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Seventeen of the top 30 US newspaper websites showed a decline in the average time users spent on their sites in May versus the same period last year, according to an exclusive article in Editor & Publisher. The data come from Nielson Online, which keeps track of the most widely read newspaper sites based on number of unique visitors.

On the bright side, that means nearly half of the sites posted gains year-over-year, some of them fairly significant. The Star Tribune of Minneapolis, a paper struggling to get out of bankruptcy, added 20 minutes to the time readers spend on the site - at an average of over 47 minutes per user, it's also the newspaper site that users stay on the longest. The San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate.com also recorded sizeable gains, jumping to 21 minutes this year compared to 12 minutes in May 2008.

Adding credence to the notion that more than ever people are relying on the Internet as their primary source of news, the latest poll by Zogby International shows a majority of Americans view the web as the best source of information. When presented with a scenario in which they had to choose only one source of news, 56% of adults picked the Internet.

Where Americans are getting their news on the web is striking. Nearly half said the web sites of national newspapers are important and 43% said the same for national TV sites. Internet-only operations fared much worse. Less than 30% stated that blogs that shared their political views were important, and just 14% said the same for blogs with the opposite political view. And social networking sites? Forget it. Ten percent of adults named Facebook as an important source of news, and a mere 4% said the same of Twitter.

The New York Times was the Daily Show's latest victim.  Jason Jones took a tour around the NYT's offices to understand, "why the last of a dying breed prefer aged news to real news".   

The skit tried to paint the NYT as a 'creaky old rag'- the old school news provision of stories printed the day after the events happen, pitiful revenues due to declining circulation and advertisement revenues, now redundant in the face of rapid fire, twenty-four-seven online news services and competing classified websites.

The future of printed media has become a major political issue in countries like the United States or France, even being debated in ad-hoc committees set up by the legislative or the executive powers. Discussions along the Potomac or the Seine rivers have been focusing on the impact of Internet and new technologies, or on the need for state subsidies.

Meanwhile, on the Vltava in Prague, a group of editors and reporters working for PPF Media, the recently created division of insurance and consumer banking group PPF, is already opening new ways of covering a whole country in what may be a newsroom of the future. With other journalists for the moment based in four provincial towns from the Czech Republic, they are launching the so-called "hyperlocal weekly" Nase adresa ("our address"), which combines print and online journalism with particular efforts to sustain high professional standards and get closer to the readers.

"It can only work with well prepared journalists who will be trained in the Futuroom, our central newsroom," explains Roman Gallo, 44, director for PPF's media strategies and conceiver of the project. "We are also opening newscafés in our local bureaus, which will facilitate the contact between Nase adresa's journalists and the public, to enrich the content of our newspaper and of its webpages," adds Matej Husek, 33, director of news operations.
 
The newspoints, combining local newsrooms and Internet cafés in often small, rural towns, may be the most visible originality of this new undertaking. A few weeks before Nase adresa's launch, for instance, PPF Media's already hired staff had the chance to taste two products, the first print prototype of the weekly, and a cake likely to be served in the cafés. "The project represents a special challenge in terms of logistics, of room for storage, as we will be managing dozens of bistrot-Starbucks-like coffee shops in local newsrooms," comments Tomas Chejn, 41, the manager of PPF Media's branded cafés, a food specialist hired for his long time experience in quality catering. Petr Vitasek, 38, the director and chief editor for the Moravia region, based in the eastern Czech city of Olomouc, thinks this effort is worth the investment, because these "well located newspoints will be critical in getting Nase adresa's journalists to work closer to their readers."
 

 
But the whole project is innovative at other, multiple levels. To start with, for the first time a newspaper's birth is tightly associated to the creation of a multi-media training center - with several international partners including Google, Atex and the World Association of Newspapers/ World Editors Forum. The Futuroom will be a newsroom in charge of assisting and training in-house editors, some having no previous reporting experience, as much as a real life teaching field for future journalists. These will include a group of students within another partnership with Brno's Masaryk University, in the second largest Czech town.

