By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor
The New York Times has spent the past few months polishing its Web site as it attempts to give its readers more choices.
The most notable tweak was the September shuttering of TimesSelect. The Times also began offering access to all of its online content, as well as archives dating back to 1987, free of charge.
Although TimesSelect drew more than 780,000 users, the paper decided to replace the subscription model by one based on advertising, said Vivian Schiller, senior vice president and general manager for NYTimes.com.
American Express signed on as the first sponsor of the opened areas of NYTimes.com. For the past few weeks, it had a significant advertising presence on NYTimes.com’s home page as well as in the opinion and archives sections that were formerly behind the pay wall.
TimesSelect rolled out in September 2005 and at its end had approximately 787,400 active subscribers. Of the subscribed users, 471,200 received TimesSelect free as part of their home-delivery subscriptions, 227,000 paid for online access and another 89,200 received it for free on college campuses through TimesSelect University.
The Times is also offering archived content between 1851 and 1922 free of charge. It charges nonsubscribers a fee to access stories published between 1923 and 1986.
Home-delivery subscribers can access The Times’ complete archive, free of charge.
NYTimes.com drew more than 14 million unique users in July, tops among all newspaper Web sites according to Nielsen//Net Ratings.
Customization
NYTimes.com also formally launched My Times, http://my.nytimes.com, a feature that allows readers to personalize Web pages by organizing sources from all over the Web.
“Our goal with My Times was to create a unique Web portal that gives readers the ability to organize New York Times content, as well as content from around the Web, on their very own page,” said Rob Larson, NYTimes.com’s vice president of product management and development.
“This personalized service makes it easy for users to read all that they like, from one central place.”
My Times users seeking additional information about their prescribed topics can also get personalized recommendations from Times journalists.
My Times receives about 94,000 unique users a month and out of those, around 45,000 users have customized their My Times page, Larson said.
“We have also added thousands of news sources and new widgets such as The New York Times crosswords, local movie show times, flickr slideshows and weather,” said Larson. “In the coming months, we will also be integrating ‘Add to My Times’ buttons around the site, making it easy for readers to set up pages and we expect usage to increase significantly once those buttons are introduced.”
Designed in-house
“My Times went from being an advanced prototype to a production-ready system,” Larson said. “We also integrated the in-house NYTimes.com advertising system into My Times, so that our advertising clients would be able to buy ads and widget sponsorships in the same way they do for the rest of the site.”
NYTimes.com also upgraded software used to create and distribute widgets.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Gainesville Sun puts Web front and center in revamp
By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor
On Wednesday, Sept. 19, The Gainesville (Fla.) Sun’s Web site rose with a new look and purpose.
The newspaper (Monday-Friday, 51,491; Saturday, 48,604; Sunday, 52,827) that day relaunched the site as part of a reconfigured newsroom aimed at delivering news and information 24 hours a day, seven days a week, said Jennifer Smodish Griggs, online director.
The redesign project went hand-in-hand with the reorganization of our newsroom at the [paper] this summer,” she said. “The reorganization moved The Sun to a 24/7 continuous news operation and it made us really start to think digital first in a lot of ways.”
Sun editors and managers spent six months redesigning the paper’s news strategies, working with specialists from The New York Times Co. Regional Media Group in Tampa. The result was new, easier-to-navigate designs for GainesvilleSun.com and companion site Gainesville.com, Griggs said.
Hands-on
Among the benefits The Sun wanted from its retooled Web sites was the ability to let newsroom editors update content and change layouts without forcing them to become expert HTML programmers.
“We wanted to give the editors the opportunity to be hands on with the Web site,” she said. “This gives the editors more flexibility, akin to the same flexibility they might have when they are laying out a print page.”
The Sun tapped Saxotech Inc. to supply the content management software necessary to allow editors to work on the site.
“We worked with staff from Saxotech and NYTRMG online support staff to make updating and changing the site easier for editors,” Griggs said.
The Sun also cloaked the site with video and offered readers the chance to post photos, videos and comments.
“We have dramatically ramped up the amount of video that our newsroom is producing on the main site as well as on our GatorSports.com site,” said Griggs, adding that the site posts from three to five videos each day.
