Tag Archives: Associated Press

Outsourcing photography – what cost to local news organisations?

Last week, the Associated Press’ (AP) commercial photography arm, AP Images, launched a new service and a new revenue stream. The new Editorial Assignment Service offers other news organisations the chance to hire out its photojournalists to cover events for their reporting.

(Read more about the launch on the British Journal of Photography’s site and Photo Archive News.)

Twenty-five AP photographers are available via the assignment service and the images on display on the marketing site are great quality. For the AP it’s a new source of revenue and use of existing resources to create a money-making service; for other news organisations – as far as the agency is hoping – it could be a labour-saving device, allowing them to outsource work on far-flung or one-off assignments.

I’m thinking in particular of local media and newspapers here. Many of whom are already AP members in the US – some of whom have left the agency as a results of increased membership fees. Much is made of multimedia and the potential of online publishing platforms to mix words with rich images and more. But where do images from the field stand on a local or regional newsroom’s budget at a time of cuts/limited financial resources?

Some such news organisations are turning photo departments into visual departments – adding video to images – and creating their own money-making products by putting these desks at the heart of the newsroom. US newspaper the Star-Ledger and its website NJ.com is now generating revenue from specialist coverage of local events, in particular high-school sports, and as such video and images remains high on the agenda.

While outsourcing could bring a greater range of images to some news sites and free organisations from the labour of obtaining them, the local knowledge and understanding of an audience can’t be outsourced or replaced by the AP. Local media outlets wanting stronger visuals would do well to develop their own rather than outsource and build products for both a multimedia and potentially commercial end.

Editor&Publisher: New AP regional investigative teams will boost CAR and data journalism

The Associated Press (AP) is creating four regional investigative teams to support its staff across the US with “reporting and presentation resources”, in particular by using journalists with expertise in computer-assisted reporting (CAR), Flash interactives and access to public records.

Now, any reporter in a region who has an idea for a story that requires high-level data analysis will have a partner. If an editor has an idea for a project that lends itself to an interactive map or another data-driven multimedia project, they can work with the team. When a big, breaking story happens anywhere in the country, we’ll tap the region’s I-team [the name given to the newly created teams] to begin digging into public records and inspection reports while the story is still developing, not days after the fact.

Full story at this link…

US Digest: staff down at Variety; ads down at Ars Technica; sense down at FishbowlDC

It’s the end of something at Variety, and Roger Ebert isn’t happy

The biggest media news from the other side of the pond this morning was the laying off of two of Variety’s marquee critics. Chief film critic Todd McCarthy and chief theatre critic David Rooney were let go amid staff cuts that will see the magazine feature freelance reviews only.

The NYT have the full story here, and PoynterOnline have the staff memo, in which editor Tim Gray seems happy to offend exiting colleagues and readers alike with statements like: “Today’s changes won’t be noticed by readers.”

“It’s the end of something, I don’t know what” said McCarthy. The first thing that springs to mind is: your staff job at Variety, Mr. McCarthy. But he may have had Roger Ebert’s subscription to the magazine in mind:

No reprieve on death row interview policy

From Associated Press, news that the Supreme Court has decided against any changes to the federal prison policy preventing death-row inmates giving interviews to journalists.

The decision was prompted by an appeal from David Paul Hammer, an inmate in Terre Haute, Indiana. Hammer claimed that the policy, which came into effect after the Oklahoma City bombing, violated his constitutional right to free speech.

Twenty-three media organisations urged the Supreme Court to hear Hammer’s case.

Ars Technica and its readers kiss and make up after ad-blocking stand-off


An interesting development in the use of ad-blocking software was played out over the weekend by technology site Ars Technica and its not-so-faithful followers. (Nieman Journalism Lab)

After discovering that a shockingly high 40 per cent of their online readership were using ad-blocking software, which removes advertisements from web-pages, the site hit back. All of a sudden, those using the ad-blocking plug-in were unable to see the site’s content, with no explanation.

The quite amazing outcome is that, after publishing a post on the site explaining the damage that ad-blocking software meant for their revenue, and explaining why they had to take the counter-measures, editor-in-chief Ken Fisher received around 1,200 emails from people who had whitelisted the site, preventing its ads from being blocked. Furthermore, 25,000 people went on to whitelist it within 24 hours and 200 people subscribed, paying for the ad-free version.

