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It isn't a secret that the American newspaper industry is experiencing difficult times, as core print revenues and circulation are falling. Many think that online news, which has been accompanied by double-digit online advertising growth in recent years, can make up for the decline in print. But several studies and articles think otherwise.

"The Web audience is growing at a great clip, while print circulation is not. And online revenues are growing faster, too, albeit from a smaller base. If the trend continues, there's little doubt that -- "eventually" -- online becomes the main business," said Bill Keller, the New York Times Executive Editor, in a 2007 interview with IwantMedia.

But as sanguinity faces off with the numbers, perhaps we shouldn't hold our breath for "eventually."

Internet revenue is growing -- in 2003, newspapers collected a mere $1.2 billion from online advertising; last year the figure was nearly $2.7 billion. "We're growing at a double-digit rate," said Randy Bennett, of the Newspaper Association of America.

But there's a problem. Scott Karp, of Publishing 2.0, has dubbed it the "10% problem." Karp explains that looking at New York Times print and web circulation numbers, "What you find, with some modest rounding, is that print circulation is about 10% of total audience reach, while online advertising revenue is 10% of total ad revenue -- the economics are nearly the perfect inverse of what they should be."

Why, as audiences shift to the web, are advertisers not following?

Although newspaper websites are attracting a lot of visitors, they aren't keeping them there.

According to the American Journalism Review (AJR), the typical visitor to nytimes.com, which attracts over 10 percent of the entire newspaper industry's online traffic, spent an average of just 34 minutes and 53 seconds browsing its extensive editorial and interactive offerings in October. That's 34 minutes and 53 seconds per month - just 68 seconds per day online. By contrast, according to Scarborough Research, print readers report spending 16 minutes a day with their newspapers.

And as small as 68 seconds a day is -- it's actually about three times longer than the average of the next nine largest newspaper sites.

Although a minority of news hounds linger on the sites, Greg Harmon, director of Belden Interactive, estimates that as many as 60 percent of online newspaper visitors are "fly-bys," people who use the site briefly and irregularly. "Everyone has the same problem," explains Jim Brady, editor of washingtonpost.com. The news industry's continuing challenge, Brady says, is to turn "visitors into residents."
 
Thomas E. Patterson, of Harvard University, who has conducted a yearlong study of 160 news sites, also offers an intriguing, if not unsettling, theory: the web is a fundamentally different way of viewing information, and as such, web ads may not be as effective as the traditional kind. "I'm not sure [advertisers] are convinced yet about how terrific a sales tool [a Web display ad] is," said Patterson. "The evidence isn't strong yet that it can drive people into a store the way a full-page newspaper ad can. They're less confident about what they're getting online."
 
To add insult to injury, online newspapers face these challenges in a fiercely competitive new medium. "Unlike the print business, in which newspaper publishers generally enjoy near-monopoly status, the online news world is littered with entrants - from giants like MSNBC.com and AOL.com, to news aggregators like drudgereport.com, to blogs by the millions," writes Paul Farhi of AJR. "This makes it tough for any online ad seller to do what newspaper publishers have done for years - keep raising their ad rates." "Ultimately, it comes down to supply and demand," said Leon Levitt, vice president of digital media for Cox Newspapers. "And there's an awful lot of supply out there."

In the midst of this, the online ad growth is beginning to slow. The confidence-building, double-digit increases are fading fast. In the first quarter of 2007, the newspaper industry saw a 22 percent gain in online revenue - impressive, but less so when seen as the smallest uptick (in percentage terms) since the NAA started keeping records in 2003. In the second quarter, the industry rate slipped yet again, to 19 percent.

And even with these double-digit increases, newspapers' print ads still draw more than 20 times the revenue from online sales, having collected  $46.6 billion in print ads last year.

The New York Times Co., the leading online newspaper company, derives just 11 percent of its revenue from the Web, and it not public how much of that 11% comes from nytimes.com vs. its other digital holdings, such as the popular about.com.

The challenge news sites face now is how to continue to move online, but bring advertisers with them.

It's "in the interest of both newspapers and advertisers to shift content to the Internet," said Philip Meyer, author of The Vanishing Newspaper.