Another part of the redesign allows The Sun to prominently place videos on the site, thus attracting more user response.
Another feature, Zoom, lets users submit a photo that can be linked to a Google map, Griggs said.
New doorway
The redesign also changed the purpose of Gainesville.com by making it more of a doorway into The Sun’s network of sites, which include GatorSports.com and other community content pages.
“That’s a change from the old Gainesville.com, which was a very long, deep page that visitors had to scroll down to see in its entirety,” she said.
The user-participation feature of the redesigned Gainesville.com got a workout soon after its launch, when readers flocked to post comments about the University of Florida student who was tasered by police at a John Kerry forum.
“We saw readers starting forums about it and posting comments on some of the individual news stories,” Griggs said. “Readers were also uploading some of their own photos of the event.”
The Sun’s revamped newsroom, meantime, is based on a hybrid print-online approach. Reporters are assigned to one of four local editors who supervise various local coverage areas, including breaking news, public service, trends, business, schools and transportation.
Reporters, in addition to their writing responsibilities, shoot video and audio for the Web sites, said Jim Osteen, executive editor.
Multimedia strategy
“All reporters now are equipped with simple video cameras and laptop computers, so filing both stories and videos to our Web sites is standard operating procedure for their daily routine,” he said. “We also created a breaking news team within the local desk operation to provide early coverage just for the Web.”
Additionally, mobile reporters file stories, pictures and videos as they circle the city looking for stories and events of interest.
To support the multimedia strategy, The Sun purchased video cameras, upgraded reporters’ laptop computers and added a high-end video camera to its multimedia desk.
“We also created a multimedia wall with four 50-inch plasma screens that has become an integral part of the newsroom,” Osteen said. “We hold all of our news meetings in front of the multimedia wall and use it to monitor our Web sites, play videos, make changes in our online news presentations and track our hits.”
Sun retools newsroom
The transformed Gainesville (Fla.) Sun newsroom features a hybrid print-online desk function that brings in the new and kicks out the old.
To that end, The Sun combined its news desk, copy desk and design desk operations into a single unit that produces stories for print and online distribution, according to Jim Osteen, executive editor.
The news desk, for example, is a “delivery desk,” he said, capable of providing stories for print and online simultaneously.
In addition to working cross-platform, in many cases individuals are working cross-section.
“Our goal in reconfiguring the newsroom was to do what we do best, substantive journalism for our community — but across platforms,” said Osteen. “What we have created is a highly versatile newsroom for the increasingly digital world.”
The city desk, features desk and business desk have been combined into a local desk that produces videos for the Web and articles for the print and Web editions.
“Under this new system the reporters are assigned to one of four local editors and contribute stories to all of our print sections and to the Web,” said Osteen. “The photography department has become the multimedia desk and provides photos and videos to our daily and weekly print editions, our city magazine and Web sites.”
Web site Snapshot
www.gainesville.com
New site launch date: Aug. 20, 2007
Last major redesign: 2005
Owner: New York Times Regional Media Group
Employees dedicated to site: 6 (including online operations and online advertising)
Additional sites cacheable through Gainesville.com
• GatorSports
www.gatorsports.com
• Gainesville Magazine
www.gainesvillemagazine.com
• Gainesville Voice
www.gainesvillevoice.com
• GV2Go.com
www.gv2go.com
• Gainesville Guardian
www.gainesvilleguardian.com
Associate Editor
On Wednesday, Sept. 19, The Gainesville (Fla.) Sun’s Web site rose with a new look and purpose.
The newspaper (Monday-Friday, 51,491; Saturday, 48,604; Sunday, 52,827) that day relaunched the site as part of a reconfigured newsroom aimed at delivering news and information 24 hours a day, seven days a week, said Jennifer Smodish Griggs, online director.
The redesign project went hand-in-hand with the reorganization of our newsroom at the [paper] this summer,” she said. “The reorganization moved The Sun to a 24/7 continuous news operation and it made us really start to think digital first in a lot of ways.”
