New Business Models

For the first time since 1980, the Federal Trade Commission amended its regulations to ensure celebrities or anyone promoting a product online fully disclose the results a consumer can expect to find. If violated, bloggers face an $11,000 fine per infraction. Read the PaidContent.org post. -- October 5, 2009.

A new study by the Pew Research Center shows that journalists largely missed the story on the financial hardships of ordinary people during the economic crisis that began last fall. The media content analysis also showed that when the stock market rebounded, news coverage notably subsided. Read the New York Times article. -- October 5, 2009.

Three award-winning journalists have quit their jobs to work for the Texas Tribune, a new nonprofit venture expected to launch in November. The organization has already raised $3.5 million to sustain itself for the next three years. Read the Editors Weblog post. -- September 30, 2009.

A senator from Wisconsin has proposed a plan that would exempt any buildings associated with a news publication from paying property taxes. While an overall newspaper bailout is still being considered, some believe these targeted tax breaks are more realistic quick fixes. Read the Editors Weblog post. -- September 30, 2009

While most iPhone applications are free, CNN is charging $1.99 for its revamped mobile tool in an effort to boost revenue. The new application allows users to become their own reporters and facilitates citizen journalism by having an easy iReport upload feature. Read the Huffington Post article. -- September 29, 2009.

With President Obama saying he would listen to proposals for helping struggling newspapers, some think it better to let weak publications die and let the stronger business models emerge on their own. This post by Daniel Lyons also suggests papers should consider buying up successful sites like Politico or The Daily Beast to save themselves. Read the Newsweek post. -- September 29, 2009

The Washington Post decided to crack down after a managing editor "tweeted" his opinions about news stories on Twitter. The publication has now restricted its staffers from using social media to express any personal thoughts or opinions regarding the Post's content. Read the Nieman Lab post. -- September 28, 2009

Kachingle, a new crowdfunding application expected to launch in October, asks users to donate $5 a month in exchange for all open content online. Users can designate if and how they want to split their donation among different news outlets. Read the Editors Weblog post. -- September 28, 2009.

In an effort to increase its foreign affairs coverage, CBS has partnered with GlobalPost, which has 70 correspondents in 50 countries around the world. This partnership between a broadcast organization and an online outlet may be a blueprint for future integration. Read the New York Times article. -- September 27, 2009.

A leaked internal memo reveals that a survey in the United States, Great Britain and Australia of a pay-for-news model was mostly positive. This, however, is in stark contrast to recent survey that showed only 5 percent of readers are willing to pay for online content. Read the PaidContent.org post. -- September 25, 2009

DocumentCloud, a new site that will aggregate and host primary-source material, has added 20 notable news organizations to their list of contributors such as The Washington Post, New Yorker and MSNBC. The site is expected to launch at the end of the year. Read the Nieman Lab post. -- September 25, 2009.

KQED Media, The UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and San Francisco financier Warren Hellman have joined forces to create The Bay Area News Project. The online publication will focus on locally produced news from a core team of reporters with the help of KQED and students from Berkeley. Read the Editors Weblog post. -- September 25, 2009.

The Austin American-Statesman has started using its Twitter account for advertising, which is very strictly monitored under Twitter rules. The paper pays $150 per "tweet" and is limited to only 120 characters twice a day. Read the Editor & Publisher article. -- September 25, 2009

Clay Shirky, a leading mind on how the Internet affects the media, says he is worried about how the decline of newspapers will affect journalism's responsibility to the public. Shirky also believes a paywall is not the ultimate solution to challenges facing the news industry. Read the Nieman Lab post. -- September 23, 2009

The Senate Judiciary Committee has amended the definition of a journalist to exclude amateurs. This means that student journalists and bloggers would not be protected under the shield law, which is expected to be further reviewed by the Senate later this week. Read the Nieman Lab post. -- September 23, 2009.

Though challenging, more news outlets are looking to become nonprofits and enlist the help of fundraising professionals. One example is ProPublica, a New-York-based group that produces "journalism in the public interest." Read the Nieman Lab post. -- September 23, 2009.

A new survey in the UK says that only  5 percent of people who read their news online would pay for it; and those who would pay want to do so annually, not in micropayment form. Also, of those polled, young people between 16-24 years of age are the most willing to subscribe to the paid content model. Read the Editors Weblog post. -- September 23, 2009

In these challenging times, news organizations are finding innovative ways to make money. From charging for seminars with veteran reporters or conferences on revamping journalism, publications (both online and print) are using previously unconventional methods to increase revenue. A new entry: establishing for-hire research units.  Read the Online Journalism Review post.-- September 23, 2009

The Washington post withheld for one day a much-anticipated report on the dire situation in Afghanistan, at the request of the Pentagon. The Post also excised portions of the report, convinced that they could pose a threat to troop safety. Read the Washington Post article. -- September 23, 2009

Spot.us has partnered with USC Annenberg to launch an LA version of the Bay Area site where donors fund stories. The nonprofit strives to be a platform where local community members, journalists and news publishers can engage. Read the Nieman Lab post. -- September 22, 2009.

Though slowing, the decline of ad revenue in newspapers is probably going to get worse before it gets better. There is hope though, as some say the recession is over or at least near its end. Read the New York Times article. -- September 20, 2009

President Obama admits he is worried about the future of journalism. Obama said he would consider legislation to help support papers because he thinks the industry needs more solid, fact-checking type journalism as opposed to opinion-driven blogs. Read the Editors Weblog post. -- September 21, 2009

A new report shows journalists lost jobs at a rate almost three times as high as average workers in the last year. More than 35,000 journalists have lost their jobs, with nearly 25,000 of those in print journalism. Read the Editor & Publisher article. -- September 18, 2009

Eric Schmidt told Rupert Murdoch that going behind a pay wall (as Murdoch says he'll do with News Corp. properties) will fail because there is simply too much free content online. Though skeptical, Google is still trying to partner with publishers to find a solution to the business-model problem. Read the PaidContent.org post. -- September 18, 2009

Beginning in January, The Washington Post will sync its print edition with its online content. This type of integration has become more popular in recent months for both its economic and organizational efficiency. Read the Editors Weblog post. -- September 18, 2009

Top research universities have started funneling their news and findings through a site called Futurity. The online journal showcases content from 35 leading schools on the environment, health, medicine and more. Read the Editors Weblog post. -- September 17, 2009

With technology facilitating the advent of many social media platforms, journalists are wondering how much is too much as outlets bend over backwards to incorporate these new tools. Robert Picard examines the benefits and drawbacks within the intersection of social media and news publications. Read the Nieman Lab post. -- September 16, 2009

Ad spending has declined 14 percent in the last six months, according to a new advertising tracker. Media corporations such as News Corp and Time Warner are among the companies who have noticeably cut down on their marketing costs, in addition to many print and broadcast outlets. Read the LA Times article. -- September 16, 2009

In response to the Newspaper Association of America's call for innovation, Microsoft introduced their version of an online news site. The prototype looks a lot like TweetDeck in that it pulls in video and photos from major media outlets and places content alongside feeds from Facebook or Twitter. Read the Nieman Lab post. -- September 15, 2009

Though Journalism Online is confident its new business model will thrive, an American Press Institute study reveals that half of industry executives are hesitant about implementing it. The study also measured readers' responses against publishers' responses to paying for content online. Read the Editors Weblog post. -- September 15, 2009

Voice of OC, a new investigative journalism outlet made up of former lawmakers, attorneys and reporters, is hoping to fill the void left by many job cuts at the Orange County Register and Los Angeles Times in recent months. The privately funded organization hopes to be releasing reports by the end of the year and will operate much like independent, nonprofit Voice of San Diego. Read the Editors Weblog post. -- September 15, 2009

NewsCorp announced that it will begin charging readers who browse the Wall Street Journal on their mobile devices. Subscribers will pay $1 per week and non-subscribers will pay $2. The publication is one of the few outlets that has succeeded in using a paid content model. Read the Washington Post article. -- September 15, 2009

Leading news organizations and Google have joined forces to produce an experimental news-browsing service called "Fast Flip." The goal is to simulate the physical feeling of perusing a print publication by taking headlines from major media outlets and placing them on a magazine-like spread. Read the NY Times article. -- September 14, 2009

As more veteran reporters migrate to successful, issue-driven organizations, concerns over objectivity are being called into question. Since advocacy groups almost always have their own agenda, journalists are facing scrutiny over the intentions behind their reporting. Read the Nieman Lab post. -- September 10, 2009

Journalism Online wants 20 percent of subscription revenue and will have news sites sign up roughly 10 percent of their monthly readers for a subscription plan. Read the Nieman Lab post. -- September 10, 2009

A new company called TweetMixx combs through thousands of Twitter updates every hour to give readers the most "Tweeted-about" headlines and stories of the day. Previously called Mixx, the site will switch from mostly using CNN.com for breaking news to the increasingly popular Twitter. Read the Washington Post article. -- September 9, 2009

As news outlets grapple with how to charge for content online, Google has plans to extend its "Google Checkout" service to include a payment system for news sites. The company is working directly with the Newspaper Association of America in hopes of finding a solution for both the print publications and the search engine giant. Read the Nieman Lab post. -- September 9, 2009

Tribune Co. is implementing a system that would simplify searching for articles across its various media outlets. The idea is to have a single URL for a piece of content regardless of whether the reader is viewing the story on the Los Angeles Times or Chicago Tribune site, for example. The company believes searching for content would be more efficient without duplicate articles. Read the Nieman Lab post. -- September 8, 2009

A new touchscreen digital reader with built-in Web browsing is due out by the end of the year from a leading consumer electronics company. The Asus product will be in direct competition with Amazon and Sony, who both have e-books in the market. Many journalism publications are currently struggling with how to sell their content via the digital reader model. Read the Times Online article. -- September 6, 2009

One of the few print publications that saw an increase in readership and revenue this past year is now considering an online paid content business model. Currently, The Economist charges only for articles that are more than a year old and its online subscription covering that archival material costs about $90. Read the PaidContent.org post. -- September 8, 2009

Josh Marshall's successful Talking Points Memo enterprise has resisted outside investment -- until now.  Tech Crunch reports investor Marc Andreesen has put in $500,000 to $1 million of his own money into TPM Media, founded by Marshall in 2000.  Read Tech Crunch story. -- July 6, 2009

While most other magazines are struggling, the Economist Group has once again posted profits during the troubled economic times. The magazine's Web site saw a 29 percent increase in earnings from January 2009 to March 2009.  The publication did not maintain profitability without cutbacks, however. It has laid off about 130 of its employees over the course of the year to cut costs. Read the PaidContent.org post. -- June 22, 2009

Simon Dumenco of Advertising Age chastises the Huffington Post for tabloid journalism and its departure from reporting traditional news. He cited the example of the Huffington Post's decision to publish articles such as “Megan Fox Walks the Red Carpet,” which draw numerous hits. Dumenco writes: "It likes to pretend that it's a respectable voice in the mediasphere, but it shamelessly pumps up its traffic by being just as trashy as, say, Maxim." Meanwhile, bloggers posting stories onto the Web sites get their information from other news organizations such as the BCC and the New York Times while these news organizations bear the costs of reporting. Read the Advertising Age post -- June 22, 2009

The Washington Post is hearing it from subscribers for its online-only posting a two-part article on the murder of Robert Wone. Subscribers argued that this was the kind of news they wanted to read, and online readers had the ability to read this story free of charge. The newspaper defended its decision not to post the article in print to save space for other articles in the newspaper. The author of the article, Paul Duggan, notes that online news posting offers a variety of advantages in comparison to printed news, in that it allows the writer almost limitless space to cover a story. Read the New York Times article. --June 22, 2009

CircLabs is currently developing software known as Circulate that will track its users' viewing habits and deliver news and ads tailored specifically for the user. The software monitors and transmits data back to the news service automatically allowing the news service to send customized news and advertisements. Users will have the choice of either enabling or disabling the tracking feature. CircLabs says it will permit local ad placement and allow companies to charge for news subscriptions. Read the PaidContent.org article. --June 22, 2009

The brainchild of Patrick Spain and Michael Wolff, the news aggregation site Newser has successfully raised $2.5 million in startup money. The money comes primarily from individuals, many of whom were involved in Spain's previous endeavors. Currently, Newser has about 2 million monthly visitors and, despite receiving just a fraction of the traffic that Yahoo and Google News get, is close to breaking even. According to its Web site, Newer is unique in that it compiles news from the top 100 news sources and provides readers with more comprehensive summaries of the stories being covered. Read the PaidContent.org. -- June 19, 2009

After his first start-up online news operation failed to gain traction, former newspaperman Adam Klawonn has received a $95,000 Knight grant with an extremely narrow focus: to cover Phoenix's new light-rail system. The Daily Phoenix, as it has been termed, will report on stories such as crime in the areas surrounding train stops. Businesses will also have a chance to be included in twice-daily text messages about their company. Klawonn still needs to secure additional funding for his project. Read the Nieman Journalism Lab post. -- June 19, 2009.

