Lampertina's Favorite Links on newspapers from Diigo

New breed of 'net newsers' shape US media habits, says Pew report | Media | guardian.co.uk

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 15:55:09 -0000

Jemima Kiss writes about the recent Pew report that describes how "well-educated, technically-savvy young web users are shaping the media habits of the US, with one in 20 Americans saying they do not watch TV on a typical day and a sharp decline in newspaper readership, according to new research."

Interesting findings on education levels and TV-watching *and* interest (lack thereof) in science and technology, too.

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

The research also found that the proportion of young people in the US getting no daily news has increased from 25% in 1998 to 34%, with only 10% of people using social networking sites for their news.

More than 40% of this traditionalist group are unemployed, and were found to prefer visual news stories to audio and have little interest in science or technology news.

A further 14% are described as "disengaged", a poorly-educated group with little interest in current affairs.

However, TV is still the most popular medium for the US, with 46% of the public classified as "traditionalists" who watch throughout the day, but are likely to be older and less well educated than net newsers.

The research paints a picture of steady decline in the US newspaper industry, with the percentage of Americans who regularly read print titles falling from 58% in 1993 to 34% in 2008.

According to the long-running survey, respondents saying they listened to radio news fell from 47% to 35% over the same period. As for network TV, the national news dropped from 60% to 29% and local news from 77% to 52%.

They do favour some traditional media brands, including the New Yorker, The Atlantic and the BBC, the Pew survey of 3,600 adults found. But only 47% watch TV news on an average day.

Net newsers are typically affluent and 80% are graduates, making them a highly desirable demographic for advertisers.

"net newsers" - web users under 35 who read more political blogs than watch national news coverage, rely heavily on web-based news during the day and have a strong interest in technology and technology news.

A new generation of well-educated, technically-savvy young web users are shaping the media habits of the US, with one in 20 Americans saying they do not watch TV on a typical day and a sharp decline in newspaper readership, according to new research.

Tags: newspapers television media news the_guardian

Posted by: lampertina

Reflections of a Newsosaur: Getting local coverage in gear

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 07:43:49 -0000

Wow, lots of excellent suggestions in this blog post, and nice discussion of how the newspapers aren't covering the local news AT ALL.

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

What do I do with all this news? Put it on my web site as a zone section.

I'd hate to be a newspaper editor today, but if I were. . .

Instead of spending time bemoaning how my owners are going to kill my paper, I'd make real sure that the people on my staff were covering news relevant to the communities where subscribers live.

I'd fire a third of the editors and convert another third of them to being reporters and give them a laptop. I'd send all my reporters home with a laptop. I would tell each of them his beat is now a circle with a radius of 12 blocks and the center of the circle is his house. I want to know everything that happens within those 12 blocks.

So, if I don't get my national and international news from the Post, and the paper makes no attempt to cover anything about where I live and work, then why should I subscribe to a newspaper that is not relevant to my life?

It gets worse. The Rocky Mountain News, the Post’s partner in the Denver joint-operating agency, pretty much hews to the same line as the Post in regard to what gets covered. I read the same stories in both newspapers.

To the credit of the Post and Rocky, they have tried some zoning (both print and Web) using “citizen” journalists, but the stories are what you’d expect: warm and fuzzy feature stories.

The sections fell into disfavor and disappeared – and all the good LOCAL stuff that readers wanted also disappeared.

Zone sections were an invention of the ad departments, which were convinced that if you offered a small business an ad that didn't have to go ROP, they would buy in.

We filled them with all the stuff that readers were interested in but couldn't find anyplace else: births, deaths, divorces, marriages, anniversaries, engagements, school-lunch menus, school calendars, zoning hearings, local city council meetings and meetings of the subcommittees, school news, lots of prep sports, features and “business of the week” profiles. We crammed in as much as possible. It was all relevant to readers because it happened in their neighborhoods or suburbs.

I define "local" news as the type we use to see in zone sections.

I can't get local news online.

Denver metros can't (or won't) take the steps necessary to report the news in their own backyards. And local news is the only thing they have to sell.

Tags: newsosaur local_news newspapers business_model

Posted by: lampertina

Lobdell's OC: 42 things I know

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 18:05:45 -0000

William Lobdell's entry about leavng the Los Angeles Times after 18 years of working there, and his list of 42 things he knows re the newspaper industry (and its moribund state).

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

You could combine all these different blogs/websites under the www.latimes.com banner, but make it simple for readers to navigate to the sites they want to become attached/devoted to.

I’d take the very talented journalists I had and develop a SERIES of websites that provided the best information for that beat/subject matter. The Web is all about niches. The Times, for instance, could have the premiere sites for every professional and college sports team in Southern California. It could be THE place to turn to for news on City Hall, Los Angeles Unified School District, and Los Angeles Police Department. Not to mention Southern California environmental issues, LAX and the coast.

