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This week, a tax break for newspapers in Washington state went into effect, giving print publications a 40 percent reduction in the state business tax. One lawmaker stressed the tax cut was "not a bailout." It is interesting to note Washington already offered equal exemptions to the aerospace and timber industries, both of which are critical to the state's economy.

In a year which saw the Seattle Post-Intelligencer make the move to online-only and the Seattle Times cut 500 staff members, many publications will welcome any relief they can get. However, others wonder whether the measure will be enough to revive struggling papers and what such aid means for the publications' journalistic independence.

Local and regional newspapers will have the opportunity to further develop the visual content on their online editions, with use of a new multimedia wire service. Tradeclips.com, which launched this week, aims to facilitate the streaming and sharing of online video content between news providers subscribing to the reasonably priced service.  

The service will offer free uploads and downloads of video, audio and still files, for which storage is offered at a fee. Registered users will also have access to a sizeable trove of archived multimedia footage.

The British tabloid, the Daily Mirror has confirmed that it will launch its own stand-alone football website. Mirrorfootball.com will be up and running for the start of the next football season in August.  

Fans of the beautiful game can expect to enjoy a wealth of information and entertainment offered by the site.  As described by the Guardian when the news of the site broke last month, it looks set to offer a predominately visual, up-to date experience of football scene. Video and audio applications will convey live match reports and press conference broadcasts.  A new 'Football Spy" application will present a daily football agenda programme, match previews and reports and transfer talks.  

One of the latest products to appear on the market for newspaper publishers looking to improve their revenue is Circulate, from new start-up CircLabs. The Editors Weblog spoke to co-founder and executive vice president Martin Langeveld, former newspaper editor and executive who now also writes for Nieman Journalism Lab, about the project.

The CircLabs team decided to look for a user-centric solution to monetise online content through improving the user news experience, as opposed to what Langeveld sees as publisher-centric solutions that focus on how to charge users for content. Charging users for content could indeed be incorporated into Circulate, but he does not see it as the main source of revenue. Rather, what Circulate hopes to do is essentially make it easier for people to find the news they are interested in, hence encouraging them to read more and therefore increasing traffic to and engagement time on newspaper websites, offering greater advertising opportunities.

The Circulate concept evolved out of research carried out by Bill Densmore at the Reynolds Institute of the University of Missouri into a project he called the Information Valet. This, Langeveld explained, is a more "comprehensive and very complex system" and Circulate hopes to be a starting point for something similar. The founding CircLabs team consists of four: Langeveld and Densmore plus Jeff Vander Clute and Joe Bergeron. The University of Missouri offered initial funding and Langeveld is confident that the company will soon announce its first round of seed funding, which would include investment from the industry and private investors as well as from the university.

What Circulate actually is

As the consumer will see it, Circulate will consist of a narrow strip that will appear within the user's browser window that will be branded and recommend journalistic content throughout the user's time online. The bar will be along the top of the window and generally narrow enough to include one line of type, though would have the ability to expand when necessary. A small programme must be downloaded to install the strip, but a user can log in to their account on any computer that has the programme. There will also be a destination URL that users can access on computers on which they cannot download the software, and the team plans to develop applications for smartphones, and offer email alerts.

When the user installs it, it will ask them some questions about them and about their interests and preferences. The user is not obliged to enter any information, but the more that they do, "the better Circulate can bring content to you," Langeveld explained. He added that his team understands how important privacy is to consumers and stressed that Circulate will be very clear with regards to the amount of information it stores about its users and will give them an easy option to access or delete this.  "It won't just be buried in one of those user agreements that everybody just clicks through," Langeveld clarified.

The programme will also track your movements online and make recommendations for content based on these and the information you provide. Article suggestions will appear as links in the Circulate strip, and it might expand to offer the user three or so recommendations on a specific topic, or to ask or answer a user's question. As the technology develops, it will be able to gather new applications, so additional icons might appear on the bar that could offer a user access to their Twitter feed, for example.

A home base for users

Users will sign up for and download Circulate via a 'home base' which is likely to be their local newspaper. The Circulate strip will be branded according to the home base, so this newspaper brand will 'travel' with the user throughout their online experience. The user would be free to change their home base at will. Eventually the local newspaper, as a Circulate partner, would be able to sell advertising and do other kinds of marketing and promotion through the strip.

How it can make money for publishers

Although Langeveld does not believe that revenue from charging users will be "more than the smallest fraction of the total potential of Circulate," it will be possible to do that within the Circulate framework. If newspapers decide that they do have premium content which is unique and valuable enough that people are willing to pay for it, Circulate will facilitate this through a universal subscription to all multiple papers' premium content, or on a per item basis.

