Results matching “place in the future”

The launch of Apple's iPad has garnered much optimism in the newspaper industry, driving hopes that the innovative tablet computer will be able to breathe some new life into an industry battered by an advertising downturn.

Much speculation has placed very high hopes on the capacity of the iPad and a slew of new generation e-readers to revamp the industry and bolster its business model. But, as Poynter Online's Bill Mitchell reports, the iPad will probably not be the solution to all of the newspapers' woes, but this sleek electronic device could play a substantial role in the migration of users from a cost-heavy past to a more efficient future.

Twitter has introduced a 'Local Trends' filter, which allows users to see what others are posting about on the site in their area.

The official Twitter blog explained that the trends function began as a way to see what was popular on a global scale in real-time, but this would create another way for members to discover relevant topics to them.

"The big events that come up around the world will always become a global conversation," a spokesperson writes, "but what about the big events that only happen in your world that only matter to those around you? Or the slight differences in the way Californians perceive an event, like Obama's election victory, versus those (in) São Paulo, Brazil?"

All AP journalists should use social media, and more AP accounts will be rolled out on social networks in the coming weeks, according to AP's new manager of social networks Lauren McCullough. In an interview with Steve Myers on Poynter Online, McCullough has explained her vision of an active two-way conversation about the news.

"Social media plays a central role in our newsgathering," she says, adding that social networks are used both to build sources and monitor trends. At the same time, the AP seeks to distribute its content through social networks, such as on their new winter Olympics website, optimised for social sharing. Accompanying Twitter and Facebook accounts are planned.

Sunday was the second anniversary of Murdoch's purchase of The Wall Street Journal, an event that many press and journalism experts decried as sullying the hallowed status of the respected paper. Under Murdoch's leadership, the Journal has turned away from business-only analytical focus and towards broader general interest stories and politics with big front-page photos.

Rupert Murdoch is not the only mogul looking to make money from online content - it's just that what with the intense media circus surrounding his rants, not to mention the severity of his accusations (think calling Google and Yahoo out and out thieves on international TV) he's the only one we've really heard about of late.

Led by Matthias Döpfner, Axel Springer, publisher of Europe's biggest daily, Das Bild, and other newspapers across Germany and Eastern Europe, is plotting the numerous ways in which it too can go about monetising its content online.

Christoph Keese, Springer's head of public affairs, said: "The meta-philosophy of free - we should get rid of this philosophy. A highly industrialized world cannot survive on rumours. It needs quality journalism, and that costs money." Döpfner added: "I see no justification, neither democratic nor market-related, for content to be generally free on the Internet. For centuries, people have been willing to pay for things of interest to them."

The Huffington Post Los Angeles local news site has gone live, a year after HuffPo's Chicago local site and its NYC site that was launched this summer. 

Clay Shirky, journalism intellectual extraordinaire, was interviewed at Yale University for a conference on The New News Ecology: "Who will pay for the messenger?" by Leonard Witt for Sustainable Journalism. 

Sam Zell, owner of Tribune Co. which includes titles the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, has welcomed Rupert Murdoch's charge for paid online content, saying he is more than happy for the News Corp CEO to "take the first sword" in the battle.

"I'm more than willing to let Rupert take the first sword," said Zell on Tuesday morning as part of a round-table discussion on CNBC's Squawk Box. "And if it works, then I think everybody's going to follow him, and should have in the first place."

More debate has taken place over whether News Corp might be looking to make a deal with Microsoft to use its Bing search engine, if the company goes ahead with its promise to remove its content from Google in the next few months.  The Financial Times reported that the two companies have been in discussions, with the impetus for the talks coming from News Corp, and that Microsoft has also approached other big online publishers to persuade them to remove their sites from Google's search engine.

Bing is currently providing little competition to Google in terms of market share and having exclusive news content could help it make progress. Therefore, it has been suggested that Microsoft is prepared to pay publishers to use their content, which could be big news for newspapers: the FT spoke with an unnamed website publisher who had been approached by Microsoft, who said that the plan "puts enormous value on content if search engines are prepared to pay us to index them." 

After announcing late last month that it would create the role of Social Media Editor, the BBC has appointed Alex Gubbay as the first to fill the position.

Currently the Interactive Sports News Editor for BBC Sport, Gubbay will commence his new title in January.