If I were publisher, I'd have a clear mission statement for The Times' editorial department (if you ask 100 journalists at The Times about their mission, you'd likely get 100 different answers).

The Times could extend its lifespan significantly with some innovative leadership in sales.
If I were publisher (a job I wouldn't take, thank you), I’d explore a partnership with Google or, more realistically, Yahoo or another proven Internet company that would combine news gathering and advertising forces.

First, the editorial department. We operated as though we had a monopoly on truth and great journalism for far too long. We didn't listen to our critics and sometimes our readers. That cost us.

Entrepreneurs — for example, Kevin Rose at Digg — have developed news sites in just a few years that have drawn far more readers than the Los Angeles Times. Digg doesn't feature original content, but The Times (and other newspapers) could have added a Digg element to its site.

The idea that your daily news is collected, written, edited, paginated, printed on dead trees, put in a series of trucks and cars and delivered on your driveway — at least 12 hours stale — is anachronistic in 2008.

the business model for newspapers is broken.

Tags: william_lobdell newspapers

Posted by: lampertina

What's really killing newspapers: They're no longer the best providers of social currency. - By Jack Shafer - Slate Magazine

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:56:49 -0000

Shafer's subtitle says it all, "[Newspapers are] no longer the best providers of social currency." What's "social currency"? It's "the information we acquire and then trade—or give away—to start, maintain, and nurture relationships with our fellow humans."

In other words, it's no longer relevant to your interaction with friends and co-workers and other citizens whether or not you've all read the same newspaper that morning. There is other social currency that's more valuable, more interesting, more useful -- as currency.

In that sense, the "news" is secondary to "currency" / "value." It seems that newspapers need to figure out -- if they can, if it's possible -- how to leverage currency, not news.

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

the decline of newspapers has nothing to do with journalism and everything to do with the changing world.

Right! don't blame the bloggers (citizen journalists) or whomever; it's the structures/ contexts posted by lampertina

A well-executed Facebook presence, like a superb pontification at the bar or a great phone-in to sports talk radio, demonstrates one's status within one's existing social network.

- see last note (above): you (consumer) aren't just getting social currency by spending what you bought at the newspaper; you get it by creating your own, which also means that the creation of currency is distributed. Widely. posted by lampertina

to read a newspaper and then keep your trap shut is to miss the point: Newspapers are designed to be read and argued over. You've got to spend social currency to make social currency.

Well, and perhaps there's the rub: the places where you can "spend" your currency (and also create more currency yourself) have become distributed. That is, it used to be that newspapers were the one-stop shop you went to for acquisition of currency, which you then spent, and in the spending, compounded. But now you can acquire currency in several places, and furthermore, your "spending habits" have changed: they're distributed now. posted by lampertina

Even folks who don't care for sports skimmed the sports pages for a little something about the games and athletes so they could engage in essential small-talk.

- "currency" posted by lampertina

And the newspaper isn't the only media hub suffering in the new era. Radio, which once served a similar social role with its menu of music, news, and talk, is plummeting.

Other institutions do far better jobs at issuing social currency these days.

Newspapers thrived, in part, because reading just one edition provided only a few cents' worth of social currency. Compounding your earnings requires that you read the damn thing nearly every day. Ignore a couple of issues, and you get left behind.

the social currency found in a newspaper has a relatively short shelf life.

news can "be used in a variety of interpersonal situations—to look smart, connect with friends and family and even move up the socio-economic ladder" and "maintain relationships."

the sniffer could learn reams about his social contact.

By sniffing the bits of social currency an acquaintance had withdrawn from the pages of his daily and was trying to cash

nothing could beat the newspaper as a source for socially lubricating conversation. How many times have you heard a conversation start, "Didja see that article ..."?

Not that long ago, the daily newspaper was an indispensable coiner of social currency, and it gave its readers piles of the stuff in each edition. The phrase, which comes from sociology, is often used to describe the information we acquire and then trade—or give away—to start, maintain, and nurture relationships with our fellow humans.

Tags: jack_shafer slate_magazine newspapers media

Posted by: lampertina

…My heart’s in Accra » The changing newsroom: good, bad and ugly

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 21:23:55 -0000

Ethan Zuckerman on the forces at work in the changing newsroom.

Tags: ethan_zuckerman newspapers local_news

Posted by: lampertina

How do we fund journalism in future? | Greenslade | Guardian Unlimited

Sat, 03 May 2008 01:12:49 -0000

Roy Greenslade reporting from a "future of journalism" conference in Australia, asking after 'the business model' for newspapers / journalism of the future. He mentions Jay Rosen, who joined the conference via satellite hook-up, and this in turn sparks some interesting conversation on the comments board (particularly by Rosen himself).

