Results matching “can freely use s”

The adventure has come to an end for Robert Ménard in Qatar.  Less than a year ago, he founded the Doha Centre for Media Freedom (DCMF), with the support of Shaykha Muzah, the wife of the Emir.  He had grand ambitions to show that it was possible to talk about the freedom of the press in the region of the Gulf which practices the most state and self censorship.  

Robert Ménard will resign this week from his post as Director General of the Centre, and several of his colleagues are likely to follow him. How did this situation develop?

"Twenty years later, it is still impossible for the Chinese media to refer freely to the ruthless suppression of China's pro-democracy movement in June 1989" said Reporters Sans Frontières.  The report was initiated as concerns mounted towards the reactions of the Propaganda department and the political police to the internal and external media coverage of the Twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

The inexorable rise of the Internet in China has provided freedom activists, working both within and outside of the country with alternative platforms for expression and access to information, presenting serious challenges for the Chinese censor. China has an estimated 300 million Internet users.
                                                                                                                          

Will people voluntarily pay to read news that they could easily read for free? Cynthia Typaldos, founder of Kachingle is convinced that they will. Kachingle proposes a novel solution to the news industry's revenue problems: encourage people to donate money to their favourite sites, whether these are major news outlets or small-time blogs. The Editors Weblog spoke to Typaldos to find out more about the scheme, which is due to launch in late July or early August.

How it works

Kachingle users, who the company are calling Kachinglers, need to sign up once to set up their subscription, which, via PayPal, will charge them $5 a month. When they go to a news site that is participating in the venture, it will display a Kachingle 'medallion', which the user can click on to indicate their support for that site. The reader can choose to highlight as many or as few news sites as it wishes, and Kachingle will track the number of times that they visit that site in a month. At the end of a month their $5 will be divided and distributed proportionally between the sites which they have flagged, according to the amount of times visited (with a 15% cut going to Kachingle and 5% to PayPal.) "The algorithm is meant to be a proxy for value received the consumer," Typaldos explained.

Why will people pay?

The main reason Typaldos thinks people will be prepared to offer this $5 is not because they have a strong desire to help save newspapers but because of the social advantages of using Kachingle. Contributors create a profile that shows which sites they are supporting, which they can post to their Facebook profiles or send on Twitter, Typaldos suggested. There will even be a Facebook application. "It becomes a very real view of the things I value, part of my online persona," she explained: something which she believes is "very important" to people as their online existence becomes more and more complex. Essentially, "there's a very powerful peer pressure recognition element to Kachingle" which is what she thinks will drive people to become involved, she feels that users will be "getting something back" in the form of social recognition. The more altruistic wish to help support news would come second to this, she believes.

Another reason Typaldos gave for why Kachingle will work is simply how easy it is: a crucial factor for such a venture. Registering involves providing just basic details, and thereafter, a Kachingler's job is straightforward, marking the sites, without having to consider how much they would like to contribute to it. "There just can't be any mental transaction costs," as Typaldos put it. And the system still allows people to move freely around different publications without encountering pay walls, which Typaldos is firmly against. "Pay walls are just the kiss of death for newspapers," she claims, "we just think it's the wrong economic approach." Those who are trying to implement them "are trying to take the old business model and stick it on the Internet," which she believes is a doomed approach.

To start with, anyone who registers as a Kachingler will make a $5 a month payment. It is fixed thus because Typaldos did not want the decision of how much to contribute to be a barrier for users. The company plans, however, to allow people to give larger amounts in the future, and to encourage them to do so by suggesting amounts based on how many sites they have chosen to support. Typaldos hopes that the typical amount given will rise to about $20 a month. Unsurprisingly, content providers would like people to contribute more money, she said.

The start-up has been in contact with many major news publishers, Typaldos clarified, and these have been by no means only US based: publishers in Germany, the UK, France, Italy, Brazil, Hungary and across Scandinavia, for example, have been in touch. "We are not country specific," she confirmed. For news organisations, the benefits are clear, and the medallion button is extremely easy to install: a simple Java script widget which "you can put on your site in three minutes."

Will it work?

So how much could Kachingle actually raise for newspapers? Could it make a difference? "I think that we will bring enough revenue to sites that are very high quality with original content," Typaldos asserted. She is not under any illusions that such an effort could save a major newspaper that has "debt, so many overheads, print, a huge staff," but she is confident that Kachingle could have a highly significant impact on smaller publications such as MinnPost, which has low overheads but respected journalists. "We will be very powerful for them," she added.