It has been a rough couple of years for the newspaper industry with the recession taking its toll on the financial stability of many organisations. In the past year alone at least ten publications have filed for bankruptcy and many have been forced to close their doors. With newspapers treading fast to try to keep their heads above water many have cut back funding for more costly types of news. One of the first things to go has been investigative journalism, considered by many publications to be a luxury. The time and investment of multiple resources in a single issue is something that many publications simply can no longer afford.

These cuts have raised alarm bells. The potential loss of 'the fourth estate' and 'government watchdog' have united many in the cause to protect the practice of journalism, even if the business and profitability of it is doomed to fail.

One method suggested to preserve this type of journalism is to run as a non-profit organisation. Seeking the status under the claim that journalism is a 'public good' publications are free from commerical pressures and the disappointment of dwindling circulation figures, relying only on donations from those who feel the cause worthy enough.

It is at this point that the Texas Tribune enters the scene. The online-only news site launched early last week as a non-profit venture in an attempt to fill a gap in quality local journalism in Texas. The Editors Weblog spoke with editor-in-chief, Evan Smith to look at Tribune's website and non-profit ambitions in closer detail.


The inspiration:
The big name in non-profit news is ProPublica. Led by former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger, the organisation began publishing in June 2008 and has consistently drawn in large sums of donations, with key sponsor the Sandler Foundation contributing annually. ProPublica, which will write an article then offer it to a newspaper to publish, has carried out some impressive investigative feats to date, most notably its collaboration with the New York Times, published in August. The 13,000 word article which cost an estimated $400,000 to produce examined the events that took place at the Memorial Medical Centre following Hurricane Katrina. The piece highlighted the importance of such investigative journalism and made the need to save it even more apparent.
 
The Texas Tribune aims to achieve something similar on a smaller and more political scale, offering Texans a news source designed to compliment local newspapers that already exist: "We've made a point of not presenting this as a binary choice: A or B. We believe it's additive: A and B. Read your local paper and read us. In fact read as much stuff as there is out there" says Smith.

"We're simply presenting ourselves as one in a series of things that you need to read and listen to and view and access if you want to be a thoughtful and engaged Texan." 

In his first posting on the website Smith talked about what the Tribune was attempting to achieve: "What we mean to do on an ongoing basis is right there in our stated mission: to promote civic engagement and discourse on public policy, politics, government, and other matters of statewide concern."

In ProPublica fashion, the Tribune has said that all the information published on its website is up for grabs for other media organisations as part of a content-sharing plan designed to aide other reporters who might not have the time to look into an issue in depth.  Matt Stiles, one of the Tribune's staff reporters writers told Poynter Online in an interview: "Ultimately, we'd like to tell every paper in the state, 'If you like this data set, just take it'."

"I hope reporters will come see the information, download it, remix it and be creative with it."

The build up:
In July this year Smith announced he was leaving his position as editor-in-chief of established Texas Monthly magazine to take up the post as CEO and editor of the Tribune. A few months later, the Tribune added Elise Hu, Emily Ramshaw and Matt Stiles to its list of experienced journalists.

In an interview with Poynter in September, Ramshaw talked of her decision to join the project: "I feel, and still feel, that the newspaper business is in serious crisis. I'm not content to cling to a deck chair and go down with a sinking ship."

Ramshaw worked for The Dallas Morning News for six years, the last three of which she was state investigative reporter.  "We're trying to prepare for the next incarnation of journalism. If this venture is going to work, it's going to work because serious, talented journalists were brave enough to take the risk," she said.

The Tribune has built up a selection of notable reporters willing to do this and Chairman and co-founder John Thorton had been quoted as saying: "We didn't hire journalists out of work. We hired reporters who their editors were pissed off that they lost them."

Smith and Thornton worked hard on securing donations, with Thornton himself donating $1 million to the Tribune. In early October the founders confirmed they had received a further $750, 000 in grants from the Houston Endowment and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The Tribune is now only slighty short of the $4 million target it needs to continue running for two years, with a current total of $3.7 million.

The sum is considerable for a start up website, as paidContent's Staci Kramer has noted: "Unlike some of the new crop of local and regional news startups, the Tribune is launching with enough money for a well-paid staff of 16, including 11 reporters," referring to salaries of $315K for the editor in chief, and up to $90K for seasoned reporters.

