Results matching “that news media transpare”

After The Capital in Annapolis, Maryland announced a "partnership" with the Anne Arundel Medical Center (AAMC), where AAMC paid the paper to provide all the content for the newspaper's health page once a month, two major journalism groups have responded, issuing a joint warning to news outlets on the ethical complications of creating to cozy of a relationship with hospitals, according to Editor & Publisher.

In March, on the Capital's website, the paper explained, "... Partnering with the hospital on the Health page seemed to make sense. We don't have a health reporter to write about medical issues and often use stories from syndicated services that quote doctors from other cities.... Instead of generic stories originating from another city, the reader will have local news featuring people they recognize (and) doctors they use."

In their release today, the Association of Health Care Journalists and the Society of Professional Journalists state they "are concerned about news media that publish or broadcast stories, reports, news releases and interviews prepared or paid for by hospitals."

"The ethics codes of the Association of Health Care Journalists and the Society of Professional Journalists call for fair and accurate reporting and editorial independence. But editorial cutbacks, along with pressure on hospitals to market profitable services, may be eroding these standards."

Despite these challenges, the groups asserted, "our journalistic mission requires us to hold doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and government agencies accountable to the public. In doing so, we commit to fair and transparent reporting of medical issues.

The statement also included these guidelines of media outlets to abide by:

• News organizations should fully disclose the source of any editorial information not independently gathered, whether video, audio, photograph or print material.

• News organizations should not run prepackaged stories produced by hospitals unless they are clearly and continuously labeled as advertisements.

• News organizations should not favor advertisers or sponsors over competing health-care providers when choosing sources or story topics and should strive to employ a wide variety of sources.

• News organizations should develop guidelines for the public disclosure of sponsors and advertisers.

• These guidelines should prohibit news personnel from appearing in or participating in sponsored programming or advertisements.

Source: Editor & Publisher

The Los Angeles Times' website drew 115 million page views in June, just short of its all-time traffic record of 120 million PV set in May.

A quick glance at the list of most-read stories and most-viewed multimedia features in June gives a good idea of readers' favorite topics of interest - namely a push towards celebrity news and away from global issues and traditionally important topics such as the general elections. The lists also show that, despite newspapers' widespread emphasis on blogs and videos, these platforms still account for a minimal share of total traffic.

Furthermore, these lists provide some indications about how reader interests may vary from one platform to the other (news, blogs, videos, picture galleries).

If one supposes that latimes.com readership isn't too significantly different from average online newspaper readership, then these numbers hint toward which formats work best for different topics (Skip to 'Insights' for a brief summary).

Text - Top articles:

1. Alex Kozinski suspends L.A. obscenity trial after conceding his website had sexual images (Scott Glover)
2. Mega-mansions are L.A.'s really big show (Jessica Garrison)
3. Oliver Stone and 'W.,' a story of President Bush (John Horn)
4. Fourth day of triple digits sends crowds to L.A. pools, beaches  (Tami Abdollah)
5. Packing in public: Gun owners tired of hiding their weapons embrace 'open carry' (Nicholas Riccardi)
6. Envisioning a world of $200-a-barrel oil (Martin Zimmerman)
7. Judge orders TMZ to remove sex tape of actor Verne Troyer (Harriet Ryan)
8. Lakers have a collapse for the ages (Mike Bresnahan)
9. Offshore oil drilling opponents are rethinking (Richard Simon and Bob Drogin)
10. Obama leads in battle for Latino vote (Peter Wallsten)


The first thing that strikes us when looking at the list is how few stories relate to 'global' issues or to the general elections in the US: ranked 6 is a column about rising oil prices and the only story directly related to the elections is ranked 10. The majority of stories have mostly local relevance about Los Angeles.

(Only) one of the top 10 stories concerns sports - a usually strong section for most newspaper websites although June isn't the biggest season for sports in the US - and the Lakers' basketball team's demise in the championship finals.

