Results matching “digital publishing conference how”

Detroit Media Partnership CEO David Hunke has declared that the company is "committed" to publishing two dailies in Detroit, never considering shutting down The Detroit Daily News amidst its current financial situation, according to Editor and Publisher.

The partnership has announced radical changes to the content and distribution of Detroit's two dailies, the News and The Detroit Free Press, foregoing home delivery except for Thursday, Friday and Sunday editions, and printing a one-section newspaper for single-copy sales the rest of the week.

The main criticism of the industry is that it does "little, incremental changes," Hunke said, and the changes will ensure the papers' survival.

The 'Secret Weapon' of Newspapers in the Digital Age? Paper!
William Powers, Media Columnist, The Nation, USA

Paper is an island of peace in the digital 'chaos' and an 'emerging strength' for media which demands much more examination, William Powers said in his keynote address to the annual Readership Conference.

"The world needs - desperately needs - what newspapers do," said Mr Powers, the media columnist for The Nation magazine in the United States and author of "Hamlet's Blackberry," an essay on the enduring power of paper.

Following on from his presentation at the World Association of Newspapers' Digital Publishing and Readership Conference in Amsterdam yesterday, Thomson Reuters Product Manager for Mobile, Ilicco Elia, told the Editors Weblog that mobile publishing did not create significant additional work in the newsroom.


Elia also reported that they have one publishing system for all platforms, and if they chose to, they can publish to all channels simultaneously.

Reuters have noted that the most popular content with their readers is stock exchange data. Elia believes that mobile content is popular with users for useful information when on the move, ie, restaurants in the locality, rather than for in-depth pieces.

Elia also said that they are upgrading the equipment they give to journalist, the team are now being given Nokia N82 phones. However, rather that each reporter being given one as part of their own reporting equipment, Elia says they will have a number of them in their newsroom and that journalists will take them as and when they need them.

Photo by Emiel Muijderman

Success of the Web? Try Newspaper Values With a New Twist
Caroline Little, Adviser to Guardian News & Media and former CEO and publisher of Washington Post/Newsweek Interactives, United States:

"Keep one foot rooted in the core journalism values of the core product, and one that happens to be delivering the most revenue, and with the other, stretch as far as possible to try new things in this new medium."

"The news websites share the same journalistic values as the newspapers, but the web folks also are working in a medium that's indisputably different, one that requires trying new things and sometimes going down in flames," she said. "Fear of failure can be debilitating. All we have to lose by being too conservative is everything."

"You need to make a mobile site," said Ilicco Elia, Head of Mobile Europe at Reuters, at the 3rd World Digital Publishing Conference & Expo held in Amsterdam. He also said media organizations should begin thinking of mobile as an equally important platform, rather than as an isolated venture.

A number of newspapers have yet to even create a mobile edition, but Elia encouraged them to try to launch a basic version.

Take your regular website, strip it from its pictures, RSS feeds and every other bells and whistles but text.

Once the content is made available to users, then developers can begin implementing fancier features.

According to him, Reuters' current mobile site was initially designed to be as simple as possible, "so you can get what you want as quickly as you want."

But "First things first, get the content available on a mobile phone."

Relative to business opportunities, "You need to start thinking of mobile as a part of a much bigger platform," said Elia. "This as a package is worth more than the sum of each part."

He did warn publishers and editors not to expect generating substantial revenue through mobile, at least in the short term.

Source: Ilicco Elia, Head of Mobile Europe, Reuters - Photo credit: Emiel Muijderman

24.com's Matthew Buckland said today at the World Association of Newspapers' Digital Publishing and Readership Conference in Amsterdam that "limited gate keeping" is necessary for citizen journalism sites.

In an interview with the Editors Weblog, Buckland said that if a media company wishes to have a "hands off" citizen journalist site then it should market it under a separate brand.

Speaking about the recent erroneous story on CNN's iReport site - which reported that Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, had died - Buckland said in this instance, "CNN's implementation of citizen journalism failed." Buckland made it clear that he did not believe that this incident highlighted a weakness with the concept of citizen journalist, but that this error simply made it clear that policing is necessary.