As for promotion of the site itself, Smith told the Editors Weblog just how useful social networking sites have been. Regular updates for the public on the status of the site via Facebook, Twitter and the site's own newsletter built up a sense of curiosity over what exactly they had in store for last Tuesday's launch.
 
"We've been very aggressive on Facebook and Twitter both to promote the content and also to connect with our community of followers" said Smith. "We've also used both to aggressively push for funding. We've generated quite a lot of memberships in the Tribune which are much like memberships in public radio by pushing over Facebook and over Twitter messages that relate to our fundraising campaign, and they've been very successful," he says, citing the 1400 founding members who have given between $50 and $5000 to the Tribune out of their own pockets.

What does the site look like?
The website debuted with top stories on the mistreatment of disabled children in public schools, the Democratic lean of El Paso in an otherwise Republican state, and the results of a poll carried out by the Tribune and the University of Texas.

The site itself is divided into ten pages, the organisation of which differ from your average news website. Offering 11 databases under a section titled 'Library' for further reading, the databases contain information ranging from federal campaign donations, gubernatorial appointees and lawmaker spending. In addition to this there is a complete electoral directory of every Texan senator and governor- the site essentially offers a single space for complete personal and political data on the '242 occupants of the state's highest offices'.

It is clear that a lot of time has gone into collaborating this research, and according to the Nieman Journalism Lab, the Waco Tribune-Herald has already taken advantage of the new resource and published some Tribune content. 

Aside from the databases, the site boasts eight of its own blogs and links to some 25 others; has a 'topics' section where stories can be found based on theme; a calender, where information about local events can be found or submitted; and a 'Tweetwire', a Twitter feed from all Texan politicians on the website's front page.

Compared to the recent launch of another local non-profit news website, Oakland Local, the Tribune's website is much more sophisticated. The Texan team have embraced the capacities of the internet and technology to their full, utilizing social media, widgets, videos, blogs and mobile applications- something Smith believes to be key to the way in which the use of media is changing.

"In consumption of media people are paying more attention to online media today then ever before," say Smith. "I look at my almost 13 year old daughter and how she consumes media and it's not at all in print it's almost entirely online and I think that's the trend line."

Smith suggests that publishers need to adapt to measure up to this changed method of consuming news: "You cannot simply go out and record the news, present that to people and believe that that's going to be enough. You need to give them the tools to better understand their world, to better know their state, to better know the people they elected, to better hold them accountable and that often is all not simply conventional reporting but the amassing and presenting of data that allows people to access the world in which they live from a more detailed level."

Why will the Tribune succeed where others have failed?
Whilst successful local non-profit news publications do exists, the Voice of San Diego and the MinnPost to name a few- there are also notable failures such as the Rocky Mountain Independent and InDenver Times, two online start-ups founded by Steve Foster earlier this year. How will the Tribune ensure that it doesn't suffer the same fate?

Smith says that the Tribune essentially has a better business plan, arguing that the RMI and InDenver Times failed because they were run by journalists, not business people and "didn't really have a plan for how to make the model sustainable."

Part of the reason the Tribune is choosing to remain online-only is because "the cost of printing a print publication for postage and paper and print facilities is so expensive that you reduce your overhead dramatically and therefore make it much more likely that your business model will sustain."

Of course the Tribune's has also managed to raise a healthy budget, further insulating itself against some of the problems faced by other publications. "Money is, as in all things, the mother's milk of your operation," Smith says, continuing on to mention that the having the financial capacity to buy the latest technology and hire top journalists will "go a very long way to allowing us to do our best work."

Smith's views bear resemblance to industry commentator Alan Mutter, who recently critized many online non-profit publications for not being business-minded enough. Mutter accuses these publications of "a suicidally stubborn determination on the part of the organizers to be in the business they want to be in, instead of attending to the business they need to attend to," and he argued early last month that, "A business, especially a start-up, requires far more than passion for the work. It requires close attention to the nuts and bolts of raising money, making sales and controlling expenses."

How will the Tribune navigate ethical issues?
A nagging question over the non-profit model is how publications will be able to resist influence from major donors. Smith argues that the seperation between donors and the editorial team is no different to the situation between advertisers and editorial: "I edited a magazine for nine years in which we had big advertisers who also happened to often be the subject of stories and the transactional economy that supports the operations of a for profit publication has no relationship what-so-ever to the journalism inside, or it shouldn't anyway, not at a good magazine and not at a good newspaper."

