Results matching “newspaper provides online video”

With all the recent developments in media consumption on mobile devices, from state of the art e-readers and the sleek iPad to the advent of countless newspaper iPhone apps, it is no wonder technology has taken center stage among news companies.

Mercedes Bunz from Media Guardian spoke to executives from The New York Times and CNN, companies who have built remarkable online presences, about how to keep up with technology companies who usually figure among the biggest sources for news on the Internet.

The "Year of the Paywall" is upon us and in a time where most newspapers seem to be gearing up to build one around their websites - the New York Times and the News Corporation Wapping publications are just a couple of examples - some executives believe there is still room for other revenue models to coexist with paid content.   

The head of digital media at News Corporation, Jonathan Miller, told delegates at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit that "dual revenue streams" are likely to co-exist as media organizations try ways of making money online, according to Guardian.

The headquarters of 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.

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."

Just last week the BBC came under fire from The Newspaper Publishers Association following news that the corporation is to launch three iPhone apps from April 2010. The NPA is adamant that such a move will step on the toes of traditional print publications seeking to generate revenue in the mobile news arena.

Perhaps then, the New York Times is looking to get one over on the broadcasting corporations muscling in on print territory. Daily Finance has reported that the newspaper is to launch a daily webcast in the same vein as the Wall Street Journal - which has been doing a twice-daily online newscast of its own, called The News Hub, since September.

Specific details regarding the New York Times' offering are still uncertain, although it is expected to go live in less than a few months' time. The daily newscast is expected to be transmitted around lunch time, when video traffic peaks. A face for the show has yet to be chosen, although a staffer at NYT has hinted that it is unlikely to be Jane Bornemeier, the newspapers current TV and Radio Senior Editor.

Source: Daily Finance

The Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists is arranging a 'speed dating' event for freelancers to meet editors, reported MinnPost. For $30 (or $20 for SPJ members), freelancers can attend 'Freelance Love' on March 11 and have five minutes of "guaranteed face time" with editors from the Star Tribune, Pioneer Press and several magazines, according to the MNSPJ website.

SPJ board member Amanda Theisen told MinnPost that "Many of our members have been asking us to do something along those lines. ... The freelancer can pitch a story idea, or simply introduce themselves to the editor and show them some of their work.  Then, after five minutes, the freelancer moves onto the next editor, then the next, then the next...you get the idea!" When they register, freelancers are asked if they are interested in working for newspaper, online, magazines, or with photography or video.

Should journalists have to pay to meet potential employers? It seems an unusual move but one that definitely offers convenience. As news outlets suffer from lack of ad revenue, more journalists are left out of work and looking for freelance assignments, and more publications are looking for freelancers to fill the gaps that shrinking newsrooms have left.

Source: MinnPost, MNSPJ 

The Newspaper Publishers Association (the representative body for all big UK publishers) is stirring up a backlash against the BBC, following news that the corporation is to launch three iPhone apps from April 2010. The NPA is adamant that such a move will step on the toes of traditional print publications seeking to generate revenue in the mobile news arena.

In a staunch statement emailed to paidContent:UK, the NPA's director Director David Newell wrote:

"Not for the first time, the BBC is preparing to muscle into a nascent market and trample over the aspirations of commercial news providers.

From the loss of advertising revenue for newspapers to the emergence of a slew of multi-functional, deluxe e-readers, times are changing for the print industry - and they are doing so quickly.

So, what can we expect for the future of the printed word in the next couple years? Some media insiders spoke to CNN to offer some insight on what could be in store for newspapers.

The founding director of a Political Management master's degree program at the George Washington University surveyed 371 print and web journalists from September to October of last year, with the aim of establishing to what extent social media tools are used in the research and distribution of articles.

The results of the online survey, reported on the university's newspaper website, found that 56 percent of those surveyed said that social media was important or somewhat important for reporting and producing stories, with the overwhelming majority citing the internet as the starting point for their research- despite the fact that 84 percent said news and information delivered via social media was slightly less or much less reliable than news delivered via traditional media.

After months of much hype and speculation, Steve Jobs finally took to the stage to unveil Apple's new highly anticipated tablet computer - the iPad.