Newspapers around the world are facing a challenging time, not only because of the current difficult economic climate and declining advertising revenues, but also because of the ever more rapid push to multi-platform publishing and the changes to the operation that this has involved. Is it time the whole operating model underwent a shake-up? Neil Benson, Editorial Director - Regionals, at Trinity Mirror believes that newspapers need to radically overhaul the entire structure and that, being from a "conservative industry", they have been "overly-cautious" for far too long.

Benson, and the three Editors of the Birmingham titles affected, have rewritten the rulebook on workflow and newsroom management at the Birmingham Post (Editor Marc Reeves - business orientated newspaper), Sunday Mercury (Editor David Brookes - tabloid) and Birmingham Mail (Editor Steve Dyson - a popular evening paper); and the new system is scheduled to go live in mid-October. Benson says that in previous recessions for the media industry, the standard way newspapers have responded is to cut the pagination of the paper and axe staff, but Trinity felt that this was simply "inadequate". Benson says, "The financial pressure is nothing new, but the additional factor is the internet and convergence and the effect that this is having on the industry, so we felt that rather than do the straightforward cost-cutting, we needed to do something much more imaginative." The Editors Weblog spoke to Benson to get all the details.

Rethinking workflow

Trinity Mirror has been using the same tried and tested newsroom workflow as most other newspapers, ie, (1) journalist writes the article, (2) submits it to the news desk, (3) designer fits the story into the page, (4) sub-editing desk scrutinizes, and (5) final revision and publication. This whole system has been completely turned on its head, with Benson stating, "We are truly a multi-media business now, so lets structure for that." The old five-step system has now been honed down to just three steps: create, place and complete. Benson says that not only did they have to look at the overall operating costs in the current difficult economic climate, but they also wanted to fully integrate multi-media working practises into the operation. With the advent of new publishing platforms, such as mobile and the Internet, newsrooms have had to adapt rapidly and have thus frequently "bolted-on" on new practises to the traditional model. Benson wanted to revamp the whole process so that multimedia is fully integrated into the operation.

The new workflow system is as follows:

1) Reporters - who will now be known as multimedia journalists*, - create the content.
2) Send to the "Multimedia" desk where a newly trained multi-skilled team will not only check the copy but also place it into heavily templated pages. This is the key step in the reinvention; here Trinity have merged the news editing and production function into one.
3) Page finishing, revising and tidying up.

Benson says he cannot remember such substantial changes being made to a newsroom in 35 years. Not only will this system help to cut costs and integrate multimedia publishing, but it will also cut down on the time between a reporter finding a story and it appearing in print or online. Furthermore, the three titles at Trinity Mirror Midlands will all be sharing a newsroom; so if a big story breaks the merged newsroom can push more resources towards the story and cover it more thoroughly than was ever possible before.

Integrated newsroom - open space and collaboration

One of the key areas where the changes can be seen is in the newsroom team itself; the individual Head of Content or Head of Sport for each title will be merged and will now work across all titles and channels. Furthermore, the whole team, including advertising and sales, will all be on one floor working together.

In the centre of the new newsroom (the whole team is moving to a new purpose-designed site in Birmingham in about a month's time) there will be a structure that Benson describes as being "like a broken doughnut" (ie, a round structure, open at two points for exit and entry) which is the multimedia desk: everything will be directed from this central hub. It will also contain the conference table where all of the news meeting will take place, making it open to the entire staff rather than in the Editors office behind a closed door as in the past. This structure also enables the multi-media desk staff to always be at their workstations even during the news meetings.

Furthermore, over the summer, a new publishing system was introduced called "Content Watch" (produced by a MediaSpectrum) which is completely web-based making it possible to file copy and sub copy from anywhere.

Training journalists: the "nuts and bolts" of integration

The training programme undertaken to make this radical change in structure possible has been comprehensive. Benson describes the training as "nuts and bolts" and philosophical, ie, enabling the team to "think" multi-media when they are working.  Staffers are all being equipped with laptops for filing on the move and Smartphones (Nokia 95 Smartphones for shooting video, streaming video, and take digital pictures), so there have been practical training sessions for the new kit, being led by the Head of Multimedia and the editorial training manager.

