Results matching “what does the futur”

Journalists should be willing to fight for strong freedom of information and open records laws, said the president of the Associated Press in a speech on Friday.

Speaking at the Kentucky Press Association, AP president Tom Curley stressed the importance of these laws as part of the "journalistic tool kit" to help reporters access information in the public interest.

"It's vital," he said. "A strong FOIA in the hands of strong journalists with strong legal support breaks news."

Editor of The Guardian Alan Rusbridger ruled out erecting paywalls around The Guardian's website, expressing optimism about the future of the newspaper, Journalism.co.uk reported.

Speaking as part of the Coventry Conversation series, run by the Coventry University journalism department, he said the newspaper had no plans to put up paywalls, as Rupert Murdoch has planned to do for News International titles. "It would be crazy if we were to all jump behind a pay wall and imagine that would solve things," Rusbridger said. He did agree, though, that it was good that journalism was "trying different things".

Conflicting reports came out of San Francisco over the weekend regarding the future of the Bay Area News Project, the non-profit local news station housed in the city's public broadcasting network KQED and bankrolled by Warren Hellman.

According to B-Net, the much reported multi-media deal combining the reporting expertise of UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism and the radio and television capabilities of KQED finally collapsed after negotiations stalled. B-Net's David Weir alleged that infighting over resources and leadership at KQED and the GSJ's lack of clout in San Francisco made an already complicated merger just too difficult - leading Hellman to withdraw his $5 million contribution.

However, Neil Henry, Dean of the GSJ, was quick to refute those reports: "The Bay Area News Project is alive and well and ready to start business. The first board meeting will be conducted next week. We have secured an outstanding CEO and an extraordinary editor in chief whose names will be announced later this month. The only change since our announcement in September is that KQED will not play a role as a founding partner, but we look forward to its active participation."

The Guardian's new iPhone app sold 9000 units in its first two days, in a development that may point to a key future source of revenue for newspapers.

The app was launched on Monday, and it was uncertain whether or not consumers could be prepared to pay the £2.39 asking price. Many news apps are free, including those offered by The Telegraph, The Financial Times, Thomson Reuters, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today.

In an article in The Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch is optimistic about the future of journalism in this age of newspaper cutbacks and the overwhelming concerns with bottom-line budgets rather than quality journalism. 

Two German entrepreneurs are setting up a new kind of home delivered newspaper among worldwide news print failures. On November 16^th the brave young businessmen are venturing into the industry with an innovative newspaper service - the first of its kind in Europe - at arguably the worst time, and for a limited Berlin-only market. But its very unorthodoxy, the essence Wanja Oberhof's and Hendrik Tiedmann's Niiu personalized newspaper, could be its saving grace.

Niiu Beginnings

The Niiu started with an idea, two and a half years ago, ultimately about information convenience. Having grown up in a newspaper-reading household, Mr. Oberhof became used to reading multiple papers to pursue the news and information he was interested in.  Having to juggle multiple national, local, and international papers to find one's interests would inevitably become a chore, especially vis-à-vis the speed and convenience of internet news. The same behavioral phenomenon is in fact the very reason why the internet seems to be ruining traditional newspapers; people, especially young adults and students, are tending find their news and information from a variety of sources on the internet rather than a single source that marked the newspaper's monopoly and success in the 20^th century. 

Oberhof's resulting idea was simple and clear: an individualized newspaper, composed of selected pages and sections from papers, delivered each morning to one's door just like a regular paper. This combination of paper format and internet convenience and accessibility found Oberhof a business partner in Hendrik Tiedmann, who shared the same idea. Together they founded InterTi GmbH, Niuu's parent company, funded out of their own pockets, and began doing their homework.

"The whole idea was based on our own behavior research and experience; [as young people] we're used to very different information sources. The main idea was to combine all the varying sources of news and information, because it is normal for young people who have grown up with the internet to have not one source of information but many," Mr. Obherof said in a telephone interview with The Editor's Weblog. But why a newspaper format? Surely a less risky and lower-cost alternative would be setting up a personal news aggregator.

Oberhof disagrees. "We asked this target group which is the most comfortable and which is the best distribution channel; is it an e-paper, is it only on mobile, is it printed or online? The feedback was that for now, paper is still the best distribution channel." Hence the simple combination of the internet and printed paper that is the essence of Niiu.

Interestingly, the founders have no particular allegiance to print, it just happens to be the currently favored distribution channel. "The vision that we offer is all the information that is relevant for the reader. As a next step it is the reader's choice which distribution channel they will use, whether it's a mobile phone, e-paper, the internet, or whatever else." Their focus is information amalgamation and distribution, the particular channel being largely irrelevant and ultimately the client's choice. This is quite an unusual position for a company entering the print industry, which these days seems to require a great deal of faith.

What Niiu is and How it Works (The Technical Bit)

On the client's side the process is very simple. After signing up for a short-term subscription (more on that later), they have until 2 p.m. to choose their news sources for the following morning's paper. On Niiu's website they can select from a wide variety of publications and online sources; from national, local or international newspapers like the New York Times, or internet news sources and blogs. A 24-page personalized paper, researched from and composed of their choices, then appears on the subscriber's doorstep the next morning.

"At this first step, for the reader it is only possible to select whole pages or sections," says Oberhof. From newspapers the readers can select pages or sections, from the internet providers they choose from over 600 very diverse rss feeds, from "Women's tennis blogs to local garden pages, we have lots of special interest content available." Clients currently cannot access their personalized paper online, as this would basically defeat the purpose of the delivered print format.

On Oberhof and Tiedmann's side, however, things are a bit more complicated. It is no easy feat to compile, print, and distribute thousands of individual papers. Over the past two years, InterTi GmbH has had to create a specialized software for compiling sources and setting the layout, arrange digital printing deals, close licensing contracts with news sources, attract advertisers, create a new business model and work out delivery schedules. So how did they do all that?

"We outsource everything," says Oberhof. "We don't have an editorial team, we don't have the printing machines, we don't have a delivery structure; we have partners. First we had to create software, so we got a partner with a Swiss web and print specialist service. They produced our software that combines all the pages and articles and news for each reader into a print-ready .pdf that is sent to the digital printing machines from the Netherlands, and a German copy house takes care of the actual printing. Then we have an agreement with a Berlin delivery service that delivers all the international newspapers that will also now deliver Niiu." Given all this outsourcing and subcontracting, one wonders whether circulation revenue will cover the costs.

