Guardian unleashes pigs to promote “open” journalism
The Guardian enlisted The Three Little Pigs on Feb. 29 as part of an “open journalism” advertising campaign for its social-network-connected news products.
Online, the video ad is accompanied by Editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger‘s notes on the thinking behind what the Guardian calls its digitally empowered approach to active-audience journalism, also highlighted in a March 24-25 “open weekend.”
The paper said the two-minute spot “imagines how we might cover the story of the Three Little Pigs in print and online. Follow the story from the paper’s front page headline, through a social media discussion and finally to an unexpected conclusion.”
Note: I aggregate other video newspaper promotions and commentaries at my Other Journalism Video Pages.
Sustainability, regeneration themes of convergence conference
A post from Newspaper and Online News Division chief Chris Roberts:
University of Alabama associate professor of journalism Dr. George Daniels was among the scores of attendees but among the few bloggers at the recent media convergence conference at the University of South Carolina, where the topic was sustainability and regeneration.
What those words meant was left to conference members, who defined it in terms of ecology, ethics, economics, and change. The keynote speaker was the University of Colorado’s Steve Outing, who used Skype because an injury left him unable to travel. Daniels noted that Outing offered a “multi-layered glimpse” of journalism’s future
This was the conference’s 10th year, and Daniels came away with five points from Columbia, S.C.:
1. Convergence is not about the tools, technology or legacy media, it’s about the audience and its role.
2. Modeling of What Convergence is still needs to be done with both theoretical development and new data-gathering.
3. Digital Media and their own sustainability are now worthy of discussion and dialogue.
4. There is still a digital divide when it comes to multimedia or convergence journalism education.
5. Longitudinal Research may be harder to come by, especially when media outlets have a “no survey” policy. What are the implications of this for future convergence/multimedia research?
National newspaper project adds bonus videos, Facebook news alerts
The “Who Needs Newspapers?” project is closing in on the last frontiers of its map of the United States, with only three states left to be profiled. If , like me, you missed the related presentation in St. Louis, weekly reports are spread via a Facebook page linked back to the home page, which houses profiles, PDF state reports, and video recordings of interviews with journalists and news execs. (For background, see the summer Leadtime.)
The Web-savvy Lawrence Journal-World was added this month, along with the latest in a series of “bonus interview” videos. Some examples:
- Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ; www.journalism.org) on the revenue crisis for American newspapers and the strengths of local papers.
- Philip Meyer on the research process and the question of operationalizing “quality journalism” that contributed to his book The Vanishing Newspaper.
- Ken Doctor, author of “Newsonomics: Twelve New Trends That Will Shape the News You Get”; topics include audience expectations of fairness, professionalism and the “great age of accountability.”
- Rick Edmonds, media business analyst for the Poynter Institute, on the profit margins, audience impressions and watchdog reporting.
Note: Academic researchers could use some citation “metadata” on a resource like this. It’s not always clear when the interviews were recorded or who was asking the questions, although Sara Brown and Paul Steinle are clearly listed as the site’s reporters. The project’s state reports, meanwhile, have covered all but the Dakotas and Minnesota.
From the site’s history page:
“Six media colleagues created a 501(c)(3) corporation called Valid Sources. Its first project is www.whoneedsnewspapers.org – this Internet-delivered report on the status of 50 newspapers in 50 states. ‘Who Needs Newspapers?’ has three main goals:
- Provide the newspaper industry fresh information about how change is being managed — with an emphasis on what works and what doesn’t work;
- Clarify the value of local newspapers for the public; and
- Collect useful insights for students considering journalism careers.
“To achieve these goals, we are traveling to 50 states and visiting one newspaper in each state in order to report how these newspapers are recasting themselves in the digital age. We also intend to document what unique community roles these newspapers fulfill.”
$4.1 million grant to expand citizen journalism across country
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has awarded $4.1 million in grant funds to expand a digital news-gathering network which, up to now, has remained somewhat under the radar. No longer.
