Monthly Archives: May 2010

Next generation journalist: make no new content!

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This series of 10 moneymaking tips for journalists began on Adam Westbrook’s blog, but continues exclusively on Journalism.co.uk from today. Adam’s e-book, Next Generation Journalist: 10 New Ways to Make Money in Journalism will be available to download in full on 20 May.

07. aggregate the news

If you get a chance, watch this short documentary by Kate Ray about web 3.0 – what might eventually follow what we now call Web 2.0.

In it, journalism professor Clay Shirky says this:

“If I was going to set up a news business tomorrow, it would be a business designed to create not one bit of content.”

Problem with the internet these days is that it’s too big. There’s too much stuff, thanks to all those pesky bloggers, flickr users, tweeters and facebookers. How do we find what we want among all the noise?

Cue a potentially profitable window for the Next Generation Journalist – aggregating, filtering, sorting, editing content for a particular group of people within a particular niche.

Some of the most popular news websites on the net do this very well already: sites like Mashable and TechCrunch (and of course Journalism.co.uk!) aggregate hundreds of articles every week, as well as adding their own, and make money in the process.

These three sites have something else in common, they all serve very particular niches, niches with new content flooding the internet everyday. There is a demand among the people within each niche for a collection of the best, the newest and the most interesting.

So here’s the business idea: you identify a profitable niche, with a well defined target audience, where the airwaves are constantly being filled with news, comment and analysis. You set up a site to aggregate this content, a process you can do yourself at first and eventually automate with software like Yahoo Pipes. You build a mailing list of subscribers, to whom you send a daily or weekly newsletter summing up the big stories, perhaps adding some editorial content too. Of course, your newsletter is sponsored, bringing in more cash.

From there, events, products, and a whole host of other tricks, all covered in Next Generation Journalist.

Aggregating the news….

  • solves a big problem within a defined target market – organising relevant information
  • if done well, can turn your website into the go-to place for news on a particular subject or issue
  • can eventually become a mostly automated service, freeing up time to pursue other projects, while still generating revenue

There’s just two days to go until the ebook goes in sale. If you’re signed up early, there’s a discount to be had…

Working in a niche or interested in doing so? Looking for new ideas for specialist journalism? Attend Journalism.co.uk’s upcoming event: news:rewired – the nouveau niche. Follow the link to find out more.

Poynter: ‘200 moments that transformed journalism’

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Poynter has created a great interactive graphic of 200 moments that transformed journalism between 2000 and 2009, as selected by library director David Shedden. Those selected include: the Twitter picture of the plane landing in the Hudson River in 2009; the launch of Amazon’s Kindle in 2007; and the BBC’s crowdsourcing of material from Iraq in 2003. The site is also asking readers to challenge its selection and suggest their own moments.

Full introduction at this link…

Full graphic at this link…

American Society of News Editors fights back with ‘mythbusting’ columns

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In the US, the American Society of News Editors (ASNE) is publishing a series of opinion pieces aimed at “reinforcing the vitally important role of newspapers and professional journalism in the digital age”. The pieces will be available for reproduction by ASNE members and news outlets and will address the following “myths”, says the Society:

  • Newspapers are washed up;
  • Newspapers are no longer relevant;
  • News media are biased;
  • Newspapers are not connected to community;
  • The web and digital technologies are killing news organizations.

In April 2009 the ASNE changed its N from newspapers to news; three of the five myths up for busting, however, focus on newspapers…

Full release at this link…

MinOnline: GQ sells just 365 copies of iPad edition

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The Conde Nast title, one of the first to appear on the iPad, sold 365 copies of its December ‘Men of the Year’ issue. Priced at $2.99 per download, which is $2 less than the print edition’s price, this totals $1,091.35. Not the salvation the newspaper and magazine publishing industries might have hoped for, but publisher Pete Hunsinger is happy with the result, reports MinOnline:

This costs us nothing extra: no printing or postage (…) Everything is profit, and I look forward to the time when iPad issue sales become a major component to our circulation.

Full story at this link…

(via Mashable)

NUJ: Johnston Press blocks staff strike with legal action

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The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) has called off planned strike action by members at Johnston Press titles scheduled for tomorrow after the publisher sought help from the High Court by claiming that it doesn’t employ any journalists, reports the NUJ.

Johnston Press spent enormous time and effort putting together a 600-page submission to prove that – despite the JP stamp on the pay slips of staff working on their titles; the JP company handbook issued to all staff; the Johnston Press plc intranet that publishes company-wide procedures including policies on grievance, disciplinary procedure and health and safety; despite the group’s claims in the  annual report, in company bulletins and external publications that it employs 1,900 journalists and more than 7,000 employees – that JP “employs no journalists”.

