Results matching “new group chief editor”

Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger told Reuters that "if we get the right functionality and design," the iPad could "produce interesting, significant revenue streams," according to PaidContent.

Because developing an application for the iPad will not require any different skills from the ones required to launch an iPhone app, news publishers that have had success with iPhone apps, are now looking to cash in on the iPad.

The Guardian has ruled out implementing paywalls on its website, but may still decide to charge for specialist or niche content, the Financial Times reports.

Chief executive of the Guardian Media Group Carolyn McCall told the Financial Times that although her position is not entrenched, she sees no commercial evidence that paywalls generate returns. "It is not really the way the web works," she said.

"That is not to say there are not areas of specialist content that cannot be charged for," she added.

The past few years has seen the explosive growth of social networking sites Twitter and Facebook, and a dramatic downturn in advertising revenue that has set about ravaging the newspaper industry. PoynterOnline has now reported new enterprises between the two industries however, which could prove profitable for both.  

Few news outlets are without their own Twitter account these days, using the site's micro-blogging capabilities as a means to distribute stories and attract a wider audience. The Austin American-Statesman is using theirs to sell tweets to local business, which can advertise their enterprises on the newspaper's Twitter account.

Having enjoyed a successful career in print journalism for over 25 years, holding the position of editor in chief at Sp!ts for the last four, Bart Brouwers has announced his departure from the role, leaving the job in the capable hands of his deputy, Willem Schouten.

Concerns have been raised over the level of gender diversity with the number of women in top newspaper positions dropping. The last week has seen three female newspaper editors resign from their positions 'indicating they are not likely to run a newsroom again,' reports Editor & Publisher.

Karin Winner, announced her retirement after 15 years as editor of the San Diego Union-Tribune. Sixty-four years of age, the decision is not a surprising one- though many are waiting to see who will be named her replacement.

Two American editors-in-chief have announced that they will be stepping down from their current positions. Sandra Mims Rowe, editor of The Oregonian since 1993, will be retiring from her post at the end of the year; Janet Coats, executive editor of the Tampa Tribune, will be finished on 18 December.

Rowe reportedly made her decision to retire over the Thanksgiving holiday in an altruistic attempt to spare other employees' jobs. In an email obtained by Portland-based Willamette Weekly, Rowe stated, "It became clear we would have to shed about 70 jobs total from the newsroom staff. As we have gotten much smaller as a newsroom, it is also clear we have too many editing positions concentrated at the top of the organization. Over Thanksgiving I wrestled with the number of layoffs we would need and determined it was best to start by removing my own salary from the budget. I informed [publisher N. Christian Anderson III] of my decision last week. Doing this preserves other jobs."

Is investigative journalism giving up on newspapers? "No!," stressed Aroon Purie, the founding chairman and editor-in-chief of the India Today Group.

Purie, a well known journalist in India, spoke earlier this afternoon on a panel discussing the abandonment of investigative journalism in newspapers.

"You need smart Journalists, determined journalists, people who have a passion for this," Purie explained.

Portugal's newest daily newspaper, i, was launched in early May and has attracted a significant amount of attention due to its rising circulation figures and innovative approach. It recently won a design award from the Society of News Design. The Editors Weblog spoke to editor-in-chief Martim Avillez Figueiredo, managing editor for online Mónica Bello and art director Nick Mrozowski, to find out more about i's approach and the reasons behind its success.

I's circulation in August was over 16,000 copies, up from just under 11,000 in its first month, May. As a comparison, the country's top selling papers, Público and Diário de Notícias, sold 36,000 and 30,000 respectively that month. So for a new paper, i seems to be doing well. How, when the newspaper industry is struggling worldwide from falling income as readers move online and advertising rates fall, is a new newspaper seemingly thriving?

What i is doing differently

I is not structured like a traditional paper. The paper's team worked with media consultancy Innovation to come up with a new way to organise the product. "Our feeling was," said Figueiredo, who came on board at an early stage, moving from Diário Económico, "that people were not concerned about traditional sections any more. Traditionally, journalists have to fill a politics section even if there is nothing relevant going on in politics. We wanted to come up with something different." So the team came up with five key needs that they wanted the paper to address, with five key words.