The idea is a good one in the sense that it manages to combine the notion that people should and can pay for news, without putting up paywalls that would block off sections of newspapers and seem incompatible with the idea that news readers should be able to jump around as they please online. It is also compatible with an advertising model. Typaldos described it as "not like tipping, not like micropayments, but we have taken the best elements of both." The fact that readers can choose what they think its worth paying for is likely to appeal to many, and the cost is sufficiently low to not be a deterrent. It does seem that quite a substantial marketing campaign will have to be carried out to spread the word and persuade people that it is worth making the effort to sign up: social pressure alone might not be enough. Once they do so, however, they will probably appreciate the service.

The New York Times is taking its use of social networks to whole new levels, and has announced the appointment of a social media editor for the publication. Jennifer Preston will concentrate "full-time on expanding the use of social media networks and publishing platforms to improve New York Times journalism and deliver it to readers."

Apt, then, that the news was revealed via Twitter by deputy managing editor of the NYT, Jonathan Landman - and ironic, therefore, that Preston's Twitter updates on her new account were set to private (although this has now been rectified, and @NYT_JenPreston is now tweeting freely). The NYT has been very much present on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook of late - the memo announcing Preston's appointment puts it in 2nd place on the Twitterholic rankings, although it is currently sitting in 14th.

The Wall Street Journal released a free iPhone application yesterday, Wednesday April 15, which allows readers to freely access WSJ's text, radio and video content, a significant move considering they're one of the few websites that still charge for content. Rupert Murdoch, CEO of WSJ stated recently that online papers should be charging for news if they want to survive.

About eight months ago, WSJ created a free application for Blackberry, yet they charge $9.99 a month on Amazon's Kindle. Critics highlight how ironic it seems that one of the oldest pay walls online is allowing users to find ways around paying. However, they also argue that it is the Journal's move to help broaden their audience.

Critics of Senator Benjamin Cardin's Newspaper Revitalization Act are concerned that the bill will stifle freedom of speech. On Tuesday Cardin proposed a bill that would allow newspapers to operate as tax-exempt non-profits with 501(c)(3) status. Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax-exempt and contributions to the papers would be tax deductible.

In an article in the Wall Street Journal, reporter James Taranto points out that, though the bill expressly permits nonprofits to publish newspapers, there is no existing legislation that prevents them from doing so now. Some newspapers, including the Christian Science Monitor, currently operate as non-profits, the difference being that under Cardin's bill the nonprofit papers may sell ad space free of taxation as long as sufficient space is provided for editorial content.

The BBC reported that the verdicts in two US trials are being appealed against because of comments about them on social networking sites made by jurors. Jurors are forbidden to discuss anything relating to a case outside the courts, but experts believe that the emergence of new technologies is challenging the rules.

In the two cases, defence lawyers say that postings by jurors on sites such as Twitter and Facebook could be grounds for appeal. In one case in Philadelphia, juror Eric Wuest admitted posting comments about proceedings on Facebook, such as telling people to expect "a big announcement on Monday." Wuest maintained that they were his private musings, and the judge resisted calls from the defence to remove him from the jury.

This week saw the launch of Media Cloud, a website created by the Berkman Centre for Internet and Research. The aim of the project is to track the flow of media on the web, and observe how news stories unfold. The Harvard based project has also teamed up with Thomson Reuters to use their Calais technology, which is providing data-analysis for one of the site's tracking strategies.

The Journal of New England Technology reports that Media Cloud is "intended to determine what types of stories are covered by certain media sources, where news stories originate, what parts of the world attract attention and which do not, what role reader comments play in setting the news agenda and how the blogosphere's coverage compares to traditional media coverage". Users can create graphs and maps displaying topics and areas of coverage, and can select up to three news sources to compare. Whilst the list of sources lacks some names, there are enough options to make interesting comparisons - looking at the global coverage of NYT, Al Jazeera English, and China's Xinhua for example, provides interesting contrast.

The Independent reported that it is asking its readers to work with the Debategraph community to help develop a "comprehensive map" of climate change issues that will confront world leaders at negotiations for a new international climate change treaty. Formal negotiations on Kyoto's successor start in less than three weeks.

Debategraph describes its goal as "to make the best arguments on all sides of any public debate freely available to all and continuously open to challenge and improvement by all," using argument visualisation and web-based collaborative editing. A diagram or map is created with the key questions about an issue, and then users can click on these to enter sub-maps, and click on different buttons to delve deeper and deeper into each topic.

The Internet has changed the way that people read newspapers in many ways: not least because news aggregators such as Google News have helped to bring readers away from the habit of focussing their news reading on just one paper's website. Now most Internet-savvy users are accustomed to visiting many different websites and choosing the source that they find appropriate for each story they would like to read. But as newspapers' print revenue drops, frustration at the way that aggregators make money out of content which is not their own has been increasing amongst newspaper publishers. Could Google's recent adoption of small text advertisements on US Google News be the last straw?

