MediaShift
How Digital Marketing Helped \'Avatar\' Break the Box OfficeMon, 08 Feb 2010 15:03:19 -0800 - Do you remember August 21, 2009? Moviegoers in more than 100 IMAX 3-D theaters worldwide watched 16 minutes of footage from a new James Cameron movie. That same day, Ubisoft debuted a trailer for a videogame based on the film, and Mattel unveiled action figures inspired by the film\'s characters. A day earlier, the teaser for the very same film broke a record on Apple.com after beng streamed more than four million times on its first day. August 21 was celebrated as \"Avatar Day.\" Today, it should be remembered as the dawn of the most comprehensive digital marketing campaign ever developed to support a film. Below are the details of four key components of the campaign, each of which are represented by important characters and creatures within \"Avatar.\" The Tree of Souls: Social Media In the film, the Na\'vi believe that the Tree of Souls, a place where the souls and voices of their ancestors rest, was the heart of what connected them to each other. This is also a core idea with social networks, which are often built from relationships rooted in our past. Social networks are frequently tapped for film marketing, and \"Avatar\" successfully built connections and conversation on Facebook (close to 1.3 million fans), MySpace (close to 800,000 friends) and Twitter (over 25,000 followers). According to Sysomos, a social media analytics firm, \"Avatar\" was the most talked about film on Twitter in January 2010. Some of those tweets resulted from a \"Tweet to Listen\" promo that required fans to send a message on Twitter in order to listen to music from the film. \"Avatar\'s\" social media strategy also branched out to YouTube (close to 11 million video views), Flickr (over 1 million photo views) and a TypePad blogging community (close to 4,000 members). The Hometree: Avatar\'s Website The immensity and visual richness of the Hometree on Pandora reflects what\'s been cultivated on the film\'s official website. Visitors have access to more than the standard fare of trailers, images and background materials. The website offers 14 side-scrolling square boxes that showcase many of the digital initiatives that make this movie stand out. Fans have access to the story, character bios, the music, and wallpaper downloads; but they also have opportunities to contribute content and showcase their interest in the film -- including Pandorapedia, a wiki for all things \"Avatar,\" and the previously discussed blogging community (which includes photo caption contests and timeless topics such as \"Why Are Avatar Aliens Blue?\"). And just as humans destroyed the Hometree in pursuit of self-interest and wealth, the film\'s homepage had its own destructive moment in mid-August when fans crashed the site while trying to secure free tickets for \"Avatar Day.\" The Banshee: The AIR Interactive Trailer Avatar\'s interactive trailer soars over previous movie trailers thanks to its integration of social media feeds, and 11 points of interaction that provide viewers with one-click access to each character. (Viewers can simply click on a character in the trailer in order to unlock additional content.) The trailer was built using the Adobe AIR platform, which gives developers flexibility. The result is that fans receive a more exciting experience, similar to that offered by Banshee jumping in the film. The trailer is a moving and frequently refreshed gateway to the film, seemingly alive and fluid the moment it begins. The trailer also includes three options to purchase tickets. Hallelujah Mountains: Augmented Reality In the film, the gravity-defying Hallelujah Mountains challenge perceptions, which is also what augmented reality strives to do by presenting an engaging experience that floats in front of the viewer\'s eyes. Mattel created \"Avatar\" toys that buyers could activate and \"bring to life\" through webcams and special product tags, while Coke Zero produced custom cans that opened up the world of Pandora at AVTR.com. The end result is that \"Avatar\" is now the biggest box office movie of all time (not adjusted for inflation). The movie has eclipsed $2 billion in total ticket sales, driven largely by 3-D revenues and international interest. Cameron has once again orchestrated a cinematic milestone. So did the digital initiatives, awareness drivers and glowing online conversation contribute to this historic success? The goal of any theatrical movie marketing campaign is to get people to head to the theater, plunk down $10 to $15 and grab a seat for two-plus hours. On that front, the entire campaign has been an inredible success. It all started on August 21, 2009, the day that started the campaign and successfully moved millions of people to experience something new and mesmerizingly blue. Since then, moviegoers have felt compelled to tell their friends to see the film. As millions flocked to theaters and clumsily put on their 3-D glasses, they helped bring a now-famous Na\'vi phrase to life: Oel ngati kameie (\"I see you\"). Nick Mendoza is the director of digital communications at Zeno Group. He advises consumer, entertainment and web companies on digital strategy, distribution and engagement. He dreamstreams and is the film correspondent for MediaShift. Follow him on Twitter @NickMendoza.
Do you remember August 21, 2009?
Moviegoers in more than 100 IMAX 3-D theaters worldwide watched 16 minutes of footage from a new James Cameron movie. That same day, Ubisoft debuted a trailer for a videogame based on the film, and Mattel unveiled action figures inspired by the film\'s characters. A day earlier, the teaser for the very same film broke a record on Apple.com after beng streamed more than four million times on its first day. August 21 was celebrated as \"Avatar Day.\" Today, it should be remembered as the dawn of the most comprehensive digital marketing campaign ever developed to support a film. Below are the details of four key components of the campaign, each of which are represented by important characters and creatures within \"Avatar.\"
In the film, the Na\'vi believe that the Tree of Souls, a place where the souls and voices of their ancestors rest, was the heart of what connected them to each other. This is also a core idea with social networks, which are often built from relationships rooted in our past.
Social networks are frequently tapped for film marketing, and \"Avatar\" successfully built connections and conversation on Facebook (close to 1.3 million fans), MySpace (close to 800,000 friends) and Twitter (over 25,000 followers). According to Sysomos, a social media analytics firm, \"Avatar\" was the most talked about film on Twitter in January 2010. Some of those tweets resulted from a \"Tweet to Listen\" promo that required fans to send a message on Twitter in order to listen to music from the film. \"Avatar\'s\" social media strategy also branched out to YouTube (close to 11 million video views), Flickr (over 1 million photo views) and a TypePad blogging community (close to 4,000 members).
The immensity and visual richness of the Hometree on Pandora reflects what\'s been cultivated on the film\'s official website. Visitors have access to more than the standard fare of trailers, images and background materials. The website offers 14 side-scrolling square boxes that showcase many of the digital initiatives that make this movie stand out. Fans have access to the story, character bios, the music, and wallpaper downloads; but they also have opportunities to contribute content and showcase their interest in the film -- including Pandorapedia, a wiki for all things \"Avatar,\" and the previously discussed blogging community (which includes photo caption contests and timeless topics such as \"Why Are Avatar Aliens Blue?\").
And just as humans destroyed the Hometree in pursuit of self-interest and wealth, the film\'s homepage had its own destructive moment in mid-August when fans crashed the site while trying to secure free tickets for \"Avatar Day.\"
Avatar\'s interactive trailer soars over previous movie trailers thanks to its integration of social media feeds, and 11 points of interaction that provide viewers with one-click access to each character. (Viewers can simply click on a character in the trailer in order to unlock additional content.) The trailer was built using the Adobe AIR platform, which gives developers flexibility. The result is that fans receive a more exciting experience, similar to that offered by Banshee jumping in the film. The trailer is a moving and frequently refreshed gateway to the film, seemingly alive and fluid the moment it begins. The trailer also includes three options to purchase tickets.
In the film, the gravity-defying Hallelujah Mountains challenge perceptions, which is also what augmented reality strives to do by presenting an engaging experience that floats in front of the viewer\'s eyes. Mattel created \"Avatar\" toys that buyers could activate and \"bring to life\" through webcams and special product tags, while Coke Zero produced custom cans that opened up the world of Pandora at AVTR.com.
The end result is that \"Avatar\" is now the biggest box office movie of all time (not adjusted for inflation). The movie has eclipsed $2 billion in total ticket sales, driven largely by 3-D revenues and international interest. Cameron has once again orchestrated a cinematic milestone.
So did the digital initiatives, awareness drivers and glowing online conversation contribute to this historic success?
The goal of any theatrical movie marketing campaign is to get people to head to the theater, plunk down $10 to $15 and grab a seat for two-plus hours. On that front, the entire campaign has been an inredible success. It all started on August 21, 2009, the day that started the campaign and successfully moved millions of people to experience something new and mesmerizingly blue. Since then, moviegoers have felt compelled to tell their friends to see the film.
As millions flocked to theaters and clumsily put on their 3-D glasses, they helped bring a now-famous Na\'vi phrase to life: Oel ngati kameie (\"I see you\").
Nick Mendoza is the director of digital communications at Zeno Group. He advises consumer, entertainment and web companies on digital strategy, distribution and engagement. He dreamstreams and is the film correspondent for MediaShift. Follow him on Twitter @NickMendoza.
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Rent vs. Own: The Streaming Music Debate ContinuesFri, 05 Feb 2010 10:00:48 -0800 - The exponential growth of Internet bandwidth combined with the ability to significantly compress digital audio has impacted the music industry in numerous ways, for better and worse. Just as file trading created a massive network of pirated music, the ability to stream audio in real-time has allowed for a number of innovative content distribution and promotion methods. Digital music streaming services have been around for over a decade. Companies such as Rhapsody, Napster, MOG, and We7 have experimented with various business models and user experiences, with mixed results. The traditional streaming model was based on an all-you-can consume subscription offering, occasionally supplemented with a very limited amount of downloads. Adoption has rarely met expectations, and long-term sustainable profit has been elusive for most companies. Now, a new wave of streaming services such as Spotify are emerging. Can they succeed where others have failed? Changing Consumer Behavior The lack of adoption of music steaming services has been attributed to a number of factors. First, a culture of ownership based on decades of purchasing physical media has locked many fans into a set way of thinking about music consumption. There are millions of music fans that correlate paying to owning, not just listening. Then there is the illegal downloads issue. Convincing someone to pay to listen is difficult when they can freely own all the digital files they can find. Recent IFPI numbers estimate that 95 percent of all digital downloads are still illegal. In addition to having to change consumer habits, logistics have also been an obstacle to user adoption of streaming services. For the majority of the past decade, most services were only available via a computer, thus limiting the number of settings and situations in which a subscriber could use the service. Most streaming platforms have now begun releasing iPhone and Blackberry apps, which adds portability into the equation. Until recently, devices were not able to capitalize on the functionality that these services offer, but thanks to 3G and WiFi networks, the bandwidth finally exists to take streaming music almost anywhere. Subscriptions are not the only business model being used to monetize streaming. A number of ad-supported platforms have come and gone, such as imeem, which was purchased by MySpace late 2009. Imeem and similar sites (including MySpace itself) attempted to use the traditional media advertising model: Provide content for free, but surround it with marketing messages. Typically, this took the form of banners, sponsored promotions, and in-stream audio advertising. This model has also proved difficult to sustain long-term, due to the fact that royalties and bandwidth costs often exceed advertising revenue. The New Wave of Streaming Services Currently leading the charge in ad-supported streaming is Spotify. It has combined peer-to-peer streaming technology with in-stream audio advertising. Advertisements also appear on the user interface, raising the likelihood of user engagement. For users who wish to use the streaming service without advertising, and to have the option for higher quality audio, Spotify offers subscriptions in various configurations. Due to licensing issues, Spotify is only available in a handful of European countries. Founder Daniel Ek previously expressed a desire to open in the U.S. by the end of 2009, but did not succeed. As discussed in a recent article on paidContent.org, the barrier to expansion seems to be licensing concerns, one of which is that U.S.-based labels are no longer satisfied with ad-supported free services and are only looking at subscription models. The most recent numbers show Spotify has 250,000 paying subscribers, compared to a free user base of six million. The Path to Profitability Content is key to the success of a streaming site, but adoption is still the ultimate issue. If consumers are focused on owning content, be it physical or digital, paid or illegal, streaming services will continue to have a major uphill battle. In a recent Bob Lefsetz article, he addressed this issue, providing a detailed look at the obstacles standing in the way of mass consumer adoption. He also looked at how other industries have used bundling and focused marketing efforts to influence consumer viewpoints on renting content versus owning. Lefsetz states in his opening sentence that, \"The recorded music business must switch to subscription, it\'s its [sic] only hope of economic survival.\" His rationale for this belief is that iTunes and other a la carte purchase options are a losing battle regarding long-term revenue. Selling music track-by-track may be better than illegal downloads -- but it\'s still a poor economic model. By removing value from the album format (and losing its higher price point), the music industry has allowed customers to spend very little money. This means the business requires a much higher number of transactions to be profitable. Lefsetz argues that by requiring users to pay one amount for massive amounts of music -- essentially bundling content the way the cable companies do -- the music industry is able to charge a much larger amount of people a higher amount of money. In exchange, these customers get all the music they can consume, across any device they want to use. Instead of paying $10 for storing 10 tracks, they can pay the same amount and have access to millions of tracks. The continually dropping cost of bandwidth and massive connectivity available has set the stage for a profitable model in subscription-based services. The biggest challenge is to now convince consumers this is the best method for experiencing music. This job falls to the streaming companies and to the labels and artists that license the music. It also requires that the technology continue to offer more and more choice and convenience. In addition, a massive number of free users must be shown the value of converting to paying for listening, through higher quality audio and an ad-free experience. As with almost everything in the music industry, the optimal streaming business model is still being figured out, but the emerging success of companies such as Spotify is showing a growing level of consumer adoption. Jason Feinberg is the president and founder of On Target Media Group, a music industry online marketing and promotion company. He is responsible for business development, formulation and management of online marketing campaigns, and media relations with over 1,000 websites and media outlets. The company has served clients including Warner Bros. Records, Universal Music Enterprises, EMI, Concord Music Group, Roadrunner Records, and others with an artist roster that includes Har Mar Superstar, Flipper, George Thorogood, Steve Vai, Robben Ford, Chick Corea, and many more. You can follow Jason on Twitter @otmg
The exponential growth of Internet bandwidth combined with the ability to significantly compress digital audio has impacted the music industry in numerous ways, for better and worse. Just as file trading created a massive network of pirated music, the ability to stream audio in real-time has allowed for a number of innovative content distribution and promotion methods.
Digital music streaming services have been around for over a decade. Companies such as Rhapsody, Napster, MOG, and We7 have experimented with various business models and user experiences, with mixed results. The traditional streaming model was based on an all-you-can consume subscription offering, occasionally supplemented with a very limited amount of downloads. Adoption has rarely met expectations, and long-term sustainable profit has been elusive for most companies.
Now, a new wave of streaming services such as Spotify are emerging. Can they succeed where others have failed?
The lack of adoption of music steaming services has been attributed to a number of factors. First, a culture of ownership based on decades of purchasing physical media has locked many fans into a set way of thinking about music consumption. There are millions of music fans that correlate paying to owning, not just listening.
Then there is the illegal downloads issue. Convincing someone to pay to listen is difficult when they can freely own all the digital files they can find. Recent IFPI numbers estimate that 95 percent of all digital downloads are still illegal.
In addition to having to change consumer habits, logistics have also been an obstacle to user adoption of streaming services. For the majority of the past decade, most services were only available via a computer, thus limiting the number of settings and situations in which a subscriber could use the service. Most streaming platforms have now begun releasing iPhone and Blackberry apps, which adds portability into the equation. Until recently, devices were not able to capitalize on the functionality that these services offer, but thanks to 3G and WiFi networks, the bandwidth finally exists to take streaming music almost anywhere.
Subscriptions are not the only business model being used to monetize streaming. A number of ad-supported platforms have come and gone, such as imeem, which was purchased by MySpace late 2009. Imeem and similar sites (including MySpace itself) attempted to use the traditional media advertising model: Provide content for free, but surround it with marketing messages. Typically, this took the form of banners, sponsored promotions, and in-stream audio advertising. This model has also proved difficult to sustain long-term, due to the fact that royalties and bandwidth costs often exceed advertising revenue.
Currently leading the charge in ad-supported streaming is Spotify. It has combined peer-to-peer streaming technology with in-stream audio advertising. Advertisements also appear on the user interface, raising the likelihood of user engagement. For users who wish to use the streaming service without advertising, and to have the option for higher quality audio, Spotify offers subscriptions in various configurations.
Due to licensing issues, Spotify is only available in a handful of European countries. Founder Daniel Ek previously expressed a desire to open in the U.S. by the end of 2009, but did not succeed. As discussed in a recent article on paidContent.org, the barrier to expansion seems to be licensing concerns, one of which is that U.S.-based labels are no longer satisfied with ad-supported free services and are only looking at subscription models. The most recent numbers show Spotify has 250,000 paying subscribers, compared to a free user base of six million.
Content is key to the success of a streaming site, but adoption is still the ultimate issue. If consumers are focused on owning content, be it physical or digital, paid or illegal, streaming services will continue to have a major uphill battle.