Luckily there is another revenue source, the very one that is ruining traditional papers, and where the Niiu shines most brightly: it offers a space for highly targeted advertising, something already optimistic advertisers will pay dearly for. At first, during the 'trial phase' of the first few months, advertising will be more general because the Niiu is new and won't have a large circulation. But with an expanded subscriber base ads will become more targeted, focusing on neighborhoods their corresponding socio-economic groups.

Oberhof is confident of his advertising model. "We have had large amounts of positive feedback from advertising clients, and they have several different ideas such as at first only distinguishing between male and female readers, then differentiating by neighborhood and age in Berlin. Some big German car players are interested and have said 'different cars for different people' based on the interests of the readers, like the family man being interested in the new X5 or the young student being shown the BMW 1." Who the people are and more particularly what their interests are would be clear from their choice of news sources for their Niiu's composition.

Ignoring that their proclaimed audience is exclusively young students and not old people and family men, this raises some questions about whether using personal information for advertising violates some privacy protections. But this is doubtful as various advertisers and distributors have used similar techniques for years: think about those supermarket coupon promotional catalogues, also known as 'junk mail,' which you might get at your front door. They differ per neighborhood using the same concept (in my experience, I got Pioneer Supermarket rice coupons up in Harlem, while my friends downtown got brochures for Citarella).

Of course, a paper cannot live on adverts alone. In terms of subscriptions, Niiu continues to be innovative. The subscription packages are aimed towards young readers and students, the paper's perennial target audience (and probably one of the more difficult market sectors to enter, especially in media and technology).

Mr. Oberhof explains: "We have several different packages, not a traditional subscription but a pre-paid system. You load up money for packages, like the one-day trial, or the longer-term packages over 25, 75 or 150 days. It's not a classical subscription at all, that's an important point for us, because many young people, according to our feedback, don't want a subscription for a year because they do not know where they will be in the near future, whether studying in a different city, or doing an international internship or living at home, so they want short-term packages." Currently Niiu is priced at €1.80 per issue, €1.20 for students.

Is this really a good way to build subscriber loyalty? There is a risk of high turnover, potentially running through the market potential before they get established. However this model makes sense for their target demographic. Personally I find this an appealing arrangement. Not really knowing where I will be in six months has prevented me from subscribing to my publications of choice, so I read online news while I would prefer the print editions.

Challenges

One of the biggest questions I had for Mr. Oberhof was regarding the licensing and use of articles and content from news providers. In the context of the current debate over paid online content and the associated problem of the cost of news and journalism, this is quite a pressing concern and I was most interested in what Niiu's arrangements were. Surprisingly, it was unsurprising and rather simple.

Niiu has a contract with each newspaper and online provider, in which "we have a little license fee which we pay for every used page," Oberhof explains. The licenses, and thus the copies of Niiu itself, are based on pages: "we pay a fixed fee for each page we use...because we take one-to-one pages from each newspaper," meaning the pages of Niiu are exact replicas of the original page from the source. This setup will be the working model for the first few trial months.

"The newspapers give us access to everything they have. That means every page and article that is used in the New York Times we can have the next day in Niiu," although details on how blogs and internet sources would be presented are a bit fuzzy. It would be safe to assume that they would appear in Niiu as they would in your browser, albeit reformatted and resized.

An obvious question regards how newspaper publishers feel about Niiu and why they would allow access to their articles, when this could very well cannibalize their own sales. While some certainly think so, the majority of publishers approached by Oberhof and Tiedmann have embraced the idea and accepted licensing contracts.

"Most of [the news publishers] think it's an interesting new project for a target group which doesn't read much newspapers. The young people, the students, in Germany don't read that much newspaper so for [the newspaper publishers] it's an experience; they want to have a look at the feedback and to test it out. Most of them also don't think that we will take the long-term single paper reader away from them, since our audience is the reader who doesn't know which paper is right for them or likes a variety of news sources," Oberhof asserts.

So, in theory, there is no direct competition because they target different audiences. However, the Niiu provides the same service as the internet but in print form; it is hard to see why publishers who would blame the internet and the news aggregators (which is basically what Niiu is doing) as the newspaper's bane would embrace that service in their own industry.

Some industry experts are not so optimistic. Joachim Blum, a digital media consultant, voices 'considerable doubts' over Niiu's future. He says the idea is interesting, but it just won't work because the target audience has left paper behind: "People who read newspapers are office workers, not students," Blum tells Spiegel Online. This is similar to the problem discussed above, where it seems that the assumption has been made that students who are used to getting news quickly and for free online will suddenly start paying for it to be physically manifested; they surely won't be paying for the service, as they can do it themselves. They would therefore be paying for the physical product, the newspaper, and its aesthetic appeal. But we all know how fickle young people and students are when it comes to aesthetics.

Another issue is more topical as to how Niiu relates to traditional newspaper and the internet, its status in between and bridging these media forms. For all its supposed innovation, "Niiu shares the same dilemma of print journalism in the age of the Internet: every paper you read in the morning only contains yesterday's news," says Stephan Weichert, a journalism professor at the Macromedia University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg. "The Web offers news every second and gives the option to link to blogs and other websites. Why would people read and even buy a story or information, which they select on the Internet the day before? It's old-school journalism," he tells Time. Again, the same underlying problem is pointed out; the combination of paper and internet has great potential, but it also combines the weak points of both and confuses the primary audiences of both mediums.

Time will tell whether these criticisms will stand or whether Niiu will live up to its potential.

The Future!

For the time being it seems like the main challenges for Oberhof and Tiedmann have been surmounted. They are looking forward to the November 16^th launch, for the time being to serve Berlin only. The circulation scope for now is limited because of the high quality but rather slow digital printing. "You can't compare it to a classical offset machine that could print 200,000 copies of Niiu in an hour; our digital printers can only do about 2000 in an hour," Oberhof explains. "That means it is not possible to deliver from one printing machine to several cities, so we start in Berlin. But obviously it's planned to expand to other cities in Germany and Europe," if the paper gets off the ground with the aim of around 5000 subscribers by the first 6 months.