"Just because someone advertises doesn't mean you go easy on them or you go hard on their competitors."

Nevetherless, the non-profit news model is still in early stages and very dependent on the income from donors. Even for-profit news publications have not been immune to advertsing clients flexing their muscles in tough financial times, with a Detroit paper recently being accused of reporting on private health care following a request from client Humana (who subsequently purchased an ad next to the story).

What would Smith do if he was approached by a donor to cover a particular story? 

"Donors don't expect that were going to write about their issues or about their enemy's issues in a negative way, they're not looking for us to take sides- they're supporting the principle that hovers above all this activity: that journalism in the public interest has value."

"Any donor who is unhappy with the coverage we provide because of such an expectation is welcome to his or her money back," he says, adding: "I'd rather lose my funding then lose my integrity."

So are non-profits the next incarnation of journalism?
The wider debate on whether or not non-profits are the future of journalism has been raging for a while. Online magazine, Slate's Jack Shafer has weighed in for the negative: "In the current arrangement, we're substituting one flawed business model for another. For-profit newspapers lose money accidentally. Nonprofit news operations lose money deliberately."

Thornton, the Tribune's chairman, hit back at the remarks: "I call it the Stockholm Syndrome. They are sympathizing with their advertiser-captors."

So who is right? Is the non-profit model the future of journalism?

Yes and no. It is unlikely to become a general solution for newspapers simply because of the huge sums of money involved, but for nieche reporting and more time/fund consuming journalism such as investigative reporting, it could definiatley be a viable option.

The idea compares favourably at least to the suggestion of government bailouts. As Thorton wrote of the "obvious fox-in-the-henhouse issues that arise--to mix animal metaphors--from government watchdogs funded out of government coffers."

As the first serious, state-focused news site with a decent enough amount of money behind it and what seems to be the right attitude toward embracing the capacities of the digital age and the changing face of journalism- whether or not the Texas Tribune succeeds will be key to the way in which the non-profit model is viewed.

As Tribune reporter Christe Hu suggests: "Journalism is at a crossroads right now. We're seeing not just survival of the fittest but a 'mutation of the species.' "

"I think the non-profit model has just as good a shot as anything else."

Oakland Local is one of many non-profit community news websites currently springing up across the globe as the need for quality local news coverage becomes more obvious. The recession has seen the local news industry suffer staggering financial blows and several news organisations, small and large, have had to heavily cut back on resources or close altogether.

The situation has caused many to express concerns about the dangers of not having a local media watchdog to keep those in power in check: "It makes me worry about all of those public authorities and courts which will in future operate without any kind of systematic public scrutiny. I don't think our legislators have begun to wake up to this imminent problem as we face the collapse of the infrastructure of local news in the press and broadcasting," Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger has said.

The New York Times unveiled its Bay Area Report last Friday, a two-page spread of local news designed to raise readership numbers and test the advertising market in San Francisco. The new section, boasting the logo: 'The world and the Bay Area. You'll find it all in the New York Times,' was announced last week and will now be published every Friday and Sunday. The spread is expected to pave the way for an entire San Francisco edition later in the year.

The Bay Area Report's debut coverage included three key stories: a profile of Oakland's new police chief;  a story on tax property assesment and a piece on local restaurant wine lists.

The stories and columns appearing in the section will also be available online at NYTimes.com where the Times will also introduce a complimetry blog called 'The Bay Area,' designed to build on the print pages by offering a space for conversation about the top stories of interest to people in the region.

Scott Heekin-Canedy, Times president and general manager, told paidContent in an interview that the expansion was a way to ensure the vitality of the paper and to 'make the print edition more valuable to subscribers and possibly convert some single-copy buyers': "In doing this, we have reason to believe that it will strengthen our subscriber retention, perhaps result in a little bit of circulation growth, but we don't have big ambitions there," he said. "By itself, it's not going to be a reason to purchase the Times or subscribe to the Times."

Rather, Heekin-Canedy says the Times has always contemplated adding coverage to various editions as part of improving the publication as a whole, but it wasn't until recently that the timing and opportunity matched. Given that the Times now sells more papers in San Francisco than anywhere else outside the Northeast (40, 080 daily) and already has a 10 person newsroom set up there- it seemed a good place to start. "That was helpful with regard to the timetable we had in mind for launching. We have the newsroom staff resources in the Bay Area to jumpstart this," said Heekin-Canedy.