In a recent Bob Lefsetz article, he addressed this issue, providing a detailed look at the obstacles standing in the way of mass consumer adoption. He also looked at how other industries have used bundling and focused marketing efforts to influence consumer viewpoints on renting content versus owning. Lefsetz states in his opening sentence that, \"The recorded music business must switch to subscription, it\'s its [sic] only hope of economic survival.\"
His rationale for this belief is that iTunes and other a la carte purchase options are a losing battle regarding long-term revenue. Selling music track-by-track may be better than illegal downloads -- but it\'s still a poor economic model. By removing value from the album format (and losing its higher price point), the music industry has allowed customers to spend very little money. This means the business requires a much higher number of transactions to be profitable.
Lefsetz argues that by requiring users to pay one amount for massive amounts of music -- essentially bundling content the way the cable companies do -- the music industry is able to charge a much larger amount of people a higher amount of money. In exchange, these customers get all the music they can consume, across any device they want to use. Instead of paying $10 for storing 10 tracks, they can pay the same amount and have access to millions of tracks.
The continually dropping cost of bandwidth and massive connectivity available has set the stage for a profitable model in subscription-based services. The biggest challenge is to now convince consumers this is the best method for experiencing music. This job falls to the streaming companies and to the labels and artists that license the music. It also requires that the technology continue to offer more and more choice and convenience. In addition, a massive number of free users must be shown the value of converting to paying for listening, through higher quality audio and an ad-free experience.
As with almost everything in the music industry, the optimal streaming business model is still being figured out, but the emerging success of companies such as Spotify is showing a growing level of consumer adoption.
Jason Feinberg is the president and founder of On Target Media Group, a music industry online marketing and promotion company. He is responsible for business development, formulation and management of online marketing campaigns, and media relations with over 1,000 websites and media outlets. The company has served clients including Warner Bros. Records, Universal Music Enterprises, EMI, Concord Music Group, Roadrunner Records, and others with an artist roster that includes Har Mar Superstar, Flipper, George Thorogood, Steve Vai, Robben Ford, Chick Corea, and many more. You can follow Jason on Twitter @otmg
4 Minute Roundup: Facebook as News Reader; Engadget CommentsFri, 05 Feb 2010 07:35:58 -0800 - This episode of 4MR is brought to you by GoDaddy, helping you set up your own website in a snap with domain name registration, web hosting and 24/7 support. Visit GoDaddy to learn more. Here\'s the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week\'s edition, I look at the rise of Facebook as a place to find news. Hitwise found that Facebook was the #4 referrer of traffic to news sites, after Google, Yahoo, and MSN -- and above Google News. Plus, the tech blog Engadget shut down comments after an influx of trolls, before relenting to open them again. And I ask Just One Question to Google News founder Krishna Bharat, who explains how 9/11 inspired him to create the service. Check it out: 4mrbareaudio2510.mp3 >>> Subscribe to 4MR <<< >>> Subscribe to 4MR via iTunes <<< Background music is \"What the World Needs\" by the The Ukelele Hipster Kings via PodSafe Music Network. Here are some links to related sites and stories mentioned in the podcast: Facebook Largest News Reader? at Hitwise Facebook Could Become World\'s Leading News Reader at ReadWriteWeb Creating Your Personalized News Channel at Facebook blog Is Facebook, Not Google, the Real Global Newspaper? at The Atlantic Facebook helps the news industry, but it\'s no white knight at VentureBeat We\'re turning comments off for a bit in Engadget Comments getting out of hand, Engadget turns them off at AFP Engadget editor - Why I turned off comments at VentureBeat Are Blog Comments Worth It? at Web Worker Daily How Much Blog Would a Blogger Blog If a Blog Chucked Its Comments? at MediaPost Commenting on Engadget - a human\'s guide at Engadget Google News to Publishers - Let\'s Make Love Not War at PBS MediaShift Here\'s a graphical view of the most recent MediaShift survey results. The question was: \"What do you think about Apple\'s iPad?\" Also, be sure to vote in our poll about where you find news online: What\'s your primary source for news discovery online?(polls) Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit. This episode of 4MR is brought to you by GoDaddy, helping you set up your own website in a snap with domain name registration, web hosting and 24/7 support. Visit GoDaddy to learn more.
This episode of 4MR is brought to you by GoDaddy, helping you set up your own website in a snap with domain name registration, web hosting and 24/7 support. Visit GoDaddy to learn more.
Here\'s the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week\'s edition, I look at the rise of Facebook as a place to find news. Hitwise found that Facebook was the #4 referrer of traffic to news sites, after Google, Yahoo, and MSN -- and above Google News. Plus, the tech blog Engadget shut down comments after an influx of trolls, before relenting to open them again. And I ask Just One Question to Google News founder Krishna Bharat, who explains how 9/11 inspired him to create the service.
Check it out:
4mrbareaudio2510.mp3
>>> Subscribe to 4MR <<<
>>> Subscribe to 4MR via iTunes <<<
Background music is \"What the World Needs\" by the The Ukelele Hipster Kings via PodSafe Music Network.
Here are some links to related sites and stories mentioned in the podcast:
Facebook Largest News Reader? at Hitwise
Facebook Could Become World\'s Leading News Reader at ReadWriteWeb
Creating Your Personalized News Channel at Facebook blog
Is Facebook, Not Google, the Real Global Newspaper? at The Atlantic
Facebook helps the news industry, but it\'s no white knight at VentureBeat
We\'re turning comments off for a bit in Engadget
Comments getting out of hand, Engadget turns them off at AFP
Engadget editor - Why I turned off comments at VentureBeat
Are Blog Comments Worth It? at Web Worker Daily
How Much Blog Would a Blogger Blog If a Blog Chucked Its Comments? at MediaPost
Commenting on Engadget - a human\'s guide at Engadget
Google News to Publishers - Let\'s Make Love Not War at PBS MediaShift
Here\'s a graphical view of the most recent MediaShift survey results. The question was: \"What do you think about Apple\'s iPad?\"
Also, be sure to vote in our poll about where you find news online:
What\'s your primary source for news discovery online?(polls)
Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.
Google News to Publishers: Let\'s Make Love Not WarThu, 04 Feb 2010 06:11:43 -0800 - In the view of some traditional media execs, Google is a digital vampire or a parasite or tech tapeworm using someone else\'s content to profit. As that rhetoric heated up in the past year, Google has responded not with equal amounts of invective but with entreaties to help publishers. Google launched Fast Flip to help bring old-style page flipping to the web, promoting higher forms of visual journalism and sharing ad revenues with publishers. Then came Living Stories, a new format for updating stories at one URL, designed in tight collaboration with the New York Times and Washington Post. Google realized old-line media were hurting (and lashing out at them), so they wanted to help. \"Specifically for Google News, we don\'t see publishers as our competitors. We don\'t have a product without their content,\" said Josh Cohen, senior business product manager of Google News. \"There\'s really a symbiotic relationship there. We don\'t have a product without high quality content to index, whether it\'s on Google News or Google overall. So part of it is there\'s interest in making sure that content thrives online. There\'s a balance there of the benefit that we certainly get from being able to index the content, and the benefit we give to publishers in the form of traffic.\" I recently went to Mountain View, Calif., to visit Google headquarters, known as the Googleplex, to talk with Google News creator Krishna Bharat, now a distinguished researcher at Google, as well as Josh Cohen, who was in town from New York. Bharat provided background on the origins of Google News (as well as a peek into its future), while Cohen explained how he is spearheading outreach to publishers. The following is an edited transcript of our chat, as well as video clips. When you first were developing Google News, what did you have in mind? What were your goals? Krishna Bharat: It was in response to September 11 [terrorist attacks]. I was reading news from a bunch of papers all over the web. And I discovered that there was no efficient way to find coverage of the same topic from different sources. To find the same coverage about the Taliban I would have to go to the L.A. Times site and [go to all these sites]. It seemed fundamentally inefficient. That\'s not the way the web was supposed to work. The web was supposed to have a link structure that helped you find content. Part of the problem is that all of this news was fresh. By definition, news is fresh and doesn\'t have links. And if Google is to fulfill its mission to find information efficiently, it occured to me that what I was doing a computer could do. A computer could, in fact, visit all these websites, find the same article, or similar articles, and group them together. I tried it, and it worked. Also, given my background, having grown up in India and read about Western events from there, I knew the diversity of reporting that existed, and certainly different points of view. Especially on this subject [around 9/11], there is a Middle East point of view, a British point of view, an American point of view. Bringing those views together seemed like a good social function. Helping people understand multiple points of view, and hence becoming wiser for it -- whether they agree with it or not -- just understanding there is another point of view is enlightening. Bharat describes how Google tries to serve the user first and then figure out the business model later: How do you measure the success of Google News? Bharat: We look at the number of queries that we impact on web search. I don\'t remember the number now, but it\'s a non-trivial subset. It\'s also a sign of the times, there\'s a lot of interesting stuff going on, a lot of good real-time information. The fact that we are contributing to that, making web search more powerful, and we\'re satisfying user needs, it\'s a sign of success. Besides that, the headline pages we have are a starting point for some people, and they follow the links, and we send traffic to publishers, which is also very satisfying. I remember when Google News first launched, you made a point about saying that there was \"no human intervention\" in creating the site. But humans created the algorithms and have had a lot of intervention in it, right? Bharat: Of course the algorithms don\'t come out of the blue, but that\'s obvious. The interesting thing is that the algorithms aren\'t trying to replace an editor, they\'re trying to assimilate the wisdom of mulitple editors, and say \'statistically, this is the most interesting story right now because more editors have covered this story than any other story.\' That\'s the basis for our ranking. Even in news search, we look at who\'s publishing a story, when it\'s published, but also how big of a story is it. Ultimately, we are aggregating editorial wisdom. I wouldn\'t say at all that this could operate without humans. In fact, everything on the web is a function of human output. People author content, people link to content, people prioritize content. And all of the different algorithms on the web, be it web search or Digg or something else, is drawn from human input. So yes, we draw on human input but the algorithm ultimately decides what leads and what does not lead. Josh, what about in your role working with publishers? How do you measure success? Josh Cohen: If we don\'t have a successful product, then it\'s not going to be all that successful for publishers. The business model we have is a little different. We\'re an aggregator, but we\'re not really a portal. So our focus is to get all that traffic and send it out to publishers. The more that we grow, that means the bigger our traffic hose is from the links that we\'re sending directly to publishers. So if we don\'t have something our users want, everything else falls apart. On the engagement side, we don\'t have any content to offer pubishers -- we don\'t have editors or reporters -- but we have technology and tools. We see publishers taking advantage of the tools we have to make their websites better. Probably the best example today is Google Maps. So many editors will use the open API, embed that into their stories, think of different ways of telling stories online that you can\'t do in a paper. And the last part is monetization, which is a big part of Google\'s business, whether it\'s in display ads or search ads to help them make more money. Cohen talks about the legal issues surrounding Google News, and how Google lets publishers remove their content from indexing: How has Fast Flip gone so far? I know there\'s a revenue split with publishers, are they happy with that? Bharat: Fast Flip was a way to increase engagement and look at new ways to monetize that. When I pick up a magazine, turning the pages is instantaneous. It\'s really fast to turn pages and see a lot of pages rapidly. On the web, things are slow, but they shouldn\'t be slow because we have the technology to make it fast. Loading a page from a top news sites may take 5 to 8 seconds on broadband. If it took you that long to turn the page of a magazine, you wouldn\'t turn many pages. There\'s inertia here, so we\'re decreasing inertia and allowing people to see more content. We made Fast Flip really fast so you can skim through content really rapidly, and in the process encounter a lot more ads, thus making more money for the publisher. When you find something interesting, you spend time on it and click through. So we have a site optimized for skimming, but even the skimming experience is monetizing for the publisher. And are those ads sold as CPM (cost per thousand) ads or CPC (cost-per-click)? Bharat: They\'re CPC ads, but we\'re just starting out with this experiment. Right now we\'re serving the ads, but you could see a situation where a publisher serves the ads. Or you could see a situation where this is premium [pay] content and the idea is to encourage people to buy the content and buy subscriptions. There are any number of ways that this could evolve. The idea was to find out more about user behavior if you made it really fast. And we learned that people look at a lot more content, and a lot more ads. We also found out that the old model of just showing you a title and a snippet [on Google News] does not do justice to certain kinds of content -- very visual content or enterprise journalism that if you don\'t have a sense where it\'s coming from and that the Economist or the Atlantic are behind it, you don\'t appreciate the quality of the content. The title does not do it justice. We\'re observing that a lot of traffic is going to site...
In the view of some traditional media execs, Google is a digital vampire or a parasite or tech tapeworm using someone else\'s content to profit. As that rhetoric heated up in the past year, Google has responded not with equal amounts of invective but with entreaties to help publishers.
Google launched Fast Flip to help bring old-style page flipping to the web, promoting higher forms of visual journalism and sharing ad revenues with publishers. Then came Living Stories, a new format for updating stories at one URL, designed in tight collaboration with the New York Times and Washington Post. Google realized old-line media were hurting (and lashing out at them), so they wanted to help.
\"Specifically for Google News, we don\'t see publishers as our competitors. We don\'t have a product without their content,\" said Josh Cohen, senior business product manager of Google News. \"There\'s really a symbiotic relationship there. We don\'t have a product without high quality content to index, whether it\'s on Google News or Google overall. So part of it is there\'s interest in making sure that content thrives online. There\'s a balance there of the benefit that we certainly get from being able to index the content, and the benefit we give to publishers in the form of traffic.\"
I recently went to Mountain View, Calif., to visit Google headquarters, known as the Googleplex, to talk with Google News creator Krishna Bharat, now a distinguished researcher at Google, as well as Josh Cohen, who was in town from New York. Bharat provided background on the origins of Google News (as well as a peek into its future), while Cohen explained how he is spearheading outreach to publishers. The following is an edited transcript of our chat, as well as video clips.
When you first were developing Google News, what did you have in mind? What were your goals?
Krishna Bharat: It was in response to September 11 [terrorist attacks]. I was reading news from a bunch of papers all over the web. And I discovered that there was no efficient way to find coverage of the same topic from different sources. To find the same coverage about the Taliban I would have to go to the L.A. Times site and [go to all these sites]. It seemed fundamentally inefficient. That\'s not the way the web was supposed to work. The web was supposed to have a link structure that helped you find content.
Part of the problem is that all of this news was fresh. By definition, news is fresh and doesn\'t have links. And if Google is to fulfill its mission to find information efficiently, it occured to me that what I was doing a computer could do. A computer could, in fact, visit all these websites, find the same article, or similar articles, and group them together. I tried it, and it worked.
Also, given my background, having grown up in India and read about Western events from there, I knew the diversity of reporting that existed, and certainly different points of view. Especially on this subject [around 9/11], there is a Middle East point of view, a British point of view, an American point of view. Bringing those views together seemed like a good social function. Helping people understand multiple points of view, and hence becoming wiser for it -- whether they agree with it or not -- just understanding there is another point of view is enlightening.
Bharat describes how Google tries to serve the user first and then figure out the business model later:
How do you measure the success of Google News?
Bharat: We look at the number of queries that we impact on web search. I don\'t remember the number now, but it\'s a non-trivial subset. It\'s also a sign of the times, there\'s a lot of interesting stuff going on, a lot of good real-time information. The fact that we are contributing to that, making web search more powerful, and we\'re satisfying user needs, it\'s a sign of success. Besides that, the headline pages we have are a starting point for some people, and they follow the links, and we send traffic to publishers, which is also very satisfying.
I remember when Google News first launched, you made a point about saying that there was \"no human intervention\" in creating the site. But humans created the algorithms and have had a lot of intervention in it, right?
Bharat: Of course the algorithms don\'t come out of the blue, but that\'s obvious. The interesting thing is that the algorithms aren\'t trying to replace an editor, they\'re trying to assimilate the wisdom of mulitple editors, and say \'statistically, this is the most interesting story right now because more editors have covered this story than any other story.\' That\'s the basis for our ranking. Even in news search, we look at who\'s publishing a story, when it\'s published, but also how big of a story is it. Ultimately, we are aggregating editorial wisdom.
I wouldn\'t say at all that this could operate without humans. In fact, everything on the web is a function of human output. People author content, people link to content, people prioritize content. And all of the different algorithms on the web, be it web search or Digg or something else, is drawn from human input. So yes, we draw on human input but the algorithm ultimately decides what leads and what does not lead.
Josh, what about in your role working with publishers? How do you measure success?
Josh Cohen: If we don\'t have a successful product, then it\'s not going to be all that successful for publishers. The business model we have is a little different. We\'re an aggregator, but we\'re not really a portal. So our focus is to get all that traffic and send it out to publishers. The more that we grow, that means the bigger our traffic hose is from the links that we\'re sending directly to publishers. So if we don\'t have something our users want, everything else falls apart.
On the engagement side, we don\'t have any content to offer pubishers -- we don\'t have editors or reporters -- but we have technology and tools. We see publishers taking advantage of the tools we have to make their websites better. Probably the best example today is Google Maps. So many editors will use the open API, embed that into their stories, think of different ways of telling stories online that you can\'t do in a paper. And the last part is monetization, which is a big part of Google\'s business, whether it\'s in display ads or search ads to help them make more money.