Nase adresa's approach could also become a school case due to the organization of the newsroom. "I like how the Futuroom is shaped. Journalists are not confined to one theme, like health or education, but to a way of reporting, and I enjoy changing topics," says Vendula Krizova, reporter in the "Human approach team" and young (25) like many of her new colleagues. Adds Radim Klekner, 50, who joined the "Institutional team" - after working for 10 different newsrooms - to do researches on European Union institutions in particular: "Vertical structures dominate in traditional newspapers, while in Nase adresa it is more horizontal. In my case, for instance, I will be covering many European issues based on the Czech reality."


Klekner had some doubts initially, however, because he has been covering foreign news in the past 15 years.  Why would he join a hyperlocal news project as an international editor, then? "There is a need for benchmarking with other European countries in all aspects of the Czech society, and with Nase adresa I will be able to give a EU presence in the remotest Czech villages", he believes. "Our role is to assess general issues like the lack of general practitioners in the country, compared to others, and connect them to specific cases brought up by the local newsrooms."
 

 
Local journalists with long intensive experience covering their community are also convinced they are working for an innovative project. Vitasek, in Olomouc, even tried a hyperlocal news concept on his own five years ago, called Olomoucky Tydenik. "It was a weekly published on Mondays and strong on local sports, like Nase adresa. We had to stop it after one year, but this time I have with me a 10-people team supported by PPF and by the Futuroom managers and trainers. Our office, in a central strategic area of Olomouc, will be a space for constant direct contact with readers and potential contributors."

Based on her 30 year experience in local journalism, Hana Vojtova, 52, the chief editor of the Teplice newspoint, in the north Bohemian city near the border with east Germany, also believes Nase adresa is a new improvement for community journalism: "We will get nearer to the people from the region, who are tired of politics and want to be informed on human interest stories," explains Vojtova, whose district is dramatically affected by problems like crime and unemployment. "We are going to cover better our readers's activities and their dreams!"
 

 
The project has attracted several other seasoned editors from all backgrounds, including Jiri Zavozda, 50, Nase adresa's head of the copy editing team. He just finished a seven year experience in major private television "Prima", as news editor-in-chief, after working more than a decade for national newspapers. "The TV experience was good because it teaches you how to write short, but I prefer print because it is less superficial," says Zavozda. There are other reasons why he joined the Futuroom. "I see my in-laws, who live in a little village in Moravia and who have only access to media not specifically targeted to them, national daily Mlada Fronta, newsweekly Tyden and the television. Only Nase adresa will inform them well on the Sunday afternoon firemen team's competitions, which are particularly popular in the Czech republic. We will get spectacular photos of fires being extinguished!"

Adds Peter Sabata, 48, the editor-in-chief responsible for the local newsroom: "I strongly believe in the hyperlocal level of information, with the combination of newspoints, and print, online journalism. The weekly will be a bridge from now to the near future, when everybody in the regions will be connected." Sabata just moved back to the Czech republic after eight years at the head of national Slovak paper Pravda's newsroom.

 
Other Nase adresa team members are particularly enthusiastic because of the new challenges specific to a project combining teaching and praxis, online and print journalism, so far never achieved at such a level. Ondrej Besperat, 31, who manages the photo-video team in a duo with veteran photojournalist Jan Silpoch, is well aware of the differences between shooting for a newspaper or for a website. Before joining the Futuroom, he was a photographer for national daily Hospodarske Noviny and then worked for Aktualne.cz, the successful, Internet-only Czech media outlet. "In printed media, you have to do one or two pictures a day, and you invest all your energy in the best one, while in Internet, you try more different perspectives as you know that several pictures are likely to be released for each story."

Besperat anticipates he is likely to spend two third of his time training reporters from the local newsrooms, at the beginning at least. "One of the main challenges will be to shoot sport with our standard high-end amateur cameras," he says. "The idea is not to have journalists who do everything all the time, but reporters who are multifunctional, able to provide good texts and images."

