Results matching “chronicle tries tv class”

75% of newspaper editors surveyed by the Associated Press Managing Editors (APME) said "their ability to inform readers has diminished with their steadily shrinking staffs," according to an article which appeared on both the APME and San Francisco Chronicle website.

Responses from 351 editors were collected for the 20-question survey, where some newspapers had more than one editor participate. 66% of editors worked for newspapers with a daily circulation of less than 50,000; 27.5% had 50,000 to 250,000; and 6.5% had a distribution of more than 250,000 copies.

According to the New York Times, Amazon.com Inc. may be preparing to launch its new, larger Kindle this week.

Plastic Logic Ltd., which is planning to give Amazon a run for its money by the time it introduces its e-reader in 2010 (pictured below), may have a harder time of upsetting the market leader than it originally envisioned.

Following the announcement of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize Winners, Roy J. Harris Jr. continues the discussion about online journalism's part in the event. The opinion piece he wrote for the Christian Science Monitor expressed his thoughts on how journalism can "raise its standards" if they include online work. "That would once more elevate journalism - and elevate the Pulitzers, too. And it just might make old Joseph Pulitzer smile," he wrote.

The Boston Globe reported today that Massachusetts Senator John Kerry will hold Senate Commerce Committee hearings in Washington next week to address the newspaper industry's financial problems. As more American newspapers fail due to loss of readership and advertising to the Internet, as well as the economic slump which has decreased advertising, government intervention might be inevitable.

Last month Maryland Senator Bill Cardin introduced a bill that would allow newspapers to operate as tax-exempt non-profits. Weeks before, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also spotlighted the newspaper industry's problems with a letter urging the U.S. Justice Department to reconsider media ownership and anti-trust laws. Both Cardin and Pelosi stressed the importance of rescuing the printed paper because of its value as an American tradition and as an essential tool of democracy.

Though InDenverTimes.com is growing in staffers, adding six more to its original 30, it might not reach its goal of 50,000 paying subscribers by April 23. After the closing of the Rocky Mountain News, former staff members announced their intention to launch an online-only publication on May 4 provided it could garner enough subscribers.

Subscription numbers have not been released, but organizer Kevin Preblud hinted that the staff might proceed with the launch regardless of whether they meet their goal, saying that the venture could gain more subscribers once the site's features become available to users. "It's likely we will succeed in our goal to launch May 4," he said.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday that he is willing to consider adjusting government antitrust policies to help save newspapers. On Monday House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent Holder a letter urging him to reexamine the antitrust mission to guard against anti-competitive behavior, suggesting the expansion of media antitrust boundaries to include electronic and digital outlets. Though Holder says he had not yet read Pelosi's letter, he is sympathetic to her cause.

"I think it's important for this nation to maintain a healthy newspaper industry, so to the extent that we have to look at our enforcement policies and conform them to the reality that the industry faces, that's something I'm going to be willing to do," Holder said.

In response to Hearst Corporation's threats to sell the San Francisco Chronicle, House Speaker and San Francisco representative Nancy Pelosi urged the U.S. Justice Department to consider changing media ownership and anti-trust rules to save the newspaper. She has also arranged a hearing for the House Subcommittee on Courts and Competition Policy on the survival of newspapers.

Since Hearst announced its intention in February to sell the Chronicle unless it could make cost reductions, the company has been negotiating cutbacks with unions. The California Media Workers Guild, the Chronicle's largest union, has already made concessions, including laying off 150 employees, and Hearst continues negotiations with labor union the Teamsters. Hearst has not yet reached a decision to sell, but under present antitrust definitions, it will be difficult for Hearst to sell the paper to its prospective buyer MediaNews, which owns almost every daily newspaper in the Bay Area.

In the first survey of its kind run by the Rosen Group, the vast majority of participants surveyed still believe newspapers are relevant.

The Wall Street Journal will publish two special editions in February and May, after the inauguration editions on January 20th and 21st, focusing on Barack Obama's impact on the economy.

The first special edition, The Obama Agenda, will be published in February and will analyze the new administration's budget.  The second will be The First 100 Days, published on Thursday, May 7.  According to the WSJ this edition will "apply its insightful reporting to the first 100 days of the Obama administration and its impact on global economy and business."

Trinity Mirror intends to centralise production and photographic work at more than 20 weekly newspapers across the south-east of England.  The editorial restructure will create a single production and content management hub which will manage all print and digital output from journalists and user-generated sources.  

The Kansas City Kansan has announced that it is to discontinue its print edition and move to online only.  The final print edition will be on January 10 and the paper will launch a revamped Web site on January 7.

 

General Manager Drew Savage explained that the move to online only was to save on overheads and allow for more investment in electronic media.  He insisted that the Kansan would continue to thrive with "a lot more content than we have ever had," and pointed out that online readership is ten times greater than for the print edition. 