For the first time in the Guardian's memory the paper has been prevented from reporting public governance proceedings, although last spring a court injunction required them to remove certain sensitive documents from their website after publishing.

In what has been described as a violation of the 1688 Bill of Rights, the Guardian has been gagged from reporting on yesterday's Commons order paper, which contains a certain question to be answered by a certain minister. The Guardian has been prevented from publishing what the question is, who asked it, who will answer it, and where the question can be found.

WikiLeaks believes it is the following Parliamentary question: "Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) - To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura."

Hardly a week goes by in media news without gloomy forecasts for the future of print from Murdoch's corner, or floundering US titles being forced to go online only or shut up shop altogether - but one publication at least, the French website Bakchich, is going against that grain, the Financial Times has reported.

The launch of Bakchich Hebdo (which takes its name from the Arabic for bribe, and the French meaning 'Weekly',) a paper edition of the popular satirical website, comes in response to the strong French demand for parody in print. The country holds a long-standing tradition of lampooning its leaders publicly and although in economic terms the segment may be small, the appetite for satire remains big.

Chris Anderson, editor of Wired and author of the recent "Free: The Future of a Radical Price," moderated the 'Free AND Paid Content: Business Models That Work' discussion on Tuesday night in the Condé Nast building in New York. The discussion, intended to focus on whether book and news consumers would pay for online content, quickly turned into a tense intellectual slugging match between John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan Publishing, and Anderson.

Anderson championed the future of free content, or 'freemiums,' explaining that free content could bring books and print back into 'cultural conversation' while emphasizing that consumers could not be expected to being paying for something they can get and have gotten for free. Anderson's 'new economy' of the freemium is based in the digital world where 90% of content is free and 10% is sold, and is a radical departure from the control of the "beneficiaries of a 20th century oligopoly" (speaking of himself and the panelists) for whom "what the Internet did is ruin our party."

While he received support from panelist Gary Hoenig, ESPN Publishing's general manager and editorial director, who offered the evidence of his own site's doubling subscriptions simply by "improving the quality of the content," Anderson was strongly opposed by Sargent, who consistently cast a grim outlook for publishers and was tepidly backed by Alan Murray, deputy managing editor and executive online editor of the Wall Street Journal. Citing the Journal's robust business coverage and successful charging for online content, Murray called the panel's central question of whether people will pay "silly." The problem he brought up is that newspapers prematurely decided they would give away content over a decade ago; readers got used to reading their papers for free, thus "devaluing their own content."

Fwix offers an uncomplicated service: it aggregates local news from newspapers, blogs and other sources, aiming to offer users an up-to-the minute guide of what is going on in their area by filling the gaps in what a local newspaper could offer on its own.  The Editors Weblog recently spoke to Darian Shirazi, the 22-year-old founder of Fwix, to find out more about what the site offers to news fans and what its goals are for the future.

"I think what we're offering is the ability to fill out the content in local newspapers with content that's written by bloggers in a local area," Shirazi explained. As newspapers suffer from falling advertising revenue, they might no longer be able to cover all verticals; hence Fwix combines local newspapers' news with content such as restaurant or movie reviews from blogs into one city feed. It is a real time feed, as, Shirazi put it, "things that are happening seconds or minutes ago are de facto more interesting than what was happening days ago." There are currently 77 different cities to choose from.

Fwix displays a headline linked to the original article, along with a snippet from the story, as permitted by fair use regulations. If a reader clicks through to an original article, it will take them to the content-producer's website but the page will have a Fwix banner across the bottom, allowing the user to quickly return to Fwix or share the article. The site also shows readers the 'Top Trends' of the moment and an Activity section indicates the articles that members are reading and sharing.

Shirazi originally built a simple version of the service for his personal use, as he wanted to stay in touch with what was going on in his city while he was travelling. "I realised that there was no good place that had all the information, from art exhibits to crime news, to events to new issues in politics," he explained. "I used it myself for a while and I really liked it. Then I thought, other people might like this. So I built it."