Sun editors and managers spent six months redesigning the paper’s news strategies, working with specialists from The New York Times Co. Regional Media Group in Tampa. The result was new, easier-to-navigate designs for GainesvilleSun.com and companion site Gainesville.com, Griggs said.
Hands-on
Among the benefits The Sun wanted from its retooled Web sites was the ability to let newsroom editors update content and change layouts without forcing them to become expert HTML programmers.
“We wanted to give the editors the opportunity to be hands on with the Web site,” she said. “This gives the editors more flexibility, akin to the same flexibility they might have when they are laying out a print page.”
The Sun tapped Saxotech Inc. to supply the content management software necessary to allow editors to work on the site.
“We worked with staff from Saxotech and NYTRMG online support staff to make updating and changing the site easier for editors,” Griggs said.
The Sun also cloaked the site with video and offered readers the chance to post photos, videos and comments.
“We have dramatically ramped up the amount of video that our newsroom is producing on the main site as well as on our GatorSports.com site,” said Griggs, adding that the site posts from three to five videos each day.
Another part of the redesign allows The Sun to prominently place videos on the site, thus attracting more user response.
Another feature, Zoom, lets users submit a photo that can be linked to a Google map, Griggs said.
New doorway
The redesign also changed the purpose of Gainesville.com by making it more of a doorway into The Sun’s network of sites, which include GatorSports.com and other community content pages.
“That’s a change from the old Gainesville.com, which was a very long, deep page that visitors had to scroll down to see in its entirety,” she said.
The user-participation feature of the redesigned Gainesville.com got a workout soon after its launch, when readers flocked to post comments about the University of Florida student who was tasered by police at a John Kerry forum.
“We saw readers starting forums about it and posting comments on some of the individual news stories,” Griggs said. “Readers were also uploading some of their own photos of the event.”
The Sun’s revamped newsroom, meantime, is based on a hybrid print-online approach. Reporters are assigned to one of four local editors who supervise various local coverage areas, including breaking news, public service, trends, business, schools and transportation.
Reporters, in addition to their writing responsibilities, shoot video and audio for the Web sites, said Jim Osteen, executive editor.
Multimedia strategy
“All reporters now are equipped with simple video cameras and laptop computers, so filing both stories and videos to our Web sites is standard operating procedure for their daily routine,” he said. “We also created a breaking news team within the local desk operation to provide early coverage just for the Web.”
Additionally, mobile reporters file stories, pictures and videos as they circle the city looking for stories and events of interest.
To support the multimedia strategy, The Sun purchased video cameras, upgraded reporters’ laptop computers and added a high-end video camera to its multimedia desk.
“We also created a multimedia wall with four 50-inch plasma screens that has become an integral part of the newsroom,” Osteen said. “We hold all of our news meetings in front of the multimedia wall and use it to monitor our Web sites, play videos, make changes in our online news presentations and track our hits.”
Sun retools newsroom
The transformed Gainesville (Fla.) Sun newsroom features a hybrid print-online desk function that brings in the new and kicks out the old.
To that end, The Sun combined its news desk, copy desk and design desk operations into a single unit that produces stories for print and online distribution, according to Jim Osteen, executive editor.
The news desk, for example, is a “delivery desk,” he said, capable of providing stories for print and online simultaneously.
In addition to working cross-platform, in many cases individuals are working cross-section.
“Our goal in reconfiguring the newsroom was to do what we do best, substantive journalism for our community — but across platforms,” said Osteen. “What we have created is a highly versatile newsroom for the increasingly digital world.”
The city desk, features desk and business desk have been combined into a local desk that produces videos for the Web and articles for the print and Web editions.
“Under this new system the reporters are assigned to one of four local editors and contribute stories to all of our print sections and to the Web,” said Osteen. “The photography department has become the multimedia desk and provides photos and videos to our daily and weekly print editions, our city magazine and Web sites.”