The team have brought in Paul Bradshaw from Birmingham City University, who has an online journalism blog, for the philosophical side; the sessions involve talks on multimedia and issues surrounding it for senior staffer, who will then "percolate this knowledge down". The staff have also been attending a series of multimedia awareness sessions led by Andrew Dickinson from the University of Central Lancashire, who also has a journalism blog.

Benson is very clear on the importance of this training programme, "We are asking people to do something very new, and unless you invest in the training it is not going to work."

Managing the team through unfamiliar waters

Another key consideration for Trinity Mirror in this reinvigoration of its newsroom has been its staff. The process resulted in 65 voluntary redundancies at the newspapers and this understandably caused concern for staffers at the group's Birmingham titles. Furthermore, with the whole workflow system being turned on its head, staffers were required to apply for roles within the new structure. This, reports Benson, was a difficult decision and one "not taken lightly". However, the changes in structure are so radical that they felt it was necessary to take this step to underline the enormous change the Birmingham titles were undertaking, and for the staff to truly consider if they wanted to be involved in it. Benson reports, "We had our eyes open, we expected a big reaction."

Bearing this in mind, management moved ahead quickly and launched a consultation period where staffers had one-to-one sessions to discuss concerns and ask questions. Rapidly after, the job application process started.  

The UK's National Union of Journalists took a role in the process, telling management that they would fight any forced redundancies; thankfully, the voluntary process proved successful and a strike was averted. Benson reports that communication was open with the union throughout the process.

With hindsight?

Trinity Mirror Midlands is nearing the finishing line in this whole process, but with the benefit of hindsight, would they have done anything differently? Benson says that he does not feel that there is a "fundamental" in the process that they got wrong. He does believe that the communication process with staff is vital and needs to be as open and detailed as possible. For Trinity, communication has been, "pretty good, but more would have been better."

Furthermore, with the office move planned well in advance and with Trinity's desire to undertake the changes before the office move so teething problems could be ironed out, lack of time was an issue. Benson says, "Ideally, a bit more time, but then again I have been involved in projects in the past where you can give yourself too much time. Being journalists, we all like a deadline."

* The multimedia journalists role now involves shooting video, taking picture, and so forth, as well as being equipped to file from anywhere with the new web-based publishing platform.

As the media landscape changes, seven longstanding competitors in the French newspaper market have been working together in an unprecedented way to test whether e-paper is a viable device to take newspapers forward. However, now that the test is over, each seems to have formed a different opinion on how to take this new publishing platform to the next level.

Electronic paper, or e-paper, is a portable display technology designed to mimic the appearance of ordinary ink on paper. It can be refreshed or rewritten countless times, thus negating the need for dead-tree paper. With rapidly rising paper, printing and distribution costs, such a device could be a boon to newspapers everywhere - if readers accept the device.

To gauge public demand for e-paper, the three main national French dailies, Le Monde, Le Figaro, and Libération; the sports paper L'Équipe; the tabloid, Le Parisien; the business paper, Les Échos; and the entertainment-magazine Télérama, joined forces with telecommunications company France Telecom to test the Read&Go e-paper device. The survey group consisted of 120 people and took place over the course of the past few months. Having recently ended the test, Le Monde, Les Echos and Le Figaro revealed their findings.

Le Monde's sceptical optimism

According to General Director of LeMonde Interactif, Dao Nguyen, newspapers have felt compelled to design their own e-paper device. At the IFRA International E-Reading Conference in Paris, Nguyen said that the reading experience of newspaper content on the current devices in the market - for example the Kindle and Sony E-Reader - is unsatisfactory, going so far as to say, "There is no newspaper experience on a Kindle. They have shoved a newspaper into a book device." Nguyen feels that the makers of the current e-readers did not consider newspapers at all when designing the devices, commenting, "I don't blame them. Amazon is interested in selling books through Kindle."