 
Nase adresa will also represent new challenges beyond the expertise usually expected from  journalists, especially for the local chief editors who will have to look after a coffee shop part of their time. "Ten years ago I had a short experience working for Coca Cola, but this will be new because I am not at all a food and beverage specialist," laughs Vitasek, in Moravia. Krizova, who is glad to cover very diverse topics, is also ready for another type of special assignment as a young reporter. She will be asked to take care of children visiting the Futuroom - turned into a "Junioroom" or "media camp" - to learn how to write an article or produce a video footage.


PPF Media's project will be preparing new generations of journalists and not just showing new forms of getting and providing the news.
 

BACKGROUND
The Czech Republic is a country of 10 million people living in 14 regions subdivided in 75 districts in total. Until 20 years ago, only the government and Communist Party related entities could publish newspapers. This was also the case for the regional dailies, and for more local publications at district or town levels. German group Verlagsgruppe Passau took over most of them in 1990 and after, under its Czech branch Vltava-Labe-Press which currently controls over 10 weeklies and over 70 dailies called Denik ("daily", followed by the name of the concerned locality). Nase adresa will have no direct competitors except in a few cases, because its editions will typically cover areas of 20-30,000 people while Denik and its affiliates are designed for larger groups, of over 100,000 inhabitants on average.

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.

Following the personalization of news trend, is a recent customizable news webcast called NewscastMix. The application allows users to create a newscast based on personally chosen geographic and thematic settings. The newscast can broadcast all kinds of information, even non newsy content such as documentaries.

"More viewers are going online and stations need to find a way to keep that audience. NewscastMix puts a new spin on online news video that delivers finely targeted content to each viewer," said Michael P. Hill, whose company HD Media Ventures, created NewscastMix.

Ana Bernal Triviño recently completed her doctorate at the University of Malaga, Spain. Her choice of thesis, entitled "Design preferences of the young regarding journalistic information on the internet" has already attracted some interest from media commentators and professionals alike.

Bernal's research throws some light on the relationship between the young and their preferred choice of medium - the web - in particular, addressing issues such as the relevance of design, content and layout in attracting younger readers to websites.

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.

Results from a recent Orange study reveal that mobile media and marketing are becoming mainstream for UK consumers. The study is the second part of an Orange research project aimed at understanding how new mobile technology affects consumer's media habits. The survey focused on consumer consumption of mobile media and their attitude towards mobile advertising, following over 2,000 users from various UK mobile networks. Research showed that more than four out of five mobile media users access mobile media once a week.

Leading technology experts and bloggers discussed news aggregators and social recommendation sites at a panel at South by Southwest Interactive, the 'tech fest' conference in Austin, Texas (Twitter search #SXSWi). Guardian writer Jemima Kiss described how the panel debated the merits of automated versus human aggregation.

For example, Micah Baldwin of Lijit Networks believes that the networks and tools we build to aggregate links replicate our trust relationships: meaning that people like to look at links from bloggers or news sites that they trust. Several of the panel also deemed the Google Reader's shared links function as very important as it adds an element of social recommendation.

The Nieman Journalism Lab has called upon American newspaper publishers to "build a social network, a community, around the news" so as to "reconnect with your audience."

Inspired by a Pew project's discovery that 35% of adult internet users now have a profile on an online social network site, the article insists that "you need to be where your customers are and interact with them as they prefer to interact." The equivalent figure in 2005 was just 8%.

Some newspapers are already experimenting with social networking, but many of these need further development in order to be effective. Melinda Gipson of Newzmaven suggests scrapping these altogether in favour of leveraging and engaging existing social media sites such as Facebook, which already have a vast amount of users.

Source: Nieman Journalism Lab via IFRA

According to a report published by the Pew Research Center, the Internet overtook print newspapers as a news source this year in the United States.

The report found that Internet usage surged from 24% to 40% in a year, overtaking the 35% who rely on newspapers, the Guardian reports.

The New York Times reports that the change "does not represent a decline in the popularity of newspapers," but rather a "near-doubling" of the number of people that name the Internet as their primary news source.  Newspapers actually gained a percentage point in popularity over the last year.

