Results matching “tap regional papers for”

Local and regional newspapers will have the opportunity to further develop the visual content on their online editions, with use of a new multimedia wire service. Tradeclips.com, which launched this week, aims to facilitate the streaming and sharing of online video content between news providers subscribing to the reasonably priced service.  

The service will offer free uploads and downloads of video, audio and still files, for which storage is offered at a fee. Registered users will also have access to a sizeable trove of archived multimedia footage.

Seventeen of the top 30 US newspaper websites showed a decline in the average time users spent on their sites in May versus the same period last year, according to an exclusive article in Editor & Publisher. The data come from Nielson Online, which keeps track of the most widely read newspaper sites based on number of unique visitors.

On the bright side, that means nearly half of the sites posted gains year-over-year, some of them fairly significant. The Star Tribune of Minneapolis, a paper struggling to get out of bankruptcy, added 20 minutes to the time readers spend on the site - at an average of over 47 minutes per user, it's also the newspaper site that users stay on the longest. The San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate.com also recorded sizeable gains, jumping to 21 minutes this year compared to 12 minutes in May 2008.

The deal was 18 months in the making, but Richard Connor has finally succeeded in buying up the Maine-based properties of the Seattle Times Co. Connor's acquisitions include the dailies the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, the Kennebec Journal and the Morning Sentinel, as well as MaineToday.com, the Coastal Journal and The Maine Switch.

As part of his new role as editor and publisher of the three dailies, Connor will write a weekly column, although he said he's not going to "foist" his opinions on the newspapers. Connor aims to make the group profitable by the end of the year - in part by slashing jobs. This week, 31 non-union workers were let go, and up to 100 more could meet the same fate.

How is one news source, totally funded by subscriptions, to compete with another that receives government subsidies? Such is dilemma that arose when WAZ, Germany's second-largest newspaper group, dropped its subscription to the independently-run German press agency DPA in favor of government-subsidized Agence France-Presse.

As Isabelle de Pommereau points out in the Christian Science Monitor, the decision has consequences for both WAZ and DPA. Since the WAZ group started relying on AFP for all its wire coverage, "the papers' depth of German-based coverage has become undeniably more shallow." Pommereau adds that the loss of such a major client also puts financial pressure on DPA as it struggles against cutting coverage or raising the cost for its other clients.

French regional La Provence just announced that it is dropping its subscription to the Agence France-Presse news wire. The paper came to the decision after realising that it uses only 20 dispatches per day for an annual cost of 550,000 euros, a journalist for the Marseille-based paper told Le Monde.

AFP CEO Pierre Louette played down the announcement and said he is ready to negotiate. "I am not convinced that the rupture with La Provence is definititive," he commented. "We are ready to make an effort for the regional press, which we feel bound to almost like a cooperative." In fact, six out of the 15 members of AFP's board are from the regional press. However, it represents only 7% of the organisation's turnover.

The Digital Britain report, published this afternoon, evokes the government's attitude and pledges to a rapidly evolving news industry, underlined by the recognition that both traditional and technological forms of news provision require both respect and support.   

Recognising the economic pressures pressing on the news industry, the report asserts that citizens, government and industry will have to work collaboratively to financially maintain the 'vital civil function of journalism.'

The launch of a cross-party select committee's investigation into the future of newspapers in the UK today was overshadowed by the ominous prediction that half of the nation's local and regional papers will be lost within the next five years.

The predictions are based on research conducted by the media analysts, Enders Media.  Its founder, Claire Enders, voiced her concerns in front of the Culture, Media and Sport select committee this morning:  

"We are expecting that up to half of all the 1,300 titles will close in the next five years."  

Parliament will next Tuesday witness the testimonies of the chiefs of four regional newspaper publishers, as they deliver their views on the condition of the British local media.  The issue will be slanted towards the financial situation. 

The meeting will unite the Culture, Media and Sport select committee and the regional representatives, who have been named as Carolyn McCall from Guardian Media Group, Sly Bailey from Trinity Mirror, Johnston Press chief executive John Fry and Christopher Thomson from DC Thomson.  Also present will be Claire Enders, the founder of media research firm Enders Analysis.

The city of San Diego is a microcosm of the current battle raging between the new and the old for the headlines of local news. As American cities struggle to maintain their regional papers, online initiatives are springing up to fill the gap left in community reporting.  Now California's second largest city is covered by three reporting projects, functioning on very different business models.   

