Results matching “still in test p”

Portfolio.com's Jeff Bercovici questions whether or not Nicholas Kristof, New York Times (NYT) op-ed columnist, has crossed an ethical border after he pretended to be a Chinese national in order to test out the boundaries of Internet censorship in China.

Yahoo News Japan reports it has now joined the likes of Wikipedia and Google's Knol in offering user-generated content in its "Editable related section", allowing other readers to suggest and edit material using their "expert knowledge", reports the European Journalism Centre.

The sources may be outside of Yahoo and may even be in other languages. However, Yahoo's influence in Japan implies that the majority of referenced content "is its own anyway".

The way in which Yahoo Japan differs from its US counterparts is that user editors have to apply for the non-paid position and take a test to distinguish the "sheep" from the "goats".

Japan's Yahoo only retains the name in common with US Yahoo.

Source: European Journalism Centre, Tech Radar

See also:

Yahoo! aims to be "number one" independent news source
Opinion: Is Google closer to becoming a media company after releasing Knol
Knol could learn from predecessors

A digital signage device that uses e-paper to deliver news articles is being put to test in two Tokyo subway stations by Bridgestone Corp and The Mainichi Newspapers Co Ltd, with the cooperation of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government's Bureau of Transportation.

The panels include breaking news reports with images, sections from the Mainichi Newspaper morning and evening editions, ads for Mainichi Newspaper periodic titles and announcements about any events the Mainichi is hosting. The two firms also intend to provide breaking news stories on the Beijing Olympic Games.

A fast mobile network updates the information, aided by a compact PC and a mobile phone that are connected to the back of the panel, writes Tech On.

An A3-sized color e-paper feature and a monochrome feature have been installed at the Shinbashi subway station (Toei Asakusa Line) and the Shinjuku-sanchome subway station (Toei Shinjuku Line).

The experiment will take place until the end of March 2009.

Source: Tech On through IFRA Executive News Service

Guardian.co.uk is still the most popular UK newspaper website, with 20,622,063 unique users last month, compared to 20,499,858 in June. This may be largely due to the sports-focused coverage that the paper featured in that month, such as the Tour de France, Wimbledon and English Test cricket, reports Guardian.co.uk.  

Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCe) figures show that Guardian.co.uk had a 28.4% increase in uniques since July 2007. Meanwhile, page impressions jumped by 1.8% to 186,430,603 in July.

Telegraph.co.uk ranks second, with 18,746,025 unique users in July, having dropped by 4.9% from 19,712,622 in June. Mail Online remains in third place with 18,705,552 uniques, a 16.8% growth from 16,015,211 in June.

Year-on-year, both Telegraph.co.uk and Mail Online experienced growth in uniques since July 2007, the figures being 108.5% and 57.7%, respectively.

Sun Online has a 69% growth in uniques from July 2007 and a 3% growth since last month, reaching 15,972,490.

Telegraph.co.uk had a decrease in page impressions from 151,857,375 to 140,318,137 while Dailymail.co.uk's page impressions surged to 143,587,842 in July from 119,483,455 in June. Mail Online, meanwhile, had 143,587,842 in July.

Times Online's and The Independent site's page views were at a record high of 123,978,303 and 27,768,695, respectively.

Independent.co.uk had a 9% plunge since last month in uniques, reaching 6,588,929 while Mirror Group Digital uniques decreased by 5% since June to 5,177,230.

UK users are more valuable in terms of advertising revenue. However, the ABCe figures show that UK audience decreased since June for Mirror.co.uk and Telegraph.co.uk.

Mirror.co.uk had a drop of 73,000 to nearly 3 million uniques in the UK, whereas Telegraph.co.uk had a fall of 80,000 to 6.5 million.

Guardian.co.uk's and Times Online uniques in the UK increased to 8.5 million and 5.9 million, respectively. The figure rose for Mail Online and Sun Online to 5.5 million uniques for both titles.

The figures are expected to have an explosive growth this month, following coverage of the Beijing Olympic Games.

Source: Journalism.co.uk, Guardian.co.uk

The News of the World, one of the UK's most popular newspapers, is relaunching its website next week. The newspaper are currently running a beta version test.



The new site will add a series of football blogs written by fans of Premier League clubs, give greater prominence to video content, adopt new templates, and offer an improved search facility.

The newspaper has pre-selected fanzine editors and supporters from unofficial club websites to write the blogs about their teams. Considering the grey legal area of bloggers, especially unpaid volunteers, Gary Thompson, associate editor of NoW.co.uk said, "The same rules will apply to them [bloggers] as to our chief sports writers. The rules of libel apply to them as much as anyone else."

The site has a redesigned homepage, adopting The Sun Online's page template, to make more content accessible above the fold. It has also added a tab feature to make navigation easier.

The new site will run on a technology system called Scenic, which also runs the websites of other News International titles, Times Online and Sun Online. The new-look site is replacing the pop-up feature by embedding a new video player supplied by Kit Digital - formerly Roo Media - into the top right of the homepage and across story pages.