However, despite these issues in its conception, Le Monde reported some positive findings from their e-paper trial with Read&Go. For instance, e-reader users read the device in the same fashion as they read a newspaper's print edition, ie, spending 20 to 30 minutes reading the news in one sitting. These numbers are much higher - and better for advertising revenue - than those of reader time spent with online editions, where people scan headlines and hop in and out throughout the day. Furthermore, the trial users were positive about the experience. According to an article in the New York Times, at least one user of the Read&Go device enjoyed the fact that it is both usable in direct sunlight, something difficult with a computer screen, as well as in complete darkness, which is impossible with a printed newspaper.

Following the test, Le Monde said it needs time to crunch the numbers and consider the statistics before fully committing, but that early indications are positive. Nguyen hinted that Le Monde feels confident that the relationship it has with its readers is strong enough that the paper will be able to sell a branded reader, possibly with subscriptions to Le Monde content. However, Nguyen refused to confirm if Le Monde is taking its e-paper experiment forward.

Les Echos: Want newspapers to work together

Contrary to the branded approach voiced by Le Monde, Philipe Jannet, Electronic Publishing Editor of Les Échoes believes that newspapers need to work together if they are to succeed with the new platform. During his presentation at the Ifra conference, he reported that users like to access many different news sources and therefore, a proprietary device will not work. Jannet believes that the newspapers must "own" the news they produce and pool their resources with other newspapers, thus having access to a pool of articles, much in the same way as Google News or Yahoo! News.

Les Échoes, according to Jannet, wants newspapers to group together to "sell articles", for example if a user is interested in the Cannes Film Festival, the news sources can provide the client with all the information they have on it in bulk. He expects a future where newspapers do not necessarily just sell newspapers with the new technology, but sell individual articles.

Le Figaro: E-Papers are the "Third Possibility"

In the same way that Jannet feels that newspapers should bundle content with other providers on e-readers, Clement Courvoisier, Digital Marketing Director of Le Figaro, was happy to have joined forces with the group of seven newspapers in order to test the device. Not only did it allow Le Figaro to share the expense of the experiment, but it also showed Le Figaro that there exists a "third possibility" to print papers and online editions.

Courvoisier does not expect a significant amount of extra work for newsroom staffers if the platform is introduced, as content is uploaded to the e-reader device much like it is to Le Figaro's website. Courvoisier stated that the there had "not yet" been any newsroom reorganisation due to the experiment, but he stated that it is still only in test phase.

During the test, no extra content was produced for this platform, Le Figaro used online articles for Read&Go; once again this could change further down the line if the product is released.

As at Le Monde, the visual style will be closer to that of the print edition. This is interesting as the news will be electronically provided making it conceptually closer to online, but perhaps because of its "hand-held" nature, the newspapers want it to reflect the print edition.

One consumer, multiple reading devices?

Despite the positive trial results, the path ahead remains unclear. A limited release of the product to test the waters seems the most sensible way to go - and a comprehensive advertising campaign - this is the type of product that consumers will either fully embrace or completely reject.

During her speech, Le Monde's Nguyen envisioned a future in which individuals have many devices for reading, but this seems an inconvenient and expensive prospect. What is more likely is that one device that meets all consumers various needs, including newspaper reading, will be the most successful.

Source: IFRA International E-Reading Conference, New York Times

Newspaper companies have been successful in generating audience and attention with their digital platforms. But the Holy Grail for newspaper companies is how to produce significant revenues online.

Companies that have had success in making money from the web -- from citizen journalism, cross-media advertising, web TV, mobile and other digital strategies -- will be featured in the World Digital Publishing Conference & Expo, to be held in Amsterdam on 15 and 16 October.

Speakers at the World Association of Newspapers event will include Caroline Little, CEO of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, Manual Mirat, CEO of Prisacom in Spain, Eric Scherer, Business Development Director of Agence France Presse's Olympics coverage, Jorma Harkonen, Director of Bonnier's MTV3 mobile strategy in Finland, and many others.

Full details of the event, which will be held back-to-back with WAN's annual Readership Conference & Expo, can be found here.

Atex, provider of mission-critical software solutions and services to the global media industry, has acquired of Polopoly, which develops web publishing and content management systems. With this acquisition, Atex hopes to provide a single global vendor for delivering news and advertising through different mediums.

