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"We have committed $25 million over five years to the Knight News Challenge because we believe in media innovation through experimentation," says Alberto Ibargüen, Knight Foundation's president and CEO. "Each winning project is an experiment with the potential to transform how we practice journalism in the digital age."

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announces its third annual Knight News Challenge, a contest that will grant up to US$5 million for ideas that transform local community news with the help of digital tools like social media, Web 2.0 or multimedia content. A new "incubator" site, the News Challenge Garage, was created in order to offer online criticism and advice for applicants.

South Italian daily newspaper La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, which has been published since 1887, announces a redesign that will transform the title into a tabloid that will be entirely in color.

The Star Tribune announced that this summer, experts would train the Tribune staff to edit videos and produce programming. It said that the paper's staff has increased training in news production and entertainment videos to "enliven" the site, "diversify the news" and "prepare for mobile delivery."

Last year, Tribune photographers were trained to shoot documentary and breaking-news video. They were also trained to bring a basic video camera to shoot breaking-news.
 
"We're trying to transform a site that was once a newspaper on the Web into one that takes full advantage of the medium," Nancy Barnes, Tribune editor, said.

The Tribune's Rick Sennott is familiar with both photography and videography and he enjoys being a "one-man-band." His aim is to "produce images that act as a channel for true understanding and give a clear voice to the people being photographed."

The Tribune's site includes video content on issues such as gardening, health, sports and local news (see above). 

"While I'm still not crazy about seeing myself on the small screen, I really enjoy how video reporting can bring a story to life," Connie Nelson, Home+Garden editor, said, "You get the sights, the sounds. You can show rather than say. And you can make a personal connection."

Barnes expressed some concern over the increasing importance of visual journalism and how journalism has evolved to deliver more than just print news.

"It's no longer sufficient for a news company to put out a fine newspaper. We have to deliver the news anywhere, anytime, however the consumer wants it. Some days, this feels a bit like the old game where you see if you can jump up and down and pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time. Now, can you do it on one foot?" Barnes said.

This trend towards increased online vide content is what news sites like the Tribune or the UK's Telegraph are following.

Source: The Star Tribune

See also:
UK: Telegraph releases online video widgets
Opinion: Best practices for video journalism, with Travis Fox
UK: Telegraph's main competitors are BBC and CNN, in era of multimedia journalism
 

Tony Lee, sales director of Norway's FAST, a company helping media companies transform their business online, presented FAST's product and strategies for newspapers at the annual Digital Media Round Table, part of the 61st World Newspaper Congress.

"You have to start with with your users," Tony Lee told the audience. He mentioned questions worth asking yourself: what task do I serve? Who are the key users? How do I build uniqueness? What is enabling content and services?

"Where, when and what are the users looking for?" Tony Lee asked. If you can make your content more findable, your users will be more contented." The right content end services improve your relationship with the user, said Lee. The search for audio, picture etc. must be more exact and relevant. Tony Lee shows us a site where the content is transforming depending on what the user is searching for. "It's really about exposing content and showing the user where to find the information." The content on New York Times site is created by the search company, and Lee thinks the Times' homepage has a very rich search and is dynamically built.

Lee isn't very impressed with Google's seach-page. "You don't want a list of results, that's not very user-friendly." Instead, ask the following questions: Can I find it? Can I find it near me? Can I compare it? Can I find a deal in it? Can I read what others think about it?

Xavier Vidal-Folch, Deputy Director of the Spanish daily El Pais, has been elected President of the World Editors Forum, the global association for senior newsroom executives within the World Association of Newspapers.

Mr Vidal-Folch was elected by the Board of WEF, meeting in Göteborg, Sweden, on the eve of the annual World Editors Forum conference. He succeeds George Brock, Saturday Editor of The Times of London, who served as WEF President for the last four years.

"It is an honour to be the successor of George Brock," said Mr Vidal-Folch. "Under his presidency, WEF became the voice of editors-in-chief through its Editors Weblog, and the attendance to our annual conference more than tripled.

"My task will be to transform the organisation into a truly digital organisation with more products and services available online. WEF wants to welcome more senior news executives through a new professional online network, useful worldwide, which will become a hub for the entire newspaper industry."

Mr Vidal-Folch has been Deputy Director of El Pais since 1989. He has been with the paper since 1982 and has served as Chief Editor and Brussels Bureau Chief.

Harald Stanghelle, the Political Editor of Aftenposten in Norway, was elected Vice President of WEF.

He has been Political Editor of Aftenposten since 2000. He previously served as News Editor of the paper and as Editor-in-Chief of Dagbladet.

Editors from four countries have been nominated to become new members of the WEF Board: Nadia Al-Saqqaf, Editor-in-Chief of the Yemen Times; Raju Narisetti, Editor of Mint, India; Marcelo Rech, Editor-in-Chief of Zero Hora, Brazil; and Gianni Valenti, Deputy Editor of Gazzetta dello Sport, Italy.

The Paris-based World Editors Forum (http://www.worldeditorsforum.org ) is the organisation of the World Association of Newspapers that represents editors-in-chief and other senior news executives. WAN, the global organisation for the newspaper industry, represents 18,000 newspapers; its membership includes 76 national newspaper associations, newspapers and newspaper executives in 102 countries, 12 news agencies and ten regional and world-wide press groups.

Source: Larry Kilman, Director of Communications, WAN, 7 rue Geoffroy St Hilaire, 75005 Paris France. Tel: +33 1 47 42 85 00. Fax: +33 1 47 42 49 48. Mobile: +33 6 10 28 97 36. E-mail: lkilman@wan.asso.fr

Media pundit Jeff Jarvis has dissected exactly how he earns a living as a blogger.

