website of the Year, a new addition to the ceremony.

According to their website, the Tom Cordner Awards are the "largest regional media awards operation in the UK." The awards cover "newspapers, magazines, and their associated websites from North Yorkshire to the Scottish border."

Source: holdthefrontpage.co.uk
 

Public trust in journalists has fallen significantly, reports a YouGov poll published in the British Journalism Review.

Although trends within the industry remain unchanged - with broadcast journalists considered more trustworthy than print reporters - all but one of the seven categories of journalist have lost ground to the trust figures reported five years ago.

Trust in broadsheet journalism is down 22% to 43%, in mid-market journalism 18% to 40%, and in local journalism figures have dropped 20% to rest at 18%. While trust in other occupations, including police and teachers, has also declined, none so dramatically as journalists.

"The only group to emerge unscathed were the red-top journalists, whose reputation was so low it could hardly sink further," said University of Westminster professor of communications Steven Barnett.

YouGov's survey shows a marked difference from the results of silimar surveying in the US. The Readership Institute's 2007 survey found that while overall trust in journalism is declining, 75% of respondents still trust their local daily newspaper's reporting.

Sources: Press Gazette, The Guardian

Guardian News and Media is merging operations of its online and print outlets, The Guardian, Guardian.co.uk, and The Observer. The move replaces the traditional "funnel" structure of the newsroom - all stories going through one editor - with a new layout, dubbed "pods in a matrix" by Guardian Editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger.

"The jargon is now, I'm told, we're a 'matrix' organisation. That means you will have to get used to the fact that you are working for two people [a section head and a head of news, sport and business]," Rusbridger says.

The new system will preserve some of the traditional positions in a newspaper, such as an overarching editor, but not all reporters will have to pass their stories through the funnel. Journalists working in "pods," or groups covering a common subject, will publish directly online.

"I've always thought that news editor on a newspaper is an impossible job - all your correspondents are trying to get the attention of this person. And in the end all their copy has to come through this tiny, narrow funnel.

"That's what I mean about releasing the creativity, so these people don't go home pissed off because they didn't get their story in the paper," Rusbridger says.

The Guardian's efforts offer a glance into the future newspaper's infrastructure, a system of micromanagement designed to facilitate media convergence, connect readers with the information they seek, and make the news as timely as possible.

"Everywhere you look in the world a similar thing is happening," Rusbridger says, "It's not seven-day publishing, it's going over to something much more ambitious."

Source: Press Gazette through IFRA Executive News Service

You likely have heard about US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's foot-in-mouth moment on Friday, but how did the reporters who broke it hear this unfortunate choice of phrase?

On a live news feed, streaming 1500 miles away.

The traveling press corps of about two-dozen journalists, photographers and camera operators who were traveling with the Clinton campaign in South Dakota on Friday, were not the reporters who broke the story - the story was broken by the New York Post, after hearing it in their own newsroom.

Last week Clinton, speaking to the editorial board of the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, defended her choice to stay in the primary campaign, arguing there was historical precedence of primary campaigns running into June. "We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California."

When Clinton made this statement, the reporters traveling with the campaign were on a bus, en route to Clinton's second appearance at a local supermarket.

Although they were watching the same stream, their internet connection was spotty - but the New York Post's wasn't. The original N.Y. Post read: "She is still in the presidential race, she said today, because historically, it makes no sense to quit, and added that, 'Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June,' making an odd comparison between the dead candidate and Barack Obama."

Within minutes of Clinton beginning her second appearance, Blackberries around the room began to go off, calls coming in from editors who had seen a Drudge Report link to the N.Y. Post article. The conversation of the day quickly shifted to her remarks at the Leader, and within two and a half hours, Clinton had made a statement expressing her regret.

In this case, perhaps more interesting than the politics of Clinton's statement are the changing politics of communication that the incident highlights.

Within minutes, Clinton, who thought she was speaking at a small event in South Dakota - one too small for even the traveling press to attend - was a sound bite around the country.

Source: The New York Times

Although the Chinese government has promised journalists the unrestricted right of expression, avoid any preconceptions, warns the Guardian's Phil Harding. This past month, news about the earthquake in China and angry protesters have tended to overshadow the issue of press coverage during the upcoming Beijing Summer Olympics.

