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2011 was a big year for news in more ways than one. Reporters were amply tested in their coverage of big breaking news stories such as the death of Osama Bin Laden or Muammar Gaddafi, major disasters such as the Fukushima earthquake, and complex political unrest much of the Arab World.

Meanwhile, newspapers continue to seek an effective digital business model, to tackle the challenges posed by social media and community involvement, to create innovative tablet applications and respond to ethical dilemmas. Looking forward to 2012, what can we expect?

Social media - will Facebook remain the undisputed leader?

Social media sprang to the forefront of the global stage in early 2011, with many directly attributing the extent of the uprisings in the Arab World to the power of Facebook and Twitter. Citizen reporting and commentary on events using social media has also flourished in the Arab World, and Anglophones have followed Twitter coverage via NPR's Andy Carvin. Will this use of social networks to provoke and cover dramatic uprisings continue?

Facebook, with its 800 million plus users, has been a top priority for news organisations in terms of their social media strategy in 2011, dwarfing smaller players such as Foursquare and so far fending off competition from new arrivals such as Google+. Most publications now have at least one Facebook page and several are experimenting with new apps using Facebook's Open Graph initiative. So far, readership levels seem to be high and it is likely that more news organisations will be keen to tap readers through Facebook.

Will Facebook's dominance continue into 2012, or will a network like Google+ - which has just introduced changes to make it more appealing to brands and businesses - put up a worthy fight? Twitter is also planning to introduce brand pages - what impact will these have?

Already, many journalists have vast numbers of fans and followers of their personal Facebook and Twitter accounts - will 2012 see a growing divide between brands and individuals on social media?

Bringing the community into the newsroom

In the world of the overwhelming information on the Web, newspapers are struggling to sustain their role as a central hub for news, and in 2011 many started to focus on interacting more closely with their communities and encouraging conversation among their readers as well as between readers and the papers.

Readers have been invited to participate in the process of local journalism in JRC's Register Citizen's newsroom café, where the paper's new office allows the public into the newsroom on a daily basis to influence, comment on and enhance coverage. Involving readers in the daily editorial decision making process is also the aim of Swedish local paper Norran's live chat eEditor, where readers can discuss story ideas with journalists in real time. Becoming accessible also means becoming more transparent, which is what the Guardian set out to do by publishing the paper's newslist online.

Expect to see more of such attempts to put readers at the heart of the newsgathering process in 2012 as newspapers realize the benefits of a strong and loyal community.

Business model uncertainty continues

In March 2011 The New York Times launched its much-anticipated paid digital content strategy and others have followed suit. Metered, intermittent, or impenetrable: no single digital paywall strategy has yet proven itself as the best. The existence of multiple digital devices means that most news organisations who do charge offer various different subscription offers across platforms.

Monetizing app content brings further complications as it means dealing with those who control operating systems such as Apple, which takes a 30% cut of all App Store purchases. Expect to see more newspapers following the example of the Financial Times, which has launched a browser-based HTML5 app that allows it to bypass Apple's store completely.   

It's unlikely that a definitive solution to the digital monetisation question will emerge in 2012: expect to see newspapers continuing to experiment with new ways to strike the best balance between charging for content and not losing readers. Hopefully we will also see attempts to find new business models as news organisations realize that there might not be just one strategy.

Delivery methods

At the end of 2011, the word 'tablet' no longer necessarily conjures up just an image of the iPad, as it did at the beginning of the year. Apple still shipped more than half the world's tablet devices sold in the third quarter of 2011, retaining a 61.5% share of the global market, and no competitor claimed more than 6%, but cumulatively they have managed to make a dent in Apple's dominance.

In 2012 we can expect to see Apple's market share continue to slide and Android-powered devices becoming more common, although there is little doubt that the iPad will remain the most common device.

In terms of what news organisations offer on the tablet, we can hope that 2012 will see some innovative and exciting new products. Although some impressive exceptions exist (such as Ringier's the collection), many papers have adopted a straightforward approach to tablet apps that does not take full advantage of what the device has to offer.

Some news organisations have already taken big steps with HTML5 and by the end of 2012 it may well be common for papers to produce HTML5 products before native apps, both for financial motivations (see above) and for ease of developing.

The tablet market is growing but it is still tiny compared to the smartphone market - maybe 2012 will also see news organisations re-evaluating their priorities in terms of digital delivery and focusing on the phone as a key device.

Newsroom organisation: digital comes first
 
The digital first mantra advocated by John Paton of the Journal Register Company has led to the creation of a new company actually called Digital First, a result of the merger between JRC and MediaNews Group, and the subsequent roll-out of this philosophy at many local US newspapers. Digital first is not intended to imply neglect of the print product, but rather a recognition of the fact that digital must come first in the news cycle, and that digital surely is the future and it is worth investing in it now.
 
