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The latest issue of Courrier International to hit French newsstands gathers translated newspaper articles themed on the uncertain future of the press. From Washington, in a lengthy set of extracts from the New Republic, Paul Starr makes three strong cases for why democracy will be endangered without a newspaper. He hints that American democracy may already have been slighted seeing that national, regional and local newspapers are dwindling in terms of content they can run since printing costs have caused them to scale back on the numbers of pages they print.

He opens his debate by lamenting the fact that Americans have taken [American] journalism (in the form of a printed newspaper) for granted as newspapers have been such an ''integral part of daily life in America, so central to politics and culture and business, and so powerful and profitable in their own right, that it is easy to forget what a remarkable historical invention they are.''

A lobbying campaign in the UK has called for the government to up the penalties for online filesharing, a practice in which over 7million UK residents regularly partake. The campaign, echoing that of the French government, takes an economical outlook, claiming that illegal filesharing is costing thousands of jobs in the UK and is denting the Kingdom's already slumping GDP. Is this a similar phenomenon to that which is causing UK and Western newspapers to shed staff at an unprecedented rate? Can newspapers, whose bottom line many consider to be suffering from digital content, learn from the plight of the music and entertainment industries affected by filesharing?

Yes and no. 

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.

Appearing on stage together at the D: All Things Digital conference, the Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth and the founder of the Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington, discussed the future of the news industry.

Weymouth, despite being confronted with a figure head of the online news movement, the rise of which having contributed to the current insecurities of the printed news industry, made it clear that she would not let herself, nor her publications, be considered as retrograde in a rapidly evolving environment.  Rather, the publisher was emphatic that newspapers need to innovate in order that they ride "the incredible seismic shift in the industry".

Constructive criticism leads to development - but what about when the critic lacks professional knowledge or qualifications in the subject of their opinions? Not a problem, according to Christopher Harper, an associate professor at Temple University's department of journalism, writing about the role of the blogosphere in the criticism of journalists.

Harper writes that "They might be wrong in their analysis, but I think that any... journalistic practice is certainly open to criticism. It doesn't mean that criticism is necessarily valid, but I think it's great that they question the things that we do." He also writes that the traditional concepts of fair, balanced and objective reporting are outdated, that fact can be interspersed with opinion and that this is one of the great things about the blogosphere.

According to the New York Times, Amazon.com Inc. may be preparing to launch its new, larger Kindle this week.

Plastic Logic Ltd., which is planning to give Amazon a run for its money by the time it introduces its e-reader in 2010 (pictured below), may have a harder time of upsetting the market leader than it originally envisioned.

The Financial Times has reported that Newsweek magazine is in the midst of a face-lift in a bid to claw back profits and reposition itself as a relevant news source.

Speaking to reporter Kenneth Li from the Newsweek offices in New York, editor Jon Meacham confirmed that a 5year-plan aimed at turning around business had been submitted last November: "You can keep doing what you have been doing all the time and march nobly off a cliff or you can adapt and change," said Meacham.

Today Editor and Publisher posted an interesting article on the Washington Post's obituary blog, "Post Mortem: The blog about the end of the story." As E&P senior editor Joe Strupp points out, there are blogs for everything else on the internet, why not for habitual and occasional obituary readers?

Like all websites and blogs, an obituary blog must hold the reader's interest to maintain site traffic, requiring the Post's obituary team to generate interesting and thoughtful stories and posts from a somewhat morbid subject. However, the team promotes the blog as a celebration of life saying, "For those of us who write them, obituaries are never morbid because they focus on the endlessly fascinating ways people choose to live their lives."

According to researchers from City University London's Graduate School of Journalism, going online only could cause a newspaper to lose 75% of its revenue and web traffic can actually fall. For their report 'Taking the paper out of news,' Neil Thurman and Merja Myllylahti studied Finnish financial daily Taloussanomat which dropped its print edition at the end of 2007, due to declining readership and heavy losses. They interviewed the CEO and Editor-in-Chief, as well as several other editors and journalists.

