Results matching “bloggers half a cen”

The Guardian has appointed three bloggers to its new experimental Guardian Local initiative.

Tom Allan, Hannah Waldram and John Baron have been appointed to cover the cities of Edinburgh, Cardiff and Leeds respectively. They will take on the position of 'beatbloggers', that is, bloggers who stick to a well-defined beat or coverage area.

After months of much hype and speculation, Steve Jobs finally took to the stage to unveil Apple's new highly anticipated tablet computer - the iPad.

With its official introduction at an event in San Francisco yesterday, Steve Jobs has finally laid many rumors about what the electronic device can do to rest, while igniting hopes about the iPad's ability to bring new life to 'old media' and to revamp the e-reader market.
 

 

A Nielsen Online data report for April has suggested that Internet users are yet to spend a significant time reading newspaper sites.  An individual spends an average of eleven minutes a month on the top 30 US newspaper sites.  Only half of these papers succeeded in increasing the amount of time spent per person on their sites in the past month.  

Somewhat surprisingly perhaps, the Minneapolis paper, the Star Tribune keeps viewers reading its website for longer than any other US paper.  The site clocks up an average of 40 minutes a month per reader on the site, surpassing the nationals such as USToday.com, NYTimes.com and WSJ.com.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer printed its last ever issue yesterday, 17 March 2009, and is looking at an online-only future. Parent company Hearst decided it could not afford to keep the paper open in its current form after it lost $14 million in 2008, and after trying and failing to sell it, they proceeded to stop the presses but keep the website. The P-I is not the first paper to make such a move, but it is by far the largest US publication so far. What does this closure mean for the paper and the people of Seattle, and what are the implications for the wider industry: will other papers follow suit?

The cost of keeping the Seattle P-I's website should be a fraction of the cost of printing the paper: Poynter's Rick Edmonds estimates costs have fallen by 80%. Staff numbers have been reduced from 165 to 20, including just one photographer, and the site will be less like that of a traditional newspaper and more like the Huffington Post, according to the New York Times, as it will have limited original reporting and consist largely of links, advice and commentary, with several local columnists. It will repackage some health and home material from Hearst's many magazines, and has about 150 unpaid bloggers who will continue to provide content. The original reporting will focus on more hard-hitting news such as government, spending and crime, said P-I executive producer Michelle Nicolosi.

Seattle will be left as a one-paper town: the Seattle Times is now the only major daily in the city and although it should benefit from no longer having competition from Hearst's paper, it will no longer be sharing printing, delivery, advertising and marketing expenses with the P-I, as it had been for more than 20 years. P-I subscribers will automatically start to receive the Times instead.  It remains to be seen whether the paper will flourish or continue to lose money. The P-I's new most direct competition is a non-profit local news website focusing on the Northwest, CrossCut.com.

How should the web-only paper tackle the competition?

This huge change for the P-I can, and arguably should, be seen as an opportunity to revamp its site and be a front-runner in innovation. Online news leaves plenty of room for original development and possibilities for increased interaction with readers, personalisation options and linking are particularly relevant for local papers such as the P-I. It is "an adventure in journalism," according to columnist Joel Connelly. Slate editor Jack Shafer called upon Hearst to plunge into experimentation by sending in the "interactive cavalry," as everything that the publisher learns in Seattle can be used at its other newspaper sites. Examples he suggests are going hyperlocal, updating the site as much "as humanly possible," and to hire as many developers as they can. Rick Edmonds seems to be in agreement, writing that as long as losses are kept low, the P-I could be an effective "real-time test of what works and what doesn't in an online-only local site." And Nicolosi has promised that the paper will "experiment a lot, fail fast" with what is on the site: if something is not working they will cut it immediately and try something else.

Does going online-only make business sense?

The paper's online traffic is 1.8 million unique viewers per month and is usually more than its former rival/partner, the Seattle Times, which has considerably higher print circulation. And according to Forbes magazine in January, Seattle is the most broadband-connected US city: hence a place seemingly well suited for an online-only publication.