Cohen talks about the legal issues surrounding Google News, and how Google lets publishers remove their content from indexing:
How has Fast Flip gone so far? I know there\'s a revenue split with publishers, are they happy with that?
Bharat: Fast Flip was a way to increase engagement and look at new ways to monetize that. When I pick up a magazine, turning the pages is instantaneous. It\'s really fast to turn pages and see a lot of pages rapidly. On the web, things are slow, but they shouldn\'t be slow because we have the technology to make it fast. Loading a page from a top news sites may take 5 to 8 seconds on broadband. If it took you that long to turn the page of a magazine, you wouldn\'t turn many pages.
There\'s inertia here, so we\'re decreasing inertia and allowing people to see more content. We made Fast Flip really fast so you can skim through content really rapidly, and in the process encounter a lot more ads, thus making more money for the publisher. When you find something interesting, you spend time on it and click through. So we have a site optimized for skimming, but even the skimming experience is monetizing for the publisher.
And are those ads sold as CPM (cost per thousand) ads or CPC (cost-per-click)?
Bharat: They\'re CPC ads, but we\'re just starting out with this experiment. Right now we\'re serving the ads, but you could see a situation where a publisher serves the ads. Or you could see a situation where this is premium [pay] content and the idea is to encourage people to buy the content and buy subscriptions. There are any number of ways that this could evolve. The idea was to find out more about user behavior if you made it really fast. And we learned that people look at a lot more content, and a lot more ads.
We also found out that the old model of just showing you a title and a snippet [on Google News] does not do justice to certain kinds of content -- very visual content or enterprise journalism that if you don\'t have a sense where it\'s coming from and that the Economist or the Atlantic are behind it, you don\'t appreciate the quality of the content. The title does not do it justice. We\'re observing that a lot of traffic is going to site...
Email is Far From DeadTue, 02 Feb 2010 12:24:24 -0800 - For years, the digerati have been declaring the end of email as a useful tool. Back in 2003, experts said RSS feeds would spell the death of the inbox. In 2007, Wired and CNET said younger generations were using IM, Facebook and MySpace instead of email. More recently, PC Magazine\'s John Dvorak proclaimed \"9 Reasons E-mail is Dead,\" and The Wall Street Journal told us \"Why Email No Longer Rules.\" The prognosticators point to the annoyances of spam; the difficulties of getting mass messages through corporate firewalls (and of having them stripped of HTML or graphics); and the fact that overflowing inboxes are causing people to pay less attention to email. It\'s true that media companies -- and isn\'t every company now a media company? -- need to pay attention to important social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. But they shouldn\'t underestimate the power of a well-crafted subject line that lands in front of an email subscriber. Let me give some examples from my own experience, and also provide some data to help bolster my case that email is alive and well. Don\'t Underestimate the Email Newsletter A business associate recently suggested we not devote too much energy to a client\'s email strategy because people are \"overloaded with email.\" But within four weeks of launch, more than five percent of the client\'s website visitors had signed up to receive email communications. The list continues to grow at a fast clip, and I consider the people on it to be among of the site\'s most loyal following. Another recent example came when a representative from a potential sponsor for MediaShift expressed interest in banner ads, but told me they were really keen to learn about opportunities in our email newsletter. They found email to be the most effective means of communicating, according to the representative. \"Email is probably the single most effective marketing communications platform available to publishers today, especially since it already has a high penetration level,\" Chris Sturk, managing editor for the publishing consultancy Mequoda Group, said via email. For a publisher, email ads, which by law require a user\'s permission and are thus more targeted than many other advertising formats, tend to garner a much higher fee on a per-user basis than web ads. They also allow for a level of design and linguistic craft that can be impossible to achieve on social platforms like Twitter and Facebook. I have consistently seen spikes in traffic to websites in the hours and days after email newsletters are sent out. Email allows you to keep messages on your servers, and not have to trust the security and delivery of the social network you\'re sending them through. You can use the data related to open rates (the percentage of those receiving an email who actually open it), clickthroughs from links and bouncebacks (when an email address is no longer valid, for example), and not have to be as concerned with whether your information is secure. Users\' privacy can be better protected with email, as well. \"In business communication with customers, oftentimes a private channel is desired, especially when pertaining to the exchange of money,\" Sturk said. \"Email has this privacy, while social media is mainly public.\" The aggregate numbers, too, show that email is not in decline. The Journal story cited data that found the number of email users grew 21 percent, to 276.9 million people, across the U.S, several European countries, Australia and Brazil from August 2008 to August 2009. Sturk said delivery rates and open rates, meanwhile, remain relatively stable. Social Networks Make Email More Efficient True, Twitter and Facebook and some social bookmarking and sharing sites are climbing up the rankings when it comes to referring traffic to websites. But surveys conducted by the marketing research company Marketing Sherpa find that users of social media consider them venues for personal communication, while 75 percent prefer that companies communicate with them via email. Social media users, in fact, may use email more heavily than others, according to Marketing Sherpa editor Sean Donahue. \"Just look at LinkedIn or Facebook -- how do you set up an account?\" he said. \"With an email address. How do you receive your notifications from those services? Through your email.\" Social networks, as well as other tools like wikis and document sharing services, may also have made emailing more efficient. Collaborators can now more easily find out a project\'s status and access documents as needed without having to send and receive emails for every update. Email may not have the buzz, but it still has a lot of power. If you\'re in the communication business, you ignore it at your peril. Email should still be in your mix if you\'re looking to reach your users in a way that makes them comfortable, lets them communicate with you, and also brings you business benefits. Dorian Benkoil is the sales manager at MediaShift and SVP at Teeming Media, a strategic media consultancy focused on helping digital media content identify and meet business objectives. He has devised strategies, business models and training programs for websites, social media, blog networks, events companies, startups, publications and TV shows. He hosts the TV program \"Naked Media: The Business of Media, Uncovered\" (NakedMedia.org), blogs at MediaFlect.com and http://dorianbenkoil.tumblr.com/, and Tweets @dbenk.
For years, the digerati have been declaring the end of email as a useful tool.
Back in 2003, experts said RSS feeds would spell the death of the inbox. In 2007, Wired and CNET said younger generations were using IM, Facebook and MySpace instead of email. More recently, PC Magazine\'s John Dvorak proclaimed \"9 Reasons E-mail is Dead,\" and The Wall Street Journal told us \"Why Email No Longer Rules.\"
The prognosticators point to the annoyances of spam; the difficulties of getting mass messages through corporate firewalls (and of having them stripped of HTML or graphics); and the fact that overflowing inboxes are causing people to pay less attention to email.
It\'s true that media companies -- and isn\'t every company now a media company? -- need to pay attention to important social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. But they shouldn\'t underestimate the power of a well-crafted subject line that lands in front of an email subscriber.
Let me give some examples from my own experience, and also provide some data to help bolster my case that email is alive and well.
A business associate recently suggested we not devote too much energy to a client\'s email strategy because people are \"overloaded with email.\" But within four weeks of launch, more than five percent of the client\'s website visitors had signed up to receive email communications. The list continues to grow at a fast clip, and I consider the people on it to be among of the site\'s most loyal following.
Another recent example came when a representative from a potential sponsor for MediaShift expressed interest in banner ads, but told me they were really keen to learn about opportunities in our email newsletter. They found email to be the most effective means of communicating, according to the representative.
\"Email is probably the single most effective marketing communications platform available to publishers today, especially since it already has a high penetration level,\" Chris Sturk, managing editor for the publishing consultancy Mequoda Group, said via email.
For a publisher, email ads, which by law require a user\'s permission and are thus more targeted than many other advertising formats, tend to garner a much higher fee on a per-user basis than web ads. They also allow for a level of design and linguistic craft that can be impossible to achieve on social platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
I have consistently seen spikes in traffic to websites in the hours and days after email newsletters are sent out. Email allows you to keep messages on your servers, and not have to trust the security and delivery of the social network you\'re sending them through. You can use the data related to open rates (the percentage of those receiving an email who actually open it), clickthroughs from links and bouncebacks (when an email address is no longer valid, for example), and not have to be as concerned with whether your information is secure. Users\' privacy can be better protected with email, as well.
\"In business communication with customers, oftentimes a private channel is desired, especially when pertaining to the exchange of money,\" Sturk said. \"Email has this privacy, while social media is mainly public.\"
The aggregate numbers, too, show that email is not in decline. The Journal story cited data that found the number of email users grew 21 percent, to 276.9 million people, across the U.S, several European countries, Australia and Brazil from August 2008 to August 2009. Sturk said delivery rates and open rates, meanwhile, remain relatively stable.
True, Twitter and Facebook and some social bookmarking and sharing sites are climbing up the rankings when it comes to referring traffic to websites. But surveys conducted by the marketing research company Marketing Sherpa find that users of social media consider them venues for personal communication, while 75 percent prefer that companies communicate with them via email.
Social media users, in fact, may use email more heavily than others, according to Marketing Sherpa editor Sean Donahue. \"Just look at LinkedIn or Facebook -- how do you set up an account?\" he said. \"With an email address. How do you receive your notifications from those services? Through your email.\"
Social networks, as well as other tools like wikis and document sharing services, may also have made emailing more efficient. Collaborators can now more easily find out a project\'s status and access documents as needed without having to send and receive emails for every update.
Email may not have the buzz, but it still has a lot of power. If you\'re in the communication business, you ignore it at your peril. Email should still be in your mix if you\'re looking to reach your users in a way that makes them comfortable, lets them communicate with you, and also brings you business benefits.
Dorian Benkoil is the sales manager at MediaShift and SVP at Teeming Media, a strategic media consultancy focused on helping digital media content identify and meet business objectives. He has devised strategies, business models and training programs for websites, social media, blog networks, events companies, startups, publications and TV shows. He hosts the TV program \"Naked Media: The Business of Media, Uncovered\" (NakedMedia.org), blogs at MediaFlect.com and http://dorianbenkoil.tumblr.com/, and Tweets @dbenk.
On-Demand Publishing Opens Up Magazine IndustryMon, 01 Feb 2010 13:15:27 -0800 - Publishing a magazine independently used to mean spending a lot of money ordering hundreds or thousands of printed copies, and then hoarding the unsold inventory in dusty boxes in your garage for the next decade. The new pioneers in on-demand magazine publishing hope to save aspiring publishers from this expensive and cluttered fate. Online services that streamline the magazine publishing process are making it possible for anyone who can create digital content -- in the form of a PDF, an RSS feed, or even just text in a word processor -- to shape that content into a print magazine that readers can order online. This process, which is free for publishers to use, enables a wide variety of individuals to enter the magazine market, and might even be a new distribution method for existing publications facing financial difficulties. Moving Beyond the Advertising Model Bruno Bornsztein, founder of the website Curbly.com, is today a magazine publisher thanks to one of these on-demand services. Curbly focuses on interior design and home décor, and while it had become a relatively successful ad-supported site with an active user community, Bornsztein wanted to diversify its offerings. \"There\'s nothing wrong with the advertising model, and it\'s worked well for us in a lot of ways,\" Bornsztein said. \"But it seems unreliable. You never know where advertisers will put their money, especially when you\'re not huge. We wanted to hedge against that, and to explore something where we create content, sell it directly to the readers, and cut out advertisers as the ones paying for the content.\" Bornsztein and a group of the site\'s regular contributors developed a slickly designed PDF booklet of instructions for a selection of home projects, and posted the PDF to the site MagCloud, an on-demand magazine publishing service. The printable PDF can be downloaded from the Curbly site for $9.99, or a printed version can be ordered via MagCloud for $18 plus shipping. MagCloud: Niche Content Direct to Readers MagCloud, an offshoot of HP Labs, is a magazine self-publishing service that allows anyone to post a PDF to its website. People can then order a paper copy of the PDF that\'s only printed when an order is placed, meaning there\'s never excess inventory and no paper is wasted on unwanted copies. The cost to a publisher for the MagCloud service is zero, and publishers receive whatever markup they choose to charge beyond the base cost of 20 cents per page that MagCloud charges the buyer. As a magazine publisher himself, Derek Powazek -- a consultant who works with the MagCloud team and holds the title \"Chief of Awesome\" to cover his varying duties -- wanted to help other aspiring publishers accomplish their print projects with minimum effort and investment, while also streamlining the distribution process. \"There are a lot of people online who have audiences and content, but have never published anything in print because they thought it would be too hard,\" Powazek said. Powazek calls MagCloud an \"elegant solution\" to the basic problems of magazine publishing, including the expense and waste of copies that are never purchased or read. Publishers can also locate advertisers for their MagCloud publications, and MagCloud is developing strategies for helping publishers connect with advertisers through the service. Bornsztein said Curbly had a good response to its print endeavor, and he and his collaborators will continue creating on-demand magazines, with the next project slated for March 2010. He said the MagCloud service is good for \"really niche content targeted at a certain group of people that wouldn\'t be financially viable to a larger organization; but for someone small, it\'s possible. People can get served with good quality content by the people producing the content.\" Printcasting: Ease of Use for Diverse Publishers A similar service is offered by Printcasting, a project initially created through a Knight News Challenge grant. Printcasting has its roots in Bakersfield, Calif., but is now increasingly an international enterprise. Printcasting takes any RSS feed and uses web design frameworks to lay out a formatted document that a publisher can print and distribute. It\'s also possible to copy and paste text into the Printcasting interface and manipulate its layout. Because no PDF is required, the Printcasting production method is somewhat simpler for novice publishers, or those without design software. Dan Pacheco, who blogs for Idea Lab, MediaShift\'s sister site, is the founder of Printcasting. Pacheco said over 500 publishers have used the site to create over 2,000 Printcasting editions. The Printcasting project was initially intended to attract \"grassroots\" publishers who would create local publications and work with local advertisers to make their publications profitable. However, although many local publications have been created with Printcasting, the concept also appeals to larger-scale publishers. \"Printcasting is built for anyone to be able to use it, but we keep getting calls from large companies and organizations,\" Pacheco said. \"It\'s supposed to democratize the print publishing process, but [these larger groups] can also use it internally to lower their costs in terms of publishing.\" As the technology attracts larger customers, it\'s also moving towards some of the least accessible audiences in the world. Pacheco described the interest Printcasting has attracted in Latin America, where newspapers could begin using the service to combine national news with small-town news from hard-to-reach rural locales. They would then print geographically targeted editions for each locale. \"They can\'t deliver newspapers to little towns up in the mountains, but people have broadband access, so newspapers could use them for distribution,\" Pacheco said. \"They would use Printcasting to write about things that are super hyper-local, and combine them with content from the newspaper.\" Integrating Advertisers Printcasting is also considering new ways to integrate advertising into local publications. Pacheco said it\'s been difficult to recruit small businesses to advertise in Printcasting products in the current economy. One approach might be to have advertisers pay only when an ad accomplishes its goal of generating new business. \"For example, we could put an 800 number or a URL in the ad, [or] some kind of action that the reader performs, and then the advertiser pays because they have a new customer,\" Pacheco said. Whatever the business model, these evolving online tools for magazine publishing mean new publishers of all sizes have a choice of strategies for their projects -- and established magazines might also find fresh life through on-demand publishing. These online services can enrich and diversify the world of print, rather than threaten it. \"I don\'t think that computers and the Internet make real people\'s need for real physical media go away,\" said Powazek of MagCloud. \"There\'s content that deserves to be archived in print and some that doesn\'t. For moment to moment updates about news, the web does that really well, but longer-lasting community-based niche content will still have a home in print. I hope that some magazines that have fallen on hard times will find their way to MagCloud and publish their whole back catalog there.\" Susan Currie Sivek, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Mass Communication and Journalism Department at California State University, Fresno. Her research focuses on magazines and media communities. She also blogs at sivekmedia.com, and is the magazine correspondent for MediaShift.
Publishing a magazine independently used to mean spending a lot of money ordering hundreds or thousands of printed copies, and then hoarding the unsold inventory in dusty boxes in your garage for the next decade.
The new pioneers in on-demand magazine publishing hope to save aspiring publishers from this expensive and cluttered fate.
Online services that streamline the magazine publishing process are making it possible for anyone who can create digital content -- in the form of a PDF, an RSS feed, or even just text in a word processor -- to shape that content into a print magazine that readers can order online. This process, which is free for publishers to use, enables a wide variety of individuals to enter the magazine market, and might even be a new distribution method for existing publications facing financial difficulties.
Bruno Bornsztein, founder of the website Curbly.com, is today a magazine publisher thanks to one of these on-demand services. Curbly focuses on interior design and home décor, and while it had become a relatively successful ad-supported site with an active user community, Bornsztein wanted to diversify its offerings.
