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The Editors Weblog is running a series of exclusive interviews about the future of journalism with top editors at leading newspapers around the world. Here is the latest installment with Dan Bogler, Managing Editor of the Financial Times in the UK.

Click here to view all interviews in this series. Other titles include The New York Times, the Guardian, Fairfax Media, the Hindustan Times, etc. (full list at the bottom of the interview).


Questions: "News, journalism, newspapers: same past, different futures?"


- How long do you think you will define your company as a newspaper company or a print company?

We see ourselves as a news organization and we're becoming much more agnostic about our distribution channels. We're becoming much more interested in creating relevant information for our readers and much less interested in how it gets to the readers. Pearson, the parent company, clearly is an education company with a print publishing arm and an information division, which includes the FT. At the FT level, we consider ourselves to be a financial news business more than a newspaper. Our mission is to be the gold standard for global business news in print and online - and in any other formats.

- At this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, a panel of futurists claimed that print newspapers wouldn't exist by 2014. To what extent do you agree with this?

Largely but not completely. 10 years from now - 2014 may be slightly too short a time frame - we will still have printed newspapers, because people like reading  things in print. Newspapers, just like the book, are convenient to read in places you can't do with a computer; but my belief is that a lot of what will be printed will be analysis, comment, analysis and opinion. The actual news will be more or less online or in other more timely formats. In a way the FT will split in two, with FT.com for all the news that's breaking and some immediate reactions and  opinion. The more considered analysis will be almost an Economist-type publication. Maybe it wouldn't have to be broadsheet anymore, it could be tabloid or even magazine format. To put it very crudely, you'd have all the news online, and you'd have 12 pages of Martin Wolf the next day in print, and all the editorials, columnists, features and more.

- In journalism's multi-centennial history, do you view the emergence of digital journalism as part of the continuity, or as a complete breakaway with previous forms of journalism?

There's one thing that's old and one thing that's new. What's old and part of the continuum is that traditional companies are going online. Our journalists are now fully integrated and write online and in print. I'm sure that in 2 years time they'll all be carrying video cameras. We've gone from zero videos website to over 100 per month in the last 18 months. That's part of the continuum: it's us doing the same thing in different distribution channels.

What's new is the blogosphere, citizen journalists and the idea that anyone - people who are not qualified journalists, either experts in a narrow field or just interested citizens - can start a blog or website and distribute it. For the FT, you would think it's negative in the sense that there's more news and opinion and more competitors. In fact, that's not really true, it almost enhances the position of leading media brands for several reasons. One is we are trusted, people believe the news they read with us. Secondly, we select and edit, which becomes an increasingly crucial function as there is more information out there. The more 'over-informed' people are, the more likely people who want to know what's actually going on will turn to a few sources that tell them what s actually important. That's what professional newspapers do really well.

- Do you believe in the increasingly active role of the user in the news process, and is it a threat or an opportunity for professional journalists?

I do believe in their increasingly active role of users: very often readers are more informed than us. If you look at an old format like the letters page in the newspaper, the amount of expertise that our readers have, who are often professionals in the City, is just incredible. They know more about it in certain aspects than our journalists. That's why we get CEOs, academics, lawyers, heads of accountancy firms and more writing in to us to say what's actually happening. They can do this online with comments or take part in Q&As, or print their views in the pages of the FT and FT.com. That sort of content is very helpful. We also have a function for any user to comment on the website's stories.

Is it a threat? Sure, to some extent. But as long as it's happening on our site or in the pages of our newspaper, it's been bundled, monitored, checked for quality and therefore is important. We're not going to turn into a place where we just repeat hundreds of readers' letters and have no journalists of our own. It's more of an opportunity for our journalists to become more informed and build contacts among readers. And it's amazing that all these readers are willing to give this information for free.

- Do you consider the Golden Age of investigative journalism is already past, or just beginning?

I don't know. That's a really hard one. I might say it's already past.

