Results matching “blogs to sharing revenue”

In the days after the 61st World Newspaper Congress and 15th World Editors Forum, the debate was still raging:
Will print products remain the core business model of the newspaper industry in the long-term?
Will digital platforms become newspapers' primary source of distribution and revenue?
Or will both print and digital work side by side to sustain newspaper journalism?
Guardian Comment is Free columnist Roy Greenslade and World Association of Newspaper CEO Timothy Balding sounded off on the topic.

Greenslade struck first. Having attended the conference, he pointed to what he considered a divide between publishers and editors and their respective conference programs; "The congress, the publishers' conference, was dominated by the upbeat statistics about the good health of newspaper sales, newspaper launches and newspaper profits"... "Yet all the discussions at the editors' forum were dominated by how to deal with the decline - whether rapid or gradual - of newspaper circulations and the accompanying flight of advertising as people turn their backs on newsprint in favour of the internet."

Balding responded by noting that, on the whole, global newspaper industry figures are positive. Circulations are up in 105 nations and stable in 31. Paid titles are up in 85 countries and stable in 83. But this doesn't stop at print. The Congress, Balding pointed out, gave many examples of traditional publishers succeeding in the digital realm and shared multimedia strategies with their colleagues from around the world. WAN continues to do "absolutely everything we can to make sure that our publishers and our editors receive the best and most reliable information about digital developments and the best success stories on their successful exploitation," said Balding. The association does not "pretend... to know the digital future."

Perhaps the real divide comes not from the publishers and editors at the World Newspaper Congress, but rather from developed and developing nations. It is no surprise that in the United States and many countries in Western Europe, print newspapers are experiencing declines in circulation and profit margins. These papers have had trouble making up for lost revenues on the Web. On the other hand, newspapers in developing countries such as India and China are witnessing huge growth and will continue to do so for years to come. Their digital offerings and revenues will also increase as Internet and mobile penetration rapidly spread.

The essence of the Congress, is to bring papers from these nations together. It is the platform where they share ideas; new ways to create and distribute content, strategies for reaching new audiences, and creative ways to make money in print and online. And sharing ideas between different markets will ensure that the newspaper industry, in both developing and developed nations, will continue to flourish.

Digital Journal has relaunched its citizen journalism site, where regular contributors are now eligible for a share of the "moneypot," an initiative comprised of advertising revenue.

Being the first online community to share a portion of revenue to users distinguishes Digital Journal from competitors such as Newsvine and Norg.

The initiative applies to news stories instead of blogs, journals, groups, photos or video. Also, rather than the popularity of individual posts, the initiative calculates the number of news stories uploaded by each citizen journalists.

That system is interesting since it could encourage quantity instead of quality, but the Digital Journal board must approve the work of each citizen journalist who wants to be paid, in order to check spelling and grammar, as well as to judge the journalist's ability to "find and research relevant news,"  according to Journalism.co.uk.

The site has reportedly doled out $38,000 to citizen journalists.

Source: Journalism.co.uk

On Monday, The Baltimore Sun launched b, a free daily newspaper and website, which targets readers from 18-34, similar to parent Tribune Co.'s RedEye. They had announced developing 'b' in February as a step to broaden the Sun's audience in times of "declining revenue and increased competition," according to the Baltimore Sun website.

The first 40 page issue featured a cover story of reader's photographs shown at sites around the city, and included a section of reader "rants" and opinions. The first issue had 75,000 copies, distributed in 1,000 bright orange boxes in 1,400 drugstores, convenience stores and athletic clubs in metropolitan Baltimore. Also, about 70 volunteer employees handed out "samplers."

"It really is going well," said Timothy J. Thomas, vice president of business development, who expects distribution to grow to 100,000. "They're kind of flying off the shelves."

Steven Duke, associate professor of journalism at Northwestern University, said similar young adult-targeted newspapers, such as RedEye, have succeeded by distributing in places where young readers congregate.

