Results matching “page views and blogger”

With shrinking newsrooms due to increasingly drastic budget cuts and a biting global economic environment, newspapers have been searching for a solution to the age-old problem of profit margins versus quality of product. A relatively new player is marketing a solution to this problem; Daylife this week is launching Daylife Select, a tool that enables newspapers to enhance and expand their content easily and quickly.

This new product launch is the latest chapter in the Daylife success story; its client list reads like a "Who's Who" of the newspaper world, and yet it is a small New York based operation run by a team of just 25, most of whom are technologists.

Back in 2005, a team of news junkies and techies began work on a technological solution to the news industry's increasingly difficult business climate. The team looked at the web and saw the likes of Amazon and EBay racing ahead in the user experience, while news online hadn't changed that much in terms of navigation and fluidity of the whole site. The team, a bunch of "self-confessed frustrated media fans" started building a system that was launched in January 2007. It was clear to them that the demand for news had not declined, but that the product was heading for rocky waters unless it pushed its boundaries.

The Editors Weblog spoke to the CEO of this team of news junkies, Upendra Shardanand, about the new product, his organisation, the technology behind it, and the future of newspapers.

Solution

Shardanand begins his explanation by saying, "Publishers looked at Google and other aggregators getting all this traffic without doing the original reporting, and we are just saying, well, here is the technology, so you can go and do it under your own brand, around your own original content. I do believe that original content is absolutely critical; that is going to be the draw that brings a user back to your service and establishes your brand and so forth, but that can only scale so far; so, do what you do best and link to the rest. This is a different way to think about publishing."











This new product in the ever-expanding stable of services provided by Daylife is being marketed as a solution to help newspapers through the difficult business climate. Using one platform, it enables editors to access content such as photos, YouTube clips or blog postings on any subject they are looking to cover. One of the issues is that newspapers are frequently cash-strapped in terms of IT, so this product lets anybody with just a web browser and a click on the interface launch a content portal. This portal can cover anything from technology companies to Manchester United, and goes so far as to even allow customisation of the site.


Daylife describe itself as the layer between raw content and the news organisation. The system is an Intelligent Content Service, it being a substantial database with the ability to pull together relevant information for any news organisation on any topic. Simply put, if for example, a journalist is writing an article on Barack Obama's health care policies, the Daylife system will rapidly pull together all relevant stories, pictures, video and so forth from a multitude of sources. This database can therefore provide you with all quotes from Obama on healthcare and all photos of him at, for example, a hospital.

Daylife has various agreements with the major content providers, be it AP or Getty Images, but Shardanand reports that the deal that follows with the client is worked out individually depending on the relationship the client has already with AP, for example, the level of content they are looking for and the size of the client's publication.

The Daylife news website, despite it only being a beta product who's sole purpose is to work as a demonstration to potential clients, achieves 3 million hits a month. When the site first launched many reviewers thought it was a straight news site and questioned the lack of RSS Feeds and so forth.

With shrinking newsrooms due to declining revenues, one of the most significant facts about the Daylife web site is that it is run with zero human input. Shardanand informed the Weblog that the team could go on holiday for a month and it would in no way affect the running of the site.

Shardanand further points out that all the clients they have are, "renewing their contracts."

USA Today experience - 600% increase in page views for a blog

All of this sounds highly impressive, but what impact is this product having on its clients? Shardanand cites the work it has done with USA Today; the newspaper had a blogger writing about cruise ships, making it perfect for advertisers such as P&O and other holiday companies, but one blogger can only achieve so much, and the page was thus too small to attract significant advertisers. USA Today talked over these problems with Daylife, and it thereafter delivered tailored content to the publisher. The resulting page was far more comprehensive and resulted in a 600% increase in page views. It's the same blogger working, but with the help of Daylife's tailored service he is now able to increase content and improve layout.

Advanced algorithms

The software that runs this product is produced in-house, it runs on an open source platform with extra work put in by the "team of rocket scientist" for advanced algorithms. Furthermore, as Daylife hosts the portal, newspapers are able to wash their hands of any technological maintenance or responsibility.

With hindsight?

Considering the great leaps that this small company has made in a relatively short period of time, Shardanand is thoughtful about how they got to this point. The only regret is perhaps a desire to speak to publishers earlier to spread the word and have speeded up the process sooner for inputting the system for clients.

The future for Daylife

Looking ahead Shardanand believes that we will see news coming from a more diverse group; Shardanand informs the Weblog that one of its clients is a pet food company in the UK that wanted to set up a blog containing pet news and stories. He expects more of such diversified providers of news and content in the future as it becomes easier to start publishing.

For Daylife itself, Shardanand is content with the direction the company is going in, but hopes to be able to move the technology into foreign languages "at some point in the future." Daylife also just want to keep on "experimenting and trying new things."