The top three stories (and 7) revolve, more or less closely, around issues of sex and the cult of celebrities and entertainment. Number 3 is a story about the making-of Oliver Stone's latest movie about President George W. Bush. Granted, considering Los Angeles' prime location in the movie and celebrity industry, it isn't particularly surprising that many latimes.com readers are going for those stories.

But this doesn't necessarily mean that readers of latimes.com news articles prefer 'softer' content compared to readers of other online newspapers. In fact, this distribution is probably representative of a move towards celebrity news by mainstream media and the audience in general.

Limitations: This is a very cursive overview of readers' favorite topics for news stories only looking at the top 10. A more in-depth study would possibly show that while a few select individual stories about sex and celebrities receive many hits, the sections for 'hard' news (World, Business, National) on the whole generate substantially more traffic than Entertainment.

Top blogs:

1. Top of the Ticket  -- 1,743,178 PV
2. The Dish Rag  -- 1,437,462 PV
3. L.A. Land --  652,605 PV
4. Lakers Blog      
5. Show Tracker                
6. L.A. Now         
7. Technology Blog (first month out, and in the top ten)       
8. Gold Derby      
9. Web Scout      
10. Countdown to Crawford (launched June 17)


Now a look at the top-10 list of blogs gives a more intricate perspective: compared to news stories, the blog format seems to draw more readers to 'serious' topics such as politics and the general elections.

The political blog Top of the Ticket is in the lead, and Countdown to Crawford (a blog that covers the final steps of the elections) has made it to the list although it was only launched in mid-June. Ranked 6, L.A. Now covers general news about California.

It may seem counter-intuitive that readers prefer the blog format, usually associated with a more conversational tone and less formality, to read stories about politics. On the other hand, this preference could also be explained by the fact that those readers precisely prefer a format open to opinion and debate to read about those topics. Since blogs typically allow for more author disclosure, they can also be seen as a more transparent medium.

The last two blogs revolve around technology and developments in the digital landscape, a thematic that was absent from the Top 10 news stories.

Limitations: Again, this is hardly a scientific procedure, and the top 10 blogs on latimes.com account for less than 5% of total page views on the site. To put this in further perspective, five of the ten blogs relate to 'softer' content - three revolve around celebrities and the movie industry - one is about the Lakers and number 3 is a blog about real estate (note the parallel with the news story about mansions ranking 2).

Furthermore, The Dish Rag, ranked 2, is edging close to Top of the Ticket, so that in reality the number of users consulting LA Times blogs for soft and hard news is probably equivalent.

Pictures - Top photo galleries:

1.  Celebrity and sports collide in L.A.
2.  Universal Studios fire
3.  Celebrities' real names revealed (Denise Martin and Stephanie Lysaght)
4.  Hollywood hunks before they were hot (Elizabeth Snead)
5.  Celebrities by The Times
6.  Celebrity shots
7.  Midwest flooding
8.  Top 9 cars women buy more than men
9.  Hollywood's unwedded bliss list (Elizabeth Snead)
10. R-rated firsts (Susan King)

Unsurprisingly, the list of most popular photo galleries is also dominated by celebrities, even more so than for news stories or blogs (seven out of ten).

Of the three remaining picture galleries, two are big general news stories with obviously strong visual content: ranked 2 is the Universal Studios fire and ranked 7 is a gallery about floods in the Midwest.

Video - Top videos:

1. Dogs orphaned in China's quake find a home - 132,239 streams - AP
2. LAPD goes green: Maya Sanchez reports - 112,375 streams - KTLA
3. Tsvangirai on Mugabe - AP
4. Local update: Moe the chimp escapes cage -  KTLA
5. Amanda Beard heads to Omaha for her fourth Olympic swim - LAT
6. 17-year-old decapitated by Six Flags ride - AP
7. Australia marks Iraq withdraw with parade - AP
8. Evening update: USC student sentenced to time served in baby's death - KTLA
9. Fires grip parts of California - AP
10. Bush pleased with war spending bill - AP

The top-10 list for videos also delivers its share of lessons. First of all, despite newspapers' wild rush to boost video content, videos generate a limited amount of traffic compared to most text stories.