Wikipedia, the online crowd-sourced encyclopedia, is set to launch video on its pages. The site is hoping that more creators of content will make their videos accessible to the public domain. Until then, Wikipedia will feature content from the Internet Archive, which has 200,000 videos, Metavid, which stores congressional speeches, and Wikimedia Commons, which has 4 millions media files. Read the PaidContent.org post. -- June 19, 2009.

The Kindle may or may not be the new newspaper, but Farhad Manjoo at Slate lists some areas that have room for improvement. His biggest point of contention is the way that news on the Kindle is organized -- or isn't. While traditional newspapers, and their Web sites, organize news stories by importance and relevance, the Kindle simply lists headlines under categories, without giving the reader a sense of the type of story they're about to read, its size or its importance. That means that reading the newspaper on a Kindle is much more cumbersome and time-consuming. Read the Slate article. -- June 19, 2009

Reader's Digest has, alongside many other general interest magazines, seen a worrisome decline in both subscribers and advertising revenue. To combat this trend, the monthly publication is turning its attention to more conservative values. As Mary Berner, chief executive of Reader's Digerst, put it: "I love my family, I love my community, I love my church." The publication is hoping that a shift in focus -- away from celebrities and toward the military, for example -- will turn its fortunes around. Read the New York Times article. -- June 19, 2009

The French government is expanding its initiative to revitalize the newspaper industry by giving papers to young people. Originally, the government was to provide a one-year subscription to 18 year olds, but officials have announced that they will now supply 18-24 year olds with a free paper once a week. The project will cost an estimated 5 million euros per year. Additionally, the government has set aside 20 milllion euros to help the press adapt to the digital age. Read the Editors Weblog post. -- June 19, 2009

When Germany's second largest group of newspapers, WAZ, switched from the German Press Agency (DPA) news service to France's Agence France-Presse, it hoped to cut costs. It saved $2.7 million, but the decision has prompted concern from many in Germany. The Agence France-Presse is subsidized by the French government, while the DPA runs independently. The German news services has said that it is time for its government to assist against the unfair competition from subsizied news sources.  Read the Editors Weblog Post -- June 19, 2009

Adam Reilly at the Boston Phoenix asks what will happen to coverage of the Massachusetts statehouse if the Boston Globe were to close. If the Globe were to close, or if new owners shift priorities, it could take the four journalists currently covering the state house with it.  Though there always have been frustrations with getting the media to cover important legislative issues, writes Reilly, today it is even harder to get coverage of anything but a political scandal.  Read the Boston Phoenix article -- June 18, 2009.

The Associated Press is set to lower its fees to newspapers again in the coming year. The news agency hopes to supplement its income by renegotiating agreements with Web sites, including Google,  Yahoo and Microsoft. The AP projects that its revenue will continue to fall next year (last year revenue dropped 5 percent). The AP's chief executive said that gaining new license contracts from Web sites is his top priority. Read the Associated Press article. -- June 18, 2009

Jack Shafer at Slate remains skeptical about Twitter's news value, even after this week's events in Iran. He pinpoints several weaknesses with Twitter: One is the threat of disinformation published by authoritarian governments, perhaps for international consumption or even designed to lead to the capture of local dissidents. Shafer also responds to Andrew Sullivan's point that the tweets tell "more about the mood than hard fact." Shafer notes, "My appetite for mood is easily sated while my appetite for hard fact isn't. Read the Slate article. -- June 18, 2009.

Larry Kramer at the Daily Beast has some advice for how journalists can take advantage of Twitter's sudden boost as a news source. He notes that traditional media are no longer the single source for filtering information. Legacy media need to embrace these new methods of dissemination: "Form matters as much as substance now. News consumers want news on demand and in formats that work for them."  Read the Daily Beast post. -- June 18, 2009

The European Commission has advised Sweden to reform the subsidies it provides to news media. Unless the country lessens the amount of finanical support, Sweden may face a formal state aid inquiry from the EU. The warning comes after complainants charged that current government policies stifle competition. Sweden has three months to respond to the EU proposals that it place a cap on operatings costs and reduce aid ceilings. Read the Guardian article. -- June 18, 2009

Planet Money, the NPR podcast and blog, is looking for a way to monetize its popularity. Planet Money's creators hope to create an enduring media brand, and that means considering every option for sustainability. The team is even looking at ways that they might incorporate a for-profit arm to supplement NPR's traditional nonprofit structure.  Read the Daily Finance article. -- June 16, 2009

YouTube has started an experiment that allows its users to decide whether to watch a longer pre-roll clip or several, shorter clips within the video they stream. Additionally, if a user chooses the pre-roll advertisment, he then can decide from two ads which he would prefer to watch. The test is only running for some viewers and is limited to YouTube's longer, premium content, but the trend could produce higher ad buys as well as giving the brands valuable information about the users' choices.  Read the PaidContent.org post -- June 16, 2009

Time Warner has purchased Patch, a collection of local online news site covering six areas of New Jersey, for $10 million. Patch has also announced that it has plans for additional sites in Connecticut. Patch had begun to generate some revenue through advertising, and its advertising rates are perhaps higher than other online ads -- at around $10  per CPM. Read the Nieman Journalism Lab post. -- June 15, 2009.

In July, the Associated Press will begin providing its members with watchdog and investigative journalism from non-profit organizations, a six-month experiment involving four such institutions. If the project is successful, it will likely be expanded to include additional non-profits. The four organizations are the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Center for Public Integrity, the Investigative Reporting Workshop and ProPublica. The venture will give the organizations additional avenues for distribution as well as provide newspapers with additional content. Read the Editors Weblog post. -- June 15, 2009

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has announced that it will bestow $15 million in grants to develop new economic models for investigative journalism. The Center for Investigative Reporting, ProPublica and the Sunlight Foundation are among the largest recipients. Eric Newton, vice president for journalism, made the announcement, saying, "We’re awash in information, yet it seems to be getting harder to find good investigative reporting.” Read the Knight Foundation press release. -- June 15, 2009

John Harris, co-founder and editor of Politico, has said that the media organization will become profitable by the end of this year. The site makes money through advertisements in its traditional paper and also through its partnership with regional newspapers who exchange advertising for content. Harris also noted that Politico sends more reporters to cover the White House than any other organization. Read the BeetTV article or watch the video below:

-- June 15, 2009

In a move to provide additional benefits for subscribers, BusinessWeek will offer a special online version of the printed magazine available only to paid users. The change is an attempt to differentiate the online content, spurred by breaking news, from magazine articles, which are more analytical and forward-looking. Nonpaying users of the BusinessWeek Web site will still be able to access all of the content, but in a different design. Read the MediaWeek article. -- June 15, 2009

The Uptake,  which founder Jason Barnett calls Minnesota's "C-SPAN for the common man,"  provides video coverage of Minnesota politics. The site has recently received much publicity, especially because of the state's Senate recount, when MinnPost and other competitors re-streamed The Uptake's video on their sites. Despite the positive coverage, the Web site is seeing its revenue dwindle. During the 2008 election, the site received funding from political organizations like the Alliance for a Better Minnesota, but since then those major funding sources have dried up. Instead, The Uptake relies solely on small donors, and cash on hand is tight. It may get even worse as the contested Senate seat drama is finally resolved. Read the MinnPost article. -- June 10, 2009

Google News is experimenting with including links to Wikipedia among its other news links. For now, Google is only providing those links to a small number of users, but you can see screenshots from blogger Michael Gray, who is one of those guinea pigs. If this experiment turns mainstream, it will catapult  Wikipedia into the world of journalism, and serve as the ultimate example of crowd-sourcing. Read the Nieman Journalism Lab post. -- June 10, 2009. 

With Detroit's newspapers cutting home delivery to three days a week, two brothers are looking to start their own printed publication. Mark and Gary Stern are in negotiations with contractors to begin publishing a newspaper covering Metro Detroit. The fledgling news organization will contract out distribution and printing. They expect to charge 50 cents for the daily paper and $1 on Sundays. Read the Detroit News article. -- June 10, 2009

USA Today will produce an electronic version of its newspaper to send via email to those willing to pay for it. While USA Today's Web site will remain free, the paper will charge slightly less than the printed paper for customers to receive an emailed version. USA Today's executives are considering other ways to increase revenue, like paid mobile applications. The new e-newspaper service will begin Aug. 3. Read the Associated Press story. -- June 10, 2009

The latest iPhone has a variety of updates and new features. Perhaps the most significant for the news industry is that content can now be bought from within iPhone applications, allowing news organizations to charge micropayments or subscriptions for mobile access. Another possibility might have newspapers joining together to create a Hulu-like site for newspapers. Despite these developments, the existing diversity of smart phones might slow the progress of charging for mobile content. Read the Editors Weblog post. -- June 9, 2009

The retired president of Cox, Jay Smith, and the former editor of the Rocky Mountain News discuss their ideas for the newspaper's industry to monetize their content. Smith argues that the newspapers individually lack power, and probably do not produce much that they can charge for. However, he suggests that the AP does have that power. He cites one of countless examples: "How much might, say, the soft drink industry pay for a daily report of EVERY news item of interest printed in every U.S.newspaper?"  Read the Temple Talk post. --June 9, 2009

Josh Catone at Mashable.com looks at the success of NPR and what newspapers can learn from the radio news organization. Catone points to NPR's local coverage (through its member stations), use of social media and "ubiquitous access" as three ways that the station has been able to thrive as the news industry shifts. As he points out, however, NPR is not immune to the suffering economy. Its budget deficit for 2009 is expected to be $8 million. Read the Mashable.com post. -- June 9, 2009

Forbes reports on the increasingly diverse competition among news organizations in San Diego. The Union Tribune remains the city's major newspaper, and its Web site generates over a million unique visitors per month. Yet the Voice of San Diego, the nonprofit Web site devoted to local news, and the 3-month-old start-up, San Diego News Network (SDNN), supplement the newspaper's reporting in the wake of significant layoffs. The two sites also hope that they will be able to siphon some of the traffic away from the Union Tribune in favor of their innovative ventures. Read the Forbes article. -- June 8, 2009

The Internet has empowered users to create content -- from video to news stories. This user control has even begun to impact advertising. Google and Digg both reward advertisements (by higher rankings and/or lower costs) that consumers rate highly, click on, etc. In a similar trend, a German newspaper put out a call to its readers to produce advertisements for the news source. Read the Guardian article. -- June 8, 2009.