He acknowledged that the economy presents challenges for new publications. For instance, the free daily BostonNOW was just shut down due to economic reasons.

With a staff of about 20, the tabloid newspaper and website has a focus on news, sports, entertainment news, blogs, and listings geared to its readers. A third of its content is planned to be reader-generated material. The tabloid also has content-sharing agreements with local radio stations WTMD-FM and WNST-AM. Online readers will have to opportunity to upload photos and videos.

"This truly is a daily conversation with our target audience," said Brad Howard, b general manager.

Sources: Editor & Publisher, Baltimore Sun

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

“Use your readers’ collective intelligence”

Newspapers, radio, magazines, and many more traditional media could all learn from Skyrock’s successful transition from being a radio broadcaster to generating more than 50% of its revenues through digital – thanks to one of the world’s most popular blog platforms. In the following, founder and CEO Pierre Bellanger advises the press to use its readers’ collective intelligence – even to unite in order to do so.



From traditional media to social network

Undoubtedly, traditional media insiders have jealously eyed Skyrock’s journey, at a time when many of the most digitally-innovative papers still garner less than 10% of overall revenues through digital operations.

A few mouth-watering figures for Skyrock Blogs (henceforth referred to as ‘Skyblogs’), which targets the younger teen population, unlike Facebook: to this day, Skyblogs counts more than 22 million subscribed users, 14 million active blogs and 5.3 million profiles. The site is the world’s 17th site globally in page views, has more than 20.2 million monthly unique visitors, and counts a whopping 1.8 billion comments, 22.5 million videos and 400 million pictures. The platform was launched in 2002.

The main difficulty when trying to create a social network is reaching the critical mass of users that will lead to a snowball effect. Skyrock is currently the most-listened-to radio station among its target audience, 13-24 year-olds. So cross-promotion with the radio station helped Skyblogs’ original expansion initially. “The dynamic and the existence of the radio helped” to grow the social network.

So much so that in 2006, for the first time, Skyrock generated more than half (51%) of its revenue digitally and less than half through its traditional channel, the radio station. However, Skyblogs and Skyrock radio are considered as two distinct subsidiaries within the same parent company: one is an entertainment media channel, the other is an independent social network. Unlike many social networking experiments by newspapers, Skyblogs was considered and managed as an independent Web 2.0 venture, rather than as a new tool to complement the traditional media.

The digital world: newspapers must use the collective intelligence of readers

Is it too late for newspapers to harness the power of the Web and social networks?

Said Bellanger: “As did all traditional industries, the press perceived the Internet as a new way to do the same thing,” as a new distribution platform to publish the same product – instead of conceiving how deeply the Web could change the actual work of journalists and newspapers. “This turned out to be an extremely modest usage of the possibilities enabled by the Internet,” he said, acknowledging that “it’s easier to create a company than to change a company.” When the printed press was first invented in the 1500s, people initially simply thought of it as a new tool to produce copies of the Bible.

Newspapers mustn’t necessarily try to create Skyblogs-like social networks, and previous attempts at creating their own have had mitigated results (see USA Today). However, they must use the power of networks and users if they want to be successful online.

“Newspapers stayed for a long time in this logic of distribution, depriving themselves of one of their essential assets, which they had never previously used: the collective intelligence of their readers,” said Bellanger. In the digital age, this becomes as important as the brand name and editorial service they provide.

Use the collective intelligence of your readers. If the Financial Times were able to channel the input of its millions of business-minded readers, it would win. “To put to contribution the intelligence of readers is a real solution for the press,” said Bellanger.
Newspapers must rebuild themselves around the public debate, said Bellanger, and force themselves out of the temptation to produce ambient news.

Newspapers have begun this transition, by opening comments and platforms for user blogs, but remain timid when doing so.