In an article Monday Harding speculates whether the government can keep its word.

"In a country that keeps such a tight grip on its own media and which severely restricts access to its markets by foreign media companies...it is a guarantee that has been hotly disputed," Harding writes.

Harding quotes several journalists who echo this skepticism, including BBC Sport's Head of Major Events, Dave Gordon, whose network plans to film certain events with its own unilateral cameras in preparation for any media suppression.

"We don't want any editorial decisions made for us," Gordon says.

Harding is most curious about how the media will cover events off the field, and how the Chinese government will respond to any such scrutiny.

"If the Olympics are portrayed as a well-organized success, the media will be accused of falling for a Chinese propaganda exercise. On the other hand, if there are protests and they are properly covered, there will be accusations from the Chinese that the actions of an unrepresentative minority have been magnified out of proportion."

During the earthquake, many journalists in China reportedly enjoyed increased press freedom. It remains to be seen whether the Chinese government will keep its word for the Olympics.

In April, the World Association of Newspapers organized a conference entitled "Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom," which featured Gao Yu, a Chinese journalist jailed twice for her reporting. Unfortunately, she had reported that, in the run-up to the Olympics, the conditions for journalists were "considerably more catastrophic" than they were 15 years ago.

Source: The Guardian

From our sister site the SFN Blog and journalism.co.uk: at the Google Zeitgeist conference last week, Telegraph Media Group editor-in-chief Will Lewis said that with the advent of multimedia reporting, he considers CNN and the BBC to be the Telegraph's main competition.

"What has happened in our industry is that the traditional distinction between text and video is fusing and the Holy Grail is to now develop a content site or stream of content that is text and videos," said Lewis.

"Without being too highfaluting about it we see our main competitors as being people like the BBC or CNN.

"Both of which are trying to use video and text to enable users to decide how they find out about a story."

Unlike some other newspaper publishers, Lewis also defended Google, Digg and the like because they "bring an enormous amount of business to our door."

These comments come in the wake of the Telegraph's recent surge in online traffic, as it surpassed guardian.co.uk last month.

Source: journalism.co.uk through SFN Blog

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has recently come under the press' fire, after he and his party criticized AFP coverage. But political dissensions should by no means lead to inaccurate journalism, which is exactly what the weekly Le Nouvel Observateur did when it attributed these words to Sarkozy, during an informal meeting with a group of journalists:

"(expletive) guys, it's hot, let's go the terrace!" When asked about his visit in Tunisia and journalists there, the Nouvel Obs reported that Sarkozy had answered: "Don't give a damn, anyway, they're only a bunch of (expletive) who ask (expletive) questions..."

This would be crunchy content, especially knowing of Sarkozy's previous ethical missteps (a video shot by Le Parisien of Sarkozy insulting a citizen drew a million viewers in a day).

The problem is that this information was inaccurate, and that the Nouvel Observateur later admitted this information hadn't been verified and presented its apologies.

In fact, there wasn't even a Nouvel Obs reporter at the time of Sarkozy's meeting.

Let it serve as reminder to the press as a whole, in France and elsewhere, that a necessary degree of partisanship and political contestation shouldn't lead to inaccurate journalism.

Source: Le Monde (link in French)

The Dutch Royal Library began Monday to digitize its 8 million-page newspaper collection. The project is estimated to take three years to complete, and is part of the library's larger-scale effort to digitize its entire 30 million-item collection.

Source: DutchNews, European Commission

Timothy McNulty, the Chicago Tribune's Public Editor, responded today to the onslaught of "incensed" readers who have complained about conservative columnist Kathleen Parker's May 14 column. Many readers viewed the piece as thinly veiled racism.

Parker, who is syndicated by more than 400 newspapers, wrote: "'A full-blooded American.' That's how 24-year-old Josh Fry of West Virginia described his preference for John McCain over Barack Obama. His feelings aren't racist, he explained. He would just be more comfortable with 'someone who is a full-blooded American as president.'" The column suggests that while all Americans may be immigrants, not all have paid their dues.

Janice Lindegard was one of many who responded to the column. "Using the term 'full-blooded American' to describe John McCain smacks of nothing if not white supremacy."

NcNulty echoed the Tribune's readers. "To write about bloodlines and claim it's not about race or ethnicity is nonsense," McNulty wrote. "Those are code words. I suspect most readers understand that."