However, as stated above, Circulate's main aim is to increase traffic to newspaper websites. Langeveld pointed out that his team's research shows that in the US, web users spend only about 1.2% of their time online on newspaper websites, and traffic to newspaper sites accounts for only 1% of page views. "That really is the challenge for newspapers, to increase that percentage," said Langeveld. And Circulate hopes to do this by "constantly recommending journalistic content from newspapers and other news outlets the other 99% of that time."

The possibility for the papers acting as homebases to brand the strip also "has value" for local papers, according to Langeveld, as it means that their brand travels round the web with the user whenever they are online, thus constantly reminding them of their relationship with the paper. Circulate also intends eventually to include advertising on the bar itself, although the format has not yet been developed. Langeveld believes that there are opportunities for both national and local advertising. There would be the possibility to target users and therefore create more value, and participating papers could sell space to local businesses. He sees this as a good selling opportunity: "now you can reach our readers all the time when they're online rather than just the one or two percent that they're on our site."

Will it work?

Software development has already started and the Associated Press has agreed to allow Circulate access to its content. Langeveld confirmed that the company is planning a beta rollout with a group of newspapers and users in autumn. Could it be the solution that newspapers have been waiting for?

Many publishers seem to be concretely moving towards charging online, and others seem to be contemplating it as a solution to their financial difficulties and in an attempt to restore value to news and prevent it from becoming a commodity. The fact that Circulate would be able to incorporate this is thus a point in its favour. When asked if it could be compatible with Journalism Online, a start-up aiming to facilitate charging for content that has reportedly been in talks with many publishers, Langeveld said that it is something that his team has not explored, but that it was "certainly possible."

Increasing engagement time does indeed seem to make sense, although in terms of monetising it means that newspapers are still dependent on the advertising market. It is clearly something that newspapers should be working on themselves or through companies like Apture that try to keep readers on news sites through multimedia enhancements, but it does seem that Circulate can help in actually getting readers onto a site. Persuading readers to sign up could be tough, most likely requiring an aggressive marketing strategy, and the CircLabs team is wise to anticipate privacy concerns. Assuming that users do sign up, it is hard to say how many people will click through links and how often, but it seems as if it could well contribute to an increase in traffic. 

The Internet was responsible for Barack Obama's election to the White House, Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post claims. Although this statement will inevitably incite dissenting views, in the context of Huffington's talk on the power of the Internet it does not seem wholly unreasonable. Huffington was speaking at the Activate Conference 09, convened to discuss the social implications of the rise of the Internet and technology.  

The conference reiterated discussions of technological and cultural trends, which are conditioning not only how news needs to be presented, but how these new forms of diffusion can directly affect politics and society.

The American newspaper publisher Gannett plans to get rid of somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 positions, according to an article in today's Wall Street Journal. The job cuts will hit the company's 80 local dailies, rather than USA Today.

Former Gannett editor and reporter Jim Hopkins had previously predicted up to 4,500 slashed jobs on his Gannett Blog. He now says there will likely be 600 actual layoffs as a result of the restructuring, naming July 8 as the axe date.

Journalism Online has announced that it has retained ITZ Publishing to lead its efforts in working with small- and medium- sized newspaper companies to maximize their online revenue opportunities. ITZ will help Journalism Online's affiliated news publishers to design marketing and packaging strategies for online subscriptions, micropayments and combined online/print subscription packages.

It will do this by assessing audience usage patterns and hence helping the newspaper companies to build appropriate pay strategies through Journalism Online. "Greg Swanson and the ITZ Publishing team have been market leaders in developing breakthrough solutions for news publishers," Journalism Online's Co-founder Steven Brill said in a press release.  Another of the co-founders, Gordon Crovitz commented that "The marketing and data analysis expertise of ITZ Publishing will be especially valuable to publishers in retaining a large number of unique visitors and page views online while converting many free users to paying subscribers."

Twitter asks its users one question: "What are you doing right now?" It is a simple enough concept; 'tweeters' answer this question and their response enters the real time feeds of those who follow them, but it is becoming increasingly useful for reporters and papers as the social network attracts more and more users. Essentially, journalists can use Twitter in three ways: to find stories and other information and to track events, to publicise their work, and to connect with readers.