\"There\'s nothing wrong with the advertising model, and it\'s worked well for us in a lot of ways,\" Bornsztein said. \"But it seems unreliable. You never know where advertisers will put their money, especially when you\'re not huge. We wanted to hedge against that, and to explore something where we create content, sell it directly to the readers, and cut out advertisers as the ones paying for the content.\"
Bornsztein and a group of the site\'s regular contributors developed a slickly designed PDF booklet of instructions for a selection of home projects, and posted the PDF to the site MagCloud, an on-demand magazine publishing service. The printable PDF can be downloaded from the Curbly site for $9.99, or a printed version can be ordered via MagCloud for $18 plus shipping.
MagCloud, an offshoot of HP Labs, is a magazine self-publishing service that allows anyone to post a PDF to its website. People can then order a paper copy of the PDF that\'s only printed when an order is placed, meaning there\'s never excess inventory and no paper is wasted on unwanted copies.
The cost to a publisher for the MagCloud service is zero, and publishers receive whatever markup they choose to charge beyond the base cost of 20 cents per page that MagCloud charges the buyer.
As a magazine publisher himself, Derek Powazek -- a consultant who works with the MagCloud team and holds the title \"Chief of Awesome\" to cover his varying duties -- wanted to help other aspiring publishers accomplish their print projects with minimum effort and investment, while also streamlining the distribution process.
\"There are a lot of people online who have audiences and content, but have never published anything in print because they thought it would be too hard,\" Powazek said.
Powazek calls MagCloud an \"elegant solution\" to the basic problems of magazine publishing, including the expense and waste of copies that are never purchased or read. Publishers can also locate advertisers for their MagCloud publications, and MagCloud is developing strategies for helping publishers connect with advertisers through the service.
Bornsztein said Curbly had a good response to its print endeavor, and he and his collaborators will continue creating on-demand magazines, with the next project slated for March 2010. He said the MagCloud service is good for \"really niche content targeted at a certain group of people that wouldn\'t be financially viable to a larger organization; but for someone small, it\'s possible. People can get served with good quality content by the people producing the content.\"
A similar service is offered by Printcasting, a project initially created through a Knight News Challenge grant. Printcasting has its roots in Bakersfield, Calif., but is now increasingly an international enterprise. Printcasting takes any RSS feed and uses web design frameworks to lay out a formatted document that a publisher can print and distribute. It\'s also possible to copy and paste text into the Printcasting interface and manipulate its layout. Because no PDF is required, the Printcasting production method is somewhat simpler for novice publishers, or those without design software.
Dan Pacheco, who blogs for Idea Lab, MediaShift\'s sister site, is the founder of Printcasting. Pacheco said over 500 publishers have used the site to create over 2,000 Printcasting editions. The Printcasting project was initially intended to attract \"grassroots\" publishers who would create local publications and work with local advertisers to make their publications profitable. However, although many local publications have been created with Printcasting, the concept also appeals to larger-scale publishers.
\"Printcasting is built for anyone to be able to use it, but we keep getting calls from large companies and organizations,\" Pacheco said. \"It\'s supposed to democratize the print publishing process, but [these larger groups] can also use it internally to lower their costs in terms of publishing.\"
As the technology attracts larger customers, it\'s also moving towards some of the least accessible audiences in the world. Pacheco described the interest Printcasting has attracted in Latin America, where newspapers could begin using the service to combine national news with small-town news from hard-to-reach rural locales. They would then print geographically targeted editions for each locale.
\"They can\'t deliver newspapers to little towns up in the mountains, but people have broadband access, so newspapers could use them for distribution,\" Pacheco said. \"They would use Printcasting to write about things that are super hyper-local, and combine them with content from the newspaper.\"
Printcasting is also considering new ways to integrate advertising into local publications. Pacheco said it\'s been difficult to recruit small businesses to advertise in Printcasting products in the current economy. One approach might be to have advertisers pay only when an ad accomplishes its goal of generating new business.
\"For example, we could put an 800 number or a URL in the ad, [or] some kind of action that the reader performs, and then the advertiser pays because they have a new customer,\" Pacheco said.
Whatever the business model, these evolving online tools for magazine publishing mean new publishers of all sizes have a choice of strategies for their projects -- and established magazines might also find fresh life through on-demand publishing. These online services can enrich and diversify the world of print, rather than threaten it.
\"I don\'t think that computers and the Internet make real people\'s need for real physical media go away,\" said Powazek of MagCloud. \"There\'s content that deserves to be archived in print and some that doesn\'t. For moment to moment updates about news, the web does that really well, but longer-lasting community-based niche content will still have a home in print. I hope that some magazines that have fallen on hard times will find their way to MagCloud and publish their whole back catalog there.\"
Susan Currie Sivek, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Mass Communication and Journalism Department at California State University, Fresno. Her research focuses on magazines and media communities. She also blogs at sivekmedia.com, and is the magazine correspondent for MediaShift.
4 Minute Roundup: iPad Mania; Yelp Scores $100 MillionFri, 29 Jan 2010 15:50:21 -0800 - This episode of 4MR is brought to you by GoDaddy, helping you set up your own website in a snap with domain name registration, web hosting and 24/7 support. Visit GoDaddy to learn more. Here\'s the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week\'s edition, I look at the hype and reality around the latest device from Apple, the iPad. While some have slammed it for what it\'s missing, it\'s too early to tell how media companies might use it to sell their content. Plus, Yelp gets up to $100 million from Elevation Partners, helping some employees cash out without an IPO. And I ask Just One Question to Google News\' Josh Cohen about whether Google should have started working with publishers sooner. Check it out: 4mrbareaudio12910.mp3 >>> Subscribe to 4MR <<< >>> Subscribe to 4MR via iTunes <<< Background music is \"What the World Needs\" by the The Ukelele Hipster Kings via PodSafe Music Network. Here are some links to related sites and stories mentioned in the podcast: 8 Things That Suck About the iPad at Gizmodo The Anti-Hype - Why Apple\'s iPad Disappoints at Mashable The Apple iPad - First Impressions at NY Times Can iPad save media? Skeptics weigh in at Reflections of a Newsosaur Debating the merits of Apple\'s iPad at News.com Can Apple\'s iPad Save the Media After All? at Wired Epicenter Taking A Deeper Look At Media\'s Appetite For The iPad at PaidContent Does Apple\'s IPad Take a Bite Out of Web Advertising? at AdAge The iPad Is a Multimedia Device. So Where Are the Media? Be Patient. at MediaMemo Will the iPad Help Media? Possibly. Save Media? No. at GigaOm Elevation Partners giving Yelp a boost at SF Chronicle Yelp Taking Big Investment From Elevation Partners at TechCrunch Yelp Gets Up to $100 Million From Elevation Partners at BusinessWeek Three\'s A Trend - First Facebook, Then Zynga, Now Yelp at WSJ Google Now Collecting Local Reviews From Non-Traditional Sources at Search Engine Land Google Maps Now Adding Reviews from News Sites, Hyperlocal Blogs and Other Non Traditional Review Sources at Understanding Google Maps Here\'s a graphical view of the most recent MediaShift survey results. The question was: \"What do you think about Google\'s intent to run an uncensored site in China?\" Also, be sure to vote in our poll about the iPad: What do you think about the Apple iPad?(poll) Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit. This episode of 4MR is brought to you by GoDaddy, helping you set up your own website in a snap with domain name registration, web hosting and 24/7 support. Visit GoDaddy to learn more.
Here\'s the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week\'s edition, I look at the hype and reality around the latest device from Apple, the iPad. While some have slammed it for what it\'s missing, it\'s too early to tell how media companies might use it to sell their content. Plus, Yelp gets up to $100 million from Elevation Partners, helping some employees cash out without an IPO. And I ask Just One Question to Google News\' Josh Cohen about whether Google should have started working with publishers sooner.
4mrbareaudio12910.mp3
8 Things That Suck About the iPad at Gizmodo
The Anti-Hype - Why Apple\'s iPad Disappoints at Mashable
The Apple iPad - First Impressions at NY Times
Can iPad save media? Skeptics weigh in at Reflections of a Newsosaur
Debating the merits of Apple\'s iPad at News.com
Can Apple\'s iPad Save the Media After All? at Wired Epicenter
Taking A Deeper Look At Media\'s Appetite For The iPad at PaidContent
Does Apple\'s IPad Take a Bite Out of Web Advertising? at AdAge
The iPad Is a Multimedia Device. So Where Are the Media? Be Patient. at MediaMemo
Will the iPad Help Media? Possibly. Save Media? No. at GigaOm
Elevation Partners giving Yelp a boost at SF Chronicle
Yelp Taking Big Investment From Elevation Partners at TechCrunch
Yelp Gets Up to $100 Million From Elevation Partners at BusinessWeek
Three\'s A Trend - First Facebook, Then Zynga, Now Yelp at WSJ
Google Now Collecting Local Reviews From Non-Traditional Sources at Search Engine Land
Google Maps Now Adding Reviews from News Sites, Hyperlocal Blogs and Other Non Traditional Review Sources at Understanding Google Maps
Here\'s a graphical view of the most recent MediaShift survey results. The question was: \"What do you think about Google\'s intent to run an uncensored site in China?\"
Also, be sure to vote in our poll about the iPad:
What do you think about the Apple iPad?(poll)
GlobalPost Expands Partnerships, Struggles with Pay ServiceFri, 29 Jan 2010 09:35:09 -0800 - A year ago, GlobalPost launched online with an ambitious mission to \"redefine international news for the digital age...with a decidedly American voice.\" The idea was to hire freelance stringers around the world to report back to the U.S., and thereby fill the gap left by the closure of traditional media\'s foreign bureaus. While the site has forged important partnerships with CBS News and others, its hybrid business model of online sponsorships and a paid premium service has been slow to gain traction. When I spoke to GlobalPost CEO Phil Balboni last year, he was confident that an online-only news operation could be leaner than a legacy one. \"We can do it on the web, where we can reach our audience very inexpensively and [we\'ve developed] a business model that allows us to be profitable without having to jump over the moon,\" he told me. One year later, Balboni said he is proud of the work done by the army of GlobalPost correspondents in 50 countries, including World of Trouble, a massive report on the global economic crisis that included work from 20 correspondents. The site also broke the story that U.S. military aid to Afghanistan was helping enrich the Taliban. \"I think we succeeded in our first year by bringing back great international coverage, with extraordinary reporting,\" Balboni said. \"We now have a legion of freelancers, and have had 4 million unique visitors in all of 2009. Our goal was to hit 600,000 monthly visitors to our site, and we exceeded that with 750,000 visitors last November, and 618,000 visitors in December.\" Balboni was also happy with the growing number of syndication partners for GlobalPost\'s content. Last September, GlobalPost announced a partnership with CBS News that has brought in more exposure and pay for its correspondents, some of whom have been featured on the \"CBS Evening News.\" Not only did Balboni promise to be a non-partisan outlet, he delivered with partnerships with outlets across the political spectrum, from Huffington Post to Reuters to Newsmax. GlobalPost headlines are even featured on Fox News commentator Bill O\'Reilly\'s home page. Seth Kugel, a GlobalPost correspondent based in Brazil, told me the CBS News partnership paid dividends for him. \"I have made a decent amount of money from the partnership with CBS, which shows that they are being pro-active about getting us opportunities with their partners,\" Kugel told me via email. \"I really feel GlobalPost understands reporters and does everything they can to support us, within their limited means.\" Business Model Challenges While the site has established itself as a player in the news business in its first year, it has also struggled to bring in steady revenues from its premium Passport service, which has just 400 subscribers. The site initially planned to charge $199 per year for access to special content from correspondents and inside information. The price is now down to $99 per year, with a discounted $50 rate for seniors or academics. Balboni told me Passport members especially liked being included in the story-making process via a feature called \"Foreign Desk\" that allows them to suggest topics and story ideas to editors. But he also said GlobalPost did not meet its revenue goals in its first year, hitting the same wall as other media companies during the economic meltdown. Balboni said GlobalPost is revamping Passport and will announce something on that front in the spring. So far, Balboni said advertising is bringing in about 70 percent of revenues, with syndication deals and Passport bringing in 30 percent. He hopes the split will move closer to a more ideal 50/50. \"The less dependent we are on ads, the better,\" he said. Steve Safran, editor in chief of Lost Remote, has worked with Balboni in the past as a consultant to GlobalPost and at Balboni\'s previous venture, the New England Cable News network. Safran says Balboni succeeded in establishing GlobalPost as a respected news site. \"GlobalPost has had a successful first year by any measure,\" Safran told me via email. \"I dare say that this, its second year, will be even more critical. This is when we\'ll see if the the site and its reporting can keep growing to a point where it\'s clear whether this is a successful business model.\" Alan Mutter, a media consultant and Newsosaur blogger, was also impressed with the ambition, scope and seriousness of GlobalPost, but took issue with the tone and content. \"The work typically is solid, but often prosaic and seldom distinguished,\" Mutter said via email. \"You can get more up-to-the-minute news at Google News and many of the articles seem to lack the political, economic and strategic insight that characterizes the best of foreign reporting...I suspect they will get better and find their voice as time goes on.\" Support for Correspondents One of the challenges for GlobalPost is keeping its corps of freelance correspondents happy. The correspondents receive stock options in GlobalPost, as well as about $1,000 per month to produce one 800-word reported piece per week in addition to blog-like \"Notebook\" entries. That pay is not nearly enough to cover living expenses for most correspondents, who must field other full-time or freelance gigs to survive. Jean MacKenzie is the GlobalPost correspondent in Afghanistan who broke the story on U.S. aid going to the Taliban. She told me via email that the exposure she\'s received while being a correspondent for GlobalPost has been satisfying. But she had to run an NGO that trains journalists in Kabul in order to make enough money. \"I have relished being a reporter again, and I believe that having to produce my own stories has made me a better trainer as well,\" she said. \"The downside, of course, is the lack of adequate financial compensation, which keeps me from being able to devote as much time as I would like. In order to live and work in Kabul, which is a surprisingly expensive environment, I have to have a full-time job in addition to GlobalPost. That makes things a bit frustrating, since I sometimes cannot get as deeply into the story as I would otherwise.\" Kugel, the Brazil correspondent, also has to juggle other freelance writing work with his GlobalPost reporting. Kugel said he would appreciate getting paid more, though he\'s thankful that the company has covered some expenses, in addition to the extra work for CBS News. \"Of course, I would like to be paid more, and there have been times where I\'ve put in many days on a story and realized that my hourly pay was something god-awful,\" he said. \"But most stories are not like that, and these days [GlobalPost] has gotten much more flexible about allowing us to do major projects that pay more, and give us expenses to work with...I should note that no one can live off what GlobalPost pays, but that is part of the model: we\'re freelancers that devote ourselves part-time to GlobalPost.\" David Carr, media reporter for the New York Times, is amazed by the diversity and quality of the content at GlobalPost, but worries that correspondents who come from legacy media backgrounds might not be able to pass the torch to a new generation of seasoned reporters. \"Many of the best people who file on GlobalPost are correspondents who gained years or even decades of experience while living in far-flung lands on the nickel of MSM outlets,\" Carr told me via email. \"Those operations now find themselves in reduced circumstances and as a result have cut their global news efforts and the people who make it happen...I\'m thrilled to still be reading the work of many of them, but once that generation of talent that was sustained and educated under an old media paradigm peters out, where will the talent come from?\" While GlobalPost has done a good job establishing its credentials as a serious, non-partisan news organization, it still has work to do in exploit...
A year ago, GlobalPost launched online with an ambitious mission to \"redefine international news for the digital age...with a decidedly American voice.\" The idea was to hire freelance stringers around the world to report back to the U.S., and thereby fill the gap left by the closure of traditional media\'s foreign bureaus. While the site has forged important partnerships with CBS News and others, its hybrid business model of online sponsorships and a paid premium service has been slow to gain traction.
When I spoke to GlobalPost CEO Phil Balboni last year, he was confident that an online-only news operation could be leaner than a legacy one. \"We can do it on the web, where we can reach our audience very inexpensively and [we\'ve developed] a business model that allows us to be profitable without having to jump over the moon,\" he told me.
One year later, Balboni said he is proud of the work done by the army of GlobalPost correspondents in 50 countries, including World of Trouble, a massive report on the global economic crisis that included work from 20 correspondents. The site also broke the story that U.S. military aid to Afghanistan was helping enrich the Taliban.
\"I think we succeeded in our first year by bringing back great international coverage, with extraordinary reporting,\" Balboni said. \"We now have a legion of freelancers, and have had 4 million unique visitors in all of 2009. Our goal was to hit 600,000 monthly visitors to our site, and we exceeded that with 750,000 visitors last November, and 618,000 visitors in December.\"
Balboni was also happy with the growing number of syndication partners for GlobalPost\'s content. Last September, GlobalPost announced a partnership with CBS News that has brought in more exposure and pay for its correspondents, some of whom have been featured on the \"CBS Evening News.\" Not only did Balboni promise to be a non-partisan outlet, he delivered with partnerships with outlets across the political spectrum, from Huffington Post to Reuters to Newsmax. GlobalPost headlines are even featured on Fox News commentator Bill O\'Reilly\'s home page.