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

said, more than once: "I have no commercial aspirations whatsoever". Instead, his concern is to uncover the social value, rather than the financial value, of participatory journalism.

- see Rosen's rebuttal/ clarification in comments posted by lampertina

To me it's the wrong question if you want to find a way to pay reporters. We have to start further back in the inquiry: how do we create editorial value online, using the strengths of the Web?

Furthermore, I haven't noticed that the people who jump up and down, shouting, "where's the business model? where's the bloody business model?" are moving any closer to a working business model. Have you? Realistically, it seems to me we are at a place when there is no business model for news right now. Too often, "where's the business model?" isn't really a discerning question, but a club with which to beat the Internet.

However, I knew going in that "open source" reporting projects aren't--realistically--going to be money-makers because we are still at the stage of trying to figure out whether it's even viable to do this kind of pro-am journalism. We need to know what the puzzles and problems and practical challenges are. It's far better for our developing knowledge if we do not burden the experiment with commercial goals and targets that may not apply.

Having studied the press and the history of the public sphere over a 300 year stretch, I know how critical marketplace success has been in securing a free, independent and powerful press. Those who went into the business of providing information have been pushing the development of the press along for hundreds of years. It was true in the eighteenth century; it's true today.

takes us back to the main question: who will fund them? I don't buy Cokley's entrepreneurial idea. I like the idea of philanthropy but I know it's idealist. I think advertising will still raise a lot of money, enough to fund small staffs. It still may not be enough.

Jay Rosen

John Cokley, a journalism lecturer at the University of Queensland, in accepting that situation, urged journalists to do much more to market their work, to understand the demand and then discover a business model to fund it.

"I can't see a funding model for serious journalism in future, not one that will pay for large staffs with specialists, and foreign correspondents and stringers, everywhere. I can't see ads paying for big operations that costs tens of millions of dollars. Websites can attract millions but not the necessary tens of millions."

The key question that cropped up throughout was about whether journalism can be funded if newspapers - or broadcasters - collapse due to the loss of advertising revenue.

Tags: greenslade the_guardian journalism business_model newspapers

Posted by: lampertina

Study finds gap between editors and readers in ground rules for online conversations - MIT TechReview

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 06:04:06 -0000

Fascinating study regarding the discrepancies between what MSM professionals believe and what its reading public believes. The latter think that anonymous comments are ok; that journalists/ authors participating in online conversations with readers is ok; and that expressions of personal views by journalists are ok. The 'professionals' believe the exact opposite. Hmmm.

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Editors and readers also agreed on the desirability of depth, such as links to content published elsewhere and databases or other information visitors can explore on their own.

''There's some indication that readers are looking for something more online. Whether it's information about our expertise, our knowledge, our background, I'm not really sure.''

Some 70 percent of editors surveyed said requiring commenters to disclose their identities would support good journalism, while only 45 percent of the public did. Similarly, 58 percent of editors said letting journalists join online conversations and give personal views would harm journalism, but only 36 percent of the public agreed.

Online Journalism Credibility Study released Tuesday by the Associated Press Managing Editors group and the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri

Newspaper readers agree with editors on the basics of what makes good journalism, but they are more apt to want looser rules for online conversations, a new study on news credibility has found.

Tags: mit_techreview socialmedia socialtheory conversations media

Posted by: lampertina

Huh? As fortune declines, newspaper readership rises - Crosscut Seattle

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 01:50:24 -0000

Great article by Douglas McLennan (of http://www.artsjournal.com/). I've had this open in a browser tab since the end of February -- postponing bookmarking it because I felt I needed to annotate it / comment on it appropriately. But now I'm bookmarking it with just one bit of advice: just read the article, especially if you're interested in newspapers and news media.

The issue McLennan addresses? From the lead-in to the article: "More people are reading newspapers than ever before — on the Web. Yet publishers in Seattle and elsewhere continue to lament their decline. Why are they failing to capitalize on all these new eyeballs?"

Figure it out, Mr or Ms Newspaperperson.

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

These things (and many more) have combined to poison the business. Meanwhile, social networks have amassed millions of users, and prominent bloggers have begun making so much money that they're madly hiring editors and reporters and winning awards. Some "small" editorial operations now have more daily readers than The New York Times.

- be nice to figure out how that's happening; aside from say, Huffington Post and blogs of that size/ influence, are there really many (any?) making "so much money"? posted by lampertina

And all that lip service about how newspapers want to listen to their readers? Not really true. Sure, comments sections have given readers places to vent, but what newspapers are actually treating their readers as communities to be interacted with rather than loud voices demanding to be heard? What's interesting about that?

- how true, as I noticed via my recent participation in a "sound off" -- it's way too easy to lose your voice, and the many-second delay confounds having an actual conversation... posted by lampertina

As the paper's content has degraded, the perception of it in the community is one of declining influence and quality.

