Results matching “prefer online to p”

The Miami Herald Media Co. - responsible for The Miami Herald - has stopped accepting volunteer donations to finance its online editorial content, according to The Miami Herald's website.

Last December, the Miami-based daily, experimented with an innovative way to finance its online operations by asking its online readers to donate if they "prefer the convenience of the Internet."

A move that worked for the collaborative online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, was reported to have been working well for The Miami Herald.

Journalism Online's e-commerce service for publishers, Press+, has begun to release more details about the online payment system that allows publishers to implement a variety of payment methods for their digital content, according to eMedia Vitals.

Gordon Crovitz, a Journalism Online co-founder and a former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, spoke to eMedia Vitals about the company's progress and about the online payment form that early adopters are leaning towards: a metered, segmented option.

The Berkeley Daily Planet will be phasing out its print edition as the paper transitions to an online-only format in March, the paper announced Thursday.

In an editorial, Editor Becky O'Malley and Publisher Mike O'Malley explained their decision. "The only way to cut expenses further is to give up print publication for the moment. We know that many if not most of our 40,000-plus faithful readers prefer paper, and frankly, we do too," the editorial reads.

A study carried out as part of an online survey by the research agency DECODE as part of an international benchmark project of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers in 2008, has found that Dutch youth (based on 1,000 people between the ages of 15 to 29) are neither interested in receiving news via mobile applications nor taking part in citizen journalism projects. They also do not find newspaper sections aimed at young people a compelling reason to regularly pick up a paper. They do, however, judge news media fairly positively.

Whilst initially surprising, the results of the study "Youth, news media and civic engagement," are in line with findings of a new study by IBM's Media and Entertainment Group, which shows that online news consumption has dropped among young adults, but risen among older consumers, calling into question the assumption that young people read more online news and older people favour printed publications.

Independent Newspapers South Africa has launched an 'E-dition', an online version of its printed newspapers that keeps the same format and layout as the print edition. This is in addition to the papers' standard news websites.

It also includes interactive radio and instant translation functions, so readers can listen to the articles in 11 languages. The editions can be downloaded for offline reading and are optimised for reading on smart phones. Bookmarking and search functions are also included.

In the lead up to the Christmas, the Miami Herald is asking that the spirit of giving extend to their pages and is requesting donations from readers.  In what has been a financially troubling year for the paper the Herald has made some 200 job cuts, suffered steep losses in revenue and drops in circulation numbers.

Yesterday the McClatchy-owned newspaper began using its website to invite users to donate with a link at the bottom of each story directing them to "Support ongoing news coverage on Miamiherald.com." There, readers can donate however much they wish with a credit card and are guaranteed their money is going to a good cause.

An article on the Washington Post by Paul Farhi has looked at recent media coverage of the Tiger Woods' alleged extra-martial affairs, and pointed out some ethical issues that arise from what appears to be the simple repetition of celebrity gossip in established publications. Farhi writes that whilst: "There's little doubt that Woods cheated on his wife... two weeks after stories about the world's greatest golfer began detonating, much about this story has taken on the coloration of fact without the facts themselves."

The New York Daily News can now print every page in colour, as its three new high-speed printing presses have whirred into action earlier this month.

Although the upgrade will increase efficiency and reduce waste, spending $200 million on equipment in the midst of a recession does appear to contravene conventional business wisdom.

But owner of the tabloid Mort Zuckerman told Crain's New York Business that he hopes that the resulting high-quality images will attract more advertising dollars, as high-end brands prefer to see their advertisements in the arresting visual format common to European newspapers or luxury magazines.

The Tindle Newspapers Group, which publishes over 200 local and regional papers in the UK, some of which are over 100 years old, has judged its various paid content experiments as successful and now plans to erect paywalls at 40 of its titles. 

Media consultancy group Oliver and Ohlbaum interviewed (not just polled) 2,600 UK adults in early November and concluded that paywalls alone would not improve newspapers finances, but a mixed strategy of micropayments and subscriptions would be necessary. 

"Newspapers are screwed" according to an executive in a report from media law firm Olswang, 'Convergence 2009' on paid content. This latest data backs up Forester's and paidContent:UK's own data on how (un)willing people are to pay for online news content.

Here's the bomb: 60% of 1,013 people polled won't pay for any sort of newspaper articles on any digital format. 

Otherwise, Unsure: 12 %; Obtain articles "illegally": 2%; Switch to free alternative: 8%; Seek free alternative but pay up if none available: 5%; Prefer subscription to micropayments: 2%; Would make micropayments but only infrequently: 8%; Would pay micropayments frequently: 4%.