• 1. Opinion is the first section of the paper, based on the key word think. No other Portuguese paper starts out with opinion.
• 2. Radar is the second, accompanied by the key word know. Figueiredo said the assumption was that readers will already know a lot from other sources, but Radar aims to offer a quick overview of everything that has happened in the past 24 hours. The section is eight pages long, and the longest article is half a page.
• 3. Zoom is the third section, connected to the key word understand. The 22-26 page section looks at between eight and 13 topics in depth, with articles taking up one to ten pages. "We deal with these subjects with a lot of care, and we use the best teams," Figueiredo said.
• 4. The fourth section is called More, linked to the key concept feel. This is where anything about people's private, cultural, social lives goes. Figueiredo explained that the team did not want to give the section a more specific name, or the content would be limited. More encompasses the fifth need that the paper wanted to address: sports, about 80% of which is focused on football - "this is very important in Portugal," Figueiredo said.

Design...

Nick Mrozowski, i's American art director, said that "I think the overriding concept, not just in the design but in the newspaper as a whole, is that we want to try to set out to produce a magazine every day." The 56- to 64-page paper is tabloid size and stapled, so looks as much like a magazine as a newspaper.

A huge amount of work goes into designing the paper every day. At first, Mrozowski explained, the idea was that the paper would have a template that would leave some pages fixed each time, meaning that some pages would require no design work on a daily basis and that editors would simply put their content into the pre-designed format. "But from day one that strategy fell apart," he said. "We realised that the sort of paper we were making had a lot of very specialised content and each page would have to be custom-made to the needs of a reporter or editor."

"From a design perspective it's a little intense," Mrozowski said. The design team are challenged to find magazine-quality visual solutions every day. For example, unlike most daily newspapers, i strives to include high quality portrait photography rather than just that for events, which means finding the time to sit down with sources. The paper also has a lot of illustration, something which many newspapers have been cutting back on in recent months, Mrozowski pointed out. "I think people notice this," he said. "You can't go a day reading i without coming across at least one commissioned illustration, rather than just back art."

I has a team design team of seven, two infographic artists and a group of photographers. This visual team is "like one unit," Mrozowsi stressed. "We all sit at one big arching table, so it's very easy to communicate."

Despite the strong focus on the visual side of the paper, Mrozowski stressed that this is never at the expense of the content. He was trained as a journalist as well as a designer, so "I've always worked in newspapers with a journalistic eye." And he makes sure that his design team also understand that "the design should come from the content."  He clarified, "it's not enough to design a page, you have to know what's going on it, what type of photo is going to be there and how it should best be played." The designers and editors therefore work very closely together, requiring the design team to have a journalistic understanding of each page that they work on.

Not just print...

I also has an increasingly significant web presence at www.ionline.pt: online editor-in-chief Mónica Bello said that the site recently passed 900,000 uniques per month. The paper's print and online operations are broadly integrated: journalists write for both platforms. "It's a work in progress," said Bello, "it's getting better and better all the time." Two editors are just focused on the website, and many journalists work on breaking news online for a few hours and then move on to writing for the paper.  40% of content from the paper also goes online, explained Figueiredo, with the other 60% being exclusive to the print product.

I's website is an aggregator as well as displaying original content. Figueiredo described how the paper is happy to link to competitors' content, and how aim is that people come to I as a base for their news exploration. "We want to make sure that people on Facebook and Twitter are using i as their main information source," he said, adding that i has a presence on many social networks. The paper has, in effect, six different homepages online. One is a portal of general news, one is focused on Portuguese political news, a third is economic and financial, a fourth is world news, fifth is sports and the last is the 'good life' homepage

There seems to be a general acceptance at i of the fact that online news is not profitable, at least for the moment. "You can't make any money there," said Figueiredo, "but you have to be there in order to grow your brand." Bello said that "the print edition is of course the priority, and will be at lease for the next few years." This means that the designers do not contribute so much to the website, which has a far more fixed template compared to the paper.

