Results matching “of the new yor”

Since 2004, the number of new, "citizen-generated" media and reporters at the US political conventions has significantly increased. It has become more difficult to differentiate between independent bloggers and traditional ones as traditional media is adopting a "multi-platform" method, according to Media Shift's Mark Glaser.

User comments on websites has become standard fare for most media organizations. But according to the Poynter Institute's Bob Steele and Kelly McBride, who spoke at the Unity: Journalists of Colour Convention, news organizations must make it easy and inviting for users to comment, otherwise they may inhibit the discourse they purport to initiate.

Editor and Publisher looked into the matter in order to see the mechanisms that newspaper sites were employing when dealing with user-generated content and found a range of methods.

The research found:

-All of the top 10 US newspaper websites reviewed have mechanisms to monitor the content, be it screening comments or urging users to report offences
-Some sites require registration
-Some sites preview comments prior to their publication
-Some used both

According to Editor and Publisher, the most "liberal" policy about user's posts is from the Wall Street Journal, since neither registration or moderation are used and readers are pushed to self-police and report offences.

The Los Angeles Times had the "most stringent" and "severely worded" rules that referred to discrimination, false advertising and interrupted online access:

WARNING: A VIOLATION OF THESE POSTING RULES MAY BE REFERRED TO LAW ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITIES.

This is exactly the kind of unappealing, and threatening phrase that Poynter's Steel and McBride warned against, saying that they could be perceived as "hostile."

Less "threatening" in tone, the Denver Post's Neighbor forum includes the following guidelines:

Think of Neighbors as a neighborhood gathering, where conversation is lively and civil. What's important to you is probably of interest to others - if your neighbors don't know about something, they will appreciate if you share your knowledge. The community and its users will decide what the site becomes, but it is not intended to be a free-for-all.

Retaining more "civility", the New York Daily News writes:

Be nice. Think about others. People often say things on boards that they would be ashamed to say to someone face to face. Please treat other users with respect.

Source: Editor and Publisher

The average time spent per person on nearly half of top 30 US newspaper websites in July 2008 has decreased year-on-year, according to Nielsen Online data.

The figure for the Houston Chronicle increased from 14 minutes to 25 minutes and from 12 minutes to 16 minutes for the San Francisco Chronicle/SFGate.com. Growth was also seen at NYTimes.com, USAToday.com and the Wall Street Journal website.

The average time spent per person at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution site dropped from 23 minutes to 10 minutes and from 18 minutes to 9 minutes at Boston.com.

From Editor and Publisher, here is a list of average time spent per person in July 2008 on newspaepr sites, ranked by the number of unique visitors per site:

Time per Person (mm:ss) July 2008 vs. July 2007

NYTimes.com -- 32:03 -- 27:21
USATODAY.com -- 16:17 -- 11:48
washingtonpost.com -- 14:31 -- 17:55
LA Times -- 07:39 -- 08:26
Wall Street Journal Online -- 18:28 -- 12:17

New York Post -- 08:13 -- 09:00
Boston.com -- 09:01 -- 18:37
SFGate.com/San Francisco Chronicle -- 16:04 -- 12:17
Daily News Online Edition -- 05:18 -- 05:04
Atlanta Journal-Constitution -- 09:55 -- 23:09

Ottaway Newspapers -- 03:34 -- 06:13
Chicago Tribune -- 08:11 -- 15:55
Newsday -- 03:29 -- 03:30
International Herald Tribune -- 02:39 -- 01:48
Chicago Sun-Times -- 07:04 -- 06:32

The Houston Chronicle -- 25:21 -- 14:20
Politico -- 06:56 -- 06:14
DallasNews.com - The Dallas Morning News -- 04:50 -- 03:29
NJ.com -- 06:09 -- 08:21
Village Voice Media -- 04:58 -- 04:45

Philly.com -- 05:27 -- 06:58
The San Diego Union-Tribune -- 05:33 -- 04:44
MercuryNews.com -- 03:49 -- 04:32
Seattle Post-Intelligencer -- 14:48 -- 13:02
Baltimore Sun -- 09:43 -- 10:20

Star Tribune -- 36:39 -- 22:36
Kentucky.com -- 02:02 -- NA
Boston Herald -- 05:35 -- 05:15
The Detroit News -- 09:35 -- 14:09
OregonLive.com -- 04:27 -- 08:46

Source: Editor and Publisher through IFRA Executive News Service

Four out of the five online news sources that experienced the largest increase in unique users since July 2007 year-on-year were newspaper Web sites, according to a Nielsen Online study which tracked 30 current and global news outlets.

