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That the world of traditional media is in crisis, nobody doubts. However the question raised by Michael Hirschorn of the Atlantic, is just how long the industry can continue in its current situation.  He takes the example of the struggling New York Times and hypothesizes about the end coming sooner than anyone expects - May in fact.  Whilst the NYT going out of business within months looks highly unlikely, its current financial status leaves this seemingly far-fetched theory every so slightly more plausible. 

Canadian web marketing agency Dialect has created a website billed as 'an online memorial to the traditional media industry.'  Traditional Publishing, RIP aggregates headlines which document "the sad decline of traditional publishing."

According to Press Gazette, one of the site's creators, Nik Szymanis, commented that "the headlines are presented starkly and without comment, giving a sobering view of the current state of media."

According to the European Journalism Centre, not only is free music popular amongst fans, it can also sell.  EJC gives the example of Trent Reznor`s Nine Inch Nails, whose album Ghosts was the best-selling of 2008 on Amazon's mp3 store- despite initially being released for free.

The question of how to balance advances in technology and free online resources with more traditional, and generally more profitable, methods is perhaps starting to be answered by the music industry and bands such as Nine Inch Nails.  And it coincides with conscious efforts by newspapers to create effective websites without leaving their corresponding publications obsolete.

Provider of online sports news, The Sports Network (TSN), has announced that it will launch a new service that will provide sports content to newspapers.  The cost of the service will be based on newspaper circulation.

According to a TSN announcement, the service will offer "within its sports, such needed items as national and international stories, sports columns, agate that can be customized but which already includes standings/major results/schedules/stats and more." 

Phoenix's East Valley Tribune has relaunched as four separate tabloid editions (The Mesa Tribune, Gilbert Tribune, Chandler Tribune and Queen Creek Tribune) with selective free distribution, according to Editor & Publisher.  In addition, the website has been redesigned and now has more interactive features.

Each of the papers will be published four days a week and in some areas they will be home-delivered for free.  Each paper will have two sections, the first with local, national and business news and the second with local sports and entertainment news. 

In the run-up to the 16th World Editors Forum being held in Hyderabad, India March 22-25, 2009, the Editors Weblog is running a special series entitled "Doing More with Less." The series highlights major trends that editors-in-chief are using to steer their newsrooms through the difficult economic climate. The second of the series studies newsroom integration at the Finnish business weekday paper, Kauppalehti, which, unable to move into a new building like the Guardian, is working with the limitations of its current office space.

In a country where newspaper penetration ranks third in the world, and where newspapers' share of mass media turnover remains high (31 per cent), Finland's leading weekday business paper Kauppalehti can have confidence in its print product's continued success. Its outlook became even more positive at the end of 2007 when its competitor Taloussanomat ceased print production and went online only. Kauppalehti, owned by the Alma Media Group also offers extensive online services at Kauppalehti.fi, including both free and paid content, and the company broadcasts economic television news on MTV3, the most popular single channel in Finland.

Integration at Kauppalehti is key to keeping a competitive edge in the fast-paced world of business news. Although the paper has integrated substantially, barriers remain, primarily because of the physical layout of the newsroom and limited space. The Editors Weblog spoke to editors-in-chief Hannu Leinonen and Eero Tuomisto and financial news editor Janne Poysti about how far integration has come and how successful it has been.

Kauppalehti first created a joint news desk when it moved offices in 2002. News editors from all platforms now sit together, on a long "super desk" in the newsroom, close to the TV studio. However, the architecture of the building has prevented the creation of one large multimedia centre: the main newsroom is L-shaped and there is not a lot of open space, with "mainly-print" journalists sitting on a different floor. Janne Poysti pointed out that there are greater communication problems between editors and reporters for print services than for online or television.  Eero Tuomisto remarked "I think this sort of integrated newsroom should be round, a big round building with the news desk in the middle, but unfortunately we don't have that." He hopes to move towards this ideal in the future, and explained that Alma Media is considering relocating all its operations into one building within the next few years.