A real time feed of breaking news and thought

Twitter is an extremely useful journalistic resource: reporters can use it to watch for breaking news, follow sources and search for information. "It's like monitoring another wire service," said Robb Montgomery, CEO of Visual Editors. It can be used to get an idea of which topics are attracting interest and what people are talking about right now. There is a list of top 'trending topics' on the Twitter home page. It is a real time search, ahead of even Google in terms of timeliness.

The useful information can sometimes be hard to find amongst multiple messages about what users had for breakfast, or what they thought about last night's TV show, but as Noam Cohen said in Global Journalist "it turns out that when a million people stare at their navels, more than a few of them will also notice that the ground is shaking, the plane is nosediving, the police are shooting." Twitter is particularly relevant during events that involve large numbers of members of the public, and a shining example of its effectiveness arose after a US Airways flight landed on the Hudson River and the first picture of the plane was posted to Twitter by an observer. Online news editor at Sky News Jon Gripton, discussing his reasons for appointing a Twitter correspondent, said "it is effectively another news feed. It helps us source eyewitnesses and photos and other people who are on the scene of an event." It is also crucial for following conferences, for example.

Applications such as Tweetdeck allow users to sort their contacts into groups and to search more and more easily for Tweets on specific topics. The custom of adopting hash-tags to make searching easier has been widely adopted: if a user is tweeting about a particular subject they can add a tag into their tweet, such as #IranElection, #Mumbai, #Gaza. The hash or pound symbol distinguishes the tag from random mentions of the same word, and is a custom developed by Twitter users.

Twitter's fame as a news source grew curing the terrorist attacks on Mumbai last November, and during the ongoing conflict in Iran following the election on June 12, Twitter has come into its own, with those inside Iran using the social network to stay in touch and communicate with the outside world while phone networks are down and many websites are blocked. News outlets turned to the service for the latest updates, as they were forced to abandon the principle of only relying on their trusted sources for information due to what the New York Times described as a "news vacuum."

Questions about the reliability of Twitter have also been highlighted by events in Iran. Clearly, it is impossible to judge the authenticity of Tweets from a non-trusted source. During 'normal' circumstances, a journalist would be able to contact the 'Tweeter' for more details and verification, but that is currently overwhelmingly difficult. Journalists who incorporate news obtained by Twitter into their reporting should always be careful to stress their uncertainty about the source.

Publishing: one-to-many

According to a Harvard Business study, there is a small group of very active Twitter users: it found that "the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets."  Researchers Bill Heil and Mikolaj Piskorski concluded that "Twitter resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network": in other words, perfect for journalists looking to publicise their work. It is simple enough to use as a publicising tool: send a link to the story with a Twitter-friendly headline, which should generally be casual and chatty, even more so than web headlines.

It is without doubt a good way to attract extra readers. One of the advantages of Twitter to spread the word is that it is viral, users frequently "re-tweet" the links that they have enjoyed. A CNN breaking news feed, not actually started by CNN but purchased by the news outlet when it gained substantial recognition, was the second Twitter feed to reach one million followers and now has well over 2 million. The New York Times main feed has 1,238,673 followers at time of publishing, and the Guardian has 25,009 on its main feed, though far more on its Guardian Tech account: 782,662. Many news organisations now have multiple Twitter feeds for their different sections. Montgomery stressed the need to "explore" the best policy for your newsroom when deciding whether to stick to one or split them

Some feeds are generated automatically, and for many journalists and bloggers it has become second nature to 'tweet' an article immediately after publishing. Robb Montgomery believes that the "more successful Twitterers have moved beyond auto-tweeting their RSS feed" to make their tweets more personal. "You want to show that there's a real person there."

A social tool for branding

As well as using Twitter as a one-to-many publishing mechanism, journalists can also take advantage of the social element of Twitter, using it to connect with their readers and to receive feedback on articles. It is a contact point between reporter and reader, making the journalist more accessible. "You can run quick polls, get a pulse, get some ideas," said Montgomery. Twitter can be used as part of a journalist's own personal branding, to develop their own network of followers, depending on their personality as well as their reputation as a journalist. This could be particularly helpful for freelance journalists and bloggers.

Newspapers' advice to staff

Many news outlets have become concerned about the way that their employees use social networks such as Twitter. New York Times executive editor Bill Keller called for a "zone of trust" after reporters Jennifer 8. Lee, Michael Luo and Brian Stelter sent 'tweets' on what executives were saying about the how the paper might charge for online content, amongst other things during a staff strategy meeting. Shortly after, the New York Times announced the appointment of social media editor Jen Preston via Twitter. She is to concentrate "full-time on expanding the use of social media networks and publishing platforms to improve New York Times journalism and deliver it to readers," including, it seems, policing Twitter use.