However, he also noted that, "Printing a column is not the same as sanctioning it."

The editor emphasized the importance of printing and debating any opinion - regardless of whether it is popular or politically correct. "It is far better to honestly relate what people are saying and thinking--even if the sentiments expressed are racist--than to hide or pretend those attitudes don't exist."

Source: Editor & Publisher

Lemonde.fr organized an online chat with French new media and technology specialist Francis Pisani. The expert gave his views on multiple topics, including the future of the mobile Web, anonymity online, social networks, and the public's fear of a Big Brother digital society.

The following is an edited and translated version of what can be found on Le Monde's site.

Nowadays, massive social networks are becoming the norm on the Web. Will this continue or will there be new social networks that are smaller and more localized?

Both coexist and will continue to do so. I find the concept of the website ning.com very interesting. Instead of putting users in a global social network, it enables users to create micro networks.

Is anonymity online a defunct notion?

It's hard to say. Personally I think the possibility of being anonymous should be preserved, but the most important thing is to have direct control over information about us. This means that users should be able to know what kind of data a website has about them, and users should be given the possibility to destroy that data or migrate it to another site.

What are the trends for blogs in the future?

I think blogs will evolve in two directions: the 'old' one, which entails publishing postings in a Wiki-type database, which can be searched independently of chronology and categories.
But today Twitter, Friendfeed and others are showing us the good things of being able to include conversations, in which the predominant role of bloggers is minimized.

How will the development of the mobile Web influence the way we use the Internet?

There are two big notions at play: the importance of location, and the highly specialized technologies necessary to understand the context around one's location.

This essentially means that once we will have these technologies, content providers (journalists, TV stations, institutions...) will have to provide content adapted to these circumstances.

We will also have to adapt to a new preset: the fact that we are becoming more and more nomadic.

Which mobile format do you think is most promising for news and information? Cell phones like the iPhone, e-books like Kindle, video game consoles like the PSP?

I would add a fourth category, UMPCs (Ultra Mobile PC), a format that is starting to seriously grow in Asia, and that we will probably see in the US and European markets very soon.

At this point, I can't say which of these forms will win. In fact, the increasing number of these machines should enable a large number of people to choose whichever format is convenient for them.

Source: Lemonde.fr

A recent study by Roland Berger Strategy Consultants finds cause for optimism for the print newspaper industry. The study foresees the future growth of print media, but urges imminent action in order to ensure its survival.

According to Alexander Mogg, a partner in Roland Berger's InfoCom Competence Center, the time for action is now.

"With so many operational optimizations already successfully implemented, what needs to be done now is to set the strategic course for the next five to ten years," Mogg says.

For him, the future for newspapers is by becoming increasingly targeted and focusing on areas of strength (see a similar argument by Jim VandeHei and the Politico).

"Magazines and newspapers will only be able to achieve lasting success in multimedia competition if they really know their target groups and focus on the inherent strengths of print publications. We see growth potential in the premium reader segment and in other niches."

The study presents nine scenarios for the future of the newspaper and includes some strategies for success. Among the strategies:

    -- Frequent, thorough market research, in order to identify trends within readerships: "Print        media can only successfully compete with other media if they are clearly positioned,"            according to Roland Berger's website.

    --"In multimedia competition, print media will have to focus on their inherent strengths -            beyond quality, these include providing readers with an individual experience and the            deliberate choice to set aside quality time in their busy schedules."

    --Filling niche markets: "The mass market has been fully distributed, but niches still hold           growth potential."

    --Brand investments (this also includes "training" younger generations to adjust to print           media.): "Brand investments are generally worthwhile, because a strong brand is                   becoming more and more important in an increasingly fragmented media landscape."

View the full list by clicking the link below.

Source: RolandBerger.com through IFRA Executive News Service

Geoffrey Pereira, Head of Editorial Systems at Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), will explain why the group has chosen ATEX Hermes and IBM's Nica platform to be its content management system at the upcoming World Editors Forum, to be held in Gothenburg, June 1-4.

SPH began its long process of adopting a CMS in 2002-2003. After a year of evaluation, SPH chose ATEX, which was implemented in the last newspaper last October. (Note that some of these delays weren't related to SPH or the CMS, but to external factors such as the general elections in Singapore or changes in IBM's system).