Once again, the evidence stacks against Murdoch's plans. Only 19% responded in favor of micropayments for articles, but rose to 30% for iPhone owners. Probably because they can actually afford it.

Following recent survey results citing the relatively low percentage of Americans willing to pay for online news (which contradicts older data, although from the UK) and the supposed preference for micropayments (which also flies in the face of survey results and common sense) comes new results from Forrester Research on subscription models.

A study carried out by Continental Research has found that the best way to get consumers to pay for online news is via single article micropayments.
The survey of 500 readers of newspapers and magazines found that only five per cent would be prepared to pay for a monthly or yearly subscription, finding them too pricy.

Two German entrepreneurs are setting up a new kind of home delivered newspaper among worldwide news print failures. On November 16^th the brave young businessmen are venturing into the industry with an innovative newspaper service - the first of its kind in Europe - at arguably the worst time, and for a limited Berlin-only market. But its very unorthodoxy, the essence Wanja Oberhof's and Hendrik Tiedmann's Niiu personalized newspaper, could be its saving grace.

Niiu Beginnings

The Niiu started with an idea, two and a half years ago, ultimately about information convenience. Having grown up in a newspaper-reading household, Mr. Oberhof became used to reading multiple papers to pursue the news and information he was interested in.  Having to juggle multiple national, local, and international papers to find one's interests would inevitably become a chore, especially vis-à-vis the speed and convenience of internet news. The same behavioral phenomenon is in fact the very reason why the internet seems to be ruining traditional newspapers; people, especially young adults and students, are tending find their news and information from a variety of sources on the internet rather than a single source that marked the newspaper's monopoly and success in the 20^th century. 

Oberhof's resulting idea was simple and clear: an individualized newspaper, composed of selected pages and sections from papers, delivered each morning to one's door just like a regular paper. This combination of paper format and internet convenience and accessibility found Oberhof a business partner in Hendrik Tiedmann, who shared the same idea. Together they founded InterTi GmbH, Niuu's parent company, funded out of their own pockets, and began doing their homework.

"The whole idea was based on our own behavior research and experience; [as young people] we're used to very different information sources. The main idea was to combine all the varying sources of news and information, because it is normal for young people who have grown up with the internet to have not one source of information but many," Mr. Obherof said in a telephone interview with The Editor's Weblog. But why a newspaper format? Surely a less risky and lower-cost alternative would be setting up a personal news aggregator.

Oberhof disagrees. "We asked this target group which is the most comfortable and which is the best distribution channel; is it an e-paper, is it only on mobile, is it printed or online? The feedback was that for now, paper is still the best distribution channel." Hence the simple combination of the internet and printed paper that is the essence of Niiu.

Interestingly, the founders have no particular allegiance to print, it just happens to be the currently favored distribution channel. "The vision that we offer is all the information that is relevant for the reader. As a next step it is the reader's choice which distribution channel they will use, whether it's a mobile phone, e-paper, the internet, or whatever else." Their focus is information amalgamation and distribution, the particular channel being largely irrelevant and ultimately the client's choice. This is quite an unusual position for a company entering the print industry, which these days seems to require a great deal of faith.

What Niiu is and How it Works (The Technical Bit)

On the client's side the process is very simple. After signing up for a short-term subscription (more on that later), they have until 2 p.m. to choose their news sources for the following morning's paper. On Niiu's website they can select from a wide variety of publications and online sources; from national, local or international newspapers like the New York Times, or internet news sources and blogs. A 24-page personalized paper, researched from and composed of their choices, then appears on the subscriber's doorstep the next morning.

"At this first step, for the reader it is only possible to select whole pages or sections," says Oberhof. From newspapers the readers can select pages or sections, from the internet providers they choose from over 600 very diverse rss feeds, from "Women's tennis blogs to local garden pages, we have lots of special interest content available." Clients currently cannot access their personalized paper online, as this would basically defeat the purpose of the delivered print format.

On Oberhof and Tiedmann's side, however, things are a bit more complicated. It is no easy feat to compile, print, and distribute thousands of individual papers. Over the past two years, InterTi GmbH has had to create a specialized software for compiling sources and setting the layout, arrange digital printing deals, close licensing contracts with news sources, attract advertisers, create a new business model and work out delivery schedules. So how did they do all that?

