Results matching “to blogs for online”

Sun-Times News Group reports a deal with social media firm Pluck which will offer readers discussion forums blogs, photo and video sharing as well as other community tools on SunTimes.com, PioneerLocal.com, SuburbanChicagoNews.com, SouthtownStar.com and Post-Trib.com. The venture is meant to increase audience interactivity, according to Catherine Lanucha, the group's director of content.

Hurricane Gustav in the US may have prevented some newspapers from publishing their print edition for two days, but not from having 24-hour online coverage on their websites.

New Orleans' The Times-Picayune and Louisiana papers The Courier and the Daily Comet all continued to report on their respective sites, reports The Guardian's Roy
Greenslade.


Source: The Guardian

New media like blogs may be helping to "demystify" the Middle East and advocate peace journalism, even though it may seem as though there are more bloggers than readers, according to Jaron Gilinsky, journalist and documentary filmmaker in Jerusalem.

FollowTheMedia.com's Philip Stone suggests that it media outlets may benefit from holding back web content either by waiting until after it is published or broadcast in traditional media or making people pay for "the really 'good' stuff". In response, The Guardian's Roy Greenslade thinks that Stone has "fallen into the that trap of seeing journalism only in business terms", assuming that unless news get advertising revenue and make a profit, there is no "commercial sense" to diffuse them.

 

As more UK newspapers get rid of sub-editors for print and online editions, the status of subs as a "luxury" is being debated. The Diary of a Wordsmith blog wrote that not only do subs correct typos and punctuation mistakes in an article, but that they are important legal assets.

"Quite apart from the problems arising when you try to edit your own work, many journalists do not write great English (and rely on the subs desk to do rewrites) and most do not have the comprehensive understanding of media law that subs do, but have only a limited working knowledge of libel law," wrote Wordsmith.

"As news becomes collaborative, editors will need to assemble networks from among staff and the public; that makes them community organisers. I also believe editors should play educator, helping to improve the work of the network," wrote Jeff Jarvis in his BuzzMachine blog.

Source: The Guardian, Diary of a Wordsmith, BuzzMachine

The biennial Pew Research Center has revealed in its report that Yahoo, MSN and CNN are the three most popular web news destinations.

Traditional media brands are still favoured, including the New Yorker, The Atlantic and the BBC, the Pew survey of 3,600 adults found. But only 47% watch TV news on an average day.

Users gave many of the leading mainstream media websites low credibility ratings. Only 6% said the Huffington Post was very highly credible and just 13% said the same of Google News, which aggregates news from mainstream news organisations.

The report presents a picture of a steady decline in the US newspaper industry, with the percentage of Americans who regularly read print titles falling from 58% in 1993 to 34% in 2008.

"For more than a decade, the audiences for most traditional news sources have steadily declined, as the number of people getting news online has surged," said the Pew report.

15% of Americans have a smart phone, such as an iPhone or a Blackberry. More than a third of the owners of these devices (37%) say they get news from their phones.

The report highlights the changing news audiences, describing 13% of the US public as "net newsers" - web users under 35 who read more political blogs than watch national news coverage, rely heavily on web-based news during the day and are interested in technology and technology news.

Net newsers are generally wealthy and 80% are graduates, making them a highly desirable demographic for advertisers.

The research also found that the proportion of young people in the US getting no daily news has increased from 25% in 1998 to 34%, with only 10% of people using social networking sites for their news.

Source: Guardian.co.uk and Pew Research Center

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
 

Clark Fredricksen of Crosscut writes, "Today, a newspaper without a posse of blogs is so passé."

Sprouting up across the US Pacific Northwest, bloggers -- often reincarnates of the newspaper political reporters of old -- are leading today's political discussion.

Chris Mulick's Olympia Dispatch, "might be the best Washington political blog you've never heard of," writes Fredricksen, of the blogger who delivers "legislative scoops"  with plenty of humor.

Mapes on Politics, authored by blogger Jeff Mapes, has got Oregon's Legislature pegged. According to Seattle Times chief political reporter David Postman, Mapes has "deeper and better understanding of Oregon politics than almost anyone."

"What Mapes is to The Oregonian," writes Fredricksen, "David Postman is to The Seattle Times -- and more." Postman on Politics has the advantage focusing solely on blogging.

"I realize I'm lucky in having the blog as my primary job, while others still have to write for the paper as well," Postman said. "I have the luxury of being able to cover issues and people statewide, and don't have to worry about writing for the paper."

Source: Crosscut

Three major Caribbean newspapers are teaming up for in order to cover this year's Beijing Olympic Games. The Jamaica Gleaner, Barbados' The Nation and The Trinidad Express are launching www.sportscaribe.com to offer collective reporting on the Games.