And online readership figures are high: according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism's State of the News Media in the US report just released, traditional media has not lost its audience, rather this audience is shifting online. The Pew Research Center reported at the beginning of the year that the Internet had overtaken print as a primary news source in the US for the first time. This trend is not just American: British papers reported record online readership in January: with the Guardian website boasting almost 30 million unique viewers.

Several other smaller publications have made the switch to online-only over the past few months. The most well-known is the Christian Science Monitor, which announced its intention to cut its daily print edition in October 2008, though it will not actually make the conversion until April 1 this year. The CSM reasoned that its web product had a far wider reach than its print paper, particularly due to its international audience, and that producing the print publication would become untenable as the Christian Science church was preparing to stop its subsidisation. Others include the Monitor in Canada, and the Kansas City Kansan, San Francisco's AsianWeek, Hoy Nueva York and Wisconsin's The Capital Times in the US: all for financial reasons.  

The State of the News Media report, however, argues that it does not currently make sense for suffering papers to "kill their print editions and go online-only" as print still commands "premium ad pricing" and US papers still make roughly 90% of their revenue from print and the average cost of printing and delivering the printed paper is 40% of costs. So, the report believes, why would you cut almost all your revenue to save less then half your costs?

Is online-only the future of news?

Arguably, despite many people's love of print, online is the future of news: how distant a future, it is difficult to say. But the vital, million-dollar question remains: how to actually make enough money out of all these online readers in order to support good quality, in-depth reporting? Nicolosi said that she thinks it is "possible to run an online-only local news site that serves a city's readers well while turning a profit" and that "a digital news product is a viable solution for cities whose papers can no longer afford to operate." She seems to be convinced that the paper will make money online, but gives no indication of how this will happen. With the traditional ad-based business model proving less and less effective as online advertising prices fall, will the P-I come up with an innovative strategy? One of the major criticisms of the industry in the State of the News Media report was the lack of innovation in the sector in terms of business models. Nicolosi has assured readers that she is willing to try out new things on the site, but will the paper be as experimental in terms of business models?

For an online-only operation, the incentive to try to make money from Internet readers is surely greater than for a print publication with a website. And if the P-I does manage to find a way to support itself, whether through being successful enough to generate sufficient advertising revenue, or by adopting some kind of paid content system, the model will undoubtedly be looked at very carefully by other suffering papers around the world.

In the age of the Internet and blogging, news and information is spread faster than ever before.  The problem is sometimes it is hard to know where the information is coming from and whether or not its even true.

Fox News, The Los Angeles Times and MSNBC were among the many who quoted a McCain campaign figure.  The problem is - the man from the McCain camp was fake. 

US-based outside.in, which gathers content from local news outlets and bloggers, announces that launched a beta version in the UK. The firm may also open a UK office to complement the launch.

The third part of Technorati's report, "State of the Blogosphere 2008" was released today. We have been covering the release of the report each day it has been released.

Chart: How bloggers attract visiters















The report so far has explored who bloggers are, what they're blogging about, and the role of blogging in their lives. Today's instalment looks at how bloggers work.

The second part of Technorati's report, "State of the Blogosphere 2008" was released today.  The first part, Who Are the Bloggers?, was released yesterday.  

The report explores the Active Blogosphere and the trends, stories and behaviors that influence not only other Blogs, but the mainstream media as well.  It also seeks to answer the following questions; "Why have blogs become a significant part of the media landscape so quickly? Just what is it that makes the medium of blogging so compelling? What are bloggers blogging about and why?"

In Part II of the survey, The What And Why of Blogging, 1000 bloggers were interviewed about the content of their blogging.  Most cover both personal and professional topics and half consider their style to be sincere, conversational, humorous, and expert in nature. 

According to Michael Agger from Slate, online reading is slower and users are more likely to lose interest faster.

The most effective text online is bulleted, in a list, occasionally bold, has informative subheads and contains no puns. Aggers refers to Jakob Nielsen's theories, labeling humans as "informavores" who look for "an information scent" on a site.