The Wall Street Journal's advice on Twitter in a staff memo is that "business and pleasure should not be mixed" and although "common sense should prevail," staff meetings should not be discussed on social networks. The Washington Post's guidelines also mentions its reliance on reporters' common sense. The AP's new rules tell reporters "Don't report things or break news that we haven't published, no matter the format, and that includes retweeting unconfirmed information not fit for AP's wires."

Embracing Twitter seems to be essential for journalists and newsrooms in today's media landscape. This does not mean that all reporters should be tweeting all day long, and certainly does not mean that they should believe everything they read, but they should familiarise themselves with the site and work out how they want to use it. A newsroom policy might be necessary to encourage or warn journalists with regards to how the paper would like to see it used, and if possible, a social media expert could monitor and coordinate the paper's efforts. It is not necessary for journalists to embrace every aspect of Twitter, but most who try it find something beneficial.

On Tuesday 30 June at 15.00 London time, Robb Montgomery, CEO of Visual Editors will be speaking at a WEF webinar on "How the real time web can improve your newspaper's journalism." More details here.

The media coverage of the shock death of Michael Jackson has served to highlight press dynamics, raising interesting questions concerning the nature of breaking news reporting, the cult of the celebrity and the relationship between newspapers and their online news rivals. Has the fact that most newspapers were delayed in the initial reporting of the death emphasised the widening gulf between print and digital channels of breaking news? Conversely, has the death been exploited by the printed press as a facile, reader guaranteeing hit?

The news of the performer's death, in terms of rumour, confirmation and reaction has been overwhelmingly 'digital' in expression. The scoop belonged to the Los Angeles based celebrity website, TMZ, which confirmed the death an hour after it aired whispers of a suspected heart attack. The reporting was rapid fire: time of death: 2.26pm, LA time, time of update: 2.44pm. 

There are many ways to measure the success of a newspaper and its website. A recent report from The Media Audit has ranked the top newspapers in the US based on percentage of adults living in the area who read the print version or visited the site in the last 30 days, and the results are surprising. The top-ranked publication: the New Orleans Times-Picayune and its online counterpart nola.com.

Nola.com tied for first in terms of the proportion of adults visiting the site, with 50.4 percent making it online in the past 30 days. The Times-Picayune came out second for print readership, with 75.6 percent of New Orleans' adults picking up the paper. However, when factoring in duplicate readers (those who read the paper as well as visit the website) the Times-Picayune reaches 85.8 percent of adults in the metropolitan area.

The Pink Paper has been forced to suspend the publication of its printed edition, due to the 'economic downturn', it was announced on the paper's website yesterday.

The fortnightly paper, the only national in Britain to cater for a gay readership, will cease printing after the current edition, due to insufficient advertising revenue.  As a free publication, it relied entirely on advertising revenue, which has fallen sharply with onset of the economic recession.

Seventeen of the top 30 US newspaper websites showed a decline in the average time users spent on their sites in May versus the same period last year, according to an exclusive article in Editor & Publisher. The data come from Nielson Online, which keeps track of the most widely read newspaper sites based on number of unique visitors.

On the bright side, that means nearly half of the sites posted gains year-over-year, some of them fairly significant. The Star Tribune of Minneapolis, a paper struggling to get out of bankruptcy, added 20 minutes to the time readers spend on the site - at an average of over 47 minutes per user, it's also the newspaper site that users stay on the longest. The San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate.com also recorded sizeable gains, jumping to 21 minutes this year compared to 12 minutes in May 2008.

The Washington Post recently took the unusual step of publishing a long investigative reporting piece on a local homicide only on its website, rather than in the print paper. Even though many articles are published online first and then in print, it has become common practice to publish in-depth pieces which are not breaking news in the print paper first, and the Washington Post's move is somewhat of a break with tradition.

The 7,000 word article on the unsolved murder of Robert Wone appeared on the Post's website in two parts, on May 31 and June 1. It is, however, the "sort of long-form reporting that newspaper editors say still justifies print in the digital age," according to the New York Times. And unsurprisingly, keeping the article out of the print edition angered many readers who pay for the newspaper, with comments on the article questioned the move.

As online news becomes more and more prevalent, with an unimaginable amount of information available at users' fingertips and Internet now ranked as US consumers' top way to access their news, how can media organisations make sure that readers find their articles?  Part of the answer is search engine optimisation, which is becoming an essential part of the daily life of a newsroom. For the printed product, newspapers must try to sell the paper as a whole; online, articles can attract traffic individually as readers come across them while searching for specific topics. It is therefore important that each story, rather than simply the site as a whole, is 'optimised' to appear higher in search results. Aside from highly technical aspects like HTML meta tagging, URL structure or site navigation, what can a newspaper do to optimise its content for search engines?