"We outsource everything," says Oberhof. "We don't have an editorial team, we don't have the printing machines, we don't have a delivery structure; we have partners. First we had to create software, so we got a partner with a Swiss web and print specialist service. They produced our software that combines all the pages and articles and news for each reader into a print-ready .pdf that is sent to the digital printing machines from the Netherlands, and a German copy house takes care of the actual printing. Then we have an agreement with a Berlin delivery service that delivers all the international newspapers that will also now deliver Niiu." Given all this outsourcing and subcontracting, one wonders whether circulation revenue will cover the costs.

Luckily there is another revenue source, the very one that is ruining traditional papers, and where the Niiu shines most brightly: it offers a space for highly targeted advertising, something already optimistic advertisers will pay dearly for. At first, during the 'trial phase' of the first few months, advertising will be more general because the Niiu is new and won't have a large circulation. But with an expanded subscriber base ads will become more targeted, focusing on neighborhoods their corresponding socio-economic groups.

Oberhof is confident of his advertising model. "We have had large amounts of positive feedback from advertising clients, and they have several different ideas such as at first only distinguishing between male and female readers, then differentiating by neighborhood and age in Berlin. Some big German car players are interested and have said 'different cars for different people' based on the interests of the readers, like the family man being interested in the new X5 or the young student being shown the BMW 1." Who the people are and more particularly what their interests are would be clear from their choice of news sources for their Niiu's composition.

Ignoring that their proclaimed audience is exclusively young students and not old people and family men, this raises some questions about whether using personal information for advertising violates some privacy protections. But this is doubtful as various advertisers and distributors have used similar techniques for years: think about those supermarket coupon promotional catalogues, also known as 'junk mail,' which you might get at your front door. They differ per neighborhood using the same concept (in my experience, I got Pioneer Supermarket rice coupons up in Harlem, while my friends downtown got brochures for Citarella).

Of course, a paper cannot live on adverts alone. In terms of subscriptions, Niiu continues to be innovative. The subscription packages are aimed towards young readers and students, the paper's perennial target audience (and probably one of the more difficult market sectors to enter, especially in media and technology).

Mr. Oberhof explains: "We have several different packages, not a traditional subscription but a pre-paid system. You load up money for packages, like the one-day trial, or the longer-term packages over 25, 75 or 150 days. It's not a classical subscription at all, that's an important point for us, because many young people, according to our feedback, don't want a subscription for a year because they do not know where they will be in the near future, whether studying in a different city, or doing an international internship or living at home, so they want short-term packages." Currently Niiu is priced at €1.80 per issue, €1.20 for students.

Is this really a good way to build subscriber loyalty? There is a risk of high turnover, potentially running through the market potential before they get established. However this model makes sense for their target demographic. Personally I find this an appealing arrangement. Not really knowing where I will be in six months has prevented me from subscribing to my publications of choice, so I read online news while I would prefer the print editions.

Challenges

One of the biggest questions I had for Mr. Oberhof was regarding the licensing and use of articles and content from news providers. In the context of the current debate over paid online content and the associated problem of the cost of news and journalism, this is quite a pressing concern and I was most interested in what Niiu's arrangements were. Surprisingly, it was unsurprising and rather simple.

Niiu has a contract with each newspaper and online provider, in which "we have a little license fee which we pay for every used page," Oberhof explains. The licenses, and thus the copies of Niiu itself, are based on pages: "we pay a fixed fee for each page we use...because we take one-to-one pages from each newspaper," meaning the pages of Niiu are exact replicas of the original page from the source. This setup will be the working model for the first few trial months.

"The newspapers give us access to everything they have. That means every page and article that is used in the New York Times we can have the next day in Niiu," although details on how blogs and internet sources would be presented are a bit fuzzy. It would be safe to assume that they would appear in Niiu as they would in your browser, albeit reformatted and resized.

An obvious question regards how newspaper publishers feel about Niiu and why they would allow access to their articles, when this could very well cannibalize their own sales. While some certainly think so, the majority of publishers approached by Oberhof and Tiedmann have embraced the idea and accepted licensing contracts.

"Most of [the news publishers] think it's an interesting new project for a target group which doesn't read much newspapers. The young people, the students, in Germany don't read that much newspaper so for [the newspaper publishers] it's an experience; they want to have a look at the feedback and to test it out. Most of them also don't think that we will take the long-term single paper reader away from them, since our audience is the reader who doesn't know which paper is right for them or likes a variety of news sources," Oberhof asserts.

