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Old people, iPad and the media

November 4, 2010 by grzegorz.piechota 

New York Times app on iPad. Photo by ApplePrinted media used to think they had problems with the young readers, now watch out as their core customers are going finally to discover the Internet.

New devices like iPads seem to be much easier for the elder generation to understand and to use.

It’s an opinion based on my observations of individual users. I admit there is a lack of hard and scientifical evidence about it. Early Nielsen research done in the US suggests iPads and other devices are bought first by early adopters who tend to be young (63 % of iPad buyers are aged 35 and younger). But it is a nascent market, premium priced at the moment — many things will change when the market matures, number of devices become available and prices fall. Obviously, more research is needed.

I do believe iPads and similar devices have some killer features making them attractive for elder people:

  • Intuitive touch-based interface: so no more intimidation when the young try to teach you the new technology, no more problems with operating the mouse and finding cursor on-screen.
  • Simplified operating system and apps: no more fear that pressing anything is going to corrupt the device or data, no more features regular guys don’t need and that make the whole experience complicated.
  • Concept of apps: this world of ”one click = one feature” seems to be somewhat more familiar to their world of brands/utilities they trust and look for.
  • Media consumption patterns: according to our research old users tend to be rather consumers of media than producers. iPad and similar devices — more easy than flexible – are simply more suitable to their needs.

These new devices may diminish the most important barriers for the growth of the Internet usage.

Until today in all European Union countries the Internet has been adopted more by the young than by the old. Some Eurostat data: among people aged 18-29 almost 100 % use the Internet. among people aged 55-64 do it only 48 %. Among people aged 65 and older the Internet is used only by 25 %. In my Poland the difference is even bigger: compare 95 % to 30 % and 8 %.

So if the Internet usage is to grow, it is to grow among people aged 55 and older.

This difference is a market opportunity recognized already by many players like telecommunication companies, financial services etc. It is yet to be recognized by many other players as hardware or software producers… and media themselves. It will be recognized sooner or later as Europe is aging. At this very moment 30 % of Poles are aged 50 and older. In 20 years there will be 50 %. No business can ignore such a change on the market.

According to our latest research study done in Poland infrastructure or money are not in fact the most important barriers for the elder people to start using the Internet. The top barrier is that they don’t see it any useful. The second barrier is they believe it is too complicated.

You can interpret these answers in many ways. Many researchers including me believe that what these people really mean is they face a lack of devices/services suitable to their capabilities and interests, and they don’t know what’s really useful for them on the Internet and how to use it.

Here come the iPad and others.

This new breed of hardware have been already supported by a new generation of software and you can just expect this trend to excelerate. New, easier to use software will help the old people to discover things we — the younger ones — already know like digital entertainment, communication, e-commerce. The most popular features of the Internet apart of finding information and news.

I have just shared my iPad with my parents-in-law. They have learnt it almost immidiately and started to use features they had never used before.

And watch this 99-year-old woman rediscover reading and writing thanks to this new device:

Remark: I have wrote this post to answer to questions raised after I have contributed to an overview of digital media trends published at BetaTales, the blog of John Einar Sandvand of Aftenposten in Norway.

I am going to share more insights about new media devices at the INMA Transformation of News Summit at Harvard on December 2-3, 2010.

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Junior Media platform will help Polskapresse reach young readers

November 3, 2010 by marek.miller 

Polskapresse, one of Poland’s largest regional dailies publisher has just started an innovative project on Polish market – Junior Media. The project is addressed to the youngest readers – school pupils and students who engage in creating small school-community newspapers.

Junior Media is an educational project targeted at schools: both students (pupils) and teachers. The goal is to show to the youngest why it is worth to read newspapers and why it is worth to have a newspaper at school. Amateur journalists writing for such newspapers will be able to learn from professionals from Polskapresse, who will help them build the pages, correct their mistakes and teach them professional journalism.

Thanks to the special online platform, creation of a newspaper is expected to be very easy. The online system will help the students create a newspaper step-by-step on a premade newspaper templates. In order to participate in the project, the school needs a computer with online access only.

The Junior Media online editorial office allows one school to create an unlimited number of newspapers which can then be printed out or read online. Beginning next year, 50 best newspapers created on the Junior Media platform, will be printed out in the printing plants – in the newspaper format and on the dedicated paper. 250 copies of those newspapers will be delivered to schools.

The schools’ participation in the project is free.

Junior Media is similar to Danish “Ekstra Bladet’s ” Redaktionen project. Forum4Editors asked Magdalena Chudzikiewicz, Polskapresse’s spokesperson, about more details of the project.

Forum4Editors: What is the planned contribution of professionals in teaching young journalists?
Magdalena Chudzikiewicz: Before the end of this year, we plan to organize workshops for editorial offices of school newspapers. The workshops will be organised in 8 cities around Poland, and will be led by professional journalists from our regional editorial offices.

Will the process of creating newspapers be 100% online or does Polskapresse expect young adepts to visit its editorial offices?
Yes, the entire process of creating newspapers will be online but every newspaper will have a chance to be printed out at school or by us as a reward in our every month competition. The pupils have been visiting our editorial offices for quite some time so far. We want to combine them with the Junior Media programme and treat them as a part of a media educational programme. This is why we are about to launch special admission forms for editorial offices’ tours directly from the site www.juniormedia.pl

What is the schools’ response you are expecting? How many schools do you expect to attract in the programme?
We will try to reach all the schools in Poland. It is hard to count their response yet. Out project is a long term one and I think we will not be able to evaluate it before next Autumn.