The advantages of youth: potential for constant innovation

Being a new newspaper, part of a new brand, gives I the freedom to experiment and it seems that this freedom has been passed on to all the staff. Mrozowski and Bello were extremely enthusiastic about their working environment and what it allows them to do. "There's this motivating feeling," Bello said. Mrozowski said that the two senior editors, Figueiredo and André Macedo, "have imparted this feeling of accomplishing the impossible at every step... There is no cap to how big these guys will dream and it presses you to do things that you wouldn't do at another newspaper."

One of Mrozowski's favourite projects at the paper so far was for the European elections: with the help of an outside illustrator, the team produced a double page spread the night of the election depicting the politicians involved as fish in the ocean, with their position in the water showing how well they had done. "It worked out beautifully, and speaks to this ambition that we have," Mrozowski commented. "It's something that I don't think another newspaper would try."

"We told them that they have the responsibility to be innovative because they don't have a set newspaper in which they have to fill the gaps, rather it is a newspaper that they have to create everyday in order to focus on the real issues," Figueiredo said.

The paper chose to hire not just experienced professional journalists, but decided to bring in some young people who did not necessarily have any experience in the field but who were technologically adept and very knowledgeable about social media.

So who is the audience?

I's specialised focus on politics and economics attracts educated, ambitious readers, Figueiredo said. 69% of readers have a university degree, 39% are top management. What is particularly exciting, he added, is that 22% of i's readers had not been regular newspaper buyers before. A key target audience, "that we are still learning to deal with," is aged between 23 and 29: they have a university degree, they have started their professional careers and have ambition, they are unmarried, they travel frequently and have a full social and cultural life, Figueiredo explained. "And they want to know what's going on. We have been dedicated to studying this new audience that nobody else has."

Why do they like it?

According to Figueiredo, "we've created a product that goes directly to the way they think and interact with news." Most of these readers are well informed via other media and already know a lot about what's going on, but they look to i to "help organise all the mixed and disparate information that they have to deal with." He believes that the in-depth articles on politics and economics, providing essential background to current issues, are one of the main reasons why people like the paper. The sports section is "very creative," unlike those in most newspapers, Figueiredo added. He does not think that the rest of the More section is a key motivation for buyers to choose i specifically, pointing out that one of the paper's competitors, Público, was very strong on culture.

Finally, he suggested that the format of the paper was particularly attractive, being small and stapled means that "people can read it anywhere," even on the beach. Lisbon is not a major commuter city, however, meaning that this audience, crucial to the success of many papers in many countries, does not exist.

What's next?

The i staff seemed excited about the paper's future. Mrozowski plans to further improve the work of his design team, to take it "to the next level." The team has mastered the basics, he feels, and is now "going to start focusing on certain areas of the paper one at a time and try to make them better so that we are at the highest level."

Bello said that one of her hopes for the website is to expand readership outside of Portugal. Currently 80-90% of traffic comes from within Portugal, the largest percentage of the remainder coming from Brazil. She would like to reach Portuguese immigrant communities around the rest of the world.

Figueiredo intends to work on strengthening the paper's brand, to "create a fantastic dynamic around the brand." Distribution of the paper is something that Figueiredo said i was hoping to improve. "It's a nightmare in Portugal," he explained, "but we are trying to come up with some more good ideas in order to be very efficient in terms of distribution."

I's shareholders have given it five years to break even financially. In a time of falling profits, when many papers are making huge losses, this is a significant challenge for a new newspaper. However, i does seem to be off to a pretty good start. The decision to move away from the traditional structure of a newspaper and provide something different definitely makes sense, as does embracing creativity and innovative thinking in the workplace. The paper has made inroads with a young, successful demographic that would often be attracted by online news rather than print, and reaching about half of the circulation of the major daily papers in a few months is impressive. However, it remains to be seen whether i can be successful over a longer period, and if it can indeed become profitable.

If i does succeed, will others follow it down the path of innovation?

To see what i's first day was like, watch:
 

Questions over journalistic integrity have been raised with the Detroit Free Press being accused of publishing stories at the request of their advertisers, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

Amidst tough financial times and some of the lowest circulation figures recorded in decades, publishers have struggled to retain advertising dollars as many clients shift from print to the online realm.

The Wall Street Journal has announced a growth in its daily circulation with figures presented to the Audit Bureau of Circulations showing a 0.6% increase compared to the same six month period last year.  