The researchers state that "logic might suggest that if a newspaper's content ceases to be available in print form, the title's website would start to register a significantly higher number of visitors." But in fact, following an initial rise, the paper's unique users started to fall months after the paper went online-only, and "compared with the websites of three newspapers who retained a print version, Taloussanomat's performance looks very poor indeed." One such website is that of its main competitor, Kauppalehti, which runs an integrated print-online operation.

Small Texas newspaper the Daily Sentinel employs Twitter to publish breaking news alerts on its Web site, and Online Editor Matthew Stoff and Lead Developer David Durrett have shared a tutorial, including code, explaining how to create the Twitter widget. "If you can send an e-mail," they say, "you can publish breaking news."

Stoff and Durrett devised the Twitter widget as a solution to a newsroom problem: because publishing online required Web staff's technical expertise, breaking news would often go unpublished until certain staff members were available. "We wanted to take advantage of Twitter's ease of use so that reporters and editors with little or no training could post headlines quickly without special software and without having to memorize a technical process," the tutorial explains. "The resulting method uses e-mail as the interface for posting short headlines (which are actually Twitter messages, or 'tweets') to the Web site."

The hotel chain has confirmed that it will no longer automatically give guests free newspapers, although those guests who would like a complimentary newspaper will still be given the option.

Marriott International claims that there is less of a demand for newspapers than in previous years and, given this, it would be imprudent to continue to give away potentially unwanted newspapers.

IBM released a global media study this week that reveals that media companies are failing to meet the expectations of digital consumers and advertisers. The study, titled "Beyond Advertising: Choosing a Strategic Path to the Digital Consumer" surveyed 2,800 consumers across six countries and included interviews with advertising industry professionals. Its results indicate four important media trends: the adoption of new distribution formats, a shift in advertising spending, digital migration of platforms, and the emergence of new capabilities due to moves by new and existing player.

The long-term prospects for US newspapers such as the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times "may more profoundly affect the destiny of the United States" than those of the key banks that seem critical to resolving the financial crisis, according to Albert R. Hunt, writing in the International Herald Tribune. The "devastation" of the industry has led to the decimation of overseas and Washington coverage, he believes.

At South by Southwest 2009, the talk entitled 'User Generated Content: State of the Union', was chaired by Chris Tolles of Topix.com, who said that the concept of UGC is "integral" to the Internet. He compared the top 10 sites now with those from 10 years ago, and noted the shift towards user content frameworks such as YouTube and Facebook. With regard to online news publications, the option for users to comment at the end of articles is common practice - although not without its problems.

Todd Morrey of Moss RackSpace's cloud project pointed out that whilst UGC may be all over the Internet, the existence of "mob mentality" results in a reliance "on humans to stay in front of the site and monitor it". This reliance in some ways detracts from the entire focus of UGC, although doesn't detract from its evident popularity. In reference to Obama's much discussed use of social media in his election campaign and inauguration, and the ongoing saga of how to make money from free and user generated online content; Tolles stated "if you can get elected on this stuff, you can certainly make some money from it".

The "bleakest" ever report on the State of the News Media in the US has just been released by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Although the traditional media have held on to their audience numbers and it seems that "the old norms of traditional journalism continue to have value," the report comes to the same conclusion that we all have: the big problem is that of revenue.

One of the most important developments, states the report, is that audience migration to the Internet is now accelerating: according to one survey the number of Americans who regularly go online for news jumped 19% in the last two years and in 2008 alone traffic to the top 50 news sites rose 27%. This shift "means that the news industry has to reinvent itself sooner than it thought," particularly in light of the worsening economy. Executives estimate that the recession at least doubled revenue losses in the news industry in 2008.