However Oberhof knows there is much to be done, and that the work is far from finished. "For the next month the biggest challenge will be whether the whole work flows as we want it to. The first actual non-test paper will [hopefully] have around 5000 subscribers and this will be a lot to handle since every newspaper is individual. We might not actually know or can't imagine what the real work flow will be, what will come, and that's definitely the hardest thing." Meanwhile, he already has plans for future products and services once Niiu gets going and is established in the market.

Oberhof and Tiedmann's mission is more about giving the market what it wants, i.e. providing whatever information the reader desires in whatever format they prefer, rather than innovating the newspaper industry (which seems to be a side effect of their project). So if the market preference shifts, so will their products and services.

Having recognized that newspaper may only be around for so long, InterTi GmbH is planning "to offer an e-paper as a second step, probably by the end of this year," Oberhof revealed. Other editions are in the works, but no plans have been formally announced given that the formal launch is still a few days away. "For the future, I think that things like the Kindle will be very interesting for our product developments, but for now its not actually enough, not many people use e-readers at all," Oberhof confides. However, given the company's service-oriented vision, we can reasonably expect an e-reader version once the market for them takes off.

Whether you think newspapers are doomed or just in a rough spot right now, there is no denying the simple ingenuity and appeal (however limited) of Niiu. Its combination of the strengths (and unfortunately some of the weaknesses) of printed news and online news could make it a product to be reckoned with, even for those newspaper publishers who feel no competition from it. The potential for newspaper innovation through individualization is huge, and it remains to be seen whether Niiu will capitalize and profit from that potential

The Editor's Weblog wishes the best of luck to Oberhof and Tiedmann. It is now up to the Berlin public to decide the fate of Niiu.

Mr. Wanja Oberhof will be speaking at the WAN 2009 16th World Editors Forum in Hyderabad

Sources: Personal interview with Mr. Oberhof.

Spiegel Online

PrintWeek

Time

It has been a rough couple of years for the newspaper industry with the recession taking its toll on the financial stability of many organisations. In the past year alone at least ten publications have filed for bankruptcy and many have been forced to close their doors. With newspapers treading fast to try to keep their heads above water many have cut back funding for more costly types of news. One of the first things to go has been investigative journalism, considered by many publications to be a luxury. The time and investment of multiple resources in a single issue is something that many publications simply can no longer afford.

These cuts have raised alarm bells. The potential loss of 'the fourth estate' and 'government watchdog' have united many in the cause to protect the practice of journalism, even if the business and profitability of it is doomed to fail.

One method suggested to preserve this type of journalism is to run as a non-profit organisation. Seeking the status under the claim that journalism is a 'public good' publications are free from commerical pressures and the disappointment of dwindling circulation figures, relying only on donations from those who feel the cause worthy enough.

It is at this point that the Texas Tribune enters the scene. The online-only news site launched early last week as a non-profit venture in an attempt to fill a gap in quality local journalism in Texas. The Editors Weblog spoke with editor-in-chief, Evan Smith to look at Tribune's website and non-profit ambitions in closer detail.


The inspiration:
The big name in non-profit news is ProPublica. Led by former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger, the organisation began publishing in June 2008 and has consistently drawn in large sums of donations, with key sponsor the Sandler Foundation contributing annually. ProPublica, which will write an article then offer it to a newspaper to publish, has carried out some impressive investigative feats to date, most notably its collaboration with the New York Times, published in August. The 13,000 word article which cost an estimated $400,000 to produce examined the events that took place at the Memorial Medical Centre following Hurricane Katrina. The piece highlighted the importance of such investigative journalism and made the need to save it even more apparent.
 
The Texas Tribune aims to achieve something similar on a smaller and more political scale, offering Texans a news source designed to compliment local newspapers that already exist: "We've made a point of not presenting this as a binary choice: A or B. We believe it's additive: A and B. Read your local paper and read us. In fact read as much stuff as there is out there" says Smith.

"We're simply presenting ourselves as one in a series of things that you need to read and listen to and view and access if you want to be a thoughtful and engaged Texan." 

In his first posting on the website Smith talked about what the Tribune was attempting to achieve: "What we mean to do on an ongoing basis is right there in our stated mission: to promote civic engagement and discourse on public policy, politics, government, and other matters of statewide concern."

In ProPublica fashion, the Tribune has said that all the information published on its website is up for grabs for other media organisations as part of a content-sharing plan designed to aide other reporters who might not have the time to look into an issue in depth.  Matt Stiles, one of the Tribune's staff reporters writers told Poynter Online in an interview: "Ultimately, we'd like to tell every paper in the state, 'If you like this data set, just take it'."

"I hope reporters will come see the information, download it, remix it and be creative with it."

The build up:
In July this year Smith announced he was leaving his position as editor-in-chief of established Texas Monthly magazine to take up the post as CEO and editor of the Tribune. A few months later, the Tribune added Elise Hu, Emily Ramshaw and Matt Stiles to its list of experienced journalists.

In an interview with Poynter in September, Ramshaw talked of her decision to join the project: "I feel, and still feel, that the newspaper business is in serious crisis. I'm not content to cling to a deck chair and go down with a sinking ship."

Ramshaw worked for The Dallas Morning News for six years, the last three of which she was state investigative reporter.  "We're trying to prepare for the next incarnation of journalism. If this venture is going to work, it's going to work because serious, talented journalists were brave enough to take the risk," she said.

The Tribune has built up a selection of notable reporters willing to do this and Chairman and co-founder John Thorton had been quoted as saying: "We didn't hire journalists out of work. We hired reporters who their editors were pissed off that they lost them."

Smith and Thornton worked hard on securing donations, with Thornton himself donating $1 million to the Tribune. In early October the founders confirmed they had received a further $750, 000 in grants from the Houston Endowment and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The Tribune is now only slighty short of the $4 million target it needs to continue running for two years, with a current total of $3.7 million.

The sum is considerable for a start up website, as paidContent's Staci Kramer has noted: "Unlike some of the new crop of local and regional news startups, the Tribune is launching with enough money for a well-paid staff of 16, including 11 reporters," referring to salaries of $315K for the editor in chief, and up to $90K for seasoned reporters.

As for promotion of the site itself, Smith told the Editors Weblog just how useful social networking sites have been. Regular updates for the public on the status of the site via Facebook, Twitter and the site's own newsletter built up a sense of curiosity over what exactly they had in store for last Tuesday's launch.
 