The basics of news aggregation

Many different news aggregators exist: those run by media giants such as Yahoo, those based on reader interaction such as Digg and others like the Huffington Post and the Daily Beast which provide aggregation alongside original reporting and commentary. Some provide just headlines; Google News, however also collects brief excerpts from articles on its homepage, and makes them available via a search function. Unlike some aggregators such as the Drudge Report that have a human editor choosing the headlines, Google News aggregation is entirely automatic, using algorithms which carry out contextual analysis and group similar stories together. According to Google, articles are ranked based on "how often and on what sites a story appears online," and "based on certain characteristics of news content such as freshness, location, relevance and diversity."

Google's mission

News aggregation has been an extremely controversial issue for many years. Google News creator Krishna Bharat claims that Google's service aims to "encourage readers to get a broader perspective by digging deeper into the news - reading ten articles instead of one, perhaps." This in itself is undoubtedly a respectable idea, and reflects one of the great advantages of online news for consumers: the ability to easily read around a topic. According to William Echikson, Google's Senior Manager for Communications, "Google makes the news more accessible and more interesting - encouraging people to read more and so benefiting the news industry as a whole." It can be argued that Google does indeed benefit the news industry by directing traffic to newspaper websites and hence promotes newspaper content. This is perhaps especially pertinent for smaller papers which would not otherwise get many visitors to their sites: when a major event occurs locally, they might suddenly find themselves topping the Google News homepage.

Publishers vs. Google

Despite some undeniable benefits for readers and apparent benefits for newspapers, some newspaper publishers are resentful of Google News and other similar aggregators. The essential problem is that publishers do not feel that the click through rate to articles is high enough, and therefore any additional advertising revenue that they would gain from extra viewings of individual articles does not compensate for the income they lose from readers not going direct to their newspaper websites. For Google News search results, the click through rate is only about 10%. People scan headlines and the brief article excerpts that appear but then few seem to bother to read full stories, meaning that despite their content being used, newspapers are not receiving any income. And even if people do click through, it means that they are less likely to visit newspapers' homepages and therefore newspapers cannot make much money from their premium advertising spots. There have already been protests: Belgian newspaper copyright group CopiePresse is in the process of seeking 49 million euro in damages from Google for storing and reproducing Belgian newspapers' articles without permission. Another of the complaints that newspapers have is that the aggregators' crawlers do not distinguish between "good" journalism and everything else.

Advertising adds to conflict

Newspaper owners have also been opposed to the fact that advertisements are placed alongside search results on the general Google site, meaning that Google is directly making money from other people's content. The recent decision to place advertising on search results for the US version of Google News after keeping it ad-free for six years is a move that can only further anger many publishers, as it seems now obvious that Google is, after all, just trying to make money out of newspaper content. According to the New York Times, a Google spokesman said that Google had devised an approach that could deliver contextually relevant ads so had decided to go ahead with them. NYT writer David Carr was extremely unimpressed, stating that "newspapers' audiences are harvested and sold divorced from the content that attracted them in the first place."

It is not clear whether the company intends to start putting ads on Google News outside the US. According to Press Gazette, Europe's notions of "fair use" are more heavily weighted in publishers' favour than in the US. CopiePresse has asserted that it will take further legal action if ads are placed on Belgian Google News.

Newspapers' anti-aggregator options?

So, apart from simply suing Google and trying to halt a seemingly irreversible trend, how can newspapers tackle these problems, which are all the more relevant in this time of financial crisis?  One possibility is the solution provided by ACAP, or Automated Content Access Protocol, a coalition of newspaper, magazine and book publishers led by the World Association of Newspapers, which claims to put "content owners in control of their online content in a way that is conducive to developing new online business models, putting new, high-quality content on the net and to maximizing the benefits of the relationship with search engines." In essence, it would mean that copyrighted material could not be used so freely in search engines. Over 700 news organisations have implemented ACAP as a symbolic gesture in anticipation of search engines recognising the service.

One further non-confrontational solution could be for newspapers themselves to provide more aggregation, such as the NYT's Times Extra page: an alternative homepage which includes links to articles from other sites under the Times' own stories. The Washington Post has a politics-specific Political Browser which freely links to other publications. If newspapers embraced this linking further, they could succeed in providing significant competition to aggregators. As well as just linking to other papers, they could utilise a product such as Pluck's BlogBurst, which is effectively a blog syndication service, allowing newspapers to easily search 'quality' blogs and find content to supplement their own stories. Obviously to do this newspapers must adopt "a fundamentally different mindset" to quote Scott Karp, who coined the term "link journalism": they must stop trying to keep people within their own sites and realise that sending them away to appropriately interesting articles may well keep them coming back for more. The Huffington Post, for example, thrives on sending readers away to other articles, and managed to become the most linked-to blog on the web.

Can newspapers supply the competition?

