Tag Archives: media industry

AP offers digital analysis to members as papers bypass agency content

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The Associated Press (AP) is to give its newspaper partners access to reports on digital trends in the industry, in an arrangement with research firm Outsell Inc.

A release from the AP said the free service will help newspapers to understand online developments, such as web traffic measurement and online advertising issues.

Reports will be sent out quarterly and are free to AP member papers as part of the agency’s new Innovation Toolkit service.

In recent weeks a host of US newspapers have served notice on their membership with the AP, as the Editors Weblog reports, most responding to recent changes in pricing by the agency.

Some papers have grouped together to bypass AP content, while according to BuzzMachine.com, New Jersey’s Star-Ledger published an entirely AP-free edition yesterday.

A comment from Paul Colford, from the AP’s corporate communications department, on the BuzzMachine post said:

“We understand that The Star-Ledger and the media industry as a whole are facing difficult financial challenges and that in this environment many newspapers are experimenting with news priorities and with their presentation of news. The Associated Press has been working with all members of the cooperative, including The Star-Ledger, to determine their needs and to ensure that the AP news report retains its value to them and their readers. Member Choice, the content and pricing initiative rolled out this summer, was in fact developed as a response to member requests for simpler content and pricing options.”

Steve Hewlett to front Radio 4 media show

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BBC Radio 4 will broadcast a new weekly programme on the media industry from October.

Presented by former TV executive Steve Hewlett, The Media Show will also be available as a podcast and will run for a year.

It will focus on changes affecting all aspects of the industry: print, online, television, radio and telecommunications, a release from the BBC said.

Online Journalism Scandinavia: Print and online integration ‘not the key to success’

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Image of Kristine Lowe Kristine Lowe is a freelance journalist who writes on the media industry for number of US, UK and Norwegian publications. Today Online Journalism Scandinavia asks why not integrating print and online may be the way forward.

Integration is not the recipe to become a nation’s newspaper of choice, says the editor-in-chief of Norway’s leading news site.

“It is very demanding to take the poll position both in print and online as VG has done in Norway. It demands a very strong focus on both platforms,” Torry Pedersen, the editor-in-chief of Schibsted-owned VG online, Norway’s most profitable and most read news site, told journalism.co.uk.

“Print and online are different disciplines and will only become more different. Until now, we have been so fortunate as to be able to develop on our own and build our own culture,” added Pedersen.

VG.no is organised in a different company than its printed sister publication, VG (short for Verdens Gang).

This separation has transfered into dramatic success because each company has a core business with specific aims, rather than often counter productive aims of a newspaper company producing online and print under one system.

In 2006, VG.no had a profit margin of 42.1 per cent compared to the 12.6 per cent of VG’s print edition. In week 11 2008, the news site had 3m users (according to TNS Gallup).

“Our success is to a large extent built on the fact that VG online has had its own floor and been separate from the rest of the newspaper. This is changing now that VG online has become so big we need more space, but I’m adamant that VG online will be a separate news operation,” Pedersen said.

Pedersen, who has staff keeping a constant eye on worldwide online innovation, told Journalism.co.uk that he had yet to see an example of online and print integration being fully successful.

Online Journalism Scandinavia: Should public broadcaster seek competitive advantage online by offering users content for free?

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Image of Kristine LoweKristine Lowe is a freelance journalist who writes on the media industry for number of US, UK and Norwegian publications. Today Online Journalism Scandinavia asks if public broadcasters should be more restrained in the content they offer for free online.

The head of the online division of Norway’s public broadcaster (NRK) has admitted that it intends to use its public mandate of supplying content for free as a competitive advantage on the web through increasing activity with file-sharing and social networks.

“I believe all public broadcasters more and more think along the lines that it is a competitive advantage that they can deliver content without charging it for it,” said Bjarne Andre Myklebust, head of the online division of NRK.

He added that the organisation is actively working to use its public mandate as a competitive advantage to strengthen its position online.

Not only are they working to make NRK’s content more easily available to download and share on social sites, such as YouTube and Facebook, but are also experimenting with file-sharing services such as BitTorrent and Joost.

NRK recently made its first programme series available to download in Bit Torrent, they liked it so much, they are thinking of doing more. (You can read about their experiences so far here.)

The broadcaster has also been working to get its own channel up and running on Joost, a project that has been delayed somewhat by the challenge of obtaining permissions from all the copyright holders involved.

In addition, it has recently made some of its footage available to use under a creative commons license on Flickr. Something Germany’s public broadcaster has also dabbled with.

So is this the way forward? A good way to give value back to all its license fee payers, or just a way of completely skewing the competition in the broadcasting market?

What if the BBC, in a time of intensified competition, started extending its own free delivery of content across Facebook and bit-torrent sites? It’s probably only a matter of time, but is it an unfair advantage over commercial broadcasters, news and otherwise?

Is it a way of better fulfilling its public mandate, or just an outright example of the rampant commercialism of public broadcasters using public funding as an advantage against others that find it more difficult to distribute content for free?

Online Journalism Scandinavia: More news sites using Twingly to link to blog reactions

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Image of Kristine LoweKristine Lowe is a freelance journalist who writes on the media industry for number of US, UK and Norwegian publications. Today Online Journalism Scandinavia looks again at news sites linking to blogs.

Dagbladet.no, the online operation of Norway’s second biggest tabloid, has become the latest Scandinavian news site to use Twingly to show blog links to articles on the site.

Dagladet.no has been experimenting with Twingly since October last year, but last week announced that Twingly would now become the standard across the site.

However, the online newspaper said that articles dealing with very sensitive issues – those concerning murder, suicide and death – would not not have the technology applied to them.

“Our experiences with Twingly so far are very positive. There are so many interesting things happening in the blogosphere, and we think it is important that our readers can converse in their own rooms and extend the debate about our articles there,” Mina Hauge Naerland, a journalist involved with the implementation, told Journalism.co.uk.

“It’s also very interesting for us to be able to follow those conversations, it helps us improve our journalism.”

Politiken.dk, the news site of one of Denmark’s leading newspapers, started using Twingly a month ago, and the online operations of two of Sweden’s most influential newspapers, Svenska Dagbladet and Dagens Nyheter, have used Twingly for about a year.

Online Journalism Scandinavia: Norway’s leading news sites strategies for attracting online audience

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Image of Kristine LoweKristine Lowe is a freelance journalist who writes on the media industry for number of US, UK and Norwegian publications. This week Online Journalism Scandinavia looks at how Norway’s leading news sites attract their audiences. Continue reading →

Online Journalism Scandinavia: Danish news sites benefit from doing things ‘The Drupal Way’

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Image of Kristine LoweKristine Lowe is a freelance journalist who writes on the media industry for number of US, UK and Norwegian publications. Here she looks at use of open-source software, Drupal, on Danish news sites. Continue reading →

New journalism training site launched by regional news veteran

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Ed Oldfield, a journalist with 25 years of experience in regional newspapers, has launched training website beajournalist.com – a site aimed at those taking their first steps in the media industry.

The site offers guides to training courses in the UK, details of industry training schemes, as well as the latest training news.