The choice of Hermes and Nica over competitors was motivated by several factors including:

- The main reason was that these firms could provide on-site help throughout the entire process, and customize the CMS as it was being developed. For almost two years, ATEX provided a project manager and two staffers to work hand-in-hand with SPH, up to the roll-out. "What I don't want is to specify a product and when it comes back, if I have made a mistake, to hear 'sorry, no change requests," said Pereira. "When you ask for a big system like this, you don't (initially) know what you want in very fine detail."
This contrasted with other firms that built the CMS on their own site, then returned it after completion - with little possibility for the customer to modify initial requirements.

- Flexibility: thanks to Hermes, any changes in font for example can be easily implemented. Its ouput, in XML and PDF, also gives the possibility to easily create e-editions.

- Compatibility with Adobe.

- The training period for staffers was shorter than for other CMS: one week. In fact, a group of five people from SPH were trained by IBM's staff during three long months. This paid off. When this core group of "super-users" - not technical people, two subeditors and three reporters - returned they were able to train another ten people. This group trained all other 500 staffers in-house in a year, ending last October. By the end of the process, it only took two days to teach reporters, and four days for designers, how to use the CMS.

Pereira will discuss these issues at the upcoming World Editors Forum, during the session on content management systems.

View other preview interviews here.

(Disclaimer: ATEX is a strategic business partner in the World Association of Newspapers' Shaping the Future of Newspapers project.)

Source: Geoffrey Pereira, Head of Editorial Systems, Singapore Press Holdings

In Monday's Guardian Reader's Editor Siobhain Butterworth ponders a universal standard for evaluating citizens' requests for retracting their comments in published stories, noting the difficulty of creating such a measurement - especially in the digital age.

At the Guardian, "We usually resist requests for deletions of names and quotes that don't identify significant errors."

"Should users who ask for their comments to be removed from blogs be treated differently to people who request the deletion of their names and quotes from articles, or the removal of their letters?" Butterworth writes.

Butterworth mentions other factors involved in the evaluation process, such as timeliness and sensitivity. In the latter case, a rape victim's wish for anonymity is a suitable request. However, Butterworth questions whether "letter writers who in youth, anger or enthusiasm managed to get their missives published in the Guardian, but now wish they hadn't" are suitable requests to the former.

"If you gave a quote to the paper or had a letter published several years ago you may not have given a moment's thought to your digital footprint, but even before the advent of search engines people needed to think carefully about what they put on the record.

"The difference is that in the pre-digital age a letter to a newspaper or quote in an article, from someone who was not in the public eye, was less likely to resurface."

Butterworth's musings are not prescriptive but rather cautionary, warning users to be mindful of their "digital footprints." For the editors left to sift through user retraction requests, the directions are less clear.

How can editors deal with the delicacy of such requests without compromising the integrity of their newspapers? Butterworth doesn't say.

Source: The Guardian

How can newspapers curb Google's expanding reach into their digital profits?

According to BusinessWeek's Roben Farzard, the giant search engine "is the ultimate enemy of the journalism that we constitutionally cherish."

"For every dollar of traditional ads it displaces, Google's intermediation kicks back mere nickels to content providers...(Google) won't pony up the money to station and protect correspondents in Baghdad, nor will it pick up the martini tab when a reporter interviews a hedge fund manager's whistleblowing mistress."

According to Farzard, Google, will "either run or broker half of the world's $55 billion in online advertising" by next year.

To save news organizations, Farzard suggests implementing a profits tax on the search-engine giant, limiting its ability to commandeer the newspaper advertising market.

But is it really possible, as Farzard argues, to tax the search engine giant?

Source: BusinessWeek

The US Society of Professional Journalists - "an old-media organization" in the words of the Chicago Tribune - has chosen embrace the trend towards citizen journalism by organizing workshops to teach citizens about ethical and responsible journalism.

Until now, "Some major initiatives in this country have failed on both business and news-gathering levels," commented the Tribune.

Others, such as Talking Points Memo and the Huffington Post, have strived.

In any case, the trend towards "citizen journalism" is here to stay and the SPJ has decided to conduct seminars around the country to teach the basics of journalism to "those who are, perhaps, more citizen than journalist," reported the Tribune.