So, in theory, there is no direct competition because they target different audiences. However, the Niiu provides the same service as the internet but in print form; it is hard to see why publishers who would blame the internet and the news aggregators (which is basically what Niiu is doing) as the newspaper's bane would embrace that service in their own industry.

Some industry experts are not so optimistic. Joachim Blum, a digital media consultant, voices 'considerable doubts' over Niiu's future. He says the idea is interesting, but it just won't work because the target audience has left paper behind: "People who read newspapers are office workers, not students," Blum tells Spiegel Online. This is similar to the problem discussed above, where it seems that the assumption has been made that students who are used to getting news quickly and for free online will suddenly start paying for it to be physically manifested; they surely won't be paying for the service, as they can do it themselves. They would therefore be paying for the physical product, the newspaper, and its aesthetic appeal. But we all know how fickle young people and students are when it comes to aesthetics.

Another issue is more topical as to how Niiu relates to traditional newspaper and the internet, its status in between and bridging these media forms. For all its supposed innovation, "Niiu shares the same dilemma of print journalism in the age of the Internet: every paper you read in the morning only contains yesterday's news," says Stephan Weichert, a journalism professor at the Macromedia University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg. "The Web offers news every second and gives the option to link to blogs and other websites. Why would people read and even buy a story or information, which they select on the Internet the day before? It's old-school journalism," he tells Time. Again, the same underlying problem is pointed out; the combination of paper and internet has great potential, but it also combines the weak points of both and confuses the primary audiences of both mediums.

Time will tell whether these criticisms will stand or whether Niiu will live up to its potential.

The Future!

For the time being it seems like the main challenges for Oberhof and Tiedmann have been surmounted. They are looking forward to the November 16^th launch, for the time being to serve Berlin only. The circulation scope for now is limited because of the high quality but rather slow digital printing. "You can't compare it to a classical offset machine that could print 200,000 copies of Niiu in an hour; our digital printers can only do about 2000 in an hour," Oberhof explains. "That means it is not possible to deliver from one printing machine to several cities, so we start in Berlin. But obviously it's planned to expand to other cities in Germany and Europe," if the paper gets off the ground with the aim of around 5000 subscribers by the first 6 months.

However Oberhof knows there is much to be done, and that the work is far from finished. "For the next month the biggest challenge will be whether the whole work flows as we want it to. The first actual non-test paper will [hopefully] have around 5000 subscribers and this will be a lot to handle since every newspaper is individual. We might not actually know or can't imagine what the real work flow will be, what will come, and that's definitely the hardest thing." Meanwhile, he already has plans for future products and services once Niiu gets going and is established in the market.

Oberhof and Tiedmann's mission is more about giving the market what it wants, i.e. providing whatever information the reader desires in whatever format they prefer, rather than innovating the newspaper industry (which seems to be a side effect of their project). So if the market preference shifts, so will their products and services.

Having recognized that newspaper may only be around for so long, InterTi GmbH is planning "to offer an e-paper as a second step, probably by the end of this year," Oberhof revealed. Other editions are in the works, but no plans have been formally announced given that the formal launch is still a few days away. "For the future, I think that things like the Kindle will be very interesting for our product developments, but for now its not actually enough, not many people use e-readers at all," Oberhof confides. However, given the company's service-oriented vision, we can reasonably expect an e-reader version once the market for them takes off.

Whether you think newspapers are doomed or just in a rough spot right now, there is no denying the simple ingenuity and appeal (however limited) of Niiu. Its combination of the strengths (and unfortunately some of the weaknesses) of printed news and online news could make it a product to be reckoned with, even for those newspaper publishers who feel no competition from it. The potential for newspaper innovation through individualization is huge, and it remains to be seen whether Niiu will capitalize and profit from that potential

The Editor's Weblog wishes the best of luck to Oberhof and Tiedmann. It is now up to the Berlin public to decide the fate of Niiu.

Mr. Wanja Oberhof will be speaking at the WAN 2009 16th World Editors Forum in Hyderabad

Sources: Personal interview with Mr. Oberhof.

Spiegel Online

PrintWeek

Time

News Corp has decided to stay the course with Murdoch's plan to charge for online news despite the recent paidContent:UK/Harris Interactive poll that found only 5% of people would pay if their favorite online news source started charging. News Corp cites their own research claiming to have found support for paid digital content.

A memo from Richard Freudenstein, CEO of News Digital Media (the online arm of News Corp's Australian subsidiary News Limited), leaked to the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the 'second phase' of development for online content in Australia was under way, and that the corporation is confident of their plans. "News has conducted some audience research here in Australia and in the UK and US, which gives us confidence that, if we get the product and delivery system right, people will happily pay for news content online, on their computer, mobile, e-reader or other device," claims Freudenstein, careful to add the nuances of proper delivery and product.

