End of week round-up of online journalism news

Is Video the solution to online advertising woes?

Good news from the States – news organisations there are seeing an increase in traffic and revenue from video advertising.

According to a report in the New York Times, highlighted by Betsey Reignsborough on editorsweblog, many publications and broadcasters are leaning more heavily on video reportage on their websites, creating more opportunities for advertisements.

Advertisers are becoming more willing to buy space on videos rather than just on static pages because of the increase in traffic as well as the ability to use dynamic advertising, reports Reignsborough.

Readers have indicated that they are more willing to click play on a video then read a whole article, she continues and sites are posting more video footage to keep up with the demand for video advertising space.

She cautions that there is controversy over "autoplay" - videos that begin playing automatically as soon as the web page has loaded – which means that a viewer did not press play and is not necessarily watching the video.

This, she says, tallies up totals of video streaming without legitimacy.

Students launch hyperlocal news site

Meanwhile holdthefrontpage has covered news that MA Online Journalism students at Birmingham City University have set up a new hyperlocal website focusing on news from around central Birmingham.

The multimedia site, Hashbrum.co.uk, features maps and slideshows in its coverage of the news.

Editor Andrew Brightwell told the website: "I think we see it as a way to learn about how online news can engage and be informed by its audience.

"So we're interested in experimenting in ways of finding, creating and presenting news. We've tried to have some fun with the way that we've covered stories.

"I can't say exactly how it will develop, but I hope it evolves a life of its own, in a sense.

"By this I mean that it'd be really successful if we feel that much of the news we're creating is being led and developed by the site's audience."

Top 50 Journo Blogs

Finally, the US website Journalism Journeyman has released a list of the 50 best journalism blogs.

The list has been divided into various categories, including citizen journalism, school-supported and new media focused. See if your favourites made the cut here.

News alerts: keeping audiences coming back for more

Newspapers maybe missing out if they don’t make full use of alerts and tools, especially when it comes to exclusive materials, argues Dorian Benkoil of Poynter Online.

He uses the example of the Times’ story of tennis player Andre Agassi’s autobiography - in which he admitted to the use of the drug crystal meth - of which they would then be publishing exclusive excerpts.

Because the Times did not have an alert system (using, say, Twitter or Facebook), which would have encouraged Benkoil to go back to the excerpts when they went live, he eventually started checking Google news and the Guardian, and didn’t return to the original source for some weeks.

This, he argues, is a missed opportunity that could lose newspapers valuable page views, advertising and other opportunities, stating that this is backed up by masses of Web analytics data.

Every little impediment, says Benkoil, is an opportunity for a visitor to leave, go somewhere else, forget they can get what they want from you.

Over time, he adds, that means the loss of real money and all the other metrics people like to use, such as "stickiness" and "engagement."

He continues by saying that if The Times had offered the chance to be alerted when the excerpts were published, not only would they have had his subsequent page views (and ad impressions), they would have had his contact info and valuable information about his interests.

Benkoil suggests that every site should have sharing apps, like the AddThis module at the bottom of the Agassi story that links to dozens of social networking and bookmarking options, amongst many other apps.

But, he concludes, publishers also need to tailor their links and offerings as much as possible.

Sometimes, he says, that will mean human intervention, such as a smart editor saying, "Hey, we've got the Agassi excerpts, they'll be big, so let's make it easy for everyone to find them and get alerted to them."

This will also increase the ability of new Semantic Web applications to place relevant alerts and adverts alongside them and it should be as easy as possible for someone to find what they are looking for on the publication’s site.

Execs: Are your readers as loyal as you think?

If your readers can’t access your newspaper content online, don’t be so sure that they will come back to your print product.

That is the stark warning arising from a study by the American Press Institute on the attitudes of newspaper executives to digital content, highlighted by Professor Alfred Hermida on his Reportr.net blog.

According to Professor Hermida, the study (PDF) shows a shocking disconnect between the attitudes of executives and those of readers.

75% of execs thought that readers would return to the print product is they could not access the newspaper content online, in sharp contrast to only 30% of readers who said they would return to print.

68% of readers said they would actually go to other websites if their local newspaper website was no longer available.

The findings are all the more relevant, says Professor Hermida, given the current debate about locking content behind paywalls.

The API study found that nearly 60 percent of execs were considering charging for news, with 25% expected to start doing this in the next six months.

