Results matching “160 years of archive”

The advertising slump for traditional media is here to stay, according to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Speaking at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, where he was named "media person of the year," Ballmer described the current economic situation for media as a "reset" not a "recession." That means media companies must completely rethink their business models to keep up with the changing landscape of publishing.

Ballmer also faulted newspaper publishers for not doing enough to make money out of their online ventures, adding that Google is the only digital company with a track record for earning significant revenue. And traditional media will have to figure out how to squeeze out revenue from online content soon, as Ballmer predicted all content will be digital in the next 10 years.

As online news becomes more and more prevalent, with an unimaginable amount of information available at users' fingertips and Internet now ranked as US consumers' top way to access their news, how can media organisations make sure that readers find their articles?  Part of the answer is search engine optimisation, which is becoming an essential part of the daily life of a newsroom. For the printed product, newspapers must try to sell the paper as a whole; online, articles can attract traffic individually as readers come across them while searching for specific topics. It is therefore important that each story, rather than simply the site as a whole, is 'optimised' to appear higher in search results. Aside from highly technical aspects like HTML meta tagging, URL structure or site navigation, what can a newspaper do to optimise its content for search engines?

How to introduce SEO to the newsroom

One major potential stumbling block is that journalists might view SEO as a way to manipulate their stories and take away their true value. So the way it is presented to staff is extremely important. And indeed, it is crucial that newspapers do not get carried away with prioritising SEO above all else. Even Google advises creating content "primarily for your users, not search engines:" it is important to make your site easily accessible to search engines but still remain focused on your visitors' needs.

Clearly, it is important for all reporters to be aware of the ways that they can make each individual article more search-friendly. After all, journalists have always wanted their stories to be as widely read as possible, in print as well as online, and are likely to be willing to help make that happen. And often, the principles of SEO echo the principles of writing a good story: such as the idea that the first sentence should be a summary of the rest of the article, containing relevant concepts or keywords. One difference is that less generic, more specific works for SEO in terms of names or concepts. Google recommends shorter rather than longer titles.

Esa Peltonen, who has been working as a web analyst at the largest Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat for three years, said that he has worked extensively with editorial staff, for example on how to use Google, to get an idea of how users will be searching and what kind of search words people are using. Head of audience development at the Telegraph, Julian Sambles, said in March that the paper was trying to give journalists "the knowledge and understanding that they need so they can apply it to their daily production process and make informed decisions about content when they're writing or publishing it." Thinking about SEO should be second nature, he added.

Papers must also consider their goals in optimising content for search engines. As Drew Broomhall, head of search at the Times explained, if you rank success by sheer volume of traffic, then you should "write the same as everyone else but more of it and more frequently updated." However, if you are looking to increase engagement on a specific subject you need more detailed keyword analysis and niche research.

One straightforward course is the need to stay ahead of the trends: predict what people are going to be talking about in upcoming months and provide appropriate content. "Fix SEO requirements into the editorial calendar," Broomhall suggests. Obviously much news is unpredictable, but there are some events that are year-in-year-out, or which are easy to prepare for in advance, such as an election or a festival. It is necessary to consider both specific, distinct events, such as religious holidays, and longer, less defined periods such as winter travel. Articles that contain links and that have been linked to by others appear higher in search results. Therefore, with annual events, it is beneficial to link to last year's coverage and make use of old content that already has inbound links to help promote the new content.

Hiring a SEO specialist?

As well as training all reporters to be aware of the principles of search engine optimisation, many newspapers have taken the step of hiring an in-house specialist. Ideally such a person would have deep technical knowledge combined with considerable journalistic experience, but such candidates might be hard to find. Peltonen comes from a business background, Broomhall from journalism and technology.

There are also many third party services available to news outlets, supplementary to the guidance of an in-house expert, such as Thomson Reuters' OpenCalais which recently announced deals made with the Huffington Post, DailyMe and the Mail Online. OpenCalais offers an 'Archive Express' feature which can tag an archive of up to 20 million documents in 24 hours. The service 'reads' and breaks down articles into their essential elements - who, what, when, where, how - and tags and sorts them so that it is easier to bring archived articles into 'related stories' sections and improve their search relevance.