The Internet has changed the way that people read newspapers in many ways: not least because news aggregators such as Google News have helped to bring readers away from the habit of focussing their news reading on just one paper's website. Now most Internet-savvy users are accustomed to visiting many different websites and choosing the source that they find appropriate for each story they would like to read. But as newspapers' print revenue drops, frustration at the way that aggregators make money out of content which is not their own has been increasing amongst newspaper publishers. Could Google's recent adoption of small text advertisements on US Google News be the last straw?

The basics of news aggregation

Many different news aggregators exist: those run by media giants such as Yahoo, those based on reader interaction such as Digg and others like the Huffington Post and the Daily Beast which provide aggregation alongside original reporting and commentary. Some provide just headlines; Google News, however also collects brief excerpts from articles on its homepage, and makes them available via a search function. Unlike some aggregators such as the Drudge Report that have a human editor choosing the headlines, Google News aggregation is entirely automatic, using algorithms which carry out contextual analysis and group similar stories together. According to Google, articles are ranked based on "how often and on what sites a story appears online," and "based on certain characteristics of news content such as freshness, location, relevance and diversity."

Google's mission

News aggregation has been an extremely controversial issue for many years. Google News creator Krishna Bharat claims that Google's service aims to "encourage readers to get a broader perspective by digging deeper into the news - reading ten articles instead of one, perhaps." This in itself is undoubtedly a respectable idea, and reflects one of the great advantages of online news for consumers: the ability to easily read around a topic. According to William Echikson, Google's Senior Manager for Communications, "Google makes the news more accessible and more interesting - encouraging people to read more and so benefiting the news industry as a whole." It can be argued that Google does indeed benefit the news industry by directing traffic to newspaper websites and hence promotes newspaper content. This is perhaps especially pertinent for smaller papers which would not otherwise get many visitors to their sites: when a major event occurs locally, they might suddenly find themselves topping the Google News homepage.

Publishers vs. Google

Despite some undeniable benefits for readers and apparent benefits for newspapers, some newspaper publishers are resentful of Google News and other similar aggregators. The essential problem is that publishers do not feel that the click through rate to articles is high enough, and therefore any additional advertising revenue that they would gain from extra viewings of individual articles does not compensate for the income they lose from readers not going direct to their newspaper websites. For Google News search results, the click through rate is only about 10%. People scan headlines and the brief article excerpts that appear but then few seem to bother to read full stories, meaning that despite their content being used, newspapers are not receiving any income. And even if people do click through, it means that they are less likely to visit newspapers' homepages and therefore newspapers cannot make much money from their premium advertising spots. There have already been protests: Belgian newspaper copyright group CopiePresse is in the process of seeking 49 million euro in damages from Google for storing and reproducing Belgian newspapers' articles without permission. Another of the complaints that newspapers have is that the aggregators' crawlers do not distinguish between "good" journalism and everything else.

Advertising adds to conflict

Newspaper owners have also been opposed to the fact that advertisements are placed alongside search results on the general Google site, meaning that Google is directly making money from other people's content. The recent decision to place advertising on search results for the US version of Google News after keeping it ad-free for six years is a move that can only further anger many publishers, as it seems now obvious that Google is, after all, just trying to make money out of newspaper content. According to the New York Times, a Google spokesman said that Google had devised an approach that could deliver contextually relevant ads so had decided to go ahead with them. NYT writer David Carr was extremely unimpressed, stating that "newspapers' audiences are harvested and sold divorced from the content that attracted them in the first place."

It is not clear whether the company intends to start putting ads on Google News outside the US. According to Press Gazette, Europe's notions of "fair use" are more heavily weighted in publishers' favour than in the US. CopiePresse has asserted that it will take further legal action if ads are placed on Belgian Google News.

Newspapers' anti-aggregator options?

So, apart from simply suing Google and trying to halt a seemingly irreversible trend, how can newspapers tackle these problems, which are all the more relevant in this time of financial crisis?  One possibility is the solution provided by ACAP, or Automated Content Access Protocol, a coalition of newspaper, magazine and book publishers led by the World Association of Newspapers, which claims to put "content owners in control of their online content in a way that is conducive to developing new online business models, putting new, high-quality content on the net and to maximizing the benefits of the relationship with search engines." In essence, it would mean that copyrighted material could not be used so freely in search engines. Over 700 news organisations have implemented ACAP as a symbolic gesture in anticipation of search engines recognising the service.