It also gave clear recommendations to execs considering putting content behind such a paywall, saying:

“For paid content to succeed, it must go well beyond repurposed print content and old models. Audiences are most likely to pay for unique content that is not available elsewhere for free. Fully paid blocks of repurposed local area newspaper content have not proven to be a significant revenue source for news websites that have tried this strategy.”

Professor Hermida argues that if a news organisation is going to consider charging for content, it needs to view it from the perspective of the audience.

The value of news and information is not determined by execs in a newsroom/boardroom, says Professor Hermida, rather, the value is determined by the audience.

Berlin Wall project: a lesson in multimedia?

If you have been watching coverage of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, chances are you may have seen the multimedia project by City University graduates that they have dubbed "a documentary on online journalism".

As reported on journalism.co.uk, the Berlin Project, which was launched on the 5th November, plans to provide 7 days of initial coverage (till the 12th November) using a variety of tools, including audio service Audioboo, Twitter and mobile video service Qik.

The article states how the project will assess how free services can be used to create, consume and distribute multimedia reports.

The project has been partnered by Reuters who, according to team leader Alex Wood, have been using the team to cover more unusual stories surrounding the anniversary in a range of media.
The team previously collaborated to provide coverage of the G20 summit protests in April using Twitter and Qik.

G20 Live attracted more than 80,000 unique users to a site only built the night before, but the Berlin Project will be about more than using mobile and mixed media for journalism, said Wood.

"It's about connecting the dots [between different mediums]. It's all about context rather than just content," he added, explaining that how a reader of viewer watches the team's work will inform their choice of tool and medium for covering an event. The quality of video streaming offered by Qik, for example, would be used to cover events that might be watched back on mobile.

Think of it as a documentary on online journalism. For online journalism the rules aren't written, so we're trying a different thing."

Interestingly, the team have kept navigational features to a minimum in order to allow users to 'get lost' and discover new reports and features. Content will also be published on Facebook and Reuters.

Social Media: selling to your "friends"

A new survey has indicated that social networking sites could be the best medium to advertise your brand, according to a report on the Shaping the Future of Newspapers Blog.

They cite a survey reported on by BtoB Online and Mediaweek that reveals that social media users are open to marketing on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

The survey found that thirty-four percent of respondents used a search engine to find a product or brand online after seeing an ad on a social networking site, and 46 percent said they would recommend or talk about a product on Facebook.

Meanwhile, 44 percent said they have already done so on Twitter, according to the survey, conducted in partnership with ROI Research.

Scott Haiges, president of ROI Research, told Mediaweek: "Brands have a bigger opportunity than people would think - consumers are open to receiving promotions and offers from brands that they've connected with through social networks.

"Social networking between a consumer and a brand has created this interesting dynamic where you're making a brand your friend and you're treating like a friend."

The survey was conducted online, with 3,000 people responding.

It may be digital journalism, but is it good journalism?

While newspaper sites experiment with new technology and new ways to generate revenue, it is always good to step back and take stock of what works and what doesn’t.

How do we define whether any of [digital media] is good or not asks Mark Briggs on his Journalism 2.0 blog. It is great to get started, but how do you maintain the quality of your digital products?

Briggs chaired a panel discussion recently at the National College Media Conference in Austin, Texas, where this issue was tackled.

The panel featured Gary Chapman, director of The 21st Century Project at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, the graduate school of public policy at the University of Texas at Austin, Bryan Murley, director for innovation, Center for Innovation in College Media, and assistant professor, Eastern Illinois University and James Wickett, general manager, Community Impact Newspapers, a growing hyperlocal publisher based in Austin.

Briggs stated that all three agreed that a sense of urgency was needed in defining what’s good in digital journalism.

According to Chapman: “Journalists need to discover their sense of mission. Otherwise it’s just going to be a bunch of cats flushing toilets.”

He continued by describing that even as methods for sending and receiving communication are changing rapidly, the “continuum of information isn’t going to change”. He suggested that journalists are still not using analytics as effectively as they should be and recommended more effort be focused on them.

Wickett added that it was important to split the media from the medium and not to write-off print products, saying there was still a place for it. His company is print based but has a growing digital presence.

According to Briggs, Murley provided the closest thing to a rigid definition for quality, suggesting that technical merits on multimedia and additional components to a package (timelines, maps, etc.) can help steer us toward a standard definition and a goal to shoot for.

Briggs finished the panel discussion with a short slide show presentation on how to take a practical approach back to a newsroom for standards in defining what’s good.

Build your own iPhone app

With the Manchester Evening News launching its own iPhone app, other newspapers may be considering their own next move in attracting wider audiences.