Source: Guardian.co.uk

Germany's Deutsche Telekom is developing a portable e-reader that could be competition for Amazon's Kindle.

They are currently planning a test run with a few dozen of prototypes in Berlin. Pictures of the product, whose code name is "News4me", have not been revealed yet.

Peter Möckel, head of Deutsche Telekom's R&D department, said the "company sees a market in the gap between mobile phones and laptops."

However, Deutsche Telecom won't manufacture the devices, nor will they offer any kind of content, according to CrunchGear. Unlike with Kindle, the users will just have to download content from print media onto their e-readers (no RSS, online news, and so forth).

The researchers are trying to keep the "form" as similar as possible to articles in the printed format. According to one of the engineers, Kindle is in the right direction but DT's News4me will have a larger (and possibly flexible) display, and it will be easier to operate.

France Telecom's Orange is also working on a similar project called "Read&Go". Kindle is not in either the French or the German market.

Source: CrunchGear

The Lede: In the four-missile version of the image released Wednesday by Sepah News, the media arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, two major sections (encircled in red) appear to closely replicate other sections (encircled in orange). (Illustration by The New York Times)

Agence France-Presse has retracted an image of Iran's 'four' missile tests, after it appeared that the picture had been digitally altered by Sepah News, Iran's Revolutionary Guard media arm.

Only, the realization was made after a number of large mainstream media organizations had published the picture on their front page, including The Los Angeles Times, the Financial Times, The Chicago Tribune, BBC News and NYTimes.com.



Since then, the Associated Press has distributed a similar picture showing only three missiles being launched.

The fourth missile "has apparently been added in digital retouch to cover a grounded missile that may have failed during the test," said Agence France-Presse when it retracted the first image.

This is one of the most recent and blatant examples of an increasing challenge for media across the globe, namely how to authenticate digital documents prior to their publication.



Source: The Lede through IFRA Executive News Service

The Orange County Register will outsource copy editing and layout duties to Mindworks, an Indian company, for a one-month trial. Editors at Mindworks will work five times a week on selected editing and layout assignments, and will be overseen by the Register's editors.

"This is a small-scale test, which will not touch our local reporting or decision-making," said Register deputy editor John Fabris.

The Register is not the first newspaper company to outsource work to India; the Sacramento Bee and the Miami Herald have both announced plans similar to the Register's. Amid dropping circulation, outsourcing is becoming an increasingly viable option for newspapers looking to reduce costs - but it can also be a risk for editorial quality.

"In a time of rapid change at newspapers, we are exploring many ways to work efficiently while maintaining quality and improving local coverage," Fabris said.

Click here for more on outsourcing.

Source: Yahoo Finance through I Want Media

Last Sunday, the Orlando Sentinel's new layout was unveiled to readers (see top), including "more graphics, quick-read digests of top news, blog summaries and other changes" in order to make it more attractive to busy readers, Wall Street Journal reported.

Since December, Samuel Zell has been in charge of the Tribune Co., which owns Chicago Daily News, The Orlando Sentinel and the Los Angeles Times. Zell's eight billion dollar buyout left Tribune Co. with a 13 billion dollar debt "amid an industrywide meltdown", according to the WSJ.

Zell has scheduled for the Tribune Co. papers to be redesigned by September this year. Some of the changes to be made include "scaled-back page counts and further paring of employees", the WSJ said.

The new look of the Sentinel attempts to make the paper become more "eye-catching" and plentiful with interesting, "alluring" stories, WSJ wrote.

"Our community is fast moving, very modern. It's changing and growing. We need to have a paper that feels like that, too." said Charlotte Hall, Sentinel Editor.

In the last year, the Sentinel's circulation has decreased to 227, 593, compared to Miami Herald's 240,000 and St. Petersburg Times 300,000. However, the Sentinel's Sunday circulation is 332,000.

The general trend for newspaper redesign, according to the WSJ, is "splashier colour, simpler layouts and more digestible stories."

Although the new version of the Sentinel corresponds to the trend, it "isn't as radical as it could be", Hall said. Lee Abrams, in charge of innovation, "encouraged" the newspaper to "emphasize its stars" by adding front-page photographs of columnists with excerpts from columns, WSJ wrote.

Local news coverage, consumer information and "government-watchdog stories" all increased and reporters have been coached on different story-telling techniques.

According to the WSJ, Zell thinks Tribune Co.'s newspaper division is "stuck in the past", perhaps not accommodating "readers used to the pizzazz and immediacy of the Web."

It isn't clear whether a makeover will change the financial condition of Tribune Co., as ad sales have generally been declining in the newspaper industry. The Newspaper Association of America said that in the first quarter newspaper ads dropped by 13 %, Tribune Co.'s falling by 15%.