Future of newspapers

Despite the fact that Daylife's success is almost directly as a result of the problems that the industry is facing, Shardanand is positive about the future of the industry: "The outlook is bleak in the short term for newspapers, but I am an optimist and I have to believe that the demand for news will always be there from consumers, and at some point in time, once we are through this whole murky phase, there will be a model for publishing that is probably a lot more efficient. A model where the publisher can extend the newsroom staff because all the other staff can be outsourced. I think even though we are seeing newsrooms being slashed today, I think the right model is where editorial is actually a bigger percentage of the staff than it is today because of outsourcing."

Publisher and managing editor of FT.com Ien Cheng believes that publishers need to model themselves on technology companies, by working quickly and being more responsive.  

"Change is hard for anyone, and I think it's a historic challenge for traditional publishers now," says Cheng. "The challenge for us is to become not just a publisher but a technology company in order to support that publisher."

Cheng's strategy involves, according to Guardian.co.uk blogger Jemima Kiss: "
- improving the development of new editorial products
- refining the subscription model
- changing the way the business works internally."

FT.com had 7.1 million unique users last month and a 72% increase in page views, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

"We need to learn from the web start-up and pure play web company approach that has technology much closer with the business. Publishers can't just think it's the it department over the wall that they throw stuff to. You've got to have the right platform, approach, mindset and processes to keep up," says Cheng.

Cheng remarks that there are technical changes, such as making the site run faster and appointing a new chief technology officer, but there are also editorial changes, such as expanding video coverage to about 150 reports a month. Last month, the site had over 1 million video views.

Though video and mobile are a priority, the most important thing is "remodeling the company to become more agile and to launch products in a more iterative, webby way," reports Kiss.

Cheng notes that advertising grew 40% this year and subscriptions 11-12%, with 10-15,000 people subscribing registering each week. The Financial Times newspaper also boasts an increase in circulation.

"Frankly, [every traditional news brand] shouldn't all survive," says Cheng. "But the ones that provide a sustainable value to users will not only survive but will be stronger. That will be good for consumers and good for journalism."

Source: Guardian.co.uk

The Newspaper Association of America reported this week that the number of unique visitors at its member's websites increased by 12.3% in the first three months of the year.

That's certainly excellent news for newspapers. However, blogger Alan Mutter has pointed out a worrisome finding behind the growth: more people than ever are visiting, but they are sticking around for shorter than in 2007.

The chart depicts the movement of the four key metrics of online newspaper growth.

In the first three months of 2008, the average amount of time spent by website visitors dropped by 2.9%. Though not a dramatic drop, it becomes more noticeable after factoring in the 6.6% loss in the average number of page views per unique user,

According to Mutter, "the decline in the average duration of sessions at newspaper web pages suggests that visitors are not utilizing the industry's sites as primary destinations, but, rather, as places to episodically view individual articles highlighted by Google News, Drudge, Digg, blogs or any of the thousands of other places they might be."

The concern for newspapers with what Mutter terms "drive-by surfers" is a potential loss in advertising revenue, which would come as particularly hard hit in an industry that is relying more and more on online revenue. It is also likely that these latest figures will increase newspaper's opposition to Google's new "search within a search," which had started to curry favor following a controversial debut.

Source: Reflections of a Newsosaur 

With blogs becoming such a popular news source, New York Times's journalist Paul Boutin investigates how a blog can accumulate a large audience:

- Don't expect to get rich because viewers rarely click on the automatic ads on the blog. A blog that draws in 500 page views a day only makes about $45 a month. Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and blog blogmaverick.com, advises, "Don't go into blogging to make a living."
- Blog about topics you are passionate about, not what you think your audience wants.
- Put your personal life first. "The blog is best handled by inserting it into the small bits of free time that rest among the bigger chunks of your work," says Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee who posts to his blog instapundit.com.
- Post immediately so you get everything you want to say out and don't spend time trying to polish the prose. You can always go back and edit or add information.
- Be constant in posting so readers know when to expect new material, whether it be several times a day or once a week.
- Be constant in blog length and format.
- Link back to other bloggers, crediting them to photos or ideas you use. This is a good way to get them to link back to you which sends readers to your site and raises your site's ranks in search engines.
- Plug yourself by sending a note to a prominent blogger to draw attention to a post you wrote or comment to their post, including a link to your blog. Another way is to submit your blog posts to sites like Digg, Fark, and Boing Boing.
- Allow readers to post comments to raise live interaction and readership.

Boutin warns that if your blog does eventually become successful, you might have trouble doing your day job.

Source: The New York Times through I Want Media

The Associated Press plans to increase its celebrity and entertainment coverage, and is hiring an additional 21 employees to be spread across Los Angeles, New York, and London.

AP insists that the new venture, termed an entertainment vertical, is "not about gossip, unnamed sources and innuendo." Rather, given the high demand from customers and members for entertainment coverage, AP says it makes "good business sense," reports blogger Nikki Finke.

