Results matching “but more web 2”

The success of Brazilian newspapers may be a result of a growing economy that gave rise to better education and a middle class that wishes to belong to the "mainstream reading public", reports The Readership Institute (RI). Internet usage remains relatively low in the country, so Brazilians look to the daily papers, "their anchor to the world."

Philip M. Stone confronts a problem in his column for FollowTheMedia.com, the problem of the additional digital revenue earned from news web sites not covering the analog dollars lost by print products. Stone considers a solution: he advocates running additional web sites that have nothing to do with news but that can attract the real masses and hopefully new advertisers - such as social networking sites for the local community? This is what Mecom are doing.

David Montgomery, Mecom executive chairman, is convinced that newspaper companies need to make more than just the price of a newspaper from its readers.

"We are launching new websites at a rate of one a week," Montgomery said as his company announced disappointing results for the first half of the year. "A single copy of a newspaper per customer is no longer adequate. We have got to provide media in as many different forms as possible"

Source: FollowtheMedia.com

He may be an investigative journalist by trade, but Guardian (UK) writer Nick Davies is not shy to criticize his own profession. Davies made headlines across the globe with the February 2008 publication of his book, Flat Earth News, a searing indictment of investigative reporting and modern journalism. The book, which details issues such as illegal acts committed by journalists on the job and "churnalism", or barely fact-checked information rehashed from PR professionals and spin-doctors, turned the spotlight on the news industry, launching a debate within the ranks of news professionals about the challenges facing the industry.

Davies is the author of five books, has been named Journalist of the Year, Reporter of the Year, and Feature Writer of the Year. He was also the first winner of the Martha Gellhorn award for investigative reporting in 1999.

To launch our series on the Future of Investigative Journalism and the challenges ahead, the Editors Weblog spoke with Davies to see what all the controversy was about and to ask Davies his views on the future of his profession.

EW: What skills does it take to specifically be a good investigative journalist? How is it different to being a beat reporter or is it similar?

ND: In principle, the skills of investigative reporting are exactly the same as those of any other kind of reporting - because all reporting is investigative, all reporting is an attempt to get at the truth, so the distinction is a false one.

There is a sub-set of reporting where somebody is actively obstructing the reporter's access to information, which means the job will be more difficult and so the skills will be more obvious, but the key difference is not in the skills required but in the time that is required. The beat reporter is liable to be under pressure to produce several stories every shift and, therefore, will be unlikely to have the time to dig into anything which is being deliberately concealed.

EW: How has the business changed over the past 10 years, ie, skills necessary, training, and so forth?

ND: The big change in the business over the last ten years is precisely the reduction of time available for almost all reporters to do their work. The beat reporter as much as the 'investigative' specialist suffers from this, because so many news rooms have been taken over by profit-hungry corporations who have cut staff and increased output and thereby made it extremely difficult for any of their reporters to work effectively. The required skills have not changed (apart from the minor technical skills of dealing with websites).

The training, however, is in decline along with the industry as a whole, primarily because colleges now train students to fit with the demands of time-starved newsrooms, eg, the quick re-writing of press releases, the recycling of agency copy; and also because colleges set up courses with 'media' or 'journalism' in the title because they know it will attract student numbers even though they have nobody qualified to teach the course, so you have sociologists and literary specialists teaching the skills of a profession which they do not understand.

EW:  Is your job harder or easier with the advent of multi-platform news? Do you see podcasts and video content as useful?

ND: Multi-platform news has tended to make it more difficult for all reporters - beat, specialist, 'investigative' - to do their work because filing for audio, video and print
a) consumes precious time, and
b) dilutes concentration.
And I am not at all sure that our consumers are particularly interested in or attracted to the vodcasts and podcasts that we make available to them. Occasionally, there are stories where the print version is hugely enlivened by video - for example, the passenger video of the scenes inside the Qantas flight which blew a hole in its fuselage last month. But to make the production of audio and video versions a standard requirement for all stories is bad management and highly likely to accelerate the declining standard of our product.