"We've been very aggressive on Facebook and Twitter both to promote the content and also to connect with our community of followers" said Smith. "We've also used both to aggressively push for funding. We've generated quite a lot of memberships in the Tribune which are much like memberships in public radio by pushing over Facebook and over Twitter messages that relate to our fundraising campaign, and they've been very successful," he says, citing the 1400 founding members who have given between $50 and $5000 to the Tribune out of their own pockets.

What does the site look like?
The website debuted with top stories on the mistreatment of disabled children in public schools, the Democratic lean of El Paso in an otherwise Republican state, and the results of a poll carried out by the Tribune and the University of Texas.

The site itself is divided into ten pages, the organisation of which differ from your average news website. Offering 11 databases under a section titled 'Library' for further reading, the databases contain information ranging from federal campaign donations, gubernatorial appointees and lawmaker spending. In addition to this there is a complete electoral directory of every Texan senator and governor- the site essentially offers a single space for complete personal and political data on the '242 occupants of the state's highest offices'.

It is clear that a lot of time has gone into collaborating this research, and according to the Nieman Journalism Lab, the Waco Tribune-Herald has already taken advantage of the new resource and published some Tribune content. 

Aside from the databases, the site boasts eight of its own blogs and links to some 25 others; has a 'topics' section where stories can be found based on theme; a calender, where information about local events can be found or submitted; and a 'Tweetwire', a Twitter feed from all Texan politicians on the website's front page.

Compared to the recent launch of another local non-profit news website, Oakland Local, the Tribune's website is much more sophisticated. The Texan team have embraced the capacities of the internet and technology to their full, utilizing social media, widgets, videos, blogs and mobile applications- something Smith believes to be key to the way in which the use of media is changing.

"In consumption of media people are paying more attention to online media today then ever before," say Smith. "I look at my almost 13 year old daughter and how she consumes media and it's not at all in print it's almost entirely online and I think that's the trend line."

Smith suggests that publishers need to adapt to measure up to this changed method of consuming news: "You cannot simply go out and record the news, present that to people and believe that that's going to be enough. You need to give them the tools to better understand their world, to better know their state, to better know the people they elected, to better hold them accountable and that often is all not simply conventional reporting but the amassing and presenting of data that allows people to access the world in which they live from a more detailed level."

Why will the Tribune succeed where others have failed?
Whilst successful local non-profit news publications do exists, the Voice of San Diego and the MinnPost to name a few- there are also notable failures such as the Rocky Mountain Independent and InDenver Times, two online start-ups founded by Steve Foster earlier this year. How will the Tribune ensure that it doesn't suffer the same fate?

Smith says that the Tribune essentially has a better business plan, arguing that the RMI and InDenver Times failed because they were run by journalists, not business people and "didn't really have a plan for how to make the model sustainable."

Part of the reason the Tribune is choosing to remain online-only is because "the cost of printing a print publication for postage and paper and print facilities is so expensive that you reduce your overhead dramatically and therefore make it much more likely that your business model will sustain."

Of course the Tribune's has also managed to raise a healthy budget, further insulating itself against some of the problems faced by other publications. "Money is, as in all things, the mother's milk of your operation," Smith says, continuing on to mention that the having the financial capacity to buy the latest technology and hire top journalists will "go a very long way to allowing us to do our best work."

Smith's views bear resemblance to industry commentator Alan Mutter, who recently critized many online non-profit publications for not being business-minded enough. Mutter accuses these publications of "a suicidally stubborn determination on the part of the organizers to be in the business they want to be in, instead of attending to the business they need to attend to," and he argued early last month that, "A business, especially a start-up, requires far more than passion for the work. It requires close attention to the nuts and bolts of raising money, making sales and controlling expenses."

How will the Tribune navigate ethical issues?
A nagging question over the non-profit model is how publications will be able to resist influence from major donors. Smith argues that the seperation between donors and the editorial team is no different to the situation between advertisers and editorial: "I edited a magazine for nine years in which we had big advertisers who also happened to often be the subject of stories and the transactional economy that supports the operations of a for profit publication has no relationship what-so-ever to the journalism inside, or it shouldn't anyway, not at a good magazine and not at a good newspaper."

"Just because someone advertises doesn't mean you go easy on them or you go hard on their competitors."

Nevetherless, the non-profit news model is still in early stages and very dependent on the income from donors. Even for-profit news publications have not been immune to advertsing clients flexing their muscles in tough financial times, with a Detroit paper recently being accused of reporting on private health care following a request from client Humana (who subsequently purchased an ad next to the story).

What would Smith do if he was approached by a donor to cover a particular story? 

"Donors don't expect that were going to write about their issues or about their enemy's issues in a negative way, they're not looking for us to take sides- they're supporting the principle that hovers above all this activity: that journalism in the public interest has value."

"Any donor who is unhappy with the coverage we provide because of such an expectation is welcome to his or her money back," he says, adding: "I'd rather lose my funding then lose my integrity."

So are non-profits the next incarnation of journalism?
The wider debate on whether or not non-profits are the future of journalism has been raging for a while. Online magazine, Slate's Jack Shafer has weighed in for the negative: "In the current arrangement, we're substituting one flawed business model for another. For-profit newspapers lose money accidentally. Nonprofit news operations lose money deliberately."

Thornton, the Tribune's chairman, hit back at the remarks: "I call it the Stockholm Syndrome. They are sympathizing with their advertiser-captors."

So who is right? Is the non-profit model the future of journalism?

Yes and no. It is unlikely to become a general solution for newspapers simply because of the huge sums of money involved, but for nieche reporting and more time/fund consuming journalism such as investigative reporting, it could definiatley be a viable option.

The idea compares favourably at least to the suggestion of government bailouts. As Thorton wrote of the "obvious fox-in-the-henhouse issues that arise--to mix animal metaphors--from government watchdogs funded out of government coffers."

As the first serious, state-focused news site with a decent enough amount of money behind it and what seems to be the right attitude toward embracing the capacities of the digital age and the changing face of journalism- whether or not the Texas Tribune succeeds will be key to the way in which the non-profit model is viewed.

As Tribune reporter Christe Hu suggests: "Journalism is at a crossroads right now. We're seeing not just survival of the fittest but a 'mutation of the species.' "

"I think the non-profit model has just as good a shot as anything else."