Executive Editor of PBS's MediaShift Mark Glaser offered a "Guide to Alternative Models for Newspapers" in response to all the problems currently "plaguing" the business of daily newspapers in America.  He offers a selection of solutions: some which are already being used, some brand new.

First come blog networks, which aggregate blogs written by staffers, freelancers and readers.   Glaser cites LATimes.com as a site which has used blogs to help it drive more traffic, which could of course lead to more advertising revenue. 

Next is classified networks; Glaser explains that free online services such as Craigslist have usurped much of newspapers' classified ad businesses.  In order to entice people back, he thinks they will need to "super-charge listings and add extras galore."

Charlie Beckett, director of the Polis journalism initiative in the UK, said it is "frustrating" that both traditional journalism and online content may not be seen as reliable, reported Journalism.co.uk. According to him, there was no "Golden Age" for reporters to be viewed as "impartial conveyors of reality" and that "trust was always conditional."

Even though the Internet is becoming increasingly popular as a news source as Americans move away from print newspapers, television is still the most popular news media.

Younger people prefer to get their news online whereas older people consult traditional news sources such as TV and papers, according to data from the Pew Research Center.

There is "a sizable group of more engaged, sophisticated and well-off people that uses both traditional and online sources to get its news" and that accounts for 23% of respondents who spend the most time with news, reported the European Journalism Centre (EJC).

Nearly half of those surveyed rely heavily on TV, being the "oldest" with an average age of 52 and "least affluent", with 43% of the group being unemployed, reported the EJC.

The group that is most dependent on online news outlets is the youngest, with an average age of 35, and the least numerous, accounting for 13% of respondents.

Source: European Journalism Centre

More than half, or 53%, of PR professionals see print coverage as more valuable than online. This is suprising as the majority of consumer surveys indicate that online is the more  influential mediun.

Furthermore, it is not only the PRs who prefer print, but so do their clients. Nearly 64% of PRs believe their clients prefer print coverage to online, television or radio. 53% of PRs believe their stakeholders are more influenced by print coverage than television, online or radio.

According to the survey performed by Parker, Wayne & Kent survey. They prefer the permanence of print. The fact you can hold it in your hand and turn the page.
 
PRs strongly believe that print coverage is still highly relevant, with only 11.7% seeing it becoming less relevant to PR campaigns.

Parker, Wayne & Kent's results seem to conflict with a recent report by PR company Fleishman-Hillard which said that online is eight times as influential as traditional print media and twice as influential as TV.

Source: Brand Republic
 

The Los Angeles Times' website drew 115 million page views in June, just short of its all-time traffic record of 120 million PV set in May.

A quick glance at the list of most-read stories and most-viewed multimedia features in June gives a good idea of readers' favorite topics of interest - namely a push towards celebrity news and away from global issues and traditionally important topics such as the general elections. The lists also show that, despite newspapers' widespread emphasis on blogs and videos, these platforms still account for a minimal share of total traffic.

Furthermore, these lists provide some indications about how reader interests may vary from one platform to the other (news, blogs, videos, picture galleries).

If one supposes that latimes.com readership isn't too significantly different from average online newspaper readership, then these numbers hint toward which formats work best for different topics (Skip to 'Insights' for a brief summary).

Text - Top articles:

1. Alex Kozinski suspends L.A. obscenity trial after conceding his website had sexual images (Scott Glover)
2. Mega-mansions are L.A.'s really big show (Jessica Garrison)
3. Oliver Stone and 'W.,' a story of President Bush (John Horn)
4. Fourth day of triple digits sends crowds to L.A. pools, beaches  (Tami Abdollah)
5. Packing in public: Gun owners tired of hiding their weapons embrace 'open carry' (Nicholas Riccardi)
6. Envisioning a world of $200-a-barrel oil (Martin Zimmerman)
7. Judge orders TMZ to remove sex tape of actor Verne Troyer (Harriet Ryan)
8. Lakers have a collapse for the ages (Mike Bresnahan)
9. Offshore oil drilling opponents are rethinking (Richard Simon and Bob Drogin)
10. Obama leads in battle for Latino vote (Peter Wallsten)


The first thing that strikes us when looking at the list is how few stories relate to 'global' issues or to the general elections in the US: ranked 6 is a column about rising oil prices and the only story directly related to the elections is ranked 10. The majority of stories have mostly local relevance about Los Angeles.