How to introduce SEO to the newsroom

One major potential stumbling block is that journalists might view SEO as a way to manipulate their stories and take away their true value. So the way it is presented to staff is extremely important. And indeed, it is crucial that newspapers do not get carried away with prioritising SEO above all else. Even Google advises creating content "primarily for your users, not search engines:" it is important to make your site easily accessible to search engines but still remain focused on your visitors' needs.

Clearly, it is important for all reporters to be aware of the ways that they can make each individual article more search-friendly. After all, journalists have always wanted their stories to be as widely read as possible, in print as well as online, and are likely to be willing to help make that happen. And often, the principles of SEO echo the principles of writing a good story: such as the idea that the first sentence should be a summary of the rest of the article, containing relevant concepts or keywords. One difference is that less generic, more specific works for SEO in terms of names or concepts. Google recommends shorter rather than longer titles.

Esa Peltonen, who has been working as a web analyst at the largest Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat for three years, said that he has worked extensively with editorial staff, for example on how to use Google, to get an idea of how users will be searching and what kind of search words people are using. Head of audience development at the Telegraph, Julian Sambles, said in March that the paper was trying to give journalists "the knowledge and understanding that they need so they can apply it to their daily production process and make informed decisions about content when they're writing or publishing it." Thinking about SEO should be second nature, he added.

Papers must also consider their goals in optimising content for search engines. As Drew Broomhall, head of search at the Times explained, if you rank success by sheer volume of traffic, then you should "write the same as everyone else but more of it and more frequently updated." However, if you are looking to increase engagement on a specific subject you need more detailed keyword analysis and niche research.

One straightforward course is the need to stay ahead of the trends: predict what people are going to be talking about in upcoming months and provide appropriate content. "Fix SEO requirements into the editorial calendar," Broomhall suggests. Obviously much news is unpredictable, but there are some events that are year-in-year-out, or which are easy to prepare for in advance, such as an election or a festival. It is necessary to consider both specific, distinct events, such as religious holidays, and longer, less defined periods such as winter travel. Articles that contain links and that have been linked to by others appear higher in search results. Therefore, with annual events, it is beneficial to link to last year's coverage and make use of old content that already has inbound links to help promote the new content.

Hiring a SEO specialist?

As well as training all reporters to be aware of the principles of search engine optimisation, many newspapers have taken the step of hiring an in-house specialist. Ideally such a person would have deep technical knowledge combined with considerable journalistic experience, but such candidates might be hard to find. Peltonen comes from a business background, Broomhall from journalism and technology.

There are also many third party services available to news outlets, supplementary to the guidance of an in-house expert, such as Thomson Reuters' OpenCalais which recently announced deals made with the Huffington Post, DailyMe and the Mail Online. OpenCalais offers an 'Archive Express' feature which can tag an archive of up to 20 million documents in 24 hours. The service 'reads' and breaks down articles into their essential elements - who, what, when, where, how - and tags and sorts them so that it is easier to bring archived articles into 'related stories' sections and improve their search relevance.

Analysing traffic

A SEO specialist would be responsible for analysing traffic to a news outlet's site, looking at how readers find content, readership patterns and what methods of optimisation work best. Peltonen explained how he started off looking at basic data such as what are the top news stories, how many people are going where on the site, and started to work out how to increase traffic. His paper partnered with Microsoft to further analyse traffic data. Such traffic data analysis can be used to spot and develop potential niche verticals to focus on, for example, by looking at repeat visitor figures.  

Google keywords

Purchasing Google keywords to guarantee that news articles appear higher on search results is one of the more costly ways for news outlets to promote their content. Peltonen said that his paper frequently buys specific words, for instance for sports events, but stressed that it would be cheaper to improve the paper's SEO. Buying keywords could also raise ethical issues, depending on the words and their context. The Sun, for example, reportedly purchased the key words 'Natasha Richardson' immediately after the British actress's sudden death in March, in what appears to be a blatant attempt to profit from the tragedy. The Guardian came under considerable criticism last August when, apparently accidentally, it purchased the Google keywords "Madeleine McCann," giving any searchers the link to its coverage of the child's disappearance. The Guardian promptly relinquished the rights, and said it would review its list of keywords. Purchasing Google keywords in order to promote a product is common practice, but is it ethical for newspapers?