Evidently people do like to be able to get the news from many different sources around the world, and younger readers who have grown up with online news possibly have less loyalty to individual newspapers. With this in mind, newspapers could even provide a better service than Google and co. One of the problems with automated aggregators such as Google is the lack of a real editorial agenda: Google's algorithms try to judge the importance of stories in ways described above, but there is no editor to provide an informed, professional view of events by appropriately arranging stories on a homepage. A newspaper might not be able to provide as comprehensive an aggregation service as Google, but it would have the advantage of being able to offer a clear editorial voice in its selection of articles and how they appear, which is one of the aspects of newspapers that readers value highly.

Another more radical and highly controversial option to defy the search engine aggregators is to start charging for content. If newspapers were to come together and universally start charging online readers, via joint subscriptions or micropayment, they could create a newspaper-owned search engine and aggregator which included advertising and fairly distributed revenue, hence keeping all income from newspaper content within the control of newspapers. It would be a huge step, but as more and more publications contemplate a return to paid content, it seems at least a possibility.

Will Google's additional ads spur newspapers into action? Or will they continue to somewhat reluctantly tolerate the Internet giant's profit from their industry, and accept the directed traffic in return? The Internet has revolutionised the way that people read news, and aggregation and linking is undoubtedly going to continue to be a part of the news landscape. The issue is whether it will be newspapers themselves or third parties which manage the system.

Guardian readers' editor Siobhain Butterworth addresses the issue of the differences between reader responses and feedback to news in printed media as opposed to online forums. Prompted by the libel action brought by Washington lobbyist Vicki Iseman against the New York Times, which settled last week in a negotiated resolution that included space on the newspaper's website for her lawyers' commentary on the lawsuit, Butterworth examines the changes in the reader's "right of reply" in the digital age.

Following increased discussion in the media world of the non-profit model as a potential saviour for newspapers, the idea of paid online content has returned to the forefront of the debate, and different ways to implement this have been proposed. What most of the arguments are lacking, however, is an acknowledgment of the free spirit of the Internet and the necessity to maintain this. If the tides are to be reversed and people are to be persuaded to pay for information again, any online payment program that is established should not erect pay walls between publications. Paid online content would be a huge step for newspapers, and a reversal of current policy, so great thought and care are required to ensure that it is a step taken in the right way. But as online advertising revenue slows, and newspapers' very survival is threatened, could paid online content indeed be the solution?

The current micropayment debate

Walter Isaacson's article in Time which first spurred the debate makes the valid and interesting point that maybe returning to paid content would actually be a positive change for the industry in terms of the way that journalists work. Charging readers for content is based on very different principles to charging for advertising. When seeking income from advertisers, readers become less of a priority: "eventually you will weaken your bond with your readers if you do not feel directly dependent on them for your revenue." Isaacson believes that the key to attracting online revenue "is to come up with an iTunes-easy method of micropayment," that would allow impulse purchases of individual articles, rather than having content available purely by subscription. As many newspapers have already tried and failed to generate income via paid subscriptions, it would seem that micropayment is definitely worth considering.  

Steve Brill's memo to the New York Times that was published in Poynter, advises the paper on "how to get off the free-content treadmill", calling for the NYT to lead the way in establishing a new paid content model. He points out that "getting an average of just $1.00 a month (3.3 cents a day) from each visitor [who currently uses the site] would yield $240m in new annual revenue." He outlines a plan whereby online articles will cost 10 cents each, a day pass for all articles would cost 40 cents, a month would cost $7.50 and a year $55. Passing on an article would cost 5 cents. This combination of subscriptions and the possibility to purchase individual articles makes sense, but there are flaws in this proposal.

All newspapers in one payment plan?

First, an industry-wide simultaneous switch would undoubtedly be a preferable solution, and arguably the only one that has a chance of succeeding. Any newspaper that unilaterally decides to start a paid content system for information that can be found elsewhere is bound to suffer from a lack of readers, as people will simply go elsewhere. Few people who get their news online have undying loyalty to one or two individual publications any more. Brill suggests "a new marketing campaign would promote the fact that the Times alone among daily newspapers (until the others follow) is charging for its content because 'you get what you pay for.'" Obviously it is possible that this would work, but it would be a huge risk and it is likely that many readers would immediately be lost, and content would be isolated, as TimesSelect content was during its brief period behind a pay wall. The idea of paying to forward an article further fortifies this wall. Forget traditional concepts of competition: newspapers need to come together so that paid content will work for everybody.