Seth Kugel, a GlobalPost correspondent based in Brazil, told me the CBS News partnership paid dividends for him.
\"I have made a decent amount of money from the partnership with CBS, which shows that they are being pro-active about getting us opportunities with their partners,\" Kugel told me via email. \"I really feel GlobalPost understands reporters and does everything they can to support us, within their limited means.\"
While the site has established itself as a player in the news business in its first year, it has also struggled to bring in steady revenues from its premium Passport service, which has just 400 subscribers. The site initially planned to charge $199 per year for access to special content from correspondents and inside information. The price is now down to $99 per year, with a discounted $50 rate for seniors or academics.
Balboni told me Passport members especially liked being included in the story-making process via a feature called \"Foreign Desk\" that allows them to suggest topics and story ideas to editors. But he also said GlobalPost did not meet its revenue goals in its first year, hitting the same wall as other media companies during the economic meltdown. Balboni said GlobalPost is revamping Passport and will announce something on that front in the spring.
So far, Balboni said advertising is bringing in about 70 percent of revenues, with syndication deals and Passport bringing in 30 percent. He hopes the split will move closer to a more ideal 50/50. \"The less dependent we are on ads, the better,\" he said.
Steve Safran, editor in chief of Lost Remote, has worked with Balboni in the past as a consultant to GlobalPost and at Balboni\'s previous venture, the New England Cable News network. Safran says Balboni succeeded in establishing GlobalPost as a respected news site.
\"GlobalPost has had a successful first year by any measure,\" Safran told me via email. \"I dare say that this, its second year, will be even more critical. This is when we\'ll see if the the site and its reporting can keep growing to a point where it\'s clear whether this is a successful business model.\"
Alan Mutter, a media consultant and Newsosaur blogger, was also impressed with the ambition, scope and seriousness of GlobalPost, but took issue with the tone and content.
\"The work typically is solid, but often prosaic and seldom distinguished,\" Mutter said via email. \"You can get more up-to-the-minute news at Google News and many of the articles seem to lack the political, economic and strategic insight that characterizes the best of foreign reporting...I suspect they will get better and find their voice as time goes on.\"
One of the challenges for GlobalPost is keeping its corps of freelance correspondents happy. The correspondents receive stock options in GlobalPost, as well as about $1,000 per month to produce one 800-word reported piece per week in addition to blog-like \"Notebook\" entries. That pay is not nearly enough to cover living expenses for most correspondents, who must field other full-time or freelance gigs to survive.
Jean MacKenzie is the GlobalPost correspondent in Afghanistan who broke the story on U.S. aid going to the Taliban. She told me via email that the exposure she\'s received while being a correspondent for GlobalPost has been satisfying. But she had to run an NGO that trains journalists in Kabul in order to make enough money.
\"I have relished being a reporter again, and I believe that having to produce my own stories has made me a better trainer as well,\" she said. \"The downside, of course, is the lack of adequate financial compensation, which keeps me from being able to devote as much time as I would like. In order to live and work in Kabul, which is a surprisingly expensive environment, I have to have a full-time job in addition to GlobalPost. That makes things a bit frustrating, since I sometimes cannot get as deeply into the story as I would otherwise.\"
Kugel, the Brazil correspondent, also has to juggle other freelance writing work with his GlobalPost reporting. Kugel said he would appreciate getting paid more, though he\'s thankful that the company has covered some expenses, in addition to the extra work for CBS News.
\"Of course, I would like to be paid more, and there have been times where I\'ve put in many days on a story and realized that my hourly pay was something god-awful,\" he said. \"But most stories are not like that, and these days [GlobalPost] has gotten much more flexible about allowing us to do major projects that pay more, and give us expenses to work with...I should note that no one can live off what GlobalPost pays, but that is part of the model: we\'re freelancers that devote ourselves part-time to GlobalPost.\"
David Carr, media reporter for the New York Times, is amazed by the diversity and quality of the content at GlobalPost, but worries that correspondents who come from legacy media backgrounds might not be able to pass the torch to a new generation of seasoned reporters.
\"Many of the best people who file on GlobalPost are correspondents who gained years or even decades of experience while living in far-flung lands on the nickel of MSM outlets,\" Carr told me via email. \"Those operations now find themselves in reduced circumstances and as a result have cut their global news efforts and the people who make it happen...I\'m thrilled to still be reading the work of many of them, but once that generation of talent that was sustained and educated under an old media paradigm peters out, where will the talent come from?\"
While GlobalPost has done a good job establishing its credentials as a serious, non-partisan news organization, it still has work to do in exploit...
College Media Should Ignore Siren Song of Pay WallsThu, 28 Jan 2010 11:43:54 -0800 - The drumbeats are growing louder, as Rupert Murdoch, Steven Brill, and now the New York Times have confirmed: Pay walls or metered pricing systems for online news content will soon be coming to a high-profile website frequented by you. Too little, too late? Journalism\'s savior? A final nail-in-the-coffin separation between old and new media? The implications for the news industry and Internet as a whole are enormous. For college media specifically, meters and walls could be a veritable game changer, a final helium burst in their rise to professional press-level prominence -- provided, of course, they turn them down. At present, I can see no reason why college media outlets should erect pay walls or enact pricing meters for their online content. Some independent student newspapers with higher bottom lines have endured financial hiccups lately but, overall, college media are holding strong. A majority of outlets are fully or mostly supported. Staff work for free or are paid a pittance. Annual profit expectations are zero to uber-low. With no pressing need to enhance their revenue streams, my advice is: Keep sites free. By offering readers an open window instead of a wall, college media can become more of a trusted, viable alternative to the pro-press pay plans. Attracting the Mainstream Beyond niche outlets like The Chronicle of Higher Education and rich information centers like the New York Times, most meters and walls will only be scaled by the most passionate readers. (For example, I used to read Variety online, but there is no way I am shelling out its new asking price of $248 per year.) If enacted en masse, the new \"walledoffedness culture,\" as a snarky colleague of mine calls it, will leave general web surfers in the lurch and looking for more affordable options. Cue college media. If they react to the meter/wall onslaught correctly, student outlets can entice these more routine news seekers, who are in the majority. Making it work will require some changes in student media\'s editorial approach. Two main alterations are worth consideration. 1. Increase Off-Campus Reporting The web-age adage of how to succeed online is currently centered on hyper-localization. Cover a topic or geographic area like no one else, and your outlet will gain value for its uniqueness and market dominance. So far, student outlets have embraced this simply by continuing their long-established focus on campus and student news. But if the new journalism world is going to separate will-pay and won\'t-pay readers, some extra reporting about local and even national news could be a huge draw. Last January, The Villanovan, a student newspaper at Villanova University, was criticized for failing to cover much of President Obama\'s Inauguration. At the time, editors offered a hyper-local response: The Villanovan is and always has been the student paper of Villanova, not a national newspaper. There are four complimentary national papers on campus; students should turn to these for daily coverage. When you want to read about Villanova and students\' reactions and reflections, though, we\'re your paper. In the pay-era, this type of thinking might have to go. Readers may not be willing to pay for access to sites belonging to national or city papers. They might be looking for a free alternative, something relatively trusted that captures the pulse of their hometown. Offering some \"outside\" news may be a wonderful enticement to draw readers to student media sites. Hopefully people will also stay to read about what should always remain the student press\'s main focus: campus news, with a student-first editorial philosophy. So, how do you add in this extra news component, especially since it\'s tough enough already to cover a single campus? 2. Extend Peer Content Sharing We are living in a post-UWIRE world in which content distribution among college media is tougher than ever. (Though I have high hopes College News Network or a similar future initiative will save the day). In order for student media sites to become more popular with casual news browsers, they will need to republish more news from their peers -- especially biggie items about, say, the recent special election in Massachusetts or the current Sundance Film Festival. Most high-profile news events and issues have relevance to a school in some way -- at times simply because they occur near a campus -- so usually at least some student media will provide coverage and commentary. Student outlets looking to fill the gap created by pay walls should seize and display these news items more prominently on their sites, providing visitors a well-rounded glimpse of the world. Strategy for Success So to sum up, my three-point strategy for college media success in a walled-off news media world: Stick with local news reporting depth. Add national news breadth. Be an open window, not a pay wall. In a New York Times piece about pay plans, Rupert Murdoch is described as a Pied Piper hoping to lead a mass of media to pay-walled nirvana. My advice to college media is simple: Do not follow Murdoch the Piper. Remember that in the fairy tale, the children are lured by the lovely music into a cave, never to be heard from again... Dan Reimold is a visiting assistant professor of journalism at Singapore\'s Nanyang Technological University. He writes and presents frequently on the campus press and maintains the daily blog College Media Matters, affiliated with the Associated Collegiate Press. His first book on a major modern college media trend, \"Sex and the University: Celebrity, Controversy and a Student Journalism Revolution,\" is due out later this year by Rutgers University Press.
The drumbeats are growing louder, as Rupert Murdoch, Steven Brill, and now the New York Times have confirmed: Pay walls or metered pricing systems for online news content will soon be coming to a high-profile website frequented by you. Too little, too late? Journalism\'s savior? A final nail-in-the-coffin separation between old and new media?
The implications for the news industry and Internet as a whole are enormous. For college media specifically, meters and walls could be a veritable game changer, a final helium burst in their rise to professional press-level prominence -- provided, of course, they turn them down.
At present, I can see no reason why college media outlets should erect pay walls or enact pricing meters for their online content. Some independent student newspapers with higher bottom lines have endured financial hiccups lately but, overall, college media are holding strong. A majority of outlets are fully or mostly supported. Staff work for free or are paid a pittance. Annual profit expectations are zero to uber-low.
With no pressing need to enhance their revenue streams, my advice is: Keep sites free. By offering readers an open window instead of a wall, college media can become more of a trusted, viable alternative to the pro-press pay plans.
Beyond niche outlets like The Chronicle of Higher Education and rich information centers like the New York Times, most meters and walls will only be scaled by the most passionate readers. (For example, I used to read Variety online, but there is no way I am shelling out its new asking price of $248 per year.)
If enacted en masse, the new \"walledoffedness culture,\" as a snarky colleague of mine calls it, will leave general web surfers in the lurch and looking for more affordable options. Cue college media. If they react to the meter/wall onslaught correctly, student outlets can entice these more routine news seekers, who are in the majority.
Making it work will require some changes in student media\'s editorial approach. Two main alterations are worth consideration.
The web-age adage of how to succeed online is currently centered on hyper-localization. Cover a topic or geographic area like no one else, and your outlet will gain value for its uniqueness and market dominance. So far, student outlets have embraced this simply by continuing their long-established focus on campus and student news. But if the new journalism world is going to separate will-pay and won\'t-pay readers, some extra reporting about local and even national news could be a huge draw.
Last January, The Villanovan, a student newspaper at Villanova University, was criticized for failing to cover much of President Obama\'s Inauguration. At the time, editors offered a hyper-local response:
The Villanovan is and always has been the student paper of Villanova, not a national newspaper. There are four complimentary national papers on campus; students should turn to these for daily coverage. When you want to read about Villanova and students\' reactions and reflections, though, we\'re your paper.
In the pay-era, this type of thinking might have to go. Readers may not be willing to pay for access to sites belonging to national or city papers. They might be looking for a free alternative, something relatively trusted that captures the pulse of their hometown. Offering some \"outside\" news may be a wonderful enticement to draw readers to student media sites. Hopefully people will also stay to read about what should always remain the student press\'s main focus: campus news, with a student-first editorial philosophy.
So, how do you add in this extra news component, especially since it\'s tough enough already to cover a single campus?
We are living in a post-UWIRE world in which content distribution among college media is tougher than ever. (Though I have high hopes College News Network or a similar future initiative will save the day).
In order for student media sites to become more popular with casual news browsers, they will need to republish more news from their peers -- especially biggie items about, say, the recent special election in Massachusetts or the current Sundance Film Festival.
Most high-profile news events and issues have relevance to a school in some way -- at times simply because they occur near a campus -- so usually at least some student media will provide coverage and commentary. Student outlets looking to fill the gap created by pay walls should seize and display these news items more prominently on their sites, providing visitors a well-rounded glimpse of the world.
So to sum up, my three-point strategy for college media success in a walled-off news media world:
In a New York Times piece about pay plans, Rupert Murdoch is described as a Pied Piper hoping to lead a mass of media to pay-walled nirvana. My advice to college media is simple: Do not follow Murdoch the Piper. Remember that in the fairy tale, the children are lured by the lovely music into a cave, never to be heard from again...
Dan Reimold is a visiting assistant professor of journalism at Singapore\'s Nanyang Technological University. He writes and presents frequently on the campus press and maintains the daily blog College Media Matters, affiliated with the Associated Collegiate Press. His first book on a major modern college media trend, \"Sex and the University: Celebrity, Controversy and a Student Journalism Revolution,\" is due out later this year by Rutgers University Press.
Best Coverage, Tweets of Apple iPad EventWed, 27 Jan 2010 09:36:36 -0800 - The hype has reached fever pitch on the new tablet device being unveiled by Apple today in San Francisco. You\'re probably tired of going through tweets, live blogs and photo galleries trying to find the latest and best coverage of the latesty shiny gadget. So we\'ve collected the best coverage around the web in one handy place here on MediaShift. You\'ll get to see the best Twitter feeds, lists and tweets in one place, as well as photos, blogs and links to in-depth analysis. The page will be updated throughout the day, so add in anything we\'ve missed in the comments. Twitter List With the help of MediaShift associate editor Craig Silverman, I compiled a Twitter list of the best tablet tweeters: http://twitter.com/mediatwit/tablet-tweeters Best Tweets Here\'s a sampling of the most insightful, funny and informed tweets during and after the Apple tablet event (from oldest to newest): Gizmodo First Pic of steve jobs holding Apple iPad http://bit.ly/9U2HsX 9to5mac large onscreen qwerty keyboard, etc - v like a huger iphone, itunes, youtbe, maps, calendars, address book, photos, browsing - you get it? macrumors iTunes store built in. YouTube including High Def. Awesome to watch TV Shows and Movies. Steve demoing unit while sitting on couch. gadgetlab No Flash on the Apple iPad tablet. Now that\'s disappointing! carr2n Playing with his iPad on stage, Jobs seems lost in the device for a moment, forgetting that we are all here. GlennF iTunes Store and iPod app within iPad is much more like full desktop iTunes than features within iPhone OS. #appleevent sanfrandan It\'s a half inch thin and weighs just 1.5 pounds. Thinner and lighter than any netbook, Jobs says. 9.7 inch lps very high quality display gadgetlab Apple iPad tablet specs: 0.5 inches thin, 1.5 pounds, 9.7 inch display, multi-touch, Apple\'sown 1GHz A4 chip, 16 -64 GB Flash storage, Wi-Fi 9to5mac 10 hr battery life, accelerometer and compass. Runs all iPhone Macs, green credentials, Will pixel double and run apps full screen carr2n the gaming interface on #iPad? Lots of new firepower in the hands of gamers. It comes, um, fully weaponized. sanfrandan Nisenholtz: iPhone app, downloaded 3 million times, now want to create something for iPad, that\'s best of print and best of digital. #apple theleggett Everyone\'s iPhone just became an iPad Nano. jonfortt iPad + Bluetooth keyboard = new low-end Mac (almost). This thing needs a way to get video in. #iPad. stephenfry $14.99 for 250MB $29.99 for UNLIMITED data. AT&T in the states. No contract. Prepaid! Cancel anytime. Activate on iPad. sanfrandan Shipping the wifi models in 60 days, and 90 days for the 3G models. \"Soon you\'ll be able to get an iPad in your hands starting at just $499\" gillianmae The New York Times\' iPad application looks so much like Times Reader, costs $3.45 a week. Demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPQeCEHFlFA ScepticGeek No camera. No phone. No multi-tasking. #iPad markmcc Jobs: Our most advanced technology in a magical & revolutionary device at an unbelievable price. sanfrandan Seeing early critiques: @robhof says no multitasking - won\'t replace a netbook. @troywolv say no webcam, no video chats #apple Gizmodo There\'s over 1000 hardware sensors on the device for multitouch sensitivity. cultofmac oh yeah, at $499, netbooks are dead, and the nook, and anything else that looks like crap and has black/white display #iPad Engadget iPad has optional keyboard dock, camera connection kit and Apple-designed case http://bit.ly/9jNL11 dangillmor if iPad ran OS X apps i\'d buy it as a laptop replacement for travel. carry bluetooth keyboard, use screen for mouse, and it would be perfect nichcarlson Wait, how is this supposed to save media again? lanadefemme So does this iPad thing mean that Apple has finally breached the gap between technology and feminine hygiene products? Live Video Here\'s a live video feed from announcement via Ustream and Leo Laporte (actually audio): Online video chat by Ustream Image Gallery Here\'s a Flickr photo gallery from iLounge Roy Tanck\'s Flickr Widget requires Flash Player 9 or better.Get this widget at roytanck.com Live Blogs Live Apple Tablet Event Coverage at gdgt Apple Tablet Event Live Blog - We\'re Here at Gizmodo Live from the Apple Tablet Latest Creation Event at Engadget Blog Posts and Articles The New Subsidy at The Apple Blog Take Two Tablets and Text Me in the Morning at Public Cola The Tablet Could Spur A Media Revolution, But It Will Be Out Of Apple\'s Hands at TechCrunch The iPad is a Multimedia Device. So Where\'s the Media? Be Patient. at AllThingsD iPad means iPhone developers need to think different at Computerworld Is AT&T a deal breaker for the 3G iPad? at CNET\'s Crave Mark Glaser is execut...
