Journalism.uk reporting:
A report looking at the successes and failures of online-only news
websites in Europe has found that most are unable to cover their
operating costs, meaning most survive for less than three
years.
The study,
"Survival is Success", published by the Reuters Institute for
the Study of Journalism (RISJ), suggests that "surviving for more
than a few years is a form of success in itself".
Out of nine start-up news sites analysed in the report, only two,
Mediapart (France) and Perlentaucher (Germany) broke even.
Mediapart is sustained by a paywall system, while Perlentaucher's
low operating costs help its survival, combined with a "highly
diversified business model" the report adds.
The rest of the nine have either shut down, been bought out by news
magazines, or continue to operate at a loss, surviving only on
support from external investors.
The report says there are two main challenges for online-only news
websites:
http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/study-online-only-news-sites-struggling-to-cover-costs-/s2/a548867/
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Spain's iPad Mag, Vis à Vis, Shows Growth, Points to New Path
Mediashift reporting:
In a small office in Alcala Street, in the center of Madrid, a team of seven young entrepreneurial journalists are working overtime to produce the next issue of digital magazine Vis à Vis.
Conceived exclusively for the iPad and launched in January, Vis à Vis is an interactive, visual and modern publication that wants to reinvent journalism.
The first edition of the magazine recorded up to 42,000 downloads. The third edition was released on April 1, and the team's expectations are very high.
"Journalism is going through a phase in which either you undertake your own idea or you have to conform to the reality of market," said Laura Blanco, the magazine's editor in chief.
Together with Ángel Anaya, she holds the reins of this initiative that forged its roots during their first year at college. The seven editorial staff members are between 23 and 25 years old and studied together in the Spanish city of Valencia. After working on a project involving the editing of a print magazine, they decided to launch their own publication online.
"With the emergence of digital platforms, the entire printed press industry started wobbling," Blanco said.
When the iPad appeared on the market, she and her colleagues realized that it would be a suitable platform for a lifestyle magazine, because it could combine quality content with interactive features.
"In August [2011] we reached Madrid with much uncertainty, but with a lot of hope and enthusiasm," Anaya said. He confessed that the magazine is "his creation" and passionately narrated the gestation process of the idea. In the beginning, the group of friends had to rely on family support to fund their project. When they asked for a small bank loan, they were told that they were "too young to take that risk."
In a small office in Alcala Street, in the center of Madrid, a team of seven young entrepreneurial journalists are working overtime to produce the next issue of digital magazine Vis à Vis.
Conceived exclusively for the iPad and launched in January, Vis à Vis is an interactive, visual and modern publication that wants to reinvent journalism.
The first edition of the magazine recorded up to 42,000 downloads. The third edition was released on April 1, and the team's expectations are very high.
"Journalism is going through a phase in which either you undertake your own idea or you have to conform to the reality of market," said Laura Blanco, the magazine's editor in chief.
Together with Ángel Anaya, she holds the reins of this initiative that forged its roots during their first year at college. The seven editorial staff members are between 23 and 25 years old and studied together in the Spanish city of Valencia. After working on a project involving the editing of a print magazine, they decided to launch their own publication online.
"With the emergence of digital platforms, the entire printed press industry started wobbling," Blanco said.
When the iPad appeared on the market, she and her colleagues realized that it would be a suitable platform for a lifestyle magazine, because it could combine quality content with interactive features.
"In August [2011] we reached Madrid with much uncertainty, but with a lot of hope and enthusiasm," Anaya said. He confessed that the magazine is "his creation" and passionately narrated the gestation process of the idea. In the beginning, the group of friends had to rely on family support to fund their project. When they asked for a small bank loan, they were told that they were "too young to take that risk."
"Free Forever"...
... The magazine's content consists of interviews with prominent figures in the areas of sports, television, fashion or gastronomy, presented in a personal "vis à vis" (face to face) setting. "We try to create a special atmosphere with each character. Interviews are always done in a kind of 'petit comité'," Blanco said.
http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u=f32534a334b03264ce60a3732&id=a333c93c90&e=8509319387
Bloomberg Businessweek goes magazine-y on the iPhone
NiemanJournalismLab reporting:
Bloomberg Businessweek is testing a question: How well can magazine content work on the iPhone?
Magazine companies have jumped feet first into the iPad marketplace, attracted to the idea that a lean-back medium like magazines would work well in a lean-back platform like tablets. But they’ve proven less interested in jumping onto iPhones and other smartphones — a target market that, while possibly less magazine-friendly, is also much larger.
The Bloomberg Businessweek+ app crossed that divide with a new version that jumps from the iPad to the iPhone, delivering the same issue-based content in a smaller package.
