In a column, Washington Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton asked if the newspaper was innovating too fast. Pexton noted how “hardly a week goes by without the Web site or newspaper launching some feature, or a venture to attract more revenue, or a blog, or a social media innovation.” He later added, “I’m wondering, and readers are too, whether there’s just a bit too much innovation, too fast.” In response, the
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Here is a brief write-up of some of the main points from my talk at the Screen Futures conference in Australia on the promise and practice of participatory journalism. The talk was based on findings in my co-authored book, Participatory Journalism: Guarding Open Gates at Online Newspapers, into how journalists are thinking about their relationship with the people formerly known as the audience. Comments on stories have become a familiar feature on
There were two significant developments in the media in Canada last week. The Huffington Post crossed the 49th parallel to set up Huff Post Canada and one of the largest newspaper groups, the PostMedia Network, dipped its toes into paywalls. In my first post for the HuffPo, I discuss the metered model being tried out by PostMedia at two of its newspapers. In the post, I take issue with the
An interesting project that seeks to help journalists and editors connect with each other has just launched in Canada. MediaCooler.com is the brainchild of my friend, Alison Yesilcimen. I’ve been following the development of the service since September last year. I’ve had long conversations with Alison about it, providing feedback and trying out the alpha site. MediaCooler aims to be a marketplace for media. In an e-mail, Alison said that she “always
Since I was on the last research panel at ISOJ, I was not able to blog about the strong papers by my fellow presenters. Fortunately, the ISOJ student team wrote a short wrap up. But I wanted to share the slides and text of my paper presentation for those who weren’t about to make the conference. The paper is also available as PDF. The Active Recipient Thank you. It is
Jim Brady, former editor of TBD.com and WashingtonPost.com, set the tone for a professional panel on engaging the audience at #ISOJ by saying they were going to stick to time and leave plenty of time for questions. First up was Espen Egil Hansen, editor-in-chief of VG Multimedia, Norway. He started by stating that he tells his journalists to spend a minimum of 10% of time interacting and engaging with readers. Three-quarters of
Eivind Thomsen from Norway outlined how the Schibsted Media Group had shifted its financial base from print to digital at the ISOJ. Newspapers are popular in Norway, with the average user reading 1.3 newspapers a day. But this is declining, from 1.6 newspapers in 2009. Thomsen said part of the reason for this was virtually universal broadband and mobile penetration, plus the growth of social networking – 64% of Norwegians
In the session on paywalls at the ISOJ, Jorge Meléndez, vice president for new media, Grupo Reforma (Mexico), explained how the newspapers have had paywalls since 2002. The newspaper sites were free for the first two years. But they realised there was a very small online advertising market so the group just did it. Part of this involved an active strategy to convert newspaper subscribers online. The impact of the paywall was
In the week the New York Times introduced digital subscriptions, a Canadian study shows that consumers just don’t want to pay for the news. An online survey of 1,682 adults, conducted by the Canadian Media Research Consortium (CMRC )and Vision Critical, showed that Canadians are overwhelmingly opposed to fees for content. It found that 92% of Canadians who get news online say they would find another free site if their favourite news site
The different news agendas of the US mainstream media, blogs and Twitter are one of revelations of the annual State of the Media report for 2011 from Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The report found that the news agenda of blogs closely followed the mainstream media, with both agreeing on nine of the top 10 stories of the year, including the economy, the midterm elections, the health care debate and