Sharing and connecting

If users would like to associate their activity on Fwix with their Facebook or Twitter accounts, they may sign in via these services and then if they choose to share a story, it will appear on their Twitter feed or Facebook profile page. Shirazi has no plans for Fwix to create its own account system: "that's not necessary, and it's a battle we are not willing to wage." Rather, he explained, "we levarage ecosystems that help people share information and then provide the news." A Fwix profile page saves everything a user reads, but they have the option to delete whatever they would like. "Really the profile is just for you to keep track of what you've shared and what you've read."

Reporting

Fwix is waiting for approval from Apple for its iPhone application, which would allow a citizen journalism element to be incorporated into the site as users would be invite to report news. The app will provide a 'report' button which users can click on when they see something that they think is worthy of attention. A camera will then pop up and the user can photograph and describe what they want to report and send it to Fwix. On the site, a pin on a map will show the user's precise location when they reported the news. The reported news would go straight into the activity section and into the individual's profile, and will be automatically vetted before it enters the main feed. The vetting process judges credibility based on the existence of similar reports.

The company plans to allow users to report from other devices in the future, but not from a web browser.

Monetisation

As yet, making a profit is not Fwix's main goal, Shirazi said. For now, it has funding from BlueRun ventures. However, when it does start to monetise, local advertising will be its revenue stream, he specified. Local businesses "are really looking for places to advertise," he stressed, "there will always be ad dollars out there." He sees a gap in the market that Fwix could fill: "the only places for local businesses to advertise right now are those like Yelp.com and there are way more ads than there is space," he explained.

What's in store for the future

The site just came out of beta. Fwix's current goal is simply growth, Shirazi said, meaning getting more people using the service. Currently the site has about 400,000 unique visitors per month and via widgets on other sites, the content network reaches about 8 million. There are about 8000 publications whose content is aggregated. Shirazi would like to expand the service internationally, but said that here is no telling when this will happen.

Fwix clearly provides a useful service for those who are looking to keep abreast of what's going on in their local area, and Facebook and Twitter users are likely to find the ease with which they can share stories appealing. Twitter's new geo-tagging capabilities might provide competition, depending on how developers take advantage of this. Fwix could also help local news outlets by sending traffic to their websites, although of course as with all aggregators, there is always the possibility that people might visit Fwix.com rather than their local newspaper's home page if it provides a more comprehensive service. Local blogs with fewer visitors are likely to appreciate the extra exposure that Fwix offers. What Fwix offers is not groundbreaking, but services such as this are changing the way that people access news as consumers move away from traditional news reading habits.

Google is developing a paid online content model involving both subscriptions and micropayments that it is has proposed to the Newspaper Association of America, Nieman Lab reported. Google submitted an eight-page document to the NAA in response to the association's request for content charging solutions (available here).

Google already has an e-commerce platform called Google Checkout and the new system would be an extension of this.

The company outlines its thoughts on paid online content as follows:

Google believes that an open web benefits all users and publishers.  However, "open" need not mean free.  We believe that content on the Internet can thrive supported by multiple business models -- including content available only via subscription. While we believe that advertising will likely remain the main source of revenue for most news content, a paid model can serve as an important source of additional revenue.  In addition, a successful paid content model can enhance advertising opportunities, rather than replace them.

The document outlines Google's assumption that one of the main challenges of paid online content is to "create a simple payment model that is painless for users." It claims that it could use its expertise in e-commerce and consumer products to "help create a successful e-commerce platform for publishers." And it stresses that, given its position in Internet users' lives, it can help publishers to enable users to find the paid content via search.

Key features in Google's vision of a "premium content ecosystem" include:

• • Single sign-on capability for users to access content and manage subscriptions  
• • Ability for publishers to combine subscriptions from different titles together for one price  
• • Ability for publishers to create multiple payment options and easily include/exclude content behind a paywall  
• • Multiple tiers of access to search including 1) snippets only with "subscription" label, 2) access to preview pages and 3) "first click free" access   
• • Advertising systems that offer highly relevant ads for users, such as interest-based advertising

Using the "fast, secure" Google Checkout, consumers can store their payment information in their Google Account and use this to buy products, both digital and physical. Fraud losses are low, the document says, and tens of millions of users and several hundred thousand merchants are already registered.

Subscriptions and micropayment options

Checkout can already offer subscription payments, and the document promises that the currently "fairly rudimentary" process could be improved to be "more relevant for news and media companies." Micropayments are "in the early planning stages" but "will be a payment vehicle available to both Google and non-Google properties within the next year." The document stresses that merchant integration will be "extremely simple."