As on the iPad, Businessweek offers magazine articles, videos, audio interviews, and more; new issues of the magazines are downloaded into the Newsstand. Aside from obligatory design differences, the apps are identical in content; neither offers the regular updating of a daily news app.
The company says the app, which launched this time last year, has gained more than 100,000 subscribers on the iPad. The iPhone version is an attempt at opening up that number a little further...
http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/04/bloomberg-businessweek-goes-magazine-y-on-the-iphone/
Bloomberg Businessweek is testing a question: How well can magazine content work on the iPhone?
Magazine companies have jumped feet first into the iPad marketplace, attracted to the idea that a lean-back medium like magazines would work well in a lean-back platform like tablets. But they’ve proven less interested in jumping onto iPhones and other smartphones — a target market that, while possibly less magazine-friendly, is also much larger.
The Bloomberg Businessweek+ app crossed that divide with a new version that jumps from the iPad to the iPhone, delivering the same issue-based content in a smaller package.
As on the iPad, Businessweek offers magazine articles, videos, audio interviews, and more; new issues of the magazines are downloaded into the Newsstand. Aside from obligatory design differences, the apps are identical in content; neither offers the regular updating of a daily news app.
The company says the app, which launched this time last year, has gained more than 100,000 subscribers on the iPad. The iPhone version is an attempt at opening up that number a little further...
http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/04/bloomberg-businessweek-goes-magazine-y-on-the-iphone/
May 7, 2012, 3:11 p.m. Super Mario Wallpaper Super Mario, cub reporter: Jesse Schell on what the game industry could teach the news industry
NiemanJournalismLab reporting:
Take a look at the video game industry, and it’s hard not to think of journalism.
Both built themselves up by controlling their distribution platforms — whether that meant a game console or a newspaper’s printing press — in ways that made competition difficult, maintained pricing power, and generated lots of profits. And both are now being disrupted by “good enough” new competitors that use more open development platforms (the web, the modern app store), run on carry-everywhere mobile devices, and are much, much cheaper. What The Huffington Post is to your local daily, 99-cent Angry Birds or free-to-start Farmville is to the $59 Playstation console game.
Just as the Internet has fundamentally disrupted how we think about journalism, it has deeply rattled the video game industry. We aren’t just seeing a dramatic change to how games are played — on a platform like Facebook rather than on a single-function console like Nintendo, for example — we’re seeing a shift in who is making games in the first place. Sound familiar?
To start to think about the parallels, I caught up with Jesse Schell, CEO and creative director of Schell Games, who teaches at Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center...
http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/05/super-mario-cub-reporter-jesse-schell-on-what-the-game-industry-could-teach-the-news-industry/?utm_source=Daily+Lab+email+list&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=38f5f51029-DAILY_EMAIL
Take a look at the video game industry, and it’s hard not to think of journalism.
Both built themselves up by controlling their distribution platforms — whether that meant a game console or a newspaper’s printing press — in ways that made competition difficult, maintained pricing power, and generated lots of profits. And both are now being disrupted by “good enough” new competitors that use more open development platforms (the web, the modern app store), run on carry-everywhere mobile devices, and are much, much cheaper. What The Huffington Post is to your local daily, 99-cent Angry Birds or free-to-start Farmville is to the $59 Playstation console game.
Just as the Internet has fundamentally disrupted how we think about journalism, it has deeply rattled the video game industry. We aren’t just seeing a dramatic change to how games are played — on a platform like Facebook rather than on a single-function console like Nintendo, for example — we’re seeing a shift in who is making games in the first place. Sound familiar?
To start to think about the parallels, I caught up with Jesse Schell, CEO and creative director of Schell Games, who teaches at Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center...
http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/05/super-mario-cub-reporter-jesse-schell-on-what-the-game-industry-could-teach-the-news-industry/?utm_source=Daily+Lab+email+list&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=38f5f51029-DAILY_EMAIL
For its 2012 elections coverage, MTV swaps out citizen journalism for gamification
NiemanJournalismLab reporting:
Nearly 17 million Americans have reached voting age in the four years since the last presidential election cycle. This year’s pool of youth voters includes 46 million people in the United States, according to the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. But the youth vote is notoriously elusive.
Even in 2008, when young people turned out in huge numbers and the under-30 vote tipped the scales for Barack Obama in some key swing states, youth turnout still clocked in below the record-high of 55.4 percent in 1972. In the 2010 midterms, turnout among young voters dipped slightly below where it was in 2006. There’s also a significant education gap — 26 percentage points in 2008 — that shows college students vote in much higher numbers than young people not enrolled in college.