How many copies of the best newspapers in the project will Polskapresse print out?
At the beginning we expect to print out 250 copies monthly and deliver 50 best newspapers to schools in 250 copies each.

What about the rest of the newspapers? Will they be distributed online?
All the newspapers will be accessible online. We will leave this form of distribution to schools. They can decide themselves whether they want to keep the newspaper online, or will it be printed out and distributed among the students.

What is the cost of the project?
I am not allowed to tell

A similar project comes from the Danish “Ekstra Bladet”. What is the difference between Redaktionen and Junior Media?

We are not afraid to tell that we liked Ekstra Bladet’s project, and that it inspired us. The idea is basically the same – media education plus building the readers’ loyalty from the very beginning. The differences are based on our specifics and the construction of the project. We specialize in local media, and due to the fact we publish many regional titles, we created a new brand targetted at children – Junior Media. Through this brand we plan to build the regional brands awareness and link young people to the content created by our journalists. The school editorial office that will register on the special editorial online platform has to choose the brand that is specific for the region. Under this brand the newspaper will be created. It can also be filled with the content from our websites. Only the best newspapers will be printed out by us, as far as we are concerned Ekstra Bladet prints out all of them.

We don’t have the deep insight of the Dannish project, but we also will educate children and teenagers in terms of media. Special workshops that will start before the end of this year will help us reach this goal. Not only that – we also plan the competitions and the Summer Journalism Junior Media School for best school editorial offices in Poland.

Thank you, and good luck.

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Mecom will start charging for local content on the web

October 25, 2010 by marek.miller 

Read this exclusive interview with David Montgomery, CEO Mecom Group plc., done by Artur Karda and Tomasz Krawczyk from Media Regionalne – part of Mecom’s assets in Poland.

You have announced you will leave your position on January 2011, after majority of Mecom shareholders forced you to resign. Does it mean your departure from media industry or is the game not over yet?
David Montgomery: I’m working just as normal. The Mecom plc board has endorsed our strategy, and I am working to pursue that strategy.

How do you see the development of Polish publishers in terms of print and online products, comparing to Europe?
David Montgomery: I’m really impressed that Media Regionalne has successfully rolled out online products across the country. You have achieved a significant position in online and you’ve done it with the local content. I believe that the combination of print and online will be our future. That really is the essence of the future local content business.
Regarding print newspapers development – in Poland it is not similar to the other parts of Europe. Newspapers in Poland tended to be smaller in terms of circulation. But we should not give up the print side. I believe that we as Mecom group have to consider making further promotion to support the newspapers themselves. The circulation depression elsewhere in our group is relatively moderate. Among our newspapers we have an increasing tradition of continuous product development. Investment in newspapers can’t be merely to promote activities for the readers. Investment also has to be in the editorial side of the product. I suppose, we need to exam the resource process of restructuring the editorial introducing new content, new sections for readers, advertisers and promoting those reconfigured newspapers aggressively. There is also a question for you: is there a way we can acquire or launch further print title in Poland?

Aren’t you afraid that when we start constant relaunch of our newspapers, we could lose our traditional readers in our print products?
David Montgomery: My evaluation is that when you make the newspaper better and you give better value, you will keep your readers and you’ll find new readers. And I am not talking about changing layout and visual part of newspaper, but constant editorial development here. I think we should be much swifter in developing products and we should take away things that don’t work properly. We should also be courageous in trying new things in print. Maybe we should not call it relaunch. We should call it enrichment of the content. I believe that the more successful you are in online content, the more you can stimulate the sale of print if you’ve got the right newspaper.

How do you define a role of communities in local media life?
David Montgomery: Local community needs local content no matter what age group, profession or activity they are engaged with. Nothing has changed over the ages. In the past distribution was limited to the printed paper. Today we can use local content in many different forms and across many different platforms. Future times are not limited by the physical side of print. The size of internet is unlimited so we can use local content in many ways, like online.

Do you think user generated content is a part of our challenge to the professional journalism?
David Montgomery: Journalists will increasingly become managers of content rather than simply sourcing one story next to another. Managing content across many different sources: user generated content, content from public services, social organizations. It’s increasing – the individual journalist will harvest all of those different platforms. I recognize that this involves lots of different skills and responsibilities. It particularly demands judgment about quality of content, how it can be packaged and how it can be published across different platforms. That judgment is being made up at the level of ordinary journalists rather than the senior editorial level. That also changes the role of the editors in chief. I like to think about editors in chief as the people who are directors of the content, because editor in chief these days cannot operate just in the printed version. We have to rethink all of the roles and we should give to the people different job titles than the traditional ones, which inflect only the print functions. Personally, I would rather like to start my career as a journalist now, than 40 years ago, because it’s much more exiting and stimulating world for individual journalism, and more challenging. I would be very persuasive, recruiting people in industry today. It’s an exciting world, it gives for individual journalists, even on junior level, much more exciting and responsible lifestyle. But I do admit that they need to like hard work.