Many of the videos in the list are 'soft', but don't relate to entertainment especially. Instead, they are often emotionally-driven (dogs orphaned in China, 17-year old girl decapitated at a fair park). A lot of these popular videos are visual anecdotes with a potential for virality (Moe the chimp escapes cage).

'Hard' news, ie. a Congress debate about legislation or a business acquisition, does not typically constitute a popular pick for videos, as it is often poor visually.

The majority of successful video content is syndicated, generally provided by the Associated Press (only one of the top 10 videos was produced by the LA Times). Considering the average PVs for videos, and although CPMs for video ads are usually higher than for regular PVs, it is still often (too) costly for newspapers to produce their own quality videos.

Insights

In short, here are some of the insights brought by latimes.com's Top-10 lists:

- The Los Angeles Times has strongly emphasized 'soft' news, which is becoming increasingly popular among regular news stories.
- On the other hand, its blogs seem to attract many viewers interested by politics - although half of the blogs in the list deal with lighter content.
- The blog format is also popular when they deal with technological issues.
- To an extent, it could be inferred that the latimes.com is fulfilling its role as a newspaper by focusing on 'local' stories: Hollywood, celebrities and the entertainment industry being part of that local context.
- The photo galleries are overwhelmingly dominated by pictures of celebrities. The only two 'hard' news stories are obviously visual: a fire and floods.
- Video content must also be visually rich, but the most popular videos are those that are emotionally-driven and potentially viral (ie: humorous anecdotes, shocking stories).

The purpose of this piece was simply to make some observations as to the types of topics preferred by online users, depending on the format they were published in. The goal wasn't to quaintly warn editors against the risks of chasing eyeballs at the expense of news judgment.

However, these Top-10 lists are clearly representative of the trend, adopted both by editors and by the audience, towards more celebrity-type news, or 'soft' news in general. In January and April, when the Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times announced that they were beefing up coverage of Britney Spears, at the same time as newsrooms across the nation couldn't afford the expenses of covering the elections, many newspaper editors were outraged by this rush towards more catchy, entertainment-driven, stories.

According to others, celebrity is a cultural currency that fulfils a role in the press. But at what cost?

This week, Richard W. Stevenson, political editor and deputy Washington bureau chief for the New York Times, will be answering questions from readers. The Q&A is part of the Time's regular Talk to the Newsroom feature, which most recently hosted NYT managing editor, Susan Edgerley.

Stevenson started off by addressing political bias, blogs and content decisions.

What follows is an edited transcript of Stevenson's thoughts on blogging, politics and the attitude that often accompanies the two.

The Blogs/News Balance

Q. As political editor, does your franchise extend to The Caucus blog and, if so, have you established editorial guidelines for the blog that differ from guidelines for news articles and news analysis? I'm not simply referring to tenor but to subjects blogs may cover while articles and analyses shouldn't. It seems schizoid to have Kit Seelye speculating on Hillary Clinton's emotional state of mind in the blog and then doing straightforward political reporting for the newspaper...

-- Patrick Murphy, Lionville, Pa.

A. Mr. Murphy, you are on to one of the biggest challenges we face, and perhaps the solution to it as well.

Yes, The Caucus, our political blog, is a core element of our election coverage, and is fully integrated into our reporting efforts. Nearly all of our political reporters file regularly to the blog, both breaking news and other pieces that are more analytical or observational. The wonderful thing about blogs is that they are infinitely flexible, and we are always experimenting with how we can do New York Times quality journalism that takes advantage of the Web.

But as your question implies, that can be tricky, because the Web ethos is different from a traditional newsroom ethos.

Consider the Web's key attributes. First is speed, immediacy...When news breaks, we can get it online quickly, giving our users quick access to information.