Rhode Island's Newport Daily News has implemented a pay wall for its online content, one that benefits subscribers of the printed edition. Home delivery of the newspaper costs $145 a year.  Those that want both home delivery and online access will habe to pay $245, and online-only access will cost a whopping $345 per month. The strategy is clear: print first. It is too soon to tell if the pricing structure will prove effective, though there are some advantages for the publication that may help its success. Read the Nieman Journalism Lab article. -- June 8, 2009.

Michael Kinsley, in a Washington Post op-ed, writes of his experiences as editor of various news organization. His conclusion is that non-profit news is not the best option, based on his experience at Harper's Magazine, where directors were both resistant to change and meddlesome. His ideal is for an organization "to be a flyspeck on the balance sheet of a large company with other things on its mind," though he admits that this arrangement is increasingly rare. Read the Washington Post op-ed. -- June 8, 2009. 

Just two weeks after the Spanish courts ruled that a press-clipping service could not republish articles from other newspapers withour prior permission, the Spanish press is starting up a new lawsuit, this time against online news aggregators. The press is hoping that the courts, which ruled that newspapers have intellectual property rights, will uphold those rights in an online forum as well. Read the Editors Weblog post. -- June 8, 2009.

A new Indiana law adjusts the terms of the publication of government notices in the newspaper. Such notices typically reveal budget figures and other information about how money is being spent. The new law allows newspapers to raise the rates for these ads by 2.75% per year, whereas before this rate increases had to be legislated. The new law, however, eliminates a requirement that salary ordinances and a few other types of information be published. Read the Herald Bulletin article. -- June 8, 2009.

As Tribune Co. restructures under bankcruptcy, a new plan may transfer ownership of the media conglomerate from Sam Zell to the banks and investors that hold $8.6 billion in debt. The plan calls into question whether Zell will continue to head the Tribune's operations, or if the new owners would seek a new leadership team. The proposed debt-for-equity swap is still being negotiated. Read the Chicago Tribune article. -- June 8, 2009.

The fourth annual Beyond Broadcast conference began Wednesday at USC's Annenberg School for Communication with a keynote from Henry Jenkins, the Provost's Professor of Communication, Journalism and Cinematic Arts. Thursday, the panels included discussions of ways to monitor new media's impact, public media around the world and social messaging within entertainment. Webcasts are available from the day's panels.  Friday's panels will be streamed live on the Beyond Broadcast Web site. Visit the Beyond Broadcast website. -- June 4, 2009

Newspapers may be constrained in their ability to charge for content by U.S. antitrust law.  Yet two columnists in the Wall Street Journal use the music industry as a template for the possibility that newspapers could work together to charge for content. The model would essentially involve newspapers charging sites for the reproduction of their content, just as songwriters make money from the playing of their songs on the radio or at nightclubs. To be successful, the newspapers would need an intermediary to monitor the online replication of their articles, and thereby legally ensure payment for their content. Read the Wall Street Journal column. -- JUne 4, 2009.

Bill Day writes on PaidContent.org that online advertising needs to be dramatically transformed. Day rejects a pay model, but says that advertisers and publishers must make ads more effective. Among his suggestions: (1) limit the number of ads on the page, (2) target and adapt ads to the user, and (3) make the calls to action more sophisticated. Read the PaidContent.org post. -- June 4, 2009

Tim Windsor at Nieman Journalism Labs discusses how he kept informed about a symposium at the University of Maryland about how journalism would fare if newspapers died. Windsor's conclusion: "Reporting, apparently, still gets down." Despite the absence of any reporting by the Balitmore Sun, he stayed informed through tweets ("missjames: miller is obviously not a believer in future of online. #localnews"), blogs and local community news sites. Read the Nieman Journalism Lab post. -- June 4, 2009.

News Corp has said that it will establish a paid model for its online content, and its new chief digital officer suggests that the company, "is willing to take a lead position to push for change." Jonathan Miller says that News Corp is interested not just in providing additional revenue for itself, but also in developing a model that will help the industry as a whole. One of his ideas is to bundle content -- offering some of News Corp's New York media, or a group of their newspapers, together for a fee. Miller argues that bundling needs to be tested, but could prove profitable for the company. Read the Hollywood Reporter article. -- June 3, 2009

Journalism students at Northwestern University have teamed with their peers in computer science to develop several applications that produce and organize information. One generates sports stories from box score and play-by-play information. Another one is suited for an iPhone, and organizes the news into 5-minute, 10-minute, or 20-minute chunks. And yet another would allow journalists to fact-check their stories in Microsoft Word without switching to an Internet search. The groups will meet with journalists in the industry to discuss their applications next week. Read the Northwestern University article. -- June 3, 2009. 

As an important conceptual step, Advertising Age reports that the New York Times no longer considers its customers to be readers, but users. More pratically, the paper is trying to make its Web site and online content more interactive. The paper has opened up its application programming interfaces to allow outside developers the chance to create news ways of viewing and reacting to the data. One example is the NYTExplorer, which offers an alternative search feature to the current search options on the site. Read the Advertising Age article. -- June 3, 2009

In another hint that a wide variety of online content may soon exist behind a pay wall, Jonathan Miller, News Corp's new chief digital officer, suggested that Hulu.com will likley switch to a subscription model in the near future. Under his vision, which Miller stresses is his personal prediction, the site would begin to charge users to view some of its TV shows and movies. If the move were to prove successful, perhaps it would encourage other sites to establish a pay wall. Read the Daily Finance post. -- June 3, 2009.

Though the Spanish-language media has experience some difficulties due to the economic downturn, these newspapers are faring much better than their English-language counterparts. For one thing, their demographics continue to grow with the continuing immigration of Spanish-speakers. For another, Hispanics continue to suffer from the digital divide, and therefore lack access to the Internet.  Read the Philadelphia Weekly article. -- June 2, 2009.

Steve Brill of Journalism Online has made several agreements with newspapers to charge for their online content. Journalism Online is pushing a “common platform” for news Web sites to charge annual, monthly and per-article fees." Brill argues that by mixing free and paid offerings, newspapers can gain subscription revenue from 5-10% of their users, while preserving a supermajority of their page views and ad revenue.  Read the Nieman Lab post. -- June 2, 2009. 

Gina Chen of Save the Media suggests a new type of newspaper Web site. To work, though, newspapers must recognize two truths: "(1) The mass audience is dead, (2) The product of newspaper Web sites is not news."  The new site would let users choose their activities -- from reading the latest top story to doing a crossword puzzle to reviewing a new video game. Chen calls this idea a hyperinterest page, which like Twitter would gain popularity through word of mouth. Read the Save the Media post. -- June 2, 2009.

Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair has this advice for struggling newspapers: "Get on a big story with widespread public appeal, devote your best resources to it, say a quiet prayer, and swing for the fences." He cites the compelling example of London's Telegraph, which has devoted 120 broadsheet pages to its expose on the expenses of members of Parliament. It led to the resignation of the Speaker of the House of Commons, not to mention the selling out of the Telegraph issue that broke the story, plus an additional 600,000 copies. Read the Vanity Fair article and view the Telegraph's coverage of MPs' expenses. -- June 2, 2009

The Philadelphia Inquirer Web site may begin charging for its online content by the end of the year. Brian Tierney, the owner of Philly.com, said he would push to get money from Google for their content that appears on the search engine's site. Tierney remains optimistic about the printed newspaper's viability, postulating that the paper would continue to be published for the next 20 years. Read the article from Fox 29. -- June 2, 2009.

Two rival Russian news agencies have joined together to cover and share national news with about 600 regional media outlets. The partnership between RIA Novosti and Interfax is a conscious, yet temporary, effort to support the struggling regional news organizations. Regional outlets will be able to subscribe to the content, including video and photos, for free. Read the Editors Weblog post. -- June 2, 2009.

Hearst Magazines, a company that owns Food Network magazine, Cosmopolitan, Esquire and others, has been performing remarkably well, despite the economic climate. The company has countered conventional wisdom in several ways: by keeping its magazine content only in print, expanding the size of its magazines and raising the price of the printed copy. All of this seems to be paying off for Hearst. Read the New York Times article. - June 1, 2009

Starbucks is to become a naming sponsor of MSNBC's "Morning Joe," the morning news show hosted by Joe Scarborough. New graphics and a voiceover will announce, "Morning Joe, brewed by Starbucks."  Howard Schultz, the chief executive of Starbucks, notes the partnership demonstrates that “the rules of engagement in marketing and advertising have changed quite significantly.” Read the New York Times article. -- June 1, 2009.

Slate has amassed a collection of editorial cartoons commenting on the state of the newspaper industry. Most lament the demise of newspapers, especially the cost to democracy. View the Slate editorial cartoons. -- May 29, 2009

Ben Sheffner at Slate discusses the potential legal liabilities of the Illinois meeting of newspaper executives, which included representatives from the New York Times, Gannett, McClatchy, the Associated Press and others.  The purpose of the meeting, called "Models to Monetize Content," was clearly the publications' attempts to survive the perils of the industry. But Sheffner discusses how such a meeting, and the subsequent installation of pay walls or subscriptions requirements, could seem to violate antitrust law. Read the Slate article -- May 29, 2009

In light of yesterday's meeting of newspaper executives, the purpose of which was to see how to monetize online content, Zachary M. Seward of the Nieman Journalism Lab notes overlooked arguments against instituting pay walls. He highlights the perils of trying, and ultimately failing, to implement a successful paywell system. He also argues that pay walls are better at protecting the printed editions than generating income. Read the Nieman Journalism post. -- May 29, 2009.

The New York Times has taken to a new level homepage takeover ads, a rather common technique of placing a paid message on top of the Web site.  The Times recently ran an Intel ad that incorporated the newspaper itself.  The experiment is an attempt to make online ads more engaging. And while the effect of these ads is not yet fully known, "brands are clearly excited about the notion of blending marketing messages with respected editorial content." Read the Forbes article. -- May 29, 2009.

Gawker Media has added another vertical to its lists of blogs, the likes of which include the media gossip Gawker and gadget-friendly Gizmodo. The newest addition, however, is unique among the offerings because it is a sponspored blog. BloodCopy, the new blog, is an HBO project, completely funded and written by the cable channel to promote its vampire series, True Blood. Gawker's site will feature crossposts from BloodCopy just like the rest of its verticals. Gawker's vice president of sales and marketing, Chris Batty, has stated that the site hopes that such sponsored ads become the major funding for their efforts in the future. Read the Nieman Journalism Lab post. -- May 27, 2009.

David Kaplan of PaidContent shares his advice for newly hired Jennifer Preston, the New York Times' social media editor. Kaplan notes that many of the ways that newspapers are currently using social media, especially Twitter, are working. Thus, he cautions Preston against trying to "fix what isn't broken" or establish too tight a clamp on what editors and journalists can express in these forums. After all, he contends, people aren't interested in interacting with a faceless institution, but with other human beings. And that's what all that twittering presently offers. Read the PaidContent.org post. -- May 27, 2009.

