Google to help Tunisian journalists pick up new skills

Google is to sponsor six Tunisian journalists to spend three months at a leading French newspaper, picking up digital news-gathering skills.

The internet giant has teamed up with liberal daily Le Monde, which will offer a newsroom placement to each of the journalists, covering daily news and the French presidential elections taking place in May.

Google’s William Echikson wrote on the company’s European public policy blog:

Our hope is that they then will return home with new skills that will serve to construct a new, free but responsible professional press in Tunisia.

At Google, we are aware of the need to work with publishers to smooth the transition not only from oppression to freedom, but from analogue to digital distribution. We are sponsoring a series of digital journalism prizes with Institut de Sciences Politiques, the International Press Institute in Vienna and the Global Editors Network in Paris.

Meanwhile, journalism academics at City University in London are heading to Tunisia next week to lead a series of workshops for Tunisian journalists on “reporting a democracy”.

The project is the first of its kind being organised by the Journalism Foundation, which was founded last December and is led by former Independent editor Simon Kelner.

City lecturer Roy Greenslade writes on his Guardian blog:

The courses are the first to be held in Tunisia since last January’s overthrow of Ben Ali’s authoritarian regime.

They will provide practical advice to journalists on coping with the realities of reporting in a free society. But the classes will be held amid an ongoing battle for media freedom.

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UCLan project awarded £64,000 from Google to support ‘news entrepreneurs’

The University of Central Lancashire’s Journalist Leaders Programme has secured €75,000 (£64,000) of Google funding to support “news entrepreneurs” after being named as one of three winners of the International Press Institute’s News Innovation Contest.

The programme, founded by researcher, academic and consultant on newsroom and digital business innovation François Nel (pictured), will develop a project called Media and Digital Enterprise (MADE), to offer an “innovative training, mentoring and research programme”.

The funding awarded by IPI will be spent by the UCLan programme on working “to create sustainable news enterprises – whether for social or commercial purposes – by helping innovators”.

Nel told Journalism.co.uk MADE will “support the entire news ecosystem as we need innovation across the sector”.

He is now looking for people with entrepreneurial ideas who are interested in news innovation.

The other two winners of the contest are Internews Europe, a European non-profit organisation created in 1995 to help developing countries establish and strengthen independent media organisations to support freedom of expression and freedom of access to information, alongside the World Wide Web Foundation, a Swiss public charity founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web.

In February Google announced it was awarding $2.7 million to the Vienna-based IPI for its contest.

There were round 300 applicants, reduced first to 74 and then to 26 before the three winners were selected by a panel of seven judges, including journalism professor and commentator Jeff Jarvis.

The winners of the total fund of $600,000 were announced yesterday; Nel heard this morning how much the MADE project is being allocated, telling Journalism.co.uk “it’s fantastic to have support for news innovations”.

Nel and others working on the Leaders Programme have been working with news organisations, including Johnston Press, Trinity Mirror and the Guardian Media Group, looking at digital processes and innovative business models.

MADE allows us to pull those strands together and work with directly with news entrepreneurs. And we’re really excited about the possibility of putting this to the test.

Nel explained that MADE will “deliver good skills for a whole range of news start-ups” and he is now “looking to work with individuals, groups and companies, who are interested in news innovation” to get involved.

The project will help develop new skills and test the business plans, offering bespoke support to those with entrepreneurial ideas.

We’re looking to support five good people and good ideas for at least three months so that we can give those ideas legs.

The project includes various partners that were part of the bid, including one to build content and one to build communities.

Developers at ScraperWiki will be working with the project to develop innovations in data journalism and build content. Another partner is Sarah Hartley who is now working on the Guardian’s social, local, mobile project n0tice, with this area of the project focusing on building communities.

MADE will also involve Nel’s colleagues at Northern Lights, an award-winning business incubation space at UCLan.

The project also has an international element, involving groups in Turkey, drawing on Nel’s connections in the country.

Nel explained why the funding and ongoing support from IPU is vital.

In the digital news media space the cyber world is littered with start ups. The corpses of news start ups are every here. What we really need to do is help news entrepreneurs stay up and that’s what we are trying to do here.

• This announcement details more of MADE’s aims.
• This post has information on the project and includes contact details for François Nel.

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#news2011: Paywalls – ‘the solution is going to be unique and individual’

In one of the first sessions at the Global Editors Network news summit today the panel discussed paywalls and paid-for apps.

One of the speakers was Frederic Filloux, general manager of ePresse Consortium, the “digital kiosk” or newsstand from ePresse which launched in July this year after just six months of development by a two-man team (the catalogue section of the iPhone app is shown in the screenshot on the left).

