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Prominent French daily regional newspaper Sud Ouest reports that it intends to re-launch its print edition in mid-November, focusing more on reader's needs, whether they are from Bordeaux or the nearby region, says Patrick Venries, the paper's information director.

The revamp will make Sud Ouest more "coherent", "logical", well-organized", "well-sequenced" and give it a stronger anchor to the region, says assistant editor Francis Dupuy, who will be in charge of the development at Sud Ouest starting from January 1 next year.

The tabloid format will remain the same but the logo will be squeezed into two lines to form a square on the top left in order to have a more organized frontpage. The re-designed paper will also have more content dedicated to leisure activities.

The makeover is led by the Scottish Palmer Watson, who also helped re-design the Spanish daily El Pais and the French daily Le Monde.

Source: AFP

Yahoo! News may be considered as a news organization, according to Jessica Barron, director of editorial programming. Unlike online news outlets that aggregate news content from the Web, Yahoo! is not only investing in its own journalists but is also signing agreements with wire services and "traditional" sources.

"Our aim is to reach these bigger names and use our reporting talent to break news. We are really going for the kinds of questions that will make news," said Barron."We have been doing a lot of original reporting and we are going to be doing a lot more."

The original reporting she refers to include interviews with South Korean president Lee Myung-bak, US leader George W. Bush and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Yahoo!'s global audience of 500 million helps to formulate its news judgement, since the outlet pays attention to what stories get most traffic. According to Barron, online readers have shown that they are interested in both hard facts and the human value of stories.

Barron intends to make Yahoo! the premier independent online news source.

Source: AFP through IFRA Executive News Service

The Russian division of Human Rights Watch (HRW) declared that coverage of events in Georgia-Southern Ossetia is breeding "propaganda and disinformation".

Tatiana Lokshina, a HRW spokesperson, said that both sides of the conflict are misinforming the public about the situation.  HRW said that one of the reasons for this is the absence of correct data about the number of victims.

Vsepolog Bogdanov, a member of the Russian Union of Journalists, said that the coverage features opinionated material that is "not information", reported gipp.ru. He mentioned that the situation might get more complicated if instead of a "balanced" approach reporters include one-sided points of view.

Guardian blogger Jack Schofield wrote that Georgia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has resolved to posting information by using Google Blogger. Other blogs include State Minister for Reintegration and Russia and Georgia At War.

Last week, the Georgian military attempted to overtake the pro-Russian Southern Ossetia region. Russia responded by sending its forces into Georgia, reported Reuters. Two Georgian journalists, Alexander Klimchuk, and Grigol Chikhladze, who writes for Newsweek, were killed while reporting the events.

Source: gipp.ru, Reuters, The Guardian, RBC News
See also:
Russia: Authorities call upon national media to abstain from promoting extremism

Newspapers are losing ground in the online local market. According to Borrell statistics cited in a recent Wall Street Journal story, newspapers' share of the local online ad market fell from 35.9 percent to 27.4 percent in the last two years. Which means newspapers are missing out - not just on what they have lost in the last two years, but actually on a larger advertising market than the one they had, because local online advertising is growing rapidly, at a rate of 57 percent annually.

Mark Potts, of the Recovering Journalist blog, argues that news sites are missing out on the "Smaller advertisers - the pizza parlors, nail salons, mom-and-pop stores... there are lots of them, and other media are moving in - community papers, local Web sites and blogs, even Google, Yahoo and specialty sites like Yelp."

So how can news sites take the local advertising base back? Potts offers these suggestions (below follows an edited version of Potts' post. Get the full list here):

- Build a strong local product to attract local advertisers, for example the leading local entertainment guide

- Cut costs of ad sales as low as possible, and get rid of the high-commission sales rep. What about commission-only telemarketing reps smiling and dialing to blanket small local businesses.

- Make it as easy as possible for advertisers to come online, create, place and pay for an ad. That drives the cost of sales way down.

- Seminars for local businesses on online advertising. It's a medium that's new to many small business owners - educate them on the value of online advertising and how to take advantage of it.

- Banners and tiles aren't the only way to advertise online. Experiment. Use video. Real estate walkthroughs, chefs describing their restaurants-these videos seem obvious, but they're still few and far between on newspaper sites.

Source: Recovering Journalist

A study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, called "The Changing Newsroom: What is Being Gained and What is Being Lost in America's Daily Newspapers", has found that smaller newsrooms are hurting newspaper quality. The recent brutal cuts in newsrooms across America are taking their toll, the Associated Press report.