Web site Snapshot
www.gainesville.com
New site launch date: Aug. 20, 2007
Last major redesign: 2005
Owner: New York Times Regional Media Group
Employees dedicated to site: 6 (including online operations and online advertising)
Additional sites cacheable through Gainesville.com
• GatorSports
www.gatorsports.com
• Gainesville Magazine
www.gainesvillemagazine.com
• Gainesville Voice
www.gainesvillevoice.com
• GV2Go.com
www.gv2go.com
• Gainesville Guardian
www.gainesvilleguardian.com
DTI wants everyone in the pool with new content app
By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor
Newspapers now have another tool to oversee content slated for multiple channels with the release last month of MediaPool, a content management app that handles both print and online data on the same server.
Digital Technology International Chief Executive Officer Don Oldham said MediaPool, introduced at last month’s IfraExpo, will let newspapers freely earmark content as needed, from print to Web radio.
“MediaPool is a content management system that doesn’t have boundaries between print and Web or even between new channels,” Oldham said. “When we talk about the Web, that’s usually not one channel. It’s possibly on the Internet or mobile, Web TV or Web radio.”
The Register-Guard in Eugene, Ore., is the first newspaper to integrate MediaPool CMS into its operation. The paper expects to roll out the app later this year in conjunction with a major upgrade of its editorial and advertising software.
Engine for apps
MediaPool is the content management engine for several DTI apps, including AdSpeed, ClassSpeed, NewsSpeed and WebSpeed.
The app is based on InterSystems Corp.’s Cache database software, a high-performance object database InterSystems claims can retrieve information five times faster than relational databases.
“This database uses a multidimensional array and even though it’s a single pool of data, it can be physically distributed across servers and even across geographic locations,” said Oldham, explaining the benefits of InterSystems’ approach.
Parent and child approach
MediaPool uses a hierarchical method to manage data, with a “parent” record and any number of “child” records linked together in the database.
“You have to have children because you may need a high-resolution photographs for print, but a low-resolution version for the Web,” Oldham said.
“Instead of having two separate photos with separate names that have to be updated in the system, they exist as one photo with different versions that show up as a thumbnail.”
MediaPool is also capable of overseeing user-generated content, a benefit to newspapers that solicit community input on their Web sites.
“Typically, that content isn’t in the regular workflow and has to be treated and handled separately,” Oldham said. “But the MediaPool architecture allows all of that user-generated material to come into the pool of content and be treated” like newsroom-generated content.
Meantime, DTI released a new version of WebSpeed, integrating the app with Adobe Systems Inc.’s Dreamweaver software.
WebSpeed’s suite of applications includes SpeedWriter, eWriter and Escenic Content Studio. SpeedWriter and eWriter let users create stories in a format that can be immediately published to the Web or onto layouts for print publications.
DTI has had a longstanding relationship with Adobe, integrating InDesign and InCopy within its software offerings.
“What we did with InDesign is we made it into a multi-user collaborative system and not just a single-user page layout program like it comes shrink wrapped,” Oldham said. “What we’ve added to Dreamweaver are dynamic tags so that a designer can lay out pages but put in the content tags, which will update directly out of the MediaPool database.”
The tags will thus allow users to automatically update their Web site hundreds of times per day without having to go back and manually edit the sites, Oldham said.
DTI said it also plans to incorporate Adobe Media Player into its apps at a later date.
Associate Editor
Newspapers now have another tool to oversee content slated for multiple channels with the release last month of MediaPool, a content management app that handles both print and online data on the same server.
Digital Technology International Chief Executive Officer Don Oldham said MediaPool, introduced at last month’s IfraExpo, will let newspapers freely earmark content as needed, from print to Web radio.
“MediaPool is a content management system that doesn’t have boundaries between print and Web or even between new channels,” Oldham said. “When we talk about the Web, that’s usually not one channel. It’s possibly on the Internet or mobile, Web TV or Web radio.”
The Register-Guard in Eugene, Ore., is the first newspaper to integrate MediaPool CMS into its operation. The paper expects to roll out the app later this year in conjunction with a major upgrade of its editorial and advertising software.
Engine for apps
MediaPool is the content management engine for several DTI apps, including AdSpeed, ClassSpeed, NewsSpeed and WebSpeed.
The app is based on InterSystems Corp.’s Cache database software, a high-performance object database InterSystems claims can retrieve information five times faster than relational databases.