The entertainment vertical will be produced by a brand new AP entertainment group, helmed by recently appointed Director of Entertainment Content, Daniel Becker, who will be responsible for managing coverage across all platforms, as well as contributing towards development of new multimedia services.

According to an internal AP Q&A with Becker, AP chose to create a separate division in order to "fine tune its content offerings." Becker said the entertainment group's initial content will "focus on celebrities and be heavily image driven."

AP has already signed a deal to provide celebrity video for the website of American entertainment magazine People.

Rupert Murdoch, however, is going in the opposite direction with regards to entertainment coverage, pulling the plug effective immediately on News Corp.'s online gossip blog PageSix.com. 

The site, which had only been live since December, experienced its first 1 million page views in a day after breaking photos of the prostitute involved in the Elliot Spitzer scandal. Nonetheless Murdoch assessed that site was not making quick enough inroads into an already crowded market.

"Given the difficulty in the economy, it was not the right time for this launch," said Jennifer Jehn, one of the site's managers.

Sources: Deadline Hollywood Daily and Gawker both through I Want Media

Blogger Paul Bradshaw has identified ten keys trends in journalism in the past decade.

For Bradshaw, the biggest change has been the increased involvement of the audience, which has morphed from the occasional letter into "something else entirely." New technology also has made communication between reader and media easier than ever before.

Another contributing factor to reader involvement is what Bradshaw terms "the rise of the amateur." The spread of affordable video cameras and camera-equipped mobile phones, coupled with online viral distribution, has put readers in a position to generate news. Media outlets have since realized the value of "user-generated content."  

The new focus on both "international" and "hyperlocal" markets has had an impact as well. Case in point: the Guardian US based readership is now on par with that of the New York Times. Conversly, Trinity Mirror's Teesside Gazette has launched news services geared towards individual postcodes. Services like Adrian Holovaty's Everyblock have also gotten in on the local craze.

Bradshaw points out that the web has forced journalists to step up their game. Everything is connected online, so readers can do their own research and quickly catch wire copy material or holes in stories.

Other important changes include:

-measurability in terms of web traffic and page views

-mapping and geotagging (such as Northcliffe's use of tagging for its ThisIs brand)

-advent of databates

- RSS

-disribution as part of a journalist's job description. As the newsstand is no longer the only point of distribution, a journalist's online activity, from social networking to blogging, is now part of the game

-increased use of multimedia, including video and podcasts. "Now print journalists are learning about white balance, and broadcast journalists are learning about local news," Bradshaw writes.

Source: Online Journalism Blog

Quebecois weekly business newspaper Les Affaires has been honored with an "Award of Excellence" in the "Redesign" category in the Society for News Design's 2008 competition.

Mignon-Media worked with Les Affaires in 2007 to revamp the editorial strategy and design. Newstands sales jumped by 10% following the redesign.

Les Affaires has also modified their website, which has led to new records in unique vistors, page views, and time spent on the site by readers.

Changes to the layout and website design seem to get results. This may because new designs cater more to today's user habits, which Poynter blogger Ernst Poulsen describes as an expectation to "scan, choose, and move on instantly."

Taking this to heart, Denmark's Jutland Post has recently started writing leads in two easy-to-read bullet points. The Washington Post has also taken on a redesign project.

Poulson poses the interesting question, however, of what a newspaper website might look like if designed entirely by web editors with your average no-time reader in mind.

Source: E-Media Tidbits 

The New York Times Co. announced that it will end its paid online service TimesSelect, in light of the changing online users landscape, hoping to generate sufficient ad revenue from the increased traffic that will result.

Washington Post journalist and blogger Joel Achenback describes how online journalists, in the race for traffic and eyeballs, now try to encourage bloggers to link back to their paper’s website. However, the newfound importance of page views can mislead journalism.

The free daily Metro in Sweden could launch Metrobloggen, a tool that would pay bloggers 3 öre, or half a US cent, per page view. Bloggers must get at least 5,000 views to be given any money and page views are counted monthly and not aggregated. So if a blogger gets 4,999 page views during the month of June they get nothing and they start at 0 for the month of July. 

The rise and prospects of hyperlocal journalism.

Citizen journalism media and local news websites offering user-generated content influence their communities and are here to stay, according to a report released by J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism. Traditional Media companies are coming up against these citizen journalism sites so it’s imperative to understand how to set them up, the secrets to success and how they can work hand in hand with newspapers.

Photo: Dan Gillmor (c) Dan Gillmor 2003.

It's not recent (May 2003), but it remains a good synthesis on what is collaborative journalism. Steve Bryant, a freelance journalist, co-managing editor of ReadMe and of the ReadMe blog, DriftNet gives us a good lesson on the recent past and the future of blogging.