Jose Galang has reported on the current state of Philippine media entities for the Asia Media Forum, which he has described as being "in a state of flux". According to Galang, in light of rising production costs no longer covered by the now declining readership, newspapers are now looking for other ways to generate revenue.

Publications around the world have recognised the Internet's potential to attract a wider audience as well as boost profits: In February 2007, fortnightly magazine Newsbreak, specialising in in-depth, investigative reports, did away with its regular printed copy in favour of operating as an online publication (Newsbreak.com.ph). Editor-in-chief, Marites Dañguilan Vitug said of the decision: "We're reaching a wider audience now that we're on the web and we operate on less funds".

Portugal's newest daily newspaper, i, was launched in early May and has attracted a significant amount of attention due to its rising circulation figures and innovative approach. It recently won a design award from the Society of News Design. The Editors Weblog spoke to editor-in-chief Martim Avillez Figueiredo, managing editor for online Mónica Bello and art director Nick Mrozowski, to find out more about i's approach and the reasons behind its success.

I's circulation in August was over 16,000 copies, up from just under 11,000 in its first month, May. As a comparison, the country's top selling papers, Público and Diário de Notícias, sold 36,000 and 30,000 respectively that month. So for a new paper, i seems to be doing well. How, when the newspaper industry is struggling worldwide from falling income as readers move online and advertising rates fall, is a new newspaper seemingly thriving?

What i is doing differently

I is not structured like a traditional paper. The paper's team worked with media consultancy Innovation to come up with a new way to organise the product. "Our feeling was," said Figueiredo, who came on board at an early stage, moving from Diário Económico, "that people were not concerned about traditional sections any more. Traditionally, journalists have to fill a politics section even if there is nothing relevant going on in politics. We wanted to come up with something different." So the team came up with five key needs that they wanted the paper to address, with five key words.

• 1. Opinion is the first section of the paper, based on the key word think. No other Portuguese paper starts out with opinion.
• 2. Radar is the second, accompanied by the key word know. Figueiredo said the assumption was that readers will already know a lot from other sources, but Radar aims to offer a quick overview of everything that has happened in the past 24 hours. The section is eight pages long, and the longest article is half a page.
• 3. Zoom is the third section, connected to the key word understand. The 22-26 page section looks at between eight and 13 topics in depth, with articles taking up one to ten pages. "We deal with these subjects with a lot of care, and we use the best teams," Figueiredo said.
• 4. The fourth section is called More, linked to the key concept feel. This is where anything about people's private, cultural, social lives goes. Figueiredo explained that the team did not want to give the section a more specific name, or the content would be limited. More encompasses the fifth need that the paper wanted to address: sports, about 80% of which is focused on football - "this is very important in Portugal," Figueiredo said.

Design...

Nick Mrozowski, i's American art director, said that "I think the overriding concept, not just in the design but in the newspaper as a whole, is that we want to try to set out to produce a magazine every day." The 56- to 64-page paper is tabloid size and stapled, so looks as much like a magazine as a newspaper.

A huge amount of work goes into designing the paper every day. At first, Mrozowski explained, the idea was that the paper would have a template that would leave some pages fixed each time, meaning that some pages would require no design work on a daily basis and that editors would simply put their content into the pre-designed format. "But from day one that strategy fell apart," he said. "We realised that the sort of paper we were making had a lot of very specialised content and each page would have to be custom-made to the needs of a reporter or editor."

"From a design perspective it's a little intense," Mrozowski said. The design team are challenged to find magazine-quality visual solutions every day. For example, unlike most daily newspapers, i strives to include high quality portrait photography rather than just that for events, which means finding the time to sit down with sources. The paper also has a lot of illustration, something which many newspapers have been cutting back on in recent months, Mrozowski pointed out. "I think people notice this," he said. "You can't go a day reading i without coming across at least one commissioned illustration, rather than just back art."

I has a team design team of seven, two infographic artists and a group of photographers. This visual team is "like one unit," Mrozowsi stressed. "We all sit at one big arching table, so it's very easy to communicate."

Despite the strong focus on the visual side of the paper, Mrozowski stressed that this is never at the expense of the content. He was trained as a journalist as well as a designer, so "I've always worked in newspapers with a journalistic eye." And he makes sure that his design team also understand that "the design should come from the content."  He clarified, "it's not enough to design a page, you have to know what's going on it, what type of photo is going to be there and how it should best be played." The designers and editors therefore work very closely together, requiring the design team to have a journalistic understanding of each page that they work on.

Not just print...

I also has an increasingly significant web presence at www.ionline.pt: online editor-in-chief Mónica Bello said that the site recently passed 900,000 uniques per month. The paper's print and online operations are broadly integrated: journalists write for both platforms. "It's a work in progress," said Bello, "it's getting better and better all the time." Two editors are just focused on the website, and many journalists work on breaking news online for a few hours and then move on to writing for the paper.  40% of content from the paper also goes online, explained Figueiredo, with the other 60% being exclusive to the print product.

I's website is an aggregator as well as displaying original content. Figueiredo described how the paper is happy to link to competitors' content, and how aim is that people come to I as a base for their news exploration. "We want to make sure that people on Facebook and Twitter are using i as their main information source," he said, adding that i has a presence on many social networks. The paper has, in effect, six different homepages online. One is a portal of general news, one is focused on Portuguese political news, a third is economic and financial, a fourth is world news, fifth is sports and the last is the 'good life' homepage

There seems to be a general acceptance at i of the fact that online news is not profitable, at least for the moment. "You can't make any money there," said Figueiredo, "but you have to be there in order to grow your brand." Bello said that "the print edition is of course the priority, and will be at lease for the next few years." This means that the designers do not contribute so much to the website, which has a far more fixed template compared to the paper.

The advantages of youth: potential for constant innovation

Being a new newspaper, part of a new brand, gives I the freedom to experiment and it seems that this freedom has been passed on to all the staff. Mrozowski and Bello were extremely enthusiastic about their working environment and what it allows them to do. "There's this motivating feeling," Bello said. Mrozowski said that the two senior editors, Figueiredo and André Macedo, "have imparted this feeling of accomplishing the impossible at every step... There is no cap to how big these guys will dream and it presses you to do things that you wouldn't do at another newspaper."