Along similar lines, offering subscriptions to each individual paper is unlikely to work anymore. Online readers have become accustomed to looking at many different sources of news each day: one of the greatest advantages of online news is that you can move freely between publications, and papers are becoming more willing to link to each other's content. This is something that should be maintained, setting up walls around individual papers is inconsistent with the benefits of the web. So papers should join together and implement a system by which users can use the same payment method for many, or ideally all, publications, whether subscription-based or micropayments. In discussion with Isaacson, Daily Show host Jon Stewart suggested a cable TV style model, whereby newspapers group together to form packages. This would definitely be preferable to individual publications proceeding alone, and might provide some healthy competition. But the user would benefit more from just one universal system, as it would be simpler to access more publications in a way that is more coherent with the current way that people use the web. Choosing between different 'packages' could be a confusing and frustrating exercise and there is the risk that media companies would align along partisan lines and further polarise the industry politically.

In line with the idea of free movement, costs would have to be lower than Brill suggests for individual articles. An ideal system would be one where costs are so low that people will not hesitate to read as many articles as they like. Any payment system developed will have to be created with the less tech-savvy user in mind. It must be extremely easy to use, unobtrusive and transparent with regards to costs. The importance of ease cannot be over-estimated; it is essential not to put people off by making registration too complicated.

iTunes or iNews?

Countless parallels have been drawn between the newspaper industry and the music industry. Obviously the two industries are very different and purchasing a song is not the same thing as buying an article: not least because you are likely to listen to a song again and again while as you would often only read an article once. Consequently, any pricing structure for newspaper content must reflect this difference, with articles costing a tiny fraction of the 99 cents that iTunes, for example, charges for a track. But there are some lessons that newspapers can learn. A crucial point to understand is that a site such as iTunes is so popular because you can buy a huge amount of music there, from many different record labels, and the pricing strategies are very simple. Once a user has set up their account and entered payment details, it is very easy to make purchases. Although newspapers may not want to lump their articles all in one place, but rather retain their individual websites, one payment scheme for all definitely seems as if it would be the most usable. A pre-paid account, or a system whereby you just needed to register your card details would probably be easiest to use.

One issue that people have often pointed to when comparing the newspaper and music industries is that many people are still prepared to buy songs legally even though they can frequently be downloaded free. According to NewspaperDeathWatch, it is the artists themselves who "drove transformation" and persuaded their fans that their music was worth paying for, and made clear the damage they cause to the industry by downloading free songs. "It's up to reporters and the emerging breed of online news organizations like Talking Points Memo to convince their fans to fork over a few pennies to consume their stuff." People feel guilty about getting free music from their favourite artists, maybe people's consciences can be evoked over consuming newspaper content free if it is damaging their favourite journalists?

The value of newspaper content

So is a return to paid content the answer for newspapers? Not everybody thinks so. New York Times op-ed contributor Michael Kinsley compares the amount of money to be made from charging online NYT readers of the $2 a month to that currently made from advertising and circulation, and as the paid online sum is so much smaller he concludes that "$2 a month is not going to save newspapers." But with more and more readers moving online, and advertising and circulation revenue dropping, it is something worth considering. Advertising can still be used to generate additional income, as long as it remains relatively unobtrusive and inoffensive.

A world-wide, newspaper-wide paid content system would undoubtedly be complicated and costly to set up, but if it could provide the vital extra income needed to save the industry, it might well be worth it. A system that allows people to move freely between publications in the way that they can now, and encourages newspapers to link freely to one another so as to make best use of the advantages of the web, is essential. And hopefully readers will not only think that newspaper content is worth paying a small amount for, but learn to value this content more.

Following on from Part 1 of our interview with the Editor-in-Chief of the Christian Science Monitor, John Yemma - where we looked at why the CSM is pursing a digital future and how it prepared its readership base - we now look at what is happening inside the CSM itself. Yemma and his team are restructuring the newsroom, its mindset and the technology powering it. This is the cutting edge of news distribution, and Yemma talks us through how it is preparing itself for uncharted territory.

Restructuring the newsroom - rebuilding the engine

The next big step for this revolutionary new "newspaper" model was in the newsroom itself. How does a traditional daily newspaper restructure its newsroom team to prepare itself for the uncharted digital waters ahead? Yemma is overwhelming positive about undertaking the task of remodelling the newsroom, saying, "We essentially get to sit here and take our car engine apart and put it back together. It was an automobile engine that was built for the print world and now we get to take it apart and rebuild it for the web-first world. That is a tremendously exciting prospect because that means instead of having to serve the print master, which has its own production schedule and arbitrary deadline, we free ourselves, and we are therefore able to be much more immediate and relevant online."

