Results matching “transformations at the tel”

The features supplement Times2 has been cut from The Times, more than a decade after a features liftout first appeared in the paper, The Guardian reports.

Staff expect that there will be job cuts, but the newspaper did not comment.

Sunday newspaper The Observer is set to relaunch this week with a greater focus on news analysis as well as culture and lifestyle.

The slimmed-down four-section paper will drop its separate Escape, Cash and Business sections. Instead, it will contain four sections: an expanded main newspaper, a Berliner-size New Review supplement, Sport, and Observer Magazine. The New Review will continue to focus on arts and culture with increased coverage of film, music, architecture and books. A new Discover section within the review will be devoted to science, nature and technology. Observer Magazine will cover food, fashion, relationships, gardening, ethical living and travel.

The main news section will include a new round-up of the week's news, called The Week, and the Focus section will be expanded for more news analysis and international affairs. Sport will be expanded as well. Three of its four monthly magazine supplements, Observer Sport Monthly, Observer Music Monthly and Observer Woman have ceased publication. Observer Food Monthly will continue to be published.

All reporters at the Journal-Register Co. (JRC) will get video cameras, under an ambitious plan to bring the newspaper into the digital age, the company's 3,100 employees have been told. The company's new CEO John Paton has also told staff that they now work for a 'media company', not a 'newspaper company'. Appropriately enough, he announced the news in a seven-minute slideshow, emailed companywide, the New Haven Independent reports.

"We're not looking to make any cuts," Paton told the Independent. "We need to improve [local coverage]. We don't need to make it worse." The company, which runs 19 daily and 150 other newspapers, including the flagship New Haven Register, filed for bankruptcy last February.

It's a question that can get lost in all the talk of business models and content creation: how might journalism best serve the public?

In Australia, the latest group to ponder this is The Foundation for Public Interest Journalism, directed by a group of journalists, editors, academics and members of the community. Part of the Institute for Social Research at Swinburne University in Melbourne, it is setting up a project called YouCommNews, modeled on the American site Spot.Us, which will allow the audience to commission the stories they want to see.

The Editors Weblog spoke to Dr Margaret Simons, chair of the foundation, and to David Cohn, founder of Spot.Us.

Editor of The Guardian Alan Rusbridger ruled out erecting paywalls around The Guardian's website, expressing optimism about the future of the newspaper, Journalism.co.uk reported.

Speaking as part of the Coventry Conversation series, run by the Coventry University journalism department, he said the newspaper had no plans to put up paywalls, as Rupert Murdoch has planned to do for News International titles. "It would be crazy if we were to all jump behind a pay wall and imagine that would solve things," Rusbridger said. He did agree, though, that it was good that journalism was "trying different things".

A Scottish MP has called for a free newspaper scheme, offering young people in Scotland a newspaper of their choice for free and for a year.

In an opinion piece in The Scotsman, Scottish Labour's culture spokesperson Pauline McNeill refers to the current transformations in the newspaper industry as "the biggest crisis in its history". She calls for yearly subscriptions to be offered to teenagers on their 18th birthdays to encourage them to become long-term readers.

Reflection and conciliation are called for during discussions on the reformation of Agence France-Presse, Le Figaro reports. 

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.

The drastic measures employed by the Associated Press to stanch the flow of deserters to its service, along with DPA's recent loss of a 2-million-euro subscriber, demonstrate that news agencies have some serious soul-searching to do in terms of what they offer their customers and at what cost. Writing for followthemedia.com, Philip Stone asserts that wire services need to significantly cut their content and thus their prices in order to retain clients.

Stone, a former managing director at Reuters Europe, Middle East, and Africa media division, uses DPA as an example. Each day the agency sends out 800 stories through its main service and 100 stories from each of its 12 state services, along with 700 news photos. Clearly, there is no way any one newspaper would use all or even a quarter of those articles.

The second day of the Logan Symposium at UC Berkeley had a panel devoted to the future of investigative journalism, considering "recently it has not been a high priority for editors and publishers," due to the time, money and energy that goes into it.

The discussions involved different leaders in the field such as Robert Rosenthal of the Center for Investigative Reporting, and Buzz Woolley, chairman of the board and primary funder of Voice of San Diego. The air was relatively optimistic as the speakers focused on collaboration as the key to the future of investigative journalism.

Bill Keller of the New York Times commented, "I don't think investigative journalism will go away, and there is emerging media that will be partly profit, partly non-profit, partly collaborative, partly competitive, mainly online". Robert Rosenthal was hopeful: "Last year I said the business model for newspapers was toast. Now I believe that collaboration is going to be very important for profit and nonprofit journalism". Esther Kaplan, of The Nation Institute Investigative Fund says that partnerships in the field "are in their infancy" and they take a lot of work to happen. "We should consider a lot more, like joint investigation sites, shared technology for micro-financing," she added.

