Results matching “to bring in 51”

Life magazine, holder of one of the biggest photo collections in the world, dating back from the 1750s will now make their images available online through a deal with Google.    

According to the Guardian, 10 million images will be available, of which 97% have never been seen before.

The Associated Press is overhauling its regional coverage from Washington to include 28 states that are currently without representation, according to a press release.

The AP's "corps of regional reporters" will be restructured into teams in four regions by the start of the new Congressional year.

The teams of 12 will be responsible for news from their designated Congressional delegations and "broader Washington issues affecting their region."

"Where once we had no 'local' coverage, now we will," said Michael Oreskes, AP managing editor for US news.

This new structure is in an effort to bring localized coverage of Washington to "every state," and will "allow the regional teams to prioritize needs for all the papers in their area and increase coverage of the most relevant and important news in their region."

Specifics will be hammered out in coming weeks, according to the press release.

Source:  AP Press release

A new phone by INQ that connects users to social networking site Facebook at the touch of a button is designed to "bring the mobile Internet, and especially mobile social networking, to a much wider audience," said chief executive Frank Meehan.

The INQ1, dubbed the 'Facebook phone,' is targeted to consumers who find "smartphones such as the iPhone, Blackberry Storm and G1 too expensive." Customers will be able to use social networking, email, instant messaging and "surf the mobile web" from the device that is available in the UK, Australia and Hong Kong next month.

"The 85% to 95% of the market that did not buy the iPhone, and cannot afford an expensive smartphone has been frankly forgotten," Meehan said.  The company is looking to reach a large audience, releasing the device just in time for Christmas.  The web-surfing possibilities for the device provide an interesting outlet for online news organizations, which could also look to capitalize on social networking availabilities to gain readers.

Source:  Guardian

The Daily Nation newspaper is in an advantageous position in the African market in that it is part of the largest media conglomerate in Central and Eastern Africa, the Nation Media Group (NMG). The Nation Media Group not only runs newspapers, but also TV stations, mobile platforms, websites and radio across Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Furthermore, the introduction of three undersea fibre optic cables next year will bring broadband to Kenya and significantly change the market. These advances in technology and the large footprint of this media conglomerate brings with it unique opportunities but also unique problems for the Daily Nation.

The Editors Weblog spoke to Ian Fernandes, head of Nation Media Group's Digital Division about aggregation, integration and its plans to become a major African online news service. Before heading the Digital Division, Fernandes worked for thirteen years in broadcasting and five years in newspapers.

"Tremendous growth" for Kenya?

The Daily Nation currently faces challenges with its online division due to the lack of Internet reliability in Kenya. The introduction of broadband is widely expected to result in significant growth in the online and telecommunications market in Kenya. Richard Bell, the chief executive officer of East Africa Capital Partners, a Nairobi-based venture capital group, said when talking about the broadband introduction to Kenya, "We have bet the farm on the fact that East Africa is going to see tremendous growth... We're looking for Africa's next Google."

Unique advantages and disadvantages

The Nation Media Group is preparing itself for  broadband by integrating its news platforms. From one office in Nairobi the NMG runs five print titles, two radio stations, a television station, and the recently created Digital Division, which Fernandes heads up. The goal of integration is to, "take the content from all these brands and to make that content available on converged platforms, meaning the mobile and online platforms. Whereas other newspapers have had to invest in technology for their online editions, for us it was already existing, so all we had to do is, for example, link a Barack Obama story that we have in our print publication to what our broadcast team has done and 'voila' we have a fully multi-media website. We skipped what a lot of newspapers are actually going through today." Fernandes goes on to say, "We are giving our customers the opportunity to chose how he or she wants to view their media." Therefore, if one looks on the Daily Nation website, one can see content from the online team, but also from the broadcasting and print team within NMG as well.

