Capitalizing on the popularity of the Apple iPhone, newspapers and vendors released free applications aimed at the second-generation model released this summer.
The New York Times, for example, launched software that gives readers offline reading capabilities, a photo browser with links to related articles and personalization options for users of both the iPhone and iPod touch models.
It syncs via Wi-Fi or the user’s cellular network and downloads the latest news directly to the device, giving readers access to content offline and in airplane mode.
NewsGator Technologies Inc., meantime, released its NetNewsWire app that syncs with its suite of RSS readers, including NetNewsWire for Macintosh, FeedDemon, Inbox and NewsGator Online. The application is available from Apple’s App Store, which was launched in conjunction with the retooled iPhone.
Washingtonpost.com launched an optimized version of its site for Apple iPhone users, using software from Crisp Wireless. Crisp apps will allow users to share the paper’s content among popular microblogging and social networking Web sites, including del.icio.us and digg.
Overseas, Sweden’s Dagens Nyheter rolled out iPhone-specific features on its mobile portal, mobil.dn.se, which were developed by Norwegian vendor Mobiletech.
Enhanced features include fingertip-sized navigation controls.
The paper’s support for the iPhone is built into the same mobile portal framework that DN uses to beam information to users of other cell phone models. Mobiletech engineered the site with device-detection capabilities that eliminate the need for DN to support an iPhone-specific URL.
The iPhone’s launch has increased the amount of mobile Internet usage in Europe, said Nick Robertshawe, a business development specialist at Mobiletech.
“This has been specifically evident in sites that are tailored to the unique presentation and user interface of each device,” he said. “In the case of the iPhone we have developed sites that use the iPhone navigation, including slide shows and larger and longer-sized clickable sections and links.”
Monday, September 1, 2008
4 questions with Greg McHale
Greg McHale, founder and chief executive officer of Good2gether, discusses the impact of social networking and where newspapers fit in.
How has social networking changed over the past few years?
Some say social networking is still in its infancy and from a business perspective, it is. However, adoption rates continue to increase, as has utility. More than 57 percent of active Internet users ages 16 to 54 globally have joined a social network, according to a March 2008 study on social media trends from Universal McCann. For younger generations, who spend as much or more time online and have more online friends than real friends, social networking is entirely ubiquitous, barely lagging behind search as the primary online activity.
Demographics aside, the biggest change is simply in the fact that social networks are everywhere. New social networks crop up almost daily; the major players boast tens of millions of users, and the trend, if we were to plot it, is an upward moving curve. Not everyone has joined a social network yet but virtually everyone has heard of them; and global brands, nonprofits, even government agencies are identifying useful ways to embrace this technology.
So I think it’s fair to say social network is changing the landscape profoundly — and yet, it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
What future trends do you see with social networking?
Certainly, we can expect some consolidation among the players and much better integration between networks. Right now, many of the social networks are silos. They’re competing with one another, and from a user’s perspective, managing multiple profiles is challenging. For some, social network overload is the barrier to true adoption. To solve this problem, social network aggregators like NetVibes and PageFlakes will most likely continue to improve their offerings, and others will likely crop up as well.
But I think the biggest trend we’ll see emerging is in the way folks share and discover information. Over time, I expect it to be less about generic search and more about discovery through the network. Why do a generic search when you can get warm leads and actual recommendations from your trusted circle of friends, family and colleagues?
We’re already seeing a massive shift in the way companies and individuals are communicating — amongst themselves and with one another. Social networks are driving a more transparent, consumer-driven, vibrant two-way dialog. And the newspaper industry is beginning to embrace and encourage that, which I think is a very healthy sign of things to come.
Why is it important for newspapers to implement social networking features?
Newspapers are beginning to adopt a more holistic view of their businesses. It’s not just about the news anymore; rather, it’s about being the go-to resource for how to live in their community.
Enabling their readers to discover and share hyperlocal information about the things they care about — like causes and local nonprofits — is vital to building reader loyalty and engaging new readers online.
Additionally, newspapers are becoming more aware of the notion that not only is content king, but content that is hyperlocal, dynamic and user-generated has more stickiness and gets more mileage — and both of these things are vital to a newspaper’s success. Stickiness, page views, loyalty, time spent on site — all these things, of course, drive online ad revenue. So it makes perfect sense for newspapers to embrace and enable social networking as a means for both creating and perpetuating content online.
What are some of the more popular tools used on social networking sites?
The ability to share information of interest with your friends and contacts is essential, whether it’s e-mailing a link, posting something to your Facebook or MySpace profile or using a social book-marking tool like Digg or del.icio.us.
Of course, folks love to share their opinions and experiences with others, which is why tools that enable and encourage comments, reviews, ratings, or uploading one’s photos and videos, relevant to the site content, are also key. Widgets are another popular feature on social networks that allow users to identify their passions and engage with the community.
How has social networking changed over the past few years?
Some say social networking is still in its infancy and from a business perspective, it is. However, adoption rates continue to increase, as has utility. More than 57 percent of active Internet users ages 16 to 54 globally have joined a social network, according to a March 2008 study on social media trends from Universal McCann. For younger generations, who spend as much or more time online and have more online friends than real friends, social networking is entirely ubiquitous, barely lagging behind search as the primary online activity.
Demographics aside, the biggest change is simply in the fact that social networks are everywhere. New social networks crop up almost daily; the major players boast tens of millions of users, and the trend, if we were to plot it, is an upward moving curve. Not everyone has joined a social network yet but virtually everyone has heard of them; and global brands, nonprofits, even government agencies are identifying useful ways to embrace this technology.
So I think it’s fair to say social network is changing the landscape profoundly — and yet, it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
What future trends do you see with social networking?
Certainly, we can expect some consolidation among the players and much better integration between networks. Right now, many of the social networks are silos. They’re competing with one another, and from a user’s perspective, managing multiple profiles is challenging. For some, social network overload is the barrier to true adoption. To solve this problem, social network aggregators like NetVibes and PageFlakes will most likely continue to improve their offerings, and others will likely crop up as well.
But I think the biggest trend we’ll see emerging is in the way folks share and discover information. Over time, I expect it to be less about generic search and more about discovery through the network. Why do a generic search when you can get warm leads and actual recommendations from your trusted circle of friends, family and colleagues?
We’re already seeing a massive shift in the way companies and individuals are communicating — amongst themselves and with one another. Social networks are driving a more transparent, consumer-driven, vibrant two-way dialog. And the newspaper industry is beginning to embrace and encourage that, which I think is a very healthy sign of things to come.
Why is it important for newspapers to implement social networking features?
Newspapers are beginning to adopt a more holistic view of their businesses. It’s not just about the news anymore; rather, it’s about being the go-to resource for how to live in their community.
Enabling their readers to discover and share hyperlocal information about the things they care about — like causes and local nonprofits — is vital to building reader loyalty and engaging new readers online.
Additionally, newspapers are becoming more aware of the notion that not only is content king, but content that is hyperlocal, dynamic and user-generated has more stickiness and gets more mileage — and both of these things are vital to a newspaper’s success. Stickiness, page views, loyalty, time spent on site — all these things, of course, drive online ad revenue. So it makes perfect sense for newspapers to embrace and enable social networking as a means for both creating and perpetuating content online.
What are some of the more popular tools used on social networking sites?
The ability to share information of interest with your friends and contacts is essential, whether it’s e-mailing a link, posting something to your Facebook or MySpace profile or using a social book-marking tool like Digg or del.icio.us.
Of course, folks love to share their opinions and experiences with others, which is why tools that enable and encourage comments, reviews, ratings, or uploading one’s photos and videos, relevant to the site content, are also key. Widgets are another popular feature on social networks that allow users to identify their passions and engage with the community.
Associated Press cites growth in mobile network
By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor
The Associated Press, which rolled out its Mobile News Network only a few months ago, isn’t wasting any time enhancing the news service.
AP last month said that 728 newspapers have already joined MNN, a five-fold jump since its May launch. MNN is now available across the nation’s top 100 media markets.
Traffic meantime, topped 2 million page views in the first month, AP, said, with 150,000 unique visitors logging on via the service’s Web application version.
AP gave another boost to the service when it launched software aimed at capitalizing on the capabilities of 3G iPhones, which were introduced in July. The software lets iPhone or iPod touch users access MNN and it was downloaded more than 10,000 times the day it was launched, the cooperative said.
Browse full stories
Among other features, the iPhone software allows readers to browse full stories even when out of network reception and it also enables users to customize navigation options. The program also allows viewers to save stories of interest and to flip through photos and videos dynamically.
AP members made a conscious choice to provide full-length articles from the AP and newspaper partners instead of abbreviated versions to iPhone users, said Jeffery Litvack, the cooperative’s global director of new media.
We wanted to take advantage of the larger screen size and graphical capabilities,” he said. “The videos through the iPhone are of a higher quality than you might see on other types of phones.”
The iPhone application was developed in tandem with Verve Wireless. The software manages content and determines the types of ads transmitted to users. Earlier this year, AP led a $3 million round of financing in the company.
Litvack said AP is now examining how to optimize MNN further to support more next-gen handsets with sophisticated display capabilities.
“So when you look at sites on the Verizon Voyager, LG Dare or Samsung Instinct (handsets) we are going take advantage of the additional graphical user capabilities of those phones and offer a lot more navigation and customization options than you would be able to have on a simple WAP site,” Litvack said.
AP is also building client applications to support devices like the BlackBerry.
Ads, national and local
On the advertising front, AP is working with national ad networks as well as examining how to tap the local market, Litvack said.
MNN’s ability to target news based on location will eventually allow newspapers to offer hyperlocal ad programs, he said.
“AP members developed a set of business rules so that the ads will be placed by the newspaper,” he said. “So if you go and buy an ad within a given newspaper for print, you’ll also be able to buy it on the Mobile News Network in the future.”
Litvack said that location-based ad services will be rolling out over the next few months. Some options may include ad services cloaked with the ability to deliver coupons to users as they walk by a particular retail outlet.
“With mobile in particular, we want to drive the consumer to take an action — to walk into the store — that you can’t do if (the ad message) is delivered to your computer.”
MNN is the first product released by AP’s Digital Cooperative, an initiative aimed at finding new digital outlets for the news and information produced by AP and its members.
Other initiatives expected
Other initiatives include a Newsmap, a way for search engines to have a complete map to the news online, especially the originating source of a story, Litvack said.
“Rather than having to ping thousands of Web sites, the search engines can ping one database that’s a complete collection of all the news.”
AP is also testing its Marketplace program, a strategy that allows members to share stories among each other in a given local market.
Associate Editor
The Associated Press, which rolled out its Mobile News Network only a few months ago, isn’t wasting any time enhancing the news service.
AP last month said that 728 newspapers have already joined MNN, a five-fold jump since its May launch. MNN is now available across the nation’s top 100 media markets.
Traffic meantime, topped 2 million page views in the first month, AP, said, with 150,000 unique visitors logging on via the service’s Web application version.
AP gave another boost to the service when it launched software aimed at capitalizing on the capabilities of 3G iPhones, which were introduced in July. The software lets iPhone or iPod touch users access MNN and it was downloaded more than 10,000 times the day it was launched, the cooperative said.
Browse full stories
Among other features, the iPhone software allows readers to browse full stories even when out of network reception and it also enables users to customize navigation options. The program also allows viewers to save stories of interest and to flip through photos and videos dynamically.
AP members made a conscious choice to provide full-length articles from the AP and newspaper partners instead of abbreviated versions to iPhone users, said Jeffery Litvack, the cooperative’s global director of new media.
We wanted to take advantage of the larger screen size and graphical capabilities,” he said. “The videos through the iPhone are of a higher quality than you might see on other types of phones.”
The iPhone application was developed in tandem with Verve Wireless. The software manages content and determines the types of ads transmitted to users. Earlier this year, AP led a $3 million round of financing in the company.
Litvack said AP is now examining how to optimize MNN further to support more next-gen handsets with sophisticated display capabilities.
“So when you look at sites on the Verizon Voyager, LG Dare or Samsung Instinct (handsets) we are going take advantage of the additional graphical user capabilities of those phones and offer a lot more navigation and customization options than you would be able to have on a simple WAP site,” Litvack said.
AP is also building client applications to support devices like the BlackBerry.
Ads, national and local
On the advertising front, AP is working with national ad networks as well as examining how to tap the local market, Litvack said.
MNN’s ability to target news based on location will eventually allow newspapers to offer hyperlocal ad programs, he said.
“AP members developed a set of business rules so that the ads will be placed by the newspaper,” he said. “So if you go and buy an ad within a given newspaper for print, you’ll also be able to buy it on the Mobile News Network in the future.”
Litvack said that location-based ad services will be rolling out over the next few months. Some options may include ad services cloaked with the ability to deliver coupons to users as they walk by a particular retail outlet.
“With mobile in particular, we want to drive the consumer to take an action — to walk into the store — that you can’t do if (the ad message) is delivered to your computer.”
MNN is the first product released by AP’s Digital Cooperative, an initiative aimed at finding new digital outlets for the news and information produced by AP and its members.
Other initiatives expected
Other initiatives include a Newsmap, a way for search engines to have a complete map to the news online, especially the originating source of a story, Litvack said.
“Rather than having to ping thousands of Web sites, the search engines can ping one database that’s a complete collection of all the news.”
AP is also testing its Marketplace program, a strategy that allows members to share stories among each other in a given local market.
User-generated publications on horizon with Printcasting
By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor
A project now under way at The Bakersfield Californian could give newspapers nationwide the ability to let readers easily create their own niche publications.
The Californian earlier this year won an $837,000 grant from the Knight Foundation to develop an interface, dubbed Printcasting, that allows readers to customize publications containing content from participating blogs and newspaper Web sites.
The upshot: user-generated publications that can be e-mailed as a PDF or printed at home or in the office, said Dan Pacheco, senior manager of digital products at The Californian.
“Maybe it’s about music and you can get a bunch of content from (The Californian’s Web site) Bakotopia, or maybe it’s about a certain craft or neighborhood news,” he said, explaining that Printcasting dovetails nicely with the paper’s strategy to identify important audiences that could be served through niche products.
“What we know is that there are so many audiences that may not be as big as that for a newspaper, but there still will be a certain community that’s interested in that topic or organization,” he said.
Printcasting will also help newspapers capitalize on the continued appeal of print and allow them to reach local retailers wary of current print advertising models, Pacheco said.
“If you look at a small niche interests that may have 5,000 people dedicated to that community, there could be a half dozen or more businesses that would love to reach them,” said Pacheco. “Those types of businesses are not advertising in our larger print products and certainly not in our main newspaper because it’s too expensive and it would use their entire marketing budget in the span of a week.”
Making it happen
Printcasting sprang from what The Californian learned by creating its own network of social networking sites (see related story on page 37.)
“Initially, what we talked about was how we can have people create their own social networks about very specific interests,” said Pacheco. “And the term used for that was instabrand, but we haven’t quite gotten there yet. I think that Printcasting is going to make that happen.”
The Californian is touting Printcasting as a way for users and advertisers to benefit from the generation of customized publications geared toward a specific audience. The paper is in the first phase of a two-year project to fine-tune the concept.
The newspaper is three months into its first leg of a two-year project that will make Printcasting available to anyone who wants to use it. It will be offered as an open source product, thus allowing newspapers to download the software and integrate it into their existing systems, Pacheco said.
The first phase of the project includes design and beta testing the Printcasting interface. The second phase, slated to start next March, includes testing the system at The Californian and the third phase encompasses testing Printcasting with five volunteer publications.
Printcasting also includes a self-service ad interface to enable advertisers to place ads on their own, Pacheco said.
“Printcasting is also a bridge strategy for serving local advertisers that may not be advertising anywhere right now, let alone in print,” he said.
Once The Californian begins testing Printcasting next spring, Pacheco said he hopes to create an “American Idol” effect around the subsequent user-generated niche publications.
“We figure if we get enough people to create these things and we track which ones are the most popular, certain stars are going to emerge,” he said. “We hope we’ll see 100 come out over a three-month period where 10 of them are consistently good.”
If that part of the plan pans out, The Californian will evaluate printing and distributing those magazines that spark the most popularity or best meet a specific demographic, Pacheco said.
Hyper customization
Pacheco said Printcasting meshes with the current demand among consumers for products and services that meet their specific interests.
“The print world hasn’t been forgotten and when you see circulations go down it’s not that people don’t want to consume print,” he said. “It’s more of a statement about the one-size-fits-all audience strategy that newspapers have pursued for so many years.”
The development of Printcasting comes as newspapers begin to explore more deeply ways to serve niche audiences.
“I’ve learned that there is this whole movement that I didn’t know existed, but we are starting to learn about each other,” said Pacheco. “Printcasting is part of that movement. Fortunately we’re not the only innovators in that area, which makes it exciting.”
Associate Editor
A project now under way at The Bakersfield Californian could give newspapers nationwide the ability to let readers easily create their own niche publications.
The Californian earlier this year won an $837,000 grant from the Knight Foundation to develop an interface, dubbed Printcasting, that allows readers to customize publications containing content from participating blogs and newspaper Web sites.
The upshot: user-generated publications that can be e-mailed as a PDF or printed at home or in the office, said Dan Pacheco, senior manager of digital products at The Californian.
“Maybe it’s about music and you can get a bunch of content from (The Californian’s Web site) Bakotopia, or maybe it’s about a certain craft or neighborhood news,” he said, explaining that Printcasting dovetails nicely with the paper’s strategy to identify important audiences that could be served through niche products.
“What we know is that there are so many audiences that may not be as big as that for a newspaper, but there still will be a certain community that’s interested in that topic or organization,” he said.
Printcasting will also help newspapers capitalize on the continued appeal of print and allow them to reach local retailers wary of current print advertising models, Pacheco said.