The hype has reached fever pitch on the new tablet device being unveiled by Apple today in San Francisco. You\'re probably tired of going through tweets, live blogs and photo galleries trying to find the latest and best coverage of the latesty shiny gadget. So we\'ve collected the best coverage around the web in one handy place here on MediaShift. You\'ll get to see the best Twitter feeds, lists and tweets in one place, as well as photos, blogs and links to in-depth analysis. The page will be updated throughout the day, so add in anything we\'ve missed in the comments.
With the help of MediaShift associate editor Craig Silverman, I compiled a Twitter list of the best tablet tweeters:
http://twitter.com/mediatwit/tablet-tweeters
Here\'s a sampling of the most insightful, funny and informed tweets during and after the Apple tablet event (from oldest to newest):
Gizmodo First Pic of steve jobs holding Apple iPad http://bit.ly/9U2HsX
9to5mac large onscreen qwerty keyboard, etc - v like a huger iphone, itunes, youtbe, maps, calendars, address book, photos, browsing - you get it?
macrumors iTunes store built in. YouTube including High Def. Awesome to watch TV Shows and Movies. Steve demoing unit while sitting on couch.
gadgetlab No Flash on the Apple iPad tablet. Now that\'s disappointing!
carr2n Playing with his iPad on stage, Jobs seems lost in the device for a moment, forgetting that we are all here.
GlennF iTunes Store and iPod app within iPad is much more like full desktop iTunes than features within iPhone OS. #appleevent
sanfrandan It\'s a half inch thin and weighs just 1.5 pounds. Thinner and lighter than any netbook, Jobs says. 9.7 inch lps very high quality display
gadgetlab Apple iPad tablet specs: 0.5 inches thin, 1.5 pounds, 9.7 inch display, multi-touch, Apple\'sown 1GHz A4 chip, 16 -64 GB Flash storage, Wi-Fi
9to5mac 10 hr battery life, accelerometer and compass. Runs all iPhone Macs, green credentials, Will pixel double and run apps full screen
carr2n the gaming interface on #iPad? Lots of new firepower in the hands of gamers. It comes, um, fully weaponized.
sanfrandan Nisenholtz: iPhone app, downloaded 3 million times, now want to create something for iPad, that\'s best of print and best of digital. #apple
theleggett Everyone\'s iPhone just became an iPad Nano.
jonfortt iPad + Bluetooth keyboard = new low-end Mac (almost). This thing needs a way to get video in. #iPad.
stephenfry $14.99 for 250MB $29.99 for UNLIMITED data. AT&T in the states. No contract. Prepaid! Cancel anytime. Activate on iPad.
sanfrandan Shipping the wifi models in 60 days, and 90 days for the 3G models. \"Soon you\'ll be able to get an iPad in your hands starting at just $499\"
gillianmae The New York Times\' iPad application looks so much like Times Reader, costs $3.45 a week. Demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPQeCEHFlFA
ScepticGeek No camera. No phone. No multi-tasking. #iPad
markmcc Jobs: Our most advanced technology in a magical & revolutionary device at an unbelievable price.
sanfrandan Seeing early critiques: @robhof says no multitasking - won\'t replace a netbook. @troywolv say no webcam, no video chats #apple
Gizmodo There\'s over 1000 hardware sensors on the device for multitouch sensitivity.
cultofmac oh yeah, at $499, netbooks are dead, and the nook, and anything else that looks like crap and has black/white display #iPad
Engadget iPad has optional keyboard dock, camera connection kit and Apple-designed case http://bit.ly/9jNL11
dangillmor if iPad ran OS X apps i\'d buy it as a laptop replacement for travel. carry bluetooth keyboard, use screen for mouse, and it would be perfect
nichcarlson Wait, how is this supposed to save media again?
lanadefemme So does this iPad thing mean that Apple has finally breached the gap between technology and feminine hygiene products?
Here\'s a live video feed from announcement via Ustream and Leo Laporte (actually audio):
Online video chat by Ustream
Here\'s a Flickr photo gallery from iLounge
Roy Tanck\'s Flickr Widget requires Flash Player 9 or better.
Live Apple Tablet Event Coverage at gdgt
Apple Tablet Event Live Blog - We\'re Here at Gizmodo
Live from the Apple Tablet Latest Creation Event at Engadget
The New Subsidy at The Apple Blog
Take Two Tablets and Text Me in the Morning at Public Cola
The Tablet Could Spur A Media Revolution, But It Will Be Out Of Apple\'s Hands at TechCrunch
The iPad is a Multimedia Device. So Where\'s the Media? Be Patient. at AllThingsD
iPad means iPhone developers need to think different at Computerworld
Is AT&T a deal breaker for the 3G iPad? at CNET\'s Crave
Mark Glaser is execut...
Local Radio Keeps Haiti Earthquake Survivors ConnectedTue, 26 Jan 2010 14:21:04 -0800 - Clothilde Le Coz just returned from Haiti, where she was part of a Reporters Without Borders mission. This is a special report about how Haitian media are responding to the disaster. The photos were taken by the author. In two weeks, Haiti will be forgotten by much of the world. After foreign media leave, which will happen soon, only Haitian reporters will remain in the country as witnesses and a source of information. As it stands today, they are struggling just to keep their fellow citizens informed, which is often the case in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Roughly 250 million people a year are the victims of humanitarian emergencies, including epidemics, major accidents and natural disasters. When disaster strikes, the quality and free flow of information becomes incredibly important. Unfortunately, information is often unreliable in disaster zones, which complicates rescue and relief efforts. A lack of information and communication above all affects the victims who are left unprotected and disoriented. A strong media presence helps people maintain a vital link with the outside world, assists with the mobilization of aid, and fosters a desire to help the victims. So what will happen in Haiti when the foreign media go home? All of the above could suffer. That means Haitian media are incredibly important to the present and future of the country. They are doing their best to continue to work in the face of many difficulties, as a recent report from Montreal newspaper The Gazette explained: Like most of the countless journalists here, [Haitian photojournalist Georges] Oreste has been unable to send his work anywhere, since there has been no or intermittent electricity or Internet. Still, they have soldiered on, without pay or the proper tools to document this extraordinary event in which they, too, are part of the story. Traumatized after the sudden and violent loss of numerous friends, relatives and their country, exhausted and with little food or water, they\'ve hung their press passes stoically around their necks, grabbed notebooks, microphones and cameras and collected story after heartbreaking story of their fellow survivors. In addition to to print journalists and photographers, local radio broadcasters have become particularly important. They continue to pump out news, information and hope to the population. Reporters Without Borders in Haiti Today, Port-au-Prince looks like it was visited by Godzilla. Champ de Mars park and other squares and parks in the capital have been turned into refugee camps. The city is 60 percent destroyed, and buildings are devastated -- as if they were crushed by the monster\'s foot. Reporters Without Borders traveled there to set up a center for local media in order to help local journalists deal with the disaster and do their jobs. Over the course of six days, our team created a place were reporters could have access to the Internet, phones, computers, videocameras and other essential equipment and services. The center\'s mandate is to act as a news hub for government authorities and NGOs so that they can address as many media as possible in one place. We also advised and assisted the government and its partners to help with the relaunch of local news media impacted by the earthquake. This was done in the capital and in towns such as Petit-Goâve, Grand-Goâve and Léogâne. Solidarity Built Through the Radio In the capital, only roughly 10 of the original 50 radio stations are broadcasting. Most of them are working outside because their buildings are either too dangerous or were completely destroyed. The journalists are traumatized and are still dealing with the shock of what happened. But they go on, working in the daylight and sleeping outside during the night, just like everyone else. We were told the buildings that housed the 12 radio stations in the southwestern town of Petit-Goâve were safe, but that their equipment was badly damaged. As a result, only some of them are broadcasting. In Léogâne, a town nearer to the capital, five of the nine stations are able to broadcast, although 85 percent of the buildings in that area were destroyed or badly damaged. When we met with local reporters, they told us that, \"in Port-au-Prince, everyone has a story to tell.\" This is why radio is playing such a key role in establishing contact between survivors and rescue teams. The stations broadcast useful information in the local language, and air regular programs that provide updates on the situation. They also allow the population to express its needs and expectations, and help forge solidarity among the victims. People listen to the radio to find out when and where banks will be open, and to listen to ministers explain the decisions the government is making to resolve the situation. By helping local radio to get back on the air, and by giving local reporters the chance to do their jobs properly, we increase the chance that critical information will continue to flow out of Haiti after foreign media are gone. Clothilde Le Coz has been working for Reporters Without Borders in Paris since 2007. She is now the Washington director for this organization, helping to promote press freedom and free speech around the world. In Paris, she was in charge of the Internet Freedom desk and worked especially on China, Iran, Egypt and Thailand. During the time she spent in Paris, she was also updating the \"Handbook for Bloggers and Cyberdissidents,\" published in 2005. Her role is now to get the message out for readers and politicians to be aware of the constant threat journalists are submitted to in many countries.
Clothilde Le Coz just returned from Haiti, where she was part of a Reporters Without Borders mission. This is a special report about how Haitian media are responding to the disaster. The photos were taken by the author.
In two weeks, Haiti will be forgotten by much of the world.
After foreign media leave, which will happen soon, only Haitian reporters will remain in the country as witnesses and a source of information. As it stands today, they are struggling just to keep their fellow citizens informed, which is often the case in the aftermath of a natural disaster.
Roughly 250 million people a year are the victims of humanitarian emergencies, including epidemics, major accidents and natural disasters. When disaster strikes, the quality and free flow of information becomes incredibly important. Unfortunately, information is often unreliable in disaster zones, which complicates rescue and relief efforts. A lack of information and communication above all affects the victims who are left unprotected and disoriented. A strong media presence helps people maintain a vital link with the outside world, assists with the mobilization of aid, and fosters a desire to help the victims.
So what will happen in Haiti when the foreign media go home? All of the above could suffer. That means Haitian media are incredibly important to the present and future of the country. They are doing their best to continue to work in the face of many difficulties, as a recent report from Montreal newspaper The Gazette explained:
Like most of the countless journalists here, [Haitian photojournalist Georges] Oreste has been unable to send his work anywhere, since there has been no or intermittent electricity or Internet. Still, they have soldiered on, without pay or the proper tools to document this extraordinary event in which they, too, are part of the story.
Traumatized after the sudden and violent loss of numerous friends, relatives and their country, exhausted and with little food or water, they\'ve hung their press passes stoically around their necks, grabbed notebooks, microphones and cameras and collected story after heartbreaking story of their fellow survivors.
In addition to to print journalists and photographers, local radio broadcasters have become particularly important. They continue to pump out news, information and hope to the population.
Over the course of six days, our team created a place were reporters could have access to the Internet, phones, computers, videocameras and other essential equipment and services. The center\'s mandate is to act as a news hub for government authorities and NGOs so that they can address as many media as possible in one place. We also advised and assisted the government and its partners to help with the relaunch of local news media impacted by the earthquake. This was done in the capital and in towns such as Petit-Goâve, Grand-Goâve and Léogâne.
We were told the buildings that housed the 12 radio stations in the southwestern town of Petit-Goâve were safe, but that their equipment was badly damaged. As a result, only some of them are broadcasting. In Léogâne, a town nearer to the capital, five of the nine stations are able to broadcast, although 85 percent of the buildings in that area were destroyed or badly damaged.
When we met with local reporters, they told us that, \"in Port-au-Prince, everyone has a story to tell.\" This is why radio is playing such a key role in establishing contact between survivors and rescue teams. The stations broadcast useful information in the local language, and air regular programs that provide updates on the situation. They also allow the population to express its needs and expectations, and help forge solidarity among the victims. People listen to the radio to find out when and where banks will be open, and to listen to ministers explain the decisions the government is making to resolve the situation.
By helping local radio to get back on the air, and by giving local reporters the chance to do their jobs properly, we increase the chance that critical information will continue to flow out of Haiti after foreign media are gone.
Clothilde Le Coz has been working for Reporters Without Borders in Paris since 2007. She is now the Washington director for this organization, helping to promote press freedom and free speech around the world. In Paris, she was in charge of the Internet Freedom desk and worked especially on China, Iran, Egypt and Thailand. During the time she spent in Paris, she was also updating the \"Handbook for Bloggers and Cyberdissidents,\" published in 2005. Her role is now to get the message out for readers and politicians to be aware of the constant threat journalists are submitted to in many countries.
5Across: Environmental Impact of Newspapers, Books, e-WasteFri, 22 Jan 2010 14:31:26 -0800 - This episode of 5Across is brought to you by USC Annenberg\'s Specialized Journalism Program. This 9-month program is for mid-career or aspiring journalists. To learn more, go to the USC Annenberg site. When I canceled my daily newspaper subscription, I figured it was the right thing to do for the environment. No longer would someone have to ink up all that newsprint and deliver it to my doorstep. But what I didn\'t consider was the environmental impact of all my electronic devices -- their energy use as well as the harm they can do when being \"recycled\" in developing countries. On this episode of 5Across, I convened a group of experts to examine the environmental impact of print media, as well as e-waste and the energy used by web servers when we go online. Most surprisingly, I learned that newspaper publishers use mostly recycled paper, as well as \"virgin paper\" that comes from the refuse generated by saw mills when creating lumber for houses. Could it be that over time newspapers are actually the greener option versus using electronic devices? No one knows for sure yet, but it\'s a fascinating question to ponder. 5Across: Environmental Impact of Media >>> Subscribe to 5Across video podcast <<< >>> Subscribe to 5Across via iTunes <<< Guest Biographies Shona Burns is executive director for production development at Chronicle Books. She is currently working on expanding the environmental responsibilities within Chronicle Books and is a member of the Green Press Initiative Advisory Board, in addition to being a member of the Book Industry Environmental Council. Prior to joining Chronicle Books, Shona graduated from the three-year Book and Periodical Publishing program at Napier University in Edinburgh, Scotland, and she has held numerous production positions in the United Kingdom. She has spoken on various production topics at Book Expo America, Booktech and Stanford University\'s Summer Publishing Course. Joe Kelleher is the production director for the San Jose Mercury News. He is a member of the company\'s operating committee and is responsible for all aspects of operations. This includes prepress (digital ad team, ad production, composing, paper make up, ad services, platemaking), printing (pressroom, newsprint warehouse), packaging, and building support services. He previously worked for the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., and the Detroit Newspaper Agency. Prior to his newspaper career, he was employed in the field of injection molded plastics. Charles Uchu Strader is a worker-owner of Gaia Host Collective, a cooperatively owned Internet hosting company dedicated to environmental and social sustainability. Charles has worked for 15 years in the Internet infrastructure field with both open source and commercial software. At Gaia Host, he works to grow a low-impact Internet hosting infrastructure, and focuses on data-center efficiency, maximizing the use of the embodied energy of the hardware through life-cycle extension, efficiently managing the load on the computers, as well as managing the efficiency of software running the infrastructure. Charles is also an active board member of a non-profit operating an off-grid environmental educational facility in Massachusetts. Jean Walsh is the outreach specialist and has been working in communications for the San Francisco Department of the Environment since 2007. She supports the toxics reduction, green business and zero waste programs using new media marketing, grassroots outreach, press relations and traditional advertising. Prior to joining SF Environment, Jean served as consumer outreach and marketing manager for TransFair USA, the non-profit organization that certifies Fair Trade products. A former Peace Corps volunteer in Nicaragua, Jean holds a Masters Degree in City Planning from MIT. Sarah Westervelt is the e-stewardship director at the Basel Action Network. Her work includes developing the e-steward\'s accredited certification program, educating the public about issues associated with exporting e-waste, as well as highlighting the worst-case scenarios. Sarah co-authored BAN exposés including films and reports documenting horrific \"recycling\" in China and Nigeria. Through programs, policy, and education, the e-Stewardship Initiative provides guidance to go beyond inadequate regulations and practices, and better understand existing international laws that pertain to trade in toxic wastes. Sarah has a Master\'s Degree in Organizational Systems Renewal from Antioch University, and worked for years as a consultant in organizational development before joining the Basel Action Network in 2001. If you\'d prefer to watch sections of the show rather than the entire show, I\'ve broken them down by topic below. Recycled Paper in Newspapers and Books The Problem With E-Waste, Web Servers Online or Print? Educating the Public Finding Solutions Credits Mark Glaser, executive producer and host Darcy Cohan, producer Charlotte Buchen, camera Julie Caine, audio Location: Vega Project & Kennerly Architecture office space in San Francisco Special thanks to: PBS and The Knight Foundation Music by AJ the DJ ***** What do you think? Do you consider the environmental impact of the devices you use, and the print products you read? Share your thoughts in the comments below. Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit. This episode of 5Across is brought to you by USC Annenberg\'s Specialized Journalism Program. This 9-month program is for mid-career or aspiring journalists. To learn more, go to the USC Annenberg site.