Analysing traffic

A SEO specialist would be responsible for analysing traffic to a news outlet's site, looking at how readers find content, readership patterns and what methods of optimisation work best. Peltonen explained how he started off looking at basic data such as what are the top news stories, how many people are going where on the site, and started to work out how to increase traffic. His paper partnered with Microsoft to further analyse traffic data. Such traffic data analysis can be used to spot and develop potential niche verticals to focus on, for example, by looking at repeat visitor figures.  

Google keywords

Purchasing Google keywords to guarantee that news articles appear higher on search results is one of the more costly ways for news outlets to promote their content. Peltonen said that his paper frequently buys specific words, for instance for sports events, but stressed that it would be cheaper to improve the paper's SEO. Buying keywords could also raise ethical issues, depending on the words and their context. The Sun, for example, reportedly purchased the key words 'Natasha Richardson' immediately after the British actress's sudden death in March, in what appears to be a blatant attempt to profit from the tragedy. The Guardian came under considerable criticism last August when, apparently accidentally, it purchased the Google keywords "Madeleine McCann," giving any searchers the link to its coverage of the child's disappearance. The Guardian promptly relinquished the rights, and said it would review its list of keywords. Purchasing Google keywords in order to promote a product is common practice, but is it ethical for newspapers?

Evidently, SEO strategies are necessary in today's media landscape, not only to make more money but also to spread awareness of stories and help readers find what they are looking for and therefore should be embraced by journalists and editors as well as publishers. Search engine 'friendliness' should not be prioritised over good, accurate stories but it should be used to promote such content. Journalistic training is vital in order to optimise each individual article, and larger strategic steps should be taken by editors in conjunction with SEO specialists.

On Tuesday 23 June at 14.00 London time, Drew Broomhall, Head of Search at the Times of London will be speaking at a WEF webinar on "How to teach your journalists to write for the web." More details here.

Nieman Journalism Lab writer Joshua Benton recently  described a project which has created a Twitter account called NPRbackstory that automatically generates tweets with links to articles from NPR's archives when it decides the time is right. The code can detect when many people are searching for information about a specific topic, and it then searches NPR's archives for related stories.

Keith Hopper, a project manager at NPR's Public Interactive division, wrote the code for the project last year following the launch in July of NPR's API that gives coders access to the networks content since 1995. He was looking for a way to make use of the API, and came up with the idea of trying to provide background stories.

According to an article published on the Nieman Journalism Lab website, "print is still king", with only 3% of newspaper reading taking place online.

Journalist Martin Langveld says that his study - in which he attempts to calculate the average number of online page impressions compared to print - "was prompted" by an earlier article by John Duncan on his blog, Inksniffer, which concludes that web metric data for newspaper sites is grossly misleading. Using the UK's Guardian site as a starting point, Duncan's study shows that the act of digesting a newspaper online only equates to about 17% of the total page impressions made by its print equivalent.

In September Google announced plans start archiving historical newspapers and just this week they acquired Paper of Record's archives to get the project rolling.

ZD Net believes the project is important because "Newspapers are an excellent source of historical information, and thanks to the combined efforts of Google and Paper of Records, it will be unlocked for everyone to search and read. This shows how these companies perceive the importance of all kinds of information -- be it breaking news, or hundreds of years old."

Scotland houses an abandoned aerodrome, home to seven million issues of newspapers.  

The warehouse stocks papers that can be seen on back-issue-newspaper.co.uk. The company  has been running for five years and has sold about 30,000 back editions of UK and Irish national and regional newspaper titles each year.

The Vietnam News Agency has launched an online newspaper entitled, VietnamPlus.

VietnamPlus will cover politics, socio-economics, culture, sports, sciences and technology from Vietnam and around the world.