Filloux gave an interesting insight into the model and the online challenges of the industry in which it performs.

He said the kiosk has a “news DNA”, leaving the leisure magazine market to other outlets.

“It is highly selective. It had just eight publishers at start, and might have grown to 12 in January. It is capturing an 85 per cent reach, the market is quite concentrated.”

I spoke to him more about the platform after the session, when he also discussed how ePresse would be working with Google’s One Pass system

Frederic Filloux of ePresse by journalismnews

During the session the speakers also called on editors to experiment with numerous revenue streams, and find their unique market.

Filloux told the conference “the company that will survive will be the one able to have not two but 15 different revenue streams and be able to test, experiment and find out what will be most valuable … It will have to test a lot and try many formulas.”

Fellow speaker Madhav Chinnappa, head of strategic partnerships for Google News, added that “the solution is going to be unique and individual”.

In my personal opinion the most successful paywall has probably been the Financial Times, but they have a unique set of circumstances. It took them years to develop their paywall, trying different things. They spent a lot of effort around customer data. They come from unique position. I don’t know any human who pays for a subscription to the FT, it’s companies, so that’s going to be different from most newspapers in the audience.

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#wef11: ‘We’re standing here with open arms’, Google tells publishers

The first session of the day at the World Editors Forum in Vienna today was a conversation with Stefan Tweraser, head of Google Germany.

During the Q&A session Tweraser faced the inevitable questions about whether or not Google is friend or enemy to publishers.

If you would join me for a small experiment, close your eyes and imagine a world without Google, would you fare better or worse? I think it’s difficult to answer because in 2010 alone Google has paid 6 billion US dollars to publishers worldwide. And on average every minute Google provides publishers with 100,000 business opportunities in terms of traffic.

… More than 80 per cent of people use a search engine when looking for content online. One couldn’t exist without the other.

The moderator mentioned that some saw the relationship as one of “mutual complaint”. Tweraser responded to say Google is transparent about what it does, and enables publishers to easily opt out.

Google News gathers news content from over 50,000 publishers and that number continues to rise and rise. On the other hand, if publishers don’t want to be found, there is one piece of code they put on their website so we don’t find them. We are very transparent.

Tweraser also made reference to Google’s new joint paid content platform OnePass, which launched in February, and provides users with a single point of payment for content across a variety of websites.

There is a need for a payment aggregator for paid content and that’s what we’ve been doing with OnePass. We’re still building partnerships. There is enough of an opportunity for joint business models.

When asked for more details on whether other publishers have signed up, and plans to push the platform out more widely, Tweraser seemed to keep his cards close to his chest.

We have launched in several markets and we are actively looking for more partnerships. We are open for business with OnePass.

He added that it’s “in Google’s DNA to partner”, and called for publishers to view it as such.

Google News lives because it partners with more than 50,000 and shares revenue with them on a very significant scale. We are open to partnerships in almost any aspect of our business.

… The one recommendation I can give you: view Google as a partner who’s standing there with open arms.

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You can now see how many readers are online with Google Analytics real-time reports

Google Analytics has launched real-time data, allowing news sites to see how many readers are online and gauge the success of individual tweets.

The development was announced on the Google blog last week and is being rolled out  over the coming weeks.

You can sign-up for early access using this form.

The Google blog illustrates how real-time can be used to monitor the impact of social media.

For example, last week we posted about the latest episode of Web Analytics TV and also tweeted about the post. By campaign tagging the links we shared, we could see how much traffic each channel is driving to the blog as it happened. We could also see when we stopped receiving visits from the tweet, which helps know when to reengage.

Meanwhile, Google is also launching a premium analytics account with additonal analysis and support for an annual fixed fee, according to this blog post which has more details.

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How news sites can apply to be included in Google News Editors’ Picks

Google News UK has had a makeover. The site today (Friday, 30 September) launched a new Editors’ Picks feature, enabling publishers to highlight content within Google News; and several new features, including increased personalisation of the site.

Editors’ Picks is a new section of the Google News homepage, displaying original content that publishers have selected as highlights from their publications.

Google told Journalism.co.uk that publishers can select long-form investigative features, photo slideshows, interactive maps, charts or other content to engage readers of online news.

The Telegraph, the Guardian, BBC News, Channel 4 News, Metro, the Daily Mirror, and the Independent already have content available, and the product is available for publishers at this link, (which Journalism.co.uk has today used to apply to be included in Editors’ Picks).