"America's newspapers are narrowing their reach and their ambitions and becoming niche reads," the study said.

Newspaper paper stories are generally shorter and the coverage tends to focus on local events. The study also showed that papers carry less foreign, national and business, science and arts news, and many have reduced the crossword puzzle and eliminated television and stock listings. Reporters are also having to cover more than one beat, as Editors struggle with less staff.

Despite this, 56 percent of the editors surveyed said their news product is better than it was three years ago because coverage is more targeted. Only 5 percent of the editors surveyed said they were confident they could predict what the newsroom would look like in five years.

The PEJ study surveyed senior newsroom executives at more than 250 newspapers and interviewed editors at papers in 15 cities. The results of the survey, conducted online by Princeton Survey Research Associates International between Jan. 29 and Feb. 29, include responses from over 50 percent of U.S. papers with 100,000 or more in circulation and more than 30 percent of papers with 50,000 to 100,000 in circulation.

Source: Associated Press

French daily newspaper Le Figaro decided to celebrate its status as the premier online news source (3.173 million unique users in June) by reformatting its front page to resemble its Web version.

According to Figaro's chief editor Etienne Mougotte, the Web isn't a competitor for large papers like Le Figaro; it is an "important complement" to print editions.

The audience figures are reassuring the Figaro group, who decided to reinforce its status as an online news portal by engaging in a development scheme that focuses on the digital version of the paper over three years ago.

For the paper to remain loyal to its values, it has to enter the digital age with full force, said Mougotte.

Source: AFP

This week's cover of the New Yorker, called "The Politics of Fear", may have caused some turmoil, but the message may have been misinterpreted.

"The cover takes a lot of distortions, lies, and misconceptions about the Obamas and puts a mirror up to them to show them for what they are," said the New Yorker's editor, David Remnick.

Bill Burton, an Obama spokesperson said that even though the cover was a satire, readers might see it as "tasteless" and "offensive". Meanwhile, Senator John McCain thought it was "inappropriate", reported AFP.

"These inflammatory images and spurious associations will only serve to reinforce the racism and anti-Muslim stereotypes that the magazine says it is out to challenge," said The Council on American Islamic Relations.

However, Bill Maher, host of a political HBO show, asked, "If you can't do irony on the cover of The New Yorker, where can you do it?"

Chicago Tribune's Clarence Page defended the cover, saying that it's "within the normal realms of journalism" and that "it's just lampooning all the crazy ignorance out there", according to CBS News.

The magazine issue, which goes on sale on July 21, features a lengthy article focusing on Obama's history in Chicago politics.

Barry Blitt, the cartoon's artist, intended to come up with something that would caricature the way that misinformation floats around the political sphere and the way that terror is used as a political tool, according to Newsday.

Source: The New York Times, CBS News, AFP, Newsday

Editor and Publisher culled through Friday's online news to highlight five cool newspaper features. Here are a couple of the selections:

*The Press Democrat of Santa Roza, California is assimilating Google Maps into its coverage of forest fires. Readers can access information through an interactive map.

*The New York Times produced a slideshow documenting an "elevated park" to be built in NYC.

*Similarly, the Dallas Morning News constructed a package of slideshows illustrating social problems in Texas. The topics include poverty, pollution, and the working poor.

Source: Editor and Publisher

Chances are you've heard all about the now-'resolved' dispute that opposed the Associated Press to social news sharing site Drudge Retort, over the fair - or unfair - use of AP quotes. Even more likely is the possibility that you've heard emotion-filled - and perhaps inaccurate - coverage of the affair. So this is an attempt to untangle some of the knots.

The four-point recap, clarifications
Lesson one: The blogosphere's outcry is heard
Lesson two: but the winner is?
Lesson three: AP - "Whither" or "Adapt"? Change the DMCA or set a legal precedent?


The four-point recap, clarifications

If you haven't followed the story, here's a four-point recap (or skip to next):

- Earlier this month, AP demanded that the Drudge Retort take down seven entries, which were in its view violating policies of fair use of content and the agency's copyright (AP wants to charge outside sources for using for excerpts longer than four words).
- Drudge Retort Web host Rogers Cadenhead consequently blogged about the takedown notice, and this created a ##-storm in the blogosphere, with many influential bloggers including TechCrunch's Michael Arrington and BuzzMachine's Jeff Jarvis calling on the boycott of AP content.
- Shortly after, on June 16, AP retreated, but didn't recant: it admitted that its request had been "heavy-handed" but didn't withdraw the takedown notices.
- Then, on June 19, AP issued a statement to say its conflict with Cadenhead had been resolved, after AP lawyers gave him guidelines to make the postings suitable, and that "both parties consider the matter closed." This really meant that Cadenhead agreed to modify the contested items and ended up not reposting them.