One of Mrozowski's favourite projects at the paper so far was for the European elections: with the help of an outside illustrator, the team produced a double page spread the night of the election depicting the politicians involved as fish in the ocean, with their position in the water showing how well they had done. "It worked out beautifully, and speaks to this ambition that we have," Mrozowski commented. "It's something that I don't think another newspaper would try."

"We told them that they have the responsibility to be innovative because they don't have a set newspaper in which they have to fill the gaps, rather it is a newspaper that they have to create everyday in order to focus on the real issues," Figueiredo said.

The paper chose to hire not just experienced professional journalists, but decided to bring in some young people who did not necessarily have any experience in the field but who were technologically adept and very knowledgeable about social media.

So who is the audience?

I's specialised focus on politics and economics attracts educated, ambitious readers, Figueiredo said. 69% of readers have a university degree, 39% are top management. What is particularly exciting, he added, is that 22% of i's readers had not been regular newspaper buyers before. A key target audience, "that we are still learning to deal with," is aged between 23 and 29: they have a university degree, they have started their professional careers and have ambition, they are unmarried, they travel frequently and have a full social and cultural life, Figueiredo explained. "And they want to know what's going on. We have been dedicated to studying this new audience that nobody else has."

Why do they like it?

According to Figueiredo, "we've created a product that goes directly to the way they think and interact with news." Most of these readers are well informed via other media and already know a lot about what's going on, but they look to i to "help organise all the mixed and disparate information that they have to deal with." He believes that the in-depth articles on politics and economics, providing essential background to current issues, are one of the main reasons why people like the paper. The sports section is "very creative," unlike those in most newspapers, Figueiredo added. He does not think that the rest of the More section is a key motivation for buyers to choose i specifically, pointing out that one of the paper's competitors, Público, was very strong on culture.

Finally, he suggested that the format of the paper was particularly attractive, being small and stapled means that "people can read it anywhere," even on the beach. Lisbon is not a major commuter city, however, meaning that this audience, crucial to the success of many papers in many countries, does not exist.

What's next?

The i staff seemed excited about the paper's future. Mrozowski plans to further improve the work of his design team, to take it "to the next level." The team has mastered the basics, he feels, and is now "going to start focusing on certain areas of the paper one at a time and try to make them better so that we are at the highest level."

Bello said that one of her hopes for the website is to expand readership outside of Portugal. Currently 80-90% of traffic comes from within Portugal, the largest percentage of the remainder coming from Brazil. She would like to reach Portuguese immigrant communities around the rest of the world.

Figueiredo intends to work on strengthening the paper's brand, to "create a fantastic dynamic around the brand." Distribution of the paper is something that Figueiredo said i was hoping to improve. "It's a nightmare in Portugal," he explained, "but we are trying to come up with some more good ideas in order to be very efficient in terms of distribution."

I's shareholders have given it five years to break even financially. In a time of falling profits, when many papers are making huge losses, this is a significant challenge for a new newspaper. However, i does seem to be off to a pretty good start. The decision to move away from the traditional structure of a newspaper and provide something different definitely makes sense, as does embracing creativity and innovative thinking in the workplace. The paper has made inroads with a young, successful demographic that would often be attracted by online news rather than print, and reaching about half of the circulation of the major daily papers in a few months is impressive. However, it remains to be seen whether i can be successful over a longer period, and if it can indeed become profitable.

If i does succeed, will others follow it down the path of innovation?

To see what i's first day was like, watch:
 

Spanish online-only website Soitu.es farewelled it's readers yesterday, announcing it would shut down after only 22 months of production.

In a post titled 'Hasta la vista y gracias', founder Gumersindo LaFuente thanked the half a million unique visitors a month the site had managed to attract throughout it's short life.

Video blogging, quite simply a blog which employs video as its medium, is a phenomenon which hasn't shown the same success as its text-based parent amongst everyday web users. Despite the fact the 'tools of the trade' - cameras, editing software, and a platform to broadcast - are no longer unaffordable or complex obstacles, the significant investment of time to produce something that is of a publishable quality is still a drawback for many.

Adam Singer, in his blog The Future Buzz, writes that in video blogging professionals still have a 'leg-up': "In text-based communications, professional writers don't... In fact, amateurs are in many cases more compelling than the professionals of yesterday because they are not bound by rules that constrain and constrict the emotion possible through words." In the realm of video, however, Singer says: "It's hard to compete against professional personalities who have honed their skills in a competitive environment and have sharp writing and production staffs behind them."

Reporting by Cecilia Campbell:
Speaking at the 2nd WAN-IFRA conference on e-readers in Paris last week, Stig Nordqvist, Group Director Emerging Digital Platforms and Business Development from WAN-IFRA updated everyone on the lastest buzz and tech rumours in e-reading.

Nordqvist, who has worked in-depth with e-reading for IFRA since 2002, described his view of what the new platform of e-reading will mean for news publishers. He stressed that the type of experience e-readers offer is much more relaxed than that offered by other devices, such as mobiles and laptops, which are usually used 'on-the-go'.

As net surfers everywhere explore the benefits of interactive sites such as Twitter and Facebook, the Web's evolutionary wheels continue to turn moving users from the user-centric Web, or Web 2.0, to the semantic web more commonly known as Web 3.0. Delegates at the 2015 Newsroom conference being held in Prague displayed mixed reactions to presentations from three of the digital realm's top thinkers during the session entitled Personalised news and the semantic Web: what added value for journalism? As many delegates continue to discover Web 2.0 they were taken aback to learn of the next step to the World Wide Web's development.

In May of this year, Reuters launched its first free-of-charge BlackBerry and iPhone news applications in the U.K, U.S, Canada and India. Those in the industry recognise that for news publishers, mobile technology provides a potential big-time opportunity, particularly for phone applications, to generate revenue. Whilst Reuter's senior vice president and head of consumer publishing, Alisa Bowen, notes that mobiles are now highly customisable devices, she also insists that charging a premium for users to have access to their online content isn't on the agenda.

The news comes following The Wall Street Journal 's announcement yesterday that it is to start charging for its mobile application in the next few months.

But has Reuters passed up on a money-spinner? Steve Outing at Editor and Publisher is of the opinion that although consumers are not frequently inclined to pay for news stories on mobile phones or online via micro-payments or subscriptions - they will buy applications.