For the first session, about a week ago, there were relatively few respondents. About 25 people signed up, at $25 a day for seminars on ethics, and about two thirds of them showed up.

"There are quite a few bloggers, particularly in larger cities, who do work on a par with any journalist," said Clint Brewer, the SPJ's president and editor of Nashville's alternative City Paper. "We're trying to sort of hang our shingle out in their world with this first step and let them know we welcome them as well."

For Geoff Dougherty, who left the Tribune two years ago and founded the Chi-Town Daily News (see their own news process involving citizens) and taught the reporting seminar Saturday, the SPJ's involvement is a positive sign for the industry.

"It's great that they're interested in kind of extending the professional standards that have been in effect for newspaper journalists to a completely new population," he said.

Source: Chicago Tribune - Technolo-j

The free business daily paper City AM in London is launching Quick Response (QR) technology, which enables readers to download financial news on their mobile phones.

When a picture of a QR code is taken from a mobile phone, the QR code provides a link to the mobile Internet referring to specific news pages.

City AM claims to be the first newspaper in the UK to make us of QR technology.

These codes have already been extensively used in Japan and China. In France, several magazines successfully tried using the smart barcodes last summer.

City AM already provides a 'mobizine', a mobile-friendly format for its news service.

Source: Brand Republic

Trinity Mirror continues its company-wide relaunch of regional newspaper websites as it revamps the Hounslow Chronicle in west London.

The redesigned site includes the hyperlocal community blog feature pioneered by the Evening Gazette in Teesside - the feature undeniably boosted the Evening Gazette's traffic and helped it engage its local community.

Users can contribute content to the hyperlocal sites, and the newspaper intends to use to reverse publish this content in print products (see today's example with The Hartford Courant in the US).

More and more newspapers around the world are implementing these types of hyperlocal community portals and then publishing users' content in specific print editions, a model which seems to be successful both as a business venture and an editorial product.   

Source: Press Gazette

Matthew Wall, the Technical Architect for guardian.co.uk, described in an audio interview some of the technical developments of the website, from an engineer's perspective, as the site continues to redesign.

The podcast is fairly long and "aimed at a software engineering audience so contains soft rock," wrote Wall in a blog post.

For those who wade through the technical jargon, you can listen to the podcast here.

Source: Guardian blogs

According to Scott Karp from Publishing 2.0, The New York Times is increasingly embracing link journalism - the idea that online journalism should heavily rely on one of the Web's main attributes, hyperlinking, to increase a story's editorial value.

Karp has been grappling with the idea of link journalism for some time (see his posts here).

The Times' Lede blog makes intensive use of 'link journalism'. In one of its posts, it links back to several external sources including the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, Washington Monthly, Washington Post, USA Today, and an independent blogger.

But according to Karp, 'link journalism' extends far beyond the simple act of hyperlinking:

The Lede's posting "isn't just lazily linking to these stories -- he's read them, compared them, identified shortcomings, extracted key facts and issues, and connected the dots.

"In a traditional newspaper article, all of these facts and analysis would have been synthesized, but the reader wouldn't have had the opportunity to read for themselves the source material. This post does what journalism is supposed to do -- empower people with facts, understanding, and perspective about important issues."

The challenge for newspapers and their websites is to strike a balance, between remaining synthesizers of a wide mass of information (because consumers still expect journalists and editors to do so), while also becoming aggregators and relay points for news consumers who may want to access more in-depth sources on particular topics.

Source: Publishing 2.0

Following yesterday's ABCe results contending that telegraph.co.uk has overtaken guardian.co.uk as the most-visited newspaper website in the UK, web measurement standards are to be reviewed.

Rival publishers questioned the spectacular ascension of traffic to the Telegraph's website, which added 6.3 million unique users in two months.

The Joint Industry Committee for Web Standards, which advises ABCe on its measurement methods, has agreed to conduct a review of its measurement standards.

The credibility of ABCe measurements seems to have been undermined by the volatile figures it has produce.

In 2007, the Telegraph's claim that it had the UK's leading website had already sparked a row with the Guardian and other publishers.

Source: Guardian

According to Almar Latour, managing editor of WSJ.com, newsroom integration is a matter of newsroom culture and collaboration, rather than physical proximity.