The New York Times has hired its first ever social media editor. Officially, Jennifer Preston will work to expand "the use of social media networks and publishing platforms to improve New York Times journalism and deliver it to readers." Recently, though, Times journalists have leaked unauthorized information via their Twitterfeeds, leaving some to wonder whether Preston's main job isn't to monitor and regulate the use of Twitter and other social media. Perhaps a list of rules regarding social media will be forthcoming. Read the Editors Weblog post. -- May 27, 2009.

The European Union is launching a new Web site aimed at a forum for discussion that transcends  language barriers. The new site, funded by 3 million euros from the European Commission and run by 10 journalists, will translate content from among 250 titles that cover news in and around Europe. The site will begin publishing in 10 languages, but expects to cover all 23 of the EU's official languages in the next five years. In response to those who questioned the motives of the venture, EU communications commissioner Margot Wallstrom stated, "It has nothing to do with whether we like what the media writes or not." She said that the goal is simply to "prolong the life" of quality journalism. Read the EU Observer article. -- May 27, 2009

In Japan and parts of Europe, advertisers have long used QR codes to create an interactive experience from their printed ads. These QR codes are like barcodes--they appear in print and can link cell phones to specific Web sites. The technology could help advertisers determine what appeals to which consumers, and may even help newspapers make more money off of their printed product. Read the PBS MediaShift post. -- May 26, 2009

Vivian Schiller, CEO and President of NPR, argues in an interview that newspapers' best bet is to continue to offer their content for free. She says that there are only a few kinds of content that people have proved willing to pay for online--real-time financial news, some fantasy sports and pornography. As the former head of NYTimes.com, Schiller discusses her advocacy to end TimesSelect. While the service gained the newspaper $10 million annually, it seemed unlikely to grow, and therefore would not prove a useful tool to sustain the newsroom. Read the Huffington Post post, or watch the video: 

 -- May 26, 2009

The editors of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and the Post Register in Idaho both attribute their extraordinary print subscription numbers to the fact that they only offer free web content to their subscribers. All others have to pay to access their articles online. Their success may be why 28% of newspapers say they are considering instituting online fees, according to a recent AP survey. As Journalism Online CEO Steven Brill put it, "Online fees will give people one less reason to stop subscribing to the [printed] newspaper." Read the Huffington Post article. -- May 26, 2009. 

A Spanish court has ruled that newspapers have intellectual property rights over their content. Over two years ago, the editors of 55 newspapers sued a press-clipping service Documentacion de Medios for including their stories as part of the service. Henceforth, any group seeking to use newspapers' material in a similar way will have to get prior consent from the editors. Read the Editors Weblog article. -- May 26, 2009.

Rory Maher on PaidContent has another suggestion for how Google, who is reportedly working with newspapers to improve their websites, might help the publications. He suggests that newspaper Web sites have trouble with search opitimization. As an example, he cites how the New York Times ran a cover story on a bombing plot in the Bronx, but a search of "Bronx bombing plot" listed many small blogs and TV sites before the Times. He suggests that Google could help these sites boost their numbers by better adapting to search features. Read the PaidContent.Org post. -- May 22, 2009.

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, shares his views on newspaper business models and how Google can help the publications make money. For instance, though he views the transition from for-profit to non-profit organization is difficult, Schmidt argues that, "news gathering and the profitability model was always an uncomfortable relationship." He also notes that Google is working with the Washington Post and other newspapers to improve their websites and increase their monetization. Read the Editors Weblog post. -- May 22, 2009.

ProPublica is launching a citizen-journalism venture, asking ordinary people to pick a small part of the stimulus bill and track its progress: "Diving headfirst into databases and wrangling answers out of government officials will get us only so far. Basic information about road and bridge reconstruction projects -- like the identity of sub-contractors -- requires feet on the ground, and a lot of them." The project is designed to combine all of the information provided by citizens to answer the question: Is the stimulus working? Read the ProPublica post. -- May 22, 2009

Muck Rack, a service that aggregates the Twitter feeds of journalists, has added several new features in its recent redesigns that significantly improve the site. First, new users can organize those tweets into broad beats, ranging from technology to arts journalism. This allows people to focus on the more interesting content. Second, Muck Rack has added a list of trending topics, so viewers can tell at a glance what the world's journalists are tweeting about. Read the Nieman Journalism Lab review. -- May 22, 2009.

Politico, ABC,and Google are partnering to offer mulitmedia coverage of local political events, beginning with a debate between the candidates for governor in Virginia. ABC will broadcast the event live, and beforehand viewers will have a chance to submit video questions and text comments. The questions will be chosen using Google Moderator, which lets users rate the questions. The most popular questions will go to the candidates. Read the journalism.co.uk post. -- May 22, 2009.

If a newly proposed bill passes, New York's shield law, which protects journalists from disclosing confidential sources in state court, would be extended to include journalist bloggers. The bill was proposed by State Sen. Thomas Duane and Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal. The proposal would protect journalist bloggers who write for “a Web site or Web page that contains an online journal containing news, comments and offers hyperlinks provided by the writer.” Read the New York Times article. -- May 20, 2009

Talking Points Memo, the eight-year-old political blog, has hired its first vice president of sales, who will lead its in-house advertising efforts. Diane Rinaldo, formerly director of political advertising at Yahoo, holds the new position. Until her hire, TPM relied solely on advertising services like Blogads. In March and April, Rinaldo reports, TPM sold more advertisments than it did for all of 2008 (this refers only to in-house sales, rather than total advertising revenue). Read the NiemanLab post. -- May 20, 2009.

The decline in advertising, coupled with a decline in viewership, has hurt local TV news almost as much as newspapers. The Philadelpha Inquirer reports that, in response to this trend, local TV channels are attempting to gain advertising from companies and products that do not normally buy many spots. This means that local advertisements, from Empire Carpeting to the Snuggie, are more likely to show up in places they didn't before. Read the Philadelphia Inquirer article. -- May 20, 2009.

The Financial Times is building two studios that will allow its correspondents to produce video and audio content for the Web site. FT.com will charge non-subscribers to watch the videos, if they exceed 10 videos a month. The site already produces 170 videos per month. FT.com has over 11 million unique viewers per month, and over 100,000 subscribers. Read the Media Week article. -- May 20, 2009

The Federal Trade Commission announced that it will host a hearing on Sept. 15 to discuss the struggle for new business models for journalism. Though an agenda has not yet been released, the FTC says that witnesses will include a host of interested parties -- from journalists to privacy experts to consumer advocates. The purpose is to investigate how the failing news industry, and any potential solutions, may have an impact on competition and the consumer. Read the FTC announcement. -- May 20, 2009

Bill Mitchell at Poytner Online reviews the Kindle, which he sees as a "supplement to print and online as opposed to a substitute for either." The demographics for the Kindle, he argues, appear to skew older, which may be bad news for newspapers hoping that the device will save their industry. He notes some problems with the format and function of the Kindle, but in general has a positive review. Read the Poynter Online post. -- May 20, 2009.

In the UK, Google is arguing that laws should be relaxed to allow newspapers to consolidate. In papers submitted to the Office of Fair Trade, the search engine suggests that revising the existing barriers to merging would allow local and regional newspapers to compete with Google itself as well as other internet sites. Google's comment comes as the OFT is reviewing the newspaper merger framework. Read the Times article. -- May 19, 2009

This summer, the Federal Trade Comission is expected to release new guidelines for bloggers and the way they handle sponsored posts. Specifically, the guidelines will dictate that bloggers disclose when they're voicing opinions that aren't their own, or are writing about a product they received for free. The rules are not binding, and may leave some wiggle room, but are an attempt to provide the same level of transparency and accountability in social media as exists in traditional media. Read the Business Week post. -- May 19, 2009.

Ryan Chittum of the Columbia Journalism Review does the math on the Kindle, and concludes that it is "just another way for papers to lose money." Newspapers available on the Kindle would receive only 30 percent of the revenue from the subscribers -- $4.20 from a $14 subscription fee. Since there are no advertisements on the Kindle, there is no additional revenue stream. The setup means that if all of the New York Times subscribers were to switch to the Kindle, the paper would only make $52 million, enough to fund about a quarter of its newsroom costs. Chittum's conclusion is that there is still a long way to go on the Kindle. Read the Columbia Journalism Review post. -- May 18, 2009

Beth Teitell of the Boston Globe, noting that only a third of Americans would personally miss the printed newspaper, lists the important societal benefits that newsprint provides. "You can shed a tear right now for the iconic ransom note, with letters clipped from newspaper headlines. What's a kidnapper to do?" Teitell queries. She also advises people to invest in umbrellas, and to find an alternative to papermaiche for their child's next school project. Read the Boston Globe article. -- May 18, 2009

Next month, Martha Stewart will begin to charge for online videos from the archives, which are not currently available on the web. Users can purchase the videos and download them to their computer, mobile phone, or iPod. A price has not yet been determined. The Web site will continue to rely mostly on paid advertising as it experiments with charging for online content. Read the Women's Wear Daily post. -- May 18, 2009

The New York Times has more information about David Geffen's intent to purchase the newspaper. The paper reports that Geffen remains interested in purchasing a stake in the paper but, wary of antagonizing the Sulzberger-Ochs family, will remain on the sidelines until an opportunity arises. Geffen's friends maintain that he believes the Times should become a nonprofit, and if he were to purchase the paper he would not run that nonprofit himself. Some, however, are skeptical that Geffen could really function as a passive owner. Read the New York Times story. -- May 18, 2009

Newsweek's new Web site has launched, featuring news aggregation and user-generated content in addition to its original reporting. Some new sections will encourage debate on a selection topic or offer four informational links that might otherwise be lost in the shuffle. Editors will even take the tweets directed at Newsweek and post them on the Web sites like comments. The redesign comes at the weekly is dramatically re-evaluating what the magazine will now look like.  Read the Editors Weblog article -- May 15, 2009.

By the end of June, the New York Times will reportedly decide on a way to charge for its online content. Two proposals are currently being considered. The first, which executive editor Bill Keller described as "tricky," is a meter system, which monitors a user's page or word count, and would charge a reader only after a certain threshold is consumed. The second option is a membership, where people would make a donation to become part of the "New York Times community." Read the Observer article. -- May 15, 2009

Thomas B. Edsall considers what may happen to the New York Times if the company faces insolvency, as some expect in a year or two. Edsall argues that if the Sulzberger-Ochs family is forced to sell the newspaper to the highest bidder, the results could be disastrous for the quality of the respected publication. As an alternative, though, the family could sell its shares of the Times to whomever they wanted, giving their chosen buyer effective control over the newspaper.  Read the Huffington Post post. -- May 15, 2009.

David Geffen's offer to buy a 19% stake in the New York Times never went through, but the speculation as to why Geffen would make the offer, and what he would do with the Times if he had control, continues to be a popular pasttime. Business Week yesterday ran the story that he is likely spurred by a sense of civic duty. Meanwhile, Forbes suggests that the Hollywood billionaire may be looking for a cheap investment, and is motivated by a traditional investor's desire to turn a profit. The Finanical Times concurs, arguing that he's looking for his latest challenge, "and the New York Times might be just the ticket." Newsweek takes a different perspective, more akin to Business Week, when it reports that Geffen wants to protect the paper as a "national treasure," and that if he gained control he would turn the Grey Lady into a nonprofit, similar to the St. Petersburg Times. -- May 14, 2009

The BBC director of future media and technology, Erik Huggers, spoke yesterday at a Broadcasting Press Guild lunch. He argued that newspapers should make their online content look more like it does in print, and emphasized the potential of devices like the Kindle that could mimic the traditional feeling of reading the newspaper. Huggers also discussed the potential of Project Canvas, a venture that would link digital television and the Internet so that viewers can watch online content on the TV screens. He said that the project would bring the best of television and the best of the internet together. Read the Guardian article. -- May 14, 2009.

