Results matching “publishing will force newsroom”

The 100-year old Pulitzer prize winning Christian Science Monitor has bravely announced that it is ending its daily print format and going fully digital: it will now only print a weekly "magazine" edition. The Editors Weblog caught up with the Editor-in-Chief of the Christian Science Monitor, John Yemma, and we discussed the thinking behind this move and how on earth a nationally distributed newspaper completely restructures itself for a digital future.

This story has been broken down into two parts. Part 1 focuses on why the CSM took this step and its initial steps down this path. Part 2 looks at the nuts and bolts: restructuring the newsroom, retraining, and managing staff through change.

The CSM's decision has sparked the inevitable debate about whether this is the beginning of the end for daily printed newspapers, a debate which will run and run in the years to come. However, the peculiar nature of the CSM's subsidised business model, its relatively small print distribution run and international readership base, make it difficult to draw any firm conclusions on industry trends from this move. Nevertheless, many in the industry will be watching closely to see how the CSM manages this move and whether it proves successful or not. If the CSM is successful, then this may lead to other newspapers pursuing this business model, but these papers will have to have a distinctive and loyal readership like the CSM if they have any hope of being successful.

Why the move away from print?

Yemma (left) states that there are two main reasons behind the CSM's controversial decision to move away from the daily print model. Firstly, the CSM's publishers, "saw the writing on the wall, they knew that the Internet user patterns and reader preferences and so forth were changing the business model of print. Print was becoming increasingly untenable, especially for the Monitor, which has an international audience. We just don't have enough reach with our print product, but we have great reach with our web product. That's not uncommon in the world of publishing right now to come to that conclusion, but for the Monitor we were able to make the change a little faster, because the Christian Science church wanted to move away from subsidising the Monitor within about three to five years."

The CSM is subsidised by the Christian Science church, with the church contributing approximately 50% ($13 million) of the newspapers revenue.  The newspaper itself makes about $12.5 million in terms of print advertising, circulation, web revenue and syndication. Therefore, the publishers of the CSM felt that, secondly, this level of subsidisation could not continue forever, so the team decided to look at the newspapers various options.

How the move to digital began - where to begin?

Two years ago the CSM convened a task force to look at the possibility of dropping its daily print edition. The newspaper worked at it from all angles; from prototyping to financial analysis, and working with a consultant (newspaper consultant Chris Urban), marketing group (Kadence Associates - who organised focus groups and surveys), and a PR company (Shift Communications - who handled assisted the company in communicating this move). A former editor of the Christian Science Monitor, John Hughes, and newspaper consultant, Chris Urban, headed up this task force.

Surveying the core readership base - will they buy it?

Given the nature of the CSM and its relatively small daily print run, international appeal as a Christian newspaper and its worldwide reputation, the reasoning behind this move - no matter the financial calculations and industry trends - is sound. However, if the core CSM readership did not largely support the change, then all bets would be off. The CSM surveyed its core loyal readership base, taking sample groups to sound out their response. Yemma states that the CSM was most concerned with converting this core group as quickly as possible to reading the newspaper in a new way. Its focus groups revealed that 50% welcomed the idea of decreasing the frequency of the CSM and that of the 50% who were "on the fence" only half of these wanted to preserve it as it is now.

Once the decision to drop the daily print edition was announced, the CSM had a customer service team field all calls and emails about the decision from readers, which Yemma receives a daily report on. The accumulative report of this over the past few weeks is consistently running at just 14% negative. 35% are asking questions about this new model will work, such as price and so forth, with the rest being positive. Yemma feels the CSM has got a, "pretty good response. We expected worse."

Yemma is clear that the most important thing for them to find out is how many people will convert from buying the daily newspaper to the weekly magazine. This will not be known until the new format is marketed in the spring, and they begin selling the weekly in April. The CSM's marketing estimate is that they can covert about 80% of the people currently buying the daily to take up the weekly model. On this, Yemma says, "that is the best we can do at the moment without having perfect knowledge of the future."

Communicating with your reader

On the CSM website currently there is a web cast featuring John Yemma and the Managing Publishing, John Wells. Here they talk over the various changes and why they have come about for their reader. The site also has an in depth editorial on the changes ahead for the venerated newspaper.

"The Web is not just a paperless publishing medium, it is a totally new way of telling stories"

The move to a web focused future will, "unshackle the newsroom from print."  Yemma says "We will get to see what we can do online in a way that we have never been able to do before. I really believe that journalism in is the infancy of story telling online and that online story telling is about interactivity. I expect us to look more at intelligently moderated user generated content, crowd sourcing, and expanding the reach of CSM journalism.  We can look more at speaking to our readers, and asking them to send us their images and stories of the events hitting the headlines, and thus expand our eyes and ears. There is a non-linear way of telling stories on the web that I think has to be developed by journalists who want their stories to be told in the most appropriate way for the medium."