“This database uses a multidimensional array and even though it’s a single pool of data, it can be physically distributed across servers and even across geographic locations,” said Oldham, explaining the benefits of InterSystems’ approach.
Parent and child approach
MediaPool uses a hierarchical method to manage data, with a “parent” record and any number of “child” records linked together in the database.
“You have to have children because you may need a high-resolution photographs for print, but a low-resolution version for the Web,” Oldham said.
“Instead of having two separate photos with separate names that have to be updated in the system, they exist as one photo with different versions that show up as a thumbnail.”
MediaPool is also capable of overseeing user-generated content, a benefit to newspapers that solicit community input on their Web sites.
“Typically, that content isn’t in the regular workflow and has to be treated and handled separately,” Oldham said. “But the MediaPool architecture allows all of that user-generated material to come into the pool of content and be treated” like newsroom-generated content.
Meantime, DTI released a new version of WebSpeed, integrating the app with Adobe Systems Inc.’s Dreamweaver software.
WebSpeed’s suite of applications includes SpeedWriter, eWriter and Escenic Content Studio. SpeedWriter and eWriter let users create stories in a format that can be immediately published to the Web or onto layouts for print publications.
DTI has had a longstanding relationship with Adobe, integrating InDesign and InCopy within its software offerings.
“What we did with InDesign is we made it into a multi-user collaborative system and not just a single-user page layout program like it comes shrink wrapped,” Oldham said. “What we’ve added to Dreamweaver are dynamic tags so that a designer can lay out pages but put in the content tags, which will update directly out of the MediaPool database.”
The tags will thus allow users to automatically update their Web site hundreds of times per day without having to go back and manually edit the sites, Oldham said.
DTI said it also plans to incorporate Adobe Media Player into its apps at a later date.
Web service lets San Antonio readers pick their news
By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor
The San Antonio Express-News is bringing local news to a whole new level.
The paper in September added the capability to beam geographically tailored news and information directly to subscribers’ e-mail addresses, using software from Cambridge, Mass.-based MetaCarta Inc.
The firm’s Local Alerts Service for Publishers app lets readers personalize news stories and obtain information about the community events they most care about, said Julie Weber, general manager of MySanAntonio.com.
“We use Local Alerts on our site to encourage people to have information delivered to their inbox based on a geographical setting,” she said. The Express-News is the first paper to roll out the software.
Service subscribers can opt to get their news from any portion of the eight-county San Antonio metropolitan area. Local Alerts piggybacks on the site’s RSS capabilities to read, extract and e-mail alerts to subscribers.
“If I wanted to find something out about one of the bedroom communities, I could easily go in, click on a map of the geographic area I want information about and I can have alerts sent to me in the morning and evening on any news that has been uploaded for that area,” Weber said. “They may live 30 miles away and Local Alerts provides readers the ability to very easily and quickly find out any news about their geographic location.”
Map manipulation
Rick Hutton, MetaCarta’s vice president of content services, said the software enables users to define their coverage by manipulating a map rather than choosing a neighborhood, town or city.
“Our technology reads text somewhat like a human does and extracts those geographic references that a typical keyword search tool would not recognize,” he said. “It’s not broken down into neighborhoods. That’s one of the beauties” of the software.
Users can easily modify their search parameters, Hutton said, requesting alerts for certain types of classified ads or events such as community fairs.
“We think Local Alerts is unique in that it allows the newspaper publisher to offer their end users a means to subscribe to news and information about specific places, where they work, live or play, or for that matter, where they may be looking at making investments.”
MySanAntonio.com has tweaked the service a bit since its initial test run in July, Weber said. During the evaluation period, some subscribers said they were getting too much information, causing managers to dial back the amount of content transmitted to users.
Weber said the Express-News is pleased with the response Local Alerts is receiving from subscribers, but declined to disclose the number of readers the service is reaching.
“We’ve heard good reports that the service gives them just enough information about their area,” she said.
MetaCarta maps out niche
MetaCarta Inc. may be new to newspapers, but the online mapping vendor has plenty of experience working with companies in other industries.
