Two outlets weigh in on the efforts John Paton is making to convert his newsrooms to digital-first operations.
At the risk of self-serving (he is leading the proposed new ownership team under Paul Godfrey at Canwest Publishing, where I am employed), it's important to look at the work undertaken to transform his organizations.
The Poynter Institute looks at the results of his
Franklin Project, in which newsrooms were asked to meet the needs of audiences by developing digital journalism using free tools. The three newsrooms proved ingenious in finding new techniques and software to tell their stories differently.
Then Earl Wilkinson, the executive director of the International Newsmedia Marketing Association,
posts a profile of Paton and his approaches.
In essence, they are:
1. Mobile first, online second, print curated last.
2. Organizational culture akin to digital culture: transparent, crowdsourced, collaborative, flat.
3. Upward management on digital revenue, downward management on print costs.
To date the conventional wisdom has been that Apple's impending iPad tablet could revive the audience for print-driven journalism. The assumption: A bigger audience will naturally yield better economic metrics.
But the general manager of the not-for-profit investigative journalism foundation, ProPublica,
begs to differ. Richard Tofel argues that the iPad could kill the newspaper because digital revenue will not suffice in propelling journalism.
Even if circulation and subscription revenue can be supplanted by the iPad's arrival, digital advertising is lagging seriously behind print advertising and may never catch up. If this is so, the iPad could hasten a newspaper's decline.
For the iPad to be the newspaper's saving platform, digital advertising would need to be three to five times more costly --- a rate that seems utterly impossible to contemplate, Tofel argues.
Newsrooms worldwide are dealing with the legacy/new media balance and reconstructing their operations accordingly. The Financial Times has outlined its new model to staff in this attached document.
FT is looking for a Web-ready workflow that has three elements: create, craft and complete. It outlines the process that involves more reporters generating headlines, doing some editing and adding hyperlinks and metadata.
The aim is a "right first time" reporting. It's a definite departure from longstanding workflow and a model many newsrooms can evaluate for their own purposes. Those interested in how newsrooms are making changes will find the note to staff a valuable insight.
The plan and an FAQ are below.
Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, loves newspapers. Google, his firm, devours the content of papers and conjoins it with advertising Google sells. The business model is troubled.
Trouble is, Schmidt doesn't have any idea on how to save the paper.
He tells Fortune.com: "I wish I had a brilliant idea, but I don't."
ZDNet outlines how the Washington TImes is working with Inform to generate a more semantic quality to its Web site. The technology saves editorial time --- and provides discipline to the process --- while generating more page views and time spent. The Inform tech links out and generates topic-specific pages that attract return visits. There are more social network opportunities in the mix, too, and greater ways in which the user can customize the experience.
A new newspaper has been launched. That in itself is an accomplishment in 2008 in America.
It is being launched in Silicon Valley. That old media would rear its head in new media mecca is also an act of derring-do.
But if that isn't enough, it is being launched without a Web site. No plans for one, either, say the owners of the Palo Alto Daily Post (sorry, no link available).
After all, they note, they're a newspaper. Not a broadcaster. Not a new media entity. The New York Sun's story on them is here.
RSS Feed