Latour will explain how the Wall Street Journal has integrated its news operations - while remaining non-integrated in the restrictive sense - at the upcoming World Editors Forum, to be held June 1-4 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

"The overarching point of integration is that it should take place in the reporter's minds," said Latour. What's important is "changing a culture, going from a print news cycle to a 24-hour news cycle."

However, physical integration "is also something that is taking place" at the WSJ. Both print and online editors sit at the central news desk, which dispatches news to all platforms. "The newsgathering and distribution, the processing of news, is taking place centrally now - in an integrated fashion," said Latour.

Physical integration at the Journal - establishing the central news desk - only took a few weeks and some desk-shifting.

On the other hand, the integration isn't complete, since staffers from print and online remain platform-based. A team of WSJ.com staffers is specialized in Web-specific activities such as video, audio or online production.

As Latour said, the real challenge is to change staffers' mindsets, through practice.

For example, when the WSJ handed out video cameras to its bureaus 18 months ago, the initial results were very amateurish, and journalists sometimes confused. Now though, WSJ.com's videos have become a regular offering for the website, whether they're quality 90-second clips or full-blown 'documentaries'.

Among the steps followed by the Journal in that case:

- first, givz reporters access to the proper equipment
- successful examples of videos, which show other journalists the benefits of these forms of coverage. "A success story like that really drove home the point to the other reporters that you can and must tell stories in different ways," said Latour.
- a concerted effort to train - enthusiastic - people. WSJ used video editors from one of Dow Jones' companies to train reporters who were genuinely interested in learning video.

"That journey has been the one of real integration, the one that's still ongoing," he said.

Latour will speak at the upcoming World Editors Forum. See other preview interviews here.

Source: Almar Latour, Managing Editor, WSJ.com

The Hartford Courant in the US offers an interesting example of how a local paper can foster citizen journalism by gathering user-generated content online and then reverse publishing it into a print edition.

The Hartford Courant's feature, iTowns, is an online portal where readers can submit news briefs, post events, photos and videos.

In each of the 6 regions covered online by the paper, the Courant has a webhost and a local reporter who blogs about his zone and accompanies readers with their postings, in a pro-am process.

Six print tabloid iTowns editions are published every Sunday. The papers include a staff-written week-in review and two outdoor columns, but the rest of the content is entirely user-generated.

Furthermore, all user content is specific to the region covered by the edition.

For the covers of iTowns editions, the paper invites artists to submit their works, producing some beautiful front pages. The response was so good that the paper has created an online gallery for readers to submit their work.

Granted, as for any newspapers delving into citizen or pro-am journalism, this initiative has taken some reshuffling of staff.

"Believe me, I'm not bragging about the staffing part, that has been and continues to be tremendously difficult, it meant moving folks into roles they weren't terribly comfortable with and leaving holes in areas they once covered," wrote Melanie Shaffer, Director of Design and Graphics of The Hartford Courant.
 
But, "Overall, the response is terrific. We are giving the reader a place to give us their news and information, this is all the stuff we've been turning away for years for lack of space."

The Hartford Courant stands as a perfect example of a local paper engaging - and engaged by - its community.

Source: Visual Editors
 

French public broadcaster France 2 lost its case against Philippe Karsenty, after a court of appeal overturned a previous verdict that found him guilty of libel, in what has become known as a case of an individual fighting against the manipulations of big media.

We had interviewed Karsenty at the end of February - read the background story here. He claimed at the time that France 2's al-Dura "coverage is the media's biggest masquerade to have had such impact."

After having accused France 2 of manipulating its al-Dura footage, Karsenty had been found guilty of libel in 2006.

The new ruling will contribute to tarnish both the credibility of France 2, and of mainstream media in general.

"The al-Dura lie is an assault on our ability to think, to criticize, to evaluate, and finally to reject information - especially the right to reject information on which we base our most cherished assumptions," Karsenty said in a statement after his victory.

According to Honest Reporting, "Philippe Karsenty's efforts have opened up France 2 to scrutiny and serves as an example of how the media should be held accountable for their material and the consequences of their reporting,"

Source: Honest Reporting - Hot Air

This, just in from the alert-o-shpere.
New logo from IHT.com

The International Herald Tribune is dropping its ornate, 142-year-old logo for a more modern, simpler look. The detail-rich logo is being replaced by a phrase, "The Global Edition of the New York Times," highlighting that the paper is fully part of the New York Times Co. after a 2002 deal.