The online paper will also archive news and images from the last ten years.  In addition readers can customize the site and change the color.  In addition, the website will be available in tour different languages, Vietnamese, English and French.

Source: VNS

The Quebec Chronicle Telegraph has reached an agreement with Google to publish its archives on the Internet search engine.

Although exact sums are not known, the Quebec city paper will receive "half of the revenue from ads that appear on accessed archival pages," according to publisher and part-owner Peter Little.

The Hong Kong Economic Journal and Hong Kong Economic Times, the two largest Chinese-language business newspapers, have launched paid websites.

The Economic Times recently revamped its online and mobile services to attract more readers. Subscribers can now view entire pages of the newspaper and subscribers - who pay HKD350 (USD45) a year - have access to real-time market news and analysis, newspaper content, archives for the past three years, amongst other things.

The Economic Journal has attracted more than 8,000 registered subscribers since it launched in July. 7,000 joined in the early-bird registration campaign, paying HKD398 for a year's online access. The special early subscripton offer was closed last week and the prixce for subscription now HKD598. As an added inticement, the wall-respected Mr Cho column was also made available and a year of his archived articles. Subscribers need to pay HKD248 a year for access to Mr Cho's archive.

The Editors Weblog interviewed Martin M. Simecka, the author of an article that appeared in Czech magazine, Respekt on October 13, 2008.  

The article claims that an authentic police report, over 50 years old, has resurfaced from the Communist security agency's archive.  The report implicates Czech author Milan Kundera.  Kundera is accused of denouncing Miroslav Dvoracek, who was a university student in Prague. The denunciation led to his imprisonment for over 14 years.  

Part of the document reads:
"Today at around 1600 hours a student, Milan Kundera, born 1.4.1929 in Brno, resident at the student hall of residence on George VI Avenue in Prague VII, presented himself at this department and reported that a student, Iva Militká, resident at that residence, had told a student by the name of Dlask, also of that residence, that she had met a certain acquaintance of hers, Miroslav Dvořáček, at Klárov in Prague the same day. The said Dvořáček apparently left 1 case in her care, saying he would come to fetch it in the afternoon. (...) Dvořáček had apparently deserted from military service and since the spring of the previous year had possibly been in Germany, where he had gone illegally"

Editors Weblog asked Mr. Simecka a few questions about how Respekt has handled the issue from a journalistic and editorial point of view:

EW: How did you determine the authenticity of the police report?  Is this the only document you have?

MS: The experts from the Military History Institute confirmed the authenticity of the document. We also interviewed Ms. Militka for the story.  Other newspapers have interviewed her as well.

EW: How and why did you decide to publish the document?  Did you have any doubts or hesitations before you published the article? Did Milan Kundera answer you when you contacted him before publication?

MS:  Adam Hradilek, the historian who found the original document, tried to contact Milan Kundera by fax on September 11, 2008 (one month before the article was published), however, Kundera did not respond.  We also know that he had received the fax.  Of course we had some long debates about publishing the article, but we have no doubts about the version we have published.

EW:  How was the article written and presented in the Czech Republic? As purely factual or as accusatory?

MS:  Our article did not accuse Mr. Kundera, we simply were following the facts.

EW: Kundera has denounced the document and article as "pure lies", how do you plan on approaching the situation now?  What will be the magazine's response?

MS: In the Czech Republic it is a very heated debate, and sometimes very irrational. We have asked Czech writers, such as Vaclav Havel, to write short essays about the case.

EW: In hindsight, because Kundera has denounced the accusations, do you feel that you should have taken more precautions before publishing the article?  Or are you confident that it will hold up?

MS: Our biggest problem was how to talk to Mr. Kundera - we knew very well that he has not communicated with the media for over 25 years. On the other hand, until now Mr. Kundera has not said anything else about the case - other than claiming that it is a lie. There are many questions that need to be answered, but Mr. Kundera is not communicating to the media.

EW: You are comparing Kundera to Günter Grass.  Does this mean that you are expecting Kundera to admit?