New York Daily News was the biggest increase in unique users, growing by 66% to 4.3 million, despite ranking No.29 on the list. Cox Newspapers' unique users rose by 57% to 5.8 million. Advance's papers grew by 42% to 8 million unique users whereas New York Times rose by 38% to 19.5 million.

MSNBC had the highest number of uniques, having increades by 44% to 37.5 million.

Gannett papers had a 4% decline to 13.2 million uniques. USA Today fell by 2% to 10.4 million and The Washington Post decreased by 2% to 8.9 million.

Editor and Publisher provide a list of the Top 30 Online Current Events & Global News Destinations for last month, compared to July 2007:

Media Oulet - July '08 Unique Audience (000) - July '07 Unique Audience (000)

MSNBC Digital Network -- 37,516 -- 26,015
Yahoo! News -- 35,225 -- 32,674
CNN Digital Network -- 32,977 -- 29,757
AOL News -- 22,010 -- 23,103
NYTimes.com -- 19,513 -- 14,149

Tribune Newspapers -- 16,177 -- 12,218
ABCNEWS Digital Network -- 13,534 -- 9,876
Gannett Newspapers and Newspaper Division -- 13,254 -- 13,812
Fox News Digital Network -- 11,540 -- 9,343
Google News -- 10,776 -- 8,973

USATODAY.com -- 10,404 -- 10,611
McClatchy Newspaper Network -- 10,380 -- 8,338
CBS News Digital Network -- 9,197 -- 9,203
WorldNow -- 9,070 -- 7,604
washingtonpost.com -- 8,935 --- 9,157

Hearst Newspapers Digital -- 8,225 -- 7,596
Advance Internet -- 8,044 -- 5,648
MediaNews Group Newspapers -- 7,574 -- 6,843
Topix -- 6,229 -- 5,949
Cox Newspapers -- 5,842 -- 3,723

Slate -- 5,763 -- 4,875
IB Websites -- 5,633 -- 6,202
BBC News -- 5,253 -- 6,408
Gannett Broadcasting -- 5,010 -- 3,893
Fox Television Stations -- 4,940 -- 4,550

New York Post Holdings -- 4,937 -- 3,952
Boston.com -- 4,891 -- 4,029
MailOnline -- 4,645 -- 4,137
Daily News Online Edition -- 4,301 -- 2,586
NPR -- 4,282 -- 3,327

Source: Editor and Publisher

The mobile news market in the US will soon be ripe for mass consumption, according to Robert Samuels, Director of Mobile Products, Mobile Web, Messaging, Games and Alternative Platforms at The New York Times.

"It's been a runaway success," said Samuels, speaking of the growth of the Times' mobile site. "Numbers will continue to grow, there is a lot of industry dynamic supporting this."

The Times' mobile site, which drew 500,000 page views in January 2007, received over 10 million hits by December of the same year, and soared up to 19 million views in May 2008.

Although "most of the consumption on our site is through high end mobile devices so far" such as BlackBerry phones, Treo mobile devices and iPhones, the market is rapidly growing for the mass market, especially amongst commuters.

Generally speaking, the consumption patterns are similar for the online and mobile editions: business and politics are very popular, as well as blogs or most-emailed stories. "But amongst the mobile applications we've been rolling out, some of them are particularly tailored to the mobile user such as the mobile user real estate listings," said Samuels, which enable users on the go to receive listings based on specific criteria such as number of bedrooms, price...

"In America, I think the general web browsing for the mobile site has been at an advantage in terms of user behavior and pricing over SMS products," said Samuels.  All the Times' text message alerts link off to the mobile site to encourage users to browse it and read the whole story.

According to Samuels, text messaging will continue to grow for specific uses, such as stock listings or weather forecasts (see this study about text messaging and mobile usage), but "the predominant, long-term mass consumption, will be more than likely be browsing just because that's such a dominant behavior here in the US," he said. Still, "Text messaging for content adoption will grow in the US, we are simply well behind other markets like Europe and Asia."

As of now, the Times' hasn't created any position dedicated to editing or rewriting content for mobile consumption. "I don't think we'll hire specific people to tailor content for mobile per se," said Samuels.

However, most mobile articles are slightly edited upstream in the production process, to make headlines appropriate for mobile devices - for example, an E-hed for mobile can be made to stand alone without a picture, or pictures can be cropped to fit the device.

