How Conde Nast is dealing with iPad advertisers

An interesting post on Rob O’Regan’s blog looking at how Conde Nast has developed best practice guidelines for advertisers who want to work on its iPad apps. To create the guidance for clients, the magazine publisher has been conducting extensive research on how readers are using and rating the apps:

To learn more about these early adopters, Conde Nast is combining its in-app and in-person research with usage software built into its apps. Results from the in-app survey showed that 80 per cent of users who downloaded a Conde Nast digital magazine app said the content and experience “met or surpassed their expectations”, and 83 per cent said they were likely to purchase the next month’s edition.

Full story on emediavitals at this link…

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New York Observer: Daily Beast and Newsweek to merge

Last night the New York Observer’s Media Mob broke the news that Newsweek and the Daily Beast will merge.

According to the report, the editorial staffs of the two titles will combine in a 50-50 merger of the two companies.

Full story on the New York Observer at this link…

The Daily Beast’s editor-in-chief Tina Brown confirmed the deal in a statement on the site late last night:

It’s a wonderful new opportunity for all the brilliant editors and writers at the Daily Beast who have worked so hard to create the site’s success. Working at the warp-speed of a 24/7 news operation, we now add the versatility of being able to develop ideas and investigations that require a different narrative pace suited to the medium of print. And for Newsweek, the Daily Beast is a thriving frontline of breaking news and commentary that will raise the profile of the magazine’s bylines and quicken the pace of a great magazine’s revival.

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US student journalism awards open for entries

Entries can now be submitted to the Society of Professional Journalists’ annual Mark of Excellence Awards for 2011 which recognise the best student journalism in the US.

The awards – which include 39 categories across print, radio, television and online journalism – will first be judged by region, with the winners then put forward for the national competition.

The contest is open to anyone enrolled in a college or university in the US studying for an academic degree in 2010. Students who have had full-time, professional journalism experience, outside of internships, are not eligible. Entries must have been published or broadcast during the 2010 calendar year.

The deadline for entries is 26 January. There are more details on the competition website.

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CJR: The US newsrooms doing interactivity on a budget

The Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) takes a look at some US news organisations who are producing data visualisations and interactives for their websites with limited budgets and staff resources.

I believe the Times’ [New York Times] newsroom has at least two dozen people working full time on interactive projects; many smaller papers might be lucky to have a handful of people who know Flash. Even if newsrooms have graphic artists working on election-result maps for the papers’ print versions, many do not necessarily allocate the same level of staff time to online displays.

Full article on the CJR’s website at this link…

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Washington Post buys #election hashtag for midterms

The Washington Post sponsored the Twitter hashtag #election as part of its coverage of the US midterm elections this week.

Explains Poynter:

The Post’s sponsorship of the term #Election means that it will appear at the top of the list of Trending Topics on Tuesday. When users click on that topic, one of the Post’s tweets will appear above other tweets with the #Election hashtag – giving the Post prime real estate to promote its coverage and updates.

There were rumours flying around as to how much the Post had spent on the ‘promoted tweet’ service from Twitter, but a spokeswoman for the title said it would not comment on the cost.

Chloe Sladden, Twitter’s director of media partnerships, told Poynter that this was the first time a news organisation had used Twitter in this way.

Using new Twitter, the Post also hosted a live video stream, which it called an Election Day Twittercast, on the @washingtonpost handle.

“The Post will solicit questions from Twitter users as it simultaneously airs on the platform. The Post is among the first news organisations to be able to embed live and taped video on the new Twitter platform,” a release from the Post says.

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How many US newspaper blogs are edited?

US media ethics project StinkyJournalism has done some digging into the issue of blogs on newspaper websites and whether these posts fall under the same editing process as other items on the site.

During the recent financial downturn, some US newspapers, including the Seattle Post Intelligencer and the Christian Science Monitor, have stopped publishing print editions altogether, opting for online-only editions. All major US newspapers have a representative internet presence and publish much more content online than they could fit into their print editions. Along with this change, social media as an integrated tool plays a role in the news landscape now more than ever. However, these changes also raise questions about ethics, legal issues and journalistic standards.