The NIS News Bulletin, a English-language Dutch news service, reports that the Dutch media minister is set to hire 60 journalists. The journalists will work at one of 30 commerical newspapers that cover national or regional news. The Minister explained his decision by saying that younger journalists are frequently the first to be laid off. About 4 million euros have been set aside for this project. The minister has also set up a committee to study other possible initiatives. Read the NIS News Bulletin. -- May 14, 2009.

 Greg Horowitz at the Digitalists raises an often-overlooked question about the impact of micropayments on the journalists who write the stories. He fears that news companies, armed with data about which articles brought in the most revenue, will increasingly adapt their coverage based on what sells. Journalists themselves may be rewarded or let go based on their ability to spur micropayments, and they may start to couch their pieces in more attention-grabbing styles. All of these developments, Horowitz argues, would be bad for journalism. Read the Digitalist post -- May 13, 2009. 

 Not everyone is convinced the Wall Street Journal's announcement that it will start charging micropayments will prove successful. Mike Mansick at TechDirt argues that charging micropayments actually decreases the value of the content for its users: These days, many people value content for the ability to engage with it, comment on it and share it with others. Micropayments take away that ability, and thus decrease the value of the content, Mansick says. Read Mansick's argument at TechDirt. -- May 13, 2009. 

Business Week discusses why David Geffen, the Hollywood billionaire who once chaired the  Dreamsworks studio, would make an offer to buy a stake in the New York Times. It is, after all, no secret that the paper is in financial trouble. Geffen certainly understands this, and therefore likely sees his offer as a civic investment rather than a business venture. Geffen tried to buy the Los Angeles Times in 2006. Read the Business Week article. -- May 13, 2009. 

 Washington state has agreed to provide its newspapers with a tax break, granting the industry a 40 percent reduction in the state's main business tax. The cut is similar to ones bestowed upon Boeing Co. and the timber industry in the past. Read the Seattle Times article.

The tax reduction plan is receiving a mixed reaction. The Business Insider, for one, remains critical. Read the Business Insider post. -- May 13, 2009

 MarketWatch, a financial website published by Dow Jones, has redesigned its Web site. Along with adding new features and emphasizing original content, MarketWatch launched the new site in an effort to boost online advertising sales. Even as its competitors like Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal require subscriptions for content, and as its parent company NewsCorp looks into charging for online content, MarketWatch is hoping that the redesign will allow them to keep providing business news for free. Read the Reuters article. -- May 13, 2009. 

Through innovation and newsroom changes, Britain's Telegraph receives 8 percent of its traffic, translating into 75,000 daily unique visitors, from news aggregators and social networking sites. The Telegraph cites a variety of changes -- instituting a new technology lab, merging the print and digital operations -- with strengthening its traffic.  The Telegraph relies on its readers to recommend their articles to others via Digg, Delicious, Reddit and others. Read the Editors Weblog article. -- May 13, 2009. 

Jack Shafer in Slate discusses the 1962-1963 New York newspaper strike, and considers it a case study in what people do when the newspapers shut down. He argues that, despite today's oft-stated assumption, democracy and government did not appear to suffer too much under the 114-day strike. Instead, people turned to other news sources for information -- television, news magazines and books. Meanwhile, the circulation of newspapers not involved in the strike rose dramatically. Read the Slate article. -- May 12, 2009

MediaNews has set up its new strategy to revitalize its newspapers. The company's vision includes three major changes: First, MediaNews will begin to charge for its online news. Subscribers to the physical newspaper will have free online access, but all others will be directed to a pay vehicle. Second, the company will move to differentiate the newspaper from its online version. It will continue to utilize material from its printed source but "will also have user-generated content, community involvement and third party content." Finally, it will create a locus of local information with various resources, including shopping information and user content. Read the Romenesko post. -- May 12, 2009

Perhaps because of all the media hype, Twitter had more unique visitors in the month of April than did the online versions of the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. Twitter had 19.4 million visitors, compared with 15.6 and 12.2 million for the newspapers, respectively. These findings are consistent with previous announcements that Twitter gained 5 million new users in March. Read the Huffington Post article. -- May 12, 2009

The New York Times has launched Times Wire, a minute-by-minute update of the newspapers' articles and blog posts as they are posted on the web. While TechCrunch worries that the new feature won't do anything to address the problem of the newspaper's slow reporting speed, it does admit: "As an overview of the entire NYT site, it’s actually quite interesting." Read the TechCrunch post and check out the Times Wire. -- May 12, 2009

Thomson Reuters is revamping its mobile applications.  They will include video and market data as well as headlines. The applications are adapted to better suit the needs of iPhone or Blackberry users -- the former supplies more video and the latter focuses on business data. While the overhauled apps will remain free for now, the company has indicated that this is the first step in a transition to charging for the mobile content. Read the Finanical Times article. -- May 12, 2009.

The New York Times is re-evaluating its TimesSelect experiment, which introduced micropayments for some of the paper's content, and thinking of instituting a tiered membership scheme. The idea is akin to the American Express model, with different levels, from platinum to gold. The paper is also investigating other types of revenue, such as selling research to Fortune 500 companies. As of now, the newspaper has rejected raising the endowment or seeking individual donations as viable options. Read the Editors Weblog post. -- May 12, 2009.

Online advertisements are often measured (and paid for) in terms of clicks. Companies usually buy ads at CPMs (or cost per thousand clicks). But publishers are starting to turn to engagement advertising, which focuses on the level of engagement with a product or ad rather than the number of click-throughs. It remains difficult, however, to measure engagement, and the industry has traditionally relied upon time as the measure. There are still obstacles to overcome, but industry experts expect engagement ads to be the future of online advertising. Read the PaidContent.org article. -- May 11, 2009

As The New York Times struggles under the burdens of debt and the general decline of newspapers, Richard Siklos of Fortune reports that former Hollywood mogul David Geffen offered to purchase a 19 percent stake in the newspaper from Harbinger Capital Partners. The deal did not go through. Siklos also has a good summary of the challenges facing the so-called the Grey Lady. Read the Fortune article. -- May 11, 2009.

At the White House Correspondents Dinner, a traditionally humorous gathering of politicians and press, President Obama ended his satirical speech with an earnest support of newspapers: "a government without newspapers, a government without a tough and vibrant media is not an option for the United States of America." This statement has led some to conclude that the president is preparing for a government bailout of newspapers. Read the Editors Weblog post. -- May 11, 2009.

Papermotion might be the start of an entirely new way to consume newspaper advertising. Created by a French company, Total Immersion, and an Australian firm, the Dreamscape Group, this new technology uses a printed image.  When put in front of a webcam, it creates a three-dimensional image on the computer, complete with music. 20th Century Fox is the first major company to employ this type of advertising for their upcoming film, Night at the Museum 2. Read the Editors Weblog post and watch the demonstration video. -- May 11, 2009.

The problem with news charts, maps and databases is that they all require maintenance in order to stay relevant. Without continual updating, they quickly become irrelevant and sometimes misleading. One way to prevent this, without allocating staff, is to have the charts pull directly from the available information as it is released, so that the chart is quickly updated (The Raleigh News and Observer does this with their crime graphs, culling information from law enforcement databases). Another helpful tool might be Wolfram Alpha, a powerful search engine that will answer queries and compute information. Read the Nieman Journalism Lab post. -- May 11, 2009.

A Pricewaterhouse Coopers study surveyed viewers' willingness to pay for content. According to their survey, respondents were willing to pay 97 percent of the price for financial news. More promising, those surveyed said they would pay 77 percent of the full price for online sports news, and an average of 62 percent for general content. The study suggests, then, that newspapers and other news sources might be able to charge for online content, though perhaps not as much as they would like. Read the PaidContent article. -- May 11, 2009

The Wall Street Journal, whose online paid subscriptions have risen 21 percent since 2007, will soon add a micropayment service to view its online content. The service is set to launch in autumn; the cost of each viewed article has not yet been determined. The launch of the micropayment service comes as newspapers are increasingly looking at such a business model to fund their reporting. Read the Financial Times article. -- May 11, 2008.

Ryan Tate at Gawker weighs in on yesterday's Senate hearing, offering a defense of the bloggers that some in the mainstream media criticized. Specifically, he takes issue with the claim, voiced by former Baltimore Sun reporter David Simon, that bloggers do not cover the mundane, everyday issues like public meetings. Tate also highlights Arianna Huffington's argument that bloggers "chomp down on a story and stay with it, refusing to move off it until they've gotten down to the marrow." Read the Gawker post. -- May 7, 2009.

At Wednesday's Senate hearing on the future of journalism, traditional journalists sounded alarms about their struggling industy. Yet two of the witnesses, Marissa Mayer of Google and Arianna Huffington of the eponymous Huffington Post, represented the new-media aggregators that rely on others' original content. Mayer and Huffington both had to respond to senators who highlighted their role in killing newspapers. Sen. Kerry lamented: "I see cacophony without standards. I see more and more people operating in public life with snippets, and I think that's dangerous." Read the Washington Post column. -- May 7, 2009.

Earlier this week, Amazon.com announced its new, larger format Kindle designed for newspapers and other larger publications. The New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Washington Post have said they will deliver newspapers on the device. News Corp's owner, Rubert Murdoch, is unconvinced. He stated that his company is not interested in handing over its content to the people who made the Kindle. Instead, he expects that one of his general newspapers will start charging for online content within the year. At yesterday's Senate hearing, Dallas Morning News exec James Moroney mirrored Murdoch's sentiment, complaining that Amazon wants 70% of subscription revenue from the newspaper. Read the Financial Times' story. -- May 7, 2009.

In yesterday's broadcast, NPR's Diane Rehm interviewed four media experts about the fate of the newspaper industry: American University professor Jane Hall, blogger Alan Mutter, editor of the American Journalism Review Rem Reider, and editor of the Milkwaukee Journal-Sentiel Martin Kaiser.  Theydiscussed various options for finding a new revenue model -- newspapers going nonprofit, publishing on the Web only, changing antitrust laws and initiating new mergers. Hear the NPR interview. -- May 7, 2009

Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and the New York Times Company are both moving closer toward charging for online content. Murdoch says his company is considering establishing a pay wall for all or part of its content within a year. The NY Times is less committed; the company is still evaluating subscription and micropayment models. Read the Editors Weblog Post. -- May 7, 2009.

A hearing called by Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry produced conflicting views over whether the federal government might play a productive role in supporting the beleaguered news industry.  The publisher of the Dallas Morning News said yes.  But new media representatives said a federal role would be counterproductive. Read testimony at Senate site -- May 6, 2009

Amazon and Plastic Logic are both banking on the idea that creating a larger, Kindle-like electronic device will prove popular as the new way of consuming news. Each company is racing to complete its version of the gadget, which may prove to be the saving grace for newspapers looking for a way to charge for their content. With the devices, publishers conceivably might be able to revert to long-established business model of selling subscriptions and supporting articles with ads. Read the New York Times article. -- May 4, 2009.