This comes right after the rather dour outlook of the paidContent:UK/Harris Interactive poll, which cast only 5% as willing to pay, overwhelmingly preferring annual subscriptions, but more open to pay for online and print subscriptions bundles. However New Digital Media's chief commercial officer, Ed Smith, claims that it really depends on what kind of question is asked (paidContent/Harris Interactive has taken this as an issue with their methodology). "If you ask them yes or no, everyone says no," Mr Smith said. ''But if you do more in-depth research about what they consume, where and why and how they would be prepared to pay for it, you see very different results in line with our strategy."

Murdoch and News Corp have been quite vocal about their paywall plans, but rather hushed about the specifics; micropayments v. subscriptions, bundles v. stand alone payments, and have been reserved about divulging detailed information on The Wall Street Journal's successful pay scheme. In this case it would be safe to assume that they will charge according to the results of the paidContent:UK/Harris poll, enacting some sort of annual subscription bundle.

Sources: Sydney Morning Herald
paidContent

    A paidContent:UK/Harris Interactive poll has found that only 5% of online news readers would pay for what they read, those that would pay prefer an annual subscription plan rather than controversial micropayments or daily payments, and that for such annual subscriptions 72% polled would not pay more than £10. Of course there are minor fluctuations in the numbers when broken down by class and age; interestingly enough the youngest group polled, those between 16 and 24, would actually be the most likely to start paying to continue reading their favorite news source. This could be because this age group is more internet-literate so many have already found a niche or specialized news source (which is why they would want more than just headlines) that they had compared to other sources, and who would have had the experience of higher quality that comes with a pay wall.
    

PressDisplay.com is an online portal that allows users access to the digital editions of over 1,100 newspapers from around the world. Premium users pay for monthly memberships, and publishers receive a royalty for each edition that is read. The Editors Weblog recently spoke to Igor Smirnoff, director of strategic development, to learn more about the site's benefits to newspapers and how the company sees the market now that everyone is jumping on the paid online content bandwagon.

"It is truly premium content," declared Smirnoff regarding PressDisplay's offerings. "This is everything that ever appears in the printed edition. Google doesn't have it." Sometimes even the newspapers' own websites don't carry all the same content - Smirnoff estimated that 30 to 60 percent of what appears in the print edition makes it online. That's because the publications that appear on PressDisplay are an exact replica of the printed page, including all articles, pictures and advertisements.

NewspaperDirect, a Vancouver-based company founded in 1999 as a newspaper print-on-demand service, developed PressDisplay's technology about five years ago. Each day, publishers send a PDF of their newspapers to the company, which NewspaperDirect then digitizes and adds to its database. The main page of the PressDisplay site represents an aggregation of all the newspapers in the database. Users can click through to articles from this main page or browse through specific publications.

Visitors can view the front page of every newspaper for free. Once they access a specific article, a sign in is required. When browsing through a publication, clicking on an article creates a pop-up window with a plain text version. Users then have the option to translate the story into 12 languages, listen to an audio version, bookmark for personal use, or share via a variety of social networks. PressDisplay's search function is also particularly popular, according to Smirnoff, although results come from a limited window of time. "PressDisplay is really positioned as 'today's paper,'" he explained. Thus, archives go back two weeks for individual users and up to three months for library subscribers.

How newspapers make money

"In the beginning we were chasing publishers," recounted Smirnoff. "We were going after them and trying to explain the business model. Now we are being chased by publishers." The monetary benefit to newspapers is simple: each time a user clicks on an article, he or she "purchases" the entire publication for that day. The publisher then receives a standard royalty for each purchased edition; the amount varies depending on the publication, but averages about 25 cents.

NewspaperDirect offers several different types of PressDisplay subscriptions depending on the type of user. Individual consumers can opt for a free membership, which gives access to all front pages and two articles per day. An intermediate plan for $9.95 per month allows the user to view 31 publications per month, or about one a day. The most popular option is the unlimited plan for $29.95 per month. Newspapers receive the same royalty regardless of the status of the user. There are also subscriptions at the corporate level for companies who use newspapers on a professional basis, such as PR agencies, and for libraries. Smirnoff claims 50 million people read digital newspapers in this way around the world, with 1.5 million individual consumers using PressDisplay.