EW: Do you use any of the new technologies in your reporting, ie, video, and mobile? Have these new technologies made your job easier or harder?

ND: As a reporter, I'm not concerned with the way in which my words are used. What I file may go into the print edition or onto the website or be subbed down for emails or mobile messages.

The one way in which electronic technology does impact me is my access to the worldwide web. That is a wonderful research tool, and I use it all the time. It is no substitute for dealing with human sources, but it enormously increases the amount of information that is available in the public domain. Personally, therefore, it has made my working life much easier.

However, for 'beat' reporters or for any reporter who has not been able to negotiate the time to do the job, the web does also represent a threat because it means they no longer have the benefit of a deadline at the end of the day: for most of them the deadline is always here and now because even if the printed edition is not calling for copy, the website is. Time - reporters can't do their job without it.

EW: What are your thoughts on lobby groups, such as the Taxpayers' Alliance, setting up investigative reporting units themselves and sending their articles direct to newspapers?

ND: The danger with funding by lobby groups is clear - that, at best, they will select story subjects and/or angles which suit their agenda and, at worst, that they will inject outright falsehood and distortion directly into them. But not all dangers are realised. I think most reporters would say that if they could find a lobby group which was prepared to back genuine journalism without imposing its agenda, they'd take it in a heartbeat.

The underlying point is that the inherent dangers of allowing corporations to take over ownership of news media are certainly being realised with highly destructive results for truth-telling journalism - and so any alternative is worth considering.

Over the coming weeks, The Editors Weblog will be examining how investigative reporting has been affected by multi-platform publication and the 24-hour news culture.  

Northcliffe Meida regional dailies like the Nottingham Evening Post, Lincolnshire Echo and South Wales Evening Post have now joined the 48 titles that revamped their thisis site, as the publisher gets closer to transferring all online content on its "Next Generation" platform, reports Holdthefrontpage.co.uk.

"Not only are we upgrading the network to introduce evolutionary design changes and enhanced multimedia content aimed at maximising interaction with end users, but we are also enlarging it to more than 150 sites in total," says Robert Hardie, strategy director of content for Northcliffe Media,
 
A number of the revamped sites have hyperlocal "sub-sites" which present users with news content covering a particular small town or village.

Weeklies from Kent and Sussex joined the redesign. According to Hardie, the "big winners" are users from Kent since they now have 30 sites covering their region, which is a progression for Northcliffe's businesses in Kent and the ones obtained from Trinity Mirror in 2007.

The revamped sites have permanent archives to which around 10,000 articles are added each week.

In addition, searches have been optimized so search engines can drive more traffic to Northcliffe Media websites.

"As journalists get even better at writing SEO (Search Engine Optimization)-targeted headlines and adding specific keywords, the scale of that uplift will continue to grow," Hardie points out.

Source: Hold The Front Page
 

Twitter reported this week that it is axing its SMS service outside India, the US and Canada, causing consternation across the Twitter community. Almost immediately after this was announced, reports emerged of IT entrepreneurs taking up the challenge to look for a solution. The Editors Weblog spoke to - we think - the first organisation to launch a solution to the Twitter SMS issue: Twitsms.

Twitter is a free social networking and micro blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

The Editors Weblog spoke to Delia Timms and Jeff Bonnes (the founders of Twitsms) after receiving their email announcing the launch of Twitsms, which was just two days after our posting on the SMS issue. (Our interview with Delia and Jeff follows below.)

Twitsms buys the SMS in bulk in advance to keep costs low. Prices start at 7 pence in the UK and 11 cents in Australia per SMS.
 
The Editors Weblog also contacted Twitter, to find out how it feels about Twitsms and other such services helping out the Twitter fans that have been affected. Twitter has previously acknowledged that SMS is a key part of its service, saying: "We love SMS. The lowest common denominator aspect of this service is a defining part of Twitter."



Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter Inc, told me: "We do not officially endorse any one service. However, we are interested in seeing what the response to these services will be."

