This Saturday’s Wall Street Journal will see the first issue of a new glossy magazine, one part of their development project, which also includes the relaunch of the Journal’s WSJ.com website on September 16.
Subscriptions to the Wall Street Journal’s pay-for website have risen 88 per cent over the last year, according to News Corporation’s end of year results.
Total profit for the company is up from £1.7 billion to £2.7 billion.
In case you hadn’t noticed, Journalism.co.uk was in Sweden last week covering the World Association of Newspapers annual conference and the World Editors Forum.
So no one misses out, here’s a round-up of what went down while we were away:
Guardian: BBC ends ‘licence fee’ plans for international news website
The Beeb has dropped proposals for subscription-based access to BBC.com
WSJ.com: Analysis of hyperlocal news site LoudounExtra.com
Following the departure of Rob Curley, chief architect behind the Washington Post spin-off site, WSJ asks if the site has found its audience a year into the project.
Editor&Publisher: 94 newspapers join Yahoo partnership
A total of 779 newspapers now have access to the search engine’s advertising technology and HotJobs ads.
Daily Mail: Sir Ian Blair advocates use of celebrity news videos as evidence in drug trials
Footage, such as the Sun’s infamous Amy Winehouse video and of Kate Moss snorting a white substance, should be presented to the jury in such cases, Blair has said.
Guardian: BBC’s new plans for personalisation of website
Plans to create a new rating, recommendation and personalisation system across bbc.co.uk will be put to the BBC Trust, according to the corporation’s latest programme policy statement.
Editor’s Weblog: Washington Post launches online publishing company
The Slate Group will feature a host of digital titles including Slate and The Root, with additional launches planned.
Telegraph.co.uk: Update on revamp of community blogging platform MyTelegraph
Communities editor Shane Richmond says a relaunch date will be announced by the end of next week.
Matthew Ingram: Globe and Mail removes pay wall
Number of subscribers was not enough to maintain the wall, says Ingram, who works for the paper. Some readers remain unconvinced, he says, pointing out one comment: “You can’t shut us out for a few years and then expect us to come back just because it’s free.”
MediaShift: Everyblock releases first special report
The hyperlocal data and news site has mapped information from a recent Chicago police bribery investigation as part of its first special report.
Integrating newsrooms isn’t just a matter of putting all you desks in a spoke and fulcrum formation and projecting the web traffic figures on the wall.
The small matter of how you remunerate journalists expected to work both for print and web is an issue for newspapers across the globe.
It’s an issue that the Guardian and Telegraph, to name just two in the UK, have been wrestling with as they bring their divergent print and online editions closer together.
International editors sitting on a panel looking at whether integrated newsrooms are really working at the World Editors Forum, today in Goteborg, Sweden, admitted to a similar set of problems.
Jim Roberts, editor of digital news at the New York Times, told delegates that the Times’ own integration plans were hampered by the different contracts and lower pay web journalists were receiving compared to their print colleagues.
Roberts is overseeing the introduction of a ‘horizontal’ news production system where each separate news department has web producers embedded with them to encourage multimedia content production, oversee publication.
The Times is trying to spread multimedia, video, podcasts and interactive features across all its news verticals – even to the point where the Times is reverse publishing blog content as columns into the printed edition of the newspaper.
This drive for web content has also brought a renewed thirst to keep the newspaper print edition fresh, as Roberts said ‘to redirect this energy back into print’.
But as staff are now expected to work for both web and print, the different contracts they work under has led to union wrangles. WSJ.com managing editor Almar Latour and Javier Moreno, editor-in-chief of El Pais, Spain, agreed that they faced similar contractual problems on their integration projects.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has named Sarabjit ‘Ruby’ Walia as chief technology officer for its digital network.
Walia will manage the technology across WSJ.com and Dow Jones’ sister websites Barrons and MarketWatch.
He joins the Journal from business and financial communications consultancy Financial Dynamics.
“Ruby’s success leading digital technology businesses within large media companies in this space will ensure our ability to innovate and continue to bring users the most effective digital experiences possible to our millions of loyal users,” said Gordon McLeod, president of the WSJ digital network, in a press release.
WSJ.com will undergo a vast site redesign and relaunch in the coming months, so says Paid Content.
The overhaul will spread across the site section by section (a la Guardian.co.uk revamp), says the report, with some elements already being rolled out now on the site – check the changes to media & marketing.
New sections will also appear. PC points to the extended coverage of sport on the site.
While US newspaper websites appear to be going ‘widget’-crazy, there’s a distinct lack of the things this side of the pond.
The way the US sites are using these gadgets shows the breadth of news subjects they can be applied to:
These type of applications can sit on your desktop or feature on sites like Facebook, which now encourages outside software developers to design applications for its users. Answering this call, the Washington Post has developed political quiz application, The Compass, for use on the social networking site.
According to the AP article:
Jim Brady, the executive editor of WashingtonPost.com, says widgets can boost a newspaper’s brand online, refer new readers back to the site and perhaps generate revenues through sponsorship deals.
Sounds like a plan.
Yet on a quick perusal, there don’t seem to be any on the UK’s newspaper sites. Why not?
Has anyone spotted any, anywhere?