Currently the CSM has one staff orientated to producing the print CSM and a small online staff who repurpose the print content for the online edition. Yemma tells the Weblog that the team is organising itself into a "three pronged operation" with a common editorial model - under the editor, managing editor and includes the national, international and photo editors, and foreign and domestic correspondents, made up of about 70 to 80 people - feeding two smaller divisions. These two smaller divisions are the weekly print desk and the website desk, in each case they will have a small production staff. This differentiation between the magazine and the web is vital, "as print has its own needs to produce a good and valuable product" so it needs a minimal but dedicated staff. In the same way, the web has to have a focused staff to keep the site running and up to date. Yemma reports they will have about 10 people each devoted to the web and weekly. For the weekly this involves a team that will build a coherent weekly magazine - working on articles that will need to have a longer shelf life - and the overall look and feel. Similarly the website staffers will have a dedicated team of technical producers who will work on the entry page to optimise it for web traffic.

Yemma says that it has not been necessary to radically change the shape and layout of the newsroom to push through this change as the common editorial pool will be driving content and this remain largely intact. There will likely be some moving of desks to put the weekly staff together and so forth, but nothing radically different.

New technology to aid the change - democratising the web

The CSM is introducing new content management systems to facilitate this move, a print CMS and a new web CMS. This new system will allow the common editorial pool to directly feed both operations and allow the editorial staff to have much more influence over the website. CSM are using K4 CMS for the print edition and is currently closing the deal for a new CMS for the web edition. The new web system according to Yemma will, "democratises the whole operation of the web so non-technical assignment editors with the common editorial pool can update the website directly." Therefore, the majority of the content will feed from the editorial pool but the focused web team will work on the homepage itself.

Retraining for the digital future

This new business model will not only result in a rebuilding of the newsroom, but a rebuilding of staffers. The CSM has already trained its team for multi-media publications and now it is undertaking a programme for its new future. The team are being trained for the new CMS platforms; however, the new system does not require extensive training, as it is a very user-friendly system. CSM is continually training staffers for the web, as "the future is the web. Everybody knows that."  On the weekly, the assignment editors will have to rethink content to make it move "evergreen" and thus hold up for much longer on the shop shelf, and the content will have to be prepared multiple weeks in advance. The CSM is an analytical newspaper so it is already somewhat prepared for this new style of content, but Yemma says, "it is more rethinking than retraining, a magazine mindset is different to a daily mindset."

Managing staffers through uncertain times

It is exciting times at the CSM, but how do you manage staff through these uncertain times. Yemma says, "Be as open as possible about what you are doing. While things are still being developed and you don't want staff to prematurely publicise, you must be careful about you say, as anything you say in a newsroom can get outside of the newsroom. In fact, I would be disappointed if it didn't; being good gossips is part of their job. I would sometimes say things like "If theoretically we were going to have a weekly and no more daily....", the team would laugh, but I can't really say it as I do not want it to show up on a blog or something. I also tried to give them all the information. I tell you, it is much easier to remember your story when you are honest than when you make things up!"

Yemma reports that he worked with the University of Southern California and the Knight Media Digital Centre, and they performed an anonymous survey of staff. As a result, the staff were able to freely express their opinions about the changes without fear of it damaging their career. The team at USC and Knight compiled all the results and gave this to management, so they could see exactly how their staff were feeling. Yemma reports that the feedback was, "appropriately sceptical, but not overly. Again, I would be disappointed in journalists if they weren't sceptical. I would not expect everyone to be completely on board, but they appear to be largely on board."

Yemma says that that the combination of the town hall meetings, sitting down and talking with the different departments, and the anonymous survey are all necessary when managing a team through change.

Staff sackings

Yemma admits that, like many US newspapers, the CSM will be forced to let staff go. Yemma expects to reduce staffing levels by between 10% and 15%, which translates to 10 to 15 people.

Yemma told the Weblog that the staff cuts will take place in summer of next year and the time between now and then Yemma is publicising these staff cuts to the team so that hopefully levels may be reduced organically with people naturally looking for other jobs on hearing this news. Yemma admits that this will only get them part of the way there with the economy being what it is currently. Yemma is also working closely with the Human Resources department and they plan to offer a redundancy package, outplacement assistance and counselling.

The future

Looking at the radical change that the CSM is pursuing, one cannot help but feel that this type of radical restructuring is exactly the type of thinking what will pull the news industry out of its current slump. The media needs newspapers like the CSM to pursue these new strategies, as the industry has evolved very little in the past 100 years and it needs to start taking some radical risks to ready itself for a radically different future. Whether this model will prove successful, time and the market will only tell; but it is undoubtedly a brave and exciting undertaking.
 

China has agreed to loosen restrictions on foreign news and information providers inside the country, where government controls were tightened in 2006.  The agreement settles a trade dispute with the United States, the European Union and Canada.

International news and information agencies such as Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters and Dow Jones & Company will be able to "more freely compete and sell their services inside China" under the agreement, the New York Times reports.

The editors of Kyrgyzstan oppositional newspaper Alibi were arrested last night, after the paper was accused of refusing to pay over US$ 28,000 towards Asilbek Saliev, the nephew of President Kurmanbek Bakiev and son of national security head Janibek Bakiev, reports Lenta.ru.