Advertisers can focus their target audiences and can monitor consumers' behavior online, Meyer points out. At the same time, "newspapers can at last grow their businesses without being held back by the variable costs of newsprint, ink and transportation...In the recent past, newspaper owners have preferred to cut fixed costs, like editorial staff, which gives a quick boost to the bottom line but weakens their hold on the audience. Using technology to cut the variable costs is a better strategy even though the payoff takes longer."

Sources: The American Journalism Review, The State of the News Media 2007, Publishing 2.0, The New York Times
 

In August 2007, a European newspaper aggregator venture, dubbed Imooty.eu, was launched in beta version (read background here, based on a profile by the Online Journalism Review). Over the weekend, Imooty has launched a new headline aggregator widget for newspapers to implement on their sites (pictured left - see their widget platform here).

Imooty's "plan is really to develop a powerful tool for news syndication," said co-founder Kristoffer Lassen (who founded the site with Blaise Bourgeois). "The purpose is to democratize access to the most important mainstream information sources of Europe." The site now aggregates RSS feeds with latest headlines from about 450 newspapers in 19 European countries.

Imooty.eu, a newspaper and blog aggregator

Unlike services such as Factiva or LexisNexis, which are geared towards professionals and have costly fees, Imooty aims to provide a mainstream and free news search resource. Newspapers' RSS feeds that are featured on the homepage are generally chosen for their prominent size and influence, but sometimes also for their known expertise in a particular domain (Morgenbladet in Norway for its 'Culture' coverage).

Users can conveniently view latest headlines by country, newspaper, or category of news. A tab enables users to view recent blog headlines - about 700-800 have enrolled so far. Users can also customize search fields by these same criteria.

Does it still make sense to distinguish 'News' and 'Blogs', at a time when some blogs do original reporting and some traditional news brands are turning to lighter, blog-style news?

"It's basically to make a distinction between news brands as we know them today and independent reporters," said Lassen. The line between both may be getting blurry - especially concerning newspaper blogs, but Lassen believes the news consumption and expectations are different between blogs and news sites, although both may be news.

Pros and cons of Imooty for newspapers

Imooty has launched a specific section called 'Newspaper Universe', so that partnering newspapers can directly upload their feeds and customize them. "You decide how your newspaper brand will appear on the  Imooty platform."

Pros:
- Reach: Imooty "puts newspapers in touch with users who normally wouldn't use them," said Lassen. Through Imooty, readers who are geographically distant, or on the other side of the political spectrum, can discover new titles.
- Mobile: Imooty offers a mobile platform that can be of interest to newspapers.
- Revenue share: Imooty's revenue model will be based on redirecting readers to newspapers' premium (archived) content, and it will share revenues with papers.

"Cons":
- "I can see how, under the old news paradigm, some newspaper people might feel threatened by the model, because it's possibly taking away from local focus. But then again, these are new times, and people relate to media in different ways," said Lassen.



No editorializing, unlike major online news portals

News featured on the homepage is ranked by 'clicks' for individual newspapers and recency for headlines: there is no editorializing of content or of the RSS feeds by Imooty. But as Lassen said in his OJR interview, "readers now demand concise information that directly addresses their personal "need to know" requirements in an age when people are swamped by news sources." So why not give readers editorial guidance?

"That's the role of the big Internet brands. Google does this, by editorializing their pages," said Lassen.

"Our philosophy is to show the user the way news is from the different publications. We don't editorialize. The purpose is to give a panoramic view of what's actually out there."

News aggregation and Imooty: a resource for news professionals

In that respect, Imooty may be of greater use to news junkies or journalists than to the general public, at least in its first steps.

"You really have to be a news-interested person to be interested in Imooty, but it can be a starting point for ordinary news users as well."

"A lot of people like to have a pre-packaged news product," said Lassen. Although the trend towards news aggregation is increasingly visible, newspapers' role is also to provide their news judgment to sort news in an organized manner.

Future developments

Imooty is working to develop its multimedia offerings, including its mobile platform, podcasts and IPTV. According to Lassen, "this is also the direction newspapers are going in," because text-based content will be less prominent on mobiles. Imooty has launched a mobile site in beta.

According to Lassen, Imooty now has about 15,000 unique visitors and 50,000 page views monthly.

Imooty is still in full development and is still in the process of signing on official newspaper partners. This weekend it launched its imooty headline aggregator widget, which can be implemented by news sites that wish to open up their doors to other relevant sources.

