Results matching “the best blogging newspapers”

The Huffington Post unveiled its newest addition of the HuffPo clan this past Monday. Huffington Post New York, "The Internet Newspaper" features news, blog and video posts from Nora Ephron, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), former Mayor Ed Koch, as well as a host of well-known comedians and playwrights. The site is also welcoming of citizen journalist via its Eyes & Ears Citizen Reporting component that boasts citizen journalists of all ages from around the world.

A memo on the front page from Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, explains that the website "features our curated selection of the best New York news coverage, plus a collection of bloggers eager to share their takes on everything from local politics to the city's fashion, food, entertainment, and sports." She goes on to explain the site's partnership with 14 local news outlets in order to reel in hyperlocal coverage.

We live in a world, not a village

The directors of international journalism courses talked about the importance of internationalisation and giving students a chance to interact with other students from around the world in a bid to understand the effects of global media in a local context.

According to Eric Scherer at AFP, the future of journalism will lie in enterprising journalists and their efforts to come up with journalistic solutions that will facilitate the communication process and continuously revise the business models in place. He also believes that a new mindset will eventually need to replace the typical journalist's attitude of today, as well as in the value of a broad general knowledge base - something that internationalisation makes possible.

After testing the practice with a small percentage of users, Google News has started recognizing Wikipedia articles as news sources in its round-up of the web's top stories. For many Internet users, the popular online encyclopedia represents a handy source to quickly learn about a subject that's in the news.

The number of Wikipedia links on the Google News landing page is not overwhelming; a recent visit revealed just three of the dozens of links on the site belonged to the online encyclopedia.

The launch of a cross-party select committee's investigation into the future of newspapers in the UK today was overshadowed by the ominous prediction that half of the nation's local and regional papers will be lost within the next five years.

The predictions are based on research conducted by the media analysts, Enders Media.  Its founder, Claire Enders, voiced her concerns in front of the Culture, Media and Sport select committee this morning:  

"We are expecting that up to half of all the 1,300 titles will close in the next five years."  

The trusted and often dubbed 'journalist's bible,' has jumped on the Twitter bandwagon. The 2009 edition of The Associated Press Stylebook includes updates with the lingo of the much-hailed and rapidly growing micro-blogging site, Twitter.com, and other entries to remain current with the ever changing written word.

The verb phrases, "to Twitter", and "to Tweet" are now recognized and validated by the prestigious Associated Press as "Twitter" is described as a social networking website where users can emit, "Tweets," or short messages. Another term now defined in the 2009 edition that describes short messages, but is not necessarily exclusive to the Twitter-sphere, is "text" and its cousins, "texting" and "texted."

The city of San Diego is a microcosm of the current battle raging between the new and the old for the headlines of local news. As American cities struggle to maintain their regional papers, online initiatives are springing up to fill the gap left in community reporting.  Now California's second largest city is covered by three reporting projects, functioning on very different business models.   

The classic first: the San Diego Union Tribune is the city's only newspaper, which has an apparently bleak future.  Revenue from advertising has dropped by 40 per cent from 2006.  In March, a buyout shop, Platinum Equity, eager for its first publishing venture, announced that it would buy the paper.  Last month the buyers revealed that 200 of Union-Tribune staff would be made redundant.  However, it seems that the cutbacks at the Union-Tribune have not damaged its online edition, which averages 1.3 million unique visitors a month and racked in an estimated $10 million on $18 million in sales last year.

The I Want Media's The Future of Media: 2009 discussion held at NYU yesterday gathered the most renowned names in the new media world to present their visions of the future of information media.  Present were Gawker chief Nick Denton, Jack Dorsey, cofounder and chairman of Twitter; Bonnie Fuller, creator of Us Weekly and founder of Bonnie Fuller Media; Alan Murray, deputy managing editor and executive editor online at The Wall Street Journal; and Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.

Perhaps of most interest to have come from the exchange were Denton's statements about journalists' attitudes, their inaptitude for internet blogging and the pay wall debate which is currently dominating news provision dialogue.