There has been a certain amount of annoyance in aspects of the Twitter community about how Twitter have handled this issue, especially following Biz Stone's blog on the Twitter website calling for "perspective" on the issue. Svetlana Gladkova (Vice President of Business Development at Profy) does not sugar coat her views in her blog on Twitter's reaction, stating: "In my opinion, the team over at Twitter has committed quite a number of mistakes in handling this situation."

Here at the Editors Weblog, we try not to dwell on the negative and focus instead on solutions to our readers' problems; and Delia and Jeff look like they might just have one:

What inspired you to launch this service?

We use Twitter ourselves to keep in touch with friends and family both in Australia and overseas.  Jeff is American and particularly liked Twitter for staying in contact with his friends overseas.  So we understood personally how important it was for some Twitter fans to keep getting their SMS - even if they had to pay a very small fee for it.  Living in Australia we already have to pay fees for our SMS, so it is not unusual for us to pay to get our Tweets too.  We felt Twitter fans should at least have the choice to get their SMS, rather than just being cut-off by Twitter altogether.
 
How did you manage to set this up so quickly?

Experience and enthusiasm. We have built a few other successful internet businesses and have gained valuable experience over the past few years.  So we were fortunate to start out with some knowledge, skills and code. Jeff was able to apply learning from previous projects to speed up the coding for www.twitsms.co.uk. One of our other businesses does messaging and SMS already, so we were one step ahead with this. We were also able to use hardware and hosting from our other internet operations. We crowd sourced the graphic design for a fast turnaround.
 
What technology are you using?

We use Java and a web development framework called Grails. This allowed us to build  a very robust site quickly.
 
Can you explain exactly what arrangement you have established with the mobile companies?

Currently we buy SMS in bulk to keep the cost for users as low as possible.  As the site grows, we will look for ways to reduce costs even further.
 
Have you had any contact with the Twitter team about your project?

No we have not made contact yet, but will in the future. We hope that Twitter is happy that www.twitsms.co.uk and www.twitsms.com.au are keeping their fan-base connected outside of the USA, Canada and India!
 
What have been the early indicators been for Twitsms?

Early business is very strong. We knew there was a solid Twitter community and we knew they were annoyed about being shut off.  But were not sure whether they'd pay for their Tweets. However we have been happily surprised by the immediate interest from Twitter fans. They are more annoyed about Twitter shutting their service down, than having to pay a few cents to get their SMSs. Another surprising aspect for us has been the global interest.  www.twitsms.co.uk has been live for 4 days now and we've had contact from customers in the UK, Australia, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Turkey, Israel, Russia and France (of course!).
 
The use of Twitter itself has been a great springboard for www.twitsms.co.uk.  Twitter is a handy and powerful tool for communicating and getting immediate feedback from customers! It is also an efficient way to keep our customers updated as we are responding to requests and developing new features quickly.
 
What is your competition?

There is one site that has launched in competition and several still 'coming soon'. There has also been one site that has stopped development before they released. We are not worried by competition; we developed www.twitsms.co.uk because it is a service that we needed and wanted to share with the Twitter community.  Being first to market has been great. The feedback and early input from our customers is helping us ensure that www.twitsms.co.uk is the best alternative for the international Twitter community.

Sources: Twitsms, Twitter, Profy

See also:

Twitter reduces its mobile service, ends SMS updates service

 

US broadcaster NBC reports "phenomenal" ratings for its multimedia coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, with Alan Wurtzel, research president for NBC Universal, saying the broadcaster has been "stunned" by the popularity of its mobile content.

On 8 August, 210,333 people accessed the NBC mobile service, but by Monday this had more than doubled to 476,062. "These Olympics are influencing how people are using new technology," Wurtzel said. "Half of the people viewing on mobile are using it for the first time. After the Olympics, it will be interesting if these habits become part of their behaviour."

NBC has been using a new measurement system to combine viewing figures across all media outlets.

The NBC website saw unique users increase from 4.2 million on 8 August, the first day of the games, to 7.8 million on Monday, August 11, when viewers wanted to replay Phelps' US swimming victory. NBC recorded 1.7 million downloads of the final 4x100 relay final.