"Google believes that there is real power and benefit to publishers in providing these sorts of broad, multi-publication access passes."

The Google document expresses a preference for subscriptions over micropayments, and the company seems particularly keen on bundled packages of content: "Google believes that there is real power and benefit to publishers in providing these sorts of broad, multi-publication access passes." It notes that for such packages, publishers "will receive a revenue disbursement that is proportional to the usage of their content in the package." It is not clear whether this would be allocated per article clicked upon or depending on time spent on each site, however, and this has the potential to be an area of contention amongst publishers involved. Such packages do offer definitive benefits to the consumer, however, allowing users to move freely between publications, as they do now.

With regards to micropayments, the document states that "we do not believe it will be the norm for accessing content." However, it suggests that they could be useful for readers who want to buy single articles that are not included in their subscription, the price of which would be added to their monthly bill. It also proposes a pre-paid service.

Advertising

Continuing to promote advertising is an integral part of Google's proposal and the document states that "we believe the increased advertising opportunities will likely exceed total revenue from subscriptions." The platform would allow ads to be sold in three different ways: "directly by publishers, sold as part of the Google Content Network, or sold via multiple ad networks through our ad exchange." Advertising could be targeted, based on voluntary data from individual registration information.

Search

The document notes the ways that Google's search engine currently makes paid content discoverable: allowing either a preview to appear in search results if the searcher is not a subscriber, or by allowing one article free via search (the tactic the Wall Street Journal currently takes). "Search engines should know what content a user has access to," the document states, and "assuming the user has access rights, the full content should be available and exposed within 1 click from the search results page." The content to which a user does not have access would be displayed with a price.

Further distribution

The document suggests that Google News could also license and host further content from interested publishers, as it already does for various news agencies without a destination website. It also proposes helping distribute content more widely via repackaging and syndication. 


How does Google compare to the competition?

Paid online content in the near future is increasingly seeming an inevitability. In July, the NAA distributed a "request for information" to a range of companies asking for details of their paid online content solutions. As well as Google, ten others responded: CircLabs, Journalism Online, IBM, Mather Economics, Microsoft, MyWire, NewsNav, Oracle, ViewPass and YouData. The NAA has published and summarised all their proposals for the industry's perusal.

Google's proposal is particularly interesting because the company's unquestionable dominance of the search market and its existing relationship with many web-users through services such as Gmail gives it a significant advantage. Plus, it already has a news search engine, Google News. It is definitely well-placed to implement such a system.

One drawback for Google would be the fact that many publishers, due to copyright conflict particularly over Google News, see the company as an enemy rather than an ally. The document suggests that the cut taken by Google from content sales would be comparable to Apple's split on iTunes and the AppStore, which Nieman Lab points out is about 30%. Would publishers be happy to share their revenue with Google in this way?

The most similar and serious competitor to Google's proposition would seem to be Journalism Online, the venture led by Steve Brill and Gordon Crovitz. The start-up already has a detailed business plan in place, including projected revenue increase, and last month announced that over 500 publishers had signed on. So although it does not have the web presence in place that Google has, it has made considerable progress in terms of publisher awareness of its product, and intends to launch imminently. It is also promising to give member publishers feedback about how users are purchasing and reading news, in order to improve their offerings over time. Lastly, it has the advantage of not already having enemies within the industry, and the fact that its founders are from publishing backgrounds. Journalism Online's commission would be 20% of subscription revenues, according to the document it presented to the NAA.

So which proposal will emerge as a winner amongst publishers? Or will they decide to go forward with paid content alone and save on broker fees? There are definitely advantages to working through a third party: ease being prominent amongst these, for both the publisher and the user. But maybe a conglomerate as big as News Corp might have the capability to develop its own efficient system and could persuade others to follow suit.

Birmingham Post editor Marc Reeves believes that going weekly is the best option for his paper as its publisher Trinity Mirror starts a consultation process over the future of its key West Midlands title. Trinity Mirror will lose £6 million next year "unless some radical action is taken now," Reeves explains in a post on the paper's blog. The Post is currently the main daily paper in Birmingham, the UK's second biggest city.

Reeves identifies staff and manufacturing costs as the Post's biggest expenses, and these are therefore what need to be cut. The two options that he suggests are reducing the number of pages of the paper each day, or producing just one substantial edition per week.