One big basket of content

NMG recently introduced a new content management system called CoreMedia. With this new system, "if we are looking at the content of three of our newspapers and we see that the top story on the TV station is a piece about Barack Obama then we do not have to go and physically place that story on all of the three editions, it automatically picks it up as they are resident in a common database. We have one big basket into which everyone is throwing their content and then the online editors decide to pick what is relevant for their particular portal and it can be done at the click of a button."

Integration across print, TV and radio

In terms of convergence and integration, this is as far as NMG has gone. In terms of newsgathering, each brand still has its own newsroom, and each newsroom goes out and pursues an event individually. However, with the introduction of the new content management system, NMG is now looking at newsroom convergence. Therefore, instead of sending eight different teams to cover one particular event from each angle be it TV or radio, they are looking to pull them all together and have one multi-media team go and cover an event. This would consist of a reporter, cameraman and photographer reporting the story and then placing it in the CoreMedia "basket" of content. The various brands at NMG can then take that content and repackage it so it is suitable to its relevant market.

Problems of size

This is obviously a far more efficient way for NMG to cover a news event, but NMG faces a specific problem with regard the integration of publishing, ie, publishing to multiple platforms from one piece of software. Due to the sheer size of NMG, they have been unable to find suitable software that can carry all their content and efficiently manage it. Fernandes reports that "there is not any software that exists in the world today that can manage the process, because there are very few organisations like us, who need such a service.  The Times of London's video content is from the Times of London, but on the Daily Nation web edition the video content comes from NTV - the NMG's TV station -, which has its own unique brand. That is where the difference is." Fernandes and his team are examining various technologies on the market and reports "newspapers have software that integrates the ability to manage their online content, and with that newspaper companies are looking at getting video as part of that content, which is something they haven't done before. So the technology is still very much at the development stage whereby they are using video content that is suitable for their website and we need to look at video at a higher quality level."  

Aggregation site to challenge international players

The Nation Media Group is also readying itself for this new advancement and has built a news aggregator portal called nationafrica.com. nationafrica.com pulls together all the news from across the Nation Media Group's many platforms. Fernandes reports, "Our vision is to be the media of Africa for Africa. It would be wrong to think we could have newspapers and TV stations all over Africa, but online is the perfect platform." The timing of the launch of this site is significant, if nationafrica.com can establish itself quickly enough in the market, it has the potential to become the dominant force in the aggregator arena in Africa. The players in the market who have their strategies in place for when broadband hits Kenya will be at a marked advantage for establishing their brand in the market.

Fernandes reports that they are expecting the site to grow from just being a portal focusing on the Central and East African region - NMG have three newspapers in Tanzania and a newspaper and TV station in Uganda - to beyond its current reach. NMG have correspondents in 18 African countries providing content on a daily basis, it plans to train and equip these same journalists with "not just note books and pens, but cameras and video cameras" and they will be able to load this content directly onto the NMG system. NMG is in a unique position to challenge the other media conglomerates operating in Africa who have bureaus and correspondents all over Africa, such as the BBC. Fernandes states that this portal is vital to Africa as the international broadcasters like the BBC and CNN tend to focus on the "doom and gloom stories about Africa."

The future
 
NMG has undoubtedly been at an advantage with the expansion of online media due to the fact that it is not just a newspaper company, but the fact that it is not a newspaper company creates challenges for the firm in terms of efficiency for its business model. The challenge of streamlining the publication platforms for an organisation of NMG's size is a significant mountain to climb. Technology is rapidly coming on stream that will aid this process, but could it result in the various NMG brands loosing their identity in the drive for efficiency? This is something that NMG will have to consider as the brand's popularity is in no small part due to its ability to tap into the domestic market.

The future looks bright for this media conglomerate and its move to challenge the international players in the market such as the BBC is a bold and brave move that it needed to take to keep NMG at the heart of the Central and Eastern African market.

Part 2 - In tomorrow's article, social media, the Daily Nation and the search for fame, and why the "Who wants to be a millionaire" format failed in Kenya and how NMG adapted it to the mobile market.

