Northcliffe creating digi specialists

Northcliffe are about to launch a team of dedicated digital publishers according to this report from Hold the Front page.

A new specialist team is to be created to drive forward the 'thisis' network of more than 200 newspaper companion sites.

adding that

The people who currently manage these sites on a day-to-day basis are based mainly in individual Northcliffe centres and attached to specific titles.
Now their roles are to be brought together in a dedicated digital team of around 15 who will be part of a new division of the company to be called Northcliffe Digital.

A fascinating study of online distribution and collaboration in Kigali

Publishing Kigali Wire

View more documents from Graham Holliday.

Tweet it or sleep on it?

We have all been guilty of it,perhaps me more than many but is it right to live blog or live tweet at events.

The advantageous are all there in giving an audience instantaneous access to what is going on

But here is the downside

Suddenly there is no concept of news values. Only just how many tools can we use to spread the thin story just about as thinly as possible? There is never any thought of "what is this worth?" or "is this a story?"Just keep on spreading.

I would add to that the context and the time out aspect where it is often good as a journalist to reflect on what has been heard or viewed.

It is a battle that journalism has to contend with in this 24 glare that we live under.Getting the balance right is important and maybe it is up to journalists to set the parameters.

Sky closes its unproductive web pages

An interesting decision from Sky yesterday as it revealed that it would be shutting down part of its web site after a review of its online presence.

As Media Guardian reports

The axed websites – money & property, dating, careers, stars, life & style, MyKindaPlace and Monkeyslum – have been hit by the advertising downturn. They account for less than 0.5% of the total inventory on Sky.com, according to the company.

The company says that it will focus instead on its more profitable sites

So why do we go online?

Why do people go online?

Stephen's Lighhouse points to a study called the Rudder Finn Intent index which suggests that

1.more than double the amount of people go on lone to socialize rather than for business or to shop

2.That nearly three quarters of us do it to be part of a community and

3.that 3 of out 5 go online to be able to influence others or express contrasting or opposing fews

Paul Bradshaw on the importance of linking

Paul Bradshaw has done a quick round up of media organisations failure to link directly to the report on social mobility which was published earlier this week.

Why is it important

Firstly, Google will rank a page more highly if it includes more outgoing links.
Secondly, people will return to your site more often if they know they can expect useful links.

As Paul says and I totally agree

So get your act together, please.

My recollections of being online for the first time

Steve Yelvington's post about "When, how, and why did you "go online?" got me thinking back to my first ventures into cyberspace.

The year I think was 1994-95 and I invested in my first home computer,a Time machine made in Blackburn,I do believe.

I remember picking it up and carefully following the instructions on setting up before taking the plunge and setting up an account.

I think that it was turnpike that I went with,I may be wrong it could have been tiscali but I do remember my first explorations into cyberspace,excitedly finding that I could read papers online.(I am pretty sure that the New York Times was one of the first that I found,)

Then setting up an email account and sending my first email,pressing the send button and wondering whether in that short time it had actually gone.

How times change,in more ways than one.I am sure that the net's potential at that time was not realised.We certainly didn't have it at work at that time.

Steve's experiences were quite different he

"went online" years before there was a Web. In the mid-1980s, I got a computer and a 300-bps modem. I discovered a whole world of online conversation. Before long, I was hooked, and within a year I was running my own Citadel bulletin board.

But I do remember what Steve next refers to

Then came a wave of news companies rushing to get online, without stopping to think about how people use the medium. We wound up with shovelware "online editions" -- boring, predictable replicants of printed newspapers that failed to take advantage of any of the Internet's capabilities.
Most newspapers imagine themselves to have moved beyond that stage. I'm not so sure. "Allowing" comments on stories is hardly innovation.

Some reflections on being online and offline

I do worry sometimes whether I spend far too much time online.

I have always been a bit of an information and news junkie.Before the internet came along I would readily devour the newspapers and listen to the news mostly via the radio.

The advent first of the internet and now the technology to keep up instantaneously with information has meant that it is extremely easy to keep oneself wired 24/7 so to speak.

Since I began my journalism degree three years ago,began blogging and more recently got addicted to twitter,it has been increasingly more difficult to draw myself away from being constantly plugged in.

Last week I was away in Cyprus for the week.I took a decision not to take my blackberry,to rarely switch my mobile phone on and to try not to pick up the news.

The first two I kept to,apart from three twitter updates,the latter was I am afraid broken with sojourns to Sky news and buying the Guardian on a couple of occasions.

But I kept to the online policy and after withdrawal pangs in the first 24 hours,I didn't miss it.