One further non-confrontational solution could be for newspapers themselves to provide more aggregation, such as the NYT's Times Extra page: an alternative homepage which includes links to articles from other sites under the Times' own stories. The Washington Post has a politics-specific Political Browser which freely links to other publications. If newspapers embraced this linking further, they could succeed in providing significant competition to aggregators. As well as just linking to other papers, they could utilise a product such as Pluck's BlogBurst, which is effectively a blog syndication service, allowing newspapers to easily search 'quality' blogs and find content to supplement their own stories. Obviously to do this newspapers must adopt "a fundamentally different mindset" to quote Scott Karp, who coined the term "link journalism": they must stop trying to keep people within their own sites and realise that sending them away to appropriately interesting articles may well keep them coming back for more. The Huffington Post, for example, thrives on sending readers away to other articles, and managed to become the most linked-to blog on the web.

Can newspapers supply the competition?

Evidently people do like to be able to get the news from many different sources around the world, and younger readers who have grown up with online news possibly have less loyalty to individual newspapers. With this in mind, newspapers could even provide a better service than Google and co. One of the problems with automated aggregators such as Google is the lack of a real editorial agenda: Google's algorithms try to judge the importance of stories in ways described above, but there is no editor to provide an informed, professional view of events by appropriately arranging stories on a homepage. A newspaper might not be able to provide as comprehensive an aggregation service as Google, but it would have the advantage of being able to offer a clear editorial voice in its selection of articles and how they appear, which is one of the aspects of newspapers that readers value highly.

Another more radical and highly controversial option to defy the search engine aggregators is to start charging for content. If newspapers were to come together and universally start charging online readers, via joint subscriptions or micropayment, they could create a newspaper-owned search engine and aggregator which included advertising and fairly distributed revenue, hence keeping all income from newspaper content within the control of newspapers. It would be a huge step, but as more and more publications contemplate a return to paid content, it seems at least a possibility.

Will Google's additional ads spur newspapers into action? Or will they continue to somewhat reluctantly tolerate the Internet giant's profit from their industry, and accept the directed traffic in return? The Internet has revolutionised the way that people read news, and aggregation and linking is undoubtedly going to continue to be a part of the news landscape. The issue is whether it will be newspapers themselves or third parties which manage the system.

This week in the Christian Science Monitor Jonathan Zimmerman, professor of history and education at New York University, proposes a remedy for the "demise" of the newspaper. Because of declining circulation and advertising revenues, Zimmerman says that gathering news has become too expensive, forcing newspapers to make staff cuts and leading to "less real reporting." As a solution, he suggests that university professors take over newspaper reporting free of charge.

Hearkening back to a hundred years ago when leading social science and humanities academics wrote for the popular press, Zimmerman maintains that professors should, once again, share their expertise with the layperson to save the newspaper. Most professors are not paid for their work in academic journals now, he asserts, and if research universities would provide incentives, many professors would consider writing for free. Though many do not have experience in journalistic writing, they will learn, he maintains, because professors "have a lot to teach, too, about nearly every subject that a paper might cover."

Google has this week announced plans to place ads on its Google News site, which aggregates stories from more than 4,500 English-language news sources worldwide and places links to their articles on the Google News home page. The ads will only be seen by US users, and mark the first time that Google News has contained any advertising since its launch in 2002.

The revelation may not be well received by all in the newspaper and online news industry. Many publishers have taken issue with Google's use of their articles in what is seen by some as a type of rival news site, although many have accepted it due to the large volumes of traffic it drives to their sites. However, Google News' intended use of advertising alongside other publications' headlines and summaries will essentially mean the company profits from other people's content.