To cover the elections in Afghanistan on August 20, El País sent special correspondent Ramón Lobo to Kabul. In addition to articles featured in the print edition of the paper, Lobo kept a blog on the El País site documenting daily life in the country called Cuadernos de Kabul (Logs from Kabul). Writing on his personal blog following the experience, the journalist offered his views on covering both media for the same publication and the future of news as a whole.

Fwix offers an uncomplicated service: it aggregates local news from newspapers, blogs and other sources, aiming to offer users an up-to-the minute guide of what is going on in their area by filling the gaps in what a local newspaper could offer on its own.  The Editors Weblog recently spoke to Darian Shirazi, the 22-year-old founder of Fwix, to find out more about what the site offers to news fans and what its goals are for the future.

"I think what we're offering is the ability to fill out the content in local newspapers with content that's written by bloggers in a local area," Shirazi explained. As newspapers suffer from falling advertising revenue, they might no longer be able to cover all verticals; hence Fwix combines local newspapers' news with content such as restaurant or movie reviews from blogs into one city feed. It is a real time feed, as, Shirazi put it, "things that are happening seconds or minutes ago are de facto more interesting than what was happening days ago." There are currently 77 different cities to choose from.

Fwix displays a headline linked to the original article, along with a snippet from the story, as permitted by fair use regulations. If a reader clicks through to an original article, it will take them to the content-producer's website but the page will have a Fwix banner across the bottom, allowing the user to quickly return to Fwix or share the article. The site also shows readers the 'Top Trends' of the moment and an Activity section indicates the articles that members are reading and sharing.

Shirazi originally built a simple version of the service for his personal use, as he wanted to stay in touch with what was going on in his city while he was travelling. "I realised that there was no good place that had all the information, from art exhibits to crime news, to events to new issues in politics," he explained. "I used it myself for a while and I really liked it. Then I thought, other people might like this. So I built it."

Sharing and connecting

If users would like to associate their activity on Fwix with their Facebook or Twitter accounts, they may sign in via these services and then if they choose to share a story, it will appear on their Twitter feed or Facebook profile page. Shirazi has no plans for Fwix to create its own account system: "that's not necessary, and it's a battle we are not willing to wage." Rather, he explained, "we levarage ecosystems that help people share information and then provide the news." A Fwix profile page saves everything a user reads, but they have the option to delete whatever they would like. "Really the profile is just for you to keep track of what you've shared and what you've read."

Reporting

Fwix is waiting for approval from Apple for its iPhone application, which would allow a citizen journalism element to be incorporated into the site as users would be invite to report news. The app will provide a 'report' button which users can click on when they see something that they think is worthy of attention. A camera will then pop up and the user can photograph and describe what they want to report and send it to Fwix. On the site, a pin on a map will show the user's precise location when they reported the news. The reported news would go straight into the activity section and into the individual's profile, and will be automatically vetted before it enters the main feed. The vetting process judges credibility based on the existence of similar reports.

The company plans to allow users to report from other devices in the future, but not from a web browser.

Monetisation

As yet, making a profit is not Fwix's main goal, Shirazi said. For now, it has funding from BlueRun ventures. However, when it does start to monetise, local advertising will be its revenue stream, he specified. Local businesses "are really looking for places to advertise," he stressed, "there will always be ad dollars out there." He sees a gap in the market that Fwix could fill: "the only places for local businesses to advertise right now are those like Yelp.com and there are way more ads than there is space," he explained.

What's in store for the future

The site just came out of beta. Fwix's current goal is simply growth, Shirazi said, meaning getting more people using the service. Currently the site has about 400,000 unique visitors per month and via widgets on other sites, the content network reaches about 8 million. There are about 8000 publications whose content is aggregated. Shirazi would like to expand the service internationally, but said that here is no telling when this will happen.

Fwix clearly provides a useful service for those who are looking to keep abreast of what's going on in their local area, and Facebook and Twitter users are likely to find the ease with which they can share stories appealing. Twitter's new geo-tagging capabilities might provide competition, depending on how developers take advantage of this. Fwix could also help local news outlets by sending traffic to their websites, although of course as with all aggregators, there is always the possibility that people might visit Fwix.com rather than their local newspaper's home page if it provides a more comprehensive service. Local blogs with fewer visitors are likely to appreciate the extra exposure that Fwix offers. What Fwix offers is not groundbreaking, but services such as this are changing the way that people access news as consumers move away from traditional news reading habits.

Google is developing a paid online content model involving both subscriptions and micropayments that it is has proposed to the Newspaper Association of America, Nieman Lab reported. Google submitted an eight-page document to the NAA in response to the association's request for content charging solutions (available here).

Google already has an e-commerce platform called Google Checkout and the new system would be an extension of this.

The company outlines its thoughts on paid online content as follows:

Google believes that an open web benefits all users and publishers.  However, "open" need not mean free.  We believe that content on the Internet can thrive supported by multiple business models -- including content available only via subscription. While we believe that advertising will likely remain the main source of revenue for most news content, a paid model can serve as an important source of additional revenue.  In addition, a successful paid content model can enhance advertising opportunities, rather than replace them.

The document outlines Google's assumption that one of the main challenges of paid online content is to "create a simple payment model that is painless for users." It claims that it could use its expertise in e-commerce and consumer products to "help create a successful e-commerce platform for publishers." And it stresses that, given its position in Internet users' lives, it can help publishers to enable users to find the paid content via search.

Key features in Google's vision of a "premium content ecosystem" include:

• • Single sign-on capability for users to access content and manage subscriptions  
• • Ability for publishers to combine subscriptions from different titles together for one price  
• • Ability for publishers to create multiple payment options and easily include/exclude content behind a paywall  
• • Multiple tiers of access to search including 1) snippets only with "subscription" label, 2) access to preview pages and 3) "first click free" access   
• • Advertising systems that offer highly relevant ads for users, such as interest-based advertising

Using the "fast, secure" Google Checkout, consumers can store their payment information in their Google Account and use this to buy products, both digital and physical. Fraud losses are low, the document says, and tens of millions of users and several hundred thousand merchants are already registered.

Subscriptions and micropayment options

Checkout can already offer subscription payments, and the document promises that the currently "fairly rudimentary" process could be improved to be "more relevant for news and media companies." Micropayments are "in the early planning stages" but "will be a payment vehicle available to both Google and non-Google properties within the next year." The document stresses that merchant integration will be "extremely simple."