Lawrence Roberts, prolific investigative editor at the Washington Post since 2004, has been employed by the Huffington Post to lead its nascent Investigative Fund, it was revealed this morning.   The announcement was made by Arianna Huffington,  Chair of the Fund's Advisory Board and Editor-in-Chief of The Huffington Post, and Nick Penniman, Executive Director of the Fund.  Huffington said:

"We are delighted to have Larry on board. Larry's background in investigative journalism -- including being part of three Pulitzer-winning teams -- as well as his experience in online journalism make him an ideal pick to spearhead the Investigative Fund. Plus, his experience as a business editor is perfectly aligned with the Investigative Funds initial focus on covering the economic crisis."

Yesterday, the recently founded Media140 held its first Twitter and microblogging conference. Held at London's Southbank Centre - a venue in the heart of the UK capital synonymous with innovation - the event largely focussed on the effects that Twitter and micoblogging are having on the news gathering process and was attended by journalists from Guardian.co.uk, TimesOnline, TechCrunch, BBC, Aljazeera, Reuters and Sky News.

Kicking off discussions, associate editor of the Sunday Herald and author of 'The Play ethic', Pat Kane, opened up the conference with a keynote presentation on the way breaking news services were dramatically changing the face of journalism: "Reading a newspaper on a street corner might be seen as banal. What's becoming just as banal is producing news on that street corner," said Kane. You can access his slideshow from the presentation here.

Speakers at the Thinking Digital conference in Newcastle this week have covered a diverse range of subjects: from Twitter to how to save the world's problems via technology. One panel covered the blogging phenomenon - where former blogger Stowe Boyd deemed blogging outdated - and another was from Newsweek writer Dan Lyons, who shared some controversial opinions on newspapers, "I don't see the point. They are dead. They are in denial."

Lyons was singing the praises of blogging during his panel, as he met with success whilst blogging as 'Fake Steve Jobs'. However Boyd, during the panel on blogging, stated that the "heat and dyanmism of blogging is gone", and pointed towards the rise of social networks - citing Twitter as a prime example. Conversely, although there were pro-Twitter panelists during the Twitter session, Lyons was cynical about its "pre-revenue" status and labeled it as one of the first companies to be hurt by the economic downturn.

Online news aggregator the Huffington Post is well known for not paying its bloggers - however it is taking that policy one step further and asking one of its future interns to pay for the privilege of working at the Post. With all profits going to the Robert F. Kennedy Centre for Justice and Human Rights, the bidding for the two to three month internship currently stands at $13,000.

The internship is just one out of 25 which the Huffington Post will host this summer, and a spokesman for the site said that Arianna Huffington chose to make the donation as "it was for a good cause".

Source: Guardian, AdAge

The Rocky Mountain News published its final edition on Friday 27 February, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's last print edition before its move online was printed on Tuesday 17 March. The demise of these two publications, despite the P-I's continued existence online, left a hole in both Seattle and Denver. However, in both cities, online only publications have emerged. Both staffed by writers for the respective former newspapers, INDenverTimes and the Seattle PostGlobe are now up and running. The Editors Weblog spoke to INDT co-founder Kevin Preblud, and Kery Murakami who is leading the Seattle PostGlobe's effort, to find out more.

Funding

The two publications have taken very different routes in terms of funding. Fighting back against the mentality that information is free online, INDT is charging for subscriptions. Whilst much of the news will in fact be free, "it's really the premium content that we want our subscribers to pay for", explains Preblud. Initially, an target of finding 50,000 subscribers by April 23 was set, in order for the full launch to go ahead on May 4. However, the decision will now be based upon a combination of subscribers, users and page view figures.

Subscribers will have access to the INsider Channel, "where you can have a direct, real time conversations with our editors and writers" as well as a number of other applications and tools. "Insight, perspective, live blogging, live chatting, commenting, interactivity with writers and other readers" are amongst the benefits offered to paying readers.

Preblud believes that "business model is currently not working", largely due to the drop in advertising revenue and the decline in print readership. It is for these reasons that INDT is trying something different, and in terms of its model Preblud believes that "the cost structure is reasonable, the revenues are up, and with advertising and subscriptions I think we could make this work."