The "joint-effort" site will offer news, feature articles, blogs, photos and videos from The Caribbean Media Corporation with reporting on Caribbean athletes in Beijing, wrote NationNews.com.

The Gleaner's Web division came up with the concept of the deal, which is "the first collaboration of its kind between regional newspapers in sports coverage", reported NationNews.com.

Initially, the idea was focused solely on the Gleaner but Online project manager Hope McMillan said that it would be "much more dynamic" if the rest of the Caribbean participated.

McMillan also mentioned that it would be "lovely" if the papers would find other platforms to collaborate on.

Source: NationNews.com

Singapore newspaper The Straits Times (ST) revealed its print and digital makeover last Friday. The revamped print version features some changes in fonts and colors as well as an increased amount of top news on the front page. The redesigned website features a division of www.straitstimes.com into a paid service ST Digital and the free ST Breaking News.   

This week, the print edition will change the days that the sections "Digital Life", "Mind Your Body" and "Urban" are printed to Wednesday, Thursday and Friday respectively.

Like the US paper the Philadephia Inquirer, the ST is putting more focus on covering breaking news online. ST Breaking News will include breaking news coverage and news blogs, and the readers would have the ability to comment and interact with the reporters. The paid subscription service ST Digital will provide users with e-papers.

ST also announced the launch of the ST Razor TV, a free interactive online TV feature that offers live news programs, video on demand and a space for users to interact and communicate.

The paper plans to raise circulation until the end of August by providing 10,000 additional copies daily to unsubscribed households and coffeeshops.

Source: Publicitas

See also:
Singapore: The Straits Times should focus on "sponge" readers
US: Philadelphia Inquirer managng editor takes "backward" step?
US: Response to Philadelphia Inquirer's new online policy

Mike Leary, Philadephia Inquirer's managing editor, announced last week that the paper would be publishing certain stories online only after they have been published in print, apart from breaking news stories.

Even though the new policy provoked some criticism from Steve Outing and Jeff Jarvis, it is meant to be a strategic leap towards formulating "complementary differentiation between the roles of the print and online operations", according to Poynter.org's Amy Gahran.

Differentiating between print and online operations may be the key to helping papers that are in financial trouble. One of the strengths of print may be feature stories, whereas the Web's immediacy allows for a possibly better environment for breaking news coverage.

The move may be seen as restricting bloggers by limiting the stories they may work on, so as not to publish content that is in progress for the print edition.

However, Chris Krewson, the paper's executive editor for online/news mentioned that it is blogging that is the "easiest" method for breaking news coverage. In fact, he pointed out that there was a 700% increase in traffic on Philly.com blogs.

"There's no quicker way to break news than on a blog, and no better way for us to leverage our staffing advantage over other local media. In addition, beat reporters with blogs say the process has helped them cultivate and nurture sources," said Krewson.

Gahran wrote that eventhough it would be "nice" to have news organizations reporting on breaking news, enterprise and feature stories as well as interacting with the community, financial difficulties may not permit that.

Source: Poynter Romenesko

See also:
US: Philadelphia Inquirer managing editor takes "backward step"?

Newspapers are losing ground in the online local market. According to Borrell statistics cited in a recent Wall Street Journal story, newspapers' share of the local online ad market fell from 35.9 percent to 27.4 percent in the last two years. Which means newspapers are missing out - not just on what they have lost in the last two years, but actually on a larger advertising market than the one they had, because local online advertising is growing rapidly, at a rate of 57 percent annually.

Mark Potts, of the Recovering Journalist blog, argues that news sites are missing out on the "Smaller advertisers - the pizza parlors, nail salons, mom-and-pop stores... there are lots of them, and other media are moving in - community papers, local Web sites and blogs, even Google, Yahoo and specialty sites like Yelp."

So how can news sites take the local advertising base back? Potts offers these suggestions (below follows an edited version of Potts' post. Get the full list here):

- Build a strong local product to attract local advertisers, for example the leading local entertainment guide

- Cut costs of ad sales as low as possible, and get rid of the high-commission sales rep. What about commission-only telemarketing reps smiling and dialing to blanket small local businesses.

- Make it as easy as possible for advertisers to come online, create, place and pay for an ad. That drives the cost of sales way down.

- Seminars for local businesses on online advertising. It's a medium that's new to many small business owners - educate them on the value of online advertising and how to take advantage of it.

- Banners and tiles aren't the only way to advertise online. Experiment. Use video. Real estate walkthroughs, chefs describing their restaurants-these videos seem obvious, but they're still few and far between on newspaper sites.

Source: Recovering Journalist