The guidelines discussed with Cadenhead have yet to be made public though, and the AP is working on a new set of guidelines for "fair use" of its content in general. "If AP's guidelines end up like the ones they shared with me, we're headed for a Napster-style battle on the issue of fair use," Cadenhead wrote on his blog. He told the New York Times' Saul Hansell that some of the key issues for AP related to protecting headlines and first paragraphs of stories.

First clarification: unlike what has been widely echoed on the Web and suggested by another New York Times article on June 16, AP was never supposed to meet the Media Bloggers Association (MBA) in order to draft guidelines for all bloggers, according to MBA President Robert Cox.

Another clarification: the blogosphere went ablaze when it learned that AP had filed a lawsuit against Cadenhead in June, seemingly out of the blue. According to Cox though, "Drudge Retort got on AP's radar due to the posting of entire articles with exact headlines which all parties agreed constituted copyright violations two months BEFORE the most recent spate of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Take Down Notices."

Lesson one: The blogosphere's outcry is heard

News of the Associated Press' June take-down notices was met with severe criticism, calls for boycott - and many profanities - by the blogosphere.

In one of his posts, entitled "FU AP," Jarvis wrote: "Bloggers, unless the AP recants and apologizes to Cadenhead, I urge you to avoid linking to the AP and to link to reporting at its source." Jarvis also encouraged bloggers to copy-paste full AP stories.

In a self-admittedly "ridiculous" post, after being quoted in an AP story, Harrington announced that "I've called my lawyers (really) and have asked them to deliver a DMCA takedown demand to the A.P. And I will also be sending them a bill for $12.50." According to Harrington this "is exactly what the A.P. would have charged me if I published a 22 word quote from one of their articles."

That short posting alone generated more than 230 comments - most of which were harshly critical of AP's stance at the time. The wildfire that spread in the blogosphere and the seemingly rapid turn-about of AP once again illustrated a known fact: blogs have gained enough traction and buzz-generating capacity to concretely influence and shape the media landscape.

Lesson two: but the winner is?    

One - erroneous - interpretation is to say that bloggers - won their battle against the traditional media Goliath, which was trying "to impose some guidelines on the free-wheeling blogosphere, where extensive quoting and even copying of entire news articles is common," - a quote from a New York Times story. (The Times' coverage of the affair was, according to Harrington, hindered by a conflict of interest, considering that the Times is one of AP's members and sits on its board of directors.)

But this isn't a victory for bloggers. "The A.P. is going to assert a much stricter interpretation of fair use than most people on the Internet are used to," reported Hansell on the Bits blog.

As mentioned above, Cadenhead had to agree to AP's proposed modifications, and ended up not reposting the material. Furthermore, this case is really a microcosm for the bigger issue of how to adapt "fair use" policies and copyright to the digital age in general.

"I'm glad that my personal legal dispute with the AP is resolved, thanks to the help of the Media Bloggers Association, but it does nothing to resolve the larger conflict between how AP interprets fair use and how thousands of people are sharing news on the web," wrote Cadenhead, following his two-hour conversation and settlement with the AP.

"I think AP and other media organizations should focus on how to encourage bloggers to link their stories in the manner they like, rather than hoping their lawyers can rebottle the genie of social news."

While Cadenhead may be right in terms of global news consumption trends on the Web, the AP was clearly in its own right under the US DMCA, at least regarding the stories posted in their entirety with the same headline. But the legal provisions concerning "fair use" of content for smaller excerpts have remained vague - simply undefined - until now, something the AP hopes to reform by setting guidelines.

"I think it would be helpful for bloggers and users of social news sites to know what the AP believes to be fair use of their copyrighted work," said Cadenhead's lawyer. But "I hope that any guidelines that are issued are not interpreted as an agreed definition of fair use" under copyright law.

Lesson three: AP - "Whither" or "Adapt"? Change the DMCA or set a legal precedent?

The Associated Press versus Drudge Retort - blogosphere - affair throws light onto two main issues:

- Does this case exemplify the 'old media' versus 'new media' divide? Is the AP's stance representative of its inability to adapt to a new context?

Yes, in the eyes of new media guru Jarvis: "I value the AP and don't want it to die. I want it to morph to a new model and a new future. But I am afraid that in its fights, we are seeing its inability to adapt."