Mecom as an owner, and personally you, are known as very rigorous in terms of profitability of media business. That causes very high cost pressure on local publishers. How media houses might manage product development while they have to reduce the staff?
David Montgomery: I know that employees are worried about the printed circulation all over Poland. It’s huge decline: almost 10% in print circulation this year. Your people are sort of challenged how to balance this on one hand, on the other we need to develop our new products. We have to manage this double challenge.
But we’re still involving single activity way in print to many different products. You have to make constant refreshment of the portfolio and therefore we have to have a very flexible staff to be able to move from one product to another. It’s about structure and it’s about increased responsibility for individuals. The traditional newspaper business has relied far too heavily on collecting content through too many pair of hands. We simply can’t do that anymore.

You see publishers as collectors of free content and at the same time you want them to charge for content. How to make that consistent?
David Montgomery: The sources of content that I mentioned, are very often from people who want to publish something. They want professional content managers to organize content and examinate, so they offer it for free. What we want to sell is an expertise. Our expertise is to highlight content, to package it and to organize it in a way that is valuable to the readers. I don’t have the recipe yet how we will do that but I do have some thoughts. First of all, it’s necessary to educate the public, that the local content that they get not just in print and online doesn’t come just from printed form but it’s valuable whether is delivered print or online as package. When people will see that this is a package of content coming from those different sources, that they will more greatly recognized that the content is what they are paying for. The uniqueness of content is what people are paying for. We are very pleased that there is a local newspaper business because no one generally does what we do and no one likes to come along and replace local newspaper in terms of setting new newsroom. It’s most unlikely, so we need exploit that monopoly and educate readers that the content which is seen on the screen has to be paid in some form. Not all of it, but the richer elements of it. We have an innovation group in Mecom which is going to do this. One of the target is that Mecom is going to develop paid-full products. Some of them will not work, but only by experiments we will get progress in this particular area. It’s quite simple really, our industry has always depended two sources of revenue. One is for content and the other is for advertising. Those two revenue streams are necessary for the future as well. That’s what we have to get to.
I think the potential is in local content and making sure, that we secure our position as the main provider of local content in all communities what we serve. Getting loyalty from our brand audience is the number one priority. All depends on our rich experience with the audience in print an in online. When you are successful in doing that, advertising will follow, paying for content will follow.

Watch parts of David Montgomery’s speech at the INMA European Conference 2010 in Krakow:

Interview taken on September 30th, 2010, during INMA/OPA Conference in Cracow, Poland
Artur Karda and Tomasz Krawczyk are directors responsible for online content development at Media Regionalne, Polish part of Mecom.
Photo: Mariusz Jarzombek, NTO
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Crowd-sourcing and social networks in hyperlocal news