The paper's staff mentions that they were not refusing to pay the sum, but simply asking to have the payment delayed by three months.

De Facto, another oppositional title, published an article (which Alibi re-published later) suggesting that the nephew was involved in a car accident that killed a pedestrian. The author of the article noted that investigations into the accident were lagging because of Saliev's status.

Saliev filed a lawsuit against both papers and won in both cases. In addition to the US$ 28,000 that both papers were ordered disburse to Saliev, the author of the article had to pay US$80 to him personally.

De Facto put a halt on publishing on June 12, following harassment from authorities. The paper published content that suggested that the Kyrgyz Taxes and Duties Committee was corrupted.

Numerous organizations have questioned the extent to which press freedom exists in Kyrgyzstan and whether the state allows for journalists to report freely.

Source: Lenta.ru

See also:
Kyrgyzstan: newspaper forced to stop publication, pressure from authorities

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) asked Georgia to stop censoring Russian-language press and has asked for all sides of the conflict in South Ossetia to inform the public through "free reporting", reported gipp.ru.

"The world needs to know what is happening and we appeal to both Russian and Georgian authorities to allow media to operate and journalists to work freely", said Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary.

The IFJ showed also showed concern that Russian reporters might be too influenced by the Kremlin in their coverage of the events.

"Georgia claims to be a democratic country and Russia claims to respect international laws but in reality they seem to be paying lip service to these obligations. It is in the interest of peace, reconciliation and rights of both communities to let media work freely", the IFJ says.

Source: gipp.ru, IFJ

See also:
Russia: Novaya Gazeta accused of promoting hatred towards Georgians
Russia: Journalists urged to provide content that "proves" Georgian violence
Opinion: how Georgia outplayed the Russians in the PR war
Russia: reporting about Georgia is "propaganda" and "disinformation"

Russian newspaper Rossyiskaya Gazeta will launch a special edition tomorrow for refugees from the South Ossetia region of the Russian Federation, reported Lenta.ru.

10,000 copies will be published from Tuesday to Friday and freely distributed in areas where refugees live.

The edition may include announcements about missing relatives, information about help from the state and important numbers.

Since the start of the conflict, Russia has seen 30,000 refugees from the South Ossetia.

Source: Lenta.ru

The Recovering Journalist recently blogged on the Norwich Bulletin's (Connecticut) brief adventure into user commenting - The Bulletin gave readers free range to comment on the site, only to find that comments that are entirely anonymous and unmoderated can quickly spiral out of control. Apparently posters were relentless even when it came to wedding announcements.

Todd Zeigler of the Bivings Group recently blogged on 9 Ways to Improve the Quality of Comments on your Website:

1. Have moderators and staff actively participate on the comment board; when staff post frequently they can help lead the discussion and improve the level of discourse
2. Require users to have one comment pre-approved before they can post freely
3. Filter out the profanity
4. Allow users to report inappropriate comments
5. Use other users feedback to bury or promote comments
6. Require registration for posting
7. Threaded comments foster discussion; when users can reply to a specific comment it allows for multiple lines of discussion to coexist
8. Let users ignore other commenters
9. Create a comment policy; transparency is always best

By following these guidelines news sites can reap the benefits of online user discussion, without the swear words.

Sources: Recovering Journalist through David-Black.org, The Bivings Report

In April 2007, French regional newspaper Le Télégramme launched an original online offer: a miniature, daily, television-type news report.

At the time, the experiment was hailed as most innovative in the French regional paper landscape. Has that particular format borne its fruits though?

Télégramme and JT Web

The paper built a studio within its newsroom at a relatively low cost, about €70,000 including two professional cameras, an editing console and lighting. The paper hired a professional broadcast journalist to produce daily video footage with professional standards (about one original report daily, sometimes two). The actual news show, dubbed 'JT Web', lasts about five minutes. It is staffed by four of the paper's journalists, who come from diverse backgrounds and desks, on a rotating basis. It is published every weekday at 5pm.

Each journalist compiles video content shot by the videojournalist, gets a share of his or her own footage or carries out short interviews with the paper's journalists, and serves as an anchor for the news report. Each underwent a 4-week training program. They attend the morning news meeting and pick out the stories that will have most visual relevance.

The JT Web has helped to expand Le Télégramme's multimedia coverage. However, the televised format of the JT Web has borne disappointing results traffic-wise. Of the roughly 40,000-50,000 daily unique visitors to the website, there are only between 1,000-3,500 video downloads, depending on the news event.

In these baby steps of online video though, editors shouldn't be excessively concerned by eyeballs, as the JT Web served more important purposes, helping to modernize the newsroom's culture.