The union will re-ballot 550 members at Johnston Press, who were due to strike in reaction to closure of a pension scheme, a group-wide pay freeze and the introduction of a new content management system.

Says NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear:

Johnston Press management’s claim that it employs no journalists would be laughable, did it not have such serious implications for industrial relations in the UK. It’s clearly part of an emerging trend amongst employers to derail democratically agreed industrial action by skilfully exploiting the anti-trade union laws. In this case, by creating a web of subsidiary companies set up as multiple employers, JP management has been able to argue at the High Court that our dispute around group-wide pay and the introduction of a new content management system across the titles is, in fact, a series of identical disputes with JP’s multiple subsidiaries.

Full story at this link…

Westword Blogs: US editor asks staff to call out what’s boring in paper

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Extracts from a memo sent by Denver Post editor Greg Moore to staff:

A series of meetings with staff should be underway to get your take on how we can do more compelling journalism.

Please speak up in these sessions but try not to whine. These are demanding times for everyone and we all work very hard.

But if you think there is boring stuff in the paper, call it out. Do we need a new approach to our beats? Do we need fewer beats? New areas of coverage? Are you ready for a change?

The commenters on this post certainly aren’t afraid to “call out” what they think…

As this post on Westword Blogs explains the Post is reorganising its news operation and Moore is concerned that the Post’s current 200 journalists are spreading themselves and subject matters too thinly by trying to achieve the same breadth as the paper’s formerly 300-strong newsroom.

Full post at this link…

PromotionWorld: How sharing documents can help with SEO

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While this post from PromotionWorld focuses on the benefits of document-sharing for businesses (e.g. making company reports available online), there are some valid points for news organisations:

Document sharing has become a very important and crucial ingredient when it comes to the world of SEO. Sharing documents online has helped business increase their visibility in great new way.

Sharing source material using tools such as Scribd and Yudu can add to articles by giving the reader more detail about what’s involved. Additionally, as this post points out, branded widgets are often available for document-sharing embeds spreading your news group’s name across other sites.

Full post at this link…

NYT: Will an obsession with SEO kill off the clever headline?

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Is search engine optimisation ringing the death knell for the poetry of headline writing? Successful web headlines are, according to New York Times blogger David Carr, a “long way from the poetics of the best of print headlines”. But, he goes on to argue, there is a middle ground between the witty headline aimed at a thinking brain and the information stuffed headline aimed at a processing algorithm. And while Carr’s own headline – “Taylor Momsen Did Not Write This Headline” – does not quite stand up in the information delivery stakes, it does score pretty high on both wit and SEO.

Don’t know who Taylor Momsen is? Neither do I, beyond that she is the mean one on “Gossip Girl.” But Facebook knows her well, Twitter loves her, and she and Google have been hooking up, like, forever.

One more fact about Ms. Momsen: she has nothing to do with this column, let alone the headline. But her very name is a prized key word online — just the thing to push my column to the top of Google rankings.

Full post at this link…

Asian Correspondent set to hit one million monthly unique user mark

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Since its launch in October 2009, Hybrid News’ Asian Correspondent has built up a following of one million unique users per month, founder and managing director James Craven [below left] told Journalism.co.uk last week.

The site received a traffic boost when blogger ‘Bangkok Pundit’ live-blogged the Red Shirt protests, with over 60,000 uniques over one weekend. “This month we will get past one million unique visitors,” says Craven.

A quarter of traffic comes from social media; another 25 per cent from organic search, with the other 50 per cent arriving via aggregation and direct links.

From January to March 2010 his New York based sales team brought in $251,000 in advertising from 35 advertising clients, he says.

As we reported in October, Craven wants the site to be a Huffington Post for Asia, but since then his ambition has developed further. Without revealing exactly what is in store, Craven says they are planning another online product, possibly geographical or topical.

Where Asian Correspondent differs from HuffPo is in author compensation. Unlike Adriana Huffington’s site, which relies on unpaid contributors, Asian Correspondent pays its 38 freelance contributors – on average £2-300 per month, Craven says.

He’s optimistic for the growth of its advertising model: integrated packages that include advertising and the opportunity for guest blogs or interviews. The latter doesn’t affect the site’s editorial content, Craven says, because it’s “clearly a sponsored post.”

Asian Correspondent has developed an advertising platform for southeastasia.org, with customised sponsorship of destination guides. Universities have also proved strong advertising clients for the company.

#lnw: Local Newspaper Week – a week in headlines

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As part of Local Newspaper Week (10-16 May 2010), Journalism.co.uk collected images of local newspaper headlines from across the UK. We mapped them here and created a Flickr group where the pictures submitted are shared. Thanks to everyone who took part.

Here’s a slideshow of a week in local news headlines from Cardiff to Sunderland and from dog attacks, fires and job cuts to a change in government: