Results matching “newspapers indispensable to their”

The China Times, one of Taiwan's leading Chinese-language newspapers, announced in June that it would re-launch itself as a tabloid paper in early September. This announcement and the further statement that the paper planned to layoff 400 employees and reduces its page count has resulted in the union calling for its members to strike.

Union members intended to go on strike last week, but only 117 of 243 votes were in favour of the strike, the minimum necessary being 122. Following a meeting with Times staff, the publisher Chou Sheng-yuan announced a reduction in the number of staff cutbacks from 575 to 430, all of who will receive one month's salary as compensation.

The China Times says it has little choice due to the declining demand for newspapers, according to Asia Media. The rising cost of operations and plunging revenues have made the Times decide to re-invent itself as a "newspaper for the elite".

"Newspapers are more than a business. They are also an indispensable public sphere in a democracy," said Chiu Chia-yi, a Campaign for Media Reform representative. Chia-yi further mentioned that the Times should try to model itself on UK's Guardian by handing itself over to be managed by a trust.

The Association of Taiwan Journalists (ATJ), civic groups and academics have been convincing the public to sign an online petition in support of the Times workers.

Kuo Li-hsin, assistant professor at National Chengchi University's Radio and TV department, is concerned that the quality of reporting may spawn "trivialities" and "garbage reporting and that the Times may follow in the footsteps of the Apple Daily, which is undergoing structural changes.

The ATJ also predicted that the Times would remain a tabloid for a short while, eventually vanishing.

Source: Asia Media

Must-read. AJR's Senior Editor Carl Sessions Stepp has noted that while news remains as valuable as ever, journalism is certainly changing as daily newspaper circulation has declined every year since 1987.

Is it time for newspapers to panic? It could be, had Stepp not come up with an expansive list of very good editorial and business ideas for newspapers.

Instead of cutting everything, from staff to newspaper sections, Stepp argues that newspapers should be creating a product that is high quality and indispensable. Journalists need to embrace arriving technologies and make their articles more exciting. But how?

Here's a list of Stepp's ideas, more or less in his words, that could help newspapers recapture "domination of the overall information market":

-  A four section daily paper with journalists and readers sharing and discussing news together.
Section 1: a "dynamic, definitive guide" to local news featuring digests, analysis, listings, links, columns and audience contributions; excerpts and synopses of top content appearing elsewhere; and an annotated guide to the top material concerning international, national, regional and local news, sports, business and arts.

Section 2, the most important local, national, and foreign news, fully updated and differentiated from earlier Web copy.

Section 3, an in-depth package that changes everyday, which would present serious, investigative, quality journalism, not available anywhere else.

Section 4, all the expected features from crosswords to comics, plus new ones including reader creations.

- An online information superstructure built around a double home page, with an easy toggle back and forth: one screen for an orderly display of news and other content, the other a portal-type screen offering a master index of anything useful and appropriate for your audience, with more choices, more services and a nontraditional license to experiment.

- A new, more conversational tone, both online and in print, including staff and outside blogs, behind-the-scenes essays from staff members and a higher proportion of analysis and explanation.

- Archives and galleries with a more user-friendly format like Google or Yahoo! that cluster content by precinct, neighborhood or topics. Searches that index advertising or searches programmed to answer questions such as where a movie is playing or when the school board will meet.

- Expanded interactive guides to movies, shows, concerts, galleries and other arts, with amazon.com-like reader reviews and interaction.

- Real-time online traffic and weather blogs.

- Contests every day for the funniest, weirdest, most helpful or most outrageous local images, audio and video.

- Tournaments, online and in-print, pitting local individuals and teams against one another in solving puzzles, predicting sports or election outcomes..

- Online book clubs and discussion groups on local sports, religion, relationships and more.

- Original uploaded programming, in which readers Web-cam their neighborhood news, read political commentary, offer Leno-like stand-up comedy bits on the news and debate key local issues.

- A complaint forum, directed toward local government or business, in which editors or audience choose which questions have merit and pose them to local authorities.

- A local records center, providing agendas and minutes of every significant meeting in your area; text or links to as many public records as feasible; and your homemade community databases such as local sports stats, crime maps, home values or restaurant menus.

- Greater capitalization on the treasures of your archive; readers can develop and download scrapbooks featuring every article, photo or other mention of themselves and their families in your library; or publication and sale of special in-depth or feature reports drawing on your archives and research capabilities.

- A help-needed feature, a sort of super-classifieds, that lets readers pose questions, seek products, evaluate services and possibly engage in transactions from which you share the profits.

- Moderated forums and advice segments for personal finance, health, travel and other subjects.

- New products and revenue sources: frequent-visitor points, premium services (such as customized news delivery, conferences featuring star journalists, first crack at ads and coupons, local discounts), neighborhood magazines, daily auctions (lunch with the editor!), grants from nonprofits, vastly upgraded searching services and search-related ads, customized magazine and book-length reports on key topics.

- Staging regular creativity meetings throughout the news organization and in the community.

- Hosting an ongoing online suggestion box with prizes.

- Spend real money by giving $100,000 to three or four of your smartest people and challenge them to design something breathtaking.

Read Stepp's article for more of his ideas.

Source: AJR

Free newspaper group Metro International is planning on building "an interactive capability" for all of its newspapers to target young professionals, with Metro France as the pilot launch, according to Brand Republic.

Each city based website will hopefully become, as Brand Republic describes, an "indispensable source of news and information", with a network of blogs on relevant themes and local perspectives.

Tom Symonds, Managing Director of Metro Interactive, said: "With this investment Metro will define its own space, where we not only draw on our users' appetite for relevant news and information but provide a space that is completely focused on urban living and increases the users' influence."

Vice-president of Corporate Development Christian Toksvig, who was hired earlier this month, is in charge of launching free Metro titles in new markets. Currently, Metro publishes 84 editions.

Eventually Metro wants a website for all the 23 countries it operates in.

The blog network can distinguish Metro sites from other local news sites for users. Instead of just browsing through news, users can browse through opinions or other relevant information on local news.

Source: Brand Republic

Didier Pillet is the Director of Information for France’s daily with the highest circulation, the regional paper Ouest France. In a Q&A with Editors Weblog, he talks about the paper’s 14-month-old ‘Newsroom blog,’ how he manages his work as a journalist alongside regular postings and interaction with readers, and how the blog fits into the paper’s strategy.

Most press representatives gathered at the Kalb Report forum on March 6 expressed their confidence in the survival of journalism and print newspapers. They also acknowledged that indispensable changes and focus on quality were required to insure this survival.

Editor & Publisher’s Steve Outing collected a series of opinions from newspaper industry specialists, trying to figure out theoretically and practically where newspapers are going, and how to get there.

More and more newspapers consider outsourcing their work, to Singapore or India for example. For simple reasons. The average pay rate is a third less than in the U.S., there are neither equipment fees, nor health benefits to cater for, nor any extra costs for the U.S. company. Even more important, the outsourcees produce quality work.

A new survey of 7,500 university students found that they would like to see more local advertising on their campus' newspaper websites. 64% would appreciate more local restaurant ads, 51% more entertainment, and 50% more ads from local stores.

On his blog Média Café, newspaper designer and consultant Jeff Mignon asks if traditional print journalists from local papers are ready for a new news age: "Are they ready to pick up the video camera and microphone... Are they ready to ask how should I tell this story... sound, video, text, images, infographics?" He feels that this is imperative to the success of local papers, seeing as most of the news they publish on the web can easily be found elsewhere.

The world's most popular Internet company Yahoo has previewed a redesigned webpage that focuses on providing its users with personalized information and the creation of "social search." Instead of only seeing a universal website, users will be able to customize Yahoo's homepage and their searches will be based on the "collective wisdom of its users." With such innovations, Yahoo is (unconsciously?) aiming for the throat of newspapers, but at the same time, is going to depend on them.

Despite the percentage of people reading a newspaper in Japan fell 2 points last year, 92.5% of the public read a papers an average of 5.6 days a week. Newspapers remained the medium that won the highest public confidence with 53.6% of Japanese considering newspapers as "indispensable information sources." The Internet scored 31.3% in this category.

Source: Japan Times (through European Journalism Centre) 

Is the newspaper industry really in trouble? When you move past the big metros and study their smaller cousins, it doesn't seem so. An $400 million investment deal for 124 newspapers in the Boston area shows that the Little Guy appeals to investors and more importantly, to its community. And the Big Boys are trying to catch up.

If you talk to any media watcher nowadays, they don’t hesitate to tell you that the globalized world of 24-hour news stations and humongous international news organizations means that smaller newspapers need to focus more on their immediate communities. They also won’t flinch in mentioning that most local newspapers are doing a poor job. A few models of the “new newspaper” exist to which they refer enthusiastically. But a recently launched local website has joined the fray and could become the new reference point. The difference is, it’s not a newspaper.

From time to time here at the Editors Weblog, we like to give you an idea of how journalism on the medium most affecting newspapers is shaping up and how it is going to look down the road. Here's the latest in what's going on in Internet journalism:

Crosswords, brainteasers and chess have been staple to newspaper publication since as long as anyone can remember and Sudoku has rapidly become a universal addiction. These games have always helped to boost circulation. But with readers moving online, what are newspapers doing to feed the needs of game lovers?

The power of trust in the media and citizen journalism are among the topics to be discussed by top media names at a two-day forum in London next month hosted by the BBC and Reuters.

The 2006 We Media Global Forum will bring together opinion formers and leaders from media, business and technology to discuss and collaborate on how the media can foster trust and influence global issues in a world made smaller by the Internet.

The Forum takes place on May 3 and 4 – presented by The Media Center, a US-based non-profit think tank committed to building a better-informed society in a connected world.

Many newspaper pundits have long argued that the future of smaller papers lies in complete and in-depth local coverage. But this doesn't necessarily mean just news. Rob Curley, currently of the Naples Daily News, insists that newspapers have to become an indispensable source of all types of information for their communities and has helped a small paper in Kansas do so. However, a new study shows that Curley's Kansas project is a rare example.

The newspaper is no longer the traditional middleman it once was. Not only do news agencies and citizen journalists contact the public directly through their websites and new media offerings, but companies and individuals who used to depend on the newspaper to get their messages out are now empowered by Internet marketing tools to do so themselves.