The Seattle PostGlobe, on the other hand is aiming to run as a non-profit, free to access publication funded by donations. Murakami presents the project as "for the broader civic good, as opposed to trying to make money." He added that "Seattle has a rich history of community efforts." Discussing INDT's decision to sell subscriptions, Murakami thinks that "it could work" - but his reluctance is attributed to the fact that he does not like the idea that only the people who could afford to pay would have access to information.

Citing the VoiceOfSanDiego and MinnPost as influences for the project, Murakami laments that "the big difference between us and them is that they were lucky enough to find some big pocket donors". He explains that the largest single contribution the Seattle PostGlobe has so far received is just $500. To increase revenue, the SPG has reached a deal with the Seattle Weekly, whereby the Seattle Weekly sells the SPG's advertising space and split the proceeds 50/50.

"We hope it will make the community feel empowered and they will respond - it's going slow so far but we'll see."

Murakami explains that they are giving readers the choice; "What we have done is said, 'We're going to volunteer and we're going back to you, the community, to put this in your hands. If you want us to do the work that we do, then support us. But really it's your choice.' We hope it will make the community feel empowered and they will respond - it's going slow so far but we'll see."

Coverage

Both the SPG and INDT have chosen, somewhat inevitably, to narrow their coverage from that of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Rocky Mountain News respectively, and place more of an emphasis on local coverage than statewide reporting. Murakami points out that "with a much smaller staff we have to be much more focussed, in terms of what we do," whilst Preblud concedes that "because we're an online-only news resource we just can't cover everything that the Rocky was covering."

"The Seattle P-I didn't go under because of a lack of interest or of readership, which is ironic."

Murakami hopes that the SPG will recapture the market that the P-I once held - because, as he explains, "the Seattle P-I didn't go under because of a lack of interest or of readership, which is ironic." There isn't, however, necessarily a call for a more hyperlocal approach to the news in Seattle because of several blogs already in existence which focus on specific neighbourhoods.

"We will be emphasising Seattle coverage as opposed to broader Washington coverage. We are focussed on issues that affect people in the city," Murakami explains. Similarly, Preblud describes how INDT believes "that our purpose is to cover the local market and the local community of Denver in a much more focused manner. We're unfortunately leaving out some of the more statewide coverage".

Both the Seattle PostGlobe and INDenverTimes will be looking at potential content-enhancing collaborations in the weeks and months to come. The SPG is investigating partnerships with public TV and radio stations, namely KCTS-TV. "We could be a demonstration project here in the state, showing how merging a public TV station, a public radio station and former newspaper reporters could work. The idea that we are pursuing is for the three entities to remain separate yet join to create a news organisation." INDT, meanwhile, could "end up partnering with some of the other local news outlets in the smaller cities".

Reception

"It seems that we really were valued and left a void that people appreciate us trying to fill."

The response to the new publications in both Denver and Seattle has been positive. "They've all been positive, keep up the good work, they're all rooting for us, and hoping that we can continue and that we can succeed," says Preblud. Murakami describes the reaction to the SPG as heartening: "It seems that we really were valued and left a void that people appreciate us trying to fill."

Personal impact

Preblud explains that his desire to launch INDT stems from his Denver roots, where he grew up reading the Rocky. He explains that he found it difficult to watch its demise, and that "nobody stepped up and was willing to buy the Rocky." It was this which prompted him to co-found INDT, "I just felt there was an opportunity there with part of what the future solution might look like," he clarified. Working on such a project is unlikely to be the same as working at an established paper, however. Murakami, discussing his new role, comments, "It's weird, I have been a newspaper reporter for 20 years. And now I am part-salesman, part fundraiser, part photo editor, part editor, part IT guy. And I haven't had time to do any stories."