The modest rise means the paper is now the top circulating U.S daily after previous number one, USA Today, recorded its worst year ever with a 17 percent drop in circulation.

Reuters reports that the success of The Wall Street Journal is a result of 'ongoing investment that Dow Jones has made in the franchise during the past few years. This growth combined with increased subscription rates has led to an increase in total circulation revenue of 10.1% to the Journal year-over-year.'

McClatchy is considering making changes to its foreign coverage that could see bureaus opening and closing, Editor & Publisher reported. Although no decisions have been made, one possible scenario would close bureaus in Jerusalem, Nairobi and Caracas, and re-open one in Mexico City. Bureaus in Cairo and Beijing would remain and McClatchy would open another in either Afghanistan or Pakistan.

Washington bureau chief John Walcott, who oversees McClatchy's foreign coverage, told E&P that there were likely to be some changes, but "the only bottom line that is clear is that we are positioning in the places that are most important to the country and the readers of our newspapers."

The Far Eastern Economic Review is to close, it was widely reported. Described by Reuters as "one of Asia's leading print publications," the 63-year-old Hong Kong-based magazine run by Dow Jones will close in December. Subscribers will be offered one-year subscriptions to the Asian Wall Street Journal website.

"The decision to cease publication of the Review is a difficult one made after a careful study of the magazine's prospects in a challenging business climate," said Todd Larsen, chief operating officer at Dow Jones Consumer Media Group. PaidContent quoted DJ spokesman Robert Christie who said that the publication was just losing too much money for its 200,000 circulation. 

Less than a month ago, rumours concerning the possible closure of The Observer, the world's oldest Sunday newspaper, were rife. In its annual results the Guardian Media Group, the publisher of  the Observer, Guardian and guardian.co.uk, revealed a shocking loss of £36.8m after tax. The group's executive Carolyn McCall, warned that the respective publications could not sustain the current level of losses "for the next three years."

In an about turn yesterday however, GNM quashed negative speculation with the news that The Observer would not be closed as part of the group's ongoing strategic review, and announced further integration between the editorial teams at the Guardian and Observer - both publications already having integrated sports and business desks and well as various other news "pods".

Two online journalism leaders, Dallas Morning News Deputy Managing Editor Anthony Moor and Politico editor-in-chief John Harris have been named to the American Society of News Editors board of directors, Editor & Publisher has reported.

Their appointment highlights the importance and growing acceptance of online news and is one of several changes to the ASNE's policy made this year; others include the decision to permit members from online news outlets, non-daily publications, and academia to the group, as well as the replacement of "Newspaper" in the group's name with "News".

According to an announcement made by ASNE President Martin Kaiser, the group is now looking "to reach out to news executives beyond the group's print newspaper roots."

Source: Editor & Publisher

It is seeming increasingly likely that charging of online general news content may well become commonplace in the immediate future; 'within a year' according to Financial Times editor Lionel Barber. The New York Times has been surveying its subscribers to ask how much they would be willing to pay for online news, and Guardian blogger Steve Busfield pointed out that listeners of the London Times' The Bugle podcast have been asked whether they would be prepared to pay for the 'season' each week. But can a pay strategy work online? The answer has been debated at length.

The big question is, will enough people be prepared to pay enough money, via a subscription scheme or per article, for online content to compensate for and exceed the revenue generated by advertising? The answer to this was thought to be definitively negative for quite some time, but the global economic slowdown and subsequent falls in advertising revenue, particularly online, has started to change this.

Ryan Chittum, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review, has taken a look at newspaper companies' second quarter results and analysed revenue from advertising and circulation. He has found that although ad revenue is falling at companies such as McClatchy and the New York Times, income from circulation is actually increasing. Ad revenue at both companies was down 30% in the last quarter compared to the same period last year.

Revenue from circulation, however, rose 5% in the second quarter at McClatchy, to $69.4 million. The daily circulation actually fell, but price increases made up for this. And at the New York Times, Chittum points out, circulation revenues will pass ad revenues sometime this quarter for the first time ever, if current trends hold. In this year's second quarter, the paper brought in $185 million in ad revenue and $166 million from subscribers. So if the ad income continues to decline at a rate of 30% and the circulation revenue keeps increasing, the latter is likely to overtake the former any time now.