...a scenario repeated all over North America... posted by lampertina

At a time when Internet advertising can get ads to readers with incredible accuracy, why aren't newspapers on board? Last week, several newspaper companies announced a new ad network. This is only eight years late in happening, and it's not at all clear how this new network is going to make things better.

A local example: Here in Seattle, art galleries don't advertise in the local papers. Why? It's way too expensive, and it's probably not hitting the art-buying audience. Yet the popular online visual art blog of the P-I's art critic, Regina Hackett, is a place where the city's visual arts community increasingly logs in every day. Make the ads cheap enough, and galleries would be clamoring to buy space. The paper's Microsoft blog and venture capital blog have substantial, highly-sought-after audiences, yet the paper doesn't look to be even interested in attracting new advertisers for it. You don't think startups looking for funding wouldn't flock to the place where the VC's check in every day?

There are plenty of small businesses that would be micro-advertisers if the rates were right. And who has a bigger local audience online than the local newspaper? Traditional advertisers are falling away? Then start exploiting non-traditional advertisers. Hard to take newspaper execs seriously when they say they're trying everything they can to keep up their revenue. Meanwhile, they're not doing even what any savvy blogger can.

Let me focus on one area in some detail: ads. Say I want to advertise on the Web site of my local paper. How about those 2.2 million P-I readers? I go to the Web site. Look for how to do it. Not easy. I have to call someone, negotiate a deal. Can I advertise on the newspaper's blog that I know all my customers are reading? No. No one's advertising there. So how much will it cost? Not worth it to me.

Now go to any large blog. Next to every ad there's a link that says "advertise here." Click the link, you get rates, you can specify where it runs, and for how long. You can upload your ad online. If there's space, your ad can be up an hour from now. And the price drops if the space is under-utilized. Easy peasy.

Finally, most Web operations are seriously understaffed and technically deficient, making what should be even basic tasks difficult to impossible.

High-paid editors who ought to be spending their time on content spend their days snarled up in uploading images and navigating other technical mazes. Reporters and editors are pressed to add digital duties — blogs, podcasts, etc. — as add-ons to their "regular" jobs, instead of incorporating the digital world as essential tools that should make their ability to gather and tell stories and interact with their communities easier. This shouldn't add to the workload (but always seems to). Instead, these things ought to make reporting easier.

It's hard to take claims that newspapers are taking the Digital Age seriously when they have so under-invested to compete in it. Consider:

Most digital operations are seriously under-staffed and under-resourced. They don't employ even the basic traffic-building strategies that independents are using with great success.
Newspapers have declined to innovate as eBay, Craigslist, Monster.com, Google, and myriad ad networks have sprouted, thrived, and stolen customers.
Digg, Reddit, Newsvine, and others are experimenting with community selection of news, while newspapers pay little more than lip service to reader involvement.
Hundreds of small Web operations have sprung up to compete with traditional newspapers, while news organizations remain mired in old conventions.
Social networking has changed the way young people interact, yet newspapers have failed to meaningfully take the plunge.

Pretty much every online initiative in the traditional news industry has been me-too-ism rather than bold invention. The back-end digital news production structure at most newspapers is a mess. Many papers still bizarrely consider their online and paper versions separate operations.

Conventional wisdom says that newspapers are caught in a business model which doesn't support the changes to digital media, and despite huge efforts, the newspaper industry is in decline. Maybe there's no longer a place for traditional newspapers.

The conventional wisdom is crap.

Nobody's reading newspapers anymore.

And yet they are. And in record numbers. Look at this report in Editor & Publisher. The online audience is soaring, and here's the growth rate and numbers of unique readers for newspaper Web sites in January 2008:

NYTimes.com	20,461,000	45.1%
USAToday.com	12,314,000	19.4%
WashingtonPost.com	9,902,000	14.6%
WSJ.com	6,962,000	81.4%
LATimes.com	5,715,000	4.7%

Not only are these huge audiences, but the growth rates continue to be spectacular. By far, more people are reading newspapers than ever before. As just one example, scroll down the list to No. 16, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which has a Web audience of 2.2 million people per month. The P-I's print circulation, when it was considered healthy in the previous century, was in the low 200,000s.

Tags: crosscut newspapers seattle

Posted by: lampertina

Information Architects Japan » iA Notebook » The Future of News: How to Survive the New Media Shift

Sat, 23 Jun 2007 10:23:18 -0000

Tags: information_architecture media new_media_shift newspapers reference

Posted by: lampertina

Invisible Inkling » 10 obvious things about the future of newspapers you need to get through your head

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 07:58:24 -0000

Tags: invisible_inkling media newspapers reference

Posted by: lampertina