PC World, among others, takes a look at ZDnet’s handling of serious allegations made against Yahoo – that the company had handed over account information for 200,000 Iranian bloggers to the Iranian government. Yahoo denied the claims and ZDNet has retracted the story in full, the Committe to Protect Bloggers reports.
As the report points out, the problems created by growing online audiences for legacy news organisations have been excerbated by a simultaneous economic collapse.
“Journalism, deluded by its profitability and fearful of technology, let others outside the industry steal chance after chance online. By 2008, the industry had finally begun to get serious. Now the global recession has made that harder,” reads the report.
One in five journalists who were employed by a newspaper in 2001 have gone
Around 5,000 professional newspaper jobs are suggested to have been lost in 2008
Last year, publicly traded newspaper stocks lost 83 per cent of their remaining value, having already dropped by 43 per cent between 2005-7
On survival:
Many US newspapers are planning a geographical retreat in circulation to cut costs
Plans to go online-only may not save as much money as hoped, the report suggests:
“Papers still make roughly 90% of their revenue from print and, although the numbers vary by paper, the cost of printing and delivering the printed newspaper averages 40% of costs. For now, it doesn’t add up to sacrifice potentially 90% of revenues to save 40% of costs.”
What newspapers will survive and what structural differences to these survivors have, asks the report. Will print still be a part of these news brands?
The death of the newspaper industry is not imminent, adds the study, as on the whole US newspapers were profitable in 2008
Hope for the future?
Alternative news operations and websites have continued to grow in number, BUT the scale of these is still small and they lack profitability
Newspapers have improved over the last year in adapting to new trends and building partnerships
Online
Insufficient innovation in online advertising
When it comes to alternative, online news start-ups and distribution models, ‘[T]here has been little honest assessment of economic sustainability’, says the research
Yahoo news continues to dominant as main news source online – its newspaper advertising partnership and human-based news editing are particular assets, suggests the report
Jason Kintzler sets out his suggestions to save the newspaper industry.
"The 'internet' didn't kill newspapers... So, what's hurting them? It's those news-savvy companies with better business models and insight into the social web that are beating them to the punch.
You're familiar with the obvious, Yahoo News, Google News and others, but it's the newer sites like Jason Goldberg's socialmedian that are laying the foundation for the next generation of news sharing (aka distribution)." Full story...
Well, we could have brought you ‘Flocking Around the Twitmas Tree’, ‘We Three Nings’ or just a straightforward end of the year list (if only to add to our list of lists), but instead we chose this: your sing-along treat to round-up 2008 is the ‘Twelve Days of Online Media Christmas’ (hyperlinked to relevant stories, but bear in mind it’s a selection of picks and not comprehensive…).
On the first day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … An editor in a law court
… Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks, And an editor in a law court!
On the ninth day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Nine strikers strikin’
… Eight maps a-plotting, Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks, And an editor in a law court!
On the tenth day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Ten blogs a-blooming
… Nine strikers strikin’, Eight maps a-plotting, Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks, And an editor in a law court!
On the eleventh day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Eleven papers packing
… Ten blogs a-blooming, Nine strikers strikin’, Eight maps a-plotting, Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks, And an editor in a law court!
On the twelfth day of Christmas my feed read’r brought to me … Twelve sites a-starting
… Eleven papers packing, Ten blogs a-blooming, Nine strikers strikin’, Eight maps a-plotting, Seven pipes a-mashing, Six sites out-linking, Five Tweeeeeetin’ friends, Four journo forums, Three web gaffes, Two arrested hacks and an editor in a law court!
At the Gannett Blog, former Gannett editor Jim Hopkins crowdsourced a blogpost of lay-offs by the publisher, listed by newspaper area – at time of writing redundancies at 72 of Gannett’s 85 US titles affected by the company’s latest round of job cuts were accounted for in Hopkins’ post.
In an open blog post last week, Ryan Carson, co-founder of web application design and events agency Carsonified, used the company’s blog to share his thoughts about staff cuts and give the reasons for making them.
Carson went on to give tips for companies looking to recession-proof their business (points that some commenters on the post argue are common sense no matter what the economic situation).
(UPDATE – The Rocky Mountain News has launched iwantmyrocky.com to canvas support for the newspaper)
Despite the sad circumstances, the way in which journalists and media workers are facing redundancy in these examples shows a real engagement with online tools. A personal picture of what is happening to the industry is being documented for future reference by these staff members expressing themselves so openly (and perhaps significantly being ‘allowed’ to express themselves by their past/present employers).
What is more, while they may not hold the answers to the problems currently faced by the media industry, they shed light on how these issues are perceived and felt on the frontline. Something which employers should read and learn from.
Silicon Alley Insider, who admit they could be included in a downsize, have this handy feature for tracking the Yahoo job cuts as they happen.
It’s a live y’hoo to Yahoo employees, as more announcments are made. It brings together blog posts, Tweets and memos in the same way they covered the AOL layoffs last year.
For those that have been under a rock/on Mars for the last year, the next President of the United States will be decided tonight, giving news organisations another opportunity to flaunt their interactive, live reporting and user-generated wares as the votes unfold.
Twitter Vote Report: the microblogging tool has been harnessed by a network of volunteers to map voters’ experiences at the polls. Tweets tagged with waiting times (e.g. #wait 120 for a 120 minute delay) are plotted creating a rapidly updating map of problems. Could be a great service for local newspapers in the states to provide:
WashingtonPost.com: the paper has gone for an aggregated approach, pulling together all strands of its election day coverage on a map. The TimeSpace: Election graphic shows photos, video, articles, tweets, posts and audio and lets you scroll through the day with a timeline:
Yahoo: created a one-stop shop, US election microsite drawing together all of its features, including forums, Yahoo Answers, AP and Politico stories and aggregated content from external news sites, a Flickr stream of photos and options to set up news alerts on the candidates.
Hubdub: the just-for-fun news prediction site is carrying an election forecast map, which it claims is based on ‘51 underlying prediction markets that respond in real-time to breaking news’. Users can view forecasts state-by-state to help them decided where to place their Hubdub dollars when predicting the outcome of questions such as ‘Who will win the 2008 US Presidential Election?’ and ‘What will be the margin of victory in the state of Ohio?’
A new report shows that Google increased its global dominance in the search advertising market over rivals such as Yahoo in the third quarter of 2008. Full story...
According to a press release from the Associated Press (AP), the agency will embark on its first continuous, live video news coverage on US election night, November 4.
The Big Issue: Election Results stream will feature a host of AP reports and will be streamed from 7pm (EST) on the agency’s online video network.
The stream will include views from 10 non-journalists, representing the electorate, who have been selected from AP’s collaboration with Yahoo to track the changing attitudes of 2,000 American voters during the presidential campaigns.
“We recognize that this is a once in a quarter century election,” said Michael Oreskes, AP managing editor for US News.
“Through the course of the year we have dug deeply into the dynamics of race and gender and economic fears that are suffusing the electorate. Our pre-election AP-Yahoo! News poll assessing the impact of racial attitudes on the electorate is being cited as the prime source on the issue this year. We plan to carry this work into our preparations for election night.”
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Working in journalism and want to boost your digital skills? Questions about starting a news business online that you've been too afraid to ask?