October 10, 2010 by marek.miller 

Ultimately, newspapers will not only interact with readers and users, they will develop new forms of journalism that take advantage of their readers’ knowledge via methods such as crowd-sourcing. This can produce both good and bad results…  Check what editors-in-chief have to say about that:  Bart Brouwers (Managing Editor for hyperlocal Online Media, Telegraaf Media Group, The Netherlands),  Roman Gallo (Founder of Nase Adresa Project, Czech Republic),
Martha Gleich (Internet Director, Grupo RBS, Brazil), Harry Dugmore (Founder of “The news is coming” project, and Knight News Challenge winner, South Africa), and Jaroslaw Tokarczyk (President of the Board, Gazeta Olsztynska, Poland) met during the World Editors Forum 2010 in Hamburg.
There are two things worth remembering while thinking about citizen journalism:
  1. Citizen journalists are always part of what they report.
  2. Journalists do not fall from the skies – they need trainings, guidance and tools
Bart Brouwers talked about a hyperlocal project in Holland, he is about to start. He is trying to build a single online platform for every single Dutch living in the Netherlands. He plans to do it by focusing on local relevance:
  • editorial
  • commercial
  • marketing
  • gaming
  • utility
Everything has to be local, even the advertising. Local on mobile and web.  The key is to build a sustainable business model around the offered hyperlocal information, plus a way for journalism to reinvent itself.
Being local first requires action. Brouwers gives 20 golden rules of how to act on a local media market:
  1. collaborate, don’t invent – sometimes it’s better to co-work instead of inventing a wheel
  2. get personal -
  3. be social – facebook, twitter, all social media
  4. publish real time – always
  5. be easy to use
  6. be open – to everybody who wants to be a part of it
  7. be serendipitous
  8. mistakes are not failures – mistakes have to be made to make progress
  9. use outside knowledge – media are not all knowers
  10. be better
  11. avoid acting special
  12. be involved and be part of your audience – to write from within
  13. help users participate (and award them for that)
  14. cherish and curate
  15. mutualize
  16. accept lurking
  17. act entrepreneurial
  18. pile up small change – be happy with small amounts of money.
  19. automate
  20. break down the castle – old deadline model of the printed newspaper
Roman Gallo is the former chief of a project known as Nasa Andresa. This project was shut down few weeks ago, but its learnings are more than worthy to follow, and maybe copy.
Middle of 2009 – hyperlocal project in 4 pilot regions of Czech Republic was started. It consisted of few elements: hyperlocal weeklies, websites and news caffees. In the middle of caffees there were small newsrooms – the caffees were created for local communities. The project had 150 weeklies, 1000 websites, 89 caffees. 5 weeks ago, the owner decided to shut down the project.
Key learnings:
There is still a space for this type of media project. Nasa Andresa had 10% market reach in print, 80 percent readers on a subscription base: those are results on 6 months before the lockdown.
Only local content will work. Big decision is whether to mix local with national content. Focus on local
Coffee shops were the key elements. There were three major reasons for news coffees: they wanted to have a place for the direct interaction of editors with the community, it was a great marketing tool, and was a financial contribution to the project: small profit from the local caffees could help in the revenue stream.
The plan was to build a place where 30% of the content should be created by various communities or in cooperation
with communities.
Multimedia and multiskilled journalists don’t have to be young. Rather they should have a clear understanding why multimedia reporting is important. Internal training system and the know how center are a must.
Marketing plan: launching campaign + cafe existence + work was expected to be enough in the first year of the business. Should have been more.
Nasa Andresa was based on 4 income sources: subscription sales (stable), cafe revenues (tripled), print ad revenues (up), online ad revenues (up)
The reasons for closing down the project are unknown.
Martha Gleich spoke about hyperlocal sites in Southern Brazil. Her company, RBS, owns:
  • 20 TV stations
  • 85 radio
  • 8 newspapers
  • 6 websites
Hyperlocal sites are opened in the places where RBS does not exist offline. One curator, operator for each site is needed. This person has to know and be able to talk about the place. Content for the site comes both from RBS and communities: schools, universities, city halls, courts, etc. Civil journalists are engaged in creation of the sites. They are trained in order to start publishing online (training takes no more than 3 hours).
Results: 10 hyperlocal sites in one year. 18.000 uv in cities with 180 000 inhabitants on average. 15 stories a day on avarage. The sites are already breaking even, producing new generation content. Civil journalism content is also used in printed newspapers
Harry Dugmore talked about crowd sourcing and social networks in hyperlocal news from South African perspectives. Democracy needs media density and media freedom. Local democracy needs local media.
The problem is the low numbers of journalists (1 journo for every 6400 people in the USA). South Africa is doing pretty well in these statistics. They need more journalists and often it is hard to find them. In many parts of Africa even free is too expensive.
Public funding sees vital for local media in Africa.
They need thousands of new journalists – they decided to pay for citizen journalism
Citizen journalists need to be trained and managed because more credible journalism is needed. They feel the need of being smarter using even more smart mobile technology.
Jaroslaw Tokarczyk explained how hard it is to be an important local player in a country where two leading publishing groups )Polskapresse and Media Regionalne) cover nearly 100% of regional market. Gazeta Olsztynska is the last independent player in the local market. It runs a hyperlocal project 116 communes in a district of Poland.  150.000 copies per week. 26 weeklies, 5 free papers. 600 000 average number of unique visitors per month.
Main reasons:
  • being first on the market (online)
  • use of local elections to promote the project
Inline with their strategy are hyperlocalism (print) and C3 online
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Is this a breakthrough year for the newspublishers?

October 8, 2010 by marek.miller 

The new surge in sales of electronic readers for books, notably ‘tablets’, and the multiplication of mobile devices with easy and comfortable access to news sites, has given a new lease of life to the idea that wireless platforms may yet take a central role in news publishing. During this session at the World Editors Forum in Hamburg current newspaper experiments in publishing on such devices were examined by Chris Ahearn (President of Media, Thomson Reuters),Alfredo Triviño (Director of Creative Projects, News International, UK), and Annemarie Kirk (digital business development manager, Berlingske Media, Denmark)

The old business model is dead, publishers have to embrace the new opportunities. Publishers have to embrace the journalism to make sure the business survives. They have to embrace the technology to keep going – said Chris Ahearn during the last Thursday’s session at the World Editors Forum.

Chris Ahearn does not believe in the rumours of the doom of press. He introduced himself as the recovering paperboy. He understands the media business and agrees that publishers should drive demand and re-engineer costs. The key words are the subscribers.

Publishers have to give more utility, and more uniqueness in order to go on. They ought to ask themselves a question, whom are they serving. Whatever the platform is (print, mobile, tablet), there is the branded relation with the users – so think content first. And always think about the reader.

It is true that iPad is a game changer. 200 apps are downloaded from AppStore every second. We have never seen technology being adopted so fast on the consumption level. But iPad is not everything. It is still just another platform.

According to Chris Ahearn, 2010 is not yet the breakthrough year. It’s not the iPad or any other tablet, but the entire ecosystem that is changing: it is the entire 3G technology, smartphones, and tablets that scatch the future before the news publishing industry. The list of devices is long, and not each one will survive, nor they should.

New is not necessarily the end of the old. iPad nor web are not something that will kill printed newspapers. He doesn’t believe that people pay for content – they pay for experience. This is why iPad might be a game changer in the discussion about paywalls. Users will pay for experience and uniqueness. Applications are going to be crucial in the transition of the media world as apps are changing the way information is consumed.

But he desn’t believe in Chris Anderson’s words that web is dead, he thinks that Wired’s editor in chief is dead wrong.

What he thinks publishers should do:

  • differentiate,
  • package,
  • invest in differentiation and brand.