This, Chittum suggests, "points the way toward a new model" based less heavily on advertising. He suggests charging $15 a month for full access to NYTimes.com, and if half of paper's print readers and 2.5% of the website's visitors were to pay, the paper could bring in $189 million a year: enough to pay for the entire Times newsroom. And of course, the paper could still advertise. The Wall Street Journal is expected to bring in $120 million in online advertising this year despite its paywall, Chittum notes. If the Times was able to bring in a similar amount, it could easily survive in online-only format, he proposes.

Chittum disputes Jeff Sonderman's theory, recently outlined in News Futurist, that newspaper subscribers have traditionally paid for the delivery of the paper rather than for the journalism. Their money may have actually gone towards this, but the reason that people have always bought newspapers is, in fact, because of the content. Yes, people are also paying to have this content nicely packaged and delivered to their door, but it is the news that they are after. This contradicts the often-cited concept that content in itself has no value.

And this idea that people will in fact pay for quality content, though not necessarily a consensus, as concluded by The Wrap's Sharon Waxman, does seem to be gaining momentum in the media industry. As well as the New York Times, News Corp and MediaNews Group are looking at paid online content, and start-up Journalism Online is promising to facilitate this for any publishers. News Corp chief digital officer Jonathan Miller said last week at the Fortune Brainstorm conference that journalism will increasingly become a "paid model" online.

And this feeling is not only prevalent among newspapers: Disney just announced plans for a subscription-based product for the internet. "We have ample evidence both in traditional and new media that people are willing to pay for quality, to pay for choice and to pay for convenience," CEO Robert Iger said at the same conference. Barry Diller, chairman and chief executive officer of IAC/InterActiveCorp, also expressed his opinion that content on the Internet is "not free, and is not going to be."

So could revenue from paying readers online more than compensate for lost advertising?

The results of the Times of London's poll on whether people are prepared to pay for The Bugle is not very encouraging so far: when presented with different pricing options, 59% of those polled responded 'nothing.' However, of course this does not mean that these people might not be prepared to pay if forced to: it is a very different thing to be asked whether you would like to pay.

Chittum's figures for the New York Times suggest yes, although he does not claim that the numbers could support printing and distribution as well as journalism, and it is unlikely that the Times will kill its print product any time soon. And it is necessary to remember that the Times has always brought in an unusually high proportion of its revenue from circulation: in recent years this has typically been 30-35%, while many newspapers would rely on advertising for 80-85% of revenue. And a subscription is expensive, at about $770 a year for those in the US but outside the New York metro area. The paper has seemingly successfully increased its price twice within a year. It is undoubtedly seen as a product worth paying for: can the same be said for newspapers with less impressive reputations?

Journalism Online's co-founder Steve Brill has presented figures to potential partner publishers that suggest that participating newspapers would be able to keep 88% of page views and 91% of ad revenue. The company's assumptions are that 5-10% of current monthly unique visitors will be willing to pay for content; that 95 percent of those paying customers will choose subscriptions over micropayments; and that after subscribing, those readers will view 30-40 percent more pages than non-paying readers. If these numbers are correct, charging for content might well make sense.

Others believe, however, that paid online content would definitively not be able to make up for lost advertising revenue. Alan Mutter, co-founder of ViewPass, sees increasing the value of advertising by making it highly targeted is a better solution to the newspaper industry's problems. And start up CircLabs is working on creating a product that aims to up the number of page views to newspaper sites. Both of these would, however, allow publishers to make the choice to charge.

Persuading people to pay for something they have got free for many years is likely to be a tough challenge, and it is going to be risky. It is likely to take some time to discover the most effective way to do it. It has a far greater chance of succeeding if it does in fact become commonplace, and the idea that premium content must be paid for is firmly established in the consumer mindset. And although one can argue that the consumer will be benefiting from the quality content that would be supported by pay schemes, their online news experience is likely to suffer if they are confronted by frequent paywalls that stop them from roaming the web freely.

