Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog » Finland

Taloussanomat: a case study in online-only newspapers – more from City University study

Laura Oliver — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 13:53:30 +0000

As reported on Journalism.co.uk Neil Thurman and Merja Myllylahti’s study into online-only newspapers has suggested that going online alone is unlikely to bring an ailing newspaper title back into profitability.

Focusing their research on Finnish financial news site Taloussanomat, which folded its print edition in December 2007 after 10 years of publication), the pair found the title had suffered a drop in unique users of 22 per cent in five months of being online-only.

A week’s newsroom observation, access to web traffic stats and financial information, and interviews with journalists at Taloussanomat give context to the statistics and a deeper insight into the psychological and cultural barriers still at work in the title’s transitional newsroom.

Thurman and Myllylhati in their research article have been careful to point out that their predictions for the wider news industry and online-only newspapers stem from specific examples, so I think it’s important to put our report on their findings into the same context with the information below.

Firstly, the stats on traffic changes after the paper went online only – what size was its web and print audiences previously?

Between 2001-2006 its daily print circulation fell from 88,000 to 72,000; over the same period it recorded a 1,180 per cent rise in weekly ‘visitors’ to its website;
It is the second most popular (in terms of traffic) financial news site in Finland;
The site posted an initial rise in visitors after going online-only and sustained this growth for five months until June 2008 when weekly visitor numbers began to fall (from 292,059 in June to 185,714 in July)
By October 2008 (10 months after closing the print edition) the site is recording page impression figures 97 per cent higher than the week before it went online-only;
But, as the research points out, neither the page impressions figure nor the number of weekly visitors has performed better than a title with a print counterpart.

Challenges in the newsroom

Metrics

Metrics, central to this study, have become increasingly important within Taloussanomat’s newsroom and work practices, according to the research;
Journalists are increasingly aware of how individual stories ‘perform’;
There is an added pressure to this: advertisers, who would previously spend with a title based on its performance as a whole, will now look to the performance of individual articles or site sections;
“The fact that we need high visitor numbers on the site is part of being an online newspaper, but it has an impact on the journalistic work. The positive side of it is that we know what stories people find interesting. The negative aspect is that the journalists also know that,” Hannu Sokala, editor for development and strategy, told the study;
Increasing awareness of metrics may also be driving a more consumer/populist news agenda on the site according to some journalists interviewed.

Working patterns:

Despite supporting the amount of space to fill and experiment with online, journalists at Taloussanomat were found to sticking to traditional print work patterns e.g. filling at 5pm, keeping stories the same length as in print, not innovating with use of multimedia;
Journalists were also largely deskbound within the newsroom – a result of cut resources and also a desire to ‘feed’ the website with more frequent updates and content;
Yet, the researchers also noted a reluctance amongst journalists to file breaking news in short-form ways, because they view it as ‘incomplete’;
A higher frequency of online stories had also increased the newsroom’s reliance on agency copy.

The study concludes:

“The online-only newspaper should be freer to exploit the potential of the online medium without the burden of legacy content from a print or broadcast parent. The reality this study found is that the online-only newspaper carries other burdens – financial and logistical – that counteract its advantages. The cumulative effect means killing the print edition does not immediately transform a title’s ability to produce interactive, nonlinear, multimedia content. Nor does it mean that staff are ready or willing to service new publishing platforms or readers’ expectations for multiple daily updates.”

It’s early days – Taloussanomat is one of the first titles to have ditched its print edition to go online-only. According to the study, the fact that unique users decreased folowing the switch shows ‘just how much the medium, rather than the content it carries, determines how news is consumed’.

Yet, as Juha-Pekka Raeste, editor-in-chief and CEO, remarks in the research, practices such as the increased ‘churning’ of copy are not a long-term solution. Instead Taloussanomat needs to focus on niche content and coverage, he adds.

It is clear Taloussanomat and other online new entrepreneurs have ideas about how editorial content can be adapt successfully to online – but can the necessary staff resources and revenues need to fund this be adapted in the same way?

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Live streaming from Norwegian journalism event

Judith Townend — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 12:50:25 +0000

There’s a live video from the Free Media conference at the Norwegian Institute of Journalism in Fredrikstad today, courtesy of Journalisten.no.

You can’t rewind the video but you could opt in at the points you want to (Norwegian time is one hour ahead UK time).