How closures are affecting American cities

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Rocky Mountain News are two of the most high profile American newspaper closures, but there has been speculation that more could follow. Whilst the P-I is now published online, the Rocky in any official form disappeared completely. In reference to the situation Seattle now finds itself, Murakami says "The paper left a big hole in the community and nobody in the community was ever asked if that was OK. The community had no voice, in terms of this thing that happened".

"I think there's a risk at the moment and there are places where they are losing coverage."

There has been speculation in the New York Times over which American town could become the first to lose both of its newspapers, and Michael Wolff of Newser recently, and somewhat controversially, suggested that all newspapers could have disappeared in 18 months time. In terms of communities losing valued newspaper coverage, Preblud says "I think there's a risk at the moment and there are places where they are losing coverage. A vehicle like INDenverTimes hasn't been put in place to cover the losses. It's critical that we as an industry figure out what the right model is so that we don't lose the core of journalism, which starts with local coverage."

Whilst neither the Seattle PostGlobe or INDenverTimes are claiming to be a replacement for the newspapers whose demise lead to their creation, they are undoubtedly trying to help fill the gap that was left. In the future, will the situation in Denver and Seattle repeat in other towns and states in the US? If there are further newspaper closures, it is somewhat inevitable that sites such as INDT and the SPG will emerge - but can such sites provide a service to the community that is in any way comparable to that of a city paper?

The Wall Street Journal monthly columnist, Mark Penn, has today written a startling article analysing the growing trend of the professional blogger.

Together with his co-author from book Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes - E. Kinney Zalesne - Penn reports that there are almost as many people in the United States earning a living as a blogger as there are lawyers. What's more, Penn and Zalesne claim that the Bureau of Labor Statistics, has identified 452,000 Americans working as full-time bloggers, suggesting there are more bloggers than there are bartenders, computer programmers, CEOs or firefighters (although a scan of the data unveiled no such magical figure when we checked).

At a panel Monday at the UC Berkeley School of Journalism, blogging pioneer Dave Winer and writer and editor Scott Rosenberg defended web journalism. The topic of the panel was the San Francisco Chronicle, which Hearst Corporation has threatened to shut down if it cannot make drastic cutbacks. While many of the journalists and speakers at the panel focused on ways to save print reporters, newspapers, and journalism, Winer and Rosenberg argued that the loss of newspapers does not mean the loss of journalism.

Both Winer and Rosenberg discussed their views in further detail this week on their respective blogs. Both writers felt that though the panel commenced well with a declaration that reporters should focus on saving public-interest journalism rather than saving newspapers, it ended with criticisms of web journalism and lamentations about the end of journalism. Instead of constructively examining how journalists must adapt to the new medium, panelists offered solutions for saving print reporters such as "news tax" on electronics, government subsidies and antitrust exemptions.

In its 2008 report, Amnesty International declared that the Egyptian government's emergency powers and police force are "used systematically to violate human rights". There are just three or four newspapers said to be independent in the country, but these are cautious, and "worryingly silent" on corruption and human rights issues, explains an article in Le Monde. It is for this reason that nearly 200,000 Egyptians have embraced the freedom given by new media and begun their own blogs. Whilst only 10,000 of these are deemed "political", this is a relatively high figure given the possible ramifications.

One of the most well-known Egyptian bloggers is Waël Abbas, who revealed the brutal torture of Imad El-Kebir (as a result El-Kebir's torturers were sentenced to three years in prison, although the victim also received a three month sentence for "resistance to the forces of order"). Speaking to Le Monde, Abbas explains that the Egyptian political blogosphere is "a movement born of frustration, with neither leader nor structure". Despite Abbas explaining that the movement is unorganised, it seems to have been effective, and an exemplary use of the Internet as a means of communication - some of the bloggers command up to 30,000 readers, equalling and sometimes surpassing the circulation of government run newspapers.

At this years Digital News Affairs conference, debates have ranged from the merits of the online aggregation business model to questioning who made Barack Obama President, and speakers have come from new online-only start-ups and established print publications alike. The two-day Brussels based event has been covered in detail by Journalism.co.uk, and has been live blogged by dedicated Twitter users both in the audience and on the podium.