Wurtzel said NBC had feared that online content would negatively impact its TV audience share, thereby hitting its most lucrative advertising. However, this has not been the case. NBC's research showed that just 0.2% of its audience used the web exclusively.

"The internet hardly cannibalises - it actually fuels interest," said Wurzel. He went on to say that half the online viewers were watching events they had missed and about 40% wanted to see replays.

Source: Guardian.co.uk

See also:

Media companies reporting the Olympics, Google launches online tool

The biennial Pew Research Center has revealed in its report that Yahoo, MSN and CNN are the three most popular web news destinations.

Traditional media brands are still favoured, including the New Yorker, The Atlantic and the BBC, the Pew survey of 3,600 adults found. But only 47% watch TV news on an average day.

Users gave many of the leading mainstream media websites low credibility ratings. Only 6% said the Huffington Post was very highly credible and just 13% said the same of Google News, which aggregates news from mainstream news organisations.

The report presents a picture of a steady decline in the US newspaper industry, with the percentage of Americans who regularly read print titles falling from 58% in 1993 to 34% in 2008.

"For more than a decade, the audiences for most traditional news sources have steadily declined, as the number of people getting news online has surged," said the Pew report.

15% of Americans have a smart phone, such as an iPhone or a Blackberry. More than a third of the owners of these devices (37%) say they get news from their phones.

The report highlights the changing news audiences, describing 13% of the US public as "net newsers" - web users under 35 who read more political blogs than watch national news coverage, rely heavily on web-based news during the day and are interested in technology and technology news.

Net newsers are generally wealthy and 80% are graduates, making them a highly desirable demographic for advertisers.

The research also found that the proportion of young people in the US getting no daily news has increased from 25% in 1998 to 34%, with only 10% of people using social networking sites for their news.

Source: Guardian.co.uk and Pew Research Center

Newspapers in Dubai do not disappear but reinvent themselves, thus boosting "staying power", according to Mario R. Garcia. However, an anonymous newspaperwoman mentioned that most of the papers have articles that are "simply too long".  

The newspaperwoman went on to say that Arabic daily Alittihad is "the most boring" but continues to be published since it is state-subsidized. Albayan's makeover made the paper more appealing to readers, whereas Alkhaleej isn't "neatly designed" or "organized". Garcia pointed out that because Albayan (see left) uses photos that are over three times as big as in other titles, it is visually more interesting to young readers who favor to "look" and not "read".

The Arabic paper that is most attractive to younger readers is Emarat al youm (see left), "with its compact tabloid format, the nice illustrations, and content that has appeal", said the newspaperwoman.

The newest addition to Dubai's English-language dailies is The National (see below left), whose design Garcia praises, mentioning that it is for the "elite reader" who wants his paper to be "perfectly organized."

"White space that travels up and down the broadsheet pages to remind everyone that there is room to grow here.  Overall, it is a sort of The Guardian of London, before it redesigned to the Berliner format. If one word describes the look of a newspaper, gravitas comes to mind here;" said Garcia.

Source: Garcia Media through IFRA Executive News Service

An interesting and growing market has opened up for newspapers with online editions in Africa: the expat reader looking for news about home from a familiar news source. The print version of newspapers remains paramount in Africa in terms of readership and revenue, but newspaper organizations are waking up to this new medium's potential.

When Kenya's Daily Nation launched its website a decade ago, it had a clear vision. The country's leading newspaper recognised that the 1.8 million Kenyans living abroad had little access to news from home, and that an online edition would have mass appeal to the increasing number of ex-pats who hungered for news. This is something that editors and publishers across Africa should bare in mind: the International Labour Organisation estimates there are some 7.1 million Africans living outside their home country. The number is rising rapidly and by 2025 could climb to one in ten, the IOM predicts.