Surveyed about why they opt out of voting, eligible youth consistently say that they aren’t interested in politics. Other common explanations for staying away from the ballot box: Being too busy, turned off by political vitriol, or just forgetful.
Taking cues from fantasy football, MTV is partnering with a group of news organizations on a game they hope will engage youth with elective politics. The network has long experimented with ways to engage young voters, but this year it’s trading citizen journalism — in 2008, MTV picked one correspondent in each state and D.C. to cover the presidential race — for a gamification approach to elections coverage.
“Millennials are increasingly viewing life through a game lens, even just [using] #winning or #fail,” Jason Rzepka, MTV’s vice president of public affairs, told me. “Game vernacular has become a part of youth vernacular. By putting that competitive layer on top of it — a lot of people are inherently competitive, so if the path to winning is being informed, there could be a really great civic benefit.”
MTV is using a $250,000 Knight Foundation grant to launch a beta version of Fantasy Election ’12 this summer, with a formal public launch on Sept. 1. Here’s how the game works: Players and their friends sign up to compete against one another in a league. Each player drafts a 12-person team made up of Congressional and presidential candidates. When the candidates on your virtual team do well in real life, you get points. If the candidates on your team are faltering, you have the opportunity to trade them. The game emphasizes mobile — players using smartphones can check stats from their phones, receive push notifications about candidate performance, and check into various campaign-related events from anywhere...
http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/05/for-its-2012-elections-coverage-mtv-swaps-out-citizen-journalism-for-gamification/?utm_source=Daily+Lab+email+list&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=b603bac331-DAILY_EMAIL
Nearly 17 million Americans have reached voting age in the four years since the last presidential election cycle. This year’s pool of youth voters includes 46 million people in the United States, according to the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. But the youth vote is notoriously elusive.
Even in 2008, when young people turned out in huge numbers and the under-30 vote tipped the scales for Barack Obama in some key swing states, youth turnout still clocked in below the record-high of 55.4 percent in 1972. In the 2010 midterms, turnout among young voters dipped slightly below where it was in 2006. There’s also a significant education gap — 26 percentage points in 2008 — that shows college students vote in much higher numbers than young people not enrolled in college.
Surveyed about why they opt out of voting, eligible youth consistently say that they aren’t interested in politics. Other common explanations for staying away from the ballot box: Being too busy, turned off by political vitriol, or just forgetful.
Taking cues from fantasy football, MTV is partnering with a group of news organizations on a game they hope will engage youth with elective politics. The network has long experimented with ways to engage young voters, but this year it’s trading citizen journalism — in 2008, MTV picked one correspondent in each state and D.C. to cover the presidential race — for a gamification approach to elections coverage.
“Millennials are increasingly viewing life through a game lens, even just [using] #winning or #fail,” Jason Rzepka, MTV’s vice president of public affairs, told me. “Game vernacular has become a part of youth vernacular. By putting that competitive layer on top of it — a lot of people are inherently competitive, so if the path to winning is being informed, there could be a really great civic benefit.”
MTV is using a $250,000 Knight Foundation grant to launch a beta version of Fantasy Election ’12 this summer, with a formal public launch on Sept. 1. Here’s how the game works: Players and their friends sign up to compete against one another in a league. Each player drafts a 12-person team made up of Congressional and presidential candidates. When the candidates on your virtual team do well in real life, you get points. If the candidates on your team are faltering, you have the opportunity to trade them. The game emphasizes mobile — players using smartphones can check stats from their phones, receive push notifications about candidate performance, and check into various campaign-related events from anywhere...
http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/05/for-its-2012-elections-coverage-mtv-swaps-out-citizen-journalism-for-gamification/?utm_source=Daily+Lab+email+list&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=b603bac331-DAILY_EMAIL
Coverup at Washington Times
Salon reporting:
During his long career, Arnaud de Borchgrave, a one-time Newsweek correspondent and editor, has earned his share of laurels. Fellow journalist Theodore H. White has called him one of “America’s great foreign correspondents.” “In a job that requires bluff and bravado, he has outrun the best of them,” Esquire gushed in a lengthy profile, which is quoted in de Borchgrave’s official bio. Along the way, he has also racked up some fancy titles, including director of the transnational threats project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
These days, though, de Borchgrave is involved in some less praiseworthy pursuits. Alongside his other activities, the veteran newsman is a columnist for the Washington Times, the influential conservative broadsheet, where he once served as editor in chief. And in a handful of columns over the last year he has lifted passages verbatim, or nearly verbatim, from the Internet and other sources, without attribution — a fact the Washington Times’ leadership tried to sweep under the rug, according to insiders at the paper...