It seems that the key in this case was communication, getting the message out to an essentially appreciative readership that using ad-blocking software can have seriously detrimental effect on content that you enjoy.

And, it seems like it worked. Good for Ars Technica.

An error within and error within and error within an..hold on what?

Finally, FishbowlDC shows everyone else a clean pair of heels in the competition for today’s strangest blog post, which reports in a round about way that the blog Regret the Error made an error reporting on an error made by Wolf Blitzer.

I can’t find an error in the Fishbowl post, which it rightly points out would constitute an error within an error within an error, but as that would also constitute even less of a story than the current one, it’s probably for the best.

US Digest: paidContent 2010; Tiger Woods, Scientology vs; journalism, and more

Starting today, the editor’s blog will feature an afternoon roundup of all things media from over the pond. From the hugely important to the very inconsequential, check in for a choice of America’s journalistic goings on.

paidContent 2010

The issue of paid content was high on the agenda at the end of last week with the paidContent 2010 conference in New York. In attendance were big names from the New York Times: Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., chairman and publisher; Janet Robinson, president and CEO; and Martin Nisenholtz, senior vice president of digital operations, who were interviewed at length by ContentNext’s Staci D. Kramer on “metered news and more”.

According to the paidContent coverage, “while they were willing to buy lunch, they weren’t ready to feed the appetite for detail about plans for NYTimes.com to go metered in 2011”.

See the video here

And the full conference coverage from the paidContent site here

“Does the bleeding ever stop at 425 Portland?”

image courtesy of Stephen Cummings

Presumably, ways of making newspaper journalism pay were also high on the agenda over in Minneapolis at the end of last week, where the Star Tribune announced that five voluntary redundancies would be offered to reporters and editors. “Does the bleeding ever stop at 425 Portland?” asks MinnPost.

Staff memo here

Pessimistic stories of this kind, including this one, continue to be thoughtfully aggregated by blogger and pessimist extraorinaire Fading To Black. Not featured on this chronicle of US newspaper decline was the story that down in South Florida, rather than asking him if he’d like to pack his things, the Sun Sentinel handed production maintenance manager Bob Simons a $25,000 spot bonus and a Caribbean holiday. Simons’ suggestion of a different supplier for equipment apparently saved the paper $1 million.

A very different staff memo here

AP underperforms on non-profit content distribution

An interesting story from the Nieman Jounalism Lab reports on the outcome of Associated Press’ decision to distribute content from America’s top four non-profit news outlets: ProPublica, Centre for Public Integrity, Centre for Investigative Reporting, and the Investigative Reporting Workshop.

The six-month project was launched back in June 2009 at the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in Baltimore, “with great fanfare” according to Bill Buzenberg, executive director of Centre for Public Integrity.

It seems however that the scheme hasn’t been successful so far, with admissions from both the AP and the non-profit directors that very little content has made it into print. A poor distribution model is to blame apparently, with new non-profit content not being sufficiently flagged.

“They haven’t done the technical backup work to really make it work,” said Buzenburg. “They haven’t made it a priority.”

However, hope remains for the project from both sides. Buzenburg added: “This is a good idea. I’d like it to work […] The potential of this remains.”

“It’s early yet – we’re only six months into it,” said John Raess, AP’s San Francisco bureau chief.

“We want our celebrities to show a little leg”

image courtesy of Jim Epler

Much of the weekend’s media coverage in the US was given over to Tiger Wood’s much-publicised public apology on Friday morning. Mediabistro nailed the best format for coverage by inviting readers to pen Haikus for the Mediabistro facebook page. Submissions include this clear frontrunner from Pamela Ross:

“Questions? Don’t go there.
My Thanksgiving meal was ruined.
Thanks. Now. Watch this swing.”

With more syllables at his disposal, David Carr of The New York Times’ Media & Advertising pages goes into a little more detail, considering the relationship between celebrity sportsmen and the media:

Athletes and actors would like for us to focus on the work, while reporters know that their editors and audience want more, because while the work is visible, we want our celebrities to show a little leg.

But once this bit of leg, so strictly concealed by Woods for so long, has been shown, why are the media who feed on it so relentlessly owed some sort of apology?

Those of us who have had some experience with human frailties all know why Tiger Woods did what he did last Friday, which was to get in a room with people he had hurt or embarrassed to say he was “deeply sorry” for what he had done. That part made sense, the beginning of a process of amends.