According to earlier research, there was no difference in reading speeds between reading on paper and on the Web. Nielsen, however, believes that reading online is 25 % slower.

The advice that experts give for reading on the computer is to choose a default screen font such as Verdana, rest your eyes every half an hour, have a good monitor, minimize reflection and skip long lines of words.

Nielsen thinks online readers are "selfish, lazy, and ruthless."

In order to fight this (read Nielsen's post), websites need:
- One idea per paragraph
- Bulleted lists
- Bold text
- Have informative subheads
- Contain no puns
- Shorter text

Nielsen points out that if users are motivated to read lengthy paragraphs in order to get the information they need, then they will. Otherwise, hyper-texting is advisable.

Agger says reading for pleasure is a whole different thing, because you are "engrossed" in the text and do not care about its length but this is a less common practice online.

Nielsen does not promote blogging, but Agger says that bloggers can beat the Internet by "offering a comprehensive take on a subject" and "supplying original thinking."  

Agger concludes by recommending paper as a "balm." "It's contained, offline, tactile," he says. Find out more by reading "A paperless world?"

Source: Slate.com through IFRA Executive News Service

See also:

New eyetrack research can help online editors

Managing offensive journalists is easy; if the journalist pushes the envelope too far, terminate his or her employment. But since papers can't fire readers- nor would they want to - newspapers must learn how to manage the questionable user-generated content that inevitably comes with increased interactivity.

Guardian.co.uk's Sean Dodson looks primarily at the example of The Telegraph's MyTelegraph service, which gives readers the opportunity to publish their own stories under the paper's masthead. The service has won The Telegraph accolades, but the year-old service has also put the paper in the middle of the debate over how to best manage and develop UGC.

MyTelegraph, which will launch a redesigned version this summer, boasts some well-written, thoughtful blogs. It also has its share of users with extreme opinions, ranging from active members of far right party BNP to members of an anti-feminist "men's movement."

A statement from a Telegraph spokeswoman emphasized the inevitable fact that "a multiplicity of views will be expressed" on the site. She continued, "Our readers are entitled to their opinions and, within the scope of the law, they're entitled to publish on MyTelegraph."

What do to do though if the comments toe the line of legality? Or if they are just too extreme for most to stomach? Most papers now employ a team of moderators, although the moderation system varies from publication to publication. Newspapers also rely on their users to help moderate; The Telegraph, like others, has a flag offering readers to chance to report offensive material. Moreover, a poll suggests that almost half of internet users favor a voluntary blogger code of conduct in order to suppress overly offensive material.

What distinguishes MyTelegraph from most other UGC services at other newspapers (and what makes effective moderation all the more pertinent) is The Telegraph's rejection of the "gatekeeper" model. Most newspapers, like The Guardian's Comment is Free, allow only bloggers sanctioned by the newspaper to start user debates. But in the Telegraph model, users themselves can propose topics; "MyTelegraph unlocks the gate and hands over the key," writes Dodson.

Newspapers looking for a solution to nasty contributors can also look to Norweigen paper Daily Verdens Gang, which launched a service in 2005 allowing readers to set up their own blogs (25,000 bloggers have joined, 15,000 are fairly active).

"A minority can go too far outside of the legal borders but we have a good control system," said Geir Ruud, VG's online foreign editor. "If they continue to misbehave we kick them out."

Source: Guardian

Nearly half (46%) of internet users favor the creation of a voluntary code of conduct for bloggers and online commentators, shows a survey by legal firm DLA Piper.

Bloggers were fairly evenly split: 32% supported the application of a code reflecting laws on defamation, intellectual property and incitement, while 34% were opposed.   

According to Duncan Calow, a DLA Piper media law specialist, there is a "dangerous perception" among web users that user-generated content is "immune to the law." Three-quarters of users who had posted comments or blogged online were oblivious to libel law, while only 1 in 3 had actually read the terms and conditions of the sites they frequent.