Here’s the programme:

Thursday November 6

10.00
Welcome: Trine Østlyngen, director, The Norwegian Institute of Journalism
Opening remarks: Håkon Gulbrandsen, State Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs

10.15
Strengthening media in the developing world - what does it take to ensure access for people living in poverty? Stephen King, director, BBC World Service Trust

11.15
The Muhammad Cartoons – an imagined clash of civilizations?
Opening remarks: Why I published – and how do I reflect upon my decision today? Flemming Rose, cultural editor, Jyllands-Posten
Panel discussion The caricatures as seen by the press around the world. Presentation of the new anthology summarizing the Muhammad cartoons controversy in several countries with Rose, Elisabeth Eide, researcher at Culcom, University of Oslo, and Risto Kunelius, professor and director of the journalism program at the University of Tampere, Finland
Moderator: Journalist and author Solveig Steien

14.00
Caucasus burning: The need for a free and independent media – and how to develop it? Danish SCOOP with support from International Media Support has started a program to help train journalists and develop media infrastructure in the Caucasus. The first national seminars were held last month in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. With Antti Kuusi, country coordinator, International Media Support; editor Boris Navasardian, Yerevan Press Club; and former Russia-correspondent Arne Egil Tønset, Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, who recently returned from a journey in the region. Moderator: Aage Borchgrevink , writer and advisor at the Norwegian Helsinki Committee

16.00
A Cameroonian journalist in exile: Philip Njaru and Jan Gunnar Furuly, SKUP/GIJC

Friday November 7

09.00
A thousand words – the camera as a tool. Well-known Iranian photographer Reza presents his “100 photos for press freedom”

09.45
Safety for journalists. A global overview. Sarah de Jong, Deputy Director and Project Manager INSI (International News Safety Institute).

10.30
Conflict-ridden Colombia: The role of the media
A journalist’s perspective: From death threats to a life in exile – reflections from Maria Cristina Caballero
Followed by a panel discussion where Jan Egeland, former UN Under-secretary general and the secretary general’s special adviser on Colombia, and NRK-journalist Sigrun Slapgard, will join. Moderator: Journalist and former Latin-America- correspondentHaakon Børde

11.30
Closing speech: Former presidential candidate and FARC-hostage Ingrid Betancourt

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BBC Editors: Use of graphic images in the Finnish shooting coverage

Laura Oliver — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 12:27:15 +0000

The BBC held back some of the YouTube footage of the Finnish gunman: were they right to do so?

Online Journalism Scandinavia: Here come the Web 2.0 docusoaps

Kristine Lowe — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 10:43:10 +0000

Swedes are getting so hooked on social media that for many web-crazy young things reality-TV has all but moved online.

Last night Twingly, the Swedish web company that supplies a blog trackback functionality to newspapers world-wide and last week launched its international spam free blog search engine Twingly.com, aired the first programme of its new reality-series on YouTube: The Summer of Code.

YouTube reality-show
“We have recruited four ambitious interns and given them six weeks to develop a visual search engine for blogs; Twingly Blogoscope,” said Martin Källström, CEO of Twingly.

“Everyone can follow what happens in the project via daily episodes on YouTube.”

The episodes will be uploaded Monday to Friday at 6 PM GMT (10 AM in San Francisco, 19:00 in Stockholm) and the first programme aired last night.

“Openness in this project is a way to show the daily life in the office,” said Källström.

“Generally people are not familiar with the stimulating working atmosphere in a start-up. Hopefully Twingly Summer of Code will inspire more people to join Twingly or other start-ups.”

Media increasingly about conversation
Last week, Twingly launched its search engine Twingly.com to track 30 million blogs all over the world.

Despite this global scope, Källström said Twingly will concentrate on being number one in Europe, working with several different European languages.

“Google has not improved its blog search for more than two years,” he told Journalism.co.uk.

The company has teamed up with newspapers in Spain, Portugal, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and South Africa, to show blog links to the news sites’ articles.

Källström added that his hope was for Twingly to be able to take on both Google and Technorati by providing more functionality and driving traffic to bloggers via its media partnerships.

“Media is more and more about the conversation between media and its readers. We see a very strong synergy between mainstream media and bloggers and try to provide a bridge that can improve this synergy,” he said.

Blogs have replaced docusoaps
Twingly’s target group for The Summer of Code will no doubt draw an audience of uber-geeks but a young Swedish reporter recently admitted she was addicted to a very different sort of ‘web docusoap’.

Madeleine Östlund, a reporter with the Swedish equivalent of Press Gazette, Dagens Media, claimed the country’s fashion blogs had replaced docusoaps (link in Swedish).

She confessed she found it increasingly difficult to live without her daily fix of intimate everyday details and gossip from the country’s high-profile fashion bloggers, a phenomenon Journalism.co.uk has described here.

“It is not their blogging about clothes that draws me in, rather it is the surprise and fascination with which I read about these young girls’ private lives. Surprise and fascination about how much they often reveal,” she wrote, citing posts about broken hearts, hospital stays, what they had for breakfast and descriptions of a caesarian birth.

Roll on the Web 2.0 docusoap about dashing media journalists, I say.

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Guardian: WAN 2008: Citizen journalism stalling in Scandinavia

Laura Oliver — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:42:25 +0000

Hyperlocal websites are thriving in Sweden and Finland, an industry conference heard today, but their success is not shared by citizen journalism projects.

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