Loyalty, convenience, access and discovery are the advantages of an app world. Journalism needs to fundamentally change – we need a new content platform for the professional news industry. It is not said yet, that iPad will be that platform.

For Alfredo Trivino, tablets are something more than just an opportunity for reading. It is about playing, organizing and buying – a perfect combination of interactions with users. This combination of information with entertainment should be backed up with the element of surprise.
Technological issues will be essential in building a strategy on tablets. Of course, understanding the reader is important, but the existance on tablets will be something like finding a balance between meeting the readers’ expectations and understanding technological boundaries, such as loading time for instance.
Tablets were called by Trivino the liquid media. In his opinion, the liquid media are now the best ally for storytelling. Tablets not only differ with the so far known media platforms like books, newspapers, magazines, and websites, but they also have this unique ability to substitute them all.

The mixture of stories, technology and emotions in media means money – revenue that media companies are so desperately seeking online nowadays.

Even though the iPad has not yet officialy launched in Denmark, Annemarie Kirk says, her company is already ready and well prepared for it. Berlingske Media already built an application for iPad, and did it with a shoestring budget and a very small team of people. The recipe is to find talented and goal oriented people in the newsroom, people who have a fresh view on global trends, and get them to work. Existing skills should not be forgotten – the iPad application was designed by a graphic with a long time work experience. The iPad will consist of a mixture of online and offline content, and will be exported to the app through the semi-automated process. The app is now awaiting approval from the App Store.

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Google tools for publishers

October 8, 2010 by marek.miller 

Madhav Chinnappa, the Strategic Partner Development Manager, Google News & Books, UK, gave a speech during the World Editors Forum in Hamburg. He presented the latest and most powerful Google tools, that could be successfully used by the publishers.

  1. Fast Flip – a new way of browsing news. Content consumption on the web – different presentation of the content that could be more engaging to hte readers. It takes screenshots from the publishers content and allows to flip through it. Check the Google Fast Flip in action.
  2. Google News experiment: Editor’s Picks. Built around the Google’s algorithm. Adding the human aspect, which cannot be provided by the algorithm. It’s about using the human editor to choose within the Google News important news that not necessarily have to be most popular.
  3. Living stories: a new way to display news. Learn about this concept by watching this video:

Tools that could help publishers tell stories in a different way:

  1. Google Maps – a tool widely known but stil worth developing
  2. YouTube Direct – connects news organisations with video producers. It is about interaction, all directly on own website:
  3. Google Translate – as Google calls it, it is “one of the coolest things Google has ever made”. It can be used for interaction between readers from different parts of the world. And it already has been done.
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What’s next for new media training?

October 8, 2010 by marek.miller 

During the last day of the World Editors Forum in Hamburg, one of the sessions tried to answer the question whether the money on trainings for journalists is being spent well. Howard Finberg (Poynter Institute),
Joyce Barnathan (International Center for Journalists – ICFJ), and Tarek Atia (Media Development Programme, Egypt) shared their experience and gave some advice to news publishers.

Howard Finberg started with the evaluation of the training programs for journalists available at Poynter. He tried to answer the question what has been done right, what could have been done better in new media training. He explained, that the success of a media company depends not only on journalism, nor technology but on training as well. Poynter’s News University is an online training resource basing on 4F’s: focused, flexible, fun and financially accessible. So far it has 161.000 registered users, particularly editors, publishers, journalists and students interested in media aspects.

The 3 most popular trainings:

  • 5 steps to multimedia storytelling
  • video storytelling for the web
  • writing for the ear

Poynter commited a survey concerning its training programs, and the results are as follows. 425+ responses, mostly US reporters were surveyed. In the past 5 years, 84% received some kind of multimedia training. Is it working? Respondents say yes:

  • 70,5% said that multimedia training they have received has made them smarter
  • 84,8% said the multimedia training they have received has made them better at their jon
  • 81,5% said the multimedia training they have received has helped their department program or organisation

Overall multimedia skills in US are better
5 yrs ago 62% nonexistent or poor multimedia skills dropped to 22% today. Sad news is that one fifth of the media workers are not fit to work in the multimedia company.

  • In terms of project planning: 5 yrs ago 23% of respondents declared they were proficient or expert. It is 60 % today.
  • In terms of video production: 5 yrs ago 22% of respondents declared they were proficient or expert. It is 55% today.
  • In terms of photography: 5 yrs ago 61% of respondents declared they were proficient or expert. It is 75% today.
  • In terms of interactive design: 5 yrs ago 9% of respondents declared they were proficient or expert. It is 22% today.

The more the training is put in the practice, the higher the rating is. As time increases, so does the self-improvement. Conferences and webinar work but not as much as regular trainings. Motivation is the number one driver of all training programs.
What’s next? Tools change, but training can’t stop. Barriers that are still there: time, money, and energy to develop new skills.

In summary: multimedia training has worked, skill levels were improved. Lots more training is needed – almost all respondents (90%+) will apply for more training.

Joyce Barnathan works for the International Center for Journalists which was created by journalists for journalists.

We live in incredibly disruptive times, the journalism is changing, and so are audiences. They demand to get stories however they want to receive them, they want to interact and often want to produce the information as well. No need for big budget to train multimedia journalism. So many technologies are free.