John Hawkins, Atex Group CEO says, "With our roots firmly established in the print world, Atex recognises the shift from print to online and the market trends driving the shape of the industry. Atex wants to see 50% of its revenues come from web-centric, mobile and video applications by 2011."

Atex DNA is designed to "help create innovative revenue sources, reduce operating costs, and engage both younger and older audiences," according to its website. Based in Stockholm, Sweden, Polopoly AB's platform is designed to maximize efficiency in media utilization by offering tools to easily create and manage websites and providing "highly interactive, collaborative and community-focused experiences for visitors" on a variety of digital devices.  
 
Hawkins adds, "As a business partner with the World Association of Newspapers in the SFN (Shaping the Future of the Newspaper) project, we have developed a roadmap for our customers based on our Atex DNA strategy, and this acquisition of Polopoly continues to demonstrate Atex's engagement and understanding of our customers' needs going forward in bridging the print and digital media worlds."

Four editors in chief will be talking about ATEX and Polopoly in a session on content management systems at the World Editors Forum Conference which will be held in Sweden this year.

For more information on the World Editors Forum Conference, click here.

Source: ATEX through IFRA Executive News Service
 

Publishers everywhere are being asked to implement ACAP, Automated Content Access Protocol, developed at the initiative of the World Association of Newspapers, the International Publishers Association and the European Publishers Council.

What will the newspaper look like in 2020? The World Association of Newspapers asked  22 futurists, academics, industry insiders, internet pioneers and other media experts to envision the newspaper of the future, and their responses say much about the present state of the newspaper business.

The theme of this year's World Digital Publishing Conference is the Digital Revenue Revolution. Leon Levitt, Vice President of Digital Media at Cox Newspapers spoke about his company's experience adapting to the changing media landscape.

The World Association of Newspapers is organizing two major events in October for the whole of the press industry. The World Digital Publishing Conference & Expo, to be held on Oct. 17-18, and the World Editor and Marketeer Conference & Expo, to be held on Oct. 18-19, will take place consecutively in Amsterdam.

At a June 26 conference in London, the World Association of Newspapers and a global coalition of publishing and media groups gave a progress report on the development of the Automated Content Access Protocol.  ACAP is a new standard with which online content providers could automatically regulate the use of their content through search engines operators.

The quality of print is currently better than online, editors agreed in a panel discussion at the 14th World Editors Forum Editors of South Africa’s Editors Forum on the challenges of quality editorial in the digital age.

Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, has called for newspapers – especially in the UK – to appoint more readers’ editors. Indeed, the role of ombudsmen has seemingly diminished in the digital age, at a time when it is even more crucial.

At the 6th annual Ifra International Newsroom Summit, representatives from two of 2006’s most closely watched news organizations presented the conference with the trials and tribulations of their respective newsroom integration processes. Will Lewis gave the anxious audience a peek into the Daily Telegraph’s new newsroom and Michael Maness from Gannett detailed his organization’s dive into hyper-local "Information Centers."

At the Magazine Publishers of America’s annual digital conference, much talk pointed towards magazines’ websites evolving towards user-driven content and video. As newspapers become magazine-ish, perhaps there’s something in it for them.

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 BBC is often cited as one of the traditional organizations that has taken advantage of the Internet to expand its already monumental influence. The company’s head of News Interactive, Pete Clifton, detailed his employer’s strategy when it came to developing its internationally acclaimed website at the World Digital Publishing Conference.

The Bakersfield Californian is regularly used as the example of a local paper that has embraced and succeeded in the world of new media. Dan Pacheco, Senior Manager of Digital Products for the paper addressed the audience at the first World Digital Publishing Conference in London.

Head of the Continuous Newsdesk at the New York Times, Neil Chase, joined the speakers at the first World Digital Publishing Conference to talk about the latest innovations at what is becoming the world’s paper of record thanks to its website.

Speaker vignettes from the World Digital Publishing Conference.

Robb Montgomery reports from London in this video blog for the World Editors Forum.