“If you look at a small niche interests that may have 5,000 people dedicated to that community, there could be a half dozen or more businesses that would love to reach them,” said Pacheco. “Those types of businesses are not advertising in our larger print products and certainly not in our main newspaper because it’s too expensive and it would use their entire marketing budget in the span of a week.”
Making it happen
Printcasting sprang from what The Californian learned by creating its own network of social networking sites (see related story on page 37.)
“Initially, what we talked about was how we can have people create their own social networks about very specific interests,” said Pacheco. “And the term used for that was instabrand, but we haven’t quite gotten there yet. I think that Printcasting is going to make that happen.”
The Californian is touting Printcasting as a way for users and advertisers to benefit from the generation of customized publications geared toward a specific audience. The paper is in the first phase of a two-year project to fine-tune the concept.
The newspaper is three months into its first leg of a two-year project that will make Printcasting available to anyone who wants to use it. It will be offered as an open source product, thus allowing newspapers to download the software and integrate it into their existing systems, Pacheco said.
The first phase of the project includes design and beta testing the Printcasting interface. The second phase, slated to start next March, includes testing the system at The Californian and the third phase encompasses testing Printcasting with five volunteer publications.
Printcasting also includes a self-service ad interface to enable advertisers to place ads on their own, Pacheco said.
“Printcasting is also a bridge strategy for serving local advertisers that may not be advertising anywhere right now, let alone in print,” he said.
Once The Californian begins testing Printcasting next spring, Pacheco said he hopes to create an “American Idol” effect around the subsequent user-generated niche publications.
“We figure if we get enough people to create these things and we track which ones are the most popular, certain stars are going to emerge,” he said. “We hope we’ll see 100 come out over a three-month period where 10 of them are consistently good.”
If that part of the plan pans out, The Californian will evaluate printing and distributing those magazines that spark the most popularity or best meet a specific demographic, Pacheco said.
Hyper customization
Pacheco said Printcasting meshes with the current demand among consumers for products and services that meet their specific interests.
“The print world hasn’t been forgotten and when you see circulations go down it’s not that people don’t want to consume print,” he said. “It’s more of a statement about the one-size-fits-all audience strategy that newspapers have pursued for so many years.”
The development of Printcasting comes as newspapers begin to explore more deeply ways to serve niche audiences.
“I’ve learned that there is this whole movement that I didn’t know existed, but we are starting to learn about each other,” said Pacheco. “Printcasting is part of that movement. Fortunately we’re not the only innovators in that area, which makes it exciting.”
Yahoo steers 100 million to member sites
Yahoo said that it has driven more than 100 million visits to Newspaper Consortium member Web sites through the distribution of local news headlines across the Yahoo network.
Under a content distribution program, Newspaper Consortium member sites provide news headlines to Yahoo for placement across Yahoo properties, including the Yahoo home page, news, finance and sports, as well as across its mobile network and messenger service. The links take Yahoo users directly to the full articles on the local news sites.
Content distribution is just one of the components of the partnership between the Newspaper Consortium members and Yahoo. Initially focused on providing a local and national recruitment network through Yahoo HotJobs, the Newspaper Consortium is expanding to provide member newspapers with Yahoo’s advertising platform technology.
Under a content distribution program, Newspaper Consortium member sites provide news headlines to Yahoo for placement across Yahoo properties, including the Yahoo home page, news, finance and sports, as well as across its mobile network and messenger service. The links take Yahoo users directly to the full articles on the local news sites.
Content distribution is just one of the components of the partnership between the Newspaper Consortium members and Yahoo. Initially focused on providing a local and national recruitment network through Yahoo HotJobs, the Newspaper Consortium is expanding to provide member newspapers with Yahoo’s advertising platform technology.
Topix announces partnerships, new widget
Topix announced six new content partnerships, giving visitors in each of the United States’ 32,500 ZIP codes access to localized event and entertainment information, business directory data, pet classifieds, mortgage resources, and apartment listings.
Information from Eventful, a database containing more than 8 million events, and Zap2It, which collects movie show times and television listings, is part of the new offering. Topix also partnered with four other companies, InfoUSA, LiveDeal, Apartments.com and Informa Research Services, as part of its expansion.
Meantime, Topix is introducing a headline widget this month that will use the company’s categorization technology to return highly relevant articles and related categories to its newspaper customers.
Papers can customize the results to include headlines from around the Web, or restrict them to links specifically from their property.
Information from Eventful, a database containing more than 8 million events, and Zap2It, which collects movie show times and television listings, is part of the new offering. Topix also partnered with four other companies, InfoUSA, LiveDeal, Apartments.com and Informa Research Services, as part of its expansion.
Meantime, Topix is introducing a headline widget this month that will use the company’s categorization technology to return highly relevant articles and related categories to its newspaper customers.
Papers can customize the results to include headlines from around the Web, or restrict them to links specifically from their property.
NAA report: Newspaper Web traffic increases 12%
Newspaper Web sites attracted nearly 66.4 million unique visitors on average in the second quarter of 2008, a 12.2 percent increase over the same period a year ago, according to a custom analysis provided by Nielsen Online for the Newspaper Association of America.
The NAA said newspaper Web site visitors generated an average of more than 3 billion page views per month, compared with nearly 2.7 billion in the year-ago period.
To help promote newspapers’ value for online advertisers, the NAA created a new Web site, www.newspapermedia.com, which highlights the benefits newspapers can provide, the group said.
“With newspaper sales staffs placing an unprecedented emphasis on digital advertising, newspapermedia.com offers the information they need to demonstrate the effectiveness of the medium’s multi-platform offerings,” said Randy Bennett, NAA’s senior vice president of business development.
Rochester, Washpost tops
Meantime, the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle and Washingtonpost.com retained their No. 1 positions for weekly print and online audience ratings, respectively, in Scarborough Research’s second release of its Newspaper Penetration Report.
Scarborough’s report tracks newspaper audience ratings for newspapers and their Web sites across 81 local markets.
The Democrat and Chronicle took top honors with a market penetration of 80 percent, Scarborough said, while washingtonpost.com each week attracted a higher percentage of local market adults — 22 percent — than any other newspaper in the country.
The Democrat and Chronicle also took first by boasting an integrated newspaper audience of 81 percent. The integrated newspaper audience combines a paper’s weekly reach — both electronically and in print.
The report covered data collected from February 2007 to March 2008.
The NAA said newspaper Web site visitors generated an average of more than 3 billion page views per month, compared with nearly 2.7 billion in the year-ago period.
To help promote newspapers’ value for online advertisers, the NAA created a new Web site, www.newspapermedia.com, which highlights the benefits newspapers can provide, the group said.
“With newspaper sales staffs placing an unprecedented emphasis on digital advertising, newspapermedia.com offers the information they need to demonstrate the effectiveness of the medium’s multi-platform offerings,” said Randy Bennett, NAA’s senior vice president of business development.
Rochester, Washpost tops
Meantime, the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle and Washingtonpost.com retained their No. 1 positions for weekly print and online audience ratings, respectively, in Scarborough Research’s second release of its Newspaper Penetration Report.
Scarborough’s report tracks newspaper audience ratings for newspapers and their Web sites across 81 local markets.
The Democrat and Chronicle took top honors with a market penetration of 80 percent, Scarborough said, while washingtonpost.com each week attracted a higher percentage of local market adults — 22 percent — than any other newspaper in the country.
The Democrat and Chronicle also took first by boasting an integrated newspaper audience of 81 percent. The integrated newspaper audience combines a paper’s weekly reach — both electronically and in print.
The report covered data collected from February 2007 to March 2008.
ChiTrib touts Web gains
Chicago Tribune Media Group said the number of unique visitors to the Chicago Tribune’s Web site soared 55 percent since the paper redesigned the page in June 2007.
The company said the site attracted 4.8 million unique visitors in June 2008, nearly doubling the audience of its closest local online news competitor.
“The jump in our Web traffic reflects the increased interactivity that our sites offer as a result of improvements we made last year,” said Alison Scholly, vice president of interactive.
Site improvements included frequent updates, a greater emphasis on photos, graphics and maps and improved search functionality.
The company said the site attracted 4.8 million unique visitors in June 2008, nearly doubling the audience of its closest local online news competitor.
“The jump in our Web traffic reflects the increased interactivity that our sites offer as a result of improvements we made last year,” said Alison Scholly, vice president of interactive.
Site improvements included frequent updates, a greater emphasis on photos, graphics and maps and improved search functionality.
Boston.com rolling out the online social graces
By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor
Boston.com is trying to become more neighborly with its readers through a series of social networking initiatives designed to enhance its local presence.
The Web site — the online arm of The Boston Globe — embarked on a three-pronged approach, embracing publishing, aggregating and convening, said Bob Kempf, vice president of product.
“What has been a strength of Boston.com from the beginning has been our ability to serve the originally produced content at The Globe with the original Web production of the site,” he said. “We don’t consider that to be everything we do, but that is just one piece, an important piece to which the other elements can react.”
To bolster its role as a convener, the Web site, last month upgraded its forum and commenting capabilities for articles, using software from Waltham, Mass.-based developer Awareness.
Boston.com already used Awareness’ software to enable photo uploading, so it’s tethering the new blogging and commenting features around user profiles to enable readers to easily track a user’s participation.
Boston.com is also segmenting content to create vertical Web sites targeted toward specific interest groups.
On the site is: BoMoms, a page containing articles and forums aimed at young mothers in the Boston area.
“It is populated largely by forums and by a community of users posting a lot of comments on stories that are posted there,” Kempf said.
Local support
Another aspect of Boston.com’s user-generated content/social networking strategy is its recent partnership with non-profit advocate Good2gether to launch the Do Good channel. The site is aimed at linking readers with local non-profit organizations.
“We have a tremendous opportunity, because of the content that we publish, to offer the right context for people to respond to causes,” Kempf said. “We need to give them a channel and capability to do that.
“The Do Good channel is a way for readers to say, ‘I’m reading an article about a hurricane and I want to help, how can I help?’ and on Do Good there is a link to take them where they want to go.”
Do Good now contains links and information about more than 650 local non-profits, Kempf said, and Boston.com is gearing up to seek sponsorships.
“The whole area gives us a chance to provide a platform for cause-based marketing,” he said. “We know that a lot of our major companies locally have cause-based marketing messages they want to get across.”
Hyperlocal horizon
Boston.com also plans to branch out by developing a hyperlocal platform, scheduled to be rolled out later this year. The wiki-based sites will be populated with town-specific news and information.
The Awareness-anchored platform will contain a mix of internally and user-generated information, from Globe staffers and “trusted” contributors, Kempf said.
“Newspapers tend to take some of those separate brands and products and keep them isolated and not integrated with the core content experience,” Kempf said. “We need to get that mix exactly right. I think isolating your user-generated content in one place makes for a difficult business and audience proposition.”
SF Chronicle gets social
The San Francisco Chronicle last month launched SFGate BayList; a site that allows Bay Area residents to vote for and comment on local businesses.
“The SFGate BayList gives our site visitors a uniquely local resource for identifying and recognizing the best businesses that the area has to offer,” said Michele Slack, vice president of digital media for SFGate.com.
The Chronicle uses software from CityVoter to run the site and for the next 12 months the paper will roll out new content in phases, with contests promoting the new features occurring in each phase.
Meantime, The Chronicle also launched a social networking channel aimed at connecting users with non-profit community organizations. The Do Good portion of SFGate.com is fueled with software by Good2gether.
Do Good will allow users to find, research and support the issues and will be able to search by the type of cause, as well as type of involvement, including volunteering, making donations or attending an event.
Users can also look for organizations or events within certain geographical locations that will be flagged on area maps. Other social tools like the ability to e-mail search results to a friend or share on social networking and bookmarking sites are also embedded within each listing.
Associate Editor
Boston.com is trying to become more neighborly with its readers through a series of social networking initiatives designed to enhance its local presence.
The Web site — the online arm of The Boston Globe — embarked on a three-pronged approach, embracing publishing, aggregating and convening, said Bob Kempf, vice president of product.
“What has been a strength of Boston.com from the beginning has been our ability to serve the originally produced content at The Globe with the original Web production of the site,” he said. “We don’t consider that to be everything we do, but that is just one piece, an important piece to which the other elements can react.”
To bolster its role as a convener, the Web site, last month upgraded its forum and commenting capabilities for articles, using software from Waltham, Mass.-based developer Awareness.
Boston.com already used Awareness’ software to enable photo uploading, so it’s tethering the new blogging and commenting features around user profiles to enable readers to easily track a user’s participation.
Boston.com is also segmenting content to create vertical Web sites targeted toward specific interest groups.
On the site is: BoMoms, a page containing articles and forums aimed at young mothers in the Boston area.
“It is populated largely by forums and by a community of users posting a lot of comments on stories that are posted there,” Kempf said.
Local support
Another aspect of Boston.com’s user-generated content/social networking strategy is its recent partnership with non-profit advocate Good2gether to launch the Do Good channel. The site is aimed at linking readers with local non-profit organizations.
“We have a tremendous opportunity, because of the content that we publish, to offer the right context for people to respond to causes,” Kempf said. “We need to give them a channel and capability to do that.
“The Do Good channel is a way for readers to say, ‘I’m reading an article about a hurricane and I want to help, how can I help?’ and on Do Good there is a link to take them where they want to go.”
Do Good now contains links and information about more than 650 local non-profits, Kempf said, and Boston.com is gearing up to seek sponsorships.
“The whole area gives us a chance to provide a platform for cause-based marketing,” he said. “We know that a lot of our major companies locally have cause-based marketing messages they want to get across.”
Hyperlocal horizon
Boston.com also plans to branch out by developing a hyperlocal platform, scheduled to be rolled out later this year. The wiki-based sites will be populated with town-specific news and information.
The Awareness-anchored platform will contain a mix of internally and user-generated information, from Globe staffers and “trusted” contributors, Kempf said.
“Newspapers tend to take some of those separate brands and products and keep them isolated and not integrated with the core content experience,” Kempf said. “We need to get that mix exactly right. I think isolating your user-generated content in one place makes for a difficult business and audience proposition.”
SF Chronicle gets social
The San Francisco Chronicle last month launched SFGate BayList; a site that allows Bay Area residents to vote for and comment on local businesses.
“The SFGate BayList gives our site visitors a uniquely local resource for identifying and recognizing the best businesses that the area has to offer,” said Michele Slack, vice president of digital media for SFGate.com.
The Chronicle uses software from CityVoter to run the site and for the next 12 months the paper will roll out new content in phases, with contests promoting the new features occurring in each phase.
Meantime, The Chronicle also launched a social networking channel aimed at connecting users with non-profit community organizations. The Do Good portion of SFGate.com is fueled with software by Good2gether.
Do Good will allow users to find, research and support the issues and will be able to search by the type of cause, as well as type of involvement, including volunteering, making donations or attending an event.
Users can also look for organizations or events within certain geographical locations that will be flagged on area maps. Other social tools like the ability to e-mail search results to a friend or share on social networking and bookmarking sites are also embedded within each listing.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Yahoo Consortium beefs up group
By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor
Yahoo Inc. said that 94 more publications joined its newspaper consortium, bringing the total number of participants to 779.
New companies in the consortium include the Sun-Times News Group, which publishes the Chicago Sun-Times and a number of other suburban Chicago papers; Black Press; Stephens Media Group; Independent Newspapers and Yankton Media Inc.
The new members will be able to cross-sell recruitment ads on Yahoo’s HotJobs network and also add the forthcoming Yahoo Advertising Management Platform technology to their portfolios.
Member newspapers can also integrate Yahoo’s paid search technology across their sites and be able to distribute their content across multiple Yahoo properties.
AMP rolling out
Meantime, Yahoo said it expects to roll out AMP to its first newspaper users this summer.
The ad management software provides tools designed to allow consortium members to target ads to specific audiences, as well as to manage and package inventory from across the network.
Gail Provenzano, Yahoo’s senior director of operations at the consortium, said the search engine company began working on developing an ad-serving product early last year.
“As a part of the partnership, Yahoo was working on researching the next generation of ad-serving technology and putting together a marketplace,” she said. “We worked with the newspaper consortium to define what requirements they had as a part of using our ad platform technology.”
Once AMP is installed, Provenzano said newspapers can use the app to generate proposals and oversee display advertising, order entry, inventory management, creative management and reporting.
Yahoo will work with each newspaper to roll out the initial AMP sites but expects them to be self-sufficient after the initial training, Provenzano said.
Finally, Yahoo launched an online ad circular program that allows retailers to deliver personalized newspaper circulars directly to consumers based on their areas of interest.
Yahoo Circulars will be using content from ShopLocal, which converts local print promotions and Sunday circulars into online formats.
Associate Editor
Yahoo Inc. said that 94 more publications joined its newspaper consortium, bringing the total number of participants to 779.
New companies in the consortium include the Sun-Times News Group, which publishes the Chicago Sun-Times and a number of other suburban Chicago papers; Black Press; Stephens Media Group; Independent Newspapers and Yankton Media Inc.
The new members will be able to cross-sell recruitment ads on Yahoo’s HotJobs network and also add the forthcoming Yahoo Advertising Management Platform technology to their portfolios.
Member newspapers can also integrate Yahoo’s paid search technology across their sites and be able to distribute their content across multiple Yahoo properties.
AMP rolling out
Meantime, Yahoo said it expects to roll out AMP to its first newspaper users this summer.
The ad management software provides tools designed to allow consortium members to target ads to specific audiences, as well as to manage and package inventory from across the network.
Gail Provenzano, Yahoo’s senior director of operations at the consortium, said the search engine company began working on developing an ad-serving product early last year.
“As a part of the partnership, Yahoo was working on researching the next generation of ad-serving technology and putting together a marketplace,” she said. “We worked with the newspaper consortium to define what requirements they had as a part of using our ad platform technology.”