(Only) one of the top 10 stories concerns sports - a usually strong section for most newspaper websites although June isn't the biggest season for sports in the US - and the Lakers' basketball team's demise in the championship finals.

The top three stories (and 7) revolve, more or less closely, around issues of sex and the cult of celebrities and entertainment. Number 3 is a story about the making-of Oliver Stone's latest movie about President George W. Bush. Granted, considering Los Angeles' prime location in the movie and celebrity industry, it isn't particularly surprising that many latimes.com readers are going for those stories.

But this doesn't necessarily mean that readers of latimes.com news articles prefer 'softer' content compared to readers of other online newspapers. In fact, this distribution is probably representative of a move towards celebrity news by mainstream media and the audience in general.

Limitations: This is a very cursive overview of readers' favorite topics for news stories only looking at the top 10. A more in-depth study would possibly show that while a few select individual stories about sex and celebrities receive many hits, the sections for 'hard' news (World, Business, National) on the whole generate substantially more traffic than Entertainment.

Top blogs:

1. Top of the Ticket  -- 1,743,178 PV
2. The Dish Rag  -- 1,437,462 PV
3. L.A. Land --  652,605 PV
4. Lakers Blog      
5. Show Tracker                
6. L.A. Now         
7. Technology Blog (first month out, and in the top ten)       
8. Gold Derby      
9. Web Scout      
10. Countdown to Crawford (launched June 17)


Now a look at the top-10 list of blogs gives a more intricate perspective: compared to news stories, the blog format seems to draw more readers to 'serious' topics such as politics and the general elections.

The political blog Top of the Ticket is in the lead, and Countdown to Crawford (a blog that covers the final steps of the elections) has made it to the list although it was only launched in mid-June. Ranked 6, L.A. Now covers general news about California.

It may seem counter-intuitive that readers prefer the blog format, usually associated with a more conversational tone and less formality, to read stories about politics. On the other hand, this preference could also be explained by the fact that those readers precisely prefer a format open to opinion and debate to read about those topics. Since blogs typically allow for more author disclosure, they can also be seen as a more transparent medium.

The last two blogs revolve around technology and developments in the digital landscape, a thematic that was absent from the Top 10 news stories.

Limitations: Again, this is hardly a scientific procedure, and the top 10 blogs on latimes.com account for less than 5% of total page views on the site. To put this in further perspective, five of the ten blogs relate to 'softer' content - three revolve around celebrities and the movie industry - one is about the Lakers and number 3 is a blog about real estate (note the parallel with the news story about mansions ranking 2).

Furthermore, The Dish Rag, ranked 2, is edging close to Top of the Ticket, so that in reality the number of users consulting LA Times blogs for soft and hard news is probably equivalent.

Pictures - Top photo galleries:

1.  Celebrity and sports collide in L.A.
2.  Universal Studios fire
3.  Celebrities' real names revealed (Denise Martin and Stephanie Lysaght)
4.  Hollywood hunks before they were hot (Elizabeth Snead)
5.  Celebrities by The Times
6.  Celebrity shots
7.  Midwest flooding
8.  Top 9 cars women buy more than men
9.  Hollywood's unwedded bliss list (Elizabeth Snead)
10. R-rated firsts (Susan King)

Unsurprisingly, the list of most popular photo galleries is also dominated by celebrities, even more so than for news stories or blogs (seven out of ten).

Of the three remaining picture galleries, two are big general news stories with obviously strong visual content: ranked 2 is the Universal Studios fire and ranked 7 is a gallery about floods in the Midwest.