Source: AllAfrica.com
 

Janine Gibson was appointed to the newly created position to oversee the "day-to-day content management of Guardian.co.uk," setting ambitions to move beyond search engine optimization (SEO) and print deadlines.

Leaving her former post as head of G3 and MediaGuardian editor-in-chief, Gibson is also going to work toward coordinating "related content in one place."

Getting content to the user is priority number one.  The election and Olympic coverage were good trials for Gibson's team to learn "navigational" issues online.

The Quebec Chronicle Telegraph has reached an agreement with Google to publish its archives on the Internet search engine.

Although exact sums are not known, the Quebec city paper will receive "half of the revenue from ads that appear on accessed archival pages," according to publisher and part-owner Peter Little.

Under new laws introduced by the Federal Government in Australia, journalists and whistleblowers will have "increased protection from prosecution."

Changes to the Evidence act mean that journalists will no longer be forced to reveal their sources in court, even if they have broken a law in providing the information, according to EJC.

The Federation of European Journalists (FEJ) reports that it is worried about the "modernization" of news provider the Agence France-Presse (AFP) and wishes to discuss the issue with French president Nicolas Sarkozy.

According to a recent article published in the Washington Post, the Associated Press has acquired a new "boldness" that may be threatening its standing as "a neutral arbiter of the news" in addition to "challenging its relationship with its owners."

The article presents a series of headlines from this year:

"Is Edwards Real or a Phony?"
"Mitt Romney's victory in Michigan was a defeat for authenticity in politics."
"John McCain calls himself an underdog. That may be an understatement."

Tribune Media Services, the Tribune Company's licensing division has announced an agreement with Vibes Media to bring content to the mobile market.

Vibes Media is a provider of interactive text message and mobile content marketing. 

Michael Wolff, the founder of Newser, had a lot to say about his Website, the future of news, Google, The Daily Beast and more...

In case you haven't (already) heard of Newser...

Yet again, an old media man is trying to reinvent his craft with new media thinking. Wolff, who has been covering the media for quite a while as a contributor to Vanity Fair came up with the idea for Newser as a response to what he calls a "revolution in how people get their news."  Newser is a news aggregation website that launched one year ago and is based on the concept of more news in less time, by adding human intelligence to machine-driven aggregation.  According to Wolff, the idea is that Newser "searches the web, reads the stories and delivers concise and sharp summaries - along with links to the full text."

The Starting Point

Wolff is sure that newspapers and traditional broadcast media will fall to an imminent death.  So as a means feed the enormous demand for news he created the online news aggregation site.

Even though there are huge advantages to using technology in the media industry, Wolff argues that "nobody has really developed the user-friendly way for getting news," that is, until he created Newser. The idea behind Newser was to create something that could be fun, entertaining, interesting and all the while make sense - something that was essentially, user-friendly. With this in mind, combined with what he calls "an absolute place in the market" - he designed and launched the news platform, giving editors and writers the opportunity to use the technological tools at hand to produce news that would be both efficient and entertaining.

The News According to Newser: Its Visual, and General

The news aggregation system is set up in a visual grid format so that readers can see the day's happenings pass before their eyes.  He describes it as a real-time visual for the day's events, a "kind of narrative through which you can literally watch the day go by."

When asked if visuals take away from the content  -  Wolff was quick to state his position: visuals are essentially the life force of news.  "I think the visual presentation of news is the business we are in. Newspapers are visual media; obviously television is visual media. News is visual, if news is not visual (i.e., Google, or YahooNews) it's a lesser form."  Wolff believes that if you can't visualize (or have it visualized for you), then you are missing out on the world.  To him, Newser is a "window to an incredible experience of the moment...", and he believes this is part of what people want.  The other part that people want is drama.