Once AMP is installed, Provenzano said newspapers can use the app to generate proposals and oversee display advertising, order entry, inventory management, creative management and reporting.
Yahoo will work with each newspaper to roll out the initial AMP sites but expects them to be self-sufficient after the initial training, Provenzano said.
Finally, Yahoo launched an online ad circular program that allows retailers to deliver personalized newspaper circulars directly to consumers based on their areas of interest.
Yahoo Circulars will be using content from ShopLocal, which converts local print promotions and Sunday circulars into online formats.
4 Questions with Billy Thieme
Billy Thieme, president and chief executive officer of ThieMedia Consulting LLC, a newspaper advisory firm, talks about why smaller and alternative newspapers are thriving and what metros can do in response.
What are some of the online issues newspapers are facing today compared to two or three years ago?
I think we can say that while the “Craigslist effect” has probably settled, papers are well aware that their longtime revenue stream from print classifieds has essentially dried up. The time it takes for any story to be posted and read online, from the time the author pens it, keeps shrinking, and newspapers continue to bleed readership to the Web. Even those newspapers with a highly developed and intelligent Web presence are having trouble maintaining any consistent readership in the face of the growing popularity of social networking, blogging and Web self-publishing.
These issues tend to be less strenuous on the alternative, community weekly newspaper and shopper market — but are still felt.
What are some of the reasons smaller and alternative newspapers are thriving compared to metro dailies?
There are a few reasons these weeklies are growing, or at least are not shrinking at the same rate as the dailies. The size of these papers influences their livelihood immensely. It’s much easier to change directions, and adapt and change a business plan when there are only 25 to 50 employees — as is the case with many of these papers.
Weeklies and community papers are ready and willing to try a new product or sales initiative on the fly. Major dailies subject themselves to decision-making processes that move at a glacial pace.
But the most powerful reason for the weeklies’ growth in the face of dailies’ implosions is the weeklies’ commitment to their readers and their readers’ interests. For far too long, while the dailies’ editorial content overall has been shrinking, they continue to increase the amount of wire-gathered national and international news across all sections — most of which holds little or no interest for local readers.
This power of local weeklies is also reflected in their advertising base. The dailies offer a footprint to the local advertiser that is frankly more than they are interested in reaching, in many cases. Dailies have effectively priced most local businesses out of their papers. The local weeklies and shoppers offer an audience that these small merchants cannot only handle, but is their community. The weeklies can offer this audience at a price these businesses can afford. With the inevitable growth of self-service advertising, the margin on these ads for the local shoppers and weeklies will only increase.
What are some of the online features newspapers and their readers are asking for on their Web sites and why?
I’ve always thought it comical that the one product that a business cannot purchase online is the newspaper’s No. 1 product — display advertising. I think we’re on the verge of seeing a huge explosion in self-service advertising, wherein advertisers will use the Web to book, build and buy their own print ads. This trend is already somewhat established in the classified liner category, where customers are encouraged to enhance print line ads on the Web — adding photos, videos, much more descriptive text, etc.
I believe the next level will be for advertisers to place print display ads on the Web. As newspapers continue to see the intrinsic value in this type of online interaction and production, I believe we’ll see a turnaround in newspapers’ profit margins. Just as Amazon and eBay have used the Web to change the world of retail, I believe self-service applications will change the face of newspaper advertising.
What are some ways newspapers can maintain or even add to their online readership base?
The explosion in social media networking is a sector of marketing that I think newspapers have yet to really even touch, let alone take advantage of. Newspapers should have their own My-Space or Facebook page, as should editors and writers. Another feature newspapers need to continue to evaluate and support is reader-generated content. The weeklies have always depended on submissions from local sources, and have always offered a strong grassroots platform for local writers. Now, with the power of the Web, the growing phenomenon of citizen journalism holds a lot of promise for these papers.
I believe newspapers have a long way to go in understanding how to intelligently benefit from the Web, and those that develop a Web-savvy attitude and interactive business plan will be the ones on top for years to come.
What are some of the online issues newspapers are facing today compared to two or three years ago?
I think we can say that while the “Craigslist effect” has probably settled, papers are well aware that their longtime revenue stream from print classifieds has essentially dried up. The time it takes for any story to be posted and read online, from the time the author pens it, keeps shrinking, and newspapers continue to bleed readership to the Web. Even those newspapers with a highly developed and intelligent Web presence are having trouble maintaining any consistent readership in the face of the growing popularity of social networking, blogging and Web self-publishing.
These issues tend to be less strenuous on the alternative, community weekly newspaper and shopper market — but are still felt.
What are some of the reasons smaller and alternative newspapers are thriving compared to metro dailies?
There are a few reasons these weeklies are growing, or at least are not shrinking at the same rate as the dailies. The size of these papers influences their livelihood immensely. It’s much easier to change directions, and adapt and change a business plan when there are only 25 to 50 employees — as is the case with many of these papers.
Weeklies and community papers are ready and willing to try a new product or sales initiative on the fly. Major dailies subject themselves to decision-making processes that move at a glacial pace.
But the most powerful reason for the weeklies’ growth in the face of dailies’ implosions is the weeklies’ commitment to their readers and their readers’ interests. For far too long, while the dailies’ editorial content overall has been shrinking, they continue to increase the amount of wire-gathered national and international news across all sections — most of which holds little or no interest for local readers.
This power of local weeklies is also reflected in their advertising base. The dailies offer a footprint to the local advertiser that is frankly more than they are interested in reaching, in many cases. Dailies have effectively priced most local businesses out of their papers. The local weeklies and shoppers offer an audience that these small merchants cannot only handle, but is their community. The weeklies can offer this audience at a price these businesses can afford. With the inevitable growth of self-service advertising, the margin on these ads for the local shoppers and weeklies will only increase.
What are some of the online features newspapers and their readers are asking for on their Web sites and why?
I’ve always thought it comical that the one product that a business cannot purchase online is the newspaper’s No. 1 product — display advertising. I think we’re on the verge of seeing a huge explosion in self-service advertising, wherein advertisers will use the Web to book, build and buy their own print ads. This trend is already somewhat established in the classified liner category, where customers are encouraged to enhance print line ads on the Web — adding photos, videos, much more descriptive text, etc.
I believe the next level will be for advertisers to place print display ads on the Web. As newspapers continue to see the intrinsic value in this type of online interaction and production, I believe we’ll see a turnaround in newspapers’ profit margins. Just as Amazon and eBay have used the Web to change the world of retail, I believe self-service applications will change the face of newspaper advertising.
What are some ways newspapers can maintain or even add to their online readership base?
The explosion in social media networking is a sector of marketing that I think newspapers have yet to really even touch, let alone take advantage of. Newspapers should have their own My-Space or Facebook page, as should editors and writers. Another feature newspapers need to continue to evaluate and support is reader-generated content. The weeklies have always depended on submissions from local sources, and have always offered a strong grassroots platform for local writers. Now, with the power of the Web, the growing phenomenon of citizen journalism holds a lot of promise for these papers.
I believe newspapers have a long way to go in understanding how to intelligently benefit from the Web, and those that develop a Web-savvy attitude and interactive business plan will be the ones on top for years to come.
Company putting new spin on video ads
By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor
Self-service video ads could be coming to a newspaper Web site near you.
SpotMixer, in cooperation with AdFare Marketing, is offering newspapers the tools to give local businesses a way to dive into the online video ad market.
Redwood City, Calif.-based SpotMixer in May rolled out a self-service online video ad service aimed at small-to-medium sized businesses looking to produce online ads quickly.
“Small businesses often have to make a choice between standing behind the cash register and making sure the business is open and doing their marketing program,” said Brett Gardner, SpotMixer’s vice president of marketing. “We wanted to lower the barrier of entry and with SpotMixer we’ve done this as much as possible.”
SpotMixer’s parent company, One True Media, first developed the software underpinning its current product three years ago as a way for users to create online movies. But it discovered that several companies were using the service to create ads, she said.
From Hollywood to Madison Ave.
“A lot of people were starting to use our services for their businesses — everything from real estate agents creating listings to people doing customer testimonials they could give out to prospective clients,” Gardner said. “So we launched SpotMixer, dedicated to businesses that want to create their own online video ads.”
SpotMixer offers hundreds of different premixed style templates, which include suggestions of where to place graphics and text in the video ad. Users can also create their video ad with still images, Gardner said.
Users can publish their videos to Google AdWords, YouTube or export their ad as an mp4 file and use it anywhere.
The template guides the user on what kind of text should be placed in a spot and users can also add a voice-over track.
“We offer you the opportunity to either upload a voice-over track or record one of your own, which is easier now that most laptops have a built-in microphone,” she said. “You can hit a button in the editing tool and record a voice-over that will synchronize up with your video.”
Recoup fee
SpotMixer partnered with Newbury Park, Calif.-based AdFare Marketing to offer the service to newspapers.
AdFare President Frank Lucero said SpotMixer is priced at $79 per month for a one-month plan or $59 per month for a six-month contract.
Newspapers can recoup some of that fee if an advertiser signs up, Lucero said. The amount varies from $20 to as much as $150 depending upon which service plan a marketer chooses.
AdFare will also create the ad for companies that send the company materials.
“No matter how simple (it might be to create a video ad) people don’t want to do this and AdFare’s alliance comes into play,” Lucero said. “They can press a button and all the information in the order will go to AdFare and we can then talk to the advertiser to see how they want (their video ad) to look.”
Lucero said that adding SpotMixer’s self-service portfolio is another tool to allow AdFare to provide additional features to its newspaper customer base, which includes Gannett, Tribune Interactive, E.W. Scripps Co., McClatchy Co., Freedom Communications and Copley Newspapers.
Do or DIY
Do-it-yourself Web technology is moving to the forefront as newspaper sites look to make it easier for small- and medium-sized companies to place ads online.
The New York Times, for example, just launched a self-service banner ad service using software from AdReady Inc.
“This new feature allows NYTimes.com to better serve small businesses and the long tail for online display advertising,” said Denise Warren, senior vice president and chief advertising officer for The New York Times Media Group.
Advertisers can create a self-service account at www.nytimes.com/selfservice, design an ad and launch an ad campaign on the site.
Advertisers will have access to AdReady’s library of ad themes, real-time ad customization tools, an intuitive Web-based interface and detailed reporting on all performance of their campaigns.
The toolset
Meantime, BrandMuscle Inc. launched the BuildMyAd platform that allows advertisers to customize print and online ads.
BuildMyAd lets any user create fully customized print materials through an online interface. The app’s five-step process walks the advertiser through planning, designing and purchasing display advertisements, as well as classified ads, printed inserts, online banners and other materials.
Each interface can be customized and all rates, sizes and packages can be set up by the publication.
Advertisers know upfront how much each ad costs before they get to the point of purchase and they can save their work at any time and return later to complete the order.
Associate Editor
Self-service video ads could be coming to a newspaper Web site near you.
SpotMixer, in cooperation with AdFare Marketing, is offering newspapers the tools to give local businesses a way to dive into the online video ad market.
Redwood City, Calif.-based SpotMixer in May rolled out a self-service online video ad service aimed at small-to-medium sized businesses looking to produce online ads quickly.
“Small businesses often have to make a choice between standing behind the cash register and making sure the business is open and doing their marketing program,” said Brett Gardner, SpotMixer’s vice president of marketing. “We wanted to lower the barrier of entry and with SpotMixer we’ve done this as much as possible.”
SpotMixer’s parent company, One True Media, first developed the software underpinning its current product three years ago as a way for users to create online movies. But it discovered that several companies were using the service to create ads, she said.
From Hollywood to Madison Ave.
“A lot of people were starting to use our services for their businesses — everything from real estate agents creating listings to people doing customer testimonials they could give out to prospective clients,” Gardner said. “So we launched SpotMixer, dedicated to businesses that want to create their own online video ads.”
SpotMixer offers hundreds of different premixed style templates, which include suggestions of where to place graphics and text in the video ad. Users can also create their video ad with still images, Gardner said.
Users can publish their videos to Google AdWords, YouTube or export their ad as an mp4 file and use it anywhere.
The template guides the user on what kind of text should be placed in a spot and users can also add a voice-over track.
“We offer you the opportunity to either upload a voice-over track or record one of your own, which is easier now that most laptops have a built-in microphone,” she said. “You can hit a button in the editing tool and record a voice-over that will synchronize up with your video.”
Recoup fee
SpotMixer partnered with Newbury Park, Calif.-based AdFare Marketing to offer the service to newspapers.
AdFare President Frank Lucero said SpotMixer is priced at $79 per month for a one-month plan or $59 per month for a six-month contract.
Newspapers can recoup some of that fee if an advertiser signs up, Lucero said. The amount varies from $20 to as much as $150 depending upon which service plan a marketer chooses.
AdFare will also create the ad for companies that send the company materials.
“No matter how simple (it might be to create a video ad) people don’t want to do this and AdFare’s alliance comes into play,” Lucero said. “They can press a button and all the information in the order will go to AdFare and we can then talk to the advertiser to see how they want (their video ad) to look.”
Lucero said that adding SpotMixer’s self-service portfolio is another tool to allow AdFare to provide additional features to its newspaper customer base, which includes Gannett, Tribune Interactive, E.W. Scripps Co., McClatchy Co., Freedom Communications and Copley Newspapers.
Do or DIY
Do-it-yourself Web technology is moving to the forefront as newspaper sites look to make it easier for small- and medium-sized companies to place ads online.
The New York Times, for example, just launched a self-service banner ad service using software from AdReady Inc.
“This new feature allows NYTimes.com to better serve small businesses and the long tail for online display advertising,” said Denise Warren, senior vice president and chief advertising officer for The New York Times Media Group.
Advertisers can create a self-service account at www.nytimes.com/selfservice, design an ad and launch an ad campaign on the site.
Advertisers will have access to AdReady’s library of ad themes, real-time ad customization tools, an intuitive Web-based interface and detailed reporting on all performance of their campaigns.
The toolset
Meantime, BrandMuscle Inc. launched the BuildMyAd platform that allows advertisers to customize print and online ads.
BuildMyAd lets any user create fully customized print materials through an online interface. The app’s five-step process walks the advertiser through planning, designing and purchasing display advertisements, as well as classified ads, printed inserts, online banners and other materials.
Each interface can be customized and all rates, sizes and packages can be set up by the publication.
Advertisers know upfront how much each ad costs before they get to the point of purchase and they can save their work at any time and return later to complete the order.
Sonoma Index-Tribune going greener with hybrid options
N&T Staff Report
The twice-weekly Sonoma (Calif.) Index-Tribune is hoping its readers join the revolution as the newspaper moves to reduce its paper and energy consumption.
To that end, the 129-year-old newspaper launched a SmartEdition digital newspaper produced in partnership with NewspaperDirect.
Publisher Bill Lynch said that the Index-Tribune has already racked up a list of green initiatives, including using recycled newsprint, soy-based ink and backing a commitment to recycle every bit of waste it can.
“We cut back on the number of sections and pages we print and deliver by more than 30 percent but the most important change is getting our readers to join us in the biggest green revolution in the history of newspapers — going paperless,” he said.
Each story in the paper is available in 12 languages including Spanish, French, Italian, German, Chinese and Japanese and SmartEdition also offers audio capabilities, thus allowing subscribers to listen to the news stories.
The NewspaperDirect software also lets readers print out articles, perform keyword searches, share articles, read offline and post content with such social networking sites as Facebook, Digg and Del.ico.us.
“Just as hybrid cars are transitional to some future vehicle that will not use any fossil fuels, this is our hybrid phase,” Lynch said. “We still use paper, but a lot less and NewspaperDirect’s SmartEdition is loaded with features that will make this transition easier.”
The paper said it’s also working with TownNews to add more features that attract readers and help local advertisers reach prospective customers.
The twice-weekly Sonoma (Calif.) Index-Tribune is hoping its readers join the revolution as the newspaper moves to reduce its paper and energy consumption.
To that end, the 129-year-old newspaper launched a SmartEdition digital newspaper produced in partnership with NewspaperDirect.
Publisher Bill Lynch said that the Index-Tribune has already racked up a list of green initiatives, including using recycled newsprint, soy-based ink and backing a commitment to recycle every bit of waste it can.
“We cut back on the number of sections and pages we print and deliver by more than 30 percent but the most important change is getting our readers to join us in the biggest green revolution in the history of newspapers — going paperless,” he said.
Each story in the paper is available in 12 languages including Spanish, French, Italian, German, Chinese and Japanese and SmartEdition also offers audio capabilities, thus allowing subscribers to listen to the news stories.
The NewspaperDirect software also lets readers print out articles, perform keyword searches, share articles, read offline and post content with such social networking sites as Facebook, Digg and Del.ico.us.
“Just as hybrid cars are transitional to some future vehicle that will not use any fossil fuels, this is our hybrid phase,” Lynch said. “We still use paper, but a lot less and NewspaperDirect’s SmartEdition is loaded with features that will make this transition easier.”
The paper said it’s also working with TownNews to add more features that attract readers and help local advertisers reach prospective customers.
Philly.com gears up for local content dominance
By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor
Philadelphia Media Holdings this spring ushered in a redesigned Philly.com Web site as the publisher attempts to land a knockout punch against its local online competitors.
According to Philly.com President Eric Grilly, the competition is anyone vying for eyeballs or ad dollars, online and offline.
The redesign is part of PMH’s efforts to revitalize The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News through a number of initiatives designed to innovate and energize its advertiser and readership base (see Newspapers & Technology, April 2008).
The Clickability Inc.-anchored site, which debuted May 11, was 11 months in the making. PMH hired local firm Avenue A Razorfish Inc. to help the company conduct the market research necessary to better understand the needs of local users.
“We wanted to understand what (readers) were doing on the Web, how they were using it and how they were using our competitors,” Grilly said. “What we found is that 80 percent of our users can be broken down into three categories, foodies, planners and doers and sports enthusiasts.”
