http://www.editorsweblog.org/ en Copyright 2010 Thu, 07 Jan 2010 14:57:54 +0100 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification No Google search: It's an unthinkable scenario for much of the world, but one that China is likely to face next month as the business shuts down its search engine in the notoriously conservative nation.  Although Google has not confirmed the pullout, China Business News reported today that the company is likely to announce its decision to remove its search capacities from the nation on Monday.

The decision comes as a response to increasing conflict between the Chinese government and the Internet business.  Google suffered an attack on their technological interface in December that has been attributed to hackers based in China, and the search site has been subject to mandatory censorship from the Chinese government.
]]> http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2010/03/googles_split_from_china_taking_a_stand.php http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2010/03/googles_split_from_china_taking_a_stand.php Newsrooms and Journalism aggregation China freedom of speech Future of journalism Google search Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:05:35 +0100 With much pessimism in journalism, from decreased advertising income and a lack of model for online publishing, the news media is in crisis.

But, does that mean news is over?

Not exactly, according to George Brock, former president of the World Editors Forum, current board member of WEF, and professor and head of Journalism at City University London, who recently gave an inaugural lecture on March 17 at City University on where journalism is right now and where it's heading.

His lecture not only explains what developments have led to the current state of media, but what to do to ensure news media survival "for they are in need of help."
]]> http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2010/03/with_much_pessimism_in_journalism.php http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2010/03/with_much_pessimism_in_journalism.php Newsrooms and Journalism advertising business models citizen journalism Future of journalism journalism paid online content paywall Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:03:09 +0100 A cacophony of voices from across the web have begun to take issue with that holdover from legacy media, the op-ed page.  

Ezra Klein, Washington Post domestic policy blogger, posted an indictment of the Washington Post's op-ed page on Monday.  

"I don't really understand why my op-ed page, or all the other op-ed pages, waste so much real-estate publishing talking points from politicians," he lamented.  He went on to argue that op-ed pages should post pieces written by experts "for a different purpose...than those written by political experts."
]]> http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2010/03/wikipedia_founder_calls_for_the_end_of_t.php http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2010/03/wikipedia_founder_calls_for_the_end_of_t.php Newsrooms and Journalism blogs newspaper opinion Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:06:28 +0100 The International Press Association, an organization representing all foreign reporters stationed in Belgium, is hosting a meeting today to discuss employment prospects for journalists reporting in Brussels.

The meeting, entitled "What does the future hold for Brussels-based journalists?" will attempt to address the exodus of much of the European Union press corps over the past five years and the diminishing presence of foreign press in Brussels.  According to a press release, the API "considers an urgent taking stock and a broad debate are imperative."  The group hopes to address three main concerns:
]]> http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2010/03/international_press_association_hosts_me.php http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2010/03/international_press_association_hosts_me.php Newsrooms and Journalism Europe Future of journalism press freedom union Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:52:36 +0100 Despite promising growth forecasts made by many in the industry, staffing cuts at news organizations big and small indicate that the news media industry is not yet out of the woods.  

Today, Journalism.co.uk reported that BBC's Global News division is undergoing restructuring that will result in the elimination of a number of management positions.  And smaller but still significant Channel M, the Manchester regional TV station owned by Guardian Media Group (GMG), will be losing 29 positions--a reduction of 88 percent.

The BBC will be losing a laundry list of high-level positions, including the directorial positions of BBC World News, BBC World Service and BBC World Service English.
]]> http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2010/03/bbc_global_news_and_channel_m_suffer_res.php http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2010/03/bbc_global_news_and_channel_m_suffer_res.php Newsrooms and Journalism BBC cutbacks Guardian revenue staff changes Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:18:37 +0100 The end result of a collaborative six-month project between USC's Anneberg Journalism School and the Center for Investigative Journalism will premiere March 19th. Entitled "Hunger in the Golden State," the project is a three week-long multimedia series documenting California's growing social issues in light of the economic crisis. A press release from the Annenberg School noted that more than 20 multimedia stories will be released online, over the radio, and on television.   ]]> http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2010/03/usc_j-school_cir_along_with_other_news_o.php http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2010/03/usc_j-school_cir_along_with_other_news_o.php Newsrooms and Journalism Future of journalism investigative journalism journalism journalism schools lmultimedia multimedia newsroom management Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:02:02 +0100 The European Fund for Investigative Journalism, or Journalismfund.eu, launched in February 2009 with a plan to raise funding for investigative reporting that involved cross-border collaboration in Europe.

"In Europe we can see that politics, business, even organised crime all cross borders, while journalists and their coverage are often focussed purely on a national target group and are reluctant to cross borders," director Brigitte Alfter explained in an interview last year.