Some of its clients include the Dept. of Homeland Security, the National Security Agency and other entities such as the EPA, USDA and Smithsonian Institution, said Rick Hutton, MetaCarta’s vice president of content services.
MetaCarta launched its content services branch last year and began its focus on the publishing industry about six months ago.
Hutton said MetaCarta’s Local Alerts app is the first in what will be several applications designed to pull unstructured text — that is, text that isn’t contained in a database file or within defined fields or records — and present it with geographic references.
“What we offer to newspaper publishers is the chance to unlock all of the geographic information that is buried in their text-based content,” said Hutton. “Once they can unlock that they can present it to users in a number of ways.
“The challenge with online is offering personalization features. Newspapers have had to use a one-size-fits-all approach in publishing news to everybody without (giving users the) ability to target it except by asking a user to click on a section,” he said. “Using software like Local Alerts starts to let newspapers know who their users are and (also lets them) target the information that they care about.”
Associate Editor
The San Antonio Express-News is bringing local news to a whole new level.
The paper in September added the capability to beam geographically tailored news and information directly to subscribers’ e-mail addresses, using software from Cambridge, Mass.-based MetaCarta Inc.
The firm’s Local Alerts Service for Publishers app lets readers personalize news stories and obtain information about the community events they most care about, said Julie Weber, general manager of MySanAntonio.com.
“We use Local Alerts on our site to encourage people to have information delivered to their inbox based on a geographical setting,” she said. The Express-News is the first paper to roll out the software.
Service subscribers can opt to get their news from any portion of the eight-county San Antonio metropolitan area. Local Alerts piggybacks on the site’s RSS capabilities to read, extract and e-mail alerts to subscribers.
“If I wanted to find something out about one of the bedroom communities, I could easily go in, click on a map of the geographic area I want information about and I can have alerts sent to me in the morning and evening on any news that has been uploaded for that area,” Weber said. “They may live 30 miles away and Local Alerts provides readers the ability to very easily and quickly find out any news about their geographic location.”
Map manipulation
Rick Hutton, MetaCarta’s vice president of content services, said the software enables users to define their coverage by manipulating a map rather than choosing a neighborhood, town or city.
“Our technology reads text somewhat like a human does and extracts those geographic references that a typical keyword search tool would not recognize,” he said. “It’s not broken down into neighborhoods. That’s one of the beauties” of the software.
Users can easily modify their search parameters, Hutton said, requesting alerts for certain types of classified ads or events such as community fairs.
“We think Local Alerts is unique in that it allows the newspaper publisher to offer their end users a means to subscribe to news and information about specific places, where they work, live or play, or for that matter, where they may be looking at making investments.”
MySanAntonio.com has tweaked the service a bit since its initial test run in July, Weber said. During the evaluation period, some subscribers said they were getting too much information, causing managers to dial back the amount of content transmitted to users.
Weber said the Express-News is pleased with the response Local Alerts is receiving from subscribers, but declined to disclose the number of readers the service is reaching.
“We’ve heard good reports that the service gives them just enough information about their area,” she said.
MetaCarta maps out niche
MetaCarta Inc. may be new to newspapers, but the online mapping vendor has plenty of experience working with companies in other industries.
Some of its clients include the Dept. of Homeland Security, the National Security Agency and other entities such as the EPA, USDA and Smithsonian Institution, said Rick Hutton, MetaCarta’s vice president of content services.
MetaCarta launched its content services branch last year and began its focus on the publishing industry about six months ago.
Hutton said MetaCarta’s Local Alerts app is the first in what will be several applications designed to pull unstructured text — that is, text that isn’t contained in a database file or within defined fields or records — and present it with geographic references.
“What we offer to newspaper publishers is the chance to unlock all of the geographic information that is buried in their text-based content,” said Hutton. “Once they can unlock that they can present it to users in a number of ways.
“The challenge with online is offering personalization features. Newspapers have had to use a one-size-fits-all approach in publishing news to everybody without (giving users the) ability to target it except by asking a user to click on a section,” he said. “Using software like Local Alerts starts to let newspapers know who their users are and (also lets them) target the information that they care about.”
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