MS:  Originally, I hoped for it but now I do not expect that Kundera will admit.

EW: Where do you see this debate going?  Will it continue to grow?

MS: Yes, especially in the Czech Republic, the debate is going to be huge.  I am afraid the result may be that politicians will close the Military History Institute.

EW:  What does it change if Kundera is guilty or not?  Who will be affected the most?

MS: This case could open the debate of the past, but it seems that it can also close it for years and years. That would be the saddest story.

EW:  What do you expect from Vaclav Havel?
 
MS:  Vaclav Havel has written for us - more or less defending Mr. Kundera.

EW: Do you think other cases of velvet revolution heroes will appear? Have you opened Pandora's box?

MS:  Some other cases may come up, but I do not think they will ever be as big as this one.

Source: Respekt

According to News & Record editor John Robinson, Kubler-Ross' model of accepting death can be applied to the current state of the newspaper industry in the US: it is time for acceptance.

In Kubler-Ross' model, the five stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

In April, Terry Heaton, AR & D's Media 2.0 senior vice president, said the industry was at the depression stage.

Now is time of acceptance - not of death though, but of the need for change.

Reporter and blogger Doug Fischer wrote that although it may seem that newspapers are dying, they would continue to "exist in radically different frequency and content."

Journalists need to deal with the economic reality and think about the challenges ahead, Robinson wrote.

"That means we understand how the world has changed, and we understand how our journalistic skills and assumptions must change. For instance, learning what it takes to be a digital journalist is vital. Reaching readers -- information consumers, really -- where, how and when they want it is good for journalism. Listening to and learning from them is even better," he said.
 
Two years ago, the Economist published a special report in which it said that the newspapers might survive in the long term if they "reinvent themselves on the Internet and on other new-media platforms such as mobile phones and portable electronic devices."

The situation of the US newspaper industry does seem critical, in light of the massive wave of layoffs in recent weeks and the overall advertising decline. But Robinson pointed out that future journalistic opportunities lie in microblogging, beat blogging and social networking. Journalism is, in his opinion, on the verge of attracting different customers.

Source: News-Record.com
 

The US Society of Professional Journalists - "an old-media organization" in the words of the Chicago Tribune - has chosen embrace the trend towards citizen journalism by organizing workshops to teach citizens about ethical and responsible journalism.

Until now, "Some major initiatives in this country have failed on both business and news-gathering levels," commented the Tribune.

Others, such as Talking Points Memo and the Huffington Post, have strived.

In any case, the trend towards "citizen journalism" is here to stay and the SPJ has decided to conduct seminars around the country to teach the basics of journalism to "those who are, perhaps, more citizen than journalist," reported the Tribune.

For the first session, about a week ago, there were relatively few respondents. About 25 people signed up, at $25 a day for seminars on ethics, and about two thirds of them showed up.

"There are quite a few bloggers, particularly in larger cities, who do work on a par with any journalist," said Clint Brewer, the SPJ's president and editor of Nashville's alternative City Paper. "We're trying to sort of hang our shingle out in their world with this first step and let them know we welcome them as well."

For Geoff Dougherty, who left the Tribune two years ago and founded the Chi-Town Daily News (see their own news process involving citizens) and taught the reporting seminar Saturday, the SPJ's involvement is a positive sign for the industry.

"It's great that they're interested in kind of extending the professional standards that have been in effect for newspaper journalists to a completely new population," he said.

Source: Chicago Tribune - Technolo-j

TimesOnline launched a beta version of its digital archive, opening up over two hundred years of newspaper content online.

It seems more and more newspapers are opening online archives, in an effort to draw traffic (guardian.co.uk has been trying a paid-for model since last November).

The archive features content from The Times, Sunday Times and TimesOnline published since 1785.

The beta version will be expanded and officially launched in the next couple of months.

TimesOnline is using technology from search company Fast. The archive will initially be free to access, but eventually a subscription model could emerge.