Evidently, SEO strategies are necessary in today's media landscape, not only to make more money but also to spread awareness of stories and help readers find what they are looking for and therefore should be embraced by journalists and editors as well as publishers. Search engine 'friendliness' should not be prioritised over good, accurate stories but it should be used to promote such content. Journalistic training is vital in order to optimise each individual article, and larger strategic steps should be taken by editors in conjunction with SEO specialists.

On Tuesday 23 June at 14.00 London time, Drew Broomhall, Head of Search at the Times of London will be speaking at a WEF webinar on "How to teach your journalists to write for the web." More details here.

French regional La Provence just announced that it is dropping its subscription to the Agence France-Presse news wire. The paper came to the decision after realising that it uses only 20 dispatches per day for an annual cost of 550,000 euros, a journalist for the Marseille-based paper told Le Monde.

AFP CEO Pierre Louette played down the announcement and said he is ready to negotiate. "I am not convinced that the rupture with La Provence is definititive," he commented. "We are ready to make an effort for the regional press, which we feel bound to almost like a cooperative." In fact, six out of the 15 members of AFP's board are from the regional press. However, it represents only 7% of the organisation's turnover.

As editorial teams the across the globe seek to increase and diversify their papers' revenue streams, a wealth of diverse ideas and business models have appeared.  One of the latest to be aired comes from Laurent Joffrin, editor of the French national La Libération.   He suggests that editors of the press, publishers and website unite in the request that the leading internet servers providers (ISP or FAI's in France) Free and Orange add a few extra euros to their clients' bills.  This would serve to finance the costs of the services provided by publishers.  The fees would then be invested back into newspapers and other productions, the amount corresponding with the title's popularity and size of its newsroom.

The concept of a mutually rewarding financial model has a strong precedent in France.  The French cinema industry is financed this way, which according to Joffrin, 'has saved the industry and allowed its expansion', as reported by Challenges.fr. The editor is convinced that newspapers are an essential component in a democratic state, thus highly worthy of greater financing. 

The Digital Britain report, published this afternoon, evokes the government's attitude and pledges to a rapidly evolving news industry, underlined by the recognition that both traditional and technological forms of news provision require both respect and support.   

Recognising the economic pressures pressing on the news industry, the report asserts that citizens, government and industry will have to work collaboratively to financially maintain the 'vital civil function of journalism.'

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."  

Parliament will next Tuesday witness the testimonies of the chiefs of four regional newspaper publishers, as they deliver their views on the condition of the British local media.  The issue will be slanted towards the financial situation. 

The meeting will unite the Culture, Media and Sport select committee and the regional representatives, who have been named as Carolyn McCall from Guardian Media Group, Sly Bailey from Trinity Mirror, Johnston Press chief executive John Fry and Christopher Thomson from DC Thomson.  Also present will be Claire Enders, the founder of media research firm Enders Analysis.

The New York Times was the Daily Show's latest victim.  Jason Jones took a tour around the NYT's offices to understand, "why the last of a dying breed prefer aged news to real news".   

The skit tried to paint the NYT as a 'creaky old rag'- the old school news provision of stories printed the day after the events happen, pitiful revenues due to declining circulation and advertisement revenues, now redundant in the face of rapid fire, twenty-four-seven online news services and competing classified websites.

The Apple iPhone 3GS, premiered yesterday at Apple Inc's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, boasts an array of important new features for the newspaper industry and journalism at large. Perhaps most pertinent is the development that content can now be purchased from within iPhone applications. This new functionality presents newspapers with the opportunity to employ subscription and micro-payment structures to monetize the delivery of their content to their mobile phone readership.

Given the recent developments in the newspaper industry, such as the 'secret' meeting held in Chicago organised by the Newspaper Association of America to discuss how to monetise online content, it seems the question is no longer whether papers will begin charging online, but when, and how. And with regards to the iPhone 3GS, will they allow readers to continue to access their content for free, maybe making it harder to shift them to a pay structure in the future, or will newspapers seize this opportunity and begin charging readers as soon as the new OS is released?

Classifieds website Craigslist has provided a noteworthy boost to alt-weeklies' adult classifieds revenue after its recent policy change that requires closer regulation of its adult-services classified ads.  This is an ironic turn of events for the online colossus of classifieds that has wrought havoc on its competition, in print and online, ever since 2005.