TechCrunch reports that online advertising revenues dropped significantly over the last quarter, suggesting that the recession has come to online ad sales. With Google, Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft reporting on their finances for the quarter, Web revenue dropped 2 percent from last year and 7 percent from the fourth quarter. Read the TechCrunch report. -- May 4, 2009.

Allowing comments on news stories is increasingly common, despite the potential pitfalls. One of the benefits of comments section can actually be increased pageviews which translate into increased online advertising dollars. It keeps readers at the site longer, can create a community of users, and increases the interaction between producers and consumers of news. All of this may result in added revenue. Read the article from the San Francisco Chronicle. -- May 4, 2009.

When pressed at Monday's briefing, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs expressed concern over the failing newspaper industry, but stated, "I don't know what, in all honesty, government can do about it." Even as Sen. John Kerry begins holding hearings this week on the state of the newspaper industry, it appears that the White House is not planning imminent action. Read the Huffington Post article. -- May 4, 2009.

The Detroit Free Press has partnered with a local CBS affiliate, WWJ-TV, to launch a morning news show. The program will air two hours each weekday morning, and feature content produced by the newspaper's journalists, in addition to updates on weather and traffic. Read the Free Press article. -- May 4, 2009.

National Public Radio combined computer code, archives and Google Hot Trends to create an automated twitter account NPRBackstory. It goes like this: the code automatically detects frequent search terms, checks within the NPR archives for related stories and posts the link on Twitter, all without any human involvement. The goal of the project is to provide some backstory and context to breaking news, and to make full use of the online NPR archives that date back to 1995. Read the Nieman Journalism Lab post. -- May 4, 2009.

MTV is promoting its new show, What You're Watching with Alexa Chung, by taking advantages of new media. Yet the television channel is taking the unprecented step of sharing the ad revenue from the show with Facebook and Twitter. While many companies and industries, including CNN and Us Weekly, have used these two sites to promote their projects, this is the first time that either site will receive revenue for hosting the organization. Read the Paid Content post. -- May 4, 2009

Mark Glaser of PBS' MediaShift has read 600 ideas for how to best serve community information needs, and has distilled them into an eight-step plan to get the job done.  Step One:  Crack open government data and access.  Glaser's project is in connection with a big effort from the Knight Foundation to identify community news and information needs in an era when legacy news organizations may be greatly diminished.  Read PBS' MediaShift. --April 30, 2009

There's good news and bad news for newspapers in a new report by USC's Jeffrey Cole, one of the world's leading authorities on Internet trends.  Cole found a significant increase in the amount of time readers were spending on newspaper online sites.  Simultaneously, it found a large chunk of Americans had quit their newspaper or magazine subscriptions because they could read the same material free on the Web.  Read the USC Annenberg news release. -- April 30, 2009

A new report by Borrell Associates suggests that a four-year decline in newspapers' share of local online revenue has ended.  The somewhat surprising finding is attributed to the strength of feet-on-the-ground sales forces during an economic recession.  Read Paid Content's report.  -- April 30, 2009

Sharesleuth.com is an investigative journalism site devoted to exposing corporate misbehavior and securities fraud. The projects are funded by Mark Cuban, entreprenuer and owner of the Dallas Mavericks. The site acknowledges that Cuban sometimes makes investments based on the information uncovered by the reporters, but that this activity will always be fully disclosed to allow readers to determine any conflict of interest. The patron-funded model of journalism raises some ethical questions for journalists as they try to find a way to fund their work. Read the Poynter Online article. -- April 29, 2009

Edward Wasserman, in the Miami Herald, argues that online journalism seems to focus mainly on the op-ed model - -where contributors are not employees of the site, hold some knowledge about the topic for which they write, and are paid little if at all. These contributions are edited by full-time editors of the news source. Wasserman sees this trend as a continuation of journalism's tradition of relying on subsidies to prosper. Yet he also worries about potential conflics of interest, which seem almost inherent in the op-ed model. Read the Miami Herald piece. -- April 29, 2009.

Penelope Muse Abernathy of the University of North Carolina has written a paper in anticipation of an upcoming conference on nonprofit media at Duke. Her piece, “A Nonprofit Model for the New York Times?”,  considers four possible nonprofit models for the paper-- (1) establishing an endowment, (2) support from a foundation, (3) purchase by a university, and (4) purchase by a so-called "angel" investor. Read Abernathy's paper (pdf) and the New Yorker commentary. -- April 28, 2009.

Many different proposals have emerged for how government can help the struggling journalism industry, but one UK blogger has a different perspective: "To draw on an old adage: Government should not only give the hungry industry some fish and ensure that the legislative environment is conducive for fishing - but it should also help the industry build the knowledge to devise new ways of fishing." He proposes that the government should be training journalists in new media, so that the industry can better adapt to the changes. Read the For the Media blog post. -- April 28, 2009.

The University of Washington is following the University of Minnesota's lead and forming a Facebook application, joining with Seattle-based company, NewsCloud. In:Site, the new application, will be run by 20 university students who hope to produce at least two original articles per week. The application will focus on interactivity and community-involvement. Read the article from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. -- April 28, 2009.

Bill Mitchell of Poynter Online provides a breakdown of the proposed government intervention in preserving journalism, and adds his checklist of qualifications for any bureaucratic interference. He writes that any proposal, from tax breaks to relaxed antitrust regulations, must preserve editorial independence, promote innovation, and encourage news consumption. He emphasizes that the goal has to be to preserve journalism, not the media companies. Read the Poynter article. -- April 28, 2009

This week, the Financial Times began asking its readers to contribute to online editoral content. Readers will contribute to the Arena blog, which launches today.  The first topic centers on higher taxes. This development is the latest in a trend of crowdsourcing. Earlier this week, the New York Times put out a similar call for contribution from its readers. Read the Guardian article. -- April 28, 2009

The Windsor Star explains some of the reasons that Canada's newspaper industry is performing better than its counterpart in the U.S. Among the reasons are higher readership, less competition for ad revenue and a less devastating economic downturn. This is not to say that Canadian newspapers are not struggling. Read the Windsor Star article. -- April 28, 2009.

The Internet has been praised for increasing the level of interaction between the producers of news and its consumers. Yet Virginia Heffernan of the New York Times questions just how valuable the online "Comments" section of articles really is. Using Slate/Washington Post columnist Ann Applebaum as an example, Heffernan notes that this journalist, who has been called one of the "world's most sophisticated thinkers," reguarly receives anti-Semitist, angry, superficial, and just plain irrelevant comments for her pieces.  Read the New York Times piece. -- April 28, 2009

The Attributor Corp has joined with a group of online publishers to form the Fair Syndication Consortium, a venture that hopes to gain advertising revenue from sites that reproduce their content. Attributor already works with the AP and the Financial Times to track their content, so that those organizations can request that their work be taken down if used inappropriately. Now, however, the Fair Syndication Consortium hopes to use that same technology to track the use of their content and persuade the reproducers to share in the advertising revenue. Read the announcement on the Editors Weblog.

Update: The Consortium, which now includes Politico, Reuters, among others, held its first meeting Monday. Attributor found that for every one viewer who reads an article on the producer's website, another five find it in full elsewhere. Read the Editors Weblog post. -- April 27, 2009

Even as their newsrooms contract, local TV news stations are adding time to their broadcasts, totaling on average half an hour per day. In these tough economic times, the local news stations hope that by increasing their news hours, they will remain competitive and vibrant operations. Yet local news remains less profitable than in the past, and the vast majority of stations have had to consolidate and lay off workers. Read the Huffington Post story -- April 27, 2009.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has a plan that he believes may help newspapers generate more revenue for their content. Google's algorthims will start bringing users the news, adapted to their preferences, without the users even looking for it. Because the news will be personalized and highly targeted, the site can charge for premium ads alongside the stories. Problematically, the content producers will not receive a cut from this additional revenue, but Google says that this will still help the newspapers as they will receive more hits on their sites. Read the Editors Weblog Post --April 27, 2009.

In an experiment aimed at increasing reader interaction, the New York Times has turned to crowdsourcing -- using its readers as the sources for news. The paper has published over 650 pages of Timothy Geithner's schedule as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and asked that its readers supply their thoughts on what is worth noting in the document. The Times has already published some of its own insights and perspective, but is offering the masses a greater chance to weigh in. Read the post in The Independent. -- April 27, 2009.

Eric Gertler, in the Huffington Post, writes that newspapers should focus less on producing content that they can charge for online and instead work to leverage their brand. By creating new ventures like resume services, membership clubs and classes, newspapers can start to make money off their brand. Newspapers need to hurry, though, as other online competitors, from Yelp to the Huffington Post, continue to take over spaces where newspapers traditionally dominated. Read the Huffington Post blog. --April 24, 2009

Richard Tofel, ProPublica general manager, praised the substantive work that the nonprofit news organization has been able to produce, citing the coverage of health care for contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet Tofel noted that ProPublica could not alone fill the gap in investigative reporting brought on by dwindling newsrooms. Tofel also argued that the organization's next big challenge will be to find a sustainable business model, so it can persist after the grant that began the project runs out. Read the Poynter article. -- April 24, 2009.

PBS MediaShift has put together a compendium of local watchdog news sites, including a description of the sites like MinnPost and the Arizona Guardian. Take a look at PBS's list. -- April 24, 2009

Umair Haque suggests that the New York Times might save itself by buying Twitter. The Times could use the timeliness of Twitter to disseminate the news. Haque suggests that Twitter offers the newspaper viral distribution, context, relational capital, and the ability to experiment with business models. Read the Harvard Business Publishing post. -- April 24, 2009

Over the next two weeks the Knight Foundation is asking the public to help define communities' news and information needs.  Journalism's biggest foundation is skeptical that communities will have the information they need to be effective citizens in the digital age.  See Knight Foundation press release. -- April 23, 2009

After the close of the Rocky Mountain News, reporters and investors sought to launch InDenverTimes, a news site funded by subscribers. Their goal was to have 50,000 subscribers by April 23, in order to fund their launch in May. As of today, however, the site has enlisted just 3,000 subscribers, causing the site's three investors to reevaluate the project. Some reports have suggested that the investors are withdrawing their support from the project, but the Westword blog suggests that they are simply readjusting their business model. Read the Westword blog post. -- April 23, 2009. 

The Department of Homeland Security has stopped its subscriptions to general-interest publications like The Washington Post, Newsweek and the New York Times. Any future subscriptions will have to have prior approval. The department noted that employees would still be able to keep up with today's news, as these publications offer access to the content online. Read the AP article. -- April 23, 2009

The chairman of the New York Times Company spoke to shareholders today, but revealed no new plans for the future of the newspaper. He admitted that the website does not make enough money to support the newsroom, but offered words of comfort to shareholders that the New York Times will not fail: "It is this commitment to excellence that will get us through this turbulent time," said Arthur Sulzberger Jr.  Read the New York Observer article.  -- April 23, 2009

Eight more hyperlocal community news sites have received funding from J-Lab's New Voices program.  Each will get startup funding of $25,000 -- courtesy of the Knight Foundation -- over two years.  Half of the winning proposals are associated with universities.  Since 2005, New Voices has provided funding for 48 hyperlocal programs.  See the New Voices press release.  -- April 21, 2009

You might know him as an astute -- April 21, 2009 critic writing about film for The New Yorker.  But David Denby writes about other things as well -- including some ideas on how newspapers survive the Internet age.  Read David Denby's letter to the New York Times.  -- April 21, 2009

If newspapers go under, the argument goes, blogs and aggregators will lose the source of much of their news. To assess the validity of that assumption, Daily Kos looked at its "front page" posts for the week of April 6 through April 12, and counted up the sources of their linked items. They found that the plurality came from newspapers, 123 items, but that the newspaper content amounted to only 20 percent of the news items that Daily Kos linked to during the week. Read the Daily Kos post. -- April 17, 2009

Starting today, the Middle East Times is available online only via subscription. The publication, which originally began as a printed weekly based in Cairo, had been publishing its content online for free. The online newspaper expressed regret over the change, but emphasized that a subscription model was necessary. The Times will be publishing more limited content in the next couple of weeks as it reorganizes as a subscription publication. Read the Editors Weblog Post. -- April 17, 2009.