Is mobile news more adapted to local news outlets that can send out locally relevant alerts to users? "I think it is most definitely appropriate for them but by no means exclusive for them," said Samuels. National brands can also establish themselves on the local mobile news market. In the second half of the year, Samuels plans to roll out restaurant listings, in addition to its show time and weather services.

The Times is also developing news alerts for scheduled news events, such as the Olympics or the presidential elections in the US. For the Olympics, users can sign up to receive various updates including postings from the Rings blog, Top-10 medal count charts or the schedule of events.

While most of the Times' mobile news alert services are free, its mobile games and products will remain paid-for for the foreseeable future. "Through experience and industry research, still the model of paying for a mobile game is something that users are willing to engage in," said Samuels.

Source: Robert Samuels, Director of Mobile Products, Mobile Web, Messaging, Games and Alternative Platforms at The New York Times

Media outlets have taken the Games as an opportunity to compete for audiences as sites reveal an array of Olympics-focused features. Google announced a series of new tools that were launched for the Beijing Olympic Games this year, such as a virtual 3D tour of the stadiums that uses a combination of Google Maps and Google Earth.

Other features include an Olympics widget that can be downloaded and added to a personalized iGoogle site in order to receive features that provide Olympics coverage, sports headlines, YouTube videos, daily horoscopes, weather forecasts and a Google News feature. Users may also add applications such as a clock or games, similar to those used on social networks like Facebook.
 

The New York Times has a prominent section on the homepage that provides stories, results, schedules, multimedia and an interactive Olympics Tracker that allows you to personalize.

USA Today has a colourful section on the Games, offering everything from stories and results to blogs and Twitter feeds. There is also an "Olympics: Looking back and ahead" section that discusses former games and upcoming games as well as a section with input from fans.

The New Zealand Herald's Olympics coverage entails a section that is easy to navigate, with features like "As our Olympic team a question" and "Weird Olympics" with unusual stories about the events (e.g. stories like "Spanish team defends 'slanted-eye' photo", "China opts for lip-synching in quest for perfect Olympic image").

Numerous newspapers around the globe have launched sites dedicated entirely to the Games, such as Russian gazeta.ru, Irish Independent.ie and Ecuadorian eltelegrafo.com.

Send us examples of your Olympics coverage.

Source: The Telegraph
 

David Stout, of The New York Times, is currently answering questions in the paper's regular Talk to the Newsroom feature. Stout, a domestic correspondent for the Continuous News Desk explains some of the challenges facing the desk in the 24 hour news cycle - "We are constantly trying to balance speed and accuracy" - and what the Continuous News Desk, one found in just a handful of newsrooms across the country, actually does.

"Part of my job is to synthesize the reporting of my colleagues. In return for their help, I try to repay them by keeping them apprised of news developments (I keep a constant eye on wire service reports) and, occasionally, going to news conferences," explains Stout.

He adds, "My job, generally, is to write a quicker, and therefore less detailed, version of an article about a court decision than will appear in the following day's newspaper. I think there is a need for both kinds of articles in this day of 24-hour news.|

In early 2007, the Editors Weblog interviewed Neil Chase, then editor of the Continuous News Desk.

Source: The New York Times

Citigroup analysts predicted that Amazon's Kindle e-reader sales are expected to grow to 380,000 this year, reported The Register today.

Knol, Google's Wikipedia rival, may be inciting fear in media companies as they increasingly begin to see it as a competitor, reported The New York Times (NYT). Knol features user-generated content which authors have control over and which Google may pay for through advertising.

"Google can say they are not in the content business, but if they are paying people and distributing and archiving their work, it is getting harder to make that case," said Jason Calacanis, chief executive of Mahalo, a search engine that employs editors to write on different subjects.

Google will not own the copyright to Knol content and neither will the website contain the Google logo. The company's aim is to guide people towards the "answer" they want and it doesn't intend to own or create any content, said Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker. Knol allows people to create and publish information and the only role that Google has in this is to "organize that information", according to Stricker.

While some people like Wenda Harris Millard, co-chief executive of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, worry about the bias of Google search results, Stricker said that if Knol pages do rank high, it is because they "earned their position", reported the New York Times.

Calacanis expressed concern about Google overtaking search results, which may "alienate Web publishers that are Google's advertising partners" although Google might not actually "artificially favor its sites", reported the NYT.