There have been further signs of turmoil within the newspaper industry this weekend.  Philadelphia Newspapers, subsidiary of Philadelphia Media Holdings and owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News, filed for bankruptcy late Sunday night.  Brian Tierney, publisher of the Inquirer said, "Philadelphia Newspapers' goal is to bring its debt in line with the reality of current economic conditions."  The focus of the bankruptcy will be on the company's debt rather than its operations, and concessions will be sought from its banks rather than its unions.

The previous day saw the owner of the New Haven Register, the Journal Register Company, file for bankruptcy as well. "We intend to emerge from the Chapter 11 process stronger, leaner and more financially viable in the current environment," James W. Hall, the company's chief executive.  Similarly to events in Philadelphia, the focus will be on the company's stock and should not affect operations.

Ahead of a forum headed by the Association of Online Publishers looking at how new technology is shaping multimedia publishing, event chairman and editor of the Sun Online Pete Picton has discussed the evolution of the editorial process over the years.  He believes that the shift into a more digital world has made speed key in reporting, but has also allowed for more flexibility and greater audience reach.  He doesn't however think that new technology has affected editorial standards - in fact Picton is of the opinion that in some ways editorial practices have been improved, due to the requisite extra knowledge that journalists need to publish online.

As for the future of technology in the industry, Picton states that it's important it is "seen as creative addition to the production of news stories", and not their main feature.  Picton concludes his brief interview by explaining that whatever technological developments occur, quality editorial content will remain the priority for anyone publishing online - "it's about producing great editorial content that's better than anyone else."

Source: AOP UK

Kuwait's Arabic-language daily newspaper Assawt, launched in October 2008, published its last issue on Monday as a consequence of the economic downturn.

Thomson Reuters plans to "roll out a major social media coverage package "to enhance its coverage of the World Economic Forum which begins tomorrow in Davos, Switzerland.  Reporters will use Twitter and YouTube to share video and updates from the Forum. 

According to Mark Jones, global community editor at Thomson Reuters, "We want to turn the coverage around, by asking delegates what they think the biggest issues facing the global economy are, then use social media to let the public offer their opinion."

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. This week, we looked Global Post and Huffington Post, two news websites that are challenging the traditional newspaper business model. Below, editors from around the world share their own thoughts about ONLINE-ONLY NEWS PUBLICATIONS.

AFRICA
Azubuike Ishiekwene, Executive Director, Punch Nigeria
A Nigerian site equivalent to the Huffington Post named Saharareporters.com is a competitor of Punch, but we don't consider it a threat. However, the site has helped to keep us on our toes. We believe that print will remain an indispensable medium for the validation of meaning among readers. We have nearly 36 years of credibility which must count for something. My colleagues in the newsroom agree that competition from online can only make us stronger and is unlikely to supplant our relevance as long as we're listening to the readers.

LATIN AMERICA
Marcelo Rech, General Product Director, RBS Group, Brasil
By now, newspaper people should always have in their head that they and their newspapers are competing with every kind of consumer distraction, from YouTube to Twitter.

That's why we have to work harder and harder to promote the newspaper to the public and advertisers, especially the basic idea behind the newspaper; to be THE place for news (local, political, national, general, etc., depending on the strategy of your paper), and be far better than your competitor. This is not a new story; it is the same concern of our ancestors 150 years ago.

EASTERN EUROPE
Roman Gallo, Director of Media Strategies, PPF Financial Group
Online-only news sites are not a threat to traditional news gatherers. These project are only threats for media companies that do not understand changing media landscape, that do not understand that publishing on only one channel, one platform media (only print, only TV...) is not a future. One platform media will be able to survive only if they are strictly targeted and focused at a very clear (and I would guess a very limited) audience. In the case of my former publishing house, we are partially in competition with these sites because we run a fully-integrated and clearly targeted multimedia system. .