On the other hand, few bloggers have pondered the more controversial view that the AP's approach may actually be a sign of its willingness to adapt - granted, not yet to the 'utopian' world copyright-lessness. But the AP, in its own way and after being "heavy-handed," is now attempting to define new standards that are adapted to the digital age. (Read this note on June 13 by Jim Kennedy, VP and Director of Strategy for AP.) No doubt some of the outspoken bloggers mentioned previously could be quick to shatter this argument.

- As is often the case, the law doesn't evolve as rapidly as the context it seeks to protect. The blurry wordings of the current DMCA must either be reformed quickly, after multilateral consultation, or the issue of "fair use" of content will eventually be settled in court and set a precedent, costing either news organizations or bloggers - presumably both.

This is the real issue at stake: how fast can the law be adapted to the reality of the Web, in order to avoid costly conflicts over subjective interpretations of "fair use" of content? As Hansell concluded in the Bits blog, "the unsettled state of the law makes it a gamble to take the matter to court."

A costly gamble, whether it ends in a loss for the AP or for bloggers. Or both.

Note that, just in case, no AP material longer than four words was excerpted in the above.

Bloggers: you can also watch this video by DigitalJournal.com for advice from Harvard Citizen Media Law Project Director David Ardia.



Source: Buzzmachine (here and here) - Techcrunch (here and here) - Associated Press - New York Times - New York Times Bits blog - Mediabloggers.org - The Moderate Voice - paidcontent.org

Google News cannot be compared to other news sites like Yahoo News or CNN.com, according to PaidContent.org.

Google News gathers content with the help of computers who scan news on the Web and does not contain any ads. Meanwhile, other news sites like CNN.com create licensed material that passes through editors.

Google News groups articles by subject and ranks article by importance based on factors like  authority of publisher or placement of article in site. NYT writes that Google "packages the results as a set of links, sending readers to the sites where the articles appear."

According to the New York Times, Google executives claim that traffic is not the primary aim but that Google News "helps the company produce better search results and helps users find news sources that they might not know about otherwise."

According to the NYT, the growth rate of Google News is only 10 %, compared to MSNBC.com's 42 %, which got the site 10.4 million in traffic.

Dan Gillmor, who is director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at the Arizona State University School of Journalism, said that he is surprised "how little" Google News "evolved, at least on the surface", NYT wrote.

Marissa Meyer, vice president for Google search and user experience, said that Google News is one of "the most innovative" Google features and that its users actively employ the  Google search engine  and other services, NYT wrote.

She also mentioned that news results do emerge on the main Google search page, alongside adverts.  According to Meyer, "it directly feeds the main business."

Google News is sometimes seen as a competitor to other news providers, even if it brings traffic to the news site. Industry executives, according to NYT, think that because Google News links to a remote article, the readers are not likely to stay on the news site.

According to Braig Moffett, a Sanford C; Bernstein & Copany analyst, the Internet "made it possible to aggregate news cheaply". Consequently, news providers stopped charging for content. "Google may be doing more to accelerate this trend than anyone, but they are not doing it out of malice,"  Moffett said.

Tribune Co. owner Samuel Zell accused Google of stealing news stories for their own gains. In Europe, Belgian prosecutors said that Google News had "violated copyright laws" without asking for permission to link to the articles, NYT reported.

Google said that the company wishes "to help, not hurt, journalism", NYT wrote. Its chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, said that the company has "a huge moral imperative" to aid news outlets in becoming more "successful online", NYT wrote.

Last year, several features were added, such as different country and language versions of Google News. The number of "duplicate articles" is being reduced, as "authoritative" and "original" news stories are being displayed, according to NYT.

There is also the chance to personalize Google News, by focusing on local news and mapping the news event sites on Google Earth. Users can also post comments and search quotes.

Different sides to the same story are being provided by the news search engine, helping to make people "wake up and think," said Krishna Bharat, the research scientist behind Google News. "That's what makes people news junkies," she added.

NYT wrote that even if there have been some innovations, Google News "still lacks many of the flashier features that have attracted users to more conventional news sites, including interactive graphics and video."

Analysts have begun to question automated products and their limitations. Mark Glaser, PBS MediaShift editor said, "there is only so far you can go with an algorithm" because , "in the long run, people want a human touch."

Source: PaidContent.org, New York Times

See Also:

8 efficient and visual ways to present your online news
How to maximize your site's visiility in Google search ranking