http://www.salon.com/2012/05/17/coverup_at_washington_times/
During his long career, Arnaud de Borchgrave, a one-time Newsweek correspondent and editor, has earned his share of laurels. Fellow journalist Theodore H. White has called him one of “America’s great foreign correspondents.” “In a job that requires bluff and bravado, he has outrun the best of them,” Esquire gushed in a lengthy profile, which is quoted in de Borchgrave’s official bio. Along the way, he has also racked up some fancy titles, including director of the transnational threats project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
These days, though, de Borchgrave is involved in some less praiseworthy pursuits. Alongside his other activities, the veteran newsman is a columnist for the Washington Times, the influential conservative broadsheet, where he once served as editor in chief. And in a handful of columns over the last year he has lifted passages verbatim, or nearly verbatim, from the Internet and other sources, without attribution — a fact the Washington Times’ leadership tried to sweep under the rug, according to insiders at the paper...
http://www.salon.com/2012/05/17/coverup_at_washington_times/
True Confessions Of A Book Lover
Huffpost reporting:
Here's a dirty secret: I like books.
And I mean books, with pages made of real paper. In fact, I like them so much that I used to consider digital publishing a personal threat. I was such a loyal foot soldier in the war of paper vs. platform, that when the Kindle came out, I spent hours researching its burning point to demonstrate the absurdity of Fahrenheit 451 in a world of eReaders. (The "correct" title should be Fahrenheit 361.)
So imagine my surprise when three years later, I, a professed book lover, found myself presenting Tumblr, the microblogging service, as an ideal distribution channel and reading platform for a new fiction magazine.
I overcame my radical devotion to the printed word when I started working at Electric Literature, an indie publisher perhaps best known for being the first fiction magazine to the iPhone and also for tweeting an entire story by Rick Moody.
The fiction in Electric Literature's recently retired quarterly journal was extraordinary on any platform--including paper, though we didn't publish online. I'm now co-editor of our new magazine: Recommended Reading, which is an exclusively digital publication (online and Kindle to start). Why the drastic change to our publishing model? By publishing online, Recommended Reading is easy to share between friends, can be accessed directly through social media, and read on any smartphone. It means we can publish weekly, charge nothing, and more people will read the fiction we believe in.
We live in a culture of distraction: there's TV, Hulu, and Netflix; there's Facebook, Twitter, and OK Cupid; there are all the books you've been planning to read, the stack of New Yorkers on your coffee table, and (hopefully) some fiction journals you've been meaning to get to. Not to mention, if you have an iPhone, just like 100 million other people, all these services are always available and competing for your attention. With the world's largest library at your fingertips, how do you know which page to turn to? Here's where we step into the fray.
Recommended Reading will publish one piece of fiction a week, each curated by the best writers and editors working today...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/benjamin-samuel/true-confessions-of-a-boo_1_b_1467482.html?ref=books
Here's a dirty secret: I like books.
And I mean books, with pages made of real paper. In fact, I like them so much that I used to consider digital publishing a personal threat. I was such a loyal foot soldier in the war of paper vs. platform, that when the Kindle came out, I spent hours researching its burning point to demonstrate the absurdity of Fahrenheit 451 in a world of eReaders. (The "correct" title should be Fahrenheit 361.)
So imagine my surprise when three years later, I, a professed book lover, found myself presenting Tumblr, the microblogging service, as an ideal distribution channel and reading platform for a new fiction magazine.
I overcame my radical devotion to the printed word when I started working at Electric Literature, an indie publisher perhaps best known for being the first fiction magazine to the iPhone and also for tweeting an entire story by Rick Moody.
The fiction in Electric Literature's recently retired quarterly journal was extraordinary on any platform--including paper, though we didn't publish online. I'm now co-editor of our new magazine: Recommended Reading, which is an exclusively digital publication (online and Kindle to start). Why the drastic change to our publishing model? By publishing online, Recommended Reading is easy to share between friends, can be accessed directly through social media, and read on any smartphone. It means we can publish weekly, charge nothing, and more people will read the fiction we believe in.
We live in a culture of distraction: there's TV, Hulu, and Netflix; there's Facebook, Twitter, and OK Cupid; there are all the books you've been planning to read, the stack of New Yorkers on your coffee table, and (hopefully) some fiction journals you've been meaning to get to. Not to mention, if you have an iPhone, just like 100 million other people, all these services are always available and competing for your attention. With the world's largest library at your fingertips, how do you know which page to turn to? Here's where we step into the fray.
Recommended Reading will publish one piece of fiction a week, each curated by the best writers and editors working today...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/benjamin-samuel/true-confessions-of-a-boo_1_b_1467482.html?ref=books
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