Source: Kristoffer Lassen, co-founder Imooty.eu

According to Ground Reports, 2008 will be the year citizen journalism evolves, after having cemented its establishment in 2007. Leaders such as Newsvine, NowPublic, Orato and Digital Journal offer many similar features: proprietary content submission tools, community ratings, and even some occasional revenue share. But it’s “how these players break out of the pack in the coming year (that) will determine everything.”

The article summarizes its key predictions on what to expect from citizen journalism in 2008:
 

“Can today’s j-schools (…) prepare students for the new world of New Media? Of course not.” The answer is provocative but Pajamas Media’s Steve Boriss (who also blogs for The Future of News) offers his list of things journalism schools should be teaching.

Rue89.com was founded in May by four former journalists and bloggers from the French leftist daily Libération. Within months, the online-only news site unearthed a few scoops and became a recognized independent source in the French media landscape, ranking first among French news sites for time spent, ahead of newspapers, according to Nielsen NetRatings. One of its founders and director, Pierre Haski, tells the Editors Weblog how Rue89 found a working compromise to pro-am journalism.

Over the past two years, arguably the most rapidly evolving trend on the Internet is social media. The Texas-based Pluck, which describes itself as a social media tools and services provider, has been one of the main companies driving innovations in this field while simultaneously attempting to help newspapers adapt to the digital media universe. Pluck co-founder and CEO Dave Panos chatted with the Editors Weblog to preview his upcoming presentation in Cape Town at the 14th World Editors Forum taking place June 3-6.

A new book, The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy by Andrew Keen challenges blogs, citizen journalism and social networking sites, saying that they destroy culture and create “digital narcissism.”

An Online Journalism Review wiki aimed at independent publishers provides some key tips to choosing which advertising programs work best for individual news content websites.

At the ‘New Media: The Press Freedom Dimension’ conference in Paris last week experts in Blogging and Citizen media discussed the evolution of this new media and press freedom dimensions. Here, Declan McCullagh of CNET looks at the discussion of the legal divisions and rules between journalists and bloggers.

Merinews.com, launched last May, claims to be India’s first English-language citizen journalism online portal. The website offers a platform open to discussion for people to interact and opinionate. 

Friday 24^th of November, a good 80 Dutch and Flemish editors and researchers gathered in the European Journalism Centre, Maastricht, Netherlands, to assess and discuss several prototypes of novel newspaper products or services. All are web-based one way or another, and ready for the Web 2.0 publishing environments. The in total six demonstrators feature remote reporting tools, video content based on strategic alliances with non-journalistic partners, e-paper trials and online reader communities. Most were developed in close cooperation with specialised R&D centres. Together, the prototypes reveal the contours of the future electronic newspaper.
Al least half of the demonstrators will make it to real applications, the other are subject to further testing in living lab conditions.
General conclusion of the event: we need further experimentation to capture the essence of digital presence. In the conference report, the applications as well as the editors’ appraisal are described more in detail.

The latest audit shows that newspaper circulations in the US are down 2.8% year-on-year. Internet readership, however, has been exploding 20-25% by some counts. It may be true that the Internet has extended the reach of newspapers across the globe, but it is also contributing to a change in readership habits for which newspapers are not fully prepared.

Last week, a map of Britain took up The Independent’s entire page one, showing the location of the country’s population by race.  Yep, that’s right.  They put an infographic front and centre with no other stories around it.  Although an atypical move for newspapers in general, The Independent is following a long-term trend towards design modernization that shows no signs of slowing. 

The recent American Press Institute study “Newspaper Next” had some pressing news for the newspaper industry: local information should be an immediate priority. The fact is, countless regional papers have dragged their feet when it comes to developing vibrant local hubs.  With the threat of larger players hinging in on local markets, are papers too late to develop their sites?

What is the purpose of a front page? Is it to provide a comprehensive look at the day’s top stories? Or is it to win back dwindling circulation numbers?

That’s the question paper editors are asking themselves across the U.S., reports AJR in its June/July issue, at publications ranging from modest regional dailies to national powerhouses. The revelation: presentation matters.

If you talk to any media watcher nowadays, they don’t hesitate to tell you that the globalized world of 24-hour news stations and humongous international news organization