If there exists a trend towards more niche news, as many media pundits postulate, Wolff feels that the trend is backward. In his opinion, general news, news that embraces everyone, is in demand.  As a result, Newser does not target a certain age group or demographic. In Wolff's words, "We are one of the few sites that target general interest news audiences. We are not serving up left wing news. We are not serving up right wing news. We're not serving up special interest news." He views it as an "old fashioned idea," something that works because, essentially, the audience wants "the news that everyone else wants -it doesn't want it to be specialized - they want that sort of pure view into the world."

The Newser System

Newser's system is somewhere between human and Googlebot. An algorithm searches sources for the news, then the editors and writers make the final decisions as to what to summarize and publish, summarizing being the site's primary purpose. Wolff sees Newser as a way to bring an "enormous amount of information" to readers, "which is significantly more consumable because we are the ones who are preparing, digesting it, summarizing it, condensing it."

Newser has 20 editors working rotating shifts so that hands are on deck 24/7. Outside of the main offices in Chicago and New York City, Wolff employs people throughout the world to keep up the pace. News has to be instantaneous, so his staff policy is, "if you are out of bed, we use you."  

Wolff also describes Newser as being in the business of sources; "If we are an expert on anything; its on sources."   Although many traditional publisher esteem that news aggregation sites are "stealing" content, Wolff does not view it that way.  He points out that Newser is sending readers back to the original source and "the world depends on directories and aggregators to locate and point original content...to present a literal infinity of information in a manageable form."  He sees Newser as doing a "more valuable act, or at least as valuable as the creators themselves."

Wolff"s categorizes sites that post purely original content as "relics of the past" because "nobody wants news from just one source." But he also doesn't see the point in purely automated aggregators that just produce headlines (such as Google or Yahoo) - he views them as "lesser forms."

Not Such a Beast After All

When asked how he compared Newser to other sites such as the Huffington Post, Drudge, or Tina Brown's recently launched The Daily Beast, Wolff highlighted the fact that his site is "pure news aggregation, we are not producing other content." In addition, Newser remains "agnostic to orientation" in order to present the news in "everybody's point of view."

When asked about his thoughts on The Daily Beast, he was quick to offer his apocalyptic view of yet another "relic"; "The Daily Beast...which I think is a complete error and hash and mismatch - is just trying to produce an old idea of a magazine, Tina Brown's old idea of a magazine online. So it's not even a new idea of a magazine - its Tina Brown's old idea, and in my view has no chance of success at all."  Wolff continued, opining that both the Huffington Post and The Daily Beast are spending more money that they can ever make back; "Someone is going to end up eating that," he said.

News Today Gone Tomorrow

As for hindsight, he is pleased with the outcome of Newser - but stated that as with any business dealing with the development of technology - there are always things that could have been done differently, but described it as a learning experience - with technology sometimes you don't know what the outcome will be of certain efforts. It's trial and error. He cites one of the "main management challenges (as) deciding where to focus and allocate brain resources."

Obviously he wants Newser's audience to grow and for them to become "a significant and possibly dominant news brand online." He has no plans to develop a print version of aggregated news and leaves it for the most part up to users' demands.  

Wolff imagines the future news landscape as being purely electronic-centric and sees the main challenge as figuring out what works. Opposed to those traditionalists that laud the power of traditional media, he believes that consumer behavior does change - people have always sought their news in the most efficient way possible.

As for print: "The advice is probably not to get up for work today, sleep in and, you know, hope your retirement account will take care of you."

Today the washingtonpost.com will launch Economy Watch, a page designed to bring readers news, resources and in-depth analysis in order to help them "better understand the unfolding financial crisis."

Economy Watch will also feature information on government decision-making and will answer personal finance questions from readers.  

Some features include; The Ticker, live discussions, latest video, Crisis 101, Must Reads, Quotables, Data Points, Reader Stories, and audio from President Roosevelt's Fireside Chats during the Great Depression.

Source: Washington Post press release