The Guardian has also expressed its commitment to going digital first "in philosophy and practice," a process which involves losing staff but also taking on more developers and others with digital skills.
 
In 2012, expect to see other publishers making steps towards digital first as there is a growing acceptance of the necessity to concentrate efforts on building a business out of digital news. Many are realizing that achieving true newsroom integration is a long and complex process that requires an entire overhaul of workflows, processes and mindsets in the newsroom if it is to be truly effective, so they are looking for next steps.

New skills in the newsroom
 
Data, data and more data. In 2011 we saw an explosion of data-powered journalism, often displayed through visualizations, infographics, and interactive maps and apps. New web tools have made an incredible flood of raw data accessible which can then be visualized, organized in searchable databases, aggregated in interactive tools and used to investigate complex issues such as the UK riots that the Guardian analysed with the Reading the riots project. ProPublica also makes impressive use of data. 

Non-linear forms of storytelling are likely to feature highly on the agenda of forward-thinking news organisations in 2012 and consequently journalists will have to keep up with the skills required to shape stories and make them comprehensible to the public. The data journalism handbook published during the Mozilla Festival in London last November could be useful in this.

Technical skills such as coding will likely become more and more essential for journalists entering the trade in 2012 and we may well see retraining of more experienced journalists so that they can make best use of what data has to offer.

A high level of competence in effectively using social media is also increasingly becoming necessary as its use becomes more and more integrated into reporting as well as communicating with readers.  

Phone-hacking - will this lead to increased regulation in 2012?
 
At the start of 2011, few would have thought that the year would end with one fewer national newspaper publishing in the UK, and the entire press under scrutiny with regards to its ethical conduct. The phone-hacking scandal at Murdoch's The News of the World dominated media news in the UK in the second half of the year, and made headlines around the world as the paper was closed down and News International executives resigned. With both publishers and editors called in front of a judge, any belief that newspapers can defy the law with no questions asked has been strongly shaken.
 
2012 will see the beginning of the wider impact of the scandal as the Leveson Inquiry unfolds and recommendations are likely to be made for a more thorough regulation system in the UK. The inquiry will consider to whom the press is accountable, and how far outside interference is necessary.  Will self-regulation be deemed sufficient? Will there be an impact overseas? Will the results for journalism be positive or negative?

by Federica Cherubini and Emma Heald 

The newspaper industry is in a time of upheaval, with mainstream newspapers looking for innovative strategies to survive and thrive, to re-affirm their importance and their role in the news landscape.

Cost cutting is increasingly prevalent throughout news organisations in Europe and the US, with many publications putting more and more emphasis on digital products as they lose print readers.

Launching a new print publication in 2009 might have seemed therefore like a risky step, but it's exactly what Italian journalists Marco Travaglio, Antonio Padellaro and Peter Gomez decided to do. Il Fatto Quotidiano was launched in September 2009 and in the past two years it has managed to both establish itself as a respected newspaper brand and actually make some money, with a profit of €5.8 million in 2010.

How has it achieved this?

When it comes to press freedom, Latin America's reputation is less than stellar. Over the course of last week the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) reported an arson attack against a radio station in Argentina, two newspaper employees going missing in Mexico, a journalist being beaten and stabbed eight times in Bolivia, and an editor going on hunger strike in Venezuela to protest his imprisonment. And that's not even a complete list.  

"Remember when a single investigative reporter with the temerity to demand a decent living... could pull the curtain back on one of the most powerful and secretive organizations on the face of the earth?"

As digital media grows and print revenue shrinks, papers around the world are struggling to find ways to make online news pay. One of the most obvious - and most controversial - solutions has been the paywall. But getting people to pay for content is no easy task if they feel they can the same thing for free elsewhere.

Given the present climate, the British Press Complaints Commission seems to be something of an endangered species. However, there are still certain members of the media who are rallying for its continued existence.

U.K. Media Lawyer Tony Jaffa wrote a piece for Holdthefrontpage.co.uk, which the Editors' Weblog reported on yesterday, arguing the merits of the PCC.  

Now Nigel Pickover , editor of The Ipswich Evening Star, has made a public declaration of support in favour of the PCC. It seems that, much like Tony Jaffa, Pickover fears that changed to the regulatory system would damage regional publications.

Has the news article become outdated as the principal way of conveying information? An increasing number of voices are saying so.

Jeff Jarvis's blog post from last week about the role of the article generated some discussion. In his post, Jarvis argued that the article form is not the best way to convey information in many cases. Instead, journalists and news organisations should explore other options for reporting and write articles only when they are necessary.