Google currently owns YouTube, blogging service Blogger and Usenet archives, a digital discussion board collection that is older than the Web. Google also digitalizes books that show up on search results as well as containing stories from the Associated Press in its Google News service and publishing stock market information on Google Finance.

Source: NYT

See also:
Google launches paid Wikipedia alternative

This Sunday, the New York Times magazine ran their first "cover wrap" advertisement, for U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management, which overlays one-third of the front cover and nearly one-half of the back.

"This ad buy illustrates how we continue to work closely with our clients to create unique executions and customized opportunities to meet their business objectives," Denise Warren, senior vice president and chief advertising officer at the New York Times, said in a statement.

The Times has introduced many new ad formats over the last 18 months including section front ads, spadias, and single-sponsored magazines.

If there was ever a time for innovation in newspaper advertising, it's now. Advertising revenue was down 11.8% for NYT in the second quarter of 2008.

Source: Editor & Publisher

Earlier this week, Pam Platt, now former public editor for The Courier-Journal, wrote her final column, announcing that the paper - the first in North America to have an ombudsman - will no longer have a public editor to act as a reader representative. Platt is now a member of the paper's editorial board.

"These are very difficult times... and we are having to make tough decisions," said Executive Editor Bennie Ivory. "The position has been a very valuable part of the newspaper, but I felt the need to move the resource to another area. I didn't think we should weaken the editorial voice of the newspaper."

Recently, there has been much discussion about the need, or lack there of, for the ombudsmen.

In addition to the Courier-Journal, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Orlando Sentinel, The Hartford Courant and The Palm Beach Post have all eliminated the position from their payrolls.

The New York Times, which first added an ombudsman in 2003, following the Jayson Blair scandal, when it was discovered that the New York Times reporter had fabricated and falsified dozens of stories, made waves in 2007 when the paper considered eliminating the ombudsman.

Daniel Okrent was revered during his tenure as the Times' first Public Editor, however, the paper's second PE, Byron Calame, proved less popular. Slate wrote, "Like many ombudsmen, Calame assumed the voice of a writer who thought the standing title of his column was 'What I Would Do If I Were Editor of This Newspaper.'"

According to the New York Observer in 2007, near the end of Calame's term, "Mr. Keller wrote in his e-mail that 'some of my colleagues believe the greater accessibility afforded by features like 'Talk to the Newsroom' has diminished the need for an autonomous ombudsman, or at least has opened the way for a somewhat different definition of the job.'"

The Times opted to keep the position, which is now filled by Clark Hoyt.

Platt writes her last column as, "an obituary for a position that has mattered to The Courier-Journal and its readers for 40 years, a position that has mattered to world news media for that long, too."

Source: Poynter

Yesterday, the New York Times published an article about buyouts at the New Jersey Star-Ledger, but really, a story about nearly every American newspaper today.

"...The bald fact is this newspaper can't stand on its own two feet now and something has to change," said Jim Willse, the paper's editor. "I told the staff yesterday that the problem we are suffering is like the plague. It is sweeping through our business and you can't expect beneficent ownership to ignore what is going on."

An article in the Star-Ledger on Friday announced the owners will sell the newspaper if they cannot win union concessions and persuade 200 of the 756 nonunion, full-time employees to take a buyout by October 1. The Star-Ledger, along with its sister paper, The Times of Trenton, is losing $30 million to $40 million a year.

The news is particularly disheartening, because, as Nick Carr, of NYT reports, the Star-Ledger is an excellent paper, and its owners - the Newshouse chain - are excellent owners.

"Under the sure hand of its editor, Jim Willse, The Star-Ledger is both modern -- big and pretty with strong photos, navigation and graphics -- and a throwback to the days when the most important story was the one just down the block. In short, it's the kind of newspaper that can get the laziest reader out of bed," writes Carr of his local paper.

In the article, Carr acknowledges the cliché that should be coming. "This is the place... where the knowing... point the finger at the evil, greedy owners and talk about their relentless pursuit of profits above all else. That's some other column. The Newhouse newspaper chain... owns 27 newspapers and has managed to maneuver through the past few years of downturns without brutal cuts... It has also invested in papers to the point where many of them are regional standouts, including The Oregonian in Portland, and The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, where it financed and supported the paper even as many businesses -- much of the advertising base -- deserted the place."


"It's a sad story not just for my friends who work at the paper," said Tom Moran, the paper's political columnist. "But for the state of New Jersey." A state which has been riddled with political corruption. "If this continues, the bad guys will have a lot less to worry about."

Source: The New York Times