Operated by American Public Media, the Public Insight Network, or PIN, “brings together a network of 120,000 citizen sources from a variety of disciplines, who agree to share their expertise, insights and first-hand knowledge, with experienced journalists from 45 newsrooms.” The huge influx of funding, if invested effectively, could raise PIN’s profile profoundly.
Described as “a cross between a fancy Rolodex and a crowdsourcing machine,” PIN has mainly been associated with public radio. But as public radio goes more multimedia, distinctions between broadcast and print continue to blur.
Since PIN’s citizen journalists are self-nominating, one challenge may be keeping the ranks of PIN’s sources balanced in their outlooks and agendas. (Those of us who have worked in journalism know all too well about how certain sources sometimes come forward a little too easily.)
A new “national news brand” on iPad only
The word “newspaper” doesn’t show up in the “about” page text, but here’s Rupert Murdoch’s new iPad-specific litter-free daily, available by weekly or annual subscription through Apple’s App Store, The Daily.
The Daily launched on February 2, 2011 with the mission to provide the best news experience by combining world-class storytelling with the unique interactive capabilities of the iPad.
Led by Editor-in-Chief Jesse Angelo and Publisher Greg Clayman, The Daily is a category first: a tablet-native national news brand built from the ground up to publish original content exclusively for the iPad.
The Daily is incisive, optimistic, and independent. It’s not just an app—it’s a new voice. The Daily is offered exclusively in Apple’s iPad App Store and is available free for two weeks. It costs just 99 cents a week, or $39.99 a year.
More, from Macworld on YouTube and from The Daily’s first press release:
“New times demand new journalism,” said Mr. Murdoch. “So we built The Daily completely from scratch — on the most innovative device to come about in my time — the iPad.”
“The magic of great newspapers — and great blogs — lies in their serendipity and surprise, and the touch of a good editor,” continued Mr. Murdoch. “We’re going to bring that magic to The Daily — to inform people, to make them think, to help them engage in the great issues of the day. And as we continue to improve and evolve, we are going to use the best in new technology to push the boundaries of reporting.”
The Daily’s unique mix of text, photography, audio, video, information graphics, touch interactivity and real-time data and social feeds provides its editors with the ability to decide not only which stories are most important — but also the best format to deliver these stories to their readers.
“News Corp. is redefining the news experience with The Daily,” says Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We think it is terrific and iPad users are really going to embrace it.”
At http://thedaily.com there’s a walk-through for folks who don’t own an iPad. One page offers the concept in one-sentence: “The Daily has the depth and quality of a magazine, but is delivered daily like a newspaper and updated in real-time like the web.”
Its staff is drawn from a variety of newspaper, magazine and online careers. The editor in chief, Jesse Angelo, is executive editor of the New York Post, and will retain that title. A New Yorker and Harvard grad, he was a reporter for The Sun in London and the Daily Telegraph in Sydney before joining the Post.
News editor Mike Nizza has worked for The New York Times online, Atlantic Media Co.’s Innovation Center, and as editor in chief of AOL News.
The New York Times business section story on The Daily’s launch includes interesting details on costs, staffing and Murdoch’s deal with Apple. And, the Times calls it a “newspaper.”
Update:
(One critical reader says “The Daily” name itself is out of touch with the new medium, that it should be “The Moment” — “with rabid updates throughout the day.” I suspect rabid for rapid is a Freudian-Murdochian-Foxian slip.
If you’ve tried The Daily, feel free to add reviews or links to them below… Your mild-mannered webmaster is an Android user, at least until iPad 2 comes out.
A 2013 timeline for newspapers to go mobile
Clyde Bentley at the University of Missouri offers a timeline for “Mobile Newspaper Success”… The road to 2013: A timeline for newspapers.
Responding to a Gartner Research study that forecast mobile devices will replace PCs in Web access by 2013, Bentley built a timeline from the endpoint to the present.