This episode of 5Across is brought to you by USC Annenberg\'s Specialized Journalism Program. This 9-month program is for mid-career or aspiring journalists. To learn more, go to the USC Annenberg site.
When I canceled my daily newspaper subscription, I figured it was the right thing to do for the environment. No longer would someone have to ink up all that newsprint and deliver it to my doorstep. But what I didn\'t consider was the environmental impact of all my electronic devices -- their energy use as well as the harm they can do when being \"recycled\" in developing countries.
On this episode of 5Across, I convened a group of experts to examine the environmental impact of print media, as well as e-waste and the energy used by web servers when we go online. Most surprisingly, I learned that newspaper publishers use mostly recycled paper, as well as \"virgin paper\" that comes from the refuse generated by saw mills when creating lumber for houses. Could it be that over time newspapers are actually the greener option versus using electronic devices? No one knows for sure yet, but it\'s a fascinating question to ponder.
>>> Subscribe to 5Across video podcast <<<
>>> Subscribe to 5Across via iTunes <<<
Shona Burns is executive director for production development at Chronicle Books. She is currently working on expanding the environmental responsibilities within Chronicle Books and is a member of the Green Press Initiative Advisory Board, in addition to being a member of the Book Industry Environmental Council. Prior to joining Chronicle Books, Shona graduated from the three-year Book and Periodical Publishing program at Napier University in Edinburgh, Scotland, and she has held numerous production positions in the United Kingdom. She has spoken on various production topics at Book Expo America, Booktech and Stanford University\'s Summer Publishing Course.
Joe Kelleher is the production director for the San Jose Mercury News. He is a member of the company\'s operating committee and is responsible for all aspects of operations. This includes prepress (digital ad team, ad production, composing, paper make up, ad services, platemaking), printing (pressroom, newsprint warehouse), packaging, and building support services. He previously worked for the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., and the Detroit Newspaper Agency. Prior to his newspaper career, he was employed in the field of injection molded plastics.
Charles Uchu Strader is a worker-owner of Gaia Host Collective, a cooperatively owned Internet hosting company dedicated to environmental and social sustainability. Charles has worked for 15 years in the Internet infrastructure field with both open source and commercial software. At Gaia Host, he works to grow a low-impact Internet hosting infrastructure, and focuses on data-center efficiency, maximizing the use of the embodied energy of the hardware through life-cycle extension, efficiently managing the load on the computers, as well as managing the efficiency of software running the infrastructure. Charles is also an active board member of a non-profit operating an off-grid environmental educational facility in Massachusetts.
Jean Walsh is the outreach specialist and has been working in communications for the San Francisco Department of the Environment since 2007. She supports the toxics reduction, green business and zero waste programs using new media marketing, grassroots outreach, press relations and traditional advertising. Prior to joining SF Environment, Jean served as consumer outreach and marketing manager for TransFair USA, the non-profit organization that certifies Fair Trade products. A former Peace Corps volunteer in Nicaragua, Jean holds a Masters Degree in City Planning from MIT.
Sarah Westervelt is the e-stewardship director at the Basel Action Network. Her work includes developing the e-steward\'s accredited certification program, educating the public about issues associated with exporting e-waste, as well as highlighting the worst-case scenarios. Sarah co-authored BAN exposés including films and reports documenting horrific \"recycling\" in China and Nigeria. Through programs, policy, and education, the e-Stewardship Initiative provides guidance to go beyond inadequate regulations and practices, and better understand existing international laws that pertain to trade in toxic wastes. Sarah has a Master\'s Degree in Organizational Systems Renewal from Antioch University, and worked for years as a consultant in organizational development before joining the Basel Action Network in 2001.
If you\'d prefer to watch sections of the show rather than the entire show, I\'ve broken them down by topic below.
Credits
Mark Glaser, executive producer and host Darcy Cohan, producer Charlotte Buchen, camera Julie Caine, audio Location: Vega Project & Kennerly Architecture office space in San Francisco Special thanks to: PBS and The Knight Foundation Music by AJ the DJ
*****
What do you think? Do you consider the environmental impact of the devices you use, and the print products you read? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Why Youth Media Projects Should Link Up with Public MediaThu, 21 Jan 2010 11:49:17 -0800 - \"The issues that we tackle in our ?lms are very powerful,\" said youth filmmaker Lenah Perez in a newsletter from the New York-based youth media organization, Global Action Project. \"I should say the way we tackle the issues is powerful, the issues are important -- to look at the world as the big picture and to ?ght for this world.\" As Perez\'s quote suggests, there is often tremendous overlap between youth media and Public Media 2.0 projects. While we describe public media\'s core function as \"generating publics around problems,\" youth media projects often accomplish the same goal by addressing issues such as social justice, civic engagement, and media reform. But, too often, these sectors are not linked. Is this a missed opportunity? There are over 100 youth media organizations in the United States, and they have a diverse range of priorities. According to the State of the Youth Media Field, a report written by Ingrid Hu Dahl, editor-in-chief of Youth Media Reporter and program officer of youth media at the Academy for Educational Development: Youth media neighbors other fields -- including youth development, media arts, and public interest journalism -- and has looser ties with civic engagement, youth organizing/activism, and service-learning. But youth media is distinct in that it uses media as a tool and strategy for young people to examine themselves, their communities, and the world at large. One of the greatest qualities of youth media is its potential to reach large audiences while offering young people a thoughtful, mediated process. Powerful Youth Media Examples Below are just a few of the many powerful youth media projects that span different platforms with varied goals and approaches, including journalism, career training, and social justice activism. They are participatory, grassroots efforts that take full advantage of Public Media 2.0 tools in order to generate the kind of engagement that spurs community development and social change. Global Action Project Since 1991, Global Action Project has provided media training for underserved youth in New York City and beyond. Global Action Project runs several programs, including Urban Voices, which combines social issue media production, college prep, leadership and critical thinking skills; and Media in Action, which provides support for community campaigns with \"targeted, cross-generational trainings in capacity-building through creative youth engagement, media production, and strategizing.\" Additionally, their Global Voices program links youth producers with regional organizations in order to produce and screen videos all around the world. With the help of partner organizations, Global Action Project\'s productions are screened for over 250,000 people per year. Films are for sale on their website, and many are also available on Global Action Project\'s YouTube Channel. Below is \"What\'s Justice?\" a video about how the Youth Leadership Project of CAAAV (also known as also known as Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence) is organizing for justice and community healing in the Bronx: The Lower East Side Girls Club It connects media production training, hyper-local journalism, intercultural understanding and community activism for girls aged eight to 18. The organization\'s website includes podcasts (check out this one about two young women who refused to serve in the Israeli Army), blogs, girl-produced videos, and girl-produced citizen journalism, including an extensive multimedia hyper-local journalism project. In addition to media training, the Lower East Side Girls Club runs a diverse array of programs, ranging from health to the environment to international field trips. For more information on the Lower East Side Girls Club, see the video below: Youth Radio/Youth Media International Founded in 1990, Youth Radio provides underserved youth with free media training. Each year, Youth Radio trains 1,300 young people in broadcast journalism, multimedia skills training and career preparation. Youth Radio has achieved tremendous success in terms of distribution -- over 300 Youth Radio reports are broadcast annually, on outlets including NPR, CNN.com and iTunes. According to Youth Radio\'s website, \"an estimated 27 million people hear and read the often overlooked perspectives of young people through Youth Radio\'s work each year.\" Read Youth Radio blogs here, listen to programs live here, or explore the archives here. Also, be sure to check out this youth-produced journalism collaboration with KQED. Challenges Facing the Youth Media Field While youth are often at an advantage in terms of social media fluency and knowledge of contemporary culture, the youth media field faces major challenges in supporting training, production and distribution, especially for resource-intensive broadcast platforms. Perhaps the most pressing issue is funding. According to the State of the Youth Media Field report: Veteran funders are making fewer and smaller grants, and new funders are not inclining toward the kind of small, youth development-oriented organizations that populate the youth media field. Despite this funding landscape, youth media organizations and their funding partners acknowledge that the field has great potential to address large issues like poverty, education, war/conflict resolution, and HIV/AIDs. Funders in these areas tend to make long-term investments with short-term deliverables -- a combination that would seem perfect for youth media, which routinely produces short, powerful, convincing, provocative, and extremely innovative pieces that have the potential to change society. Along with difficulties in securing funding, practitioners in the youth media field sometimes struggle to uphold production values that match professionally produced media. While a particular youth media production may tell a great story that has the potential to ignite social change, many people will disregard it based on production values alone. Additionally, youth producers are not always taken seriously, or seen as even remotely authoritative. And in some school-based youth media programs, students can find their freedom of speech restricted. According to Christine Newkirk of Youth Media Reporter, as a culture we are especially uninterested in the opinions and concerns of socially marginalized young people: \"We see young people as consumers. We want their engagement in terms of buying things from us, but not in terms of listening to what they have to say.\" Another issue facing the youth media field is visibility. There are hundreds of youth media organizations in the United States and abroad, but individual projects are often grassroots and local, and lack access to widespread distribution. The field is in need of a centralized distribution hub in order to create the kind of awareness that makes adults sit up and listen. For example, Youth Radio has had great success in broadcasting youth-produced pieces on national media outlets. The potential for public engagement and social change increases exponentially when the audience is widened. Newkirk noted that exposure to youth productions can lead adults to develop \"a newfound respect for youth citizenship and participation.\" As Dahl pointed out, youth media has too much potential to be ignored. And, much like public media, \"youth media has the potential to create lasting, sustainable, major shifts in the culture we know today.\" The youth media field must continue to generate engagement while expanding its reach into new audiences -- including adult communities. And stakeholders in both fields must continue to nurture the areas in which youth media and public media overlap. Katie Donnelly is a research fellow at the Ce...
\"The issues that we tackle in our ?lms are very powerful,\" said youth filmmaker Lenah Perez in a newsletter from the New York-based youth media organization, Global Action Project. \"I should say the way we tackle the issues is powerful, the issues are important -- to look at the world as the big picture and to ?ght for this world.\"
As Perez\'s quote suggests, there is often tremendous overlap between youth media and Public Media 2.0 projects. While we describe public media\'s core function as \"generating publics around problems,\" youth media projects often accomplish the same goal by addressing issues such as social justice, civic engagement, and media reform. But, too often, these sectors are not linked. Is this a missed opportunity?
There are over 100 youth media organizations in the United States, and they have a diverse range of priorities. According to the State of the Youth Media Field, a report written by Ingrid Hu Dahl, editor-in-chief of Youth Media Reporter and program officer of youth media at the Academy for Educational Development:
Youth media neighbors other fields -- including youth development, media arts, and public interest journalism -- and has looser ties with civic engagement, youth organizing/activism, and service-learning. But youth media is distinct in that it uses media as a tool and strategy for young people to examine themselves, their communities, and the world at large. One of the greatest qualities of youth media is its potential to reach large audiences while offering young people a thoughtful, mediated process.
Below are just a few of the many powerful youth media projects that span different platforms with varied goals and approaches, including journalism, career training, and social justice activism. They are participatory, grassroots efforts that take full advantage of Public Media 2.0 tools in order to generate the kind of engagement that spurs community development and social change.
Global Action Project Since 1991, Global Action Project has provided media training for underserved youth in New York City and beyond. Global Action Project runs several programs, including Urban Voices, which combines social issue media production, college prep, leadership and critical thinking skills; and Media in Action, which provides support for community campaigns with \"targeted, cross-generational trainings in capacity-building through creative youth engagement, media production, and strategizing.\"
Additionally, their Global Voices program links youth producers with regional organizations in order to produce and screen videos all around the world. With the help of partner organizations, Global Action Project\'s productions are screened for over 250,000 people per year. Films are for sale on their website, and many are also available on Global Action Project\'s YouTube Channel. Below is \"What\'s Justice?\" a video about how the Youth Leadership Project of CAAAV (also known as also known as Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence) is organizing for justice and community healing in the Bronx:
The Lower East Side Girls Club It connects media production training, hyper-local journalism, intercultural understanding and community activism for girls aged eight to 18. The organization\'s website includes podcasts (check out this one about two young women who refused to serve in the Israeli Army), blogs, girl-produced videos, and girl-produced citizen journalism, including an extensive multimedia hyper-local journalism project. In addition to media training, the Lower East Side Girls Club runs a diverse array of programs, ranging from health to the environment to international field trips. For more information on the Lower East Side Girls Club, see the video below:
Youth Radio/Youth Media International Founded in 1990, Youth Radio provides underserved youth with free media training. Each year, Youth Radio trains 1,300 young people in broadcast journalism, multimedia skills training and career preparation. Youth Radio has achieved tremendous success in terms of distribution -- over 300 Youth Radio reports are broadcast annually, on outlets including NPR, CNN.com and iTunes. According to Youth Radio\'s website, \"an estimated 27 million people hear and read the often overlooked perspectives of young people through Youth Radio\'s work each year.\" Read Youth Radio blogs here, listen to programs live here, or explore the archives here. Also, be sure to check out this youth-produced journalism collaboration with KQED.
While youth are often at an advantage in terms of social media fluency and knowledge of contemporary culture, the youth media field faces major challenges in supporting training, production and distribution, especially for resource-intensive broadcast platforms. Perhaps the most pressing issue is funding. According to the State of the Youth Media Field report:
Veteran funders are making fewer and smaller grants, and new funders are not inclining toward the kind of small, youth development-oriented organizations that populate the youth media field. Despite this funding landscape, youth media organizations and their funding partners acknowledge that the field has great potential to address large issues like poverty, education, war/conflict resolution, and HIV/AIDs. Funders in these areas tend to make long-term investments with short-term deliverables -- a combination that would seem perfect for youth media, which routinely produces short, powerful, convincing, provocative, and extremely innovative pieces that have the potential to change society.
Along with difficulties in securing funding, practitioners in the youth media field sometimes struggle to uphold production values that match professionally produced media. While a particular youth media production may tell a great story that has the potential to ignite social change, many people will disregard it based on production values alone. Additionally, youth producers are not always taken seriously, or seen as even remotely authoritative. And in some school-based youth media programs, students can find their freedom of speech restricted.
According to Christine Newkirk of Youth Media Reporter, as a culture we are especially uninterested in the opinions and concerns of socially marginalized young people: \"We see young people as consumers. We want their engagement in terms of buying things from us, but not in terms of listening to what they have to say.\"
Another issue facing the youth media field is visibility. There are hundreds of youth media organizations in the United States and abroad, but individual projects are often grassroots and local, and lack access to widespread distribution. The field is in need of a centralized distribution hub in order to create the kind of awareness that makes adults sit up and listen. For example, Youth Radio has had great success in broadcasting youth-produced pieces on national media outlets. The potential for public engagement and social change increases exponentially when the audience is widened. Newkirk noted that exposure to youth productions can lead adults to develop \"a newfound respect for youth citizenship and participation.\"
As Dahl pointed out, youth media has too much potential to be ignored. And, much like public media, \"youth media has the potential to create lasting, sustainable, major shifts in the culture we know today.\"
The youth media field must continue to generate engagement while expanding its reach into new audiences -- including adult communities. And stakeholders in both fields must continue to nurture the areas in which youth media and public media overlap.
Katie Donnelly is a research fellow at the Ce...