Users can use the slider feature to increase or decrease the amount of news they receive from a particular outlet.

In a release, Madhav Chinnappa, Google’s head of news partnerships in Europe said:

We’ve been working with partners for some time now to create innovative new ways for them to engage readers of news online. Editors’ Picks gives publishers a place to bring together the best of traditional and digital journalism; promoting long-form stories and experimenting with new formats.

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App of the week for journalists – Astrid Tasks, a task manager for Android

App of the week: Astrid Tasks

Operating systems: Android

Cost: Free

What is it and how is it of use to journalists?

According to @germanbureau, who recommends this app:

Astrid is a task manager app that allows you to set new tasks with due dates, reminders, notes, tags and four colour-coded levels of importance. It offers additional settings such as quiet hours (during which reminders are deactivated regardless of individual task settings), and the app can also be extended using various plug-ins.

Astrid provides an array of useful functions without going overboard. It is lightweight and intuitive in my experience, and it integrates well into the Google Calendar and related apps, such as the Pure Calendar widget, another one of my all-time favourites. Astrid runs exceedingly well on my old Cupcake 1.5 OS, and I’m told that it also works great on newer models; recent updates have also optimized the app for tab devices.

As a freelance journalist, Astrid allows me to keep track of my stories and deadlines by setting reminders for various tasks. In combination with Google Calendar, it is a highly useful tool for managing my day-to-day professional activities.

(Images taken from Android Marketplace)

Reviews: It gets 4.4 stars in the Android Marketplace

Recommended by: @germanbureau

Have you got a favourite app that you use as a journalist? Fill in this form to nominate an app for Journalism.co.uk’s app of the week for journalists.

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Google’s +1 button now acts like Facebook share

Google+ users can now use the +1 button to share content with their circles of contacts within the new social network.

Following the development this week the button will act like Facebook’s share button in that anyone with a Google+ profile can directly share a link to their wall (or stream in Google+ terminology).

Google made the announcement on its blog yesterday and said it would be rolled out over the next few days.

The +1 button was launched at the beginning of June, allowing anyone logged in to a Gmail account to recommend web content to their contacts, who would then see a personally ranked suggestion when using Google Search. At the end of June Google+ was launched by the search engine giant which appeared to be taking on Facebook by creating its own social network.

The fact the button now acts like a Facebook share widget may persuade a few more news sites to adopt it. Take up early on appeared to have been slow based on often lower traffic referrals when compared to other share buttons.

In yesterday’s blog post, Google also announced another development of interest to publishers: the creation of “snippets”.

When you share content from the +1 button, you’ll notice that we automatically include a link, an image and a description in the sharebox. We call these snippets, and they’re a great way to jumpstart conversations with the people you care about.

Of course: publishers can benefit from snippets as well. With just a few changes to their webpages, publishers can actually customise their snippets and encourage more sharing of their content on Google+. More details are available on the Google Webmaster blog.

The video below takes you directly to an explanation of snippits.

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Reuters: Google+ gets 25m users in four weeks

Google+ is the first website to achieve 25 million users in four weeks and is growing at a rate of one million new users a day.

The social network launched on 28 June and achieved 25 million users on its four-week anniversary, according to a report from Reuters.

In contrast, it took Facebook about three years to attract 25 million visitors, while Twitter took just over 30 months, according to comScore.

While the data show Google’s latest attempt at breaking into social networking has started strongly, it may not mean the project is a long-term success. MySpace grew to 25 million unique visitors in less than two years – faster than Facebook or Twitter. However, it’s lost a lot of visitors in the past year, comScore data show.

One million people in the UK have signed up to join.

The full Reuters post is at this link

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Google launches What Do You Love search

Google certainly has no shortage of services around the web, and its latest stab at social networking in the form of Google+ has been creating a greater buzz than the lukewarm reception of Google Buzz when it launched in February 2010.

Also released with rather less fanfare is What Do You Love, a simple search tool that returns results from more than 20 Google services.

The site offers search in images, alerts, YouTube, books and maps among others, and renders the results on one page.

For example, a search for “journalism” gives you an option to find books about journalism, translate “journalism” into 57 different languages, call someone about journalism with Google Voice or search through related Blogger articles.

You can share the results via Gmail, Buzz or +1, but no third party sharing tools such as Facebook or Twitter are available.

The site is currently very unpolished – at the moment many of the results aren’t particularly accurate or helpful, but this may well improve with time.

For the moment it offers a nice idea that may return better results based on more specific keywords. In future it could also help with collecting a variety of content from different services about a single topic, rather than having to go through each site’s native search engine.

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