The research also showed that there were already several features on Philly.com geared toward what readers wanted, including Philly Uncorked, a local wine review page; and Philadelphia Business Today.
Local, local, local
The retooled Web site carries the motto “Anything and everything Philly,” below its logo and that philosophy underpins the entire operation, Grilly said.
To that end, Philly.com contains a wide swath of information, covering everything from sports to cultural events.
Content is changed throughout the day and week to match consumers’ moods and interests.
“For example, on Thursdays and Friday afternoons people start thinking about the weekend and what they might do with their families or what they might want to know about when a new restaurant is open,” said Grilly. “Rather than serving them the same meal morning, noon and night we’re going to give them a different meal.”
The Web site also includes a row of quick links for readers wanting to check lottery results, horoscopes, Sudoku, crossword puzzles, traffic and obituaries.
Although the bulk of the content is still contributed by Inquirer and Daily News journalists, user-generated news and information is playing an increasingly larger role.
“The user-generated content experience is a big part of the new site,” Grilly said. “It’s been factored in and weaved into nearly everything that we are doing.
“We tried to color-code things and make it easier for people to find what we are doing on the site.”
Case in point: Yellow-shaded boxes indicate stories and information in which a dialog discussion interactive feature is available, asking readers for comments or to react to a particular event.
The goal, Grilly said, is to increase user engagement, which he said rose 25 percent in the first 30 days after the redesign was launched.
Philly.com Vice President and Editor Wendy Warren credits the Web site’s commenting and discussion features as primary tools to woo readers to the site.
“When we say we talk about interaction with users we aren’t talking about adding a comment or two, we are talking about discussions that eclipse the story that sparked the interaction,” she said. “Some of our stories consistently end up with 100 or more comments from our readers.”
Multimedia independence
The newspaper also enhanced the site’s search capabilities and added video support through Maven Media Service’s video player.
“We are pretty excited about the short-form branded entertainment that we are producing,” Grilly said. “We’ll have six shows, all unique to us, created here in this marketplace before the end of June, each with a sold sponsor.”
The site’s existing wine and business shows, meantime, will be bolstered by shows covering gossip, gardening, restaurants and health.
Grilly said Philly.com also plans to roll out a sitcom and a series of documentaries, including one that covers the history of organized crime.
All of these short-form video programs are part of an effort by Philly.com to produce content unique to the site.
“When I came to Philly I was asked to turn Philly.com into a stand-alone Internet media company with its own voice and identity in the marketplace,” Grilly said. “A big area where you are seeing Philly.com’s voice is around culture and the way we are doing that is launching new channels anchored by video with people that resemble and reflect the audiences we are trying to reach.”
This approach, he said, allows the site to reach a younger audience without alienating its core audience.
“We are trying to create and open up as many communication lines as possible with our users, whether it’s by capturing an event or experience through a cell phone or offering another way to submit user-generated content via an opinion poll — a story, a photo a video a comment or a rating on a restaurant,” Grilly said.
Zeppy continues
One feature that didn’t change when philly.com launched the new site was Zeppy.com, an online shopping venture that allows people to purchase products reviewed by Inquirer and Daily News writers.
“The thought here wasn’t that we were going to take on Amazon.com,” Grilly said. “We have a lot of talented artists, authors, movie producers; there’s a lot of creative talent in this marketplace and it’s trying to find a way to leverage our relationship with those individuals and finding ways to integrate transactional opportunities around our content.”
Users can purchase products related to what’s presented on the site, ranging from Philadelphia Phillies baseball tickets to books reviewed by one of the papers.
Subscribers to either of the papers receive a 25 percent discount when they make a purchase on the site.
Associate Editor
Philadelphia Media Holdings this spring ushered in a redesigned Philly.com Web site as the publisher attempts to land a knockout punch against its local online competitors.
According to Philly.com President Eric Grilly, the competition is anyone vying for eyeballs or ad dollars, online and offline.
The redesign is part of PMH’s efforts to revitalize The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News through a number of initiatives designed to innovate and energize its advertiser and readership base (see Newspapers & Technology, April 2008).
The Clickability Inc.-anchored site, which debuted May 11, was 11 months in the making. PMH hired local firm Avenue A Razorfish Inc. to help the company conduct the market research necessary to better understand the needs of local users.
“We wanted to understand what (readers) were doing on the Web, how they were using it and how they were using our competitors,” Grilly said. “What we found is that 80 percent of our users can be broken down into three categories, foodies, planners and doers and sports enthusiasts.”
The research also showed that there were already several features on Philly.com geared toward what readers wanted, including Philly Uncorked, a local wine review page; and Philadelphia Business Today.
Local, local, local
The retooled Web site carries the motto “Anything and everything Philly,” below its logo and that philosophy underpins the entire operation, Grilly said.
To that end, Philly.com contains a wide swath of information, covering everything from sports to cultural events.
Content is changed throughout the day and week to match consumers’ moods and interests.
“For example, on Thursdays and Friday afternoons people start thinking about the weekend and what they might do with their families or what they might want to know about when a new restaurant is open,” said Grilly. “Rather than serving them the same meal morning, noon and night we’re going to give them a different meal.”
The Web site also includes a row of quick links for readers wanting to check lottery results, horoscopes, Sudoku, crossword puzzles, traffic and obituaries.
Although the bulk of the content is still contributed by Inquirer and Daily News journalists, user-generated news and information is playing an increasingly larger role.
“The user-generated content experience is a big part of the new site,” Grilly said. “It’s been factored in and weaved into nearly everything that we are doing.
“We tried to color-code things and make it easier for people to find what we are doing on the site.”
Case in point: Yellow-shaded boxes indicate stories and information in which a dialog discussion interactive feature is available, asking readers for comments or to react to a particular event.
The goal, Grilly said, is to increase user engagement, which he said rose 25 percent in the first 30 days after the redesign was launched.
Philly.com Vice President and Editor Wendy Warren credits the Web site’s commenting and discussion features as primary tools to woo readers to the site.
“When we say we talk about interaction with users we aren’t talking about adding a comment or two, we are talking about discussions that eclipse the story that sparked the interaction,” she said. “Some of our stories consistently end up with 100 or more comments from our readers.”
Multimedia independence
The newspaper also enhanced the site’s search capabilities and added video support through Maven Media Service’s video player.
“We are pretty excited about the short-form branded entertainment that we are producing,” Grilly said. “We’ll have six shows, all unique to us, created here in this marketplace before the end of June, each with a sold sponsor.”
The site’s existing wine and business shows, meantime, will be bolstered by shows covering gossip, gardening, restaurants and health.
Grilly said Philly.com also plans to roll out a sitcom and a series of documentaries, including one that covers the history of organized crime.
All of these short-form video programs are part of an effort by Philly.com to produce content unique to the site.
“When I came to Philly I was asked to turn Philly.com into a stand-alone Internet media company with its own voice and identity in the marketplace,” Grilly said. “A big area where you are seeing Philly.com’s voice is around culture and the way we are doing that is launching new channels anchored by video with people that resemble and reflect the audiences we are trying to reach.”
This approach, he said, allows the site to reach a younger audience without alienating its core audience.
“We are trying to create and open up as many communication lines as possible with our users, whether it’s by capturing an event or experience through a cell phone or offering another way to submit user-generated content via an opinion poll — a story, a photo a video a comment or a rating on a restaurant,” Grilly said.
Zeppy continues
One feature that didn’t change when philly.com launched the new site was Zeppy.com, an online shopping venture that allows people to purchase products reviewed by Inquirer and Daily News writers.
“The thought here wasn’t that we were going to take on Amazon.com,” Grilly said. “We have a lot of talented artists, authors, movie producers; there’s a lot of creative talent in this marketplace and it’s trying to find a way to leverage our relationship with those individuals and finding ways to integrate transactional opportunities around our content.”
Users can purchase products related to what’s presented on the site, ranging from Philadelphia Phillies baseball tickets to books reviewed by one of the papers.
Subscribers to either of the papers receive a 25 percent discount when they make a purchase on the site.
Journal Comm. taps Clickability for papers, outlets
Journal Communications Inc. said it will roll out Clickability Inc.’s Web content management software to underpin its Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, community newspaper, radio and television Web sites.
Under the new multiyear agreement, Clickability will develop, host, and provide the content management system for all of Journal Communications’ media and niche portal Web sites.
For Journal Communications’ Milwaukee television and radio stations, Clickability will partner with Broadcast Interactive Media to provide Web content services.
Meantime, Clickability said that it joined Google’s Website Optimizer Technology Partner program.
As a member, Clickability will allow its customers to revise their Web site content based on results generated from Google Web site Optimizer, which indicates which content and layouts are most effective in reaching an audience.
Under the new multiyear agreement, Clickability will develop, host, and provide the content management system for all of Journal Communications’ media and niche portal Web sites.
For Journal Communications’ Milwaukee television and radio stations, Clickability will partner with Broadcast Interactive Media to provide Web content services.
Meantime, Clickability said that it joined Google’s Website Optimizer Technology Partner program.
As a member, Clickability will allow its customers to revise their Web site content based on results generated from Google Web site Optimizer, which indicates which content and layouts are most effective in reaching an audience.
Study: Local online ad revs on the rise; newspapers top media rivals
By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor
Newspapers continue to outpace broadcasters and radio stations in the amount of local ad revenues placed on their Web sites, according to a study released last month by Borrell Associates.
The report, “What Local Media Web sites Earn: 2008 Survey,” stated that, on average, the local newspaper snared almost 12 percent of the online advertising market, while broadcasters and radio stations each captured less than a 1 percent market share.
The report analyzed Web revenues for more than 3,100 media properties, including 741 daily and 272 weekly newspapers, and found that overall local online revenues are growing at a rate of 50 percent this year. Borrell expects revenues from local online ads to reach $13.1 billion this year, up slightly from the $12.6 billion the firm estimated in December 2007.
Borrell said that one factor contributing to the growth in local online advertising is the number of media companies selling advertising on their own sites.
The economic slowdown is also motivating advertisers to abandon more traditional spending patterns as they seek out more economical methods of reaching potential customers.
Newspapers as the aggressors
The study reported that newspapers spent much of last year regrouping and approaching the Internet as attackers instead of waiting to be attacked by competitors such as the Yellow Pages.
Some of the more aggressive moves newspapers took included the formation of the newspaper consortium with Yahoo, Borrell said. The study also credited newspaper associations with providing members the research they needed to combat rivals in the marketplace.
Nationwide, newspapers attracted more than $3.1 billion in online ad revenue in 2007 — $2 billion in local advertising and $1.1 billion in national advertising sales. That number is expected to grow to $3.7 billion this year, Borrell said.
But growth will begin to slow, Borrell said, with compound annual growth rates dropping below 15 percent over the next four years. That’s compared to a 48 percent annualized growth rate papers posted over the past four years.
By 2012, growth will decrease to the single-digit range, the firm said.
New online identities
The study also found that newspapers are retooling their Web sites to become more distinct from their printed counterparts.
The Miami Herald, for example, spun off Miami.com from its Miami.herald.com Web site in a bid to create a local portal that’s separate from its newspaper-branded online operation, Borrell said. The Bakersfield Californian and The Buffalo (N.Y.) News made similar moves.
Finally, the study found that the most successful online newspaper ventures shared common traits such as devoting more resources to online sales forces, launching multiple Web sites and reducing dependence on classified vertical categories.
Still, papers reported that on average, newspapers in 2007 received 41.9 percent of their online revenue from recruitment advertising, 10.7 percent from automotive and 10.4 percent from real estate.
Local online advertising
Revenue
2002: $655 million
2003: $811 million
2004: $1.2 billion
2005: $2.0 billion
2006: $2.6 billion
2007: $3.1 billion
2008: Projected $3.7 billion
Source: Borrell Associates
Associate Editor
Newspapers continue to outpace broadcasters and radio stations in the amount of local ad revenues placed on their Web sites, according to a study released last month by Borrell Associates.
The report, “What Local Media Web sites Earn: 2008 Survey,” stated that, on average, the local newspaper snared almost 12 percent of the online advertising market, while broadcasters and radio stations each captured less than a 1 percent market share.
The report analyzed Web revenues for more than 3,100 media properties, including 741 daily and 272 weekly newspapers, and found that overall local online revenues are growing at a rate of 50 percent this year. Borrell expects revenues from local online ads to reach $13.1 billion this year, up slightly from the $12.6 billion the firm estimated in December 2007.
Borrell said that one factor contributing to the growth in local online advertising is the number of media companies selling advertising on their own sites.
The economic slowdown is also motivating advertisers to abandon more traditional spending patterns as they seek out more economical methods of reaching potential customers.
Newspapers as the aggressors
The study reported that newspapers spent much of last year regrouping and approaching the Internet as attackers instead of waiting to be attacked by competitors such as the Yellow Pages.
Some of the more aggressive moves newspapers took included the formation of the newspaper consortium with Yahoo, Borrell said. The study also credited newspaper associations with providing members the research they needed to combat rivals in the marketplace.
Nationwide, newspapers attracted more than $3.1 billion in online ad revenue in 2007 — $2 billion in local advertising and $1.1 billion in national advertising sales. That number is expected to grow to $3.7 billion this year, Borrell said.
But growth will begin to slow, Borrell said, with compound annual growth rates dropping below 15 percent over the next four years. That’s compared to a 48 percent annualized growth rate papers posted over the past four years.
By 2012, growth will decrease to the single-digit range, the firm said.
New online identities
The study also found that newspapers are retooling their Web sites to become more distinct from their printed counterparts.
The Miami Herald, for example, spun off Miami.com from its Miami.herald.com Web site in a bid to create a local portal that’s separate from its newspaper-branded online operation, Borrell said. The Bakersfield Californian and The Buffalo (N.Y.) News made similar moves.
Finally, the study found that the most successful online newspaper ventures shared common traits such as devoting more resources to online sales forces, launching multiple Web sites and reducing dependence on classified vertical categories.
Still, papers reported that on average, newspapers in 2007 received 41.9 percent of their online revenue from recruitment advertising, 10.7 percent from automotive and 10.4 percent from real estate.
Local online advertising
Revenue
2002: $655 million
2003: $811 million
2004: $1.2 billion
2005: $2.0 billion
2006: $2.6 billion
2007: $3.1 billion
2008: Projected $3.7 billion
Source: Borrell Associates
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Denver Newspaper Agency reins in active syndication of YourHub
By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor
Even as newspapers continue to explore the value of rolling out grassroots-oriented Web sites and special sections, one of the first publishers to pioneer citizen journalism has quietly halted syndicating the concept to other publications.
Elaine Zinngrabe, Denver Newspaper Agency’s senior vice president, interactive, said that while DNA is no longer actively marketing YourHub, newspapers can still license the service.
DNA two years ago began syndicating YourHub.com after receiving inquiries from other newspapers interested in the concept (see Newspapers & Technology, April 2006).
The syndication kit included content publishing and hosting software as well as strategies for marketing, editorial and sales.
DNA charged newspapers a one-time setup fee of between $2,000 and $10,000 and a recurring monthly license fee of between $250 and $5,000, depending upon market size.
Still available
YourHub, a combination of Web sites and weekly printed publications, made its debut in Denver in 2005. The concept, produced by the Rocky Mountain News, is promoted and printed by the DNA, which also publishes The Denver Post.
Currently, the Denver YourHub encompasses 47 Web sites and 18 print editions.
Outside of The Buffalo (N.Y.) News and The Gazette in Colorado Springs, Colo., however, the newspapers that syndicated YourHub were either MediaNews Group Inc. or E.W. Scripps-owned properties, reflecting the publishers that share ownership of DNA. They included the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, Treasure Coast Newspapers in Florida and the Wichita Falls (Texas) Times Record News.
But The Knoxville (Tenn.) News-Sentinel, a Scripps paper that was an early adopter, recently discontinued YourHub, said Jack Lail, managing editor of multimedia.
Changing strategy
“Our strategy has changed. Instead of doing three geo-targeted print publications, we now do one in our home county,” he said. “A separate publication we own is doing community zoning.”
Lail said The News-Sentinel is continuing to offer opportunities for users to contribute content through four different sites, aimed at prep sports, college sports, education issues and for the nearby Smoky Mountains. The sites were created on Ning.com, a free social networking site.
Lail said that some user-generated features can also be supported in the Ellington CMS platform the newspaper uses for its Knoxnews.com Web site (see related story above).
The paper is also exploring other options to allow users to post additional photos and text.
Associate Editor
Even as newspapers continue to explore the value of rolling out grassroots-oriented Web sites and special sections, one of the first publishers to pioneer citizen journalism has quietly halted syndicating the concept to other publications.
Elaine Zinngrabe, Denver Newspaper Agency’s senior vice president, interactive, said that while DNA is no longer actively marketing YourHub, newspapers can still license the service.
DNA two years ago began syndicating YourHub.com after receiving inquiries from other newspapers interested in the concept (see Newspapers & Technology, April 2006).
The syndication kit included content publishing and hosting software as well as strategies for marketing, editorial and sales.
DNA charged newspapers a one-time setup fee of between $2,000 and $10,000 and a recurring monthly license fee of between $250 and $5,000, depending upon market size.
Still available
YourHub, a combination of Web sites and weekly printed publications, made its debut in Denver in 2005. The concept, produced by the Rocky Mountain News, is promoted and printed by the DNA, which also publishes The Denver Post.
Currently, the Denver YourHub encompasses 47 Web sites and 18 print editions.
Outside of The Buffalo (N.Y.) News and The Gazette in Colorado Springs, Colo., however, the newspapers that syndicated YourHub were either MediaNews Group Inc. or E.W. Scripps-owned properties, reflecting the publishers that share ownership of DNA. They included the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, Treasure Coast Newspapers in Florida and the Wichita Falls (Texas) Times Record News.
