Sep 8th, 2006 | Media 2.0, Reimagination | No Comments
Catching up on some links I meant to post over the summer, the Economist had a piece about how newspapers aren’t doing as much to remake themselves and adapt to life with the Web and new media as they should be. The subtitle is “Newspapers are making progress with the internet, but most are still too timid, defensive or high-minded.” Here’s an excerpt:
Even the most confident of newspaper bosses now agree that they will survive in the long term only if, like Schibsted, they can reinvent themselves on the internet and on other new-media platforms such as mobile phones and portable electronic devices. Most have been slow to grasp the changes affecting their industry—“remarkably, unaccountably complacent,” as Rupert Murdoch put it in a speech last year—but now they are making a big push to catch up. Internet advertising is growing rapidly for many and is beginning to offset some of the decline in print.
Sep 8th, 2006 | Media 2.0, Reimagination | 1 Comment
A friend passed on this link, which is to an article at The Bivings Report website on things newspapers can do to improve the interactivity of their websites. The site gets its name from a report that surveyed the major U.S. papers and what they are doing in terms of the web — the report is described here and you can download the full thing here. Interestingly, 80 out of 100 papers had blogs and 63 of that 80 allowed comments. A little over 75 per cent of the papers surveyed had RSS feeds, although they were partial (i.e. not the full text of articles). The suggestions include offering full-text articles in RSS, partnering with local bloggers and getting rid of registration.
Sep 8th, 2006 | Reimagination, Social Media | No Comments
In a recent piece in the Online Journalism Review, Rob Miller — longtime operator of a community forum and website devoted to open-source software, and one of the senior editors at the popular Digg-style tech site Slashdot — gives some worthwhile tips on how to run a good online community. His first tip, interestingly enough, is that comments should be threaded and not flat (something we talked about with our comments). His other rules include “Your readers know more than you do” and “Let your readers judge each other so you don’t have to judge them yourself.”
Sep 8th, 2006 | Media 2.0, Reimagination | No Comments
As referred to in the post below, the Telegraph believes web-paper integration is just part of the changes that need to be made to adapt, as CEO Murdoch MacLennan describes in this Guardian article (registration required). Here’s an excerpt:
“Some aspects of our news operation have not altered significantly in decades,” Mr MacLennan said. “The competition - not just from our traditional print rivals - is changing, growing and becoming fiercer. Readers are migrating online, and advertisers are following them. People are demanding customised news, wherever and whenever they want it. We have to adapt to these realities, or face a future of decline which goes to the very heart of our business,” he said.
“Everyone in the media - print, broadcast and online, national and regional - faces a tough and uncertain future as digital technology creates a myriad of new ways for our customers to receive their news, and also changes forever the way it is gathered, processed and transmitted,” Mr MacLennan said.
Sep 8th, 2006 | Media 2.0, Reimagination, Social Media | No Comments
The Guardian’s media section had a story recently that talked about some of the changes at the Financial Times and the Telegraph (registration required). Here’s an excerpt:
Rona Fairhead, Pearson’s former finance director, who took over the running of the FT Group in June, is carrying out a wide-ranging review of the newspaper and its website [and] is examining new business plans and whether to follow the lead of other newspapers and stop charging for access to parts of the FT.com website. There is growing belief among the management, however, that the FT would be better off distancing itself from the head-long charge into free news by retaining some form of charging.
The CEO of Telegraph Group also talked about how there would be some “redundancies” as the Brits like to say, as a result of web-paper integration and moving to a new office.
“As we have recently seen at the Financial Times, the integration of print and online inevitably produces considerable scope for reducing duplication of effort and for simplifying the editorial production processes,” said Telegraph Group chief executive Murdoch MacLennan. Mr MacLennan said the daily newspaper’s business section would be the first to switch to the new 24-hour digital newsroom. Other departments will start transferring at end of the month with the company aiming to complete the move in November.
And while we’re on the subject, Guardian editor Roy Greenslade has some thoughts about web-paper integration and those “redundancies” (which apparently mostly involve copy editors) in his blog.