I just don’t know what the rest of us were doing there.

A sentiment echoed this side of the pond by Charlie Brooker today in the Guardian.

There are those that must hope that, now this enigmatic character has addressed his hushed audience, and delivered his much anticpated talk, that the hype, rumour, pontificating, and endless media coverage will die away.

Apple wields knife over TV show prices

It is fair to say that at least a few people thought exactly the same thing about Steve Jobs’ unveiling of the iPad. But the so-called saviour of the newspapers is back in the media spotlight this week with news that Apple are considering halving the current price of television shows on iTunes from $1.99 to 0.99 cents. Media commentators have hailed the iTunes store’s 125 million registered customers as a potential liferaft for sinking newspaper publishers, and major networks may be wary of waving a pin anywhere near that customer base by rejecting the move, instead gambling on even a small percentage increase in those paying for TV offsetting the significant price drop.

image courtesy of curiouslee

Meanwhile, Adobe and Conde Nast have jumped right aboard the good ship iPad, unveiling “a new digital magazine experience based on WIRED magazine” at the TED Conference in Long Beach, California.

The Church of Scientology vs. the St. Petersburg Times, Round 1

And finally, from Howard Kurtz’s Media Notes at the Washington Post, the improbable story that the Church of Scientology, in a tit-for-tat response to investigations by the St. Petersburg Times of Tampa Bay, has organised some investigative journalism of its own.

image courtesy of Ben Sutherland

The church has officially hired three ‘veteran reporters’ – a Pulitzer Prize winner, a former “60 Minutes” producer, and the former executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors – to look in detail at the newspapers’ conduct. Steve Weinberg, the former IRE executive, who was paid $5,000 to edit the study, says that the agreement stipulates the church publish the study in full or not at all.

Weinberg claims that in spite the study being bankrolled by the church, it will be objective. Neil Brown, executive editor of the St. Petersburg Times, thinks otherwise:

“I ultimately couldn’t take this request very seriously because it’s a study bought and paid for by the Church of Scientology.”

Brown seems to feel a bit hard done by in this instance:

“I counted up something like six or seven journalists the church has hired to look into the St. Petersburg Times. I’ve just got two looking into the Church of Scientology,” he complained.

No fair.

Steve Rubel: The AP’s vision of a “siteless web”

Steve Rubel responds to criticism of the Associated Press for redirecting its followers on Twitter to stories hosted on its Facebook page rather than on the AP’s own or partners’ websites.

As wires like AP and Reuters syndicate their content everywhere, they have struggled to build any kind of meaningful relationship with readers (…) The AP is now changing the game for news by not only going where attention spirals are taking us but by also using their content to curate a conversation on Facebook and – above all – build relationships.

Full post at this link…

Digits Blog: AP stories come back to Google News

Stories from the Associated Press (AP) are once more appearing on Google’s News search engine, ending a near seven-week absence from the site.

The two parties have been negotiating a licensing agreement and talks were stalled by the AP’s monitoring of its articles to and through Google News, the Wall Street Journal’s Digits blog reports.

Google and AP said negotiations on an agreement were ongoing despite the return of AP stories.

Full post at this link…

AP: Using and verifying citizen journalist photos

News breaks.

Images are uploaded to photo-sharing services like TwitPic and yFrog. Links are tweeted by the original photographer. Other people retweet those links or copy and paste them into Facebook or other blogs. In a matter of minutes, an individual photo can spider out in myriad directions.

So how does a news organisation verify images? Director of photography Santiago Lyon explains the Associated Press’ explains the agency’s process and establishes some useful guidelines for other news orgs – above all: “If we can’t verify the content, we don’t use it.”

Full post at this link…

SearchEngineLand.com: New AP stories no longer appearing in Google News

New Associated Press (AP) stories, hosted by Google itself, are no longer appearing in Google News, reports Danny Sullivan for SearchEngineLand.com.

It’s true. Since Dec. 24, Google has no longer added new AP content, something the company confirmed with me today [Friday]. I received this statement:

“We have a licensing agreement with the Associated Press that permits us to host its content on Google properties such as Google News. Some of that content is still available today. At the moment we’re not adding new hosted content from the AP.”

So why not? The statement doesn’t explain. But it’s reasonable to assume it’s related to the ongoing talks between Google and the Associated Press.

Full post at this link…

(via paidContent.org)