Just over a year on, two investigative stories have been published and eight more are currently being researched, with groups of two to six journalists working on each. The money raised by Alfter goes towards travel, advice, time and making freedom of information requests.  ]]> http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2010/03/journalismfundeu_funds_stories_investiga.php http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2010/03/journalismfundeu_funds_stories_investiga.php Newsrooms and Journalism investigative journalism Wed, 17 Mar 2010 10:00:41 +0100 The 8.8 earthquake that ravaged central Chile on February 27 has also wreaked havoc on the newspapers that operate in the region. While some continued to print with borrowed electric generators and improvised newsrooms, some were forced to halt publishing for a number of days. Most of the local newspapers websites' in the most affected areas were down in the aftermath of the quake. But, even though the worst seems to be over for this battered nation's newspapers, damage to the country's largest paper factories could become a big problem for not only Chilean but also other south American newspapers.

As aftershocks still rattled central Chile, the Editors Weblog spoke to the General Manager of the Asociación Nacional de la Prensa of Chile, Ignacio Muñoz, about how the earthquake has affected Chilean newspapers and how they have coped with the difficulties of reporting under extraordinary circumstances.
]]> http://www.editorsweblog.org/analysis/2010/03/the_88_earthquake_that_ravaged.php http://www.editorsweblog.org/analysis/2010/03/the_88_earthquake_that_ravaged.php Analysis Newspaper Newsrooms and Journalism digital editions distribution journalism newspaper South America Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:20:53 +0100 South China Morning Post reported yesterday.

Li Dongdong, the deputy director at the General Administration of Press and Publication confirmed on Wednesday that that qualification exam would resemble the test taken by civil servants, and that all aspiring journalists would be required to take it before applying for a reporting job.

Under the new guidelines, the Communist Party's stance on journalism would be required reading for students studying journalism.]]> http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2010/03/chinese_censor_orders_journalists_to_tak.php http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2010/03/chinese_censor_orders_journalists_to_tak.php Newsrooms and Journalism freedom of speech newspapers and democracy Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:39:03 +0100 Media Management Center will be teaching the Media Executive Leadership Program from July 19 to 31 on the Northwestern University campus in  Evanston, Illinois.

The program was launched last summer to train media executives from all fields in strategy, leadership, innovation and integration. Mike Smith, Executive Director of the Media Management Center said that based on the responses of the participants and their instructors, he believes this was the most successful program in 20 years of teaching media executives.

The Center is looking for media executives from a variety of content platforms - television, newspaper, magazine, radio, digital, interactive, new media or advertising. Specific job functions or level of expertise are not that important; but they should be leaders - or potential leaders - who are facing new challenges and being asked to develop new strategies.

For more information about the Media Executive Leadership Program see here. ]]> http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2010/03/media_management_center_to_hold_executiv.php http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2010/03/media_management_center_to_hold_executiv.php Newsrooms and Journalism event training Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:29:13 +0100 Agora, Poland's biggest media concern, in a southern district of Warsaw, have huge windows as a façade, and inside, terraces on every floor. The whole configuration seems to facilitate contact between the different editorial units housed in this imposing building. They are numerous and varied, from flagship daily Gazeta Wyborcza to freesheet Metro, from talk-news radio Tok FM to countless Internet portals and the administrative departments. Their members or contributors don't need to go to the basement, to the cafeteria, to see people from other platforms or professional cultures. The in-house newsstand and bookstore, which sell not only the group's productions, also remind them they are not alone in the industry.

Agora, which also has a strong presence in magazine, book and DVD publishing, in music-film production and in outdoor advertising, has more than half of its 3,150-odd employees based in this "horizontal skyscraper". The architecture building that is longer than it is tall, with stretching, low wall corridors, may reflect the interaction between separate units. Ironically however, it also contradicts the term "vertical", often heard in this four-storey building and applied to some of the integrated online activities.

"We are in all media platforms except television," says Grzegorz Piechota, the special projects editor for Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland's leading quality newspaper.  "For a decade, we have been particularly active in extending our expertise in Internet, finding synergies between online and print operations. Agora is in everything except porn, instant messaging and mapping!"