India's "second largest" English-language daily newspaper The Hindustan Times announces that it is undergoing a makeover process in the next few months that will feature transformations across all the sections, supplements as well as its Sunday magazine Brunch.

Mario R. Garcia will be in charge of the redesign. Garcia previously redesigned papers like The Miami Herald and The Wall Street Journal in the US and Sakaal Times and The Hindu in India.

"In a crowded print market, Indian publishers are increasingly relying on good design to help a new product stand out on the newsstand and keep the impatient young reader from navigating away from printed pages," wrote contentSutra.

Source: contentSutra

In a decade or so, newspapers will not exist as we know them today. According to Demian Kudryavcev, general director of Russian publishing group Kommersant, speaking at the InfoCom.2008 conference last week, they may differ enormously in the future but they will not disappear. The basic transformations that have to take place for newspapers involve technology; Kudryavcev speculated that the future lies in e-paper.

Newspapers have started to lose Russian readers and the difficult distribution system may be making matters worse, since it focuses not on the sale of the product but on the sale of shelf space. Kudryavcev suggested that it is this aspect that must change.

Kudryavcev believes that tomorrow's paper will be mobile and should be physically independent from distribution, so that readers can access it from anywhere and at any time. It should be material and promoted by keeping its "physical utilization" factor in mind.

"It is necessary to create a new spectrum of services to accommodate new technologies," said the general director. "Today's media have to get ready for a new behavioral model."

However, he pointed out that news sources must not get too carried away with technology itself since that may cause them to lose their audiences. Outlets may soon swap selling information to marketing its "style" and "spirit."

The most important thing for the media in Russia today may be the brand itself. Kudryavcev mentioned that because it is key to "respect oneself," news providers have to refrain from making spontaneous mistakes such as transmitting biased or unverified information and "stealing" stories.

Source: RIA Novosti

On Wednesday, October 22, chairman and publisher of The New York Times Company, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. made a speech at the WebbyConnect conference about transformations at the New York Times.

"Our 21st-century news cycle, with its trials and tribulations, feels even more immediate because of our access.  It is reasonable to ask: Do we need all this news and information? Do we want all this news and information? Can we tolerate all this news and information?," Sulzberger asked.

He believes that in this day and age people are looking more towards trusted and pragmatic voices.  He also advocates an effort to reject "the increasingly frenzied 'apocalypse now, tomorrow, and forever' talk.  Quality content matters...trustworthy voices are more important than they have ever been."

Welcome to the 2008 edition of the Newsroom Barometer, an annual survey of editors around the world conducted by Zogby International and commissioned by the World Editors Forum and Reuters.

The global survey gathered the answers of more than 700 editors and senior news executives from 120 countries, and was conducted online in March 2008.

In last year's Newsroom Barometer, newspaper editors had revealed their overwhelming optimism about the future of their newspapers - an optimism that is still widespread today. In this edition, editors worldwide see neither their newsroom nor their journalists as being "print-only," having clearly accepted the multimedia revolution.

Do you agree or disagree that the "integrated newsroom" or "multimedia newsroom" will be the norm for newspapers in your country in 5 years?



Among the main results this year:
 
-  86% believe integrated print and online newsrooms will become the norm, and 83% believe journalists will be expected to be able to produce content for all media within five years.
  
- Two-thirds believe some editorial functions will be outsourced, despite frequent newsroom opposition to the practice.

- A plurality - 44% - believe on-line will be the most common platform for reading news in the future, compared with 41% last year. Thirty-one cited print (down from 35% last year), 12% mobile and 7% e-paper. The rest were unsure.
 
- 35% said training journalists in new media was the number one priority for investing in editorial quality. Recruiting more journalists was cited by 31%, up from 22% last year.
 
- A majority of editors - 56%- believe news in the future will be free, up from 48% from last year's survey. Only one-third believe the news will remain paid for, while 11% were unsure.
 
- Two-thirds of respondents believe the importance of opinion and analysis pages will increase.
 
- A majority - 58% - think the decline in young readership is the biggest threat for the future of newspapers.
 
"The survey shows that editors-in-chief are already multi-media minded and that they have the capacity to carry out the transition from print-only to print and online," said Bertrand Pecquerie, Director of the World Editors Forum.

The 2008 Newsroom Barometer also brought good news concerning editors' morale. Despite some (see Part 4) growing concerns as to the improvement of the quality of journalism in the future, an overwhelming majority of newspaper editors are still very optimistic about the future of their newspaper:


Read Part 1: Presentation - main results, the integrated newsroom will be the norm
Read Part 2: Multimedia, multi-skilled and integrated
Read Part 3: The future of the press
Read Part 4: Who participated in the survey?
Read Part 5: Comments by John Zogby and WEF President George Brock
Read Part 6: Threats to newspapers, areas of investment, more results

Or watch the video here.