4 recommendations based on ICFJ experience:

  1. Train your staff to engage your readers. Envolving the readers will make the news organisation stronger. Malaysiakini.com is the main online source in Malaysia. When the program for citizen journalism was started, they heard a lot of criticism. They decided to start the citizen journalism program with video – it was the best journalism form to monitor the quality of.
  2. Train your staff to use new tools and technology – this will help deliver information to and from the website. The benefit of the free web is that there are lots of free resources to take to enrich the newspaper.
  3. Train the staff to be experts in the areas they cover. The most read blogs are the ones where authors have something to say, and they are seen as experts. ICFJ believes it looks exactly the same for newspapers
  4. Use the web to train (examples: NewsUniversity, ICFJ)

Tarek Atia from the Media Development Programme in Egypt gave some brief history and description of the training programs for journalists in his country.
In the beginning there was the old model of training in Egypt – veteran journalists told stories to the listeners. Global issues were analysed from the local perspective, and had typical problems: training was treated as as punishment, reluctant managemenent, poor facilities. At the same time Egypt was going through the same problems of the change in media from print to digital.

Things changed with the 15 million dollar donor program which helped to train over 4000 journalists in 4 years

The process required:

  • evaluate needs of constituents
  • design training programs
  • help build training centers
  • connect trainers to trainees
  • training, training and more

Despite this all, it took time for certain concepts to sink in, topics like: local media, blogging, and teamwork for better design. The number of courses and trainings in Egypt rose. The number of trainees increased from 355 in 2007 to 1986 in 2010. The focus of all these trainings was mostly new media. The others were local media, young readers, photography and media ethics.

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Does iPad really offer a second life to newspapers?

October 7, 2010 by marek.miller 

Juan Senor During the 2010 World Editors Forum in Hamburg, Juan Senor from the Innovation Media Group, presented ideas of the newspaper of the future, and what the publishers should focus on while building the business models. Read the summary of this extremely interesting presentation below.
The session focused on three subjects:
  1. Unbundling the Bundle, the New Sunday Papers.  In many markets, Sundays represent the ‘last chance’ for many newspapers to revive their fortunes and keep their paper operations profitable and popular. So what are the new successful Sunday formulas for newspapers that are working and why?
  2. The New Quality Tabloids. A new genre of newspapers in emerging in developing nations: the Quality Tabloid – a mass market compact an compelling newspaper that appeals to many social classes with a firm base on the emerging urban middle classes of megacities in India, Brazi and Russia. So what can the developed world learn from this new generation of Quality Tabloids? And where is the money?
  3. Tablets – a Second Life for Newspapers? How can newspapers re-invent their brands successfully on tablets to increase reach, relevance and revenue? A look at best practice, guidelines and lessons learned so far.
Juan Senor’s presentation was accompanied by:
Claus Strunz, Editor-in-Chief, Hamburger Abendblatt, Germany
Flavio Pestana, Editorial Director, Diario de Sao Paulo, Brazil
Diego Cenzano, Director, Biko, Spain
Carlo Campos, Direction, Innovation Media Consulting Group
Do tablets  really offer second life to newspapers? Rupert Murdoch once said: “if you have more of these devices and less of the newspapers… it may be as well saving the newspaper industry”
Publishers  must reinvent the way they are telling stories – it’s about the content, not about the platform. They must reinvent the newspaper by deconstructing it. Tablets are a new grammar, the news that you can read, watch and touch. Experience in the age of tablets is much more important than the brand.
App Store: average rating of the application of newspapers: 2.5 out of 5. Magazines: 2.2 out of 5. Newspaper publishers do something wrong.
iPad is often (wrongly) understood in 3 ways:
  • iPad as the pdf reader
  • iPad as the newspaper on steroids with lots of videos, audio and buzz
  • iPad as a shovelware – 100% of newspaper on iPad
This is all wrong. Innovation Media Group proposes a 70/20/10 – formula. 70% mechanical transportation of newspaper’s content. 20% – the part where news publishers should think of new storytelling, something that will differentiate iPad app from the newspaper. 10% should be the utilities of the app: weather forecast, traffic, etc.
iPad is not only the video. If everybody does that,  it doesn’t mean we should do the same. Think about: infographics, unique videos, slideshows, caricatures/art. Try to sell information, services and issues and passions.Tablets should be approached as premium product. iPad means iPay – why should it be for free?. Produce more for those who pay and less for those who do not pay. Enough of free, as free is very expensive for news publishers.
Apple wants to become the world’s kiosk. The cost of that is great for news publishers (they keep 30%) If news publishers lose pricing and customer’s data, what’s left for them? So here comes the advice from Juan Senor: don’t impulsively bite the Apple. News industry cannot suffer same fate as music industry (Apple actually killed it with iTunes).
Should it be tablets or paper? Stop thinking black and white! Think tablets AND paper.
Innovation believes all these new devices will morph into one device in the nearest future. Here is how Innovation Media Group perceives the future:

Newsrooms should divide content creation part from content elaboration
Diego Cenzano proposes to think about 3 main profiles of employers to be left in the newsroom: IT people, journalists and graphic designer. Infographics will be the new way of telling stories. There are 5 To-Do’s that cannot be skipped while planning the tablet strategy:
  1. become application creator
  2. be more stress flexible
  3. enhance the user experience
  4. organize the IT staff to deal with the day-to-day work
  5. expand the technical staff’s horizons
They do believe paper has a bright future. No medium in history did ever kill another medium. TV did not kill the radio, internet nor tablets will never kill the paper.
Innovation does not want another weekend publication, nor extra pagination strategy. They would like to propose a new Sunday magazine formula, new multimedia product with all the multimedia extensions, photography in the first plan, and sold differently.
Example: Diario de Sao Paulo, a newspaper in trouble turned into a 3 rhytm sunday experience: dia (day – what’s going on), viva (life), esportes (sport). Most in the “show, don’t tell” formula. Internet is no competitor for publishers. Nor are new market players. The main competitor is time, the lack of time to innovate.
Flavio Pestana (Diario de Sao Paulo): circulation decreasing, advertising decreasing. The brand did not exist within opinion papers. They started to change the newspaper, cosmetical change would not do anything here. The size was changed (dangerous move – all quality papers are in one format), they invested in machines to have a full color 64 pages newspaper. Wanted to tell good stories with visual effects.
So far the results are: in 2 months, there is an increase in sales on the newsstands by 50%. In terms of advertising, the results are to be seen next year. The newspaper is becoming more relevant, just because of the political topic, the elections, Diario De Sao Paulo increased the sales by 50%.
Hamburger Abendblatt has gone through not only redesign, but the reconstruction of the concept. Claus Strunz had to restructure the entire team.  As he said, it meant some of them were not ready for the future and were not ready for the digital future. The workflow had to be reinvented. 15 months later they felt they could make it.
As the effect, circulation dropped only by 4% yoy.  Advertising revenue after the drop is coming up back again. He sent a direct message to editors: don’t forget the reader in the process of transformation, the reader is the key to your success. The relaunch of Hamburger Abendsblatt is the effect of the intense process of consulting the changes with the readers, 500 readers were involved in the process.
Where is the money?
There will be a flip soon, the paper in the future will become a premium product. Online and mobile will be the mass medium. Despite the falling circulation it is possible to earn more when publishers charge more for the paper issues. The benchmark is 5 times more than the regular price, from 50 cents to 2,5 Euros.
Carlo Campos has searched for the possibilities to earn from different platforms. The right question is not whether we should charge or not charge  for online (we should) but what we should charge for. Only what is scarce can be charged for. Publishers have to find scarcity in what they do. Google has already found it: proprietary algorithm for searching, opportune context, limited search terms.
Here is the scarcity publishers can charge for:
  • unique content
  • unique utility
  • unique convenience
  • unique packaging
  • unique experience
Innovation believes in a freemium model. Abundant content should be free, scarce content has to be paid for.
Avertising? Situation now: overabundance of bulk contacts that drives CPM to zero all over the web. What is scarce in newspaper advertising:
  • message richness,
  • context,
  • audience profile,
  • location,
  • intention,
  • fulfilment.
We have to move from the digital to the physical world.  Try to get more intimate with the audiences – to keep contact with the audience and let advertisers know they have this direct contact as well.
How to find the money? Focus on your clients’ needs. Start thinking about clients as opposed to productions needs what kind of product publishers want. Become audience orientated. It is a huge step to take, from media in a box, to a commercial engine.
Where is the money? Clients have it, so publishers need to focus on their needs and have to focus on scarcity.
Sometimes it is good to go back to basics. Think about the core business! Good journalism is a good business.
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How to break away from the “he said yesterday” journalism?

October 7, 2010 by marek.miller 

How can editors-in-chief adapt to the major shift which is the “he said yesterday” journalism? A discussion with Sylvie Kauffmann (Editor-in-Chief, Le Monde, France),  Abdel-Moniem Said (Chairman of the Board, Al-Ahram group, Egypt), Jeff Reifman ( Founder, NewsCloud, USA), and Francisco Amaral (Director, Cases I Associats, Spain) took place during the 2010 World Editors Forum in Hamburg.
The moderator was Malte von Trotha, CEO, DPA News Agency, Germany.
Newspaper content will dramatically change in the upcoming years. A British editor said a few years ago that newspapers were becoming “viewspapers” with more opinions and editorial pieces. But in fact, almost all articles and stories must be written differently because we can assume that readers already know the basic news.
Sylvie Kaufmann, first female editor in chief in France, pointed out three major issues that could be the receipt for newspublishers’ struggles:
  1. control costs
  2. embracing new ways in journalism
  3. belief in the publishing business
20 years ago there were only newspapers vs other newspapers. Today newspapers compete with internet which is widely understood as a mixture of different platforms and startups. Every single online player is the basic competitor to the newpspaper publishers.
The problem is  not within the platforms, it is all about the content. Platforms are only new ways of distribution to different targets, the challenge is to find the right content for the right niche. The challenge is also to organize the newsroom to be adopted to the new reality. Le Monde tries to combine online and print in all possible ways. They are the forces that strengthen one another.
The webteam of Le Monde is not integrated, they are only in the same building. Joint editorial meetings of online and print team help get maximum impact for each platform.
Abdel-Moniem Said said that the main objective for newsmedia publishers should be to think how to transform journalism to work better in terms of knowledge. Changing people is most difficult in the transformation era. If people are used to traditional journalism, have been working in that for years, it is the most hardest work – to change their mentality and perception of journalism in the new media age.
Al-Ahram was established in 1875, and is the largest newspaper in terms of circulation in Egypt. In 1950, the Middle East Institute described Al Ahram as  being as important to Arabic public as “London Times to Englishmen and the New York Times to Americans”.
There were many platforms of communication and distribution in history. It all started with the word, then there were:
  • holy and sacred books
  • books
  • press
  • radio/tv
  • satellites and internet & digital publication

Every shift to a new platform followed discussions. And hopefully, with every next shift there will be debates as well..