 

AsianWeek, a San Francisco free sheet aimed at Asian Americans has also announced the demise of its print edition, with the final copy to come out on Friday.  It will continue to publish online, and its editor and publisher Ted Fang attributed the move to economic hardship.  

The Oklahoman has followed the path of a swath of newspapers across the western hemisphere and undergone a redesign. The redesign has been headed up by Dr Mario R. Garcia.



















The regional US paper is now narrower and longer, making it easier to carry and following the trend of The Times of London and the European edition of the Wall Street Journal. Garcia believes that the future of newspapers is heading towards a smaller format.

The redesign also features a new navigational system, on page one allowing the reader to survey what's in the paper. The paper is also introducing a new typographic style. Garcia reports that two fonts have been incorporated into the design: Chronicle and Retina, that make the newspaper easier to read (especially for readers 50 and older). The page grid follows a basic six-column format. The width of the page is 60.9 picas, and each column is 9.3 picas.

Source: Garcia Media

Google Inc plans to partner with newspaper publishers in order to make millions of news archives be available digitally. The company announced on Monday that it will make "dozens" of historical newspapers and the images featured accessible online.

"Not only will you be able to search these newspapers, you'll also be able to browse through them exactly as they were printed -- photographs, headlines, articles, advertisements and all," says Punit Soni, Google product manager.

US papers like The New York Times and the Washington Post would work alongside Google to index their content in Google's News Archive. Papers that are included in the deal range from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to the Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph, which is the oldest paper in North America being first printed in 1764.

The first newspapers that are linking up with Google for the project are based in North America, according to a spokesman.

Source: European Journalism Centre

Part 1 discussed how the planned changes at The New York Times and International Herald Tribune will help the NYT's continuous news offerings, and how these changes could affect the organization and interaction between both newsrooms.

Part 2 examines how The New York Times intends to:
- Further compete against the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal internationally, and ways in which newspapers can reinforce their international reach.
- Use the strength of its online brand while safeguarding the IHT's popular print brand name.

The Weblog spoke to Jim Roberts, Digital Editor at The New York Times, and Martin Gottlieb, who was appointed to the newly created position of Editor, Global Edition.

How newspapers can become international brands, the NYT joins the race

Until now, the Times hasn't specifically catered to overseas advertisers and readers.

"We need to be agile," said IHT publisher Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, "to compete much more aggressively, nose to nose, with The Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and anybody else who is competing for our readers and advertisers."

No doubt that the Times actually borrowed the continuous news outpost idea from the aforementioned competitors, which have been relying on their foreign bureaus to provide round the clock coverage.

The staff memo reaffirmed the NYT's "ambitious plans to expand in the region (Asia), particularly in India." In June, the IHT announced a partnership with the India-based Deccan Chronicle to print the Tribune's world business section in the Financial Chronicle.

With the rise of digital publishing, many news organizations are seeking to grow a previously inaccessible international readership by:

- launching a print edition abroad: several papers have rolled out editions away from home this past year, such as the FT's recently launched Middle East edition in Abu Dhabi, WSJ's partnership with business paper Mint in India, the Daily Mail's partnership with India Today to publish the Mail Today, or The Times of London's Polish edition.

- investing in an online international section: In Germany, referential weekly Der Spiegel launched an English-language International edition on its website in 2004. Five fulltime staffers are dedicated to translating Der Spiegel's content and rewriting it with an international perspective, as well as doing their own international-minded original reporting (the full case study is featured in Trends in Newsrooms 2008). The Guardian adopted a different approach, by launching a separate, foreign-based, US website, Guardian America. The Guardian is reportedly considering similar ventures in other regions.

- simply reinforcing their focus on international news in their regular coverage: the Daily Telegraph's website in the UK, which was neck to neck with the Guardian in terms of traffic in April, claims nearly two thirds of its visitors are from overseas. A well-indexed website helps to brings in a significant number of 'light' international users through search engines.

Merging "co-branded" websites but not print: a branding issue

The NYT's approach is a combination of the first two strategies: the print IHT now serves as The Times' 'global edition' (see picture), while maintaining its trademark brand name. With the proposed online merger, the NYT could also follow the second route, by hosting an international edition online, without having to extensively change its workflows (see Part 1).

The rationale to merge the websites is clearly explained in the memo: according to WebTrends, NYT's website boasts a strong international audience and 58 million global users, compared to iht.com's seven million.

"The global landscape for online news is highly competitive, making scale, speed and resources essential to success. Therefore we have determined that the best future online for the IHT and the NYT globally is through a joint international presence," said the memo.

However, the memo doesn't explicitly say why this won't be the case in print:

"The IHT should become the international print edition of the NYT, whether it is formally branded that way or not."

The main issue at stake is one of branding. "In print, there have been at least a couple of studies that show that among Tribune newspaper readers there is a great identification with the brand, that the brand means something to readers," said Gottlieb.