Video fueled newsroom convergence

The 'JT Web' was launched with two main purposes. One was to "surf on the growing enthusiasm for video news coverage" that was emerging on all the major international news sites, said Olivier Clech, Digital editor at Le Télégramme. Secondly - and as importantly in Clech's view - the JT Web was a good way to engage in cultural change within the newsroom (which isn't integrated but Clech would like it to be), by creating curiosity amongst journalists.

"Video was a lever to trigger evolution," he said. It was both used to fulfill the audience's needs and made journalists " realize that multimedia was inevitable." This doesn't mean that all of the paper's 200 journalists will regularly produce multimedia coverage, but the JT Web was a good way to make them more Web-friendly.

For the last municipal elections in March 2008, the Télégramme organized diverse video coverage to complement its print and online stories. Video interviews were shot with editors of the paper's local editions ("100% print people") to discuss the details of the elections. On election day, the Télégramme gathered spontaneous reactions from voters and politicians, and provided video analysis from its main offices.



Newspaper video: towards on-demand, news YouTubes

According to Clech, the JT Web's televised news format was a good way for the paper to tackle video, since it required a rigorous and structured approach. But it doesn't fall in line with the expectations of the online audience, "which is a more of a consumer of short video sequences." Most Web users seek short and diversified on-demand clips. The JT Web may have also suffered from insufficient visibility on the homepage, lack of broadband penetration and a relatively slow server.

In the future, the JT Web could be scrapped, or perhaps the Télégramme will save this format for talk shows, profiles or select news items. The TV news report format simply doesn't bring enough people. And there seems to be a disconnect between waiting on videos of 'hot' breaking news until the 5pm news report, instead of publishing them immediately.

Clech couldn't give too many details, but the paper is working on its next set of video offerings, which could include a larger selection of on-demand video clips, which users could freely browse. Content would be more systematically indexed to make it easy for readers to find and share. Sounds familiar? Perhaps there could even be some participatory features...

Last but not least, Clech reminded: "Let's not focus on the platform, and instead keep doing our jobs." That's the secret.


Stay tuned for Part 2, with an interview with Ian Vaile, Director of Digital Productions at Fairfax Media in Australia.

Source: Olivier Clech, Digital Editor-in-Chief at Le Télégramme

Some people may think that blogs do not have credibility since they are usually associated with pretentious reporting based on gossip. But New York Times Blogger Saul Hansell doesn't see the difference between blogs and reviews, columns, and first-person features. He argues that many newspaper blog posts are more analytical and casual than typical news articles, and at the Times, the standard for fairness and reporting are the same for blogs and articles.

The benefits of newspaper blogs, according to Hansell, are that they allow readers, competitors, and sources to comment and engage in more instantaneous and accessible discussion than in the newspaper format. Blogs also enhance an article by adding more information and opening up discussions that flow from the original article. For example, Hansell provides some history about AOL's top ad job to supplement a story he wrote with NYT reporter Louise Story for the paper.

He dismisses the idea of renaming blogs as "RealTime Reporting", which attempts to establish a separate brand identity. As with anything on a newspaper, readers have the power to decide if a blog, or whatever they choose to call it, is worth their time.

In respone, Miande, a reader of Hansell's blog, writes that blogging "detracts from the time, concentration and energy required to conduct authentic reporting. It is sad to see once-reputable news organizations transform themselves into "reality" programs."

On the other hand, Lynn E, another reader of Hansell's, believes that blogs are a "service to the community" because people can express themselves freely on topics that can be "disruptive."  "If anyone ever got out of hand," she writes, "simply [do not] go back to the site, no harm done."

Source: The New York Times

According to Ground Reports, 2008 will be the year citizen journalism evolves, after having cemented its establishment in 2007. Leaders such as Newsvine, NowPublic, Orato and Digital Journal offer many similar features: proprietary content submission tools, community ratings, and even some occasional revenue share. But it’s “how these players break out of the pack in the coming year (that) will determine everything.”

The article summarizes its key predictions on what to expect from citizen journalism in 2008:
 

According to a poll conducted for the BBC World Service, 56% of the 11,344 people interviewed in 14 countries thought that freedom of the press was very important to ensure a free society. But 40% said it was more important to maintain social harmony and peace, even if it meant curbing the press's freedom to report news truthfully.

The French regional daily press is preparing to jointly publish a magazine supplement next spring, which will be distributed freely at one million copies.

Nicolas Beytout, who was editor of the Figaro for three years, is readying to head LVMH’s media division, the DI Group. In an interview with Le Monde, he shows himself reassuring towards the employees of Les Echos, recently acquired by LVMH.

The Cincinnati Enquirer is trying out a new way use Web 2.0 in order to engage new voices in the public debate. The paper is inviting the 26 candidates for the City Council to come express their views on its editorial board blog.