But The Knoxville (Tenn.) News-Sentinel, a Scripps paper that was an early adopter, recently discontinued YourHub, said Jack Lail, managing editor of multimedia.
Changing strategy
“Our strategy has changed. Instead of doing three geo-targeted print publications, we now do one in our home county,” he said. “A separate publication we own is doing community zoning.”
Lail said The News-Sentinel is continuing to offer opportunities for users to contribute content through four different sites, aimed at prep sports, college sports, education issues and for the nearby Smoky Mountains. The sites were created on Ning.com, a free social networking site.
Lail said that some user-generated features can also be supported in the Ellington CMS platform the newspaper uses for its Knoxnews.com Web site (see related story above).
The paper is also exploring other options to allow users to post additional photos and text.
MediaNews adding health info to Web
MediaNews Group is rolling out health information and associated social networking features across its Web sites as the publisher adds more specific user content.
The publisher tapped San Francisco-based TauMed Inc. to underpin the service.
TauMed’s medical, health and lifestyle information will be added to all of MNG’s newspapers’ and regional portals’ Web sites. Users as well as healthcare professionals generate content.
Three Connecticut papers — the (Bridgeport) Connecticut Post, Greenwich Time and the Advocate in Stamford — and the Chico (Calif.) Enterprise Record were the first four MNG dailies to add the TauMed content to their Web sites.
The sites boast TauMed’s health channel, which includes social networking tools, user-generated content and video, said Tauseef Bashir, TauMed’s president and chief executive officer.
TauMed will host, manage and distribute all of the user-generated content.
Bashir said TauMed’s social networking features allow users to create personalized “My Health Space” portfolios that contain content unique to their experiences.
“People have the option of creating a personalized health space so a registered user can keep track of different subscriptions and information and interact and connect with other online community members,” he said.
The publisher tapped San Francisco-based TauMed Inc. to underpin the service.
TauMed’s medical, health and lifestyle information will be added to all of MNG’s newspapers’ and regional portals’ Web sites. Users as well as healthcare professionals generate content.
Three Connecticut papers — the (Bridgeport) Connecticut Post, Greenwich Time and the Advocate in Stamford — and the Chico (Calif.) Enterprise Record were the first four MNG dailies to add the TauMed content to their Web sites.
The sites boast TauMed’s health channel, which includes social networking tools, user-generated content and video, said Tauseef Bashir, TauMed’s president and chief executive officer.
TauMed will host, manage and distribute all of the user-generated content.
Bashir said TauMed’s social networking features allow users to create personalized “My Health Space” portfolios that contain content unique to their experiences.
“People have the option of creating a personalized health space so a registered user can keep track of different subscriptions and information and interact and connect with other online community members,” he said.
Star-Ledger is putting its newsroom staff through an intense training program to pump up the volume of video.
By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor
The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., is ready to kick up its video news coverage, thanks to an intensive training program geared toward changing the way it covers news in the Garden state.
Last month the newspaper (Monday-Friday, 345,130; Saturday, 281,901; Sunday, 500,382) put 20 newsroom staff through an intensive five-day video training boot camp, covering topics such as how to shoot and produce video.
The additional training, conducted by New York-based Rosenblum Associates, is part of an effort by the Newhouse paper to feed more video content to its Web site, said John Hassell, deputy managing editor at the daily.
“The initial boot camp we are doing with Rosenblum Associates is the first step toward two things,” he said. “First is getting video training spread more broadly across the staff and second is putting together a noontime webcast that we hope will be something new and different for newspapers.”
The Star-Ledger, with 300 editorial staff members, hopes to provide video training to everyone who needs or wants it, Hassell said.
Boot camp members had their schedules arranged so that they would spend five straight days telling stories only through video. The boot camp also introduced the staff to new techniques they could use to cover news stories.
The class teaches students how to bridge the gap between gathering news intended for both video and print distribution, Hassell said.
“What a lot of people do is when they first get a video camera and are sent out to shoot video they come back with a lot of video and that creates an inefficient post-production result because you get back and have three hours of footage that you have to watch and edit,” said Hassell.
“We are teaching people how to think about what they need to shoot for the story they want to tell so that the process of producing video stories” becomes more efficient.
The concept mirrors how a reporter and photographer traditionally prepare to cover a story. Each knows what he must do to gather the information he needs, Hassell said.
Multimedia kits
The Star-Ledger made a “significant” financial commitment in buying the equipment to outfit the first class of 20, Hassell said.
Each received a video kit that includes a Sony HVR-A1U digital camera and an Apple MacBook Pro laptop with Final Cut Pro editing software. Other accessories include a Sennheiser Evolution G2 100 series wireless lavalier microphone to capture high-quality audio.
The Star-Ledger is still planning its five-minute nooncast video program. It’s building a set in the newsroom and is in the midst of purchasing the mixing board and other production equipment needed to support the show, Hassell said.
“We still have a lot of work to do to figure out exactly what it looks like, the content and tone of the program,” he said. “The idea is to do a short five-minute nooncast that is combination of live and taped footage.”
Hassell said the daily believes the five-minute length of the show is the correct format, citing current trends favoring shorter videos.
“The evidence I see suggests that’s about as long as you are going to get somebody’s attention, except for the most extraordinary videos,” he said. “We are operating on the assumption that shorter is better and we have to be able to tell a story in two minutes.”
The Star-Ledger didn’t have a shortage of volunteers when asked for people to participate in the training session.
“We let everybody know there were 20 slots available for this boot camp, and we received 105 volunteers, “ he said.
Of the 105 candidates, 65 submitted three-minute video audition tapes. Rosenblum Associates then helped the paper whittle the remaining list down to the final 20.
“There is no shortage of interest. That’s true not just of video but of almost everything we do on the digital side,” Hassell said. “We trained the entire staff in blogging and we have reporters calling in audio clips from the field on breaking news.”
Mastering videography is one step in several that traditional newsrooms have to take in order to learn how to cover news in a multimedia environment, Hassell said.
“For us video is the next frontier in that evolution, but it’s important to make sure that everybody in our newsroom understands how video can best be used to deliver news content,” he said. “I think we should agree that we have to be platform-agnostic, but if a story is best told in video, great.”
News&Tech interviews guests from The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J. about their recent intensive video training to pump up the volume of video at nj.com. Guests include John Hassell, deputy managing editor; Sharon Russell, assistant managing editor for video; and Seth Siditsky, video enterprise editor.
Making the video push
As newspapers continue to push into the online video marketplace, they need to overcome the psychological roadblocks inherent in adapting to a new medium.
That’s what video and journalism consultant Michael Rosenblum said about newspapers attempting to become more video-active as they migrate to the Web.
“It’s incumbent upon these organizations to incorporate video as part of their whole package they have to deliver or they are going to look a bit remiss,” he said. “Luckily, the cameras are now cheap and simple enough to use so that making the transition to video is a relatively simple thing to do.”
Last month, New York-based Rosenblum Associates worked with The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., to develop a program to train 20 newsroom staff as videographers.
Rosenblum fashioned the Star-Ledger’s video boot camp after one he conducted for the BBC and other broadcasters.
“The training is straightforward,” he said. “We take a group of 20-25 people and we put them through an intensive boot camp where we isolate them from everybody else and force them to work only in video,” Rosenblum said. “We take away all text and all writing and go out and shoot pieces, critique them, take them apart and put them back together.”
Rosenblum said he is interested in creating a new generation of digital journalists that use video as a component to their reporting.
“Television itself is for television, but when you take video to the Web, it’s non-linear, on-demand and people watch it in a much more fragmented way,” he said.
Associate Editor
The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., is ready to kick up its video news coverage, thanks to an intensive training program geared toward changing the way it covers news in the Garden state.
Last month the newspaper (Monday-Friday, 345,130; Saturday, 281,901; Sunday, 500,382) put 20 newsroom staff through an intensive five-day video training boot camp, covering topics such as how to shoot and produce video.
The additional training, conducted by New York-based Rosenblum Associates, is part of an effort by the Newhouse paper to feed more video content to its Web site, said John Hassell, deputy managing editor at the daily.
“The initial boot camp we are doing with Rosenblum Associates is the first step toward two things,” he said. “First is getting video training spread more broadly across the staff and second is putting together a noontime webcast that we hope will be something new and different for newspapers.”
The Star-Ledger, with 300 editorial staff members, hopes to provide video training to everyone who needs or wants it, Hassell said.
Boot camp members had their schedules arranged so that they would spend five straight days telling stories only through video. The boot camp also introduced the staff to new techniques they could use to cover news stories.
The class teaches students how to bridge the gap between gathering news intended for both video and print distribution, Hassell said.
“What a lot of people do is when they first get a video camera and are sent out to shoot video they come back with a lot of video and that creates an inefficient post-production result because you get back and have three hours of footage that you have to watch and edit,” said Hassell.
“We are teaching people how to think about what they need to shoot for the story they want to tell so that the process of producing video stories” becomes more efficient.
The concept mirrors how a reporter and photographer traditionally prepare to cover a story. Each knows what he must do to gather the information he needs, Hassell said.
Multimedia kits
The Star-Ledger made a “significant” financial commitment in buying the equipment to outfit the first class of 20, Hassell said.
Each received a video kit that includes a Sony HVR-A1U digital camera and an Apple MacBook Pro laptop with Final Cut Pro editing software. Other accessories include a Sennheiser Evolution G2 100 series wireless lavalier microphone to capture high-quality audio.
The Star-Ledger is still planning its five-minute nooncast video program. It’s building a set in the newsroom and is in the midst of purchasing the mixing board and other production equipment needed to support the show, Hassell said.
“We still have a lot of work to do to figure out exactly what it looks like, the content and tone of the program,” he said. “The idea is to do a short five-minute nooncast that is combination of live and taped footage.”
Hassell said the daily believes the five-minute length of the show is the correct format, citing current trends favoring shorter videos.
“The evidence I see suggests that’s about as long as you are going to get somebody’s attention, except for the most extraordinary videos,” he said. “We are operating on the assumption that shorter is better and we have to be able to tell a story in two minutes.”
The Star-Ledger didn’t have a shortage of volunteers when asked for people to participate in the training session.
“We let everybody know there were 20 slots available for this boot camp, and we received 105 volunteers, “ he said.
Of the 105 candidates, 65 submitted three-minute video audition tapes. Rosenblum Associates then helped the paper whittle the remaining list down to the final 20.
“There is no shortage of interest. That’s true not just of video but of almost everything we do on the digital side,” Hassell said. “We trained the entire staff in blogging and we have reporters calling in audio clips from the field on breaking news.”
Mastering videography is one step in several that traditional newsrooms have to take in order to learn how to cover news in a multimedia environment, Hassell said.
“For us video is the next frontier in that evolution, but it’s important to make sure that everybody in our newsroom understands how video can best be used to deliver news content,” he said. “I think we should agree that we have to be platform-agnostic, but if a story is best told in video, great.”
News&Tech interviews guests from The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J. about their recent intensive video training to pump up the volume of video at nj.com. Guests include John Hassell, deputy managing editor; Sharon Russell, assistant managing editor for video; and Seth Siditsky, video enterprise editor.
Making the video push
As newspapers continue to push into the online video marketplace, they need to overcome the psychological roadblocks inherent in adapting to a new medium.
That’s what video and journalism consultant Michael Rosenblum said about newspapers attempting to become more video-active as they migrate to the Web.
“It’s incumbent upon these organizations to incorporate video as part of their whole package they have to deliver or they are going to look a bit remiss,” he said. “Luckily, the cameras are now cheap and simple enough to use so that making the transition to video is a relatively simple thing to do.”
Last month, New York-based Rosenblum Associates worked with The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., to develop a program to train 20 newsroom staff as videographers.
Rosenblum fashioned the Star-Ledger’s video boot camp after one he conducted for the BBC and other broadcasters.
“The training is straightforward,” he said. “We take a group of 20-25 people and we put them through an intensive boot camp where we isolate them from everybody else and force them to work only in video,” Rosenblum said. “We take away all text and all writing and go out and shoot pieces, critique them, take them apart and put them back together.”
Rosenblum said he is interested in creating a new generation of digital journalists that use video as a component to their reporting.
“Television itself is for television, but when you take video to the Web, it’s non-linear, on-demand and people watch it in a much more fragmented way,” he said.
Trib melds newspaper, TV operations in Fla.
By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor
Tribune Co. is experimenting with a new business model in south Florida it hopes will bring together the best of both worlds for print and broadcast advertisers.
Last March, Tribune merged the broadcast and interactive operations of its Miami television station, WSFL-TV with the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale.
The goal, said Sun-Sentinel President and Publisher Howard Greenberg, is to woo more viewers and advertisers and attract more Web traffic.
“It’s very indicative of the creative thinking of the new management in Tribune Co,” he said. Greenberg, who also serves as interim publisher of the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel, was named general manager of WSFL as part of the combination.
“They are rethinking the entire media business and what we need to do be successful in the future.”
About 40 people who work for the station, a CW affiliate, will move into the Sun-Sentinel’s building later this year. It’s the first time Tribune blended television, print and online operations under one roof, Greenberg said.
“It’s all about integration and leveraging each other’s assets, both in content, promotion and sales,” he said. “It’s also about providing value for our clients that they can’t get anywhere else in the market.”
Multimedia ad packages
Greenberg said that there are tremendous cross-promotional opportunities in offering potential advertisers a one-stop print, broadcast and online package.
“The advertising community wants a lot of things. They want flexibility, so being able to offer an advertiser one contract with all the assets between the newspaper, television station and online is huge to a client,” he said.
The advertising, marketing and research staffs of the TV station and newspaper will remain separate but they are now working side-by-side in the Sun-Sentinel’s building.
Broader range
The merged operations will reach a broader range of demographics, Greenberg said, citing the Sun-Sentinel’s slightly older audience and WSFL’s younger one.
“We’ve now married to each other’s demographics, which gives us a broader range to offer an advertiser,” he said. “It allows others to have more of the same demographic with an overlap in demographics. We are bringing more to the table.”
The Sun-Sentinel will also use its online presence to drive traffic to the WSFL site.
“It’s another avenue to expose our video because the paper’s Web site has a much broader reach than WSFL’s Web site,” Greenberg said. “We think that we can leverage the substantial page views the Sun-Sentinel gets on its Web site into broadening the reach of the WSFL Web site.”
Greenberg said the Sun-Sentinel hit 40 million page views for the first time in March.
Associate Editor
Tribune Co. is experimenting with a new business model in south Florida it hopes will bring together the best of both worlds for print and broadcast advertisers.
Last March, Tribune merged the broadcast and interactive operations of its Miami television station, WSFL-TV with the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale.
The goal, said Sun-Sentinel President and Publisher Howard Greenberg, is to woo more viewers and advertisers and attract more Web traffic.
“It’s very indicative of the creative thinking of the new management in Tribune Co,” he said. Greenberg, who also serves as interim publisher of the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel, was named general manager of WSFL as part of the combination.
“They are rethinking the entire media business and what we need to do be successful in the future.”
About 40 people who work for the station, a CW affiliate, will move into the Sun-Sentinel’s building later this year. It’s the first time Tribune blended television, print and online operations under one roof, Greenberg said.
“It’s all about integration and leveraging each other’s assets, both in content, promotion and sales,” he said. “It’s also about providing value for our clients that they can’t get anywhere else in the market.”
Multimedia ad packages
Greenberg said that there are tremendous cross-promotional opportunities in offering potential advertisers a one-stop print, broadcast and online package.
“The advertising community wants a lot of things. They want flexibility, so being able to offer an advertiser one contract with all the assets between the newspaper, television station and online is huge to a client,” he said.
The advertising, marketing and research staffs of the TV station and newspaper will remain separate but they are now working side-by-side in the Sun-Sentinel’s building.
Broader range
The merged operations will reach a broader range of demographics, Greenberg said, citing the Sun-Sentinel’s slightly older audience and WSFL’s younger one.
“We’ve now married to each other’s demographics, which gives us a broader range to offer an advertiser,” he said. “It allows others to have more of the same demographic with an overlap in demographics. We are bringing more to the table.”
The Sun-Sentinel will also use its online presence to drive traffic to the WSFL site.
“It’s another avenue to expose our video because the paper’s Web site has a much broader reach than WSFL’s Web site,” Greenberg said. “We think that we can leverage the substantial page views the Sun-Sentinel gets on its Web site into broadening the reach of the WSFL Web site.”
Greenberg said the Sun-Sentinel hit 40 million page views for the first time in March.
NAA releases video guide to help papers fortify ops
The Newspaper Association of America last month released an online guide aimed at newspapers looking to fortify their online video programs.
The offering, “Zooming In on Online Video: A Development & Growth Guide for Newspaper Web Sites” is intended to help newspapers of any size develop profitable video applications, NAA said.
The site includes tutorials on how to shoot good video, buy equipment and build newsroom sets. The guide also includes links to newspapers with already-established video operations, behind-the-scenes materials and a video glossary.
The online guide can be found at www.naa.org/Resources/Articles/Digital-Media-Online-Video-Home/Digital-Media-Online-Video-Home.aspx.
It comes as an increasing number of newspapers feature video on their Web sites, according to an NAA survey.
The survey tracked how more than 200 newspapers use video materials as part of their newsgathering operations.
Most papers are producing their own locally focused video content, NAA said.
Flash video was the most popular format for newspaper Web sites, followed by Windows Media as a distant second.
The survey also found that many reporters and photographers are shooting their own video content instead of relying on online staff.
The offering, “Zooming In on Online Video: A Development & Growth Guide for Newspaper Web Sites” is intended to help newspapers of any size develop profitable video applications, NAA said.
The site includes tutorials on how to shoot good video, buy equipment and build newsroom sets. The guide also includes links to newspapers with already-established video operations, behind-the-scenes materials and a video glossary.