Yemma goes on to say, "The Web is not just a paperless publishing medium: it is a totally new way of telling stories. We can really start using the web for what it is really all about, which is this three dimensional medium getting information and providing it at whatever level you can convey it."

Part 2 - In our next article on the CSM, the Weblog talks to Yemma about reorganising the team and the newsroom for a weekly magazine and web future, retraining, and staff cuts.

The Daily Nation newspaper is in an advantageous position in the African market in that it is part of the largest media conglomerate in Central and Eastern Africa, the Nation Media Group (NMG). The Nation Media Group not only runs newspapers, but also TV stations, mobile platforms, websites and radio across Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Furthermore, the introduction of three undersea fibre optic cables next year will bring broadband to Kenya and significantly change the market. These advances in technology and the large footprint of this media conglomerate brings with it unique opportunities but also unique problems for the Daily Nation.

The Editors Weblog spoke to Ian Fernandes, head of Nation Media Group's Digital Division about aggregation, integration and its plans to become a major African online news service. Before heading the Digital Division, Fernandes worked for thirteen years in broadcasting and five years in newspapers.

"Tremendous growth" for Kenya?

The Daily Nation currently faces challenges with its online division due to the lack of Internet reliability in Kenya. The introduction of broadband is widely expected to result in significant growth in the online and telecommunications market in Kenya. Richard Bell, the chief executive officer of East Africa Capital Partners, a Nairobi-based venture capital group, said when talking about the broadband introduction to Kenya, "We have bet the farm on the fact that East Africa is going to see tremendous growth... We're looking for Africa's next Google."

Unique advantages and disadvantages

The Nation Media Group is preparing itself for  broadband by integrating its news platforms. From one office in Nairobi the NMG runs five print titles, two radio stations, a television station, and the recently created Digital Division, which Fernandes heads up. The goal of integration is to, "take the content from all these brands and to make that content available on converged platforms, meaning the mobile and online platforms. Whereas other newspapers have had to invest in technology for their online editions, for us it was already existing, so all we had to do is, for example, link a Barack Obama story that we have in our print publication to what our broadcast team has done and 'voila' we have a fully multi-media website. We skipped what a lot of newspapers are actually going through today." Fernandes goes on to say, "We are giving our customers the opportunity to chose how he or she wants to view their media." Therefore, if one looks on the Daily Nation website, one can see content from the online team, but also from the broadcasting and print team within NMG as well.

One big basket of content

NMG recently introduced a new content management system called CoreMedia. With this new system, "if we are looking at the content of three of our newspapers and we see that the top story on the TV station is a piece about Barack Obama then we do not have to go and physically place that story on all of the three editions, it automatically picks it up as they are resident in a common database. We have one big basket into which everyone is throwing their content and then the online editors decide to pick what is relevant for their particular portal and it can be done at the click of a button."

Integration across print, TV and radio

In terms of convergence and integration, this is as far as NMG has gone. In terms of newsgathering, each brand still has its own newsroom, and each newsroom goes out and pursues an event individually. However, with the introduction of the new content management system, NMG is now looking at newsroom convergence. Therefore, instead of sending eight different teams to cover one particular event from each angle be it TV or radio, they are looking to pull them all together and have one multi-media team go and cover an event. This would consist of a reporter, cameraman and photographer reporting the story and then placing it in the CoreMedia "basket" of content. The various brands at NMG can then take that content and repackage it so it is suitable to its relevant market.

Problems of size

This is obviously a far more efficient way for NMG to cover a news event, but NMG faces a specific problem with regard the integration of publishing, ie, publishing to multiple platforms from one piece of software. Due to the sheer size of NMG, they have been unable to find suitable software that can carry all their content and efficiently manage it. Fernandes reports that "there is not any software that exists in the world today that can manage the process, because there are very few organisations like us, who need such a service.  The Times of London's video content is from the Times of London, but on the Daily Nation web edition the video content comes from NTV - the NMG's TV station -, which has its own unique brand. That is where the difference is." Fernandes and his team are examining various technologies on the market and reports "newspapers have software that integrates the ability to manage their online content, and with that newspaper companies are looking at getting video as part of that content, which is something they haven't done before. So the technology is still very much at the development stage whereby they are using video content that is suitable for their website and we need to look at video at a higher quality level."  