The "dingbat" first appeared in 1866 on the New York Tribune that later merged into the International Herald Tribune, wrote Richard Kluger in "The Paper: The Life and Death of the Herald Tribune." The logo has been altered over the years. The logo's panorama of symbolic images features pyramids and camels, an ox pulling a plow, a bridge, an hourglass, a soaring airplane and a bald eagle atop a clock showing the time of 6:12 -- for unknown reasons, Kluger wrote.

SOURCE: Businessweek.com

Two US newspapers have launched niche blogs in the last week, catering to mothers and Olympic enthusiasts, respectively.
 
On Monday Boston Globe Media launched BoMoms, a site designed by and for Boston mothers that features a searchable database of listings, a calendar highlighting events for kids, blogs written by women at varying stages of motherhood and ongoing forums on parenting.
 
"The goal of BoMoms is to be the ultimate local resource for busy moms -- because all of its recommendations come straight from the mouths of real moms who have tried and tested them," said Alexandra Hall, editor of the site.
 
BoMoms reflects newspapers' growing desire to capture the 'Moms' demographic, and is a nod to IndyMoms.com, launched by the Indianapolis Star in 2006.
 
The New York Times also announced today the launch of its 2008 Olympics blog, called 'Rings.' Rings will cover not only the summer Games (set for August 8 - 24), but also the social, political and economic issues entangled in the event.
 
The blog features analysis from sports, foreign and business reporters, who have already begun posting on issues including Web censorship by China's government, the details of the Olympic trials in the United States and the controversy over the torch relay, which has caused protests worldwide.
 
"We expect the Rings blog," explained Deputy Sports Editor Sandy Keenan, "to become a must read for those interested in all aspects of the Beijing Games."
 
Source: Editor & Publisher

The Press Complaints Commission (PCC) released its 2007 annual report today, revealing a 20 percent increase in rulings in the past year. The PCC received a record 4,340 complaints in 2007.
 
For the first time, more complaints were made about online news articles than hardcopies.
 
One column in The Mirror about Madeleine McCann attracted 485 complaints alone.
 
Of the 4,340 complaints, the majority were complaints about accuracy; issues of accuracy also made up 75.4 percent of all breaches of the code.
 
There were also 245 rulings regarding privacy; 52.3 percent of these cases involved regional press.
 
The PCC credited the growth in rulings to an increased public awareness about what the watchdog does and the ease of complaining via email.
 
Source: Holdthefrontpage.co.uk

Telegraph.co.uk has overtaken the Guardian.co.uk as the UK's most-visited news site. According to the latest ABCe results, the Telegraph reached 18.65 million people online in April. Over the past year, the Telegraph's online readership has grown 153 percent; the Guardian's has grown just 22.25 percent.
 
The Telegraph online has a more international audience than guardian.co.uk, drawing just 34 percent of readers from the UK. By contrast, just over 41 percent of the Guardian's online audience is from the UK.
 
Other newspaper sites, which rely primarily on a UK audience, haven't enjoyed the same growth, including the Mirror Group's network of websites, such as Mirror.co.uk and SundayMirror.co.uk, which dropped 2.87 percent between March and April, to 4.28 million unique users.
 
Source: Brand Republic 

The Recovering Journalist recently blogged on the Norwich Bulletin's (Connecticut) brief adventure into user commenting - The Bulletin gave readers free range to comment on the site, only to find that comments that are entirely anonymous and unmoderated can quickly spiral out of control. Apparently posters were relentless even when it came to wedding announcements.

Todd Zeigler of the Bivings Group recently blogged on 9 Ways to Improve the Quality of Comments on your Website:

1. Have moderators and staff actively participate on the comment board; when staff post frequently they can help lead the discussion and improve the level of discourse
2. Require users to have one comment pre-approved before they can post freely
3. Filter out the profanity
4. Allow users to report inappropriate comments
5. Use other users feedback to bury or promote comments
6. Require registration for posting
7. Threaded comments foster discussion; when users can reply to a specific comment it allows for multiple lines of discussion to coexist
8. Let users ignore other commenters
9. Create a comment policy; transparency is always best

By following these guidelines news sites can reap the benefits of online user discussion, without the swear words.