There's so much more information out there and it's so much harder for companies to hide information. Take the Northern Rock story, which was broken by BBC journalists, and there was a bank run as a result. It's harder to hide information. The idea that journalists have to do long-term, deep, undercover investigations where they reveal something months later - I don't think it works like that anymore. Journalists still have scoops and still break important stories, but it tends to be in a much shorter time frame. It tends to be a single development that they're breaking rather than a long series of connections.

But frankly, newspapers and media organizations are under pressure. It's hard for us to send a journalist or a group of journalists off three months investigating something - and if nothing works that's a shame but nevermind. We don't have resources to let people go off and do that for such a long time. I think The Golden Age of journalists working undercover, developing sources and breaking big scandals is less likely; but revealing news that people don't want out there, on a short term basis, uncovering a scandal and having it come to light, that's more likely. As soon as a tiny thing breaks now, it gets distributed so quickly that it's hard to see a journalist working undercover for a long time and gradually piecing something together without having it go public much earlier in the process.


Stay tuned for more interviews in our series. Among the other titles that have been asked to participate in these interviews are:

- The New York Times - Jonathan Landman (US)
- Financial Times - Dan Bogler (UK)
- Guardian (UK)
- Washington Post - Jim Brady (US)
- Globe & Mail - Ed Greenspon (Canada)
- The Times (UK)
- The Economist (UK)
- Gazeta Wyborcza - Jaroslaw Kurski (Poland)
- Le Monde (France)
- Die Welt (Germany)
- The Hindustan Times - Pankaj Paul (India)
- Asahi Shimbun (Japan)
- JoongAng Ilbo (South Korea)
- The Age / Fairfax - Mike van Niekerk (Australia)
- The Nation - Pana Janviroj (Thailand)
- Punch (Nigeria)
- El Tiempo (Colombia)
- Clarin (Argentina)
- Gulf News - Abdul Hamid Ahmad (UAE)

Paul Bradshaw of The Online Journalism Blog had posited that the editorial process and workflows must change with the online world, following the "news diamond," which is based on speed and depth.

Here's how a news site implemented this process in practice.

Editor of NME.com, a news publication about the music industry, David Moynihan, said his own team has worked towards adopting the news diamond, describing his work as "a buzzing cross-platform environment that mirrors [Bradshaw's] theories."

Though he writes that print staff is trying to be more involved with web publishing, as a web editor, Moynihan finds "that the change in processes, skill sets and attitude is still much too slow. The theories abound, but the practice is much more sluggish!"

Moynihan gives an example of how the news diamond was applied, not only to NME's print magazine, but online as well: The Raconteurs rush-released a new album without the typical promotional and marketing moves, including reviews.  "It almost makes journalism redundant," Moynihan writes. "Fan can simply listen to the album online at legal Mp3 download sites - why do they need NME?

Said Moynihan: "Except they do, it turns out. To mark the release of the album we have done all of the following on NME.com and the traffic speaks volumes about users' needs:

       1. Daily news stories in the run up to the release, covering a number of angles from album artwork, to release details to lyrics.
       2. A Photo Gallery of the band to mark the release.
       3. An instant review online, written by our writers in 'blog' format during their first listen. The full in-depth review and a feature about the unusual method of release will be in (yep, you guessed it) NME magazine, out this week.
       4. Updated our Artist page.
       5. Streamed the album online with our radio media player.
       6. Video to go online as soon as it's released"."

Source: Online Journalism Blog (photo)
 

Must-read. AJR's Senior Editor Carl Sessions Stepp has noted that while news remains as valuable as ever, journalism is certainly changing as daily newspaper circulation has declined every year since 1987.

Is it time for newspapers to panic? It could be, had Stepp not come up with an expansive list of very good editorial and business ideas for newspapers.

Instead of cutting everything, from staff to newspaper sections, Stepp argues that newspapers should be creating a product that is high quality and indispensable. Journalists need to embrace arriving technologies and make their articles more exciting. But how?