The classic first: the San Diego Union Tribune is the city's only newspaper, which has an apparently bleak future.  Revenue from advertising has dropped by 40 per cent from 2006.  In March, a buyout shop, Platinum Equity, eager for its first publishing venture, announced that it would buy the paper.  Last month the buyers revealed that 200 of Union-Tribune staff would be made redundant.  However, it seems that the cutbacks at the Union-Tribune have not damaged its online edition, which averages 1.3 million unique visitors a month and racked in an estimated $10 million on $18 million in sales last year.

London court reporting agency, Strand News, is looking forward to emerging from a spell of grave financial uncertainty, Press Gazette reported today. 

News desks around the UK were alerted to the failing financial status of the news agency last week.  The news that the company, which provides an essential service to newspapers in judiciary coverage, could be dead by the end of the year was revealed in a letter from the editor, James Brewster.

With newspapers working out how to simultaneously appeal to their readers, monetise their content and be successful businesses, some publications are taking unusual steps to do so. Speaking at the World Association of Newspapers' Power of Print Conference in Barcelona, Kylie Davis of the Sydney Morning Herald and Sun-Herald, and Rodrigo Fino of Garcia Media described what steps their publications have taken.

Davis discussed the "sacrosanct" relationship between editorial and advertising, and how the Morning Herald and Sun Herald have toed the line between the two and come up with a profitable solution. They create high quality specialised magazines of 'advertorials', bundled with the newspaper but clearly separated from the main editorial.

UK-based PageSuite, a software development company which creates digital publications, has come up with a new software tool that will enable readers of newspapers on the web to search for key words and phrases. The search results appear instantly highlighted.

Currently, such a function is possible with the website versions of a newspaper, but few electronic titles offer the option. Outside the UK, El País' English-language version, produced in conjunction with the International Herald Tribune, is a good example of a newspaper e-edition where this service is already available.

In a letter sent to the Office of Fair Trading today, Google is expected to show its support for newspaper mergers, arguing that current laws do not reflect the true scope of competition that relatively recent newcomers such as search engines and internet companies, in general, represent to publishers, the Times has reported.

Despite changes to competition laws as recent as the Competition Act of 1998 and the Enterprise Act of 2002, the internet giant believes the existing framework on mergers is potentially stifling to newspapers and insists that if publishers are to be able to seriously compete with other information and content providers, they should be given the freedom to merge with the local and regional news titles of other publishers.

According to what appears to be a Wall Street Journal article published on Post Bulletin earlier this week, America's local newspapers are faring better than the country's national titles.

The article, entitled "Smaller newspapers dodge the downturn" refers to a series of interventions on the part of some wealthy individuals who have offered to buy local newspapers in a bid to save them from apparent closure.

Poynter's Romenesko blog has published a memo from MediaNews Group CEO Dean Singleton and president Jody Lodovic to the group's employees which explains that the company is planning to charge for online content, to revamp its websites and to build new local information sites. The memo, originally sent on May 8, is the result of a recent executive meeting on the company's interactive strategy.

The interactive summit was meant to address "three daunting challenges" that the company is facing. The first is that "we continue to do an injustice to our print subscribers and create perceptions that our content has no value by putting all of our print content online for free." As well as reducing print circulation, this "devalues the core of our business - the great local journalism we (and only we) produce on a daily basis." The second is that "our interactive revenue growth has slowed because it has been too closely tied to our print classified business, which has suffered with the advent of Craigslist" and others. Thirdly, "we are not significantly extending the reach of our audience, as our online products too closely resemble the newspaper, and thus fail to meaningfully read the next generation of readers."

In response to criticism from some of the UK's leading journalism pundits, editorial staff who
work on East End Life, a weekly newspaper based in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, have penned a passionate letter defending their right to work for council-run newspapers, according to the Guardian's Roy Greenslade referring to a post on blog site FleetStreetBlues, which in turn says the letter was originally sent to the National Union of Journalist's (NUJ) Journalist magazine.

In the space of one week, three of Belgium's "quality" newspapers will have undergone a total design overhaul. On Tuesday, Le Soir (published by Rossel) unveiled its new look, followed on Wednesday by La Libre Belgique, part of the IPM portfolio. Saturday will see the anticipated launch of L'Echo, the country's business newspaper, whose most noticeable change will come in the choice of its new choice of colour, salmon pink, bearing a striking resemblance to the UK's Financial Times.