The architecture of Kauppalehti's building has prevented the creation of one large multimedia centre

WHAT IT MEANS IN PRACTICE

The space issue aside, operations have been integrated and streamlined to a significant degree.  A key element is the two joint meetings per day, attended by all news editors and editors-in-chief, to decide which news items will be on which channels and in what order. "In that sense the decision making is very centralised," commented Hannu Leinonen.  The fact that the editors all sit together, "within yelling distance", has been crucial for the success of integration, he explained. Janne Poysti remarked that "journalists work quite closely in Kauppalehti", with television reporters sending their reports to online and print, and vice versa.

Staff have been taught to be flexible, and many people can move between different medias. Leinonen explained that "by rotating people within the organisation we have been able to enhance people's skills so that more people can do multimedia now than five years ago." Tuomisto stressed the importance of good internal marketing, "how you sell the idea to your employees." There was some resistance to changes, but Poysti was confident that "nowadays, everything is going pretty smoothly." Some reporters will write a piece for television and follow it with a longer, more in depth article for the next day's paper.

A crucial part of the integration philosophy at Kauppalehti, however, is that not everybody has to be multi-channel. Tuomisto clarified that "our experience is that every single journalist has to have a home base and be attached to some channel." Editors are also still allocated to a specific platform as "you can't be responsible for everything," Tuomisto explained.

Leinonen explained that "by rotating people within the organisation we have been able to enhance people's skills so that more people can do multimedia now than five years ago."

The markets team, however, is one area of the newsroom that is fully integrated. The group sit by the main news desk and produce a breaking news feed that is sold, as the services of a news agency might be, and they then supplement this with print and television commentaries.

There is also considerable cooperation between teams in terms of content gathering. Tuomisto explained that it was a waste of resources for three or four Kauppalehti journalists to interview the same source, so now they try to coordinate who does what. Often it will be the television crew who carries out the interview, as is the case when Nokia releases its quarterly results, for example, and then the text reporters can use the resulting audio.

NEXT STEP: IMPROVING COMBINED IMPACT

Both editors-in-chief seemed keen to integrate further, but stressed that a fully integrated newsroom would have to wait for a move to new premises. For outlets which cannot afford to make the move to a state of the art multimedia newsroom like those of The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, or Fairfax, integration will always be a more difficult process.

Meanwhile, Kauppalehti is working to improve its publications and their combined impact.  Integration provides ample opportunity to reduce duplication in the final product. "We are redesigning the newspaper so that we don't publish the news that is already on the website," Leinonen explained. The redesigned product is being released this month.  Additional aims are to stop providing newspaper content free on the Web site, and to develop paid online content.  Tuomisto described the way that the organisation is working to create subscription packages that consist of news and some "added value" in the form of specialist knowledge.

The current Israeli-Gaza conflict has proved ground-breaking in terms of the way that news is being spread. For a start, Israel has blocked foreign journalists from entering Gaza since launching its air attacks on December 27, so although Al Jazeera has been reporting extensively as it had correspondents already inside, as does the AP, many media organizations have no reliable source of independent information.  It is the perfect time for blogs, Twitter, and other forms of citizen journalism to show their merits.

 

The Wall Street Journal has launched a three-part video on its website entitled "The End of Wall Street," Media Bistro reports.  This is the WSJ.com's first long-form video series.  

The video explains "how the housing bubble inflated and burst, the rippling effects across the economy and look at what's ahead for the global economy."

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

San Francisco's AsianWeek newspaper announced that it will no longer continue its print edition as of January 2, 2009.  According to New America Media, in a city that one-third of the population is Asian, it leaves a gaping hole in English-language Asian-American coverage.

Janice Lee, deputy executive director of the Asian American Journalists Association, believes that "as newspapers become thinner, readers may not notice how the staff cuts are affecting coverage, but community organizations that monitor Asian-American issues will be the first to feel the impact."

The first print edition of a new Nigerian newspaper, NEXT, was published on 4 January, following the launch of its online edition in December. The paper is owned by Timbuktu Media Group, and its publisher Dele Olojede described its aim as "to provide news and informed opinion fairly and accurately to the Nigerian public in any land."  

Last month Le Figaro launched an online gallery of their most iconic photographs.  In addition, a limited series of 15 each will be for sale.

The first collection of photographs will feature over 80 photographs from seven photographers that have worked with the Figaro.