Here's a list of Stepp's ideas, more or less in his words, that could help newspapers recapture "domination of the overall information market":

-  A four section daily paper with journalists and readers sharing and discussing news together.
Section 1: a "dynamic, definitive guide" to local news featuring digests, analysis, listings, links, columns and audience contributions; excerpts and synopses of top content appearing elsewhere; and an annotated guide to the top material concerning international, national, regional and local news, sports, business and arts.

Section 2, the most important local, national, and foreign news, fully updated and differentiated from earlier Web copy.

Section 3, an in-depth package that changes everyday, which would present serious, investigative, quality journalism, not available anywhere else.

Section 4, all the expected features from crosswords to comics, plus new ones including reader creations.

- An online information superstructure built around a double home page, with an easy toggle back and forth: one screen for an orderly display of news and other content, the other a portal-type screen offering a master index of anything useful and appropriate for your audience, with more choices, more services and a nontraditional license to experiment.

- A new, more conversational tone, both online and in print, including staff and outside blogs, behind-the-scenes essays from staff members and a higher proportion of analysis and explanation.

- Archives and galleries with a more user-friendly format like Google or Yahoo! that cluster content by precinct, neighborhood or topics. Searches that index advertising or searches programmed to answer questions such as where a movie is playing or when the school board will meet.

- Expanded interactive guides to movies, shows, concerts, galleries and other arts, with amazon.com-like reader reviews and interaction.

- Real-time online traffic and weather blogs.

- Contests every day for the funniest, weirdest, most helpful or most outrageous local images, audio and video.

- Tournaments, online and in-print, pitting local individuals and teams against one another in solving puzzles, predicting sports or election outcomes..

- Online book clubs and discussion groups on local sports, religion, relationships and more.

- Original uploaded programming, in which readers Web-cam their neighborhood news, read political commentary, offer Leno-like stand-up comedy bits on the news and debate key local issues.

- A complaint forum, directed toward local government or business, in which editors or audience choose which questions have merit and pose them to local authorities.

- A local records center, providing agendas and minutes of every significant meeting in your area; text or links to as many public records as feasible; and your homemade community databases such as local sports stats, crime maps, home values or restaurant menus.

- Greater capitalization on the treasures of your archive; readers can develop and download scrapbooks featuring every article, photo or other mention of themselves and their families in your library; or publication and sale of special in-depth or feature reports drawing on your archives and research capabilities.

- A help-needed feature, a sort of super-classifieds, that lets readers pose questions, seek products, evaluate services and possibly engage in transactions from which you share the profits.

- Moderated forums and advice segments for personal finance, health, travel and other subjects.

- New products and revenue sources: frequent-visitor points, premium services (such as customized news delivery, conferences featuring star journalists, first crack at ads and coupons, local discounts), neighborhood magazines, daily auctions (lunch with the editor!), grants from nonprofits, vastly upgraded searching services and search-related ads, customized magazine and book-length reports on key topics.

- Staging regular creativity meetings throughout the news organization and in the community.

- Hosting an ongoing online suggestion box with prizes.

- Spend real money by giving $100,000 to three or four of your smartest people and challenge them to design something breathtaking.

Read Stepp's article for more of his ideas.

Source: AJR

The Associated Press plans to increase its celebrity and entertainment coverage, and is hiring an additional 21 employees to be spread across Los Angeles, New York, and London.

AP insists that the new venture, termed an entertainment vertical, is "not about gossip, unnamed sources and innuendo." Rather, given the high demand from customers and members for entertainment coverage, AP says it makes "good business sense," reports blogger Nikki Finke.

The entertainment vertical will be produced by a brand new AP entertainment group, helmed by recently appointed Director of Entertainment Content, Daniel Becker, who will be responsible for managing coverage across all platforms, as well as contributing towards development of new multimedia services.

According to an internal AP Q&A with Becker, AP chose to create a separate division in order to "fine tune its content offerings." Becker said the entertainment group's initial content will "focus on celebrities and be heavily image driven."

AP has already signed a deal to provide celebrity video for the website of American entertainment magazine People.