"The combination of confusion and complacency about the relationship between the law and UGC puts users at risk as they come under increasing scrutiny online," Calow said.

Although some users will inevitably ignore the small print, online sites, newspapers included, should perhaps make the possible legal ramifications more visible. The other option is proactively fighting bad behavior by commentators.

Source: MediaGuardian 

The George Polk award for legal reporting honored a blogger, Joshua Micah Marshall, editor and publisher of US political blog Talking Points Memo. This is the first time the honor has been given to a blogger.

TPM, a New York City-based blog, features opinion-based, investigative reporting. Marshall considers blogging a new political conversation, and, with his highly-lauded coverage on TPM, consistently challenges doubts that bloggers can’t be journalists.

Marshall won the half-century old, Long Island University issued award for reporting on the controversial and politically motivated dismissals of several US attorneys. His success demonstrates blogging's growing credibility as a cutting-edge vehicle for news reporting.

Source: Journalism.co.uk

The Huffintgon Post confirmed its established success by securing an additional $5 million in funding, and its next step will be to become an all-inclusive digital newspaper.

Rue89.com was founded in May by four former journalists and bloggers from the French leftist daily Libération. Within months, the online-only news site unearthed a few scoops and became a recognized independent source in the French media landscape, ranking first among French news sites for time spent, ahead of newspapers, according to Nielsen NetRatings. One of its founders and director, Pierre Haski, tells the Editors Weblog how Rue89 found a working compromise to pro-am journalism.

Spain’s new newspaper, Publico, is offering a hybrid model between paid-for dailies and freesheets. Is this the new editorial and business model for newspapers, or just another step towards becoming free?

The free daily Metro in Sweden could launch Metrobloggen, a tool that would pay bloggers 3 öre, or half a US cent, per page view. Bloggers must get at least 5,000 views to be given any money and page views are counted monthly and not aggregated. So if a blogger gets 4,999 page views during the month of June they get nothing and they start at 0 for the month of July. 

Columnist David Lazarus of the San Francisco Gate recently defended his position that newspapers should charge for online content against the host of bloggers who attacked him.

Just about everybody in the media now agrees that blogs and citizen journalism will strongly influence the media landscape of the future. But how much so? A WeMedia / Zogby Interactive poll showed that 74% of Americans believe citizen journalism will play a vital role in the future of American journalism.

The rise and prospects of hyperlocal journalism.

Citizen journalism media and local news websites offering user-generated content influence their communities and are here to stay, according to a report released by J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism. Traditional Media companies are coming up against these citizen journalism sites so it’s imperative to understand how to set them up, the secrets to success and how they can work hand in hand with newspapers.

In a broadband era of information, where knowledge is only clicks away, new technologies can also lead to the exact opposite – misinformation.

Last week, a map of Britain took up The Independent’s entire page one, showing the location of the country’s population by race.  Yep, that’s right.  They put an infographic front and centre with no other stories around it.  Although an atypical move for newspapers in general, The Independent is following a long-term trend towards design modernization that shows no signs of slowing. 

Lately, the newspaper industry has been worried about the 18-34 demographic, one that they are losing to new media and which advertisers, who consider this generation their primary target, are following. But have newspapers been concerned with the habits of the next age group down, 12-17 year olds? According to a new study, they should be.

Happy Easter bloggers! And for today a good paper from Peter Wilby in The Independent about the differences (or similarities) between tabloids and quality newspapers: "In principle, I applaud the decision by the editors of up-market papers to withdraw from the British Press Awards. But I also detect snobbery. The posh papers do not like being judged alongside the tabloids...

The secret of most big tabloid stories is that they are not the result of genuine investigation, but of somebody getting a fat fee or wanting their 10 minutes of fame. Nearly all "kiss-and-tell" stories fall into this category: a woman has sex with a footballer or a pop star and decides to cash in, usually through an PR industry intermediary such as Max Clifford. Is this journalism as traditionally understood? Probably not. But I do not think most broadsheet journalism today is significantly different."