The Editors Weblog spoke with the Daily Nation's managing editor of special projects, Macharia Gaitho, about his newspapers online edition and he said: "We wanted to extend the paper's audience beyond Kenya's geographic borders to deepen the paper's voice and authority, while also offering a service to the growing Kenyan diaspora." The website was launched formally in October 1998 with a dedicated team, following trials the previous year just before the Kenyan general election.

This service goes back to the very foundation of what newspapers are all about, they are not only providing a news service, they are also serving their communities, even the members of it who have moved away.

The fact that the online edition is very reflective of the print edition is a pull to the expat community who will immediately have the emotional response of recognition and thus feel "familiar" with the web version from their first visit, this familiarity will likely encourage return visitors. As one of the most trusted news organization on the African continent, it would already be a first port of call for expats looking for news from home, but with its easily navigable site, clear graphics, photographs, video footage and with a style that echoes the print version, they have cleverly tapped into the expat market.

Gaitho, who describes the Daily Nation website as the "recognized go-to place online for news on Kenya" said it was important that the web edition reflected the "Nation's look and feel."

The Daily Nation site has recently undergone a revamp and the new-look site achieved 50,000 unique visitors daily in its first week after the launch. The previous version averaged 80,000 unique visitors daily. Explaining this disparity in visitors, Gaitho said: "Because of faster download speeds and improved features, we project the new one will surpass 80k".
 
However, some news organisations in Kenya have been slow to see the potential of this new market and only have a web version as a nod to this evolving technology without fully engaging with the medium. Dr George Ogola at the University of Lancashire says that in Kenya, "The element of interactivity, the very essence of 'experiencing' news online remains unexploited." He believes that news organisations need to recognise that with the advent of online news, the relationship between the reader and the newspaper has been altered.

The appeal of ex-pat readers is therefore another attraction for African newspapers to consider when they lead the charge to online editions, not only for editors looking to boost their news organizations readership and to keep their media house relevant, but also to appeal to advertisers such as Western Union who wish to reach the expat audience. It is as a result now mandatory for any newspaper in Africa to have an online edition.

The Editors Weblog spoke to the Directeur de Publications at Le Jour in Cameroon, Haman Mana, about his thoughts on this issue. Recently launched newspaper Le Jour is a particularly interesting case, as they chose to launch the print and online version at the same time on the 17 September 2007. This decision underscores how online media is growing in importance in Africa, even though print still creates more revenue and attracts a larger readership. When I asked Mana about his thinking behind this decision, he said bluntly, "It is inconceivable for any Cameroonian newspaper that wants to be taken seriously not to have an online edition."



Mana agreed with Gaitho on how it is important that the online edition mirror the newspaper, saying, "The design was an important step for us, because we wanted to keep the spirit of the print edition." Mana reports that a significant portion of Le Jour's online readership is also made up of the Cameroon disapora. He also highlighted how having an online edition is simply good publicity for a newspapers brand, he said the web version has opened up a world of markets to Le Jour and, "it permits us to have a global presence and visibility."

It is therefore clear that the expat reader opens up a whole new market of readers and revenue to Africa's newspapers. For those organisations that are reticent about connecting with the web, they need to be aware they are ignoring a growing market waiting to be exploited. The African web news market is already jostling with competitors, so if they do not leap now, they could miss out completely.

Sources: AllAfrica.com, Business Daily, International Labour Organisation, Daily Nation, Le Jour

Do women face a glass ceiling in the blogosphere? Organizers and attendees of BlogHer, the three-year-old conference attended by more than a thousand female bloggers, think so.

Last year, a study co-authored by BlogHer and Compass Partners found that 36 million women (about 11 percent of all US women) participate in the blogosphere each week, and 15 million of them have their own blogs.

Yet, when Techcult, a technology Web site, ranked its top 100 Web celebrities, only 11 of them were women. And last year, Forbes.com created a similar list, naming just 3 women on its list of 25.

"It's disheartening and frustrating," said Allison Blass, a BlogHer attendee whose personal blog at www.lemonade-life.com is about living with Type 1 diabetes.

Created in 2005 to help female bloggers gain exposure, this year's San Francisco even