"Google believes that there is real power and benefit to publishers in providing these sorts of broad, multi-publication access passes."

The Google document expresses a preference for subscriptions over micropayments, and the company seems particularly keen on bundled packages of content: "Google believes that there is real power and benefit to publishers in providing these sorts of broad, multi-publication access passes." It notes that for such packages, publishers "will receive a revenue disbursement that is proportional to the usage of their content in the package." It is not clear whether this would be allocated per article clicked upon or depending on time spent on each site, however, and this has the potential to be an area of contention amongst publishers involved. Such packages do offer definitive benefits to the consumer, however, allowing users to move freely between publications, as they do now.

With regards to micropayments, the document states that "we do not believe it will be the norm for accessing content." However, it suggests that they could be useful for readers who want to buy single articles that are not included in their subscription, the price of which would be added to their monthly bill. It also proposes a pre-paid service.

Advertising

Continuing to promote advertising is an integral part of Google's proposal and the document states that "we believe the increased advertising opportunities will likely exceed total revenue from subscriptions." The platform would allow ads to be sold in three different ways: "directly by publishers, sold as part of the Google Content Network, or sold via multiple ad networks through our ad exchange." Advertising could be targeted, based on voluntary data from individual registration information.

Search

The document notes the ways that Google's search engine currently makes paid content discoverable: allowing either a preview to appear in search results if the searcher is not a subscriber, or by allowing one article free via search (the tactic the Wall Street Journal currently takes). "Search engines should know what content a user has access to," the document states, and "assuming the user has access rights, the full content should be available and exposed within 1 click from the search results page." The content to which a user does not have access would be displayed with a price.

Further distribution

The document suggests that Google News could also license and host further content from interested publishers, as it already does for various news agencies without a destination website. It also proposes helping distribute content more widely via repackaging and syndication. 


How does Google compare to the competition?

Paid online content in the near future is increasingly seeming an inevitability. In July, the NAA distributed a "request for information" to a range of companies asking for details of their paid online content solutions. As well as Google, ten others responded: CircLabs, Journalism Online, IBM, Mather Economics, Microsoft, MyWire, NewsNav, Oracle, ViewPass and YouData. The NAA has published and summarised all their proposals for the industry's perusal.

Google's proposal is particularly interesting because the company's unquestionable dominance of the search market and its existing relationship with many web-users through services such as Gmail gives it a significant advantage. Plus, it already has a news search engine, Google News. It is definitely well-placed to implement such a system.

One drawback for Google would be the fact that many publishers, due to copyright conflict particularly over Google News, see the company as an enemy rather than an ally. The document suggests that the cut taken by Google from content sales would be comparable to Apple's split on iTunes and the AppStore, which Nieman Lab points out is about 30%. Would publishers be happy to share their revenue with Google in this way?

The most similar and serious competitor to Google's proposition would seem to be Journalism Online, the venture led by Steve Brill and Gordon Crovitz. The start-up already has a detailed business plan in place, including projected revenue increase, and last month announced that over 500 publishers had signed on. So although it does not have the web presence in place that Google has, it has made considerable progress in terms of publisher awareness of its product, and intends to launch imminently. It is also promising to give member publishers feedback about how users are purchasing and reading news, in order to improve their offerings over time. Lastly, it has the advantage of not already having enemies within the industry, and the fact that its founders are from publishing backgrounds. Journalism Online's commission would be 20% of subscription revenues, according to the document it presented to the NAA.

So which proposal will emerge as a winner amongst publishers? Or will they decide to go forward with paid content alone and save on broker fees? There are definitely advantages to working through a third party: ease being prominent amongst these, for both the publisher and the user. But maybe a conglomerate as big as News Corp might have the capability to develop its own efficient system and could persuade others to follow suit.

Birmingham Post editor Marc Reeves believes that going weekly is the best option for his paper as its publisher Trinity Mirror starts a consultation process over the future of its key West Midlands title. Trinity Mirror will lose £6 million next year "unless some radical action is taken now," Reeves explains in a post on the paper's blog. The Post is currently the main daily paper in Birmingham, the UK's second biggest city.

Reeves identifies staff and manufacturing costs as the Post's biggest expenses, and these are therefore what need to be cut. The two options that he suggests are reducing the number of pages of the paper each day, or producing just one substantial edition per week. 

Online news platforms are challenging the mainstream Malaysian press as the premier providers of news and information. The printed press is largely influenced by the government, thus independent, online productions are increasingly perceived to be more reliable and neutral sources of information. It is expected that the online trend will play an important part in the development of the Malaysian civil and political scene.

The online news world has experienced much growth over the past few years. According to AFP, there are now eight Malaysian news sites. Given the linguistic diversity of the multicultural population, the different sites are in Chinese, Malay and English. The first, Malaysiakini, was born ten years ago, and the most recent, the Malaysian Mirror, appeared on the web last month. The sites are predominately concerned with political and social news and analysis, performing a kind of watchdog role on state business.

This week, Slate performed "a highly unscientific experiment" to determine who is better informed: those who get their news only from newspapers, or those who rely solely on the Internet. For three days, the four volunteer subjects were forced to consume as much news as they could in one hour from their assigned medium, then report back on their findings.

Slate recruited Timothy Egan, a New York Times columnist and blogger, and Sam Howe Verhovek, who once worked at NYT and the Los Angeles Times, for the two print-only subjects. On the web side, there were Slate online reporters Emily Yoffe and Seth Stevenson. The print people were confined to four newspapers available in their respective geographic locations (in this case, Seattle), while the "webbies" had to stay clear of newspaper websites and all online news aggregators (from Google News to the Huffington Post).

The Guardian reported that its editor Alan Rusbridger has thrown his support behind a plan to give public funding to the Press Association, Britain's national press agency. The funding would allow the PA to carry out public service reporting, providing news from public authorities and courts to compensate for the reduction in coverage of such local institutions by local and regional papers.

Rusbridger was speaking at a seminar on the future of journalism at the Media Standards Trust in London. He expressed concern at the gradual disappearance of local journalism, according to the Guardian. "It makes me worry about all of those public authorities and courts which will in future operate without any kind of systematic public scrutiny. I don't think our legislators have begun to wake up to this imminent problem as we face the collapse of the infrastructure of local news in the press and broadcasting," he said.