For the full Newsroom Barometer results and commentary plus the complete, analytical guide to the monumental transformations taking place in the newspaper industry, please consult the print or PDF version of Trends in Newsrooms 2008 (http://www.trends-in-newsrooms.org/home.php), to be released May 2008. From free papers to e-papers, citizen journalism to social media and integrated newsrooms to Internet aggregators, it has everything you need to direct your paper towards a multimedia future.

About the World Editors Forum
The Paris-based World Editors Forum (http://www.worldeditorsforum.org ) is the organisation of the World Association of Newspapers that represents editors-in-chief and other senior news executives. WAN, the global organisation for the newspaper industry, represents 18,000 newspapers; its membership includes 77 national newspaper associations, newspapers and
newspaper executives in 102 countries, 12 news agencies and ten regional and world-wide press groups.

About Reuters
Thomson Reuters is the world's leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals.  It combines industry expertise with innovative technology to deliver critical information to leading decision makers in the financial, legal, tax and accounting, scientific,
healthcare and media markets, powered by the world's most trusted news organization. With headquarters in New York and major operations in London and Eagan, Minnesota, Thomson Reuters employs more than 50,000 people in 93 countries.  Thomson Reuters shares are listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: TRI); Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: TRI); London Stock Exchange (LSE: TRIL); and Nasdaq (NASDAQ: TRIN). For more information, go to www.thomsonreuters.com.

About Zogby International
Zogby International is a public opinion, research, and business solutions firm with experience operating in 65 countries around the globe. Led by founder John Zogby, President and CEO, Zogby International is known as a leading company with a reputation for uncanny accuracy and reliability that specializes in telephone, Internet, and face-to-face survey research and
analysis for political, corporate, non-profit, and governmental clients. The firm is  headquartered in Utica, New York, with offices in Washington D.C. and Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

 

Director at Google’s offices in New York, Tom Phillips, joined a wide array of speakers at the 77th annual International Newspaper Marketing Association’s (INMA) World Congress taking place in Paris, April 25 to 27, to talk about one of the projects he heads, Google Print Ads.

Many months of speculation about the future of newspapers culminated in September 2006 with a front-page story by The Economist asking: “Who killed the newspaper?” To gain an insiders view of this morbid forecast, the World Editors Forum and Reuters launched an initiative to probe those most concerned: editors-in-chief, deputy editors and senior news executives.

In the Newsroom Barometer, three questions revolved around editors’ views about the new challenges and opportunities for newspapers that have emerged with new forms of journalism, such as free papers, citizen journalism and online news. Far from resenting these forms, senior news executives embraced them.

The Newsroom Barometer also probed editors’ own predictions for the future of their newspapers and the newspaper industry. Again, unlike talks about news executives’ rigid conservatism, the study revealed editors were realistic in their assessment. Online will be the most common platform within 10 years, news will mostly be free, and opinion and in-depth commentary will increase in importance.

The Newsroom Barometer also gave editors and senior news executives a chance to reveal their priorities within the newsroom. Most (innovative) editors wanted to retrain their journalists in new media, although a good share also stuck to traditional strategies such as hiring more journalists.

435 senior news executives from around the world answered the Newsroom Barometer (there are 10,000 daily newspapers worldwide). The respondents participated in the survey on the Zogby International website, and, on the whole, were representative of editors worldwide.

In this section, John Zogby, CEO of Zogby International, and Jeff Jarvis, new media proponent and founder of Buzzmachine, comment on the results of the Newsroom Barometer. Both found that editors’ optimism and open-mindedness to new media was a clear indication that newspapers were embracing the digital revolution, yet Jarvis fears that may not be enough…

The two-day Paris new media conference, "New Media: The Press Freedom Dimension," has kicked off with an opening panel to discuss the tremendous transformations of information with the web and web 2.0 – for better and for worse.

China’s State Press and Publication Administration is engaged in its 11th Five-Year Plan Period (2006-2010), and its Outline for the press industry plans major transformations, in order to democratize the distribution of newspapers to all categories of the population.

Whereas mergers and acquisitions by bigger companies were once considered an economic salvation for newspapers, several Seattle papers are suffering from the aftermath of agreements. And analysts are praising the qualities of local titles.

Sun-Times Media Group Inc. CEO, Gordon Paris, announced serious overhaul of its key newspaper, the Chicago Sun-Times, after the mother company reported a near $35 million third-quarter loss.