The Media Guardian's guide to the most powerful people in the media and communications industry is characterised by the letter D: Digital and Downturn. The 2009 power landscape reflects the cyclical and structural changes ushered in by an economic climate encouraging a digital migration. The classic media big wigs, faced with shaky advertising revenue and circulation figures have been presented with an interesting challenge- "adapt or die". Yet, while the fresh faces of digital media enjoy a rising influence on the public and their media colleagues, the continued power of the classic newspaper moguls, testaments to grit and flexibility, are demonstrating that the printed page remains a staple force.

Four out of the top ten figures generate their "power" as leading representatives of printed media groups: inevitably present are the giants, News Corp and News International, but also somewhat surprisingly, is the appearance of Will Lewis, editor-in-chief of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph at the number ten spot. The leap of 27 places demonstrates the potency of a good scandal penned in ink: the MP Expensive Files consumed the news agenda for weeks after the story broke, the political ramifications reminded all of the clout of investigative journalism and soaring circulation figures pointed to a definite remodelling of the paper's public image.

The Wall Street Journal's Indian homepage now hosts a new site offering a wealth of information about rural India.  The site, developed in conjunction with India Knowledge@Wharton, part of the Wharton School's online business journal, contains reporting, analysis, interviews, commentary and video. It will combine new and exclusive features with an archive of previously released material.  

"Rural India's economy is thriving despite the worldwide economic downturn, and many of India's and the world's largest companies are just beginning to realize the market's potential," said Paul Beckett, The Wall Street Journal's South Asia bureau chief. "Nevertheless, the benefits of India's economic boom have been late in arriving there, and weak governance and a lack of access to basic services remain serious problems. Business decision- makers and investors in the country and overseas require accurate, timely and independent coverage of rural India's development."

The Guardian has reported that Rupert Murdoch's News Group paid out more than £1 million to settle cases that would reveal evidence that the group's journalists had been involved in illegally hacking into public figures' mobile phones. News Group is owned by News International, a News Corp subsidiary.

The payments secured secrecy over out-of-court settlements in three cases that threatened to expose evidence that reporters from the News of the World hired private investigators who "illegally hacked into the mobile phone messages of numerous public figures to gain unlawful access to confidential personal data, including tax records, social security files, bank statements and itemised phone bills," the Guardian reported.

Rupert Murdoch has denied the Guardian's report, telling Bloomberg that he was not aware of any payments made to settle cases in which the company's newspaper reporters may have been involved in criminal activity. "If that had happened, I would know about it," Murdoch said. The New York Times said that the Guardian report "could not be independently verified."

The next World Young Reader Conference in Prague in September will look at the "Total Youth Think" approach that is being adopted by newspapers looking to ensure a future audience of young people. The conference is one of the first to be conducted under the merger of the World Association of Newspapers and IFRA.

The "Total Youth Think" approach should aim to "create post-Internet print content combined with smart digital approaches, directly engage young people and those who influence their media loyalties, while at the same time avoid alienating older readers," according to a press release. Speakers include:

• - Anne Kari Jacobsen, Chief Analyst for A-Pressen Group in Norway, who will discuss how that group's local newspapers have used a wide array of strategies,
• - Grzegorz "Greg" Piechota, Special Projects Editor for Gazeta Wyborcza in Poland, which is conducting a strategy to "link generations" in the newspaper
• - Boris Trupčević, General Manager for 24sata in Croatia, who will examine how the youth-led company became the market leader with a newly launched newspaper and website, and completed its multimedia strategy with a news TV channel.

The Huffington Post unveiled its newest addition of the HuffPo clan this past Monday. Huffington Post New York, "The Internet Newspaper" features news, blog and video posts from Nora Ephron, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), former Mayor Ed Koch, as well as a host of well-known comedians and playwrights. The site is also welcoming of citizen journalist via its Eyes & Ears Citizen Reporting component that boasts citizen journalists of all ages from around the world.

A memo on the front page from Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, explains that the website "features our curated selection of the best New York news coverage, plus a collection of bloggers eager to share their takes on everything from local politics to the city's fashion, food, entertainment, and sports." She goes on to explain the site's partnership with 14 local news outlets in order to reel in hyperlocal coverage.