For example, most user comments – when these are enabled – are simply listed below the actual article, in no particular order or hierarchy. And comments seldom have permalinks (a Web-specific address), which could enable users to share or refer to specific comments: in other words they are still considered as mere add-ons to the journalist-led story.

Bellanger’s argument may be demoralizing for many journalists and editors: to an extent, his vision of the Web puts users’ collective input on the same level, if not higher, as content produced by journalists. However, this content still requires journalistic expertise to be organized and transformed into an add-value resource.



The online business model: traffic compensates for lower CPM

All newspapers are still struggling to find a viable and profitable business model online. The average online user still typically brings in 10 times less ad-revenue compared to the print reader. But according to Bellanger, if newspapers can build up adequate social networks that bring in twenty times more traffic, then they hold the solution to their online business model.

But don’t newspapers run the risk of saturating the market if they all attempt to launch their own social networks?

Not at all, said Bellanger, because the Web is full of nano-networks, which can be built around the sharing of experiences and common interests, however small a community. This in turn can lead to targeted-advertising and higher CPMs. The ‘secret recipe’ for the press is thus to offer an online platform that can group their readers in nano-networks, whether around car-tuning, Japanese cooking or better, major public debates.

About Pierre Bellanger and Skyrock

Skyrock Radio was founded in 1985 by Pierre Bellanger, son of a French newspaper editor who was also co-founder of the World Association of Newspapers’ parent. Bellanger thus grew up amidst stenographers and the smell of print presses: he has also participated in studies about newspapers’ future commissioned by the French government.

Source: Pierre Bellanger, CEO Skyrock

The Los Angeles Times traces back the evolution of newspapers’ view of bloggers. In the past, they “wanted nothing to do with bloggers,” but now newspapers “are posting and plugging them and even sharing advertising revenue.”

For many major dailies, the current trend of newsroom integration seems like a natural evolution nowadays. The Editors Weblog has regularly showcased best examples of newsroom integration and has advocated that papers follow the trend. Yet many, if not most, newspapers continue to function well while keeping a non-integrated organization. So the question is: do papers have to integrate? In this first piece of a three part-series investigating non-integrated newsrooms, the Figaro.fr managers explain to the Weblog how online fits in the group’s strategy.

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.

Not only is there a marketplace for blogs, they sell well. Young blogs are being auctioned on specialized websites, and ‘web estate agents’ are buying them at more than a tenfold price.

The New York Times has added a new service making it easier for users to link and post stories on social news and networking sites Digg, Facebook and Newsvine. Linking buttons were added this morning but will not be available on Time Select articles, newspaper's premium content offering, staff blogs or wire stories.

Copiepresse, the organization that helps protect the copyright of French and German-language publications in Belgium, has issued Microsoft with a "cease and desist" letter, demanding the removal of its member publications' content from the MSN website. Copiepresse recently won a court case against Google over the same matter.

Microsoft and the NYT's future news reader made news at a meeting of U.S. editors recently in Seattle but let's please first concede that it is vaporware - it doesn't exist in a form availble to customers.
In contrast a few weeks earlier at INMA in Chicago the folks at Press Display were quietly showing some serious upgrades to their digital delivery technology that can help editors and publishers today.
The most stunning to my eye was the real-time user feedback that publishers can collect and analyze for free. (see graphic)

Also discussed.

• Web 2.0 - what does it mean? 
• Why it's 'Me' Media, not 'we' media 
• Why did Rupert Murdoch buy a Karaoke site? 

In our last posting, we looked at how news reading on the Web is changing and how news production must change with it. It seems that newspapers on the Web will play the role of aggregators, linking readers to the best reporting, commentary and analysis. But if this is to be the case, there are some consequences that will change the dynamics of newspaper news.

Many newsreaders may have been surprised this morning when they awoke to a completely revamped New York Times website. As for all new things, it may take a little getting used to, but overall, the Times appears to be on the right path; its numerous new features take significant steps towards the future of online news production and reading.