The online guide can be found at www.naa.org/Resources/Articles/Digital-Media-Online-Video-Home/Digital-Media-Online-Video-Home.aspx.
It comes as an increasing number of newspapers feature video on their Web sites, according to an NAA survey.
The survey tracked how more than 200 newspapers use video materials as part of their newsgathering operations.
Most papers are producing their own locally focused video content, NAA said.
Flash video was the most popular format for newspaper Web sites, followed by Windows Media as a distant second.
The survey also found that many reporters and photographers are shooting their own video content instead of relying on online staff.
AP launches Mobile News Network
The Associated Press last month debuted Mobile News Network, a multimedia news portal targeted at smart phone users (see Newspapers & Technology, May 2008).
The MNN launch spans more than 100 news publishers covering 16 of the top 20 DMAs.
“With a new generation of mobile devices on the market, like the iPhone, the time is right for AP to introduce a product that brings together our members’ local news brands with AP’s unrivaled coverage of international and national events,” said Jane Seagrave, AP’s senior vice president of global product development.
The new service, optimized for the Apple iPhone, offers local and national news, photo galleries and videos, among other features.
Future phases of MNN will include content from additional newspapers and broadcasters as well as being optimized for next-generation mobile phones, AP said.
Users can access MNN via www.apnews.com or via iPhone Web app pages at www.iphone.com/webapps.
The MNN launch spans more than 100 news publishers covering 16 of the top 20 DMAs.
“With a new generation of mobile devices on the market, like the iPhone, the time is right for AP to introduce a product that brings together our members’ local news brands with AP’s unrivaled coverage of international and national events,” said Jane Seagrave, AP’s senior vice president of global product development.
The new service, optimized for the Apple iPhone, offers local and national news, photo galleries and videos, among other features.
Future phases of MNN will include content from additional newspapers and broadcasters as well as being optimized for next-generation mobile phones, AP said.
Users can access MNN via www.apnews.com or via iPhone Web app pages at www.iphone.com/webapps.
Newspapers, Web offer consumers research tool
A study commissioned by Google indicates that consumers use newspapers and the Internet in tandem to evaluate and make purchases.
According to the study, conducted by Clark, Martire & Bartolemeo, among people who research products and services after seeing them advertised in newspapers, 67 percent use the Internet to find more information. Of that group, nearly 70 percent of consumers make a purchase following their additional research.
The research was the result of a study exploring the effectiveness of bringing new advertisers to the newspaper print environment through Google’s Print Ads platform.
Among other findings:
•More than half, 56 percent, of respondents either researched or purchased at least one product they saw in the newspaper in the last month.
•Of those who said they researched at least one product they saw in the newspaper, 67 percent said they conducted research online, compared with 48 percent who visited a store, 23 percent who called a store and 23 percent who asked a friend.
•About 48 percent of respondents said that seeing a product in the newspaper after seeing it online would make them trust the product more and be more likely to purchase.
The Google Print Ads program began in November 2006 with a test that included 50 newspapers and a small group of advertisers. Since then, the program has grown to include more than 750 newspapers representing 48 of the top 50 DMAs and covering 70 percent of U.S. paid circulation.
According to the study, conducted by Clark, Martire & Bartolemeo, among people who research products and services after seeing them advertised in newspapers, 67 percent use the Internet to find more information. Of that group, nearly 70 percent of consumers make a purchase following their additional research.
The research was the result of a study exploring the effectiveness of bringing new advertisers to the newspaper print environment through Google’s Print Ads platform.
Among other findings:
•More than half, 56 percent, of respondents either researched or purchased at least one product they saw in the newspaper in the last month.
•Of those who said they researched at least one product they saw in the newspaper, 67 percent said they conducted research online, compared with 48 percent who visited a store, 23 percent who called a store and 23 percent who asked a friend.
•About 48 percent of respondents said that seeing a product in the newspaper after seeing it online would make them trust the product more and be more likely to purchase.
The Google Print Ads program began in November 2006 with a test that included 50 newspapers and a small group of advertisers. Since then, the program has grown to include more than 750 newspapers representing 48 of the top 50 DMAs and covering 70 percent of U.S. paid circulation.
Bangor Daily News taps CCAS
The Bangor (Maine) Daily News selected Creative Circle Advertising Solutions to upgrade its existing Web sites and to build new sites for the paper.
The paper purchased CCAS’ suite of products including communityQ, mediasiteQ and adQ.
CCAS will redesign bangordailynews.com on the mediasiteQ platform, which will give editors the ability to edit the layout and look of the Web site.
CCAS will also build and launch a citizen journalism Web site and several other specialty sites for the Daily News.
Meantime, several Georgia publications, including the Marietta Daily Journal, Cherokee Tribune in Canton and Neighborhood Newspapers Group, selected CCAS to install new Web features on their sites.
The paper purchased CCAS’ suite of products including communityQ, mediasiteQ and adQ.
CCAS will redesign bangordailynews.com on the mediasiteQ platform, which will give editors the ability to edit the layout and look of the Web site.
CCAS will also build and launch a citizen journalism Web site and several other specialty sites for the Daily News.
Meantime, several Georgia publications, including the Marietta Daily Journal, Cherokee Tribune in Canton and Neighborhood Newspapers Group, selected CCAS to install new Web features on their sites.
Papers take different routes to content management
By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor
When it comes to content management, one size doesn’t fit all.
That was evident at this year’s Capital Convergence conference in Washington D.C., as several speakers waxed philosophic about the various content management options available to newspapers, ranging from in-house platforms created on open-source frameworks to shrink-wrapped apps.
Case in point, The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which made several changes over the past few years to its CMS infrastructure.
The paper recently switched from a 29-year-old SII editorial system to Saxotech Inc.’s Editorial Go-Live app to provide more control, said Audrey Wheeler, project manager for parent Gazette Communications.
“We wanted a single database to manage all of our newsroom generated digital media and print content,” she said. “We also wanted something that would give us more flexibility and efficiency in getting changes made.”
Prior to moving to the new platform, format changes were made by the IT department and news stories had to be copied and pasted through a long series of steps from the legacy app to the online system before they could be posted online to The Gazette’s Web site, www.GazetteOnline.com.
Before The Gazette installed the new editorial app, the paper in January 2007 rolled out Saxotech Go-Live Online. That app replaced a proprietary online system it had built in 2004.
The newspaper made the switch because it could no longer keep up with the changes it wanted to make with the software, Wheeler said.
“One or two people developed that system so as we needed changes they were very slow in coming,” she said. “Further development was delayed with our limited resources and expertise.”
With the launch of the Saxotech apps, The Gazette now has the flexibility to determine how it wants to create and distribute its information, for both print and online, Wheeler said.
Homegrown open framework
Other newspaper groups continue to invest time and money in building custom CMS, using popular open-source applications.
One publisher that has followed the open-source route, Journal-World in Lawrence, Kan., has reaped countless awards and accolades for its Web operations.
And as the honors rolled in so did inquiries about Ellington, the open-source software the daily wrote and uses to manage its Web content.
That attention prompted the paper’s parent, World Co., to create an offshoot, dubbed Mediaphormedia, to commercially market Ellington, said Dan Cox, president of the unit.
Ellington relies on an open-source platform consisting of Linux, Apache, PostgreSQL and Python. A software development app, Django, allows programmers to write custom code that interacts with Ellington data through a set of APIs, Cox said.
Cox said it’s important for newspapers to embrace new technology so they can distribute their content across a wide variety of platforms.
“A lot of companies you see are asking how to get their print product online. We’re coming at it from a different direction,” he said. “Online should be the space where we are producing a great amount of content and disseminating the best of that content back into traditional products or other distribution avenues.”
To that end, Journal-World often posts its content on multiple sites.
Since making Ellington available commercially, a number of other newspapers have purchased the app, including The Washington Post and Naples (Fla.) Daily News.
Content and resource management
At GateHouse Media Inc., the publisher’s CMS serves double-duty. It manages GateHouse’s Web content and Web resources for the publisher’s more than 500 newspapers, said Howard Owens, director of digital publishing.
The company began installing Zope Corp.’s Zope4Media content management software late last year and will finish deployment in 2008, Owens said.
Zope4Media relies on both open-source and proprietary software.
“Our challenge is running hundreds of Web sites on the same content management system,” Owens said. “One of the great things about Zope is that they handle all the hosting and infrastructure support while we can concentrate on building great Web sites.”
That allows GateHouse newspapers to funnel specific content to other sister publications for print and online use. For example, if a newspaper in Ohio covers a Boston Red Sox/Cleveland Indians game, the New England publication can pick up and run the story.
The standardized approach also allows GateHouse editors to pick up the slack when a sister newspaper needs temporary relief, Owens said, citing times where an editor at one GateHouse daily might be needed to oversee content generated at a second newspaper.
Triangle of death?
WASHINGTON — Gauging the long-term value of software can be a challenging proposition.
Just ask Ken Rickard, deputy vice president for strategic partnership development at Morris Communications Co. LLC.
At a Nexpo 2008 seminar, Rickard outlined the long-term value of open and proprietary software through a chart that illustrated the downward and upward value of the two types of software. A third line, meantime, illustrated “good enough.”
He said that, initially, the value of proprietary software outstrips open source.
“I’m going to agree that initially Microsoft Office had a high value and did things that nobody else could do,” he said.
But over time, the worth of proprietary software dips below open source, especially without the support of software upgrades, Rickard said.
Conversely, open source rises above the good-enough line over a given period of time, he said.
But now there is a gray area newspapers also need to be aware of.
“The content management position for newspapers is that we are in the triangle of death where neither the proprietary nor open-source solution is good enough for our needs,” Rickard said.
One way of weathering the triangle is for newspapers to work with each other to develop a common platform, in the process potentially aiding their competitors, he said.
“Newspapers tend to think of technology as a competitive advantage and the answer is that it’s not,” he said. “In very few cases are we in direct competitive markets.”
Rickard is a proponent of open source software, namely Drupal, an open source content management platform.
Associate Editor
When it comes to content management, one size doesn’t fit all.
That was evident at this year’s Capital Convergence conference in Washington D.C., as several speakers waxed philosophic about the various content management options available to newspapers, ranging from in-house platforms created on open-source frameworks to shrink-wrapped apps.
Case in point, The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which made several changes over the past few years to its CMS infrastructure.
The paper recently switched from a 29-year-old SII editorial system to Saxotech Inc.’s Editorial Go-Live app to provide more control, said Audrey Wheeler, project manager for parent Gazette Communications.
“We wanted a single database to manage all of our newsroom generated digital media and print content,” she said. “We also wanted something that would give us more flexibility and efficiency in getting changes made.”
Prior to moving to the new platform, format changes were made by the IT department and news stories had to be copied and pasted through a long series of steps from the legacy app to the online system before they could be posted online to The Gazette’s Web site, www.GazetteOnline.com.
Before The Gazette installed the new editorial app, the paper in January 2007 rolled out Saxotech Go-Live Online. That app replaced a proprietary online system it had built in 2004.
The newspaper made the switch because it could no longer keep up with the changes it wanted to make with the software, Wheeler said.
“One or two people developed that system so as we needed changes they were very slow in coming,” she said. “Further development was delayed with our limited resources and expertise.”
With the launch of the Saxotech apps, The Gazette now has the flexibility to determine how it wants to create and distribute its information, for both print and online, Wheeler said.
Homegrown open framework
Other newspaper groups continue to invest time and money in building custom CMS, using popular open-source applications.
One publisher that has followed the open-source route, Journal-World in Lawrence, Kan., has reaped countless awards and accolades for its Web operations.
And as the honors rolled in so did inquiries about Ellington, the open-source software the daily wrote and uses to manage its Web content.
That attention prompted the paper’s parent, World Co., to create an offshoot, dubbed Mediaphormedia, to commercially market Ellington, said Dan Cox, president of the unit.
Ellington relies on an open-source platform consisting of Linux, Apache, PostgreSQL and Python. A software development app, Django, allows programmers to write custom code that interacts with Ellington data through a set of APIs, Cox said.
Cox said it’s important for newspapers to embrace new technology so they can distribute their content across a wide variety of platforms.
“A lot of companies you see are asking how to get their print product online. We’re coming at it from a different direction,” he said. “Online should be the space where we are producing a great amount of content and disseminating the best of that content back into traditional products or other distribution avenues.”
To that end, Journal-World often posts its content on multiple sites.
Since making Ellington available commercially, a number of other newspapers have purchased the app, including The Washington Post and Naples (Fla.) Daily News.
Content and resource management
At GateHouse Media Inc., the publisher’s CMS serves double-duty. It manages GateHouse’s Web content and Web resources for the publisher’s more than 500 newspapers, said Howard Owens, director of digital publishing.
The company began installing Zope Corp.’s Zope4Media content management software late last year and will finish deployment in 2008, Owens said.
Zope4Media relies on both open-source and proprietary software.
“Our challenge is running hundreds of Web sites on the same content management system,” Owens said. “One of the great things about Zope is that they handle all the hosting and infrastructure support while we can concentrate on building great Web sites.”
That allows GateHouse newspapers to funnel specific content to other sister publications for print and online use. For example, if a newspaper in Ohio covers a Boston Red Sox/Cleveland Indians game, the New England publication can pick up and run the story.
The standardized approach also allows GateHouse editors to pick up the slack when a sister newspaper needs temporary relief, Owens said, citing times where an editor at one GateHouse daily might be needed to oversee content generated at a second newspaper.
Triangle of death?
WASHINGTON — Gauging the long-term value of software can be a challenging proposition.
Just ask Ken Rickard, deputy vice president for strategic partnership development at Morris Communications Co. LLC.
At a Nexpo 2008 seminar, Rickard outlined the long-term value of open and proprietary software through a chart that illustrated the downward and upward value of the two types of software. A third line, meantime, illustrated “good enough.”
He said that, initially, the value of proprietary software outstrips open source.
“I’m going to agree that initially Microsoft Office had a high value and did things that nobody else could do,” he said.
But over time, the worth of proprietary software dips below open source, especially without the support of software upgrades, Rickard said.
Conversely, open source rises above the good-enough line over a given period of time, he said.
But now there is a gray area newspapers also need to be aware of.
“The content management position for newspapers is that we are in the triangle of death where neither the proprietary nor open-source solution is good enough for our needs,” Rickard said.
One way of weathering the triangle is for newspapers to work with each other to develop a common platform, in the process potentially aiding their competitors, he said.
“Newspapers tend to think of technology as a competitive advantage and the answer is that it’s not,” he said. “In very few cases are we in direct competitive markets.”
Rickard is a proponent of open source software, namely Drupal, an open source content management platform.
4 questions with David A. Milliron
David Milliron, vice president of media services at Caspio Inc., talks about the benefits newspapers can get from using online database applications.
What trends do you see emerging for online database applications?
One common trend in online database applications involves the consolidation of databases on a single Web page. The public does not want to scour an entire Web site to find your database offerings. Keep those data sets updated and continue to offer new interactive databases and you will train the public to return to your site for news and information.
The fever for posting online databases is also spilling over into sister-company broadcast Web sites. I am seeing newspapers teaming up with a television station in their same market to consolidate efforts that lead to cross-promotion of Web sites (see related story, page 38).
Another trend is to allow readers to interact with many databases via a common interface. This gives readers, for example, the ability to search home sales, school statistics and crime reports by filling in search information one time. The results are interactive and can be commingled with interactive mapping.
We also see publishers looking to outsource the maintenance and delivery of national databases containing hyper-local content to allow syndication across all of their company’s Web sites. It is not only labor intensive but also costly for individual newspapers to obtain and process the same database, particularly with each being responsible for regular updates. By outsourcing these efforts, a company significantly cuts its overhead while being able to offer more robust real-time local content.
How are newspapers using database applications to attract local readers to their Web sites?
I call it “online voyeurism,” and when done right it can become viral. Online readers have a hunger for instant and timely information that includes public databases. Put a public salary database online and your Web clicks will spike. But stop there and your traffic will fade faster than yesterday’s news.
By keeping databases fresh and by rotating content you will train your readers to become dependent on your site not only for news but relevant information. The (Jacksonville) Florida Times-Union’s Databank site does just that. It is fresh and you always know what is new. And every database has a common look and feel that is inviting to the public.
Other data sets that are an instant hit online are historical lottery numbers, anything school- or crime-related, restaurant guides and inspection reports, property records and home sales, and vital statistic databases.
Why are online database applications becoming important for newspapers?
Newspaper Web sites have too many competitors vying for the same advertising dollars. A spike in traffic here and there is great, but advertisers expect consistent traffic from a well-defined audience.
Databases clearly boost revenues. Link all of your education-related databases from a common Web page, for instance, and commingle them with your local education stories and blogs and other information and you are quickly in a position to deliver a specific demographic to your advertisers. The higher number of searches conducted on the databases, the more advertisements that can be served up to your readers.
In addition to revenues, newspapers are eager to increase their overall online real estate, and database-generated content can help fill that void. For instance, one newspaper recently ran a user-generated contest where readers submitted recipes in specific categories. When the contest ended, the newspaper was able to provide a comprehensive database of user-generated recipes.
What tools are publishers looking for in database applications?
Publishers want online databases that generate audience and traffic. Those databases must be granular, intuitive and easy to navigate. Social networking and interactive mapping features are also important.
Database applications need to be flexible and portable. An application built for one site needs to integrate with multiple sites using a variety of different deployment models including transportable widgets that drive new traffic sources to your Web site. Publishers also expect database applications to integrate with third-party ad servers with little effort.
Publishers are looking for tools that do not require huge upfront costs. More and more publishers are outsourcing the creation and maintenance of their database applications. A relative low entry point with a high return on investment is the mantra for today’s online database publishing world.
What trends do you see emerging for online database applications?