Aggregation site to challenge international players

The Nation Media Group is also readying itself for this new advancement and has built a news aggregator portal called nationafrica.com. nationafrica.com pulls together all the news from across the Nation Media Group's many platforms. Fernandes reports, "Our vision is to be the media of Africa for Africa. It would be wrong to think we could have newspapers and TV stations all over Africa, but online is the perfect platform." The timing of the launch of this site is significant, if nationafrica.com can establish itself quickly enough in the market, it has the potential to become the dominant force in the aggregator arena in Africa. The players in the market who have their strategies in place for when broadband hits Kenya will be at a marked advantage for establishing their brand in the market.

Fernandes reports that they are expecting the site to grow from just being a portal focusing on the Central and East African region - NMG have three newspapers in Tanzania and a newspaper and TV station in Uganda - to beyond its current reach. NMG have correspondents in 18 African countries providing content on a daily basis, it plans to train and equip these same journalists with "not just note books and pens, but cameras and video cameras" and they will be able to load this content directly onto the NMG system. NMG is in a unique position to challenge the other media conglomerates operating in Africa who have bureaus and correspondents all over Africa, such as the BBC. Fernandes states that this portal is vital to Africa as the international broadcasters like the BBC and CNN tend to focus on the "doom and gloom stories about Africa."

The future
 
NMG has undoubtedly been at an advantage with the expansion of online media due to the fact that it is not just a newspaper company, but the fact that it is not a newspaper company creates challenges for the firm in terms of efficiency for its business model. The challenge of streamlining the publication platforms for an organisation of NMG's size is a significant mountain to climb. Technology is rapidly coming on stream that will aid this process, but could it result in the various NMG brands loosing their identity in the drive for efficiency? This is something that NMG will have to consider as the brand's popularity is in no small part due to its ability to tap into the domestic market.

The future looks bright for this media conglomerate and its move to challenge the international players in the market such as the BBC is a bold and brave move that it needed to take to keep NMG at the heart of the Central and Eastern African market.

Part 2 - In tomorrow's article, social media, the Daily Nation and the search for fame, and why the "Who wants to be a millionaire" format failed in Kenya and how NMG adapted it to the mobile market.

Source: AllAfrica.com
 

The Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin has reduced its print circulation to twice-weekly, choosing to shift much of its content to its site, Madison.com.

In its new format, The Capital Times will be distributed to homes on Wednesdays in tandem with its publishing partner The Wisconsin State Journal, and will also be available for free in city newstands. The Times has also acquired an arts and entertainment tabloid that will be distributed on Thursday.

With the move to the web, The Capital Times will have a circulation of more than 80,000 compared to its current circulation of 17,000.

"Moving our resources to the Web is the wave of the future," editor Dave Zweifel said. "Putting the full force our newsroom on the site will extend the reach and relevance of The Capital Times for years and years to come."

Madison was one of the last American cities of its size (population approximately 200,000 in July 2006) to retain two daily newspapers. The paper plans to retain a staff of 40 to 45 ; however, according to Capital Times publisher Clayton Frink, job cuts of up to 40 employees are likely.

Sources : E-Media Tidbits, Fading to Black through IFRA Executive News Service, Wisconsin State Journal, City-Data.com

The Web first publishing policy adopted by the Guardian and The Times of London for certain stories has triggered images of an online-only world, paperless newspapers, significantly impacting the media consumer’s life.

But what about in the newsroom? Every deadline will be immediate, writes The Australian’s Mark Day.

Last month in Moscow, the Russian Guild of Press Publishers held the First Russian Publishers Conference.  During the Press Freedom Seminar, President of the World Editors Forum and Saturday Editor of The Times (London), George Brock, gave a talk discussing the freedom of the press in Russia, whose text is posted below. 

The European Commission today launched a public consultation on "how to enhance the competitiveness of the publishing sector in the EU's increasingly digital economy." The replies to the consultation will be presented at a publisher's summit taking place on December 6 in Brussels and should help policy makers in the EU to better understand the challenges and need of the publishing industry in the EU.

Already next Friday editors-in-chief from eight European newspapers and magazines, including Emily Bell from Guardian Unlimited (UK) and Tøger Seidenfaden from POLITIKEN (Denmark), will meet in Brussels to discuss and give their view on strategic challenges affecting the publishing sector, like the impact of web-based and 24 hour television news or how particular Commission policies affected the editorial freedom and commercial prospect of the press. Viviane Reding, commissioner of Information Society and Media, has invited the editors-in-chief to the meeting. Reding said on Noticias.info: "The consultation launched today demonstrates the importance the Barroso Commission is giving to the media industry, and in particular to the written press ... I expect that the outcome of this consultation will give the industry, but also the EU institutions and national governments a precise picture of the economic situation of the publishing industry and of the challenges it is currently facing."