Business Insider's Jonathan Glick agreed with Jarvis, arguing that turning short news bites into articles doesn't add much value to the information and probably isn't what most news consumers want anyway. He suggested that news nuggets and long-form journalism would eventually go their separate ways. His logic is that articles, and other types of journalism that add value to information in the form of analysis and context, would thus be easier to monetize, as readers are generally more willing to pay for lengthy pieces than for quick news updates. Short, "snack-size" news will, instead, form part of readers' constant and free news stream.

As the news industry keeps evolving at what seems like an accelerating pace, there is a clear market for a source that collects and categorises developments at news organisations. Nieman Journalism Lab launched Encyclo on March 18th to fill that need, noting that "there's great value in a resource that steps back a bit from the daily updates and focuses on background and context."

Nieman Lab presented the site as an "attempt to figure out who the most important players and innovators are in the evolution of journalism." It launched with 184 entries, covering everything from newspapers to broadcast networks, both big and small. Encyclo also has entries on technology companies that are having a major impact on news, such as Google and Craigslist.

When the iPad was released a year ago, it was immediately clear that the device offered enormous possibilities for news organisations and publishers in general. With Apple promoting its App Store heavily, it seemed natural to turn to apps as a way of publishing on the iPad. Now, however, as the limitations of that approach are becoming apparent, other options are increasingly discussed.

The buzz around HTML5 has been growing for some time now. Jason Baptiste, CEO of OnSwipe, is one of the advocates of HTML5: in a recent interview with GigaOM, Baptiste noted that HTML5 makes it possible to create web pages that are up to par with native apps in terms of visual appearance and user interface.

Publishing content on the Internet, instead of developing dedicated apps, Baptiste said, would solve one of the main issues publishers have with the current tablet market: to make their publications accessible with all of the devices out there, they have to develop a version for each of the platforms available. All tablet devices naturally have adequate web-browsing capabilities, making HTML5 content free of compatibility issues.

Twitter, YouTube and other social media sites have become commonplace as sources for professional journalists, as regular people are often the first ones to witness and document significant events. Such material can be valuable in, for example, providing context for a news story. However, finding and collecting the relevant material, as well as using it to create an effective story, can be difficult.

Storify was created to address this problem. The website is designed to make it easy for journalists and others to sift through content on social media sites and publish the most relevant information. Journalists from The Washington Post, NPR, PBS and other news outlets used the service during a private test period, and the site opened to the public Monday, The New York Times reported.

As it was previously reported, the Web community now has its newspaper too: The Daily Dot, "the paper of record for the Web, the Internet's community newspaper".

At the base of this project there is the idea of the community itself, as Nicholas White, co-funder and CEO of The Daily Dot, explained on PBS' Mediashift.

The thing that has made the old newspaper industry so fragile offers hope for the future of journalism, he said. Communities have always existed and they were the basis around which newspapers were built right from the beginning.

The Boston Globe's recent decision to hire outside help to moderate its online comments, reported by Media Nation, is the latest event to prompt discussion on the different means news websites have in dealing with an overflow of readers' comments. The newspaper joined NPR and the San Francisco Chronicle as clients of ICUC Moderation Services, a Canadian company specialised in moderating online content.

Niemen Journalism Lab spoke to Keith Bilous, ICUC's president, about the benefits of outsourced comment moderation. According to him, hiring outside help both frees up newsroom resources and provides a possibility for a discussion about the function of readers' comments generally. "The focus is on getting more better-quality comments and conversation on sites instead of 'let's just get as much comments as we can.'"

Yesterday Frédéric Filloux said, "Every media company should be afraid of Flipboard."  But Flipboard has promised to work with publishers, and in fact, already is. In December, eight publishers worked with the company to better format their articles. If it's working with media companies, why would Filloux make such a strong statement?

He explained, "Flipboard is THE product any big media company or, better, any group of media companies should have invented."

Craig Silverman of RegretTheError.com on the Columbia Journalism Review reported on his talk with NPR Andy Carvin about the real-time verification system underlying his Twitter account.

Senior strategist at the National Public Radio, Andy Carvin became the "man who tweeted the revolution" and "the go-to source of information on Twitter during the recent uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya", as the Guardian described him.

"Although Carvin had a network of blogger contacts in the region whom he used to check information being tweeted, what marks him out is his willingness to retweet unverified material and ask his followers for help to establish its accuracy", the Guardian's article said. 

Regular blogging can allow for a more detailed, expert opinion than traditional print stories, Reuter's Felix Salmon pointed out earlier this month. However, live blogging is different. It depends on information given right now, usually without analysis or heavy wording.

