Results matching “the best blogging newspapers”

The founding director of a Political Management master's degree program at the George Washington University surveyed 371 print and web journalists from September to October of last year, with the aim of establishing to what extent social media tools are used in the research and distribution of articles.

The results of the online survey, reported on the university's newspaper website, found that 56 percent of those surveyed said that social media was important or somewhat important for reporting and producing stories, with the overwhelming majority citing the internet as the starting point for their research- despite the fact that 84 percent said news and information delivered via social media was slightly less or much less reliable than news delivered via traditional media.

After months of much hype and speculation, Steve Jobs finally took to the stage to unveil Apple's new highly anticipated tablet computer - the iPad.

With its official introduction at an event in San Francisco yesterday, Steve Jobs has finally laid many rumors about what the electronic device can do to rest, while igniting hopes about the iPad's ability to bring new life to 'old media' and to revamp the e-reader market.
 

 

Over the last year, newspapers have successfully utilized the micro-blogging social networking site, Twitter, to distribute their content and build up their audience.

However, newspapers have not started cashing in directly from the tweets published on Twitter - at least not yet. As Ad Age reports, early exploration from New York to Montreal is showing how newspaper publishers could cash in on their 140 character tweets.

News on your mobile phone is becoming ever more popular in the west, with The Guardian and The Daily Mirror the latest newspapers to release iPhone apps. But as The Guardian's Digital Content blog reminds us, mobile phones have been an important tool in news distribution in Africa for some time.

Rather than using bandwidth-hungry applications, though, text messages are used to disseminate news headlines, in a broadcast model that mirrors the widespread use of radio as a news medium on the continent. Newspapers are a less important news source outside urban areas, and access to the internet is not yet widespread.

Big revolutions call out for big manifestos; and the on-going revolution in journalism, with specific reference to online journalism, is no different.

Kress.de has reported that a dedicated group of internet journalists and net-experts put together and published an "Internet-Manifesto"; a document that seeks to lay out a road map for the future of journalism, in consideration of the prevalence of online publications in our digital age. The manifesto, which was originally written in German, has since been translated into no less than nine further languages - and the project continues.


 

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.