WESTERN EUROPE
Espen Egil Hansen, Editor-in Chief, Verdens Gang Multimedia, Norway
Several of the stand alone online news sites are really good, they are often better than us to utilize the possibilities of internet, and they force us to improve our own products. Nonetheless, I believe these are not our most important competitors.

The key now is to understand that the technological development gives traditional media a competition from a range of players we don't necessarily define as "media". There are three factors demanding that we analyze the competition with fresh eyes:

THE USER'S TIME: The time spent on popular sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Nettby.no and so on is dramatically longer than on news sites. This trend is reinforced by new mobile platforms like iPhone. Look around you: On the metro, in the cafeteria, at the breakfast table -in all the situations where people traditionally have been enjoying a newspaper, more and more people are now staring into some sort of screen. This represents a dramatic competitive shift because these services steal time from that which used to be allocated to newspapers and news sites.

NICHE SITES and SOCIAL NETWORK: Within any thinkable niche there exist special interest sites and services with more depth, higher quality and that are perceived as more effective than newspapers and news sites. Although many of these are not in the news business in a traditional sense, they are still our competitors because they so strongly affect the way in which we gather information in our daily life.

ADVERTISING: We are in direct competition with Google when it comes to the big advertising money. In addition, we see that the classified ads, that have been a great source of income for many, are now moving to sites not attached to traditional media houses in any way. In my mind, the most important question for 2009 is this: What will fund the journalism in the future?

Altogether, these three factors represent competitive challenges that must have consequences for all parts of our operation. Rather than pointing out the stand alone news sites as our new competitors, we need to search deeper and ask ourselves: "With this new media reality - what should we be in the future?"

NORTH AMERICA
Ed Greenspon, Editor-in-Chief, Globe and Mail, Canada
We don't see these sorts of sites as a threat per se to traditional news gathering. But we do see them as competitive. They are in the business of aggregating niche audiences around a public debate of the issues of the day. Anyone who aggregates audience obviously is a competitor, but can be seen as a partner, too.

First off, our unique proposition lies In our ability to generate the news,  often news that would not exist without our journalistic efforts, that feeds the fires of public debate. Of course, newspaper companies have long been in the commentary and opinion part of the business, too, and need to remain so.

But unlike with print, where the barriers to entry are so high, we have no option to live with many more alternatives in the digital world. So we have to consider whether we are primarily distributors or creators, along with our audiences (or communities) of content.
While I suspect we will continue to distribute through our own channels, I see no reason why we won't seek to maximize our reach by aligning our branded content through other distribution channels, such as Politico. Communities are being formed all over the place. We need to get out of the old mindset that they will come to us and go out, introduce ourselves and overwhelm them with the quality of our insights in their areas of interest.

Terry Eberle, Executive Editor and Vice President, Fort Myers News Press, Florida
Local information is what we are about. No one can compete with us for information in Southwest Florida. We must keep that in mind as we do our online work and plan our online and print newspapers. How can we make that national story local? How do we bring a national story home to our readers. On Jan. 20, Barack Obama will be sworn in as president of the United States. The world and national press will be all over that story. But, we will be on a bus traveling from Fort Myers, FL filled with people going to see this historic day. We will be on this bus, we will be doing live video on this bus. In other words, we won't be spending our time just rewriting the main story that we will receive from dozens of other places. We will spend our time reporting on this historic event through the eyes of local people.

The Kansas City Kansan has announced that it is to discontinue its print edition and move to online only.  The final print edition will be on January 10 and the paper will launch a revamped Web site on January 7.

 

General Manager Drew Savage explained that the move to online only was to save on overheads and allow for more investment in electronic media.  He insisted that the Kansan would continue to thrive with "a lot more content than we have ever had," and pointed out that online readership is ten times greater than for the print edition. 

 

AsianWeek, a San Francisco free sheet aimed at Asian Americans has also announced the demise of its print edition, with the final copy to come out on Friday.  It will continue to publish online, and its editor and publisher Ted Fang attributed the move to economic hardship.