Before proceedings began, associate editor of Wired UK and co-host of DNA 2009 Ben Hammersley spoke with Journalism.co.uk about how news organisations use social media and new technology online. Hammersley feels that many "have embraced an awful lot of stuff because it's fashionable or they feel they should", but that some hastily started projects are "not just a waste of time, they're a waste of creative resource and money". He believes that social media experiments are fine for bloggers, but that for mainstream media such action "needs to be assessed very strongly and thoroughly". He also says that news organisations need to be more ruthless and Google-esque in their attitudes to cancelling projects which aren't working - online "the key metric is which online companies kill the rubbish stuff the fastest".

There have been further signs of turmoil within the newspaper industry this weekend.  Philadelphia Newspapers, subsidiary of Philadelphia Media Holdings and owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News, filed for bankruptcy late Sunday night.  Brian Tierney, publisher of the Inquirer said, "Philadelphia Newspapers' goal is to bring its debt in line with the reality of current economic conditions."  The focus of the bankruptcy will be on the company's debt rather than its operations, and concessions will be sought from its banks rather than its unions.

The previous day saw the owner of the New Haven Register, the Journal Register Company, file for bankruptcy as well. "We intend to emerge from the Chapter 11 process stronger, leaner and more financially viable in the current environment," James W. Hall, the company's chief executive.  Similarly to events in Philadelphia, the focus will be on the company's stock and should not affect operations.

The answer in this case is yes, despite the reporter in question's assertion to the contrary. Birmingham Post's development editor Joanna Geary will be leaving her position in order to become The Times' web development editor. The reporter previously caused a stir on her blog when she questioned whether or not national titles hired staff from regional outlets.

While newspapers around the world are putting their bets on digital technology to survive the future, The Printed Blog, made its mark by being one paper that doesn't believe in just going with the flow. The brainchild of Joshua Karp, the free paper gathers and prints the best content from the web, featuring "the best content" from online blogs about anything interesting.

With the first issue ready for distribution on the 27th of January, the nytimes.com website reports that the paper has so far received permission from over 300 bloggers to publish their content. Saving costs of reporters, Karp believes that techniques that were working online could be applied to the print industry too.

The paper will publish blog posts as well as readers comments and photographs submitted by readers, on a three or four column format which will be laid out like blogs instead of columns. Users can custom-make their papers by going online to choose which blogs they want in their edition. Dismissing eventual doubts of bloggers allowing their content to be published, Karp says he "will be happy if it (the blog) get exposure to 20 new people".

Sources. nytimes.com, poynter.com

To mark the relaunch of the Editors Weblog, the World Editors Forum is running a special series entitled "Doing More with Less." The series highlights major trends that editors-in-chief are using to steer their newsrooms through the difficult economic climate. The fourth of the series takes a look at the hugely successful online-only news site, the Huffington Post.

The Huffington Post was a runaway success in 2008; with 8 million readers during the US election campaign, it is now the most 'linked-to' blog on the Web and is valued at up to $200million. It only employs around 50 staff, just a handful of which are editorial. To do so much with so little, is an impressive feat indeed. The Editors Weblog spoke to HuffPost's Founding Editor Roy Sekoff, and National Editor Nico Pitney, to examine the crucial elements that contribute to its success and look at how it plans to maintain that success post-elections.

HUFFING AND PUFFING TOWARDS SUCCESS

Content
To explain HuffPost's huge popularity, Sekoff pointed to the mix of different content you can get on the site. "It's a very vital and dynamic blend of breaking news, aggregated news and real-time commentary," meaning that you can find out the information you want and immediately see what people have been saying about it. It offers a bit of everything, both "esoteric and pedestrian," And a crucial factor is the mix of people who write on the site, from Hillary Clinton to Larry David to Arianna Huffington herself. Sekoff explained that it is "not just a certain kind of writer. You could get an actor, an architect and a politician all weighing in on the same issue."