Le Soir, for instance, has decided to give more prominence to its analysis articles. "It is by no means a coincidence that the [country's] three "quality" newspapers have decided to act," said Daniel Van Wylick, director general of the Soir, adding that their efforts "demonstrated the dynamism of the Francophone press in Belgium."

A new report produced by the publishing arm of PricewaterhouseCoopers - the world's largest professional services company - in conjunction with the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), examines the outlook for newspapers as they seek to realign themselves within a digital framework and minimise the impact of the global recession.

The study identifies interactivity, specialisation and new business models as being key to ensuring the survival of the newspaper in an online age.

In separate interviews this week, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and Deputy Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer both spoke about the many sources that now comprise a 24-hour news cycle and how they can use these to their advantage for the Obama press team, reported the Washington Times.

The president's communications team is attempting to master the implications of the changing media landscape. According to Gibbs, it is harder for the White House to hammer "a central narrative," but "stories that you think are going to drive the day in a negative way maybe don't have the impact" they would have had in the past, due to less fixed news cycles.

The BBC is to unveil proposals tomorrow for a deal with local news providers that would see the national broadcaster share resources with newspapers, TV and radio stations. The suggestions will be outlined at an industry summit hosted by UK culture secretary Andy Burnham on Tuesday, which had been arranged to discuss ways to assist local papers, which have been heavily hit by the fall in advertising revenue.

BBC proposals include giving local papers free access to video content for their websites, allowing them access to its college of journalism, sharing audio content with community and local radio reporters, and making its iPlayer technology available to rivals so that they can build their own video-rich websites, reported the Guardian.

The senate of the home state of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has passed a tax break bill for newspapers. The Washington Legislature approved a temporary 40% cut on the business and occupation tax for the state's newspapers through 2015. The bill, House Bill 2122, was passed Sunday with a 46-2 vote and will move on to the Governor Chris Gregoire.

Writing two separate articles, firstly in the Evening Standard and then in the Guardian, Roy Greenslade denounces councils for their proliferation of council-run newspapers.

According to Greenslade, "the phenomenon of papers published by local councils" poses a real threat to local titles which are already struggling with advertising losses and dwindling circulation figures.

The Shrewsbury Chronicle, a regional UK newspaper, will redesign as well as establish a part-free and part-paid model starting next Wednesday. Several other regional papers, namely the Reading Evening Post, the Birmingham Post, and weeklies like the Gravesend Reporter and Dartford and Swanley Times series, have used the both paid and non paid format.

"We are certain this new formula will give readers what they want in terms of quality, local editorial while at the same time providing advertisers with a brilliant vehicle with which to reach their target audience," said Colin Spicer, managing director of Shropshire Newspapers, which will also be redesigning the North Shropshire Chronicle.

Jacek Utko, a newspaper designer, talks about how the industry may be saved through strong designs, using his redesigns of Eastern European papers as an example. Although he says it was not the design alone that improved the paper, it was an enhancement of the entire product that did. Circulation increased 29% in Russia, 35% in Poland, and an incredible 100% in Bulgaria he said.

Utko talked about his initial frustrations with newspaper designing and how Cirque du Soleil inspired him because he saw how they took "a creepy, rundown form of entertainment and turned it into the highest level possible of performance." This is when he realized that newspapers could do the same.

There has been much discussion of the state of regional press in the UK recently, particularly at government level, and a recent early day motion in the Commons in favour of supporting local journalism gained the signatures of over 100MPs. Much of the debate has surrounded the best way to help local newspapers and their journalists, and has centred on whether or not to relax strict merger rules. However in the Guardian, Stephen Moss has written a very interesting article more focussed on how events are unfolding at local level.

In Long Eaton, Moss demonstrates how the loss of the local paper (the Long Eaton Advertiser was closed down by Trinity Mirror in October) has had much more of an affect upon older members of the community, whilst younger members are happy to get their news online or buy the Nottingham Evening Post in its place. "The people who can least afford to be connected to the new world are also those keenest on being involved in their local communities," Mark Dodson, head of regional media at the Guardian Media Group says, in reference to a hypothetical world without local newspapers.