The New York Times has launched a new, customizable widget called "My Headlines." Viewers choose from the New York Times list of sections and features to create their own list of news that appears alongside the other headlines on the Times' homepage. This is the latest in the increasingly customizable world of online news. Read the Editors Weblog Post and the New York Times's My Headlines page. -- April 17, 2009

Peter Scheer discusses the legal factors involved in instituting pay walls for online content, specifically the concept of  "fair use." He argues that the current interpretation of fair use -- which enables people to rewrite the first few paragraphs of a story while maintaining the central ideas, as aggregators often do -- will hurt some new sources more than others. Those that will suffer have news contained in the lead paragraphs, like wire services and major metropolitan dailies. Long-form journalism, such as that practiced by the New Yorker and hyperlocal sites, will fare better under this definition of fair use. Read the Huffington Post blog. -- April 17, 2009.

An editorial in the Los Angeles Times makes the case for a federal shield law to protect journalists from prosecution if they are protecting their confidential sources. Though many states have such a law, the federal government does not currently offer such protections for reporters. The House recently passed a shield law, and the Senate has an alternative on the table. The editorial finds some of the Senate measures, particularly the definition of protected journalists as one who engages in journalism, as superior to the House version. Read the Los Angeles Times editorial. -- April 16, 2009

Jack Shafer at Slate says journalists should stop criticizing the Huffington Post for copying and rewriting their original content. Shafer notes that such antics are a long-established tradition in journalism, from Pulitizer's blatant theft of Hearst's copy to Time Magazine's deft rewriting of the newspapers' news. Aggregation and substantial borrowing are simply part of journalism. Read the Slate article. -- April 16, 2009

Last month, Time Inc. launched a new experiment with Mine, a customizable print magazine. Joshua Benton of the Nieman Journalism Lab reviewed his copy today. Though Benton thought the experiment worthwhile, he was confused by the nearly two-year-old content in the magazine, and was slightly uncomfortable with the adaptions of the Lexus advertisements that funded the project. Read the Nieman Journalism Lab post. -- April 15, 2009.

Even as newspapers around the country close, New York City is getting another daily Spanish-language newspaper, called NY Al Dia. The paper will launch on April 20, and sell for 40 cents at 1,800 locations throughout NYC. The daily is staffed by 13 former employees of Hoy New York, which closed in December. The new newspaper will compete with El Diario/La Prensa, the existing Spanish-language daily in New York. Read the article from Portada. - April 15, 2009.

Clint Reilly worries that media monopolies would endanger the public good that news outlets are supposed to protect. He suggests that, as newspapers consolidate, we impose three methods of oversight over the news media: a council of citizens to monitor the news, incorporating citizens on the newspapers' editorial boards, and a state newspaper regulatory board appointed by the governor. These three mechanisms would serve as a check to ensure that newspapers continue to serve as the public's watchdog. Read Clint Reilly's blog post. -- April 15, 2009

Just as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer experienced a drop in viewership after the newspaper went online only, a finanical newspaper in Finland has seen a similar trend. According to researchers at City University London, when Taloussanomat switched to an online-only format, it initially saw a small uptick in viewership. Five months later, however, the site found that their unique viewers had dropped by 22 percent. Two British newspapers saw their websites' unique viewers increase by significant margins during that same period. The Finnish newspaper has since gained in viewers, in part due to the global economic crisis. Read the Wall Street Journal blog post. -- April 15, 2009.

According to L. Gordon Crovitz in the Wall Street Journal, it isn't just the business models for news that need reevaluating, but journalism itself. Crovitz furthers the thesis of a former Wall Street Journal editor Bernard Kilgore: "It doesn't have to have happened yesterday to be news." During his tenure, Kilgore forced the newspaper to adapt -- by explaining the implications of the financial news for its readers, rather than just reporting yesterday's facts. Crovitz suggests that newspapers today need to adapt to online breaking news in a similar fashion. Read the Wall Street Journal opinion piece. -- April 14, 2009.

Despite the fact that money spent on online advertising is increasing, newspapers have seen a decline in their online ad sales.  Alan Mutter, in his blog Reflections of a Newosaur, has the numbers and cites this lag as the reason that publishers are increasingly looking toward charging for their content. He argues that newpaper sites have to become less like newspapers and instead more interactive hubs of activity to compete for online advertising dollars. Read the blog post here. -- April 14, 2009

Steve Outing writes that instead of threatening Google with legal action or withholding content, news outlets should increase their collaboration with the search company. Outing's argument is that attempting to stop Google from linking to their sites is counterproductive, taking eyeballs away from their original content. Instead, news organizations should be coming up with ways to help Google make more money, by optimizing searches and aggregation. With this collaboration, the news sources could receive a share of the revenue from Google's ad money. Read the blog post from SteveOuting.com. -- April 14, 2009.

Starting Monday, the Washington Times will devote a full print newspage to articles written by members of the community. Each contributor will receive a set of ethics standards and guidelines from the Washington Times, and a former editorial page editor will oversee the content that covers the capital and surrounding suburbs. Read the Washington Times article. -- April 13, 2009

The success of MinnPost, the Voice of San Diego and other recent ventures demonstrate the possibilities of nonprofit journalism. Such sites encourage their readers to become paying members and thereby fund the reporting.  Yet the editor of MinnPost doubts the nonprofit structue could support the newsrooms of the New York Times or other large papers. Additionally, the article notes the dramatic pay cut that journalists face in working for nonprofit news outlets. Read the Salon.com article. -- April 13, 2009

A host of new, hyperlocal news sites have emerged, offering information targeted to a small, specific locality. Sites like EveryBlock, Placeblogger, and Outside.In aggregate information for residents, and some even do their own reporting. Generating revenue for the sites remains a challenge, however, as they inherently speak to a narrow group of people. They must also address concerns of reliability and sustainability as the sources they pull from are going out of business. Read the New York Times article. -- April 13, 2009

The Atlantic is tweaking its online content, shifting some of its resources to breaking news instead of commentary, creating new verticals such as the Politics channel and the Atlantic's Business, and developing its strategy for mobile content. Even as the Atlantic grows and changes, the site is standing by the decision to drop its paywall beginning in January 2008, reporting that gains in digital revenue have helped offset the slowdown in print advertising. Read the paidContent.org article. -- April 8, 2009

A comScore report finds that traditional news outlets have not yet found a way to capitalize on Iphone applications, despite the hope that this could serve as a revenue stream for struggling media. ComScore's survey of the top 25 IPhone applications found only Flixster, an app devoted to movies, under the News category. Many of the top applications were games, a notable number of social networking applications such as Facebook and MySpace. The report demonstrates that, even as more news sources are developing mobile applications, they have yet to generate a significant amount of consumption. Read the Editors Weblog post and the comScore press release. -- April 8, 2009

Many, including Maryland Sen. Benjamin Cardin, have proposed that government assist news outlets that are struggling to survive in today's volatile climate. Yet a recent example of government involvement in reporting has raised questions about the ethics of receiving such funds. The parent company of two Ohio TV news stations is receiving over $3 million to run stories within their broadcasts about the new state-sponsored healthcare program. After these segments, the anchor reads a brief disclaimer that mentions the story's sponsor. Is this enough of a separation between government and journalism? Read the Tulsa World article. -- April 8, 2009.

The New York Times offers a summary on the difficulties of converting a free service to paid.  Coca Cola did it with water, but newspapers are having a harder time convincing consumers to pay for their online content. The debate continues over paid-vs-free online content, with the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times charging for some of their features, while the New York Times and the Los Angeles TImes both reverted to free content after their experimentations with a paywall did not bear fruit. Read New York Times article. -- April 8, 2009

Tim Windsor develops some points he would have liked to see AP Chairman Dean Singleton make when the AP head announced that it might seek legal action against news aggregators. On his wish list: making something better than Google News, creating an online locus for news video, sponsoring curated links and additional ideas for how the AP might be able to adapt to the Internet revolution. Read the Nieman Journalism Lab post. -- April 8, 2009

Alan Murray, the editor of the Wall Street Journal Online, gave the Nieman Journalism Lab his advice for news media that are trying to find a way to monetize their websites. Murray rejects the idea that the WSJ alone is in a position to charge for content. He suggests a mix between free and paid content. He also argues that the most popular online content should not be put behind pay walls; instead, news outlets should charge for materials that attract niche markets. Read the Nieman Journalism Lab article. -- April 8, 2009

Yesterday, Michael Kinsley wrote Washington Post op-ed rejecting the idea of government subsidies for newspapers, suggesting such a newspaper would be sadly compromised by government    involvement.

Conor Clarke counters in the Atlantic that newspapers like the St. Petersburg Times exist as nonprofits without apparent difficulties. He suggests that government must close the gap between what individuals determine as the value of newspapers, and the value that society finds in newspapers. Read the Atlantic article.

Finally, Kinsely responds that, while the Clarke's argument makes sense, it is suspect if not unconstitutional for the government to attempt to influence what people read. He contends, "Preventing you from reading something (censorship) is obviously worse than causing you to read something (via subsidy), but the latter is still troublesome." Read Kinsely's post in the Atlantic.

-- April 7, 2009

The Associated Press, in addition to making waves as it tries to protect its content online, has announced that they will be cutting their rates starting January 2010. Users will also be able to cancel their subscription with one years notice, rather than the current two-year requirement. Read the Editors Weblog post. -- April 7, 2009.

Alexander Macgillivray, a lawyer for Google, wrote in the company's blog a reply to the Associated Press's recent announcement that it will seek legal action against those that use its content without permission. Macgillivray argued that Google does not misappropriate AP's work, but rather brings additional attention to the wire service as well as other newspapers around the country. Macgillivray also pointed out that since Google posts AP articles as part of a partnership with the company, the threat of lawsuits does not pertain to the search engine. Read the Reuters article. -- April 7, 2009

PaidContent.org interviewed the chairman of the Associated Press, Dean Singleton, after the wire service's announcement that it will seek legal action against sites that link to or reproduce its content without permission. Singleton said the company is forming "rules of engagement," but that the entire industry has heretofore been too reticient about protecting their original content. Read the PaidContent.org Interview. -- April 7, 2009

The Associated Press announced Monday that any Web site that uses its content must get AP permission and share revenue with the wire service. Any site that did not comply with these arrangements would face a legal challenge. A variety of online sites use AP content, from search engines like Google and Yahoo News, to news aggregators like the Drudge Report that link to articles, and smaller sites that reproduce the articles in full. Read the New York Times article. -- April 7, 2009.