Flexibility, Freelance Key for Journalism Grads in Tough Job MarketWed, 20 Jan 2010 10:01:21 -0800 - Stephanie Lim is a bright twenty-something who graduated top of her class in May 2009* from the UBC School of Journalism in Vancouver, Canada. When she returned home to Toronto, she had to face the reality of looking for a position in an industry reeling from fragmented audiences, declining profits and job losses. \"Even though I had high hopes upon graduation to find my dream job in journalism, when I graduated the media job market was not in good condition for hiring anyone full-time,\" she recalled. Lim did find work, though it was not the full-time position she\'d been hoping for. Instead, she freelanced as a video editor for Global TV news in Toronto. Her story will be familiar to journalism graduates in North America. The 2008 Annual Survey of Journalism & Mass Communication Graduates found the lowest level of full-time employment reported by graduates in the U.S. for the past two decades. Only six in 10 of graduates had full-time employment six to eight months after graduating in 2008. The report said \"by almost all indications, the 2008 graduates of the nation\'s journalism and mass communications programs found themselves in a disastrous job market.\" A year later, the State of the Media report for 2009 concluded that the collapsing economy in the U.S. aggravated an already weakened industry. Across the border in Canada, the year was just as bleak, with hundreds of job losses, newspapers cutting back on publication days and one of the main media conglomerates, Canwest, seeking creditor protection. Opportunity Knocks The journalism graduates that are getting work find they have to be flexible when considering their options. \"Pickings were slim in the job market when I graduated but opportunities were, by no means, non-existent,\" said recent grad Allison Cross. \"I say opportunities because full-time, permanent jobs were scarce, but there were plenty of contracts out there to do journalism, social media, communications or professional writing. \"In many cases, these opportunities did not resemble the ideal job I was looking for, but still seemed to provide opportunities for new journalists to get their names out, try new things and make a bit of money along the way,\" she said. Cross took a different route after graduating from UBC in 2009. Attracted by the idea of reporting abroad, she spent five months in Sierra Leone freelancing and doing media development work for the Canadian non-profit organization, Journalists for Human Rights. On her return, she landed a one-year contract as a reporter with Canwest News Service, a wire service for several major Canadian newspapers. \"I was most surprised by my new employer\'s enthusiasm for multimedia skills, and how desperately those skills are needed in the newsroom,\" she said. Taking the job involved making a difficult decision -- leaving her native Vancouver. \"My biggest challenge was trying to find the right job in the city where I wanted to live,\" she said. \"Ultimately, I had to sacrifice my city of choice and move across the country for a job.\" Difficult Choices UBC journalism grad Krysia Collyer also had to make compromises. She was awarded a prestigious Joan Donaldson scholarship with the CBC News Network, which she hoped would be the first step towards being a TV reporter. \"I won the Donaldson and as a result have had a lot easier time finding work,\" said Collyer. \"CBC has approached me as opposed to me going out and applying for a job with them.\" She is now an associate producer in Ottawa, switching between radio reporting and producing, though she hopes to move back into TV at some point. Recent grads in the U.S. have faced a similar dilemma. The 2008 survey of journalism and communication students found job satisfaction down, with some grads saying they accepted a job because it was the only one available. However, few students can hope to land their ideal job straight out of school. The challenge for grads is to marry their hopes and dreams with the realities of journalism today. If anything, students are expected to be more entrepreneurial, though this is a relatively new area for journalism schools. Ironically, the 2008 job survey found that public relations students fared better because they were more entrepreneurial and less tied to traditional job definitions. New Positions New media is creating new types of opportunities. 2009 grad Dan Haves took on a new role as social media officer for the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education in Vancouver. Fellow grad Cynthia Yoo is working for the citizen journalism website OhMyNews in Korea, as well as with the Korean blog network Tatter and Media, and a start-up based in California. \"I don\'t think you can plan out your career as journalists did in the past,\" said Yoo, who also teaches at Kyung Hee University in Seoul. \"But there are many jobs and interesting projects out there, if you\'re flexible.\" For Stephanie Lim, being flexible has meant coming back to Vancouver temporarily for the Winter Olympics. She is working as a producer\'s assistant for the Olympic Broadcasting Services Vancouver. \"The biggest challenge diving into the real world of journalism was the realization that this industry is unlike any other,\" said Lim. \"A job is not just given to you on a silver platter just because you have a degree in journalism. Instead, you must work from the bottom of the ladder as an intern, perform, and earn respect from veterans in the field.\" Her advice for journalism students who are apprehensive about graduation is simple. \"Know what area of journalism you want to get into, and strive for your goal. Don\'t give up, even if it may take you two years to find that dream job.\" *Correction Jan. 20, 2010: This post originally and incorrectly said Stephanie Lim graduated from UBC in 2010. She of course graduated in 2009. Alfred Hermida is an online news pioneer and journalism educator. He is an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Journalism, the University of British Columbia, where he leads the integrated journalism program. He was a founding news editor of the BBC News website. He blogs at Reportr.net.
Stephanie Lim is a bright twenty-something who graduated top of her class in May 2009* from the UBC School of Journalism in Vancouver, Canada. When she returned home to Toronto, she had to face the reality of looking for a position in an industry reeling from fragmented audiences, declining profits and job losses.
\"Even though I had high hopes upon graduation to find my dream job in journalism, when I graduated the media job market was not in good condition for hiring anyone full-time,\" she recalled.
Lim did find work, though it was not the full-time position she\'d been hoping for. Instead, she freelanced as a video editor for Global TV news in Toronto.
Her story will be familiar to journalism graduates in North America. The 2008 Annual Survey of Journalism & Mass Communication Graduates found the lowest level of full-time employment reported by graduates in the U.S. for the past two decades.
Only six in 10 of graduates had full-time employment six to eight months after graduating in 2008. The report said \"by almost all indications, the 2008 graduates of the nation\'s journalism and mass communications programs found themselves in a disastrous job market.\"
A year later, the State of the Media report for 2009 concluded that the collapsing economy in the U.S. aggravated an already weakened industry.
Across the border in Canada, the year was just as bleak, with hundreds of job losses, newspapers cutting back on publication days and one of the main media conglomerates, Canwest, seeking creditor protection.
The journalism graduates that are getting work find they have to be flexible when considering their options.
\"Pickings were slim in the job market when I graduated but opportunities were, by no means, non-existent,\" said recent grad Allison Cross. \"I say opportunities because full-time, permanent jobs were scarce, but there were plenty of contracts out there to do journalism, social media, communications or professional writing.
\"In many cases, these opportunities did not resemble the ideal job I was looking for, but still seemed to provide opportunities for new journalists to get their names out, try new things and make a bit of money along the way,\" she said.
Cross took a different route after graduating from UBC in 2009. Attracted by the idea of reporting abroad, she spent five months in Sierra Leone freelancing and doing media development work for the Canadian non-profit organization, Journalists for Human Rights.
On her return, she landed a one-year contract as a reporter with Canwest News Service, a wire service for several major Canadian newspapers.
\"I was most surprised by my new employer\'s enthusiasm for multimedia skills, and how desperately those skills are needed in the newsroom,\" she said.
Taking the job involved making a difficult decision -- leaving her native Vancouver.
\"My biggest challenge was trying to find the right job in the city where I wanted to live,\" she said. \"Ultimately, I had to sacrifice my city of choice and move across the country for a job.\"
UBC journalism grad Krysia Collyer also had to make compromises. She was awarded a prestigious Joan Donaldson scholarship with the CBC News Network, which she hoped would be the first step towards being a TV reporter.
\"I won the Donaldson and as a result have had a lot easier time finding work,\" said Collyer. \"CBC has approached me as opposed to me going out and applying for a job with them.\"
She is now an associate producer in Ottawa, switching between radio reporting and producing, though she hopes to move back into TV at some point.
Recent grads in the U.S. have faced a similar dilemma. The 2008 survey of journalism and communication students found job satisfaction down, with some grads saying they accepted a job because it was the only one available.
However, few students can hope to land their ideal job straight out of school. The challenge for grads is to marry their hopes and dreams with the realities of journalism today.
If anything, students are expected to be more entrepreneurial, though this is a relatively new area for journalism schools. Ironically, the 2008 job survey found that public relations students fared better because they were more entrepreneurial and less tied to traditional job definitions.
New media is creating new types of opportunities. 2009 grad Dan Haves took on a new role as social media officer for the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education in Vancouver.
Fellow grad Cynthia Yoo is working for the citizen journalism website OhMyNews in Korea, as well as with the Korean blog network Tatter and Media, and a start-up based in California.
\"I don\'t think you can plan out your career as journalists did in the past,\" said Yoo, who also teaches at Kyung Hee University in Seoul. \"But there are many jobs and interesting projects out there, if you\'re flexible.\"
For Stephanie Lim, being flexible has meant coming back to Vancouver temporarily for the Winter Olympics. She is working as a producer\'s assistant for the Olympic Broadcasting Services Vancouver.
\"The biggest challenge diving into the real world of journalism was the realization that this industry is unlike any other,\" said Lim. \"A job is not just given to you on a silver platter just because you have a degree in journalism. Instead, you must work from the bottom of the ladder as an intern, perform, and earn respect from veterans in the field.\"
Her advice for journalism students who are apprehensive about graduation is simple.
\"Know what area of journalism you want to get into, and strive for your goal. Don\'t give up, even if it may take you two years to find that dream job.\"
*Correction Jan. 20, 2010: This post originally and incorrectly said Stephanie Lim graduated from UBC in 2010. She of course graduated in 2009.
Alfred Hermida is an online news pioneer and journalism educator. He is an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Journalism, the University of British Columbia, where he leads the integrated journalism program. He was a founding news editor of the BBC News website. He blogs at Reportr.net.
How to Use Meta-Stories to Engage the Newsroom, CommunityTue, 19 Jan 2010 16:11:07 -0800 - How do we create a community? This question is frequently asked by editors as well as by marketing managers and other business people. More and more, I don\'t think you can create communities. Communities already exist. You can try and offer them a news service or a platform that the community finds useful and engaging, but forget trying to control that community or shape it to meet the needs of your media company. The community calls the shots, not you or your company. In December, I attended the LeWeb conference in Paris. I was impressed by Chris Pirillo, who told us that people who view communities as \"tools\" are tools themselves. Control is an illusion. (In fact, during his passionate presentation, Pirillo said \"control is bullshit.\") With that in mind, I\'d like to suggest a simple way to make your newsroom or website do a better job of connecting with the community you serve: writing meta-stories. Meta-stories are stories about what\'s happening on your website, and about what happens in the newsroom. They\'re a great way to engage the community. Tell a Story From Forums, Comments We allow people to post comments directly to our newspaper\'s website, but we intervene and moderate whenever the debate gets personal or off-topic. This is a story in itself. I have started writing a daily story about the comments on our site and in our discussion forums. I\'ve been amazed by the hidden gems of insight I\'ve found. It really is a story in itself to examine how people react when a story breaks, and how the discussion evolves. It\'s also important to have a forum where people can come together and interact. This is a way for them to help tell a meta-story. Using CoveritLive, I hold chat sessions each weekday (for between 30 and 60 minutes) with or without a special guest. (We\'re a financial newspaper, so mostly we chat about what happened with the markets.) This synchronous contact with our community builds trust. Beyond that, often people make very useful suggestions, like \"why don\'t you publish that investment guide each quarter instead of only once a year, we really like and need it.\" Or they suggest interesting new angles for news stories. Allow the Community to Listen In My next way to create a meta-story is very simple: I talk to my colleagues. I ask them what they\'re up to, and what their thoughts are about ongoing stories. I just jot down a list of topics and ideas and post them on our financial blog. This becomes a story about what\'s going on inside the newsroom as we prepare our reporting. Go Where Your Community Is Once I\'ve written my meta-stories, I share them on Facebook and Twitter in order to try and reach an even broader group of interested people. But even though I use Facebook and Twitter, I suggest focusing on the places where the community tends to focus its presence and attention. For our paper, we generate the most debate and comments on our website, rather than on Facebook or Twitter. Our audience is interested in finance and economics, which means they have an interest in innovation and technology. But they\'re not geeks and aren\'t necessarily tech savvy, meaning that only a minority of them actively use Twitter. Even though I\'m personally inclined to spend lots of time on Twitter, I force myself to hang out more on our site. Maybe it\'s not the latest in social media technology, but it\'s where our community hangs out. They Actually Like It At first I was afraid that community members would complain about my comment meta-stories: \'Why did you mention his comment and not mine?\' It didn\'t happen. People actually told me they appreciated the effort, even if they weren\'t the one being featured. I also get the impression some of them have started writing carefully worded comments in order to be included in the comments story. As for my colleagues, my fear was they would object to being quoted when they are in the early stages of their reporting. It seems, however, they have no objections at all. They actually seem to appreciate the fact that their work is being noted and updated, and all they have to do is to speak to me or to jot down what they\'re up to -- much like status updates, in fact. It gives the editorial work a stream-like, real-time web urgency. Keep Things Simple So forget about complicated community-building strategies. Meet the existing community you want to serve, talk to them, talk to your colleagues, write down the whole process, and put it out there for everyone to read. (This approach works equally well for those who work with sound or video.) Then combine that with a synchronous session (such as chat) and have real-time interactions. You\'ll be surprised how much your community will teach you -- not only about the news, but about what you do. ***** I\'d love to hear about your suggestions and thoughts about using meta-stories! Please share then in the comments. Roland Legrand is in charge of Internet and new media at Mediafin, the publisher of leading Belgian business newspapers De Tijd and L\'Echo. He studied applied economics and philosophy. After a brief teaching experience, he became a financial journalist working for the Belgian wire service Belga and subsequently for Mediafin. He works in Brussels, and lives in Antwerp with his wife Liesbeth.
How do we create a community? This question is frequently asked by editors as well as by marketing managers and other business people. More and more, I don\'t think you can create communities.
Communities already exist. You can try and offer them a news service or a platform that the community finds useful and engaging, but forget trying to control that community or shape it to meet the needs of your media company. The community calls the shots, not you or your company.
In December, I attended the LeWeb conference in Paris. I was impressed by Chris Pirillo, who told us that people who view communities as \"tools\" are tools themselves. Control is an illusion. (In fact, during his passionate presentation, Pirillo said \"control is bullshit.\")
With that in mind, I\'d like to suggest a simple way to make your newsroom or website do a better job of connecting with the community you serve: writing meta-stories.
Meta-stories are stories about what\'s happening on your website, and about what happens in the newsroom. They\'re a great way to engage the community.
We allow people to post comments directly to our newspaper\'s website, but we intervene and moderate whenever the debate gets personal or off-topic. This is a story in itself. I have started writing a daily story about the comments on our site and in our discussion forums. I\'ve been amazed by the hidden gems of insight I\'ve found. It really is a story in itself to examine how people react when a story breaks, and how the discussion evolves.
It\'s also important to have a forum where people can come together and interact. This is a way for them to help tell a meta-story. Using CoveritLive, I hold chat sessions each weekday (for between 30 and 60 minutes) with or without a special guest. (We\'re a financial newspaper, so mostly we chat about what happened with the markets.) This synchronous contact with our community builds trust. Beyond that, often people make very useful suggestions, like \"why don\'t you publish that investment guide each quarter instead of only once a year, we really like and need it.\" Or they suggest interesting new angles for news stories.
My next way to create a meta-story is very simple: I talk to my colleagues. I ask them what they\'re up to, and what their thoughts are about ongoing stories. I just jot down a list of topics and ideas and post them on our financial blog. This becomes a story about what\'s going on inside the newsroom as we prepare our reporting.
Once I\'ve written my meta-stories, I share them on Facebook and Twitter in order to try and reach an even broader group of interested people. But even though I use Facebook and Twitter, I suggest focusing on the places where the community tends to focus its presence and attention.
For our paper, we generate the most debate and comments on our website, rather than on Facebook or Twitter. Our audience is interested in finance and economics, which means they have an interest in innovation and technology. But they\'re not geeks and aren\'t necessarily tech savvy, meaning that only a minority of them actively use Twitter.
Even though I\'m personally inclined to spend lots of time on Twitter, I force myself to hang out more on our site. Maybe it\'s not the latest in social media technology, but it\'s where our community hangs out.
At first I was afraid that community members would complain about my comment meta-stories: \'Why did you mention his comment and not mine?\' It didn\'t happen. People actually told me they appreciated the effort, even if they weren\'t the one being featured. I also get the impression some of them have started writing carefully worded comments in order to be included in the comments story.
As for my colleagues, my fear was they would object to being quoted when they are in the early stages of their reporting. It seems, however, they have no objections at all. They actually seem to appreciate the fact that their work is being noted and updated, and all they have to do is to speak to me or to jot down what they\'re up to -- much like status updates, in fact. It gives the editorial work a stream-like, real-time web urgency.
So forget about complicated community-building strategies. Meet the existing community you want to serve, talk to them, talk to your colleagues, write down the whole process, and put it out there for everyone to read. (This approach works equally well for those who work with sound or video.)
Then combine that with a synchronous session (such as chat) and have real-time interactions. You\'ll be surprised how much your community will teach you -- not only about the news, but about what you do.
I\'d love to hear about your suggestions and thoughts about using meta-stories! Please share then in the comments.
Roland Legrand is in charge of Internet and new media at Mediafin, the publisher of leading Belgian business newspapers De Tijd and L\'Echo. He studied applied economics and philosophy. After a brief teaching experience, he became a financial journalist working for the Belgian wire service Belga and subsequently for Mediafin. He works in Brussels, and lives in Antwerp with his wife Liesbeth.
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