Result: If you’re a “key editor” at a newspaper, you should get a smartphone this month, or you’re already playing catch-up.
By August-September, Clyde says, newspapers should be training their news and ad staff on “mobile potential,” if they want to stay on track with the Gartner deadline. Within a year, mobile reporters should be producing niche-market features for mobile customers. Clyde’s examples: “Smoke-break wraps, during-game scores, pre-commute weather.”
More on that, and my own dumb experience with smartphones, here:
Tell Clyde I’m on the road to Floyd with a Droid
ONN: Decline of newspapers threatens a lifestyle
How Will The End Of Print Journalism Affect Old Loons Who Hoard Newspapers?
Suggested “bacronym” for LOON: Lovers of Old Newspapers. Count me in…
Bob
Society for News Design launches new design
The Society for News Design has an updated website for the new year, pledging to be “a dynamic representation of our evolving organization… inclusive… multi-platform… aggressively forward-looking,” according to SND President Kris Viesselman’s announcement.
In the inclusiveness department, SND’s former “Best of Newspaper Design™” competition changed its name last year to the “Best of News Design™” Creative Competition and opened the competition to all magazines, not just newspaper Sunday supplements.
(Presumably all entries for this year’s competition are on their way to Syracuse, since they are due Wednesday. Entries from outside the U.S. are accepted for another week.)
SND has a separate Multimedia Design competition, with quarterly and annual awards. Newspapers’ Web sites (The New York Times in particular) led last year’s honorees.
For this month, the new SND site features a “Designing the next decade” video interview with Roger Black (transcript included), an interview with programmer-journalist Adrian Holovaty of Everyblock.com, and a survey of newspaper and magazine presentations reviewing the past decade, “Finding some heroes of the ‘Zeros’ coverage.”
The main SND site now incorporates SND’s Update blog; also see the SNDEast blog by Lee Steele, design editor of the Connecticut Post and Region 1 SND director.
Examiner of Chronicle: Future Foreshadowed in Fog Features?
“An obituary does not propose a solution,” Richard Rodriguez observes toward the end of his Harper’s Magazine article, Final edition: Twilight of the American newspaper.
“When a newspaper dies in America, it is not simply that a commercial enterprise has failed; a sense of place has failed. If the San Francisco Chronicle is near death—and why else would the editors celebrate its 144th anniversary? and why else would the editors devote a week to feature articles on fog?—it is because San Francisco’s sense of itself as a city is perishing.”
If you haven’t guessed, it’s not an optimistic article, but Rodriguez tells a good story and knows how to save a special phrase for the end of a sentence…
“Newspapers have become deadweight commodities linked to other media commodities in chains that are coupled or uncoupled by accountants and lawyers and executive vice presidents and boards of directors in offices thousands of miles from where the man bit the dog and drew ink…”
Personally (and this is a blog, after all), the article makes me want to go write my own 6,000 word magazine article, mingling nostalgia for my Daily Hampshire Gazette paper route and my old Hartford Courant bureau reporting with something optimistic about the future of journalism.
But I’m too busy catching up on some real news in both those papers… It’s a fire story, of all the traditional newspaper things! And covered by both with all the latest online tools, from YouTube video to Google Maps mashups. That first link was to the Courant (est. 1764), where I saw the story yesterday; here’s the Gazette (est. 1786), and my old hometown paper does appear to be doing a good job of local reporting in a crisis.
Calls for papers: Newspapers, new media & election ’08
How did newspapers, their online counterparts and other “legacy media” cover — and use — Facebook and other interactive tools in the 2088 presidential campaign?
That’s one of the questions posed in a call for papers issued by Tom Johnson of Texas Tech, editor of a special issue of Mass Communication and Society on social media and the 2008 election.
Texas Tech also plans a mid-April conference on New Media Theory, which may be of interest to Newspaper Division members, Johnson said. Both the conference and the journal special issue have submission deadlines in January.
