Online Journalism Blog

[Keyword: online journalism]. The Association of Online Publishers (AOP) should be re-named The Association of Good News for Online Publishers, given how many positive reports they seem to have released in the last year. The latest research predicts the UK’s web publishing industry will grow “by 37 per cent in 2006 thanks to a growth in online advertising”, reports Journalism.co.uk:

“The association’s annual census found publishers to be optimistic about
business growth, spurred on by increasing broadband take-up, developments in
mobile technology and the success of web communities. Buoyant online advertising
is also contributing to increased confidence in the industry.”

My colleague Andrew Dubber has posted a fantastic (and amusing) post entitled ‘How to go to university’ on his blog. It may sound obvious, but advice like ‘turn up’ and ‘read books’ is really worth listening to…

[Keyword: online journalism]. The EPpy Award Blog Finalists have been named. Here’s a rundown:

Best Media-Affiliated News Blog

Cincinnati.com (BorgBlog)
http://frontier.cincinnati.com/blogs/borgman/

JSOnline.com (DayWatch)
http://www.jsonline.com/watch/?watch=1

KansasCity.com Crime Scene KC Blog
http://blogs.kansascity.com/crime_scene/

Best Media-Affiliated Sports Blog

TheNewsTribune.com (Mike Sando’s Seattle Seahawks blog
http://thesportsjunky.blogspot.com/

Web site of the Houston Chronicle
http://blogs.chron.com/sportsjustice/

Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/sports/football/patriots/reiss_pieces/

Best Media-Affiliated Business Blog

USATODAY.com (Today In The Sky Blog)
http://blogs.usatoday.com/sky/

BusinessWeek (Blogspotting
http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/blogspotting/

USATODAY.com (Kevin Maney’s Blog)
http://blogs.usatoday.com/maney/

Best Media-Affiliated Entertainment Blog

USATODAY.com (Pop Candy)
http://blogs.usatoday.com/popcandy/

Chicagotribune.com Blogger Maureen Ryan
http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_tv/

Chron.com, the Web site of the Houston Chronicle (MeMO)
http://blogs.chron.com/memo/

The winners are to be announced in Las Vegas May 18-19. You can find a list of all finalists at http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/003444.php

[Keyword: online journalism]. Steve Outing is offering some tips for news organisations to give the audience a space of their own, making the compelling argument: “MySpace and Facebook are among the most successful media-related enterprises on the Web right now [...] Yet with rare exceptions, the newspaper industry is avoiding this personal-page and social-networking trend“.

His tips include:

“Give every reporter and columnist their own personal page (a sort of MySpace space for professionals). Items to include:

– Bio section. Description of the journalist’s career and personal interests, including photos.
– Links to previous work.
– Any coverage of the journalist; external articles or profiles of him or her.
– Aggregation of reader comments to the journalist’s published work.
– A Q&A feature (or forum), where readers can directly ask a question of the journalist, and even talk among themselves about the person’s work.
– The journalist’s blog. (I think every journalist should have a blog, as a venue to interact with his or her readers, let them know what he/she is working on, and as an outlet for interesting stuff collected by the journalist that otherwise doesn’t have a home in the newspaper or on the website.)“

“invite online readers in. I mean giving them space, inviting them to become part of the news conversation, and facilitating communication between readers who share interests in the news or specific slices of it.
“Here’s my prescription for creating within a news site a place for readers/users to call their own — and start to feel a part of the news conversation.

• User bio and photo(s).
• User content.
• User’s blog highlighted.
• User-interest tagging.
• User’s news interests and expertise.

[Keyword: online journalism]. “The New Orleans Times-Picayune won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news reporting today for its coverage of Hurricane Katrina and the resulting flooding of the city,” reports the OJR. “What makes this award so significant for online journalism is the fact that the Times-Picayune published its award-winning coverage only online for the first three days after the storm. This makes the Times-Picayune’s award the Pulitzer ever given to online-original news content.”

[Keyword: online journalism]. I’ve long been aware of Scoopt, but shame on me for not being aware of fellow Joe-Public-takes-the-photos-we-negotiate-a-fee websites Splash, thesnitcherdesk.com and cash4yourpics.com. You can find more articles at The Times, Press Gazette (again) and The Guardian.

[Keyword: online journalism]. Another one from the latest Press Gazette on the latest internet demon: “They’re stealing our content!” scream publishers, comparing their plight, strangely, with illegal downloading of mp3s and the alleged effect on music sales (much challenged (PDF), by the way).

Now, while Google News is no Napster, the one concern worth exploring is “about the rise of RSS feeds and news services which lift copy from news websites without payment, often circumventing the need for the reader to visit the sites.”

The question is, how much are you prepared to sacrifice to attract new readers? My personal experience is that RSS feeds only serve to deliver me headlines. If the headline appeals, I click on the link to visit the website that publishes it, which surely increases traffic and therefore potential advertising? Perhaps there are more nefarious uses of the technology that I’m missing…

[Keyword: online journalism]. The latest issue of Press Gazette features a fascinating double-page interview with the vice president of Google Europe, Nikesh Arora – the angle being Google’s impact on news production, and the internet’s impact on the news industry generally.

You can find a chopped-down version on the Press Gazette website (presumably to force readers to subscribe) and sadly the author, Rob McGibbon, has not updated his own website with any details. But for those interested in the salient points (rather than the first few hundred words, which contains none of them), here are a few juicy quotes. If you want to read more, hey, why not subscribe to Press Gazette? Perhaps the money will help them make more improvements to their website?*

On changes to the news industry:

“[Newspapers] have to pay attention to … the unbundling of the package
… The internet is forcing a re-thinking of what is the package for a newspaper
… What elements in the bundle are going to survive?

“There are fantastic assets that newspapers could leverage more … the
journalist who can write comment pieces and editorial stuff … access to
opinion leaders around the world … their ability to write objectively and in
line with the brand of the newspaper… That element of trust is important.

“What is not fully embraced is the element of interactivity with them that
consumers want. Also, [newspapers] don’t leverage archives [enough]

“I believe there is a much larger opportunity for the provincial paper, because [local content] is very hard to globalise. [They] also have a much more loyal community.”

On changes for journalists:

“I would definitely say that all journalists … need to become bloggers… If the established journalist brands don’t become bloggers, they will leave the door open.”

*Good to see the use of Del.icio.us and Technorati links on the website, as well as related stories. Here’s hoping for more improvements so us bloggers can plug it even more…

There’s an article on sister blog Web and New Media on creating a search engine for your site – or sites.

[Keyword: online journalism]. You can read a review of sorts at Poynter, which seems particularly happy with the ’simplicity’ of the design (it doesn’t seem to simple to me, but then perhaps I’m used to British newspaper websites like The Guardian), but more importantly gives some useful links at the end to comments from the design director, among other things.