Speed
The speed at which news can be reported in an online model is invaluable for HuffPost's success and for the news industry today. "The Internet has enabled us to get what we want, when and how we want it," Sekoff declared, "and it turns out they want it fast." He described the moment when the benefits of online really hit home in HuffPost's early days. It was the day of the July 2005 London bombings and HuffPost had been covering the story from the early hours of the morning, with bloggers sending in information and pictures from London. Then the morning New York Times appeared, with London on the front page but topped with the wrong headline: about the city hosting the 2012 Olympics. "It literally was yesterday's news," Sekoff stressed. Pitney was enthusiastic about how HuffPost can provide "instantaneous coverage about what's happening," and can immediately try to get comments from people involved in the story.

Interconnectedness
The HuffPost team have also made a considerable effort to make the whole site as appealing and user-friendly as possible, as while it was originally envisaged that readers would purposefully come to the home page and then move around the site, now many people end up landing on other pages through links from searches or social media sites. Sekoff explained that they had been "working to make each landing page full of as much content as possible," with images, related stories, or recommendations for further reading, "to make much content intuitively available for people who are interested in certain topics." There is extensive "interconnectedness" between elements of the site, which both reduces the chances of readers missing things in the vast array of stories available, and makes the site more 'sticky,' increasing traffic.

Links
Sekoff was confident that the HuffPost was a financially sustainable endeavour. Its revenue largely comes from advertising, and this is based on its high traffic as a result of being the most linked-to blog on the Web. "It has become a link-based economy. You are not being paid in dollars any more for your piece, but rather you are being paid in traffic." So from a financial standpoint, the main focus is simply to get good content onto the site, which will encourage people to link to it, increase traffic and then generate more advertising revenue. The HuffPost does syndicate some of its content but Sekoff stressed that this was not an element of the site's business model.

"It has become a link-based economy. You are not being paid in dollars any more for your piece, but rather you are being paid in traffic."

Free contributions
HuffPost has invited over 2000 people to be part of its group blog. These successful, influential leaders in their fields are not paid but many still regularly offer their insight and comments to the virtual pages of HuffPost. So in terms of getting good readable content onto the site, this is a very cost effective way to do it. Sekoff explained why he thinks so many people are willing to write for the site: "we offer our bloggers a tremendous platform." The most obvious reason is simply the volume of readership HuffPost can offer: "on the HuffPost, stuff gets read." Very few people receive more than a few thousand readers on their individual blogs, while on HuffPost they can get millions. The "engaged readership" is a related factor, Sekoff believes. "People are always struck by how immediate the response is and how reasoned and interesting the comment section can be."

Another simple but important reason people like to blog for the HuffPost is the lack of commitment and deadlines. "People are free to write what they want when they want," Sekoff clarified, "so it's great for people who have something to say but don't have time to maintain their own blog." As most of the people who blog for HuffPost do other things - and in fact it is these other things that they do that make them so interesting - they appreciate the freedom to be able to speak out when they want to but have no obligation. "Nobody is carrying the weight themselves," he added, one of the advantages of having so many contributors.

Citizen reporters
HuffPost has also been embracing the free resource of citizen journalism and is confident of its potential. During the campaign the Off the Bus initiative, in conjunction with pro-am journalism venture New Assignment, used readers as reporters and was very successful. It was actually used to break stories, such as the 'Bitter Gate' scandal, and Sekoff described how readers continue to be excited about contributing to the site. In a project called 'Blogging the Meltdown,' people recount how the economic breakdown is affecting their communities, "putting flesh and blood on the statistics." He believes that tapping into the "storehouse of information and knowledge" provided by readers could be the future of much journalism.


PERFECTING POST-ELECTION PLANS

After its tremendous success during the election campaign, HuffPost is making plans for the future. Sekoff said that main areas of focus now are the presidential transition and the world economic downturn, and Pitney explained that much of the original reporting the Washington team are doing now is centred around the bailout plan. However, the site has already diversified from its original political focus and plans to continue doing so. A $25 million funding injection from Oak Investment Partners was announced in December last year and HuffPost has been looking at how to spend it.