With its official introduction at an event in San Francisco yesterday, Steve Jobs has finally laid many rumors about what the electronic device can do to rest, while igniting hopes about the iPad's ability to bring new life to 'old media' and to revamp the e-reader market.
 

 

From dock connectors to web analytics to guessing the name of this elusive gadget, all speculation will reach its pinnacle when Apple's widely anticipated tablet is finally unveiled at an event in San Francisco Wednesday.

The much-hyped iSlate (the name of the actual device has not been confirmed) is rumored to have a sleek 10-inch color display and Wi-Fi capabilities allowing newspapers, magazines, and book publishers to deliver their products with an eye-catching design.
 

Want to learn more about the use of video storytelling in journalism? A new course, offered by none other than The New York Times, may be just the thing.

The New York Times Company has been offering non-credit distance education courses for the past two years. From this week, in conjunction with some universities, it will offer courses for credit towards certificate programs.

Director of education for the Times Felice Nudelman told Inside Higher Ed that online education was a robust area. "It is, for many institutions, a profit center," she said. "And it's an exciting way to bring together all the content from The New York Times and expertise from our newsroom, and expertise of college and university faculty."

When newspapers run community events, it's important to stay committed to the convictions of the paper, says Marcin Gadzinski, editor of Sport.pl/Gazeta Wyborcza in Poland, speaking at the WAN-IFRA conference 'Using sports news to optimise your revenues'. Get that right first, and profit will follow, he adds.

His paper, which runs some sporting events, is no. 2 in Poland in terms of circulation, and likes to get involved in social issues and public advocacy campaigns. People all around Poland work for the paper, so it's helpful to use their contacts to organise activities.

They were not very successful when putting sports content on the web, he says, so in 2007 Sport.pl was launched, a strictly internet sports brand. They added online-only features rather than seeing it as a way to promote newspaper content. In 2009 the paper jumped from the number 5 to the number 2 sports website in Poland, with 5 million unique users a month. Plus, every Monday the paper publishes a Sport.pl-branded section.

Mobile advertising is not yet a source of revenue that publishers can bank on, according to Constantine Kamaras, CEO of the Greek sports portal Sport.gr, speaking at the WAN-IFRA conference 'Using sports news to optimise your revenues'.

His publication Sport.gr has around 500,000 unique users per month, with about 15000 registered users. Advertising makes up 77% of their revenue, and mobile 8%. He says that users are less reluctant to pay for mobile content, but warns that mobile advertising will make up at best 6% of interactive advertising in 2010 globally, and will be only 2% in the US, lagging behind social media and online video.

"It's not news that drives the uptake of smart phones," he warned, pointing to other important trends such as search and online communities.

The BBC, who yesterday announced a new initiative to grant the general public access to professional media training resources, has also revealed it will expand the content available on its news website by linking to rival sources via an aggregation-like system, reports The Independent.

The move comes after accusations headed by News Corp's chairman and CEO for Europe and Asia, James Murdoch, that the corporation, in choosing to remain free, is flooding the market and preventing competitors from expanding online and charging for their content.  The new plan would reportedly see links to commerical websites added at the end of BBC stories.  

As the debate between Google and news publishers rages on, an opinion piece in The New York Review of Books has proposed a different solution: that Google should fund a new journalism venture.

A variety of new ventures have been established in response to the tough times the newspaper industry faces. These include non-profit news publications such as the Chicago News Cooperative, California Watch and the Texas Observer. Other organisations including ProPublica, Spot.us and The Foundation for Public Interest Journalism receive funding from community or philanthropic sources, and use the money to support investigative or public-interest reporting.

In a recent post on Poynter Online, Paula Morton has looked at the lesson that newspapers could take from the history of their generally trashier, less respected cousin, the tabloid.  

"A tabloid story sells," she writes, "I admit: when I am caught behind a long line at the Publix checkout, I read the headlines of the National Enquirer. "Senator Caught with Hooker!" "Stars with Cellulite!"... shouting from specially designed pedestal racks positioned exactly at eye-level on the checkout counter."

Arcadi Espada, a Catalan journalist who has frequently questioned the future of print journalism, is preparing to launch a new online only, paid for news website under the name of Factual.

The daily news site, which kicks off with a starting budget of 250, 000€ will charge its customers an annual fee of 50€ for access to unlimited content and is expected to officially go live on November 30, according to El Mundo.