Therefore, StinkyJournalism thought it would be worthwhile to learn more about how newspapers manage blogs published on their websites. We looked at 10 major US newspapers and their 591 published blogs. We categorized the blogs based on their content and took notice of the blogs’ authors. Some of the results were unexpected, even surprising.

You can read the full results of the study at this link on the StinkyJournalism site, but some key findings were:

• 404 of 591 (68 per cent) blogs published by newspapers were edited, according to the newspapers themselves;
• Only eight of the 591 blogs – 1 per cent – dealt with traditional news;
• Seven of the 10 newspapers studied said they edit all blogs.

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Have your say on the AP 2011 Stylebook

Do you find yourself critiquing news reports for poor writing style, bad punctuation or incorrect phrasing? If so then this is definitely one for you. The Associated Press (AP) has again opened up the floor to the public for entry suggestions to its 2011 Stylebook.

Last year the AP decided to ask for suggestions for its new section on social media and received 237 ideas in response.

Now the guide’s editors are asking for more suggestions for the next revision. The Stylebook itself features a main A-Z as well as the areas listed below:

• Social Media Guidelines;
• Business Guidelines;
• Sport Guidelines;
• Punctuation Guide;
• Briefing on Media Law;
• Photo Captions;
• Interactive Department;
• Filing Practices;
• Filing the Wire.

The deadline for offering suggestions for the 2011 Stylebook is 15 November.

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US newspaper circulations still falling, but decline is slowing

Figures released by the US Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) this week suggest that while circulation figures recorded for the 653 daily US newspapers in the audit fell by a cumulative 5 per cent from April to September this year, the rate of decline has slowed based on previous audits.

According to the Editor & Publisher, the decrease follows year-on-year drops of 8.7 per cent for the previous six-month period and 11 per cent for April to September 2009.

Among the country’s largest papers, the sharpest drops were at the Newsday, owned by Cablevision Systems Corp. (CVC), where circulation fell 12 per cent, and the San Francisco Chronicle, owned by Hearst Corp. Its circulation declined 11 per cent.

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James Beard Journalism Awards and Associated Press bylines go platform-neutral

The James Beard Journalism Awards – “the Oscars of the food world” – are to go platform-neutral. Categories for the awards will no longer be arranged according to platform but content.

“Why? Because we cracked a window … and noticed it was 2010 outside,” wrote Kat Kinsman, who is also on the committee that oversees the awards, for CNN’s Eatocracy section. “This is not a dance on the grave of print publication … Rather, this is an acknowledgment that online contributions should no longer be relegated to the kids’ table.”

Full story on sfnblog.com.

Associated Press also signalled a move toward multi-platform today, announcing that it would no longer byline its stories “Associated Press Writer”. According to an Editor & Publisher report, bylines will now feature the journalist’s name, followed simply by “Associated Press”.

Thomas Kent, the AP’s deputy managing editor and the man responsible for editorial standards, told E&P the new platform-neutral style is “consistent with the change in AP journalists. It reflects what’s been going on for a long time – people go out, they take pictures, they write stories, they do video, they work on different platforms.”

Full story on Editor & Publisher.

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Ad Age: Internet media employment at peak since 2001 despite falls elsewhere

Advertising Age research suggests that media companies in the US have cut one in seven jobs since the start of the recession. But employment at internet media firms has risen to its highest level since 2001, according to the figures, which the title has been collecting since 1981.

Internet media companies and broadcast TV have seen solid year-to-date job gains. There’s even hope in newspapers, where recent monthly job cuts are at the lowest level since the start of the recession.

The chart below of Advertising Age’s stats shows the percentage change in the number of jobs in each media sector since December 2007:

As part of its ranking, Advertising Age looks at the leading 100 media companies in the US to see how they have fared over the past year in comparison to the rest of the industry.

Full results can be seen in this report (registration required), but some key points:

• Revenue for the US’ top media firms rose by 6.1 per cent in the first half of 2010;
• Video and broadband providers accounted for 39 per cent of 2009′s net revenue for the top 100 media companies;
• According to Ad Age, media employment has risen consecutively for two months – for the first time since 2006.

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