The form has become popular in the news industry as stories in Africa and Japan unfold. Readers have embraced the medium, bringing a huge surge in traffic and comments. The Guardian reported that live blogs account for 3.6 million unique visitors, 9 percent of the site's traffic. But as this style grows in prevalence, media experts and enthusiasts debate its pros and cons.

Tumblr has been steadily gaining prominence in the world of social media platforms. The site has grown significantly since David Karp founded it in 2007, current boasting almost 15 million blogs. With a reported 45,000 members signing up a day, it's certainly gaining popularity.

Its price tag (free!) and large user base have attracted the attention of media organizations: 160 already use the site. Many popular news sites, such as The New York Times and Huffington Post, launched Tumblr blogs in the middle of last year.

Newsweek's Tumblr, started by Mark Coatney who was senior editor at the time, was among the first media Tumblrs. "I saw it as an opportunity to talk to our audience in a new way," he said to the New York Times. Tumblr decided to hire him in August of last year to help media organizations use the site to its fullest potential.

The Editors Weblog spoke to Coatney about how media organizations could create a successful Tumblr.

February is not turning out to be a great month for TBD, the Washington D.C. metro news site, owned by Allbritton Communications.

On Feb. 9 it was announced that Allbritton's WJLA-TV would be taking over TBD.com and that General Manager Bill Lord would become responsible for website. Now, news of staff layoffs has emerged and TBD, one of the most ambitious local online launches in 2010, has turned out to be a victim of crib death, as Poynter's Rick Edmonds put it.

As the Washington City Paper reported, TBD editor Erik Wemple announced that significant layoffs were on the way and that TBD will become a niche site focused on arts and entertainment. "The layoffs, according to two staffers, eliminate the site's sports staffers, and will also take away most, if not all, of its news staff", the article reported.

A story of a relationship fraught with suspicion and tension emerged from an interview with Julian Assange about his organisation's partnerships with newspapers during the release of the US diplomatic cables, and he implied it might be something he hopes not to repeat.

The Wikileaks founder, now in a UK court for an extradition hearing spoke to Francesco Piccinini of Agoravox, and Giorgio Scura of the Italian free daily Leggo, who has also written an article. The pair met with Assange for two hours in Beccles, Norfolk, where he is under house arrest. 

The Independent is looking at different ways to make its content more accessible on social media and delivered in a more useful way, said digital media editor Jack Riley on the paper's site.

Riley believes that media organisations have been going too broad with their social media strategies, and that big general Twitter or Facebook accounts are not as useful for readers. "Giving people content in categories which best represent the individual topics in which they're interested" could be a better idea, he thinks. 

Hyperlocal news has been touted as a big player in the future media landscape, largely in the US but also in Europe. Going very local means you can not only offer news that is often exclusive, as opposed to trying to compete with ubiquitous national news, but also very relevant to users' every day lives, providing essential information about the community. Plenty of small, independent sites have sprung up over the last year or so, and several news organisations have created additional local products. One company that's taking a particularly aggressive approach to growth in the hyperlocal arena is AOL, with its launch of Patch, a growing network of community news sites, each manned by one full time editor and a handful of freelancers.

AOL has traditionally been an Internet provider and an online portal, rather than a content-generator, but recently it has significantly expanded its content offerings, having launched both Patch and Seed, a so-called 'content farm.'

The Editors Weblog spoke to Brian Farnham, who came on board in Patch's early days as editor-in-chief, about how the sites operate and how they fit in to the community, and their goals.

Swift expansion

The Patch team has started to expand by choosing areas where there is a strong sense of community. Suitable communities are chosen by an algorithm, which takes into account "a bunch of different factors," Farnham said, such as where top high schools are located, as this is seen as indicative of a town that "cares about itself." The algorithm spits out a ranked list and then staff will do more research, including speaking to local people, to establish whether this is actually a place with a cohesive community. "We're not looking for sprawling communities without a sense of identity," Farnham said.

Currently, more than 400 sites are live, and the company aims to have 500 by the end of the year, which currently means hiring 30 people a week. Having started in New Jersey in February 2009, the sites have now spread all over the US.  Each covers a community of between 20,000 and 50,000 people, and each has a dedicated full time editor.

Editorial workflow

Twelve communities are grouped into a 'region' and the local site editors have the support of a regional editor, who is a hands on manager. There are four editorial directors for different areas of the country and they work for Farnham, who oversees the editorial organisation. "We think of the New York HQ as a kind of back office for the real work going on in the field."