One major area of expansion is localizing - HuffPost Chicago began in August 2008 and is described by site founder Arianna Huffington, as "part local news source, part resource guide, part virtual soap box." It includes a roundup of local services. San Francisco is coming next. A world section, in partnership with new international news service GlobalPost was recently launched. HuffPost has plans to create an investigative journalism fund, which will fund both daily breaking scoops and longer pieces, according to Sekoff, in an effort to make sure that this vital aspect of reporting is not lost due to a financial downturn. HuffPost will hire editors, but most of the writing will be done by freelancers, Pitney explained. He added that they will try to take advantage of the skills of some of the "great journalists" who are having trouble finding work due to the current financial situation in the newspaper world.
 
Although aggregation still very much forms the basis of the news reported on the site, HuffPost's original reporting team is expanding, according to Pitney, who added that a full time congressional reporter had just been hired. There are no photographers or videographers, but all reporters have been issued with a Kite phone, allowing them to take short videos at events which "almost instantly upload to an 'embed-able' video player online."

TRUMPING TRADITIONAL MEDIA?

Arianna Huffington insisted in an interview with Iwantmedia that HuffPost is not contributing to the demise of US daily newspapers in any way. Sekoff agreed, and Pitney stressed that newspaper journalists "are vital to what we do, and hopefully we are helping their work in the sense that we send them lots of readers, and we try to highlight their best work." Sekoff mentioned that he foresees a "hybrid future" for media operations, in which people will still get their information in a variety of ways.

"Newspaper journalists are vital to what we do, and hopefully we are helping their work in the sense that we send them lots of readers, and we try to highlight their best work." 

HuffPost is just one way in that variety. It has come up with a ground-breaking formula that involves minimum expenditure but provides maximum coverage: up to date, comprehensive aggregation combined with insight from famous names and readers, all of which is obtained for free. And although reader numbers have fallen from their peak during the US election campaign, what HuffPost offers is still original and effective enough to make its continued success very likely. Its expansion into local sites could be particularly popular considering the well-documented troubles of US metropolitan newspapers, and as investigative journalism is cut at newspapers, this could be area in which HuffPost excels. One potential threat comes from the fact that more and more newspaper websites are offering aggregation services themselves, But being first off the mark, HuffPost has a significant headstart.

Forecasts for 2009 are, unsurprisingly, relatively pessimistic for traditional media and more positive for new media developments. But not all commentators were as determined as Jeff Nolan that "if 2008 was bad for newspapers, 2009 will be devastating," and many saw hope in the possibility of changes in content and format.  

As newspapers struggle to make websites profitable and some abandon their print products and move online-only, one US paper has successfully adopted a very different approach: don't put anything online. 

TriCityNews publisher and owner Dan Jacobson put it simply: "I don't understand how putting content on the Web would do anything but help destroy our paper," as giving away content would presumably mean that people would have no need to buy the print copy.  

And his theory seems to be working.  The Monmouth County, New Jersey weekly paper has been growing at a rate of about ten per cent a year since its founding in 1999, and is significantly profitable. It keeps advertising costs low, with a loyal base of advertisers, and employs just 3.5 people.

Content management systems, which permit the smooth exchange of editorial between journalists and subeditors, are becoming a greater part of newsrooms as more staff are axed owing to the economic downturn. In fact, the Press Gazette reports that it's one of the few things that news organizations are "spending serious money on."

A renewed effort by Danish newspaper publishers to stop search engines from linking to individual articles rather than a newspaper's homepage has sparked controversy with blogging journalists in the country.

"Deep linking" is a blogger's bread and butter--it's how users are directed to their sites--and search engines, such as Google News, are facing pressure from the Danish Association of Newspaper Publishers who only want homepage links to "better control the user experience."

In a recent survey, 200 blogging journalists from 30 different countries were interviewed about the effects of blogging on the process of journalism.  According to the survey, respondents came from all sectors of the news industry; almost half worked in the newspaper industry, and one third were online-only or freelance.

The survey found that as of 2008, 70% of US newspapers, 85% of UK news organizations, and 44% of European news organizations were offering journalist-authored blogs.