A report by Business Week has highlighted how easy it now is to follow in the MEN's footsteps. For those who are tech-savvy, there are dozens of guides on how to create your own iPhone app on Youtube.

But what do you do if you're not so confident?

According to Business Week, there has been a new crop of services to help non-techies and those who may have concerns about quality, distribution and security of DIY methods, to create their very own iPhone app, no matter what business they're in.

Led by the likes of Swebapps.com and MyAppBuilder.com, they can help create the apps often in less time and for less money than it would for the company to develop the app from scratch.

Clients could create downloadable games, travel guides, quizzes, blog feeds and, as with the MEN, breaking news headlines, sometimes as simply as by plugging specs into online templates.

Business Week describes how the already expanding market for these apps is likely to grow at a faster pace. It states how the number of apps downloaded through the likes of the Apple App store and Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows Marketplace for Mobile may surge to 18.7 billion in 2014, from about 491 million at the end of 2008, according to consultant Ovum. That may result in sales of nealry £3.5 billion in 2014, up from over £222 million last year, Ovum says.

(via cybersoc.com)

Linking overload: how newspapers still haven’t got it right

News sites now average around 450 links on their homes pages compared to the meagre 12 they offered 10 years ago, reports the Guardian.

According to an article that Nick Bilton, lead researcher for the New York Times, has written for Wired magazine, the average news website has 335 story or section links on their homepage compared to four to six stories on the front page and maybe eight to 10 references to other stories in the average UK or US newspaper.

Speaking to the website, Bilton said: "It is a fascinating fact is that if you go online and visit 200 web pages in one day - which is a simple task when you could email, blogs, youtube etc - you'll see on average 490,000 words; War & Peace was only 460,000 words."

“We're showing people online 300 more options on one page than we show them in print. And we wonder why people have information overload of content."

According to the Guardian report, its own starting page confronts the reader with 1,941 words, 350 individual links and 1,222 linked words.

The Mirror Group has the most intensified use of links, with nearly as many linked words as total words on the homepage 1,182 v 1,117 or 94%.

The Sun's website displays, with 578, the highest number of individual links, and the homepage of the Daily Mail features the highest number of words with 5,447 words compared with the BBC News site's 879 words.

The Guardian also points out how external linking still remains poor, as was highlighted by the Nieman Journalism Lab back in March.

"The link economy works if you're going to offer something rich to the page but just random links to random stories in the hopes that people will click is not fair to the consumer.", says Bilton.

Facebook tip-off leads to front-page story

A regional daily newspaper is celebrating after a tip-off on their Facebook page led to a front-page splash this week, reports holdthefrontpage.co.uk

The tip-off was posted on the North West Evening Mail’s page, set up by reporter Amy Fenton, by one of the group’s 2000 ‘friends’, saying a body had been found on a Barrow Street.

This meant that the CN Group-owned paper was first on the scene, giving them the front page story, along with pictures and video footage.

Whilst some newspaper groups ban their journalists from looking at the social networking site, Fenton has been encouraging as many of her colleagues as possible to use it, saying that the Facebook page has generated countless stories.

She has also visited sister newspapers in the CN group to give a presentation on the site and how it can be used as a journalistic tool.

Speaking to Holdthefrontpage she said: "Using Facebook is a great way to source stories, get contacts and receive tip-offs."

Deputy editor Phil Pearson added: "Through her own initiative Amy has shown everyone in our newsroom, and across the group, what a multimedia operation can achieve.

"She has embraced Facebook as a source of news and used it as a great way of communicating and interacting with our readers. Her work has benefited both our website and the paper. She has made our operation more immediate and relevant."

Manchester Evening News launches iPhone app

The Manchester Evening News (MEN) has become the first regional news publisher to launch an iPhone application, reports journalism.co.uk.

Readers will be able to follow headline stories in categories such as news, business and showbiz, as well as dedicated sections for Manchester United and Manchester City.

According to the MEN, more that 1,000 users have downloaded the application since it was created earlier this month.

The MEN already has a mobile website but says that this new app will provide an enhanced service for iPhone users, as well as allowing them to share stories on Facebook and Twitter.

Users can also download stories to be read offline later.

iPhone users can get the application from the App Store on their device, by searching for Manchester Evening News and iPod Touch users can get it from iTunes.

A short video of the app, developed by Spreed Inc - who also created Canadian newspaper the Globe and Mail's iPhone app - can be seen on YouTube