The Bakerfield Californian's redesign in March 2006 got the paper a short-paced circulation and revenue growth that soon worsened. Chief Executive Richard Beene said, "Don't expect it to turn around circulation or revenue overnight. It's not a magic bullet." In his blog, Howard Owens said that he is "surprised" that not a lot of people compared the Sentinel's revamping to the Californian, terming the makeover "shocking", "wild", "bold" but not "original".

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel and the Baltimore Sun are next in line for the revamping; meanwhile, the Chicago Tribune is to "test new ideas" in Saturday editions. Abrams mentioned that even though the Orlando Sentinel's new design will be used as a prototype, "every paper will be left to chart its own course", WSJ wrote.

Design experts have generally given the Sentinel's new look a thumbs-up, WSJ reports. Howar Greenberg, Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun-Sentinel publisher, said advertisers are enthusiastic about the makeover, which he thought might help improve ad revenue.

Hall said that for the time being, the readers will be "listened" to "carefully", to observe the impact that the redesign has.

Source: Wall Street Journal Online, HowardOwens.com

See also:
US: Chicago Tribune's public editor on downsizing the paper: let the readers decide
US: Tribune Co. newspaper redesign, "abrupt" and "unconventional"

The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News are facing criticism after
both papers ran fictitious ads promoting the airline "Derrie-Air."

The ads, which touted Derrie-Air as "the world's only carbon-neutral luxury airline" and claimed to charge passengers by the pound, was designed to test ad's click-through rates. The Derrie-Air advertisements drew in a 1.25% "click-through" rate for the online version, compared to the national click-through average of 0.05%.

Some in the journalism community have raised concerns over how the ads may adversely affect the papers' credibility.

"Anytime you deceive your audience, you run the risk of compromising their ability to trust you," said Kelly McBride, Poynter ethics group leader.

"Market research is a good goal in terms of understanding how advertising is going to work in this era," she continued. "I wonder if there is a way to do that that doesn't deceive the audience. Is there something you could create that could measure responses without tricking the audience?"

Clint Brewer, president of the Society of Professional Journalists and executive editor of The City Paper in Nashville, Tenn., worried that a false ad might spark distrust in the news product. "My concern would be, given how thirsty the public is for affordable air travel, if readers were to be miffed about this being false, would they then transfer those feelings to the news side of the papers?" he said. "I would be concerned if I was in those newsrooms."

Source: Editor & Publisher

Publishing 2.O's Scott Karp argued in his article "What Newspapers Still Don't Understand About The Web", that online newspaper formats are inhibiting viewers' ability to find the news they want.

His article outlined a simple test that he had completed to support his argument. While a storm hit the Washington area, Karp searched The Washington Post's homepage for information about the storm. But editors, Karp argues, did not find the story worthy of a prominent position on the homepage. Instead Karp found an article about the storm on a list of most viewed articles in the corner of the homepage. Still, the article failed to give Karp the information he sought.

He then decided to use Google. His search included the Washington power service provider called Dominion Power, who had posted maps and information Karp deemed more practical.

He decided to try the Washington Post again only this time he searched further than the homepage. Finally, in the weather section, he found everything his Google search had given him but more: real-time radars, warnings and updates, and even a link back Dominion Power's website.

Karp essentially contends that online newspapers are flawed because they are structured like traditional print newspapers. Online news sites expect users to think and do as they would with the morning paper. Google's design, Karp feels, offers users various websites whose content relates to the specificity of the search. This format appeals to Karp so much that he believes online newspapers should be "just a search box and a list of blogs."
This conclusion is extreme, although it could contribute to the premise behind future newspaper website designs.

What Karp did learn from his experience is that the Washington Post's website is actually an innovative, dual-website; one aimed at national and international readers, the other at local readers. The website reads users' IP addresses and sends users in the Washington area to local site. All users have the option of customizing their experience, making either the national or local version their preferred Washington Post homepage.  

Here's a quick sum-up of some of the big media stories outside of the newspaper industry, which you can also read more about on our sister site, the SFN Blog:

- Photo-sharing site Flickr, owned by Yahoo!, announced the launch of a video-sharing function on its site. Videos will be limites to 90 seconds and 150Mb in size though. "While this might seem like an arbitrary limit, we thought long and hard about how video would complement the flickrverse," wrote community manager Heather Champ. In broadening its span to video, Flickr will attempt to distinguish itself from market leader YouTube, by sticking to "what quickly bubbled up was the idea of 'long photos', of capturing slices of life to share," wrote Champ. The video service will only be available to "pro" users who pay $24.95 a year.

- In a move interpreted as a retaliation to Microsoft's hostile takeover offer, Yahoo! announced it will be testing an advertising sales deal with Google that will last for up to two weeks. Yahoo! will run Google's AdSense service along its own search results. Microsoft's reaction was straightforward: "Any definitive agreement between Yahoo! and Google would consolidated over 90% of the search advertising market in Google's hands; this would make the market far less competitive," said Brad Smith, Microsoft's lawyer.

Source: SFN Blog - Brand Republic - Guardian through European Journalism Centre