Second is the ability to link to or package with all kinds of resources, from background to primary source documents to audio and video.

Third, for better or worse, is a bit of attitude - or, in many cases, a lot of attitude. A whole lot.

As we have shifted more of our focus toward the Web, we've done all we can to master and take advantage of the first two attributes, while acknowledging but keeping a wary distance from the third.

We have not relaxed our news standards for the Web. The reporting needs to be solid and as transparent as possible. It needs to be presented clearly and concisely. It needs to be fair.

But within those guidelines, we are changing our journalistic culture to adapt to the reality that the Web is a big part of our future. So sometimes we will post on The Caucus or elsewhere on our Web site a first take on a breaking news story. Then we will update it as more information becomes available.

It's a different way of doing things for those of us who came up in a system that was directed to producing a single and comprehensive version of the news at the end of the day. It can be jarring for some reporters and editors to post breaking news on the Web even though there are lots of questions we know we still need to answer for our readers.

... There's much about blogging culture that can work for us on our terms, starting with encouraging a two-way conversation with readers.

Source: The New York Times

For its relaunch, the Editors Weblog is running a series of exclusive interviews with some top editors at leading newspapers around the world about the future of journalism. We kick off the series with Ed Greenspon, Editor-in-Chief of the Globe & Mail in Canada.

The list of upcoming interviews will be updated as they are published (click here to view all interviews in this series). Among the other titles that have been asked to participate in these interviews are:

- The New York Times - Jonathan Landman (US)
- Financial Times (UK)
- Guardian (UK)
- Washington Post - Jim Brady (US)
- Globe & Mail - Ed Greenspon (Canada)
- The Times (UK)
- The Economist (UK)
- Gazeta Wyborcza - Jaroslaw Kurski (Poland)
- Le Monde (France)
- Die Welt (Germany)
- The Hindustan Times - Pankaj Paul (India)
- Asahi Shimbun (Japan)
- JoongAng Ilbo (South Korea)
- The Age / Fairfax - Mike van Niekerk (Australia)
- The Nation - Pana Janviroj (Thailand)
- Punch (Nigeria)
- El Tiempo (Colombia)
- Clarin (Argentina)
- Gulf News - Abdul Hamid Ahmad (UAE)


"News, journalism, newspapers: same past, different futures?"

How long do you think you will define your company as a newspaper company or a print company?

We no longer define our company as a newspaper or print company. We define ourselves as a news organization. I would say we began to do so about two years ago. In fact, I can almost pin it down to the day.

We had what in Canada was a major exclusive on a deal that would end the lockout of professional hockey. We were able to confirm the story at about 3:00 in the afternoon. We decided to put it up on the web rather than wait for the next day's paper, even though we would be tipping off our competitors.

While this wasn't the first time we had ever done this, it was a pretty major story and "giving it away" generated some internal debate. Two things happened:

    1. Over a hundred other media around the world cited globeandmail.com as the source of the story in their own reports.

    2. The scoop held in the Canadian newspapers. Even though we had posted it in the afternoon, nobody was able to match it. They also had to cite us in the next day's papers.

The moment presented a good opportunity to truly define what we knew we were becoming - a news organization with a strong base and history in print and a strong presence and future in digital.

At this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, a panel of futurists claimed that print newspapers wouldn't exist by 2014. To what extent do you agree with this?

Not a whole lot. Printed material has been around for centuries and newspapers have encountered many incursions. The web and mobile have impressive technological and story-telling strengths. They extend our creative and physical reach.

But the newspaper also boasts unique attributes.  It is a thing of beauty that you can touch and take with you.  It is filled with information you didn't know you wanted to know.  It is an entity with which a reader can enjoy an intimate, emotional relationship.   It is a daily one-stop validation of the world around you.

Some forms of newspapers may not continue to exist, but in one form or another, newspapers will survive the internet age as they have survived other ages.