First the direct revenue from his blog BuzzMachine, which at $13,855 total revenue since 2001, is "not too shabby. Nonetheless, you'd still be forgiven for thinking I shouldn't have quit my day job," Jarvis writes.

According to Jarvis, who left his "day job" as president of an online division of Condé Nast's parent company in 2005, the exposure he receives from the blog has led to more lucrative opportunities.

Which doors have opened for him thanks, at least in part, to his blog?

·    A position on the faculty of the journalism school at City University of New York
·    Consulting and speaking gigs for various companies and brands
·    A column with MediaGuardian. Editors asked him to take ideas from his blog and transform them into a column, making "the newspaper an aftermarket for the blog"
·    A book contract stemming from an idea he discussed in his blog

And thanks to BuzzMachine, the brave new world of Web 2.0 is a more familiar place. "Buzzmachine has taught me about the new architecture of media; I wouldn't have learned that without jumping into the new world myself."

His final assessment: "this is one web 2.0 venture that is profitable."

That much is clear, but it's also true that Jarvis is something of a celebrity blogger. His success with his blog, while impressive, is certainly not the norm. For those still inclined to go web, take in to account as well the debate, provoked by a recent New York Times article, over the risks posed by the sometimes-ludicrously long hours that bloggers have to put in to keep up.

Source: Guardian 

For the second year in a row, the Knight News Challenge asked the public for ideas to transform community news through digital innovation, and 17 projects were chosen for funding. The projects will be announced on May 14, 2008, at the E&P Interactive Media Conference in Las Vegas.

The top finalists are projects that have the potential to "inform, empower and engage citizens and help them participate in the decision-making process of their neighborhoods, their communities and their countries," according to the Knight News.

Some projects are:

"Doing Away with Dewey ~ Unifying Digital and Physical Collections and Knowledge with a new open organization of knowledge (B3OK)" by Bonnie Pierce: By hyperlinking the materials within libraries with an open global digital knowledge network, all physical library collections, informative materials, media, and books, cultural objects, and specific physical locations will be connected.

"Louretta" by Matthew Waite: An open-source, socially networked, host for small-town weeklies and twice-weekles, which would improve and expand small-town journalism online.  People would participate in and contribute to those social networks, and have mechanisms for following their institutions of government, schools and local sports through databases of public records, newspaper-created information or data entered by the users themselves.

"Flash Storytelling Templates" by Russell Chun: An online site for Flash storytelling templates that is "free, open-source, specific to the needs of the multimedia journalist, and based on community participation and collaboration." Journalists will not need to know Flash to use these templates but will download source files to manipulate and use directly. The community can comment on existing templates, suggest new ones, contribute their own templates, and showcase work that was created with the templates. The site will be available nationally but will be used in to "bring to life those "smaller" stories."

For the complete list, please visit the Knights News site.

Source: Newschallenge.com

Since Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation bought Dow Jones & Company, The Wall Street Journal has faced many changes, such as a reduced focus on business news on the front page, a new focus on politics on the front page, and a decrease in long, investigative, or offbeat articles. In the coming weeks, the WSJ will continue to move toward more breaking news and shorter articles, as well as transform its Marketplace section instead of replacing it.

The makeover of Marketplace will include:
- Fewer business features on the first page.
- Shifting featured columnists to the inside pages, except Water Mossberg, the technology columnist.
- More hard news articles about the corporate world on the front page.

Robert Christie, a Dow Jones spokesman, said there are no plans to reduce the number of editors even though News Corporation executives have said that The Journal has too high a ratio of editors to reporters. Instead, they plan on hiring more reporters and bloggers.

"Our new corporate parent is committed to the expansion of the Journal franchise," he said. And quoting Marcus Brauchli, the Managing Editor, "There are a lot of evolutionary changes going on."

Recently, the WSJ has also published a special report on the environment, which to their ECO:nomics conference.

Sources: IHT, The Wall Street Journal

In the latest Nieman Report, Poynter Institute media analyst Rick Edmonds tries to make sense and point out the nonsense of newspapers’ hyperlocal strategies: hyperlocal content is sometimes news, but often not, business models so far aren’t very encouraging, and trimming down the traditional print edition can be risky.

Credit Suisse analyst John Klim has recently produced a report on the newspaper industry that explains things are not as bad as they seem to be. He made the point that the industry downturn is more cyclical than secular, having more to do with economic factors, like real estate softness, than anything inherent to the industry.

Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor in chief of The Huffington Post talks about the future of digital media, saying, “The only agency people who’ll succeed are those who fully integrate.”

Launched two weeks ago, LePost.fr is not your typical online-only news site. With a resolutely ‘new media’ approach to news, the website fearlessly tackles new trends in news consumption, and caters to a younger public generally perceived as having deserted the arena. Its editorial content and processes have been adapted to this aim, which can also be seen as a traditional media publisher’s attempt to experiment with the future of online news.

Trinity Mirror is currently poised to decentralize its online operations, launching new sites for key titles on three different website templates – one for morning regionals, one for evening regionals, and one for weeklies. 

In this section, John Zogby, CEO of Zogby International, and Jeff Jarvis, new media proponent and founder of Buzzmachine, comment on the results of the Newsroom Barometer. Both found that editors’ optimism and open-mindedness to new media was a clear indication that newspapers were embracing the digital revolution, yet Jarvis fears that may not be enough…

Reuters should be launching its own oversion of MySpace this year, a financial community website aimed at fund managers, traders and analysts. Newspapers and news organizations are increasingly probing the community aspect.