The group, whose operations are essentially Polish, counts more than 80 portals (more than Germany's Axel Springer for example, another media titan but at a world level). Agora's main portal gazeta.pl, fed by an independent newsroom integrated with radio Tok FM, is complemented by webradio tuba.fm and many other stand-alone verticals. These cover all sorts of issues, including sport, business, education, recruitment and real-estate. Most of them are leaders in their niche, and their combined audience is sixth right after Google, Polish equivalents of Facebook (nasza-klasa.pl) and E-bay (allegro.pl), and the two leaders onet.pl and Wirtualna Polska. Nearly two thirds of Poland's 17 million Internet users regularly visit gazeta.pl and its affiliated portals. Wyborcza.pl, the flagship daily's e-edition, attracts three million users and brought in  24% of the daily's advertising revenues in 2009.

Agora has been particularly proactive in looking for synergies and complementary activities made possible by the Internet. The group has implemented a multi-brand strategy which is adjusted according to the fields covered. Gazeta Wyborcza, for instance, is fully integrated only in areas that make it more appropriate, with the verticals sport.pl (launched in 2006) or wyborcza.biz (created last year).

This business portal was editorially independent from the daily when it started, in order to be more flexible than print journalists, who were considered "too serious and slow". It was filled with gossips on economic players, which was a mistake, Agora's executives admitted. "It was not the right way to attract a loyal audience. The people we target, let's say graduate readers in their 30s, with minimum 1,000 euros monthly income, have no time and are in search of serious news," explains Leszek Olszanski, the head of wyborcza.pl. "Advertisers also want to reach them through non-trivial material, which is why we work with seasoned print editors. We realized there are complementary abilities between online rapidity on one hand, and thoughtful coverage of an industry on the other."

Thanks to this integration, top economic columnists of Gazeta Wyborcza now write more. They allegedly enjoy having more space for their texts, and having the possibility to work on breaking news in real-time. The portal benefits from the credibility conferred by the paper, which in turn has become more analytical rather than news-driven. "We try to wait for the print edition for exclusivities, if possible. These scoops can be accompanied in the website's pages by teasers before, and follow-ups after," Olszanski notes.

Wyborcza.biz  has become a strong brand, along with its associated portal money.pl. Financial institutions, in particular, compete to be advertised in their pages. This year, the online revenues of the economic section should represent 50% of print earnings. Like the in-house newsstand, the sales forces also market ads for other business sites. It is in Agora's philosophy to tap into all potential income sources - not only news driven - and on the cooperative character of the Internet. "On the Net, you do business with your competitors. There is a business reason to build networks to cover them, and our expertise also includes sales to advertisers," Piechota explained.

Agora does not only play with complementarities rooted on its traditional print activities. The 50-person team managed by Pawel Stremski, as gazeta.pl/Tok FM's chief editor, is half web and half radio. Last January his unit added another website to Agora's e-basket, with the launch of tok-fm.pl, which is not a webradio (a station by the same name, broadcast in Poland's nine main cities, was already accessible on the webradio portal tuba.fm). Agora did not create another website for the sake of it, but saw Tok FM's recognized brand as an opportunity for Internet too. "The same team fills gazeta.pl for a mass market audience, and tok-fm.pl for politics and business with some entertainment content. People can follow a major hearing by a politician live, in a video coverage on tok-fm.pl, and get a summary in the other portals," Stremski says.

The website's beta version was successful in having radio journalists send in their notes, according to its promoters. Conscious of brand impact, these reporters see it as a more dynamic, immediate way to publish their stories. Gazeta Wyborcza's central newsroom is not a tok-fm.pl contributor, but its local editors are. They are based in 20 bureaus out of Warsaw, and can publish their non-print productions in the new portal. They receive no extra pay for these contributions, but they have an incentive: there is an award each month for the best exclusive story.

"We have to be fast, entertaining and multimedia, finding the way to be different," Stremski says. "There is room for good profitable journalism in Internet. By going multimedia, you get more informers, your story is not stuck on page 6, even though the credibility conferred by print remains essential."

Another advantage of creating tok-fm.pl is that in Poland's competitive media environment, newspapers not belonging to Agora are less reluctant to refer to Tok FM as a source, rather than Gazeta Wyborcza. Having many brands gives more possibilities to be quoted for scoops, and to be profitable too. "We cannot expect to make money with every website. A lifestyle or a local news website is more likely to be cost-effective from the start than a general news portal," Stremski notes.

Agora's online operations have gone even more vertical in the past months, with the majority takeover of AdTaily. This start-up company based in Krakow provides a widget-based system for advertising monetization of Internet services (including those offered by the group's platforms which at the moment house about 130,000 bloggers). "AdTaily developed a universal tool that can be used for cooperation with external customers," commented Tomasz Jozefacki, Agora's director of Internet operations. "Currently its system is used by 80% of our online media."