On my return it didn't last too long but then I came across this piece from Rob Horning who spent a week on a road trip in Idaho including Yellowstone National Park

I had expected it to be restorative to be out in nature for a while, unplugged, but instead it seemed to throw me into a kind of existential confusion. I had expected that the time away would allow to forget about online sharing and all that, but instead it brought out how much it had been lurking int he background, shaping my social self and the ways I’ve come to stabilize it and even recognize its existence

That all sounded a little bit familiar and he goes on

as I was out hiking, I would think of this dormant blog and wonder how I’ll ever manage to catch up, a nagging thought that filled me with vague, unshakable uneasiness. Being adrift in the natural world had come to feel very unnatural; the serenity seemed like a taunt. This seems to me the inverse of the interconnected feeling I take for granted in the time I spend online, and I understood for the first time why people would do something as inane as Twitter their hikes from their iPhones or something. I tried to feed this anxiety by taking lots of pictures with the idea of sharing them later, but this only aggravated the feeling. I couldn’t possibly take enough pictures. Eventually I had to try the opposite tack and take no pictures at all.

So maybe some time to reflect on this online,sharing,social media society that we inhabit.

Boost for the online Express and Star

Some good news for the local press and for my team.

Internet traffic at Wolverhampton's Express and Star has seen a big rise following Wolves' promotion last Saturday to the Premier League.

According to the paper

the website www.expressandstar.com received more than 600,000 page views – a record since the website was relaunched almost three years ago.
Internet editor Tim Walters said: “The website chronicles a great day for Wolves fans and we are amazed by the huge interest in it.
“The traffic on the website was enormous yesterday and today the levels of interest are being maintained.

Ht-Journalism.co.uk

If newsproviders continue to give away their product-then they simply devalue it

I couldn't agree with the sentiments of Walter Issacson more in his article in Time yesterday.

Issacson argues that the business model is flawed when

Newspapers have more readers than ever. Their content, as well as that of newsmagazines and other producers of traditional journalism, is more popular than ever — even among young people

The problem is that nobody wants to pay.One solution for Issacson is the pay wall one.

Newspapers and magazines traditionally have had three revenue sources: newsstand sales, subscriptions and advertising. The new business model relies only on the last of these. That makeshttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif for a wobbly stool even when the one leg is strong. When it weakens — as countless publishers have seen happen as a result of the recession — the stool can't possibly stand.

But here is another idea

Another group that benefits from free journalism is Internet service providers. They get to charge customers $20 to $30 a month for access to the Web's trove of free content and services.

So why should they not pay to subsidise the model?

John Slattery has some reservations-could this work in the UK where so much news, sport and other content is available free online from the BBC?

But also thinks that this may work

Charging for content forces discipline on journalists: they must produce things that people actually value. I suspect we will find that this necessity is actually liberating. The need to be valued by readers — serving them first and foremost rather than relying solely on advertising revenue — will allow the media once again to set their compass true to what journalism should always be about."

But one thing is for certain.If newspapers continue to give away their content for free,they only devalue the product

It's a mudpit-Ryan Sholin looks at commenting at news sites

Commenting on news stories is still broken. Busted. Stinks. It’s a mudpit. Still

.

That was one of the comments left on Ryan Sholin's site as he continues his investigation into commenting on news sites

He adds that therefore

In short, you can let readers “report as offensive” and ask questions and e-mail to a friend and vote comments up and down and recommend comments all day long, but if there’s not a journalist managing the community — participating in threads, asking and answering questions, and generally continuing the conversation — your comment threads will stay a mudpit, all technology, identity, and registration aside.

So if it is broken how do you fix it?

It has always astounded me that this tool of intercation between journalists and the public is not made much greater use of by the journalistic community.As a blogger I will always when possible respond to comments left on my site,why is it that so many journalists don't follow this lead.Do they read the reaction,have they got time to read the reaction.

If online news is to succeed as being a two way element then this needs to be addressed

Metro struggles with its online content

Is it not rather ironic that Metro International announces that it will not breakeven in 2008 and its third quarter results show losses 69% bigger.

And it's all down to its online operations.

Paid content reports that

So strong in print, Metro International seems unable to find a coherent online money-making proposition and so far this year has lost a total €3.97 million (£3.08 million) from its seven websites in Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, Hungary, Chile, France and Spain. We now can’t rule out site closures: Metro says it’s “actively engaged in a strategic review of its websites to ensure that the product continues to deliver growth

It's web traffic has seen rises but it is unbale to,in its own words

to exploit the sales opportunities for online at a lower cost”.

As Roy Greenslade points out though,

Karen Wall, assistant managing director of Metro in the UK, focussed on good old print, arguing that the free newspaper model was growing