One common trend in online database applications involves the consolidation of databases on a single Web page. The public does not want to scour an entire Web site to find your database offerings. Keep those data sets updated and continue to offer new interactive databases and you will train the public to return to your site for news and information.
The fever for posting online databases is also spilling over into sister-company broadcast Web sites. I am seeing newspapers teaming up with a television station in their same market to consolidate efforts that lead to cross-promotion of Web sites (see related story, page 38).
Another trend is to allow readers to interact with many databases via a common interface. This gives readers, for example, the ability to search home sales, school statistics and crime reports by filling in search information one time. The results are interactive and can be commingled with interactive mapping.
We also see publishers looking to outsource the maintenance and delivery of national databases containing hyper-local content to allow syndication across all of their company’s Web sites. It is not only labor intensive but also costly for individual newspapers to obtain and process the same database, particularly with each being responsible for regular updates. By outsourcing these efforts, a company significantly cuts its overhead while being able to offer more robust real-time local content.
How are newspapers using database applications to attract local readers to their Web sites?
I call it “online voyeurism,” and when done right it can become viral. Online readers have a hunger for instant and timely information that includes public databases. Put a public salary database online and your Web clicks will spike. But stop there and your traffic will fade faster than yesterday’s news.
By keeping databases fresh and by rotating content you will train your readers to become dependent on your site not only for news but relevant information. The (Jacksonville) Florida Times-Union’s Databank site does just that. It is fresh and you always know what is new. And every database has a common look and feel that is inviting to the public.
Other data sets that are an instant hit online are historical lottery numbers, anything school- or crime-related, restaurant guides and inspection reports, property records and home sales, and vital statistic databases.
Why are online database applications becoming important for newspapers?
Newspaper Web sites have too many competitors vying for the same advertising dollars. A spike in traffic here and there is great, but advertisers expect consistent traffic from a well-defined audience.
Databases clearly boost revenues. Link all of your education-related databases from a common Web page, for instance, and commingle them with your local education stories and blogs and other information and you are quickly in a position to deliver a specific demographic to your advertisers. The higher number of searches conducted on the databases, the more advertisements that can be served up to your readers.
In addition to revenues, newspapers are eager to increase their overall online real estate, and database-generated content can help fill that void. For instance, one newspaper recently ran a user-generated contest where readers submitted recipes in specific categories. When the contest ended, the newspaper was able to provide a comprehensive database of user-generated recipes.
What tools are publishers looking for in database applications?
Publishers want online databases that generate audience and traffic. Those databases must be granular, intuitive and easy to navigate. Social networking and interactive mapping features are also important.
Database applications need to be flexible and portable. An application built for one site needs to integrate with multiple sites using a variety of different deployment models including transportable widgets that drive new traffic sources to your Web site. Publishers also expect database applications to integrate with third-party ad servers with little effort.
Publishers are looking for tools that do not require huge upfront costs. More and more publishers are outsourcing the creation and maintenance of their database applications. A relative low entry point with a high return on investment is the mantra for today’s online database publishing world.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Yahoo details Web ad management platform
Yahoo Inc. released more details about its forthcoming advertising management platform aimed at allowing advertisers and newspapers to buy and sell space online (see related story, page 49).
The platform, dubbed AMP, will roll out in phases during the third quarter of this year, Yahoo said.
AMP, formerly known as Project Apex, will allow marketers to search for available advertising inventory through a single, integrated interface, Yahoo said. Companies can buy across search, display, local, mobile or video inventory, Yahoo said.
Newspaper Consortium members said they’re eagerly anticipating the release of the platform.
“We are highly enthusiastic about the potential of this platform,” said Jay Smith, president of Cox Newspapers. “We’re blown away by how Yahoo is working with intensity and commitment to create a collaborative and very efficient platform that we expect will have a significant impact on our sales capabilities.”
Yahoo plans to extend the functionality of the platform as well as adding additional publishers, advertisers, agencies and ad networks through the rest of this year and into 2009.
A video demonstration of AMP can be viewed at http://advertising.yahoo.com/amp.
Yahoo adds 4 to consortium
Shaw Newspapers in northern Illinois and Iowa; The Buffalo (N.Y.) News; Times Publishing Co. in Erie, Pa., and The Columbian in Vancouver, Wash., joined Yahoo Inc.’s newspaper consortium, Yahoo said. The new papers bring the total number of participants to 634 — 425 of which are dailies.
The search engine said 30 percent of all U.S. daily papers and 37 percent of Sunday papers are now members of the group, founded in 2006.
Since the launch of the consortium, Yahoo said Web traffic to HotJobs has grown by more than 50 percent, and that newspapers have also begun to sell HotJobs ads as part of their packages to local advertisers.
Meantime, 126 of the consortium’s newspapers feature Yahoo search on their sites, Yahoo said.
The platform, dubbed AMP, will roll out in phases during the third quarter of this year, Yahoo said.
AMP, formerly known as Project Apex, will allow marketers to search for available advertising inventory through a single, integrated interface, Yahoo said. Companies can buy across search, display, local, mobile or video inventory, Yahoo said.
Newspaper Consortium members said they’re eagerly anticipating the release of the platform.
“We are highly enthusiastic about the potential of this platform,” said Jay Smith, president of Cox Newspapers. “We’re blown away by how Yahoo is working with intensity and commitment to create a collaborative and very efficient platform that we expect will have a significant impact on our sales capabilities.”
Yahoo plans to extend the functionality of the platform as well as adding additional publishers, advertisers, agencies and ad networks through the rest of this year and into 2009.
A video demonstration of AMP can be viewed at http://advertising.yahoo.com/amp.
Yahoo adds 4 to consortium
Shaw Newspapers in northern Illinois and Iowa; The Buffalo (N.Y.) News; Times Publishing Co. in Erie, Pa., and The Columbian in Vancouver, Wash., joined Yahoo Inc.’s newspaper consortium, Yahoo said. The new papers bring the total number of participants to 634 — 425 of which are dailies.
The search engine said 30 percent of all U.S. daily papers and 37 percent of Sunday papers are now members of the group, founded in 2006.
Since the launch of the consortium, Yahoo said Web traffic to HotJobs has grown by more than 50 percent, and that newspapers have also begun to sell HotJobs ads as part of their packages to local advertisers.
Meantime, 126 of the consortium’s newspapers feature Yahoo search on their sites, Yahoo said.
Star Tribune takes personalized approach to Web
By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor
The (Minneapolis) Star Tribune is the very model of a modern major metro.
It’s already the city’s dominant mass medium through its printed product. But now it’s exploiting its online presence to give its readers and advertisers a more personal experience, said Jason Erdahl, the Star Tribune’s executive director of interactive media operations.
Case in point: The Home Page Experience ad program, launched in 2006. The program gives marketers an opportunity to reach Web visitors through a variety of ad formats based on the number of times a visitor accesses the paper’s home page.
“What’s worked for us is that the user sees the message in different ways as they come back to the front page,” Erdahl said. This minimizes the chance a consumer might ignore the ad because of repeated viewings of the same message, he said.
The paper (Monday-Friday, 335,443; Saturday, 372,657; Sunday, 570,443) listed the ad packages at $19,000 each and booked 50 last year.
Home Page Experience reflects the paper’s embrace of the Web, a commitment that netted the daily three NAA Digital Edge awards this year for most innovative storytelling, best local guide/entertainment site (see box, below) and best digital ad program.
That’s on top of the four regional Emmys the paper garnered from the local chapter of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, citing the Star Tribune’s animation, still photography and videography efforts.
Yet even as the paper built its award-winning programs, its staff had to contend with rebuilding its Web infrastructure from scratch following the 2006 sale of the Star Tribune from McClatchy Co. to private venture firm Avista Capital Partners.
“McClatchy had the Web operations set up so that everything was centralized through the parent company,” Erdahl said. “McClatchy did a fine job, but this gave us an opportunity to look at things again and we decided to go with the best-of-breed option.”
The answer was a mixture of shrink-wrapped and custom apps, Erdahl said.
To that end, the Star Tribune tapped Clickability Inc. for its content management software and Silverpop Systems Inc. for its e-mail and newsletter alert functionality. The newspaper also maintained and expanded relationships with vendors such as Planet Discover, which was selected to provide search engine and shopping portal support.
Finally, the paper renewed its contract with Omniture Inc. for Web analytics and installed an ad management app from Google Inc. unit DoubleClick.
“The site may not look entirely different but nearly everything has been dramatically changed,” Erdahl said about the new infrastructure.
The Star Tribune used its own resources, meantime, to create its popular story commenting feature.
“I would argue that we have the best story commenting system on the Web right now,” he said. “We do require registration, but that doesn’t stop (readers) from participating because our users are open to sharing information with us in exchange for posting on the Web.”
Users can rate comments similar to the way Amazon users rate reviews, Erdahl said.
Local-minded features
Earlier this year, the Star Tribune launched Politically Connected, a site where users can find more information on national, state and local election races. Erdahl expects the site to draw considerable traffic, particularly since Minneapolis is hosting this year’s Republican National Convention.
“We aggregate news and information from throughout the Web and our own content,” Erdahl said. The site will also track campaign financing and contributors, he said.
MyVote, an app that allows users to quickly find precinct information and learn about ballot issues, bolsters the Star Tribune’s local campaign coverage.
“As election night approaches (voters) can print out a ballot and choose who they like and bring it to the voting booth,” Erdahl said about MyVote’s capabilities.
“Then throughout the night, through the same interface, they can monitor how all the elections are going, personalized to their specific street address.”
Last month it also unveiled a watchdog blog, dubbed Whistleblower, showcasing the Star Tribune’s investigative reporting efforts. Readers can also use the blog to register their own complaints and concerns.
The Star Tribune’s site continues to have its most popular and most e-mailed stories on the front page, which are aggregated from the entire site. But with the Clickability content management app, will be able to offer the most popular stories and most e-mailed stories by specific section.
Interactive features also receive prominent display on the home page. Users can play videos or view blogs by accessing a scrolling slide-show box displayed on the right-hand side of the page.
“We have an organization committed to multimedia and some really talented videographers that work for the digital media team,” he said, citing as proof the four regional Emmys the newspaper won in 2007.
Mobile news distribution is another key component of the Star Tribune’s interactive efforts. News and information is tailored to enable users to quickly view the data they need on their mobile devices, Erdahl said, but consumers can also opt to view entire stories and articles if they wish.
“Running a long story is not conducive for a mobile device but people (may want to access) movie showtimes or go in to read certain stories,” Erdahl said. “We don’t have to replicate our entire Web site on the phone, but if you want to, you should be able to find and view that entire long story” even if it is 16 characters at a time, he said.
“You should still have that option.”
The Star Tribune’s mobile news package includes quick links to main story sections and stories about the Twin Cities’ four professional sports teams. Users can scroll down on their mobile devices to see top local and national stories.
Consumers also have the option to sign up for e-mail alerts and can subscribe to up to 20 individual newsletters transmitted to their PCs.
“We have a daily AM and PM newsletter we send to a couple hundred thousand people and have specific newsletters about the Twins, Vikings, business and a variety of other subjects,” Erdahl said. “We also have a lot of really great offers that we send out as well as on behalf of our advertisers for travel, entertainment, automotive and many others.”
The paper has plans for additional categories aimed at tapping into readers’ diverse tastes and interests.
“As we look at the categories of content on our site — not calling them sections — let’s just call the Minnesota Twins a category,” he said. “Heck, we should do that for ice fishing. Up here in Minnesota we should own ice fishing,” Erdahl said.
Group marketing
The Star Tribune is also digitizing and categorizing its archives in a bid to further slice and dice the market, Erdahl said.
As part of that initiative, the paper is relaunching a health and fitness category containing stories published since 1986.
Erdahl said the Star Tribune wants to create categories that meet the needs of various age groups and interests.
“I want all demographics. There is no limit, I want anyone who can pick up a cell phone and type something on their phone,” he said. “My 6-year-old son is a demographic. I want him to go on the site as he’s learning to read.”
StarTrib uses vita.mn power to grow stronger
The (Minneapolis) Star Tribune has a built-in digital proving ground to test features and services it rolls out on its Web site.
The paper’s local entertainment Web site, vita.mn, was used to work out bugs associated with its homegrown commenting application and the Star Tribune also used the site to test its Karma user rewards program.
Karma rewards registered users with points every time they participate or review material on the site. Top point earners win a prize.
Vita.mn contains information about Twin Cities restaurants, bars, clubs, movies, music, art, guides and other entertainment events.
A printed counterpart contains other information, including a mix of staff and user-contributed material.
Among the most popular features within the site is the Top 10 list, said Jason Erdahl, the Star Tribune’s executive director of interactive media operations.
Last year, he said, users wrote more than 10,000 Top 10 lists on more than 800 topics, which resulted in traffic counts exceeding 1.9 million page views, he said. Users viewing the lists stay on the site longer than the usual startribune.com visitor, he said.
“Users spend more time there because they are adding lists, tagging items, commenting and uploading photos for the site,” he said.
Karma, meantime, will migrate from vita.mn to the main startribune.com site later this year.
“We believe that the loyalty programs for Web and print should be merged,” Erdahl said. “If someone subscribes to the newspaper, big points. If someone subscribes to a newsletter, good points and if someone tags an item, good points,” he said.
Vita.mn won a Digital Edge for best local guide/entertainment site.
Associate Editor
The (Minneapolis) Star Tribune is the very model of a modern major metro.
It’s already the city’s dominant mass medium through its printed product. But now it’s exploiting its online presence to give its readers and advertisers a more personal experience, said Jason Erdahl, the Star Tribune’s executive director of interactive media operations.
Case in point: The Home Page Experience ad program, launched in 2006. The program gives marketers an opportunity to reach Web visitors through a variety of ad formats based on the number of times a visitor accesses the paper’s home page.
“What’s worked for us is that the user sees the message in different ways as they come back to the front page,” Erdahl said. This minimizes the chance a consumer might ignore the ad because of repeated viewings of the same message, he said.
The paper (Monday-Friday, 335,443; Saturday, 372,657; Sunday, 570,443) listed the ad packages at $19,000 each and booked 50 last year.
Home Page Experience reflects the paper’s embrace of the Web, a commitment that netted the daily three NAA Digital Edge awards this year for most innovative storytelling, best local guide/entertainment site (see box, below) and best digital ad program.
That’s on top of the four regional Emmys the paper garnered from the local chapter of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, citing the Star Tribune’s animation, still photography and videography efforts.
Yet even as the paper built its award-winning programs, its staff had to contend with rebuilding its Web infrastructure from scratch following the 2006 sale of the Star Tribune from McClatchy Co. to private venture firm Avista Capital Partners.
“McClatchy had the Web operations set up so that everything was centralized through the parent company,” Erdahl said. “McClatchy did a fine job, but this gave us an opportunity to look at things again and we decided to go with the best-of-breed option.”
The answer was a mixture of shrink-wrapped and custom apps, Erdahl said.
To that end, the Star Tribune tapped Clickability Inc. for its content management software and Silverpop Systems Inc. for its e-mail and newsletter alert functionality. The newspaper also maintained and expanded relationships with vendors such as Planet Discover, which was selected to provide search engine and shopping portal support.
Finally, the paper renewed its contract with Omniture Inc. for Web analytics and installed an ad management app from Google Inc. unit DoubleClick.
“The site may not look entirely different but nearly everything has been dramatically changed,” Erdahl said about the new infrastructure.
The Star Tribune used its own resources, meantime, to create its popular story commenting feature.
“I would argue that we have the best story commenting system on the Web right now,” he said. “We do require registration, but that doesn’t stop (readers) from participating because our users are open to sharing information with us in exchange for posting on the Web.”
Users can rate comments similar to the way Amazon users rate reviews, Erdahl said.
Local-minded features
Earlier this year, the Star Tribune launched Politically Connected, a site where users can find more information on national, state and local election races. Erdahl expects the site to draw considerable traffic, particularly since Minneapolis is hosting this year’s Republican National Convention.
“We aggregate news and information from throughout the Web and our own content,” Erdahl said. The site will also track campaign financing and contributors, he said.
MyVote, an app that allows users to quickly find precinct information and learn about ballot issues, bolsters the Star Tribune’s local campaign coverage.
“As election night approaches (voters) can print out a ballot and choose who they like and bring it to the voting booth,” Erdahl said about MyVote’s capabilities.
“Then throughout the night, through the same interface, they can monitor how all the elections are going, personalized to their specific street address.”
Last month it also unveiled a watchdog blog, dubbed Whistleblower, showcasing the Star Tribune’s investigative reporting efforts. Readers can also use the blog to register their own complaints and concerns.
The Star Tribune’s site continues to have its most popular and most e-mailed stories on the front page, which are aggregated from the entire site. But with the Clickability content management app, will be able to offer the most popular stories and most e-mailed stories by specific section.
Interactive features also receive prominent display on the home page. Users can play videos or view blogs by accessing a scrolling slide-show box displayed on the right-hand side of the page.
“We have an organization committed to multimedia and some really talented videographers that work for the digital media team,” he said, citing as proof the four regional Emmys the newspaper won in 2007.
Mobile news distribution is another key component of the Star Tribune’s interactive efforts. News and information is tailored to enable users to quickly view the data they need on their mobile devices, Erdahl said, but consumers can also opt to view entire stories and articles if they wish.
“Running a long story is not conducive for a mobile device but people (may want to access) movie showtimes or go in to read certain stories,” Erdahl said. “We don’t have to replicate our entire Web site on the phone, but if you want to, you should be able to find and view that entire long story” even if it is 16 characters at a time, he said.
“You should still have that option.”
The Star Tribune’s mobile news package includes quick links to main story sections and stories about the Twin Cities’ four professional sports teams. Users can scroll down on their mobile devices to see top local and national stories.
Consumers also have the option to sign up for e-mail alerts and can subscribe to up to 20 individual newsletters transmitted to their PCs.