Sources: Recovering Journalist through David-Black.org, The Bivings Report

Wall Street Journal Online has launched a new section, described by a Dow Jones press release as "a place where ambitious professional and executive women can come together to read and share ideas on work, family and the intersection of the two."

Two of the Journal's better known female columnists, Carol Hymowitz and Sue Shellenbarger, will write for the section.

The new section will also feature a blog called "The Juggle," which will examine the difficulties in balancing work and family life. 

Said WSJ Online executive editor Alan Murray:

"Our experience has shown us that there are a lot of business and professional women out there who crave not just fashion and beauty advice, but an intelligent news-oriented community where they can share experiences and swap ideas."

Source: Editor & Publisher

New media proponent Jeff Jarvis blogged last week about the "need to develop distributed strategies for news." In other words, not only are traditional news outlets increasingly aggregating relevant news from a variety of sources, they should also make their news available on those sites.

Jarvis suggests a few strategies to help this:

- creating widgets to embed your news on any other site
- establishing a platform strategy that enables people to build on your content
- a network strategy including blog networks

For example, Reuters recently opened its news content to the developer community, through Reuters Labs. Developers can now take Reuters news and build applications around it, or make the content fit existing applications.

"News cannot continue to think of itself as a destination. It has to think of itself as a feed that goes to where you are," wrote Jarvis.

Source: BuzzMachine through David Black

Kathleen Carroll, Executive Editor and Senior Vice President of the Associated Press, will speak during the session entitled "Will Web 2.0 give birth to Journalism 2.0?" at the upcoming World Editors Forum, to be held in Gothenburg, Sweden, June 1-4.

In the last six months, AP has codified its news delivery process to follow the rule of '1-2-3 filing' for all of its stories. (This process was partly based on findings from AP's anthropological study of young digital news consumers, which will also be presented during the Forum.)

Under this process, "It no longer is an assumption that text is the default and only way to tell a story." said Carroll.

This doesn't (yet) put into question the predominance of text in newspapers and its efficiency as a medium. "It's the best way to get the fast word out," she said. Only now, AP reporters also think about the most appropriate media to tell a story, which will be of most use to customers.

In the '1-2-3' model:

- 1st: AP delivers a simple headline, in about fifty character, for quick breaking news updates
- 2nd: 'AP News Now' - the news agency produces a 130-word summary of the story, written in a platform-agnostic style "that can be read on the air by broadcaster, or used online, or even printed in some print publications," said Carroll.
- 3rd: AP editors and reporters then think of the best way - or media - to tell the story. In some cases, this is simply a 500-word story. In others, an interactive graphic or video are more appropriate. Some stories don't have a third step: the 130-word sum-up was sufficient. Others "blossom into many stories."

The second and third steps are most significant in taking the AP to 'Journalism 2.0'. "It doesn't sound radical when you say it out loud," she said, but it is "if you inject it into your daily news decisions."

For example, following the cyclone in Myanmar, AP produced a detailed interactive graphic, which was widely picked up and even used by US broadcaster MSNBC.

After the earthquake in China, AP decided to distribute a user-generated video shot during the earthquake (AP has regularly invited users to contribute content, particularly imagery, through portals such as SendtoAP.com).

"In that case, the video was the story," said Carroll. "There was nothing that we could write that was going to make that story more compelling than being able to watch two and half minutes of people falling off bicycles and running around as the ground shook."

Carroll will discuss these issues at the upcoming World Editors Forum. View other preview interviews here.

Source: Kathleen Carroll, Executive Editor and Senior Vice President, Associated Press

After a tour of The New York Times this week, blogger Robert Scoble discussed some interesting additions at the Grey Lady.

Gadgets coming out of the Research and Development department included:

-a prototype newspaper rack that could print out a customized version of the paper

-a thin book reader following a discussion of metadata being collected by the Times. Scoble writes, "They have these gadgets so they can develop new ways of delivering content to those devices."

-a display featuring the results of NYT's new partnership with Google Earth

He reports that The Times' new archive initiative, the Time Machine, which debuted late February in beta, will be released soon. Scoble also learned that a Mac version of the Times Reader will be available in the next few days.

Source: Scobleizer through Journerdism