The Washington City Paper reported increases in adult ads of 38% compared to one year ago, a change Andrew Beaujon from the paper's City Desk blog correlates directly to Craigslist's tougher regulation of their adult ads. Beaujon reminisces that for alt-weeklies like his, "Craigslist's free classifieds were an extinction-level event." But now Craigslist's requires would-be adult-services advertisers to waver that their posts contain no "content that is unlawful, pornographic, or which advertises illegal services", no ads "suggesting or implying an exchange of sexual favors for money", and no "pornographic images, or images suggestive of an offer of sexual favors.". These stricter standards have driven adult advertisers away from Craigslist, resulting in the higher figures for the local papers and free weeklies that used to account for so much of the classifieds market.

A new daily newspaper serving the Detroit area will be launched within the next 60 days, it was announced Tuesday. The Detroit Daily Press, a project of the two experienced publishing brothers, Mark and Gary Stern, arose to compensate for the reduced home delivery of the city's two main daily papers earlier in the year.

"There is a definite need here," Mark Stern asserted at a news conference in the Detroit suburb of Southfield. "People are used to having a newspaper in their hand. ... That's what we're going to do -- provide a newspaper."

It is becoming increasingly clear that a proportion of general news content is going to be put behind some kind of a pay wall in upcoming months. Several publishers have expressed their intentions to start charging, and several third parties want to help them do it. Journalists don't seem to want it, it seems pretty unlikely that readers would want it, so how are publishers going to succeed? Can it restore value to good journalism which is increasingly becoming a commodity? The Editors Weblog takes a look at some of the different services on offer and strategies being considered.

Journalism Online

First, Journalism Online, a start-up founded in April by industry experts Steve Brill, Gordon Crovitz and Leo Hindery, has taken facilitating charging for online content as one of its core goals. Brill made a presentation at the NAA-organised newspaper executives' meeting in Chicago on May 28 at which Journalism Online's mission was stated as enabling "news organizations to restore the optimal mix of circulation and advertising revenue necessary to finance original reporting and editing" hence giving them the chance to "realize the revenue they deserve--and can command--from readers and distributors for their digital content."

Journalism Online is marketing its proposal as an e-commerce platform. The idea is that it would make premium content from multiple publishers easily accessible to readers and allow annual, monthly subscriptions, day passes or single articles. There will also be all-you-can-read bundling options. Publishers will decide what content they want to charge for, how much to charge (though it is unclear how all-you-can-read prices will be decided) and how to charge. In the presentation, Brill suggests $50-60 a year and $5-6 a month for small to large city papers, but he stressed that this was an arbitrary choice and clearly the price would depend on how much content the publisher put behind the pay wall. He had previously suggested $15 a month for an all-you-can-read subscription.

The company maintains that implementing its system will not lead to a substantial loss in traffic or ad revenue, claiming that papers would be able to keep 88% of page views and 91% of ad revenue, as any paid content would be part of a hybrid model. In his examples, Brill demonstrates how he believes a paper could essentially double its income. Brill has also stressed that Journalism Online will incorporate lots of sampling. He told Nieman Lab's Zachery Seward that Journalism Online's assumptions are that 5-10% of current monthly unique visitors will be willing to pay for content; that 95 percent of those paying customers will choose subscriptions over micropayments; and that after subscribing, those readers will view 30-40 percent more pages than non-paying readers.

Overall, the company seems to be presenting its service as a chance for newspapers to focus on their best customers, offering a premium service to those who are prepared to pay. At the Chicago meeting, Journalism Online also emphasised the advantages of paid online content in terms of preserving the print product: it is "about the value proposition of print... about print subscriber acquisition and retention costs."

ViewPass

Another third party service was presented at the NAA-organised meeting in Chicago: ViewPass. It is the brainchild of Alan Mutter and Ridgely Evers, and could be implemented in 9 months at a cost of $6 million. The idea is that newspaper readers would be required to register once with ViewPass and it would then track their activity across participating websites.

Like Journalism Online, it would aim to offer readers the chance to purchase premium online content from multiple sources, with potential for subscriptions, micropayments and bundling. Essentially, the ways in which it differs is that ViewPass would be industry-owned, giving publishers the chance to (hopefully) share profits in the business itself, and it most crucially it would allow users to 'pay' for their content with their time or their information instead of with cash, because of their increased value to advertisers. In fact, ViewPass would focus on presenting readers that were attractive to advertisers for highly targeted ads. Mutter himself is not enthusiastic about charging for much online content, suggesting to Nieman Lab that it would only work for specialist content.