Rupert Murdoch, however, is going in the opposite direction with regards to entertainment coverage, pulling the plug effective immediately on News Corp.'s online gossip blog PageSix.com. 

The site, which had only been live since December, experienced its first 1 million page views in a day after breaking photos of the prostitute involved in the Elliot Spitzer scandal. Nonetheless Murdoch assessed that site was not making quick enough inroads into an already crowded market.

"Given the difficulty in the economy, it was not the right time for this launch," said Jennifer Jehn, one of the site's managers.

Sources: Deadline Hollywood Daily and Gawker both through I Want Media

This summer, Slate, an online news and opinion magazine owned by The Washington Post Co, is launching The Big Money, a business analysis and commentary site, which will join Slate V, a video site, and Root, an African-American news and opinion site.

Editor James Ledbetter said that the new site "intends to use wit and irreverence to explain the arcane of Wall Street."

Source: Editor & Publisher

Against a relatively gloomy backdrop of difficulties at news magazines like The New Statesman and the now-defunct Business, The Economist is a bright spot, recently hitting a record 1.3 million in weekly circulation, the accumulation of an unbroken run of six-month increases since 1980.   

The Economist has been partly sheltered from economic woes due to its unusual ownership (50% owned by the FT group and 50% by private investors including the Rothschilds).

However, despite its current solid print circulation, The Economist has been slow in attracting online readers, prompting calls for a website redesign this year. It has also been criticized by some for having a "laughably old-fashioned" audio version of the magazine. More video is coming to the site, and the weekly has also rolled back its pay wall, allowing readers to access articles up to a year old for free.
 
The magazine's editor John Micklethwait was initially fearful of potential danger of the internet. "...It struck me that the internet had smashed through newspapers - I think the image I used was a hurricane, and it was coming straight for magazines."

He has now changed his tune, admitting that "[the internet] seems to have been a more benign force to us that I could have hoped." However, he still worries about losing advertisers to the web even if the print version seems to be retaining readers.

Source: guardian.co.uk 
 

Hearst magazines Marie Claire, Seventeen and Good Housekeeping have all three launched YouTube-branded channels, and more are on the way.

Heart Magazines Digital Media and YouTube have made a deal for 15 Hearst print and online publications to provide content online, contests, and allow viewers to upload personal videos.

Readers will be able to view on YouTube video content from the publications.

Any newspapers to follow the lead?

Source: WWD.com through I Want Media

Independent.co.uk has relaunched its site with a new design, improved reader interaction and new features, including commercial services, music downloads and additional picture galleries.

Video, video, video. In 2007, the ‘V’ word was the new craze for newspapers internationally. And this is bound to continue in 2008. But just how much video should newspapers seek? Is it an optional plus, should all reporters be assigned to capture video, or should a newsroom even have its in-house studio? In Part 1, we take a look at several examples of how newspapers have included video.

There’s no question that video is one of this year’s biggest priorities for newspapers, whether national or local. In this Q&A, the Editors Weblog interviewed Alexander Houben, editor of volksfreund.tv, an online local TV channel launched by the German local paper Volksfreund. Houben describes video’s costs, its effects on journalists and how the editorial content fits the paper's strategy.

The Waco Tribune-Herald, like most daily papers, had been experiencing extreme losses in circulation and ad revenue. Michael Vivio, an advertising executive, decided to turn things around.

India Today Group is planning a big digital move, creating a single Website that is to showcase all of its properties. The group is also shifting from a subscription-based model to free access.

Widgets, small bits of software that users can add to personalize their Web space, are slowly making what could be a significant impact on online marketing, although many advertisers have yet to catch on.

On Monday, June 25, the popular online magazine Slate announced the launch of Slate V, a new online magazine featuring original content, user-submitted video, and top picks from around the Web.  According to Andy Bowers, Slate V’s new editor and a former correspondent for NPR, “Slate V will offer daily web video with the unique Slate voice: smart, topical, yet also irreverent and fun.”