Video - Top videos:

1. Dogs orphaned in China's quake find a home - 132,239 streams - AP
2. LAPD goes green: Maya Sanchez reports - 112,375 streams - KTLA
3. Tsvangirai on Mugabe - AP
4. Local update: Moe the chimp escapes cage -  KTLA
5. Amanda Beard heads to Omaha for her fourth Olympic swim - LAT
6. 17-year-old decapitated by Six Flags ride - AP
7. Australia marks Iraq withdraw with parade - AP
8. Evening update: USC student sentenced to time served in baby's death - KTLA
9. Fires grip parts of California - AP
10. Bush pleased with war spending bill - AP

The top-10 list for videos also delivers its share of lessons. First of all, despite newspapers' wild rush to boost video content, videos generate a limited amount of traffic compared to most text stories.

Many of the videos in the list are 'soft', but don't relate to entertainment especially. Instead, they are often emotionally-driven (dogs orphaned in China, 17-year old girl decapitated at a fair park). A lot of these popular videos are visual anecdotes with a potential for virality (Moe the chimp escapes cage).

'Hard' news, ie. a Congress debate about legislation or a business acquisition, does not typically constitute a popular pick for videos, as it is often poor visually.

The majority of successful video content is syndicated, generally provided by the Associated Press (only one of the top 10 videos was produced by the LA Times). Considering the average PVs for videos, and although CPMs for video ads are usually higher than for regular PVs, it is still often (too) costly for newspapers to produce their own quality videos.

Insights

In short, here are some of the insights brought by latimes.com's Top-10 lists:

- The Los Angeles Times has strongly emphasized 'soft' news, which is becoming increasingly popular among regular news stories.
- On the other hand, its blogs seem to attract many viewers interested by politics - although half of the blogs in the list deal with lighter content.
- The blog format is also popular when they deal with technological issues.
- To an extent, it could be inferred that the latimes.com is fulfilling its role as a newspaper by focusing on 'local' stories: Hollywood, celebrities and the entertainment industry being part of that local context.
- The photo galleries are overwhelmingly dominated by pictures of celebrities. The only two 'hard' news stories are obviously visual: a fire and floods.
- Video content must also be visually rich, but the most popular videos are those that are emotionally-driven and potentially viral (ie: humorous anecdotes, shocking stories).

The purpose of this piece was simply to make some observations as to the types of topics preferred by online users, depending on the format they were published in. The goal wasn't to quaintly warn editors against the risks of chasing eyeballs at the expense of news judgment.

However, these Top-10 lists are clearly representative of the trend, adopted both by editors and by the audience, towards more celebrity-type news, or 'soft' news in general. In January and April, when the Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times announced that they were beefing up coverage of Britney Spears, at the same time as newsrooms across the nation couldn't afford the expenses of covering the elections, many newspaper editors were outraged by this rush towards more catchy, entertainment-driven, stories.

According to others, celebrity is a cultural currency that fulfils a role in the press. But at what cost?

One of the ways in which US newspapers deal with the modified business model of the industry is focusing on "refrigerator journalism", which refers to hyperlocal content that people clip onto their fridges.

"Refrigerator journalism" may be more personal and "hyper-micro-local", such as pieces announcing who won a local school dance competition. John Robinson, editor of Greensboro, North Carolina paper News & Record, said that such content may have a "more authentic feel" and people might prefer to buy the print version instead of going online and printing out the same thing.     

"And the trick these days is to get people wanting to buy the print newspaper, no matter for what reason, for that's where the big advertising bucks continue to reside as opposed to the web site," wrote Follow The Media.

Source: Follow The Media

See also:
US: Through community sites, newspapers try to attract mothers
UK: Defying the odds, local papers suceed on the  web

According to Editor and Publisher, a Forbes.com and Gartner Study found a 37 % growth in "C-level and senior management executives" who chose the Web over newspapers as their primary source of business information and a 36 % decline in newspaper consumption.
 
Since 2004, the Internet as a source of business information has augmented from 37 % to 67 %. The number of C-level executives who access the Internet instead of reading newspapers in the morning has grown by 22 % compared to 2004, whereas the number of those who continue to read the morning paper decreased by 11%.

The study also showed that C-Level executives prefer the Web to any other media (41 %).