The Minnesota Newspaper Guild has launched an awareness campaign it hopes will save the Minnestor Star Tribune. Using a Facebook page, YouTube videos, a Web site, and other methods of outreach, the guild hopes to raise awarness that the paper is danger of going under. Read the Editors Weblog post. -- April 7, 2009

Cable providers as well as cable networks are increasingly concerned by the threat of free content online. The fear is that their content will soon be available for free, and networks will have to be funded solely by advertising, like newspapers. One idea is to provide the content online only for cable subscribers, while others are worried that any restriction in online viewing may drive people to piracy and illegal downloads. Read the New York Times article. -- April 7, 2009.

Many have expressed excitement over the new Huffington Post Investigative Journalism Fund, which will support projects in investigative reporting. Others are concerned that the role of the Huffington Post as a funder might bias the journalism towards the left, reflecting the blog's well-known slant. Others doubt that lump-sum journalism is a viable option for the future. In the short-term, it may work, but the long-term sustainability of such funding remains tenuous. Read the Journalism.co.uk article. -- April 6, 2009.

The Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation has given West Virginia University $85,000 to produce multimedia content for rural newspapers. The university's journalism school has begun training rural newspaper staffers to produce video and audio content, as well as blogging and social networking. Read the Charletson Daily Mail article. -- April 6, 2009.

The New York Times has launched a new interactive feature that allows readers to upload their pictures of the economic recession to its Web site. The project is titled PUFFY - photo upload form for you - and had its trial run during the Hudson plane crash. The site now has hundreds of photos, in categories of business, home, transportation and others. Read the Editors Weblog post. -- April 6, 2009.

The Reynolds Journalism Institute is a nonprofit think tank affiliated with the University of Missouri's School of Journalism. The Institute is working to preserve journalism and help journalists make money on their work. One of their first ventures is creating a social networking site that allows solo journalists to connect and collaborate with one another. The Institute is also funding research for a portable, electronic device that would carry the news. The Institute is funded by a grant from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation. Read the AP story. -- April 3, 2009

In The American Journalism Review, Paul Farhi contends that the Associated Press may have hastened the decline of newspapers by providing online carriers with their wire service. Newspapers, which have watched their medium unravel as audiences move online, own the AP. Thus, says Fahri, they have been handing their online competitors the means to challenge their very viability. Read Farhi's article. -- April 3, 2009

Martin Langeveld does the math on charging viewers for online news, and he guesses that newspapers would be facing a net loss in revenue if they imposed pay walls for their content. There is little data on which to base these calculations, so there are a fair amount of assumptions involved in his assessment, but the conclusions are nevertheless noteworthy. Read the Nieman Journalism Lab post. -- April 3, 2009

At The Cable Show, Rupert Murdoch discussed his company's future plans--such as an investment in a four-color Kindle-like device--and dismissed the idea that a closure of the San Francisco Chronicle would be a bad omen for the future. Perhaps most interesting, Murdoch maintained that the New York Times would work well under a pay wall, countering common opinions that the Wall Street Journal is unique among newspapers in consumers' willingness to pay for content. Read paidContent.org post. -- April 3, 2009

Maryland Sen. Benjamin Cardin wrote in today's Washington Post about the reasons he submitted the Newspaper Revitalization Act, a bill to assist newspapers in becoming non-profits. He argues that, while a non-profit structure might not be optimal for some newspapers, many smaller and more local newspapers would benefit from the creation of a IRS category of  "qualified newspaper corporation." Read Cardin's article. -- April 3, 2009

More than 100 Members of Parliament (MPs) have signed a motion that encourages the government to support local journalism, but not the media conglomerates who "have already extracted millions of pounds from their businesses whilst cutting investment in editorial resources." Though the motion does not carry the weight of law, it does indicate that Parliament is unlikely to heed Newpaper Media Alliance's request for governmental assistance. Read the article from the Guardian.  -- April 2, 2009

Editor and Publisher suggests a new profit model for newpapers -- Low-Profit Limited Liability Company, or L3C. An L3C is "a corporation that qualifies as a charity under IRS rules but runs as a for-profit business." An L3C is allowed to take money from charities and nonprofits because it serves a social benefit. The Newspaper Guild is currently lobbying Congress for legislation that would state explicitly that newspapers serve this social benefit. Read the Editor and Publisher article. -- April 2, 2009

InDenverTimes.com, the online subscription news site, may be shy of its goal of 50,000 subscribers by April 23, but it has added six more staffers to the original 30. One-year subscriptions cost $4.99, and the site drew more than 100 subscribers within its first hour. The staffers are volunteering their time until the site goes live on May 4. Read the Editors Weblog post.

In England's northwest, two free monthly newspapers are starting publication. The Bury Independent and the Bolton Independent each will employ local freelance journalists but will have no paid editorial staff. These launchings follow the success of the Cheshire Independent in the region. Read the post from the Editors Weblog.--April 2, 2009

Phil Trounstine and Jerry Roberts assert newspapers are in a death spiral. They contend that there are two ways to save local reporting: most newspapers should abandon national news in favor of local coverage so as to become indispensable to residents; or, they say online businesses like Google and Yahoo might pay local reporters to produce content.  Read the CalBuzz blog post -- April 2, 2009

An article from the Vancouver Sun discusses the limitations of citizen journalism compared to traditional media. For one thing, amateur journalists often produce content on a narrower range of topics, and the sourcing is often more superficial. A Pew Survey also found that bloggers are no more likely to focus on substantive issues, despite their criticism of the mainstream media, and traditional outlets are actually more innovative in the providing interactive online content. Read the Vancouver Sun article. -- April 1, 2009

Eduardo Hauser in a post for the Huffington Post makes his defense of "The Daily Me," the customizable nature of online news. He argues that we have always filtered news according to our interests, and now only the means have changed. The Daily Me might actually increase interest and engagement with the news, which in turn would lead to more informed citizens. Read Hauser's blog post. -- April 1, 2009

Amy Gahran of Poynter Online suggests some of the ways that the news media might be able to use Google Earth street view in their stories. She cites a Taiwanese blogger who created a virtual tour of National Taiwan University's campus. Gahran argues that news organizations could use these kinds of street images to document the damage of natural disasters or explain the current environment. Read her Poynter Online post. -- April 1, 2009

Hewlett Packard has developed a new Web service called MagCloud, which makes it easier and cheaper to produce magazines. The printing costs 20 cents per page, and the producer is charged only if someone orders a magazine. MagCloud hopes to provide service to any niche market magazine. So far, the site is in testing and has produced nearly 300 magazines on topics from food photography to the history of aerospace. Read the New York Times article. -- April 1, 2009

10,000 Words, an interactive site advising journalists on how to incorporate multimedia into their work, has posted a timeline of notable moments in citizen journalism. Among the examples are video taken from the Virginia Tech shooting in April 2007 and Rathergate (the exposure of CBS's use of falsified documents) in 2004. Read the 10,000 Words post.  - March 31, 2009

The University of Minnesota, the student newpaper The Minnesota Daily, and news aggregator NewsCloud have launched the Minnesota Daily Facebook Application. The application will combine traditional journalism and citizen reporting, and seeks to become a hub of community news. Researchers will use the application to test how social networking sites can incorporate news and possibly create a working business model. Read the University of Minnesota press release.-- March 31, 2009

The Grafton Times launched today, covering news from Grafton, Mass. The site is run by Jack Schofield, an Internet entreprenuer who is familiar with online advertising.  Read the Worchester Business Journal article.-- March 31, 2009

The Twin Cities' newspaper, the Star Tribune, will offer premium content to print readers before publishing it online. Editor Nancy Barnes wrote in a column that this move would reward those who purchased a hardcopy of the paper. The Star Tribune will continue to publish breaking news on its Web site free of charge. Read the paidContent.org article. -- March 31, 2009

Glam Media has launched another site that seeks to profit from Twitter and other microblogging platforms. Tinker.com acts as a microblogging filter for events and other breaking news.  Tinker also has widgets so the conversations can be posted on websites or blogs. Read the Venture Beat article. --March 31, 2009

As their newspapers shut down or lay off workers, some former newspaper reporters have joined the ranks of their local public television stations. In Seattle, where the Seattle Public Intelligencer quit printing two weeks ago, 20 journalists now advise KCTS-TV. In St. Louis, the number is 14. Though these journalists are currently working as unpaid advisors, they are helping to provide context to local stories and deepening the local coverage that these stations provide. Read the article in Current. --March 31, 2009

The Bottom Line, a segment on Boston's National Public Radio station, compares the current state of journalism to the technology market, suggesting that we'll see many start-ups in next 10-20 years. Many of those start-ups are funded by foundations, such as the Knight Foundation or the Kaiser Family Foundation. Such ventures include Spot.us, Placeblogger, or Everyblock.com. Listen to or read the Bottom Line story.-- March 31, 2009

Two weeks after the Seattle Post-Intelligencer stopped printing its newspapers and switched to an online-only site, traffic on the site has dropped by 20 percent. About 1.7 million viewers looked at seattlepi.com in January; the number now is closer to 1.3 million. A former Seattle PI reporter via paidContent.org attributes the decline to the dramatic reduction in staff. The Beyond Search blog argues that once the newspaper is gone, marketing the online content has to become the first priority. Read the Beyond Search post and the paidContent.org post. --March 30, 2009

Jack Shafer of Slate questions whether newspapers are really so vital to democracy. He argues that citizens would get their information about government from other venues if newspapers went under. "American newspapers have never been so loved as the moment when they appear to be dying," he writes. Read the Slate article. --March 30, 2009

In a study of 18-30 year-olds, Crawford, Johnson & Northcott found that young people have both a strong interest in local information and a willingness to see such information on their social networking sites. Thus, local news might be able to find a following on Facebook or MySpace that wouldn't normally be a part of their audience. Read the post from Broadcasting and Cable.--March 30, 2009

After the editor of News & Record in Greensboro, N.C., proposed that news sites charge micropayments for users who wish to comment on their stories, the Editor's Desk blog follows up. The media experts interviewed seem skeptical of the idea, which might limit public discourse. At best, they say it would work only for a few online sites. Read the Editors Desk post. -- March 30, 2009

Liberal news blog the Huffington Post is launching a new initiative to fund investigative journalism, called the Huffington Post Investigative Fund. The non-profit news organization will pay journalists for original content, which in turn can be posted anywhere online. The fund will be distinct from the online news site in both legal terms and in editorial content. Read the PressThink blog and Arianna Huffington's announcement. -- March 30, 2009

Twitter is hoping to start turning a profit by offering a premium version of the site for commercial users. The plan remains short on specifics. Some have criticized the site, which reaches 7 million unique users accounding to a Nielson estimate, for being slow to find a profit model. Twitter just hired its first staffer to focus on monetization this month. Read the Editors Weblog Post. -- March 30, 2009

The acting chairman of the FCC, Michael Copps, has said that the agency may need to reevaluate current cross-ownership restrictions in light of the current struggles in traditional media. Copps has not endorsed Nancy Pelosi's suggestion that the restrictions on cross-ownership of media be relaxed, but has indicated he is willing to consider adjusting the rules. Read the Multichannel News article.

Mark Josephson, the CEO of news aggregation site Outside.in, proposes a simple mantra to save newspapers: aggregate, curate, and network. First, newspapers should start to aggregate local content to attract readers with stories that affect their lives. Second, newspapers are uniquely poised to curate the information available online, by supplying their own editorial voice and separating the wheat from the chaff. Finally, newspapers need to partner with local media, blogs, and businesses to generate profits from their work. Read the Business Insider article.