Circlabs

The creation of another start up was announced the day before the Chicago meeting: CircLabs, founded by Bill Densmore, Jeffrey Vander Clute, Martin Langeveld and Joe Bergeron. Its first product, code-named Circulate, aims to "offer a solution" to publishers who are experimenting with micropayments and subscriptions, suggesting that they should charge for content which is "both scarce in nature and of high utility to a segment of the audience." CircLabs is also focussed on developing opportunities for "high-value" advertising revenue, and plans to incorporate personalised news services. Further details are yet to appear.

Efforts of individual publishers

News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch has announced that all the company's newspapers would be charging within a year. It is looking at bundling content, according to chief digital officer Jonathan Miller, such as putting all the media conglomerate's New York-based content into one subscription package. One of the company's prime assets, the Wall Street Journal, is proof that paid premium content does work, although of a specifically financial nature. The paper is to expand its paid online options, with plans to introduce micropayments later this year along with a further level of premium subscriptions. Murdoch suggested that the company wants to "test" a pay model on some of its stronger properties first, and there has been speculation that the Sunday Times will be among these. The paid online content debate, although definitely present in the UK, has not been as strong as across the Atlantic, and it would be interesting to see what sort of reaction such a move would provoke.

MediaNews Group is planning to charge online under the belief that "we continue to do an injustice to our print subscribers and create perceptions that our content has no value by putting all of our print content online for free." A memo to staff from CEO Dean Singleton and president Jody Lodovic suggested that a part-paid strategy is in the works, and made it clear that the company is intending to charge for existing content rather than for new products or services.

The New York Times is apparently looking at two different ways in which it could charge for online content. The first would be somewhat similar to the Financial Times' model, whereby readers could surf the site without charge until a page-view or word limit were reached, when a 'metre' would start running and it would charge a user for the rest of their time spent. (The FT allows 10 free articles per user per month, then demands a subscription.) This would have the advantage of not putting specific content behind a paywall, and therefore not angering journalists.

The other option is a 'membership' scheme: readers would donate money and subsequently be invited into a "New York Times community," which would offer them free merchandise and other benefits. Possibly a tiered membership scheme could be implemented. When these proposals were discussed, Bill Keller told staff that a decision would be made by the end of June. The NYT is wary following its failed TimesSelect experience back in 2007 and seems determined to find a solution that will not damage its significant ad revenue.

Potential obstacles: search and antitrust

Currently many people find their news through search engines such as Google, and for articles to get good Google rankings and appear higher up in search results, they cannot be behind a paywall. Newspapers must strive to find an appropriate solution to this when they start charging: the Wall Street Journal's tactic of allowing its paid content to be accessed free via Google is clearly not fair to its paying customers, and is a definite deterrent to potential subscribers.

Antitrust regulations in the US effectively prevent publishers from coming to a joint agreement on when and how they should start charging for content. At the newspaper executives' meeting in Chicago on May 28, an antitrust lawyer was present to make sure all the discussion was legal. Poynter analyst Rick Edmonds suggested that the use of a third party "vendor" such as Journalism Online could be the solution to these concerns. Journalism Online has taken on David Boies and Ted Olson for antitrust advice.

So, is it going to work? And how?

Undoubtedly, implementing paid content is going to be a considerable challenge and is likely to involve substantial experimentation. Newspapers need to consider what exactly they would want to charge for, for example whether they could create a new paid service or put what is currently free behind a pay wall. It seems as if it would be easier to persuade people to pay for something new, rather than telling them they have to start paying for something previously free. But then people might decide that they are happy with what they get now and that they do not want to pay for anything extra. A paper with a highly developed website such as the New York Times could possibly offer basic news free but keep its interactive graphics and other more innovative content for its premium customers.

As yet, Journalism Online seems to be ahead of the pack with regards to third party services. No papers have publicly signed on but Brill told Seward that he had already spoken to about half of those at the Chicago meeting. In terms of connections and credibility of its founders, Journalism Online has a head start. ViewPass and CircLabs do seem to be onto something, however, with their focus on offering consumers as targets for higher-revenue advertising and effectively allowing them to pay for their news by looking at ads. Could these companies coexist, or is there only room for one?

A crucial factor which should not be underestimated in any attempt to charge online is ease of use for the consumer. People will be far more likely to part with their cash if doing so is simple and straightforward. For this reason, sign-in-once and all-you-can-read offers are likely to appeal. And once people are paying, the level of service should reflect this: good journalism presented attractively and accessibly. An element of personalisation would also seem worth paying for.

Can paid online content 'save' newspapers? If Journalism Online's figures are correct, it looks like it could make a significant difference to a newspaper's fortunes. The next few months will be telling in terms of experimentation and competition between proposals, but it will take some years for the definitive answer to this question to be realised.

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.