Source: journalism.co.uk

News Corp. has announced plans to further integrate its redesigned Wall Street Journal website and its News International holdings in the UK, such as the Times Online.

"It will be partly about tools, partly about deep linking to each other's content," said Anne Spackman, editor in chief of the Times Online. Spackman also suggested that similarities between The Sun and The New York Post may lead to integration between the two.

The Times had first announced plans for cross-selling advertising opportunities with WSJ. It now seems, however, that the integration will touch editorial as well as advertising content.
 
Speaking at the PPA conference, Spackman said: "We are increasingly linking to them around subjects of common interest. Our friends down under at news.com.au - we link to sport with them on cricket and rugby; with the Wall Street Journal, it will be the same on business. It will be an extremely useful thing in a way that it would never have been when we were only selling to our home audiences and when there was no power of the link."

In other news from the PPA conference, The Times, published since 1785, announced the beta launch of 200 years-worth of archive content on the web. The archives, which are supported by search technology from FAST, will be free to users initially, although subscription plans may be introduced down the line.

The Telegraph also unveiled plans to introduce user-generated content across its website.

Sources: PaidContentUK, Journalism.co.uk

The Editors Weblog is running a series of exclusive interviews about the future of journalism with top editors at leading newspapers around the world. Here is the latest installment with  Jonathan Landman, deputy Managing Editor of The New York Times in the US.

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)

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

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

We're a news and information company, not just a newspaper or print company. We own newspapers, obviously, and they remain extremely important. But we also own Web sites, not only www.nytimes.com but also www.about.com and www.boston.com and others. The Web sites are growing smartly. They are also contributing a steadily increasing share of the company's revenue -- 11 percent at the end of 2007.

 2 -    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?

I doubt it. Big U.S. papers like The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal still have a lot of loyal readers who like the feel and experience of a newspaper. I imagine newspapers will survive until the perfect electronic substitute comes along and combines the portability and readability of a newspaper with the connectivity and multimedia capabilities of the Web.
When will that happen? Place your bets.
 
3 -     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?

Both. Digital journalism combines brand-new things with time-tested old ones. The most pronounced change is in the realm of reader interaction -- technology has made it possible for journalists, outside experts and other readers to talk to each other, to collaborate on news-gathering and analysis, to fact-check and to distribute journalism in new ways. It has pulled the newspaper package apart, allowing people to acquire and consume their journalism one piece at a time or to customize it to fit their needs. It has altered the journalist's relationship with sources and introduced new visual forms like the interactive graphic. It has picked up the journalistic pace.

Those are big changes. Still, the things that haven't changed are just as important as the things that have. Good journalists must still know their subjects. Ambitious and resourceful reporting are as essential to good news video as they are to good news writing. News judgment -- shorthand for a complicated, unscientific and very human professional assessment of what's most important, interesting, surprising, funny, educational and otherwise worth knowing about -- retains its value.

4 -       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?

An opportunity. See above. For us, figuring out how to mobilize our sophisticated, curious and well-informed audience in constructive ways is both a challenge and a high priority.
 
5 -       Do you consider the Golden Age of investigative journalism is already past, or just beginning?

There's no doubt that financial pressures have driven many newspapers to cut back on investigative work. But that is distinctly not the case at The New York Times. Here are (also here, here, here and here) just a few important examples to illustrate the point.

The decline of investigative reporting at newspapers can't be a plus for democracy. On the other hand, the Internet has made public records and other documents much easier to find, expose and examine. It has made it easier for fine independent journalists like Joshua Micah Marshall to find an audience for excellent investigative work that would otherwise not gain wide public attention. And it has made it easier for whistleblowers and others to find and reinforce each other.
 
In those ways it has expanded opportunities for professional journalists to work with other people to expose wrongdoing and explore important issues. I'd say this form of collaborative investigative journalism is still young and has much potential.

6 -       Can journalism survive newspapers? (And maybe can newspapers survive journalism?)

