Readers and editors’ views on journalists participating in online discussions on local news websites are split, according to new research from the Associated Press Managing Editors (APME).
When questioned on the benefits of ‘journalists joining the conversation online and giving personal views’, 50% of the 500 readers surveyed said this would be ’somewhat or very beneficial to good journalism online’.
In comparison only 27% of the 1,250 newsroom editors interviewed felt the same way.
Figures from the study suggest, however, that both groups support of local news sites opening up stories to user comments. Editors were more in favour than readers of users contributing under their real name.
The two groups also agreed when asked whether the same standards applied to online news written by journalists should be applied to citizen journalism content with 74% of the readers and 69% of the editors saying this would benefit online journalism.
The complete findings of the survey can be read on the APME website.
Tags: Associated Press, online discussions, Online Journalism, online news
Kristine Lowe is a freelance journalist who writes on the media industry for number of US, UK and Norwegian publications. Today Online Journalism Scandinavia looks again at news sites linking to blogs.
Dagbladet.no, the online operation of Norway’s second biggest tabloid, has become the latest Scandinavian news site to use Twingly to show blog links to articles on the site.
Dagladet.no has been experimenting with Twingly since October last year, but last week announced that Twingly would now become the standard across the site.
However, the online newspaper said that articles dealing with very sensitive issues - those concerning murder, suicide and death - would not not have the technology applied to them.
“Our experiences with Twingly so far are very positive. There are so many interesting things happening in the blogosphere, and we think it is important that our readers can converse in their own rooms and extend the debate about our articles there,” Mina Hauge Naerland, a journalist involved with the implementation, told Journalism.co.uk.
“It’s also very interesting for us to be able to follow those conversations, it helps us improve our journalism.”
Politiken.dk, the news site of one of Denmark’s leading newspapers, started using Twingly a month ago, and the online operations of two of Sweden’s most influential newspapers, Svenska Dagbladet and Dagens Nyheter, have used Twingly for about a year.
Tags: Dagens Nyheter, Denmark, Journalism.co.uk, Kristine Lowe, media industry, Mina Hauge Naerland, news site, Norway, online newspaper, online operation, online operations, Scandinavian news site, Svenska Dagbladet, Sweden, United Kingdom, United StatesThe Guardian is working on a project to monitor user interaction with their website more closely.
This ‘attention data’ will then be reflected in content and community areas of the site, Tom Turcan, general manager and head of digital media development at the Guardian, told Journalism.co.uk.
Turcan would not be drawn on specifics of the plan, but said the project would involve social media firm Pluck – whose SiteLife technology is to be introduced to the community areas of Guardian.co.uk later this year.
“The principle of tracking how people use things and then reflecting it back on the site is a way to build community,” he said.
Most recommended/most e-mailed lists are basic examples of how the analysis may be used, said Turcan, but emphasis will be placed on representing ‘crowd wisdom’ in a ‘bespoke’ form.
Turcan was speaking on a panel discussing news on social networks, during which he announced the following figures for Guardian.co.uk (they are all per month):
Tags: digital media development, Guardian.co.uk, Journalism.co.uk, Pluck, SiteLife technology, social media, social networks, The Guardian, Tom Turcan
- 2 million podcasts downloaded
- 0.5 - 1 million videos viewed
- 2 million RSS clicks
- 50,000 blog posts
According to data released by Newspaper Association of America and compiled by Nielsen Online, the online readership of US newspapers grew about 6 per cent last year.
Online reach of newspapers grew to 38 per cent of all active online users, up from 36 percent in 2006.
Newspapers had an average of 60 million unique US visitors per month in 2007, up from 56.4 million the year before.
Tags: active online users, America, Newspaper Association of America, online audience, Online reach, online readership, United States, YahooAccording to the site, Facebook apps will soon be easier to embed on external websites. But how can news organisations direct users from the social network to their sites?
Tags: social networkDon’t hide editorial between ads and spam - readers don’t have to read on, says Robert Niles.
Tags: Robert NilesComScore has collated figures that suggest foreign visitors outnumber UK readers on several of the UK’s leading news websites.
According to the Guardian, the Daily Mail leads the way with the most overseas users with 69 per cent coming from outside these shores.
Just over half Telegraph.co.uk users (57 per cent) were from outside the UK, a similar figure to Guardian Unlimited (56 per cent) and Times Online (55 per cent).
Tags: Guardian Unlimited, Telegraph.co.uk, The Guardian, United KingdomLatest figures from the Newspaper Association of America (NAA)show the number of unique visitors to US newspaper sites rose more than 6 per cent to a monthly average of 60 million.
Tags: America, Newspaper Association of America, United States
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