In journalism's multi-centennial history, do you view the emergence of digital journalism as part of the continuity, or as a complete breakaway with previous forms of journalism?

I see it more as part of the continuity. I like to say that the platform isn't print or the web or mobile but that the platform is the journalism. That's the distinguishing factor and the competitive advantage of most news organizations.

The role of story telling goes back centuries and isn't going away. The craft of journalism, the skill of finding out and communicating important information and sorting the wheat from the chaff for your readers, will be in even higher demand as stories become more complex. Digital provides extra-ordinary new ways to tell stories in our world and for readers to take control of distribution and share with one another. So new opportunities abound.

It's only a break if we aren't clever enough to earn the money from the web necessary to finance our journalistic undertakings. I don't see that as an impossible challenge.

Do you believe in the increasingly active role of the user in the news process, and is it a threat or an opportunity for professional journalists?

First off, the closer a journalist can be to his or her audience the better. Users do not replace journalists, they supplement them. We have to stop being afraid to tap into the intelligence of our readers. We also have to understand that we play a unique role as full-time and fully-trained fact finders and story tellers. We now have a new tool at our disposal: the relationship we can build with readers.

Do you consider the Golden Age of investigative journalism is already past, or just beginning?

I think, for news organizations that are confident enough to invest in their journalistic resources, this should be a great age for investigative journalism. In the clutter and clatter of a 500-million channel universe, it is a great differentiator and in an age in which a non-deferential public demands greater public transparency, the place for investigative journalism should be secure.

The fact that it is not speaks to how fear and fragmentation overwhelm many in the industry. It is great that a non-profit, philanthropic entity in the United States is being established to pursue investigative journalism. But I believe there is also a commercial case to be made. The fact that so many news organizations are cutting resources actually creates even more room in the marketplace for those willing to pursue this kind of journalistic-intensive, public-interest approach.


Stay tuned for upcoming interviews about the future of journalism.

Source: Ed Greespon, editor Globe & Mail

The Web has entirely changed the journalist-reader relationship. Two-way reader interaction is gaining ground through email, comments, SMS, online chats and blog posts, 24/7. This would imply that news outlets increasingly need ombudsmen. Yet there are reportedly fewer than 40 ombudsmen in the US, and few papers are willing to hire one, at a time of general cost-cutting. Maybe they should think about the potential costs of not having an ombudsman, and figure that the readers’ editor is not (only) a guardrail against angry readers. He or she is a bridge into Web 2.0 journalism.

Last week, Wide Open, the political blog of The Plain Dealer was suspended after learning that two of the contributors to the blog had donated money to political campaigns. This raises the issue of credibility and the standards held to non-journalists. Should non-journalists be unbiased and held to the same standard as journalists?

A recent study of 25 of the world’s top news outlets revealed that most lack the necessary transparency to develop readers’ trust and a sense of credibility.

RAP 21 had the opportunity to interview Azubuike Ishiekwene during the 14th World Editors Forum the unique structure of Punch newspapers' advertising department, their integration of new technology, and ultimately the future of the newspaper industry in Africa. Here's the full interview.

The International Center for Media and the Public Agenda (ICMPA) recently published a study called “Openness & Accountability: A Study of Transparency in Global Media Outlets.” The results of the study indicate that The Guardian and the New York Times are the most transparent and accountable while Sky News and Time are the worst. 

Ensuring press freedom in Africa requires conviction from journalists. This was the theme of the Annual Press Freedom Round Table at the 14th World Editors Forum in Cape Town.

The digital news revolution has generated numerous anxieties for newspaper newsrooms, especially concerning how their journalists are handling the recently emerged power of the consumer to interact with them and produce content. The Journalism Leaders Programme at the Lancashire Business School is investigating how newsrooms are adapting and helping them ease through this transition period. Director François Nel chatted with the Editors Weblog to discuss the Programme’s projects and give a sneak peek into his speech at the 14th World Editors Forum in Cape Town.