In other words, the group is taking advantage of the blogosphere's innovations and income potentials, including e-commerce for web entrepreneurs who want to monetize their social media. "Agora realized that to be online, you need to acquire the bright guys who are in the business, and can help you to be more efficient in new platforms. Our expertise is not just about gathering news; we have to think wide," Piechota says.

AdTaily is based on the assumption that anybody can be an advertiser. It has developed a self-service ad tool designed for niche blogs, giving advertisers the opportunity to reach narrowly-targeted audiences. Its promoters insist that their system allows 70% of the ad revenues to go directly to the bloggers, with an easy to understand flat fee, unlike Google's  AdSense. "It is a great instrument for hyperlocal news websites, covering towns or districts with around 10,000 residents, where they can advertise the local shoe shops," says Jakub Krzych, one of the start-up's co-founders. "It would not make sense for Agora to buy a website on white boots or on a Krakow district. But through AdTaily, it can indirectly get some revenue streams from very specialized news websites."

Will Agora be successful with its online activism and verticalism? The group is at least trying to be as active as possible in new media platforms, and in a way that is not too costly. The investment in AdTaily also reveals that it does not believe in the online pay walls envisaged by Rupert Murdoch or the New York Times, as most contents are being commoditized. Its multi-brand strategy invites the editorial units to fill the empty spots that appear on the Net. "The publishing business used to be easy!" Piechota joked.

]]> http://www.editorsweblog.org/analysis/2010/03/a_multifaceted_online_expansion_rooted_i.php http://www.editorsweblog.org/analysis/2010/03/a_multifaceted_online_expansion_rooted_i.php Analysis Multimedia Newspaper Newsrooms and Journalism business models integration journalism multimedia radio Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:06:59 +0100 The Associated Press has named former New York Times executive Nick Ascheim as general manager of its digital division. Ascheim will also lead their new strategic business unit, AP Gateway, the newswire announced Tuesday.

Ascheim previously served as CEO of TheSquare Inc, an online social network for college students, and as editorial director of FoxNews.com before joining NYTimes.com as director of entertainment and video in 2004. Ascheim was promoted to vice president of the Times' website in 2007.
]]> http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2010/03/ap_hires_nyt_exec_nick_ascheim_to_run_ap.php http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2010/03/ap_hires_nyt_exec_nick_ascheim_to_run_ap.php Multimedia Newsrooms and Journalism Associated Press iPad multimedia Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:13:21 +0100 The BBC will be teaming up with the non-profit blogging network of citizen journalists, Global Voices, to offer a "different range of perspectives and commentary from around the world," according to the BBC.

Content from Global Voices will be incorporated into the BBC's SuperPower season coverage, a special series on the Internet and the impact it has on our lives.

The BBC will be selecting and linking to some Global Voices stories, as well as asking GV editors to give their views on how the mainstream media handle the news. The editor of the BBC's News website, Steve Herrmann, explained that he believes Global Voices and the wide range of opinions they feature could add an "interesting dimension to some of (the BBC's) news coverage."]]> http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2010/03/bbc_and_global_voices_announce_partnersh.php http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2010/03/bbc_and_global_voices_announce_partnersh.php Multimedia Newsrooms and Journalism BBC blogs citizen journalism Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:45:52 +0100 In an interview with The Hofstra Chronicle last Thursday, Will Shortz, editor of The New York Times crossword, discussed how the puzzle fits into the transition to digital media.

In the 17 years that he has been at the Times, Shortz has helped the country's most celebrated crossword make a profit during trying times for print media. While a puzzle is printed in every newspaper, the crossword is the only same-day feature in the Times that the website charges for.

Over 50,000 people had paid the $39.95 annual subscription fee to access the day's puzzle as well as the Times' archive of over 5,000 crosswords, according to Shortz. In addition to subscriptions, there is also an 900 number line for people desperate for a hint as well as Times Crossword Books, the best-selling books of its genre.
]]> http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2010/03/will_shortz_discusses_nyts_profitable_cr.php http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2010/03/will_shortz_discusses_nyts_profitable_cr.php Newsrooms and Journalism Web 2.0 digital editions multimedia New York Times paid online content revenue Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:37:13 +0100 Washington Post article the FBI announced its decision to close all but a few of the most promising cases of the 108 cold case murders from the civil rights era.

The Post's story led The Civil Rights Cold Case Project in conjunction with the Centre for Investigative Reporting to issue a statement pledging their continued commitment to reporting on unsolved or untold stories from the Civil Rights Era.

]]> http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2010/03/fbis_decision_threatens_the_future_of_in.php http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2010/03/fbis_decision_threatens_the_future_of_in.php Newsrooms and Journalism investigative journalism journalism legal non-profit Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:14:26 +0100