According to BtoB Online, the online survey was done in January and respondents were "recruited from Forbes.com and InsightExpress' nationally representative online panel."

Note that Forbes.com reported that 59% (instead of 67%) of "affluent investors" depend on the Web as the primary source of business information, up from the 52% who responded to the 2005 High Net Worth Investor Study.

Jim Spanfeller, CEO and president of Forbes.com, said that the study supports the company's belief that the C-level audience will continue to look for business information online and that business newspapers will become less popular amongst them, Editor and Publisher reported.

Source: Editor and Publisher, BtoB Online through I Want Media, Forbes.com
 

Even as online media consumption habits change, traditional journalists train in new media and new departments emerge, incorporating video journalism continues to be a challenge. How long should the videos be? Should they support text stories or be considered separate pieces entirely? How do you deal with translation? Or translate the complexities of a story, even in the same language?

The Poynter Institute recently caught up with Emmy-nominated video journalist, Travis Fox, to discuss best practices in creating web-based video.

What follows is an edited transcript of what appears on the Poynter Institute's website.  

Al Tompkins: How does video help this story?

Travis Fox: I think you're getting at the relationship between the video and the related article? ... Many of my pieces are aired on PBS, so they need to stand on their own, with their own reporting and context. This is a challenge for us on the Web, because we don't want to totally duplicate the reporting that's in the article, but at the same time we need to provide enough context in the video so when viewers come first (or only) to the video they fully understand the story. It also makes an interesting study of the differences of reporting for video and articles ... but that's another question for another time.

This story could be so complicated that nobody would read or watch it, but you simplified it to "Rwandian Women Emerge As Business Force," which is a story that has appeal far beyond those interested in foreign affairs. How do you think about the focusing and clarifying process when you are working on a story?

Fox: I would hope that all of the pieces I do have appeal beyond those interested in foreign affairs, or whatever topic I'm working on. It's difficult to go into the kind of detail you're talking about in short-form video, period. What works well in video -- namely characters and emotions -- has universal appeal no matter the story. When I do a complicated story (and every story is complicated), I have to fully understand the nuances of the story to know how to produce it in video from. This means I'm often doing interviews on background and doing interviews without the camera rolling just to find the right character to base the story around. It's a kind of casting process. In some ways, it's two processes: the journalism and the video production.

People always ask you about your gear and editing/transmitting process, so let's get that one out of the way.

Fox: Yes, let's do. I use the Sony high-definition video camera, but hope my editors soon buy me that new Sony that doesn't have tapes so I don't have to capture anymore. I edit on a Mac laptop with Final Cut Pro. I almost always transmit via hotel Internet, but if I'm in an out-of-the-way place I use a satellite phone transmitter.

A lot of online photojournalists like to use natural-sound-only pieces, but increasingly, it seems, your stories look more like a marriage of National Public Radio and documentary TV. When is it best to use a reporter track, and when is it more effective not to?

Fox: Thank you for that. I think it's always more effective to produce pieces without narration, but it's more difficult for a couple of reasons. First, most of the pieces I produce are in a foreign language, and I've found a translated audio track doesn't have the same connection with viewers as one in English, even if the content of the voice is the same. Much about the settle nuances of delivery are lost in translation. Secondly, I often find good characters with good stories to tell, but they just don't give you the sound bites you need to build a bed of quotes that takes the place of narration. Often these characters aren't concise enough, or their pacing is too slow. Lastly, I feel that I'm increasingly trying to tell more complicated stories -- ones that are based less around a central character -- and those require me to write narration to tie it all together.

What is the next big step online video will take that will improve journalism?

Fox: One thing I think we should be looking at is video going offline. Let me explain: We will see the Internet used more as a means of delivery, as opposed to a medium (the Web). At washingtonpost.com, we've already seen this in the huge increase of traffic to our various video podcasts on iTunes. Not that podcasts are the future, but the technology of delivering video to several devices, like your phone -- and especially your TV -- is. ... In short, it's the hub model. We are becoming a production company that creates work that goes out in many directions like spokes on a wheel -- to your computer, your phone, your TV. And let us not forget, your morning newspaper.