The European Commission today launched a public consultation on "how to enhance the competitiveness of the publishing sector in the EU's increasingly digital economy." The replies to the consultation will be presented at a publisher's summit taking place on December 6 in Brussels and should help policy makers in the EU to better understand the challenges and need of the publishing industry in the EU.

Already next Friday editors-in-chief from eight European newspapers and magazines, including Emily Bell from Guardian Unlimited (UK) and Tøger Seidenfaden from POLITIKEN (Denmark), will meet in Brussels to discuss and give their view on strategic challenges affecting the publishing sector, like the impact of web-based and 24 hour television news or how particular Commission policies affected the editorial freedom and commercial prospect of the press. Viviane Reding, commissioner of Information Society and Media, has invited the editors-in-chief to the meeting. Reding said on Noticias.info: "The consultation launched today demonstrates the importance the Barroso Commission is giving to the media industry, and in particular to the written press ... I expect that the outcome of this consultation will give the industry, but also the EU institutions and national governments a precise picture of the economic situation of the publishing industry and of the challenges it is currently facing."

Good (and sometimes encouraging and sometimes worrying) article from The Australian on how the newspaper industry can be successful in the coming years: "Markets for newspapers and most magazines will continue to blur and will effectively merge within 25 years, according to the chief executive of APN News & Media, Brendan Hopkins.

Hopkins told editors at the Commonwealth Press Union conference in Sydney that newspapers were not a sunset industry, provided investment in the future was made now.

Newspapers were not just newspapers any more, Hopkins said, they had become the "ultimate fast-moving consumer good [inexpensive, high-turnover items such as groceries]" in an environment where readers were increasingly selective, time-starved and media-savvy.

In a big-picture view of the industry's future, he said its health would not be determined by editorial content alone. Newspapers would have to be more marketing-driven, with budgets increased to "invest for growth" rather than "manage for decline".

"Gone are the days when there were two powerhouses of any good newspaper: the newsroom and the advertising sales force ... the editorial and advertising teams must now be joined, directed and in some cases led by the product development and marketers as the third force in newspaper publishing."

For the Editors Weblog, this management approach is not the best to answer the credibility and truth crisis met by newspapers. But we need to hear Brendan Hopkins in some other statements...

Good (and sometimes encouraging and sometimes worrying) article from The Australian on how the newspaper industry can be successful in the coming years: "Markets for newspapers and most magazines will continue to blur and will effectively merge within 25 years, according to the chief executive of APN News & Media, Brendan Hopkins.

Hopkins told editors at the Commonwealth Press Union conference in Sydney that newspapers were not a sunset industry, provided investment in the future was made now.

Newspapers were not just newspapers any more, Hopkins said, they had become the "ultimate fast-moving consumer good [inexpensive, high-turnover items such as groceries]" in an environment where readers were increasingly selective, time-starved and media-savvy.

In a big-picture view of the industry's future, he said its health would not be determined by editorial content alone. Newspapers would have to be more marketing-driven, with budgets increased to "invest for growth" rather than "manage for decline".

"Gone are the days when there were two powerhouses of any good newspaper: the newsroom and the advertising sales force ... the editorial and advertising teams must now be joined, directed and in some cases led by the product development and marketers as the third force in newspaper publishing."

For the Editors Weblog, this management approach is not the best to answer the credibility and truth crisis met by newspapers. But we need to hear Brendan Hopkins in some other statements...

Good (and sometimes encouraging and sometimes worrying) article from The Australian on how the newspaper industry can be successful in the coming years: "Markets for newspapers and most magazines will continue to blur and will effectively merge within 25 years, according to the chief executive of APN News & Media, Brendan Hopkins.

Hopkins told editors at the Commonwealth Press Union conference in Sydney that newspapers were not a sunset industry, provided investment in the future was made now.

Newspapers were not just newspapers any more, Hopkins said, they had become the "ultimate fast-moving consumer good [inexpensive, high-turnover items such as groceries]" in an environment where readers were increasingly selective, time-starved and media-savvy.

In a big-picture view of the industry's future, he said its health would not be determined by editorial content alone. Newspapers would have to be more marketing-driven, with budgets increased to "invest for growth" rather than "manage for decline".

"Gone are the days when there were two powerhouses of any good newspaper: the newsroom and the advertising sales force ... the editorial and advertising teams must now be joined, directed and in some cases led by the product development and marketers as the third force in newspaper publishing."

For the Editors Weblog, this management approach is not the best to answer the credibility and truth crisis met by newspapers. But we need to hear Brendan Hopkins in some other statements...