Commentators and prognosticators have been predicting the imminent demise of newspapers for at least 15 years. A famous example: In 1993 in Wired Magazine, Michael Crichton wrote: "To my mind, it is likely that what we now understand as the mass media will be gone within 10 years. Vanished, without a trace." The New York Times, he said, will be the GM or IBM of the 1990's, "the next great American institution to find itself obsolete and outdated while obstinately refusing to change."

Nine years later, the media critic of Slate, Jack Shafer, noted that Crichton had been wrong and took a stab at explaining why. His concluding paragraphs:
"As the wise man once said, if you're going to make predictions, make a lot of them. Folks will forget your misses and remember your hits. In that spirit, Crichton writes, 'Sooner or later a lot of people are going to say, "You know what? An editor is worth the money. Because time is money, and my time is wasted combing through this junk. I'll pay someone to do it." And it'll happen.'

"To my ears, though, that still sounds like the New York Times."


Stay tuned for more in our interview series: the next installment will feature Financial Times' Managing Editor Dan Bogler.

The Los Angeles Daily Journal newsroom eliminated its copy desk on April 8. This means deadlines will be earlier in the day, writers will suggest their own headlines, and line editors will back read each other's edited copy.

In line with a recent survey  in which 57% of  journalists stated they felt that they are working more now than they have been in the past few years, the LA Daily Journal's journalists will be taking on more responsibilities now.

Editor Martin Berg cites economic reasons for this elimination. "We're still committed to producing high-quality, ambitious journalism. It will take some adjustments, but we're going to find ways to continue to serve our community with the resources we have," he wrote in an email.


Source: LA Observed

In addition to Trinity Mirror's revamp of regional title websites, conventrytelegraph.net is the latest website in their upgrade, with an emphasis on history as well as news.
       
The history section features pictures of old Coventry from its archives that date back more than 110 years. Readers also who send in photos, in particular, those of old sports teams and classes.

The website also allows viewers to purchase pictures from the archive and has the functionality and attributes of Trinity Mirror's new websites, including more breaking news, video footage, interactivity, picture galleries and user-generated content.

Telegraph Editor Alan Kirby said, "Of course the new website is about breaking news and sport, but our historic picture archives are immense and offer a unique glimpse into Coventry's past. There are thousands of pictures which we could never hope to publish in the paper. Our website gives us a fantastic new outlet."

Sources: PressGazette.co.uk, Journalism.co.uk
 

Dow Jones & Co, recently bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, will no longer carry news from the Associated Press after 40 years because they failed to negotiate a price.

"We did not believe we were being adequately compensated for the use of our content on DJ Newswires," AP Chief Revenue Officer Tom Brettingen said. "We weren't able to resolve that with DJ, so we're going our separate ways."

The negotiations had been going on for over a year and the termination of the agreement also results in an end of sharing offices and close integration.

Dow Jones Newswires will now distribute general and political news from France-Presse, a French news service, and will also expand editorial staff. The company said the moves were "part of Dow Jones's broader strategy to invest in its global financial news operations."

Nonetheless, Dow Jones's Wall Street Journal and Factiva online news archive will still run AP news.

Source: Reuters.com

The New York Times has been under heavy fire from US newspapers, media, journalists and readers, after it published on Thursday Feb. 20. a front page investigative article about senator and Republican candidate John McCain.

The story asserted in its second paragraph that during McCain's first run for the White House eight years ago, top advisers were convinced he was having a romantic relationship with a lobbyist, which could have been detrimental to his campaign. However, in addition to lack of any specific sourcing, the article offered no substantial evidence about the alleged romance - which was subsequently denied by both McCain and the lobbyist.

This wasn't the point of the story though, according to Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, who said the article was the story of a man who rebuilt himself as a fighter against corruption but is still "careless about appearances, careless about his reputation, and that's a pretty important thing to know about somebody who wants to be president of the United States."

But this explanation didn't appease many readers, outraged by the Times' angle on the story - or what they perceived as the angle, namely the claim that McCain had had an affair with a lobbyist.