“We have a daily AM and PM newsletter we send to a couple hundred thousand people and have specific newsletters about the Twins, Vikings, business and a variety of other subjects,” Erdahl said. “We also have a lot of really great offers that we send out as well as on behalf of our advertisers for travel, entertainment, automotive and many others.”
The paper has plans for additional categories aimed at tapping into readers’ diverse tastes and interests.
“As we look at the categories of content on our site — not calling them sections — let’s just call the Minnesota Twins a category,” he said. “Heck, we should do that for ice fishing. Up here in Minnesota we should own ice fishing,” Erdahl said.
Group marketing
The Star Tribune is also digitizing and categorizing its archives in a bid to further slice and dice the market, Erdahl said.
As part of that initiative, the paper is relaunching a health and fitness category containing stories published since 1986.
Erdahl said the Star Tribune wants to create categories that meet the needs of various age groups and interests.
“I want all demographics. There is no limit, I want anyone who can pick up a cell phone and type something on their phone,” he said. “My 6-year-old son is a demographic. I want him to go on the site as he’s learning to read.”
StarTrib uses vita.mn power to grow stronger
The (Minneapolis) Star Tribune has a built-in digital proving ground to test features and services it rolls out on its Web site.
The paper’s local entertainment Web site, vita.mn, was used to work out bugs associated with its homegrown commenting application and the Star Tribune also used the site to test its Karma user rewards program.
Karma rewards registered users with points every time they participate or review material on the site. Top point earners win a prize.
Vita.mn contains information about Twin Cities restaurants, bars, clubs, movies, music, art, guides and other entertainment events.
A printed counterpart contains other information, including a mix of staff and user-contributed material.
Among the most popular features within the site is the Top 10 list, said Jason Erdahl, the Star Tribune’s executive director of interactive media operations.
Last year, he said, users wrote more than 10,000 Top 10 lists on more than 800 topics, which resulted in traffic counts exceeding 1.9 million page views, he said. Users viewing the lists stay on the site longer than the usual startribune.com visitor, he said.
“Users spend more time there because they are adding lists, tagging items, commenting and uploading photos for the site,” he said.
Karma, meantime, will migrate from vita.mn to the main startribune.com site later this year.
“We believe that the loyalty programs for Web and print should be merged,” Erdahl said. “If someone subscribes to the newspaper, big points. If someone subscribes to a newsletter, good points and if someone tags an item, good points,” he said.
Vita.mn won a Digital Edge for best local guide/entertainment site.
Journal Star rolling with mobile classifieds
By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor
The Lincoln (Neb.) Journal Star is off and running with a new program geared toward reaching text message-savvy subscribers.
Last month the newspaper (Monday-Friday, 76,848; Saturday, 70,618; Sunday, 82,835) launched a mobile classified automotive ads program using CellSigns Inc.’s Cellifieds app with plans of adding more features for readers and advertisers.
“We are offering mobile searches where if people are looking for a car, they can text Cadillac, or whatever it is, to our text-messaging program and they’ll receive a response with specific ads from their query,” said Manoj Nair, the Journal Star’s director of online operations and technology.
Cellifieds gives readers access to information about real estate, autos and employment listings. Users get information not available in print ads, including pictures, and they can contact advertisers directly with a click-to-call feature.
The paper plans to launch a similar service aimed at employment and real estate advertisers sometime this year.
The real estate service will support the short message service protocol, allowing users to receive information about a property after sending a short code, Nair said.
News alerts, promotions
At the same time, the Journal Star launched a mobile service that sends out news, sports and information alerts to registered users. Some 200 readers signed up to receive the service, dubbed JumpStart, after a soft launch of the program last month, Nair said.
The paper is working to add more advertisers and special promotions to JumpStart, he said.
“Right now we are working on a deal with a pizza chain in Lincoln to do a promotion so that when they deliver the pizza they will put the texting information on the pizza boxes,” said Nair. “And we have a grocery store lined up where they will be giving away $500 in a drawing from the people signing up for the promotion service.”
The paper also plans to build a WAP-enabled Web site to provide mobile users with additional access to the Journal Star’s news and information.
To promote its mobile classifieds efforts, the paper rolled out a dedicated Web site, www.402411.com.
“The mission of 402411 is to offer an interactive Web site where you can view instructions on how the program works and the benefits for readers and advertisers,” Nair said.
The Web site also lets readers sign up for JumpStart.
Associate Editor
The Lincoln (Neb.) Journal Star is off and running with a new program geared toward reaching text message-savvy subscribers.
Last month the newspaper (Monday-Friday, 76,848; Saturday, 70,618; Sunday, 82,835) launched a mobile classified automotive ads program using CellSigns Inc.’s Cellifieds app with plans of adding more features for readers and advertisers.
“We are offering mobile searches where if people are looking for a car, they can text Cadillac, or whatever it is, to our text-messaging program and they’ll receive a response with specific ads from their query,” said Manoj Nair, the Journal Star’s director of online operations and technology.
Cellifieds gives readers access to information about real estate, autos and employment listings. Users get information not available in print ads, including pictures, and they can contact advertisers directly with a click-to-call feature.
The paper plans to launch a similar service aimed at employment and real estate advertisers sometime this year.
The real estate service will support the short message service protocol, allowing users to receive information about a property after sending a short code, Nair said.
News alerts, promotions
At the same time, the Journal Star launched a mobile service that sends out news, sports and information alerts to registered users. Some 200 readers signed up to receive the service, dubbed JumpStart, after a soft launch of the program last month, Nair said.
The paper is working to add more advertisers and special promotions to JumpStart, he said.
“Right now we are working on a deal with a pizza chain in Lincoln to do a promotion so that when they deliver the pizza they will put the texting information on the pizza boxes,” said Nair. “And we have a grocery store lined up where they will be giving away $500 in a drawing from the people signing up for the promotion service.”
The paper also plans to build a WAP-enabled Web site to provide mobile users with additional access to the Journal Star’s news and information.
To promote its mobile classifieds efforts, the paper rolled out a dedicated Web site, www.402411.com.
“The mission of 402411 is to offer an interactive Web site where you can view instructions on how the program works and the benefits for readers and advertisers,” Nair said.
The Web site also lets readers sign up for JumpStart.
Prep sports scoring points
By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor
If you build it, they will come.
That is the hope several companies are expressing as they attempt to extend community journalism into the wide world of sports.
Last month, CommunitySportsDesk, an offshoot of the Kenosha (Wis.) News, launched a hosted service that allows local youth and recreation sports leagues to post schedules, write game summaries, input stats and box scores and upload game and team pictures to a newspaper-branded Web site.
The hosted version is the most recent iteration of CommunitySportsDesk, which the News (Monday-Friday, 24,552; Saturday, 24,215; Sunday, 27,149) rolled out last summer as an experiment to see how it could handle user-generated content flowing from the area’s youth and recreation sports teams, according to Ken Dowdell, News publisher and vice president of United Communications Corp.
“Our in-house techs built that innovative model, based on discussions with league organizers and team officials,” he said.
Reaction was positive, so the News hired additional software developers to pepper CommunitySportsDesk with additional features, including the ability for UCC to host the app, Dowdell said.
“It can be the ‘something-different’ tool that equips a traditional media company to get where they need to go with youth and recreational sports,” he said about the software, adding that he felt confident the concept would work well in other “Kenoshas” around the country.
Automatic lede writing
In addition to rewriting code that enabled UCC to host the app, developers added features that allow the software to produce basic headlines and lead paragraphs automatically, based on the data input by team representatives.
“Rather than simply offering a channel for blogging, CommunitySportsDesk helps structure the collection, processing and flow of what can be massive amounts of data,” said Dowdell.
“We’ve engineered options that can serve Pee Wee players who just need their achievements recognized to high school and adult leagues that like to collect complete stats,” he said.
Dowdell said the company is prepared to support its users as they roll out the software.
“As a result of our real-life experiences, we’re prepared to help other publishers with a community-focused, full advertising-supported business model, not merely software,” said Dowdell.
Matthew Serpe, a CommunitySportsDesk business development specialist, said the service dovetails with the industry’s adoption of hyper-local coverage.
“In a newspaper, (youth and rec sports) is an area getting the least amount of coverage. We are offering this application for youth and rec to cover themselves.”
National effort
Dell Sports Inc., meantime, plans to roll out a national high-school sports service this fall, according to Terry Dell, president of the Charlotte, N.C., firm.
The service, Prep Sports Nation, allows participants to post and share pictures, upload video and blogs and share content among students, parents, athletes and local community members.
“How cool would it be to have pictures of you, uploaded on the Web site, by everyone in the audience?” Dell said. “It’s a game of a thousand angles and it’s easy for anyone who goes and watches the game to take pictures.”
Dell said participating newspapers can download all the materials they need from the PSN site. Fans are reminded that a newspaper could use their photos or stories before they can post to PSN, Dell said.
Prep Sports Nation began beta testing the app last August and Dell said he’s modified PSN to accommodate user requests.
Reverse publishing
“One suggestion was full reverse publishing on all user photos and profile material, which we had, but (the paper) wanted to take the entire profile and feature a particular a student,” he said.
Papers can feature multiple student profiles and can also run fan profiles from multiple schools, he said.
PSN is engineered to manage rosters, schedules, and individual and team stats. Users will also be able to search for particular teams or individuals on other PSN sites and Dell said he’s working on a delivery method to allow photos and other materials to be shared among newspapers.
The system includes a stamp or watermark that identifies where the photo originated and a transmission system that can route the photo to a newspaper that requests to publish it.
CommunitySportsDesk and PSN come as newspapers try to find ways to increase coverage of local sports even as their resources are trimmed. The Amarillo (Texas) Globe-News, for example, won a Digital Edge award for its prep sports site, Pigskin Review, which launched last year (see Newspapers & Technology, March 2008)
Associate Editor
If you build it, they will come.
That is the hope several companies are expressing as they attempt to extend community journalism into the wide world of sports.
Last month, CommunitySportsDesk, an offshoot of the Kenosha (Wis.) News, launched a hosted service that allows local youth and recreation sports leagues to post schedules, write game summaries, input stats and box scores and upload game and team pictures to a newspaper-branded Web site.
The hosted version is the most recent iteration of CommunitySportsDesk, which the News (Monday-Friday, 24,552; Saturday, 24,215; Sunday, 27,149) rolled out last summer as an experiment to see how it could handle user-generated content flowing from the area’s youth and recreation sports teams, according to Ken Dowdell, News publisher and vice president of United Communications Corp.
“Our in-house techs built that innovative model, based on discussions with league organizers and team officials,” he said.
Reaction was positive, so the News hired additional software developers to pepper CommunitySportsDesk with additional features, including the ability for UCC to host the app, Dowdell said.
“It can be the ‘something-different’ tool that equips a traditional media company to get where they need to go with youth and recreational sports,” he said about the software, adding that he felt confident the concept would work well in other “Kenoshas” around the country.
Automatic lede writing
In addition to rewriting code that enabled UCC to host the app, developers added features that allow the software to produce basic headlines and lead paragraphs automatically, based on the data input by team representatives.
“Rather than simply offering a channel for blogging, CommunitySportsDesk helps structure the collection, processing and flow of what can be massive amounts of data,” said Dowdell.
“We’ve engineered options that can serve Pee Wee players who just need their achievements recognized to high school and adult leagues that like to collect complete stats,” he said.
Dowdell said the company is prepared to support its users as they roll out the software.
“As a result of our real-life experiences, we’re prepared to help other publishers with a community-focused, full advertising-supported business model, not merely software,” said Dowdell.
Matthew Serpe, a CommunitySportsDesk business development specialist, said the service dovetails with the industry’s adoption of hyper-local coverage.
“In a newspaper, (youth and rec sports) is an area getting the least amount of coverage. We are offering this application for youth and rec to cover themselves.”
National effort
Dell Sports Inc., meantime, plans to roll out a national high-school sports service this fall, according to Terry Dell, president of the Charlotte, N.C., firm.
The service, Prep Sports Nation, allows participants to post and share pictures, upload video and blogs and share content among students, parents, athletes and local community members.
“How cool would it be to have pictures of you, uploaded on the Web site, by everyone in the audience?” Dell said. “It’s a game of a thousand angles and it’s easy for anyone who goes and watches the game to take pictures.”
Dell said participating newspapers can download all the materials they need from the PSN site. Fans are reminded that a newspaper could use their photos or stories before they can post to PSN, Dell said.
Prep Sports Nation began beta testing the app last August and Dell said he’s modified PSN to accommodate user requests.
Reverse publishing
“One suggestion was full reverse publishing on all user photos and profile material, which we had, but (the paper) wanted to take the entire profile and feature a particular a student,” he said.
Papers can feature multiple student profiles and can also run fan profiles from multiple schools, he said.
PSN is engineered to manage rosters, schedules, and individual and team stats. Users will also be able to search for particular teams or individuals on other PSN sites and Dell said he’s working on a delivery method to allow photos and other materials to be shared among newspapers.
The system includes a stamp or watermark that identifies where the photo originated and a transmission system that can route the photo to a newspaper that requests to publish it.
CommunitySportsDesk and PSN come as newspapers try to find ways to increase coverage of local sports even as their resources are trimmed. The Amarillo (Texas) Globe-News, for example, won a Digital Edge award for its prep sports site, Pigskin Review, which launched last year (see Newspapers & Technology, March 2008)
Vendors target sports fanatics with fantasy sports
By Marcelo Duran
Associate Editor
Over the past few decades fantasy sports has grown from a hobby exclusively for fanatics to a multimillion-user industry with games in nearly every category imaginable.
That growth spurt has encouraged papers such as the Standard-Examiner in Ogden, Utah, to upgrade the fantasy sports sections on their Web pages.
Last year, the paper added Fan Frenzy software from MediaSpan Media Software to bolster its pro football contest and the Standard-Examiner this year launched sites devoted to the NCAA basketball tournament and auto-racing as well, said Mark Shenefelt, online manager.
“Fan Frenzy added fan forums, which are trash-talking boards. Users can also upload an avatar and MediaSpan made an effort to make the contests more of a community experience for people,” he said. “Another thing I like about Fan Frenzy is that they integrated the contests together so if you play the auto racing contest then you are signed up for the next contest.”
The paper (Monday-Friday, 60,345; Saturday, 61,095; Sunday, 64,375) offers a combined print and Web package for advertisers interested in the auto racing game, adding several new clients this season.
MediaSpan tweaked Fan Frenzy by adding social networking features that enable fans to create user profiles, write blogs and post videos and photos.
Fan Frenzy games are a series of “u-pickem”-style sports challenges for college basketball, auto racing and pro football. Users compete against a national audience of thousands of players in a bid to win prizes.
“What we are trying to drive forward is adding more of a local element to Fan Frenzy,” said Tobey Van Santvoord, senior manager of network development at MediaSpan Network. Van Santvoord said additional capabilities will be engineered into the app and are scheduled for release by year-end.
Room for casual fans
Vendors are also rolling out apps that target casual sports fans who still want to participate in contests.
Dell Sports Inc., for example, hosts fantasy games aimed at users who may not be fanatics but are still interested in having a chance to win at the end of the season, said Terry Dell, president.
This approach gives advertisers a wider audience to target, he said, and keeps interest among participants higher for a much longer period of time.
“In an ideal world, savvy advertisers want the exact opposite of a marathon,” he said, citing what happens to fan interest when one racer is leading by a big margin while others are lagging behind.
Instead, advertisers want services that capture the enthusiasm and interest of consumers for the longest period of time, “until there is a winner at the very last moment,” he said.
Dell hosts games for a number of newspapers, including the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Roanoke (Va.) Times.
Associate Editor
Over the past few decades fantasy sports has grown from a hobby exclusively for fanatics to a multimillion-user industry with games in nearly every category imaginable.
That growth spurt has encouraged papers such as the Standard-Examiner in Ogden, Utah, to upgrade the fantasy sports sections on their Web pages.
Last year, the paper added Fan Frenzy software from MediaSpan Media Software to bolster its pro football contest and the Standard-Examiner this year launched sites devoted to the NCAA basketball tournament and auto-racing as well, said Mark Shenefelt, online manager.
“Fan Frenzy added fan forums, which are trash-talking boards. Users can also upload an avatar and MediaSpan made an effort to make the contests more of a community experience for people,” he said. “Another thing I like about Fan Frenzy is that they integrated the contests together so if you play the auto racing contest then you are signed up for the next contest.”
The paper (Monday-Friday, 60,345; Saturday, 61,095; Sunday, 64,375) offers a combined print and Web package for advertisers interested in the auto racing game, adding several new clients this season.
MediaSpan tweaked Fan Frenzy by adding social networking features that enable fans to create user profiles, write blogs and post videos and photos.
Fan Frenzy games are a series of “u-pickem”-style sports challenges for college basketball, auto racing and pro football. Users compete against a national audience of thousands of players in a bid to win prizes.
“What we are trying to drive forward is adding more of a local element to Fan Frenzy,” said Tobey Van Santvoord, senior manager of network development at MediaSpan Network. Van Santvoord said additional capabilities will be engineered into the app and are scheduled for release by year-end.
Room for casual fans
Vendors are also rolling out apps that target casual sports fans who still want to participate in contests.
Dell Sports Inc., for example, hosts fantasy games aimed at users who may not be fanatics but are still interested in having a chance to win at the end of the season, said Terry Dell, president.
This approach gives advertisers a wider audience to target, he said, and keeps interest among participants higher for a much longer period of time.
“In an ideal world, savvy advertisers want the exact opposite of a marathon,” he said, citing what happens to fan interest when one racer is leading by a big margin while others are lagging behind.
Instead, advertisers want services that capture the enthusiasm and interest of consumers for the longest period of time, “until there is a winner at the very last moment,” he said.
Dell hosts games for a number of newspapers, including the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Roanoke (Va.) Times.
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