Al-Ahram’s approach is about a path of communication, which should not be forgotten as a mission of journalism nowadays. Data helps gather information, information leads to knowledge, knowledge should be transformed into widom.
In order to do go through the transformation correctly, money is needed. Money, that can be collected by empowering the resources avery news publisher has:
  • advertising
  • circulation
  • printing
  • investments

Only then the news publisher can be turned to a fully operating media company. The platforms of distribution are for Al Ahram outlets only: print, online, radio/tv, mobile, and e-readers. Different outlets with different readers, different generations. Those who read newspapers in the morning are not necessarily the same as the ones who read all the news online. 94% of Al Ahram media consumption is between 9 and 12AM.

The heart of the entire operation is the newsroom that is convergent for the outlets: virtual (online, mobile, games), print, and broadcast (radio, video) In order to fully transform, these implementation steps were needed:
  • human resources
  • newsroom physical/logical reconstruction
  • training (Al Ahram Press Training Institution)
  • empowering IT capabilities
Jeff Reifman defined journalism in a short way: journalism is telling stories and interesting as many people as possible. If yesterday journalism is not what readers expect, the sollution is simple – change that.
NewsCloud is a tool, that could be used well by publishers. It is about hosting a community pages where users can interact with one another. It is not entertainment, as opposed to some social media tools out there. Since journalism has a significant problem with its business model, Newscloud shows there is a way togenerate revenue by making people interact around one brand.
Newscloud’s Facebook application platform is an app for crowdsourcing and audience engaging. It provides a space for readers to interact with the organisation and each other. It conteins interactive features to add value to the community inside and outside the news cycle. By working as a Facebook application, it has the Facebook authentication tool, so the publishers know exactly who their readers are.
Francisco Amaral showed a couple of examples of Spanish, Brazilian and Prtuguese newspapers that managed to break away from the traditional “he said yesterday journalism”. Many of these titles needed something more than news, they needed opinion and analysis.
Newspaper publishers should be thinking that way: fact makes a story, and story should attract the readers. It’s not only relevance that make the story interesting. News publishers should think first with their targets.
Each paper should look for a model that suits its values  and its business structure. But every newspaper, no matter what its business model is, has to define the reader.
Newspapers that are successful:
  • have clearly defined values
  • know their audience
  • are newsy
  • have talented staff
  • respect the time
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New York Times is ready for paywall launch

October 7, 2010 by marek.miller 

Janet RobinsonThe second day of the World Editors Forum conference in Hamburg began with a keynote speech made by Janet Robinson, the CEO of the New York Times. New York Times is planning to introduce the paid-for-online-content business model beginning January 2011.

People at the New York Times first and foremost storytellers. Print is a very profittable pillar of the company and they will support it. They are not retreating from printing newspapers, and will print newspapers for a long time.

Media companies must be in perpetual beta in serving audiences while maintaining quality content on all platforms. They must learn from their readers, listen to their opinion and make them interact.

Free access to a limited number of articles before being asked to pay, and letting casual users visit through search and social media channels will preserve both traffic and inventory. After some time they will be asked to pay. NYTimes will anounce details of paid content model in late 2010 (prices and other details). They will continue to find new ways of presenting paid content on the digital platforms.

They are not pioneers. First was Times Select – it proved paid-for model worthy, more and more users showed the willingness to pay. It went down because of growing role of search in the internet and growing number of free content. The decision to create paid-content site adds an additional revenue source to sustain journalism

If people are willing to pay for apps, they should be willing to pay for the content. People will pay for news they trust, and are getting comfortable buying apps so will soon be ok to buy news and information. NYT has 43 million users online, the world largest online newspaper. Janet Robinson says it is all about the quality At the NYT they are more and more adapt with community driven content.

Business paradox, the so-called competitors are not competitors anymore. The are no more in the information business but in the making-content-relevant business. Reader engagement is essential to success of paid-content strategy. Interactive maps, sliding timelines, getting skilled with crowd-sourcing, all working better and better at New York Times.

Understanding the art of journalism and storytelling, and the emotional side of online engagement, will be core to New York Times success in future. Storytelling is key and online platforms can do much better than what we see now.

Facebook works well because of users’ identity. It’s important to publishers, because they now can identify the readers, as knowledgeble participants of the social discussion. No more anonymous comments. This will help build a special bond between readers and publishers. Knowing more about the readers will greatly advance readers’ loyalty.

Janet Robinson finished her speech with a statement that no matter what the future holds, people will always need and want to be informed. New York Times will be there for them.

Read this interesting interview with Janet Robinson at the New Media Age

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