"I am most disappointed in The New York Times for engaging in this sort of trash-the-candidate journalism," said one commenter to the story. The Times "has sunk below its standards and created a salacious distraction from an otherwise substantive campaign," said another. And so on.

Last Friday, the Times' story had already received over 2,000 comments, many critical of the handling of the article. "But judging by the explosive reaction to the 3,000-word article, most readers saw it as something else altogether. They saw it as a story about illicit sex. And most were furious at The Times," wrote Clark Hoyt, public editor of the Times, in a column on Feb. 24.

Should the Times have run the story? Numerous pieces have already been written, and Al Tompkins from the Poynter Institute did a good compilation of the scope of reactions, which have been varied, and offered his views on how to report the McCain story. Some believe that the Times' story had valid points about McCain that were of public interest, including Jack Shafer for Slate.

However, by choosing to refer to the affair in such a prominent way, and with loose evidence of it, the Times' opted for an angle that overwhelmingly hid the newsworthy components of the story.

"What's most remarkable about the article is that it appeared in the paper at all: The new information it reveals focuses on the private matters of the candidate, and relies entirely on the anecdotal evidence of McCain's former staffers," commented The New Republic (TNR). Similarly harsh criticism from Hanna Rosin, Slate.

According to TNR, Time magazine editor Rick Stengel told MSNBC that he wouldn't have published the piece as it was.

One of the more balanced analyses of the Times' McCain story came from the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz:

"To be sure, the piece included significant details about whether the Arizona senator had done legislative favors for Iseman's clients."

But "the hardest thing in journalism is to spend months on a story and then admit you haven't got the goods. There is, instead, a tendency to dress the thing up with fine writing and larger themes in an effort to demonstrate that it's not just about sex, when of course that is the only element most readers -- and the rest of the media -- will focus on."

In fact, Hoyt was probably one of the harshest critics of the Times' approach to the McCain story (although this may also be a strategy by the Times to weather through this storm):

"A newspaper cannot begin a story about the all-but-certain Republican presidential nominee with the suggestion of an extramarital affair with an attractive lobbyist 31 years his junior and expect readers to focus on anything other than what most of them did. And if a newspaper is going to suggest an improper sexual affair, whether editors think that is the central point or not, it owes readers more proof than The Times was able to provide."

That's a politically correct way of saying that the Times published a front page 3000-word piece that was based more on appearances than substance (read Michael Kinsley, Slate). A poor decision coming from the US' paper of record (Miami Herald).

Last Friday, the Times (re)opened the discussion about the McCain story and angle to readers. Read here.

And please send us your views.

Source: New York Times (here and here) - Los Angeles Times - Publishing 2.0 - The New Republic - Slate - Poynter Institute - Washington Post - Miami Herald

The departure of Los Angeles Times editor James O’Shea, resulting from a dispute with publisher David Hiller over cost cuts, throws light on increasing concerns for editors: how can they maintain editorial quality while the budget shrinks?

After freeing up some of its current articles and launching audio versions of its editions, the venerable British weekly, The Economist, is poised to put it's content dating from 1843 online in The Economist Historical Archive. The move follows other papers such as the New York Times and the Guardian.

Olivier Hellard, Marketing Director of L’Equipe, describes L’Equipe Junior, an online edition with a print-like design, specifically tailored for children from nine to 14, to be launched on Oct. 17.

TimesOnline, the website for the Times of London and the Sunday Times, recently underwent a comprehensive redesign at the hands of Sapient, a marketing services company. The site now uses strong editorial and page layout to give every page a front-page feel.

How can a multimedia and online-focused publication be so successful in South Africa, a market in which Internet and broadband access are still relatively limited and telecommunications’ costs are excruciating? Matthew Buckland, publisher of Mail & Guardian (M&G) Online, explains how his newspaper used these obstacles to its own advantage.

The Daily Mirror has redesigned its website to increase use of videos and user-generated content, as well as emphasize popular categories such as sport, news and entertainment coverage.