This piece is close to 10 minutes long. What are you learning about the ideal length for video stories? What keeps people watching online?

Fox: I get this question often, and almost always from my friends in TV, where time is everything. This is one of the big differences between Web video and TV. We talk about pacing, about character development, context -- not so much about time. That's not to say we don't care about videos dragging on or becoming redundant, we do, but we let the story dictate the time, not the time dictate the story. We hope quality video journalism keeps the viewers watching.

On TV, if viewers lose interest with a story, they change the channel and you've lost them. If viewers lose interest with a video online, they often just click on the next video, or maybe go to an article or blog on the same site. We haven't lost them as viewers like on TV.

Also, the advertising model right now is that the ad runs before the video. From a business viewpoint, if viewers watch two minutes or 10 minutes, it's the same advertising impression. Of course, less viewing adversely affects the important "time on site" metric, so we'd prefer they stay and watch the whole video.

I'm not trying to say that every video we do should be a long documentary. We need to have a balance between all the types of videos we do, but saying that every video should be a minute and 30 seconds long doesn't make sense online. The Web is a different beast, and the more we learn about viewers' habits -- which are still developing as technology like podcasting changes -- the better we can meet their needs. We just need to be careful not to apply the same technical standards from any traditional media to new media.

Source: Poynter Institute

Fairfax Digital in Australia just launched a news site targeting youth, which can be found at TheVine.com.au.

The site, a joint venture with youth marketing company Lifelounge, will target 18 to 29 year-olds and offer news, entertainment and social networking content.

Research by both companies have found that the 18 to 29 demographic prefer the Internet over all media, spending over 14 hours per week online.

Fairfax will contribute to a share of the site's content, but Lifelounge will be responsible for hiring, housing and managing TheVine's editorial team.

TheVine will benefit from lifestyle and entertainment content from Fairfax's newspaper websites, including those of the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age and Brisbane Times.

Looking to renew ties with young readers? Read this recent piece by Chris McGillion:
- Part 2: 5 key lessons from Generation Y to newspapers

Source: Fairfax Digital - The Australian News through IFRA Executive News Service

       The term 'citizen journalism', which was coined to describe "the effort to encourage regular folk to use the Internet to report the news directly," according to the New York Times, isn't accurate.

Todd Wolfson, 35, one of the organizers of the Media Mobilizing Project in Philadelphia is  "uncomfortable" with the term 'citizen journalism.' "We prefer the term 'community journalism.'"

Wolfson's group and Juntos, an immigrant rights group, are teaching their communities to make video reports for streaming on the Internet. The Knight Foundation in Miami sponsored the classes with a $150,000 grant.

But as Wolfson pointed out, most people involved are neither US citizens, nor even legal residents.

One of the main issues at stake is "the digital divide," according to Wolfson. Poorer communities typically "are only passive receivers of what appears on the Internet," as they often lack the resources for online publishing. Through these video classes, Wolfson plans on creating opportunities for these communities to share their stories as well.

Source: The New York Times through IFRA  Executive News Service

With the official launch of Drupal 6 on Wednesday, news organizations with small budgets have yet another free content management system made available to them.

Collegiate publications and other small organziations may be interested by a free CMS service that allows for customization. "This is great news for news organizations looking for a cheap and flexible CMS option, especially college newspapers," commented blogger Pat Thornton.

Other free open-source CMS include Magnolia, Moddle, TYPO3, etc.

The Onion and The New York Observer are among the sites currently using Drupal.

If you have any experience with CMS or prefer a particular one, please share your thoughts with us.

Source: The Journalism Iconoclast (also here)

Newspaper companies are optimistic about their ability to capture the time and interest of a new generation of readers, no matter what media channel the young prefer, according to a new report from the World Association of Newspapers.

The Newspaper Association of America (NAA) has identified eight trends to keep track of in 2008 for news organizations, including audience measurements, hyperlocal coverage, outsourcing and multimedia branding.