Newspapers have more to gain by partnering with PressDisplay than just an extra revenue stream. Readers are added to ABC figures, while a widget called Adget allows publications to sell video ads on top of traditional print advertising. Moreover, publishers receive detailed reports on each edition that shows what exactly users are reading. This "attention map" details how many copies were sold, the average reading time, how much of the newspaper the user read, which sections were most popular, and several other categories that can help publishers determine what attracts readers and where they lose interest.

Individualized SmartEditions

Another option for newspapers that don't want to open up access to all PressDisplay users is an individualized e-paper called a SmartEdition that only appears on the publication's own website. Publishers create their own pricing plans for these e-editions, giving NewspaperDirect a share of the revenue. Participating publications include the Times, the Washington Post and Le Figaro.

The service costs newspapers nothing for set-up and maintenance, and offers the same features for all publications regardless of the revenue model, including automatically updating with all the latest features. "We do want to make sure that publishers see us not as a vendor, but as a development partner," Smirnoff stated. NewspaperDirect creates individual SmartEditions for about half the newspapers in its database, and currently releases an average of one new SmartEdition each day, according to Smirnoff.

Certain big name newspapers have resisted joining PressDisplay altogether, among them The New York Times, the Financial Times and Le Monde. These publications already have a strong brand and believed they had a sufficient digital presence, but some are now ready to make the jump. "All this protectionism that we have seen from these titles is just not working," claimed Smirnoff. "And they're the ones hurting themselves, really."

"If you compare the SmartEdition of any paper - the smallest paper that we run - I think it is much better, has better functionality and features, and is accessible on many more devices" than certain other large newspapers that don't use it, he added.

Keeping up with the latest technology

One other advantage of PressDisplay comes from its broad compatibility, providing the same access on PCs, Macs and smartphones. New applications are set for release for the iPhone and Blackberry in the coming weeks, with a Palm Pre app coming out in mid-October. The company currently maintains a partnership with e-reader manufacturer iRex whereby anyone that purchases one of their devices gets a free one-month trial to PressDisplay.

"We always warn that, as a publisher, they shouldn't be attached to a specific device," advised Smirnoff. "You don't know what your readers will prefer. So you have to stay 'platform agnostic,' as we call it. And PressDisplay is platform agnostic."

Looking at the big picture

While NewspaperDirect obviously wants to make a profit - which it has been doing for the past few years - Smirnoff sees its role as providing broader benefit to the newspaper industry. "PressDisplay becomes more appealing, of course, the more content - the more sources - we have," he admitted. "But the challenge here is really bigger. We're trying to look at the industry as a whole. We're trying to find what is the way to migrate business from tradition print into digital. How are we doing this? Where is the revenue?"

Regarding recent announcements about paid online content from Google, Journalism Online and Rupert Murdoch, Smirnoff remained skeptical. His company has been around long enough to have seen a number of experiments that claimed to be the saviors of newspapers in the digital realm, few of which lasted very long. The latest ventures could learn a lot by looking at NewspaperDirect's model for getting users to pay for content.

"This actually already exists, if you look at PressDisplay," Smirnoff asserted. "This is exactly what is now being voiced at a higher level, but PressDisplay has been running for a number of years now, quite successfully."

While there have been many examinations into whether people prefer to get their news from the Internet or traditional media, Ryan Chittum argues in the Columbia Journalism Review that those who read newspapers overwhelmingly do so via the print editions rather than on the papers' websites. By Chittum's calculations, 92 percent of newspaper reading is done in print and 8 percent takes place online.

To come up with these figures, Chittum used the latest Nielsen Online data and compared it to newspaper circulation and readership numbers. Chittum created a table of the top five newspaper websites, but his main example was the venerable New York Times.

The virtue of the Internet is its inclusive, interactive nature. News sites' reader comment sections provide users with the chance to air their own views and debate stories of particular interest. Yet, as these conversations at times degenerate into uncivilised virtual sparring contests, or are hijacked by prejudiced and abusive persons, website managers are increasingly having to review their comments section policy.  

The Fargo Forum experiment is a fitting example of this state of affairs. Six months ago, the North Dakota news site took the opportunity with the upgrading of its server software to liberalise its user comments policy. Reader comments, regardless of content could be published freely and the Forum would only interfere if a posting received a complaint. Unfortunately, the freedom was exploited by "a few bad apples" according to the Forum's  editor Matthew Von Pinnon, and the quality of the debates degenerated into "low and petty discourse". Six months later, the experiment was abandoned.

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.

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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.