Good communication, however is "of the utmost importance" to create a sense of shared culture among the editors who all work very independently all over the country. There are regular conference calls and Farnham said that he and his team are trying to come up with more ways to keep editors in touch.  

Editors are briefly trained in New York, and then work from home, equipped with a laptop, an iPhone and an aircard. "We realized that you couldn't do this in a short cut way, you had to have a full time journalist who could be out and about every day," Farnham said. They are given a freelance budget, and often share specialized freelancers with other nearby community sites: a sports editor, for example who can help drive coverage between sites.

Patch has been criticized for requiring long hours from its editors for low pay, but AOL chief Tim Armstrong recently stated that 75% of those who work at Patch are paid as much or more than at their last job. He admitted that hours are long, as "this is a start up," Lost Remote reported. It is early days yet for Patch but as yet, people seem to be still signing up.

How to up community involvement

Most editors are already integrated into their local communities, and "we definitely look for people who have experience in covering a community," Farhham said. They quickly get known, he added, and more importantly, they become trusted. "They are there, putting in the time, week after week."

Members of the communities can interact with the sites in various ways, as well as actually becoming freelancers. "It's a constantly evolving area for us." Once they have signed up as members, users can input content straight into the events calendar and community announcements sections: the latter of which provides space for births, deaths and marriages for example, something which might well be paid-for in a print publication. They can comment on any article and post photos.
 
Another way to contribute to the site i via a new feature called 'The Shout' a "Facebook-esque" activity stream on the homepage that displays members' site activity but also invites further comments, providing a "What do you have to say?" box.

Crucially, although the site is community-orientated, no members can post an article directly to the site. To have an article published, it is necessary to become a freelancer. The majority of freelancers are paid, Farnham said, but there are some who "do it for the love of it."

Content: more than news

There have been no great surprises about what content is particularly popular, said Farnham: it is crime, schools, sports, and on the non-news side, people like to read about their neighbours. .

During the recent US midterm elections, Patch's traffic jumped to three times its normal level. "We were in a position, just by doing what we do, to serve a real need" for coverage at a very local level, Farnham explained. People look online for news during an election, and "there really aren't those sources online to drill lower than a Congressional level." He emphasized the political balance in Patch's reporting, which he said people sometimes found unexpected.

As well as the news content, Patch seeks to provide information that members will use in their every day lives. "We really look at this as a platform that digitizes small communities in every aspect," Farnham explained. Efforts to accomplish this include Patch's directory, a kind of yellow pages of the local community. "We literally go over the town and create a directory of everything," he said.

Farnham spoke of the potential of Patch to provide coordinated coverage around national events, by asking all the editors to look at one specific aspect of the way an event affects their community, and then bringing this together to provide a national snapshot of trends. "The best example so far is an ongoing project we have around education: we have a coordinated project involving people looking at the issues with schools in their communities" he said, and "those things over time are going to roll up into a more complete picture of the state of education."

He expects that this will expand to include election coverage: "I think next year you'll see an even more rolled up view, in addition to those local angles."

On one level, Patch is extremely local, and on the other hand it is a national brand. Farnham doesn't believe that this situation leads to incongruities in Patch's message, saying that as long as the sites are serving their communities, this is what counts. The hope is that that the reputation of the national brand will prompt people to associate positive factors with Patch: quality, comprehensiveness of coverage, an unbiased view and a platform to serve that community.

Patch's impact on other local media

AOL announced in August that Patch expected to be the biggest hirer of journalists in 2010 and as so many in the industry are losing their jobs, this must be welcome news to many in the industry, as is the simple fact that somebody is investing in journalism. Patch's business model, advertising-based, is yet to be proven but for now, it seems that AOL has the money to take the risk.

Patch has, however, prompted concern regarding its effect on local newspapers: staff have been leaving local papers for jobs at Patch, and the fear is that the sites will put already-struggling local publications out of business. (Patch CEO Tim Armstrong was asked at a recent conference, "Is Patch evil?") Farnham was adamant that this is not Patch's intention, and said that in fact, he sees significant potential for partnership opportunities with existing news organsations.

There is also concern that Patch will quash local independent bloggers, but Farnham believes that all can coexist. "I think the irony of all this is that when we go into a community, if there's a lot of online media that's actually good for us," he said, as it is easier to enter a community where people are already used to finding information online so we don't have to educate them. "The more active an eco-system you have for users, the more they'll look for stuff online."

Patch's goal for the immediate future is not only growth in terms of numbers of sites, but to continue to grow the product once the editors have plugged themselves into the communities and engage the users more so that it becomes "something that's sticky and addictive for the community," Farnham said. "That's the real mission - where Patch becomes a complete destination for people on a local level."