"More than the name, what accompanies the name, an international perspective, a sense of calling the best stories from The Times and augmenting them with unique reporting," was a combination that many readers liked.

As news organizations seek to grow their international reach, this consideration probably holds true for many that have established a reputable brand name on a local or national scale. However strong the brand name, its association with a particular place or country can potentially play against that news outlet on the international scene.

Source: New York Times - Media Bistro - Jim Roberts, Digital Editor The New York Times - Martin Gottlieb, Editor, Global Edition

The 2008 PRWeek/PR Newswire Media Survey found that the job requirements for journalists has changed with the shift from print to online, raising awareness to the commercial side of the business. 1,231 journalists of a variety of media were polled with these findings:

- 57% believe they are being asked to work more today than in the past few years.

- 56% say they are contributing to other mediums, for example, 39% of newspaper journalists have to work on the online version of their publication.

- 67% of newspaper journalists believe that print circulation will decline over the next three years and move to the Internet. 38% of newspaper reporters expect to see "reductions in staff" over the next three years.

- 63% of print journalists believe their publication will survive in the current state of the print industry.

- 91% consider the most important aspect of their work is to "make my publication successful by creating appealing content for its audiences", while to "educate and inform the masses," "break news," and "chronicle events as they happen" came as lower priority. The survey says that this "suggests a significant level of commercial awareness on the part of journalists."

- 70% say public opinion of journalists has gotten worse during the past five years, and 52% believe the general public has a "somewhat negative" opinion of journalists.

- Almost 73% sometimes or always use blogs because blogs can "measure sentiment."

A full review of the survey results will appear in PRWeek this Monday.

Source: Editor & Publisher

It seems Barack Obama has jumped on the video bandwagon as well, based on his advertising prior to the Texas and Ohio primaries.

In what MediaWeek describes as "the first major Web effort for a presidential candidate to incorporate video", the Obama campaign placed banner-style paid advertisements, replete with video of Obama speaking and other interactive features, on 26 local media websites, including The Houston Chronicle, the Akron-based Beacon Journal, and The Cincinnati Enquirer.

This begs the question, however: what are the ads doing there in the first place? Would that not mislead readers into thinking the papers are endorsing Obama? Poynter columnist Bill Mitchell and freelancer Steve Myers had the same questions, and decided to send out questionnaires to editors at news organizations that featured the ad, and to those that did not.

Among the questions they asked:

-How did you decide to accept/reject the ad? How might you approach your decision differently if the ad had been of the attack variety?

-How much risk is there that readers will view the ad as support for the candidate by the paper as opposed to paid political advertising?

-If you ran the ad, what feedback have you gotten from readers? Did you explain the decision to run the ad to readers?

-Might your decision about the ad have been different if business conditions were different?

Mitchell and Myers plan to post the responses as they come in. Thus far, The Dallas Morning News has responded, where editor Bob Mong believes there was "very little risk" of readers misinterpreting the ad.

Tom Callinan of The Cincinnati Enquirer has also responded, and confirmed that business conditions were not and would not be a factor in such a decision.

Source: PoynterOnline 

A few news items from our partner site, the SFN Blog: freebie 20 Minutos is the highest circulated daily in Spain, with slightly over a million copies a day in 2007, followed by Qué! With 957,000 copies. The San Francisco Chronicle in the US announced the launch of a new homepage at SFGate.com, as part of its redesign.

A recent survey on newsosaur.blogspot.com revealed that the overwhelming majority of those surveyed preferred at least two editors to ‘vet’ a story before it goes to print.

Of the more than 400 respondents to the online survey as of Mon. evening, 55.2% favored two editors per story, 21.9% advocated three or more editors per story, 20.4% said a single editor was sufficient and a mere 2.5% said reporters didn’t need anyone looking over their shoulders. Clearly, the majority of voters favored multiple editors per story, reported newsosaur.


The question, 'can newspapers afford editors?' again arises as survey results reveal that readers think otherwise. Alan Mutter, a Silicon Valley CEO and former editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, questioned the viability of maintaining such a stringent, and costly, editorial process when newspapers are struggling to cut costs and mind the bottom line.

While some readers criticized Mutter’s suggestion that newspapers should reconsider the economic feasibility of sticking to “traditional” methods of producing quality newspaper content at a time when traditional methods are proving too costly, Mutter maintained that he is just the bearer of ‘bad’ news.

“Take aim at the messenger if you like, but please understand that the staggering level of economic inequity is a real and indisputable problem threatening the long-term survival of newspapers as we know (and love) them,” he said.

Source: newsosaur.blogspot.com through Poynter Romanesko

In an attempt to "protect its turf from the likes of online competitors like Craigslist.com" the San Francisco Chronicle is the latest US newspaper to become involved in television classified advertising. The paper has announced that it will launch a 30 minute long television program entitled 'Chronicle Jobs TV' which will run Monday to Wednesday at 5:30 PM on UPN Bay Area Channel 44.