Bringing the news to readers, one app at a time

Writing about the popularity of mobile news and the New York Times‘ iPhone app, Nieman Journalism Lab’s Martin Langeveld suggests that ad sales don’t have to be the only source of revenue for newspapers:

One implication of the small screen, when it comes to news: we may be less inclined to work hard for news by searching, surfing and visiting aggregators, and more inclined to let the news come to us, by whatever means. The challenge, then, for publishers, may be to create apps that deliver custom-tailored news to fit preferences and interests of phone users.

Perhaps the figures Langeveld provides will be the nudge newspaper execs need to focus less on setting up pay walls and more on providing their readers with the kind of value they want, and building revenue streams upon that.

It would appear some are doing just that. Editor & Publisher reports that the new iPhone operating system will give publishers the tools they need for specialized content delivery and advertising:

The new technology has the ability to deliver user-location information at the browser level. For example, when a user accesses a newspaper Web site, the browser knows the user’s location. The newspaper can send relevant content and, more important, relevant targeted advertising within 2 blocks on a person’s location. “This makes local advertising on mobile highly potent with high CPMS,” Howe said.

Second: There is a new capability for publishers to charge for subscriptions or micropayments through one application. For example, a user could be reading about the new quarterback in town and with one click can purchase premium content like an exclusive video interview the quarterback.

Does your newsroom know its community?

Take about a minute and look at Mark Glaser’s 10 steps to saving newspapers in the digital age (via CyberJournalist). And then take note that the thread running through each of these steps isn’t about cutting costs as much as it is about being innovative in the effort to engage the local community.

Because I’m a good netizen, I won’t reprint the short post here and deprive CyberJournalist of the traffic, but I will say that Glaser is right on target in telling news sites to focus on what businesses want, rather than viewing them as an endless source of advertising dollars. And his recommendation to engage the community in face-to-face meetings recalls Gina Chen’s fine Save the Media post on how journalists can create communities of readers.

Check out this iPhone app to locate real estate

At the Reynolds Journalism Institute Symposium at the University of Missouri, a nifty application called NearBuy won the student iPhone app competition:

The app uses your location to serve up either homes for sale in the area or apartments for rent. They bring in listings from Google Base, Craigslist and Oodle. You can then view info on listings on a map, including photos, property details, contact information. Plus, you can use Twitter to query people for opinions on particular places, and then rate the place. Extras include a rent calculator and a Flickr add-on that lets you see photos geo-coded nearby.

And even though it didn’t win, I really like the sound of The ADverse Network, which offers an enticing business platform for news outlets in need of innovative ways to work with advertisers (particularly local businesses):

They wanted to create a geo-located advertising service, so that you would get local ads based on your location. Ads are inserted into the two apps we developed, iCoMoNews and Vox. For the advertisers, there are tools like a live map that shows where people are accessing the network, and even more granular “heat maps” to show where people are viewing and clicking on ads. They say they got a clickthrough rate on ads of 3.8% which is pretty good.

Behind newspaper website traffic numbers

Martin Langeveld pours some cold water on the Newspaper Association of America’s report that traffic to newspaper websites accounted for 43 percent of all Internet users in the first quarter of 2009, a 10 percent increase over last year:

Newspaper page views at 3.5 billion per month are less than one percent of total U.S. page views (386 billion in February). …

… As NAA does note, 43.6 percent of that audience visited a newspaper web site, but given that newspaper site traffic works out to only about 1.6 page views per reader per day, many of the newspaper site uniques are clearly represent one-time-only traffic. …

… In the light of the data as seen in context, it is ludicrous for them to be considering a tollbooth to make readers pay in some fashion (other than for carefully selected premium content) — any simple paywall barrier would serve to reduce their online audience share even more.  Similarly, any effort to prevent or restrict Google and others from aggregating content will backfire, since newspaper sites would lose substantial traffic in the absence of traffic driven by aggregator links.

PolitiFact's Pulitzer win is an evolution in journalism

Columbia Journalism Review’s Megan Garber looks at the significance of The St. Petersburg Times‘ PolitiFact winning the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting:

The fact that a piece of journalism so markedly different from its counterparts—both from its fellow finalists and from its fellows in investigative journalism more generally—has won the most prestigious prize in print journalism means that the shift in question is occurring not only in journalistic narrative itself, but also in the standards by which we judge excellence among its ranks. PolitiFact’s Pulitzer win marks the alteration of the definition of reportorial and narrative value itself.

The myth of the multimedia journalist

Andrew Nusca offers a media reality check to the conventional wisdom that today’s journalist must be a camera-toting, video-editing, pen-and-paper wielding jack-of-all-trades:

As new media has increased in popularity and usage, this myth has populated of the multi-talented reporter — you know, the one carrying all the gear a few paragraphs back. And while it’s certainly an ideal, it’s not a necessity. In fact, it’s barely a reality.

Thus brings my first point of this New Media Reality Check: most news organizations simply don’t operate that way.

Nusca uses Henry Ford’s Model-T assembly line to draw an analogy to modern news production:

The same thing applies to publications, moreso as it gets bigger. Whether the publication in question is a newspaper or a magazine or a radio/TV station or a website, the assembly line theory of the Industrial Age still holds true: a writer reports and creates the story, an editor edits it, a photographer shoots art for it, a production editor lays out a template for the story to appear and another editor (or two) looks at the entire package, all while being fact-checked and copy-edited by another person dedicated to that task.

Nusca provides some common sense advice for new and seasoned journalists unsure of whether they have the skills to endure. Pursue the skills you need for your particular niche, he advises. And if you want to be an online journalist:

Google News Timeline

Mathew Ingram looks at the brand new Google News Timeline and wonders: Why can’t newspapers exhibit this kind of creativity?

Google News Timeline is very impressive, offering users the abililty to look at news by days, weeks, months, years and even decades in a visually appealing column format. You can also refine your search according to a particular news source.

Connecting news with communities

A quick rundown of what The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times and a group of hyperlocal sites are doing to build audiences.

The New York Times takes a look at hyperlocal sites EveryBlock, Outside.in, Placeblogger and Patch,

Alan Murray, deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, offers his philosophy of what reporters need to do to grab eyeballs:

The art of a good blog is figuring out the right mix between the piece that you know is going to get maximum search-engine hits to the piece that really defines what you’re doing that’s uniquely valuable. That second piece might not bring in as much traffic, but it’s the piece that’s gonna keep the traffic once you get it in the door. So all of that, which is part of the job of building a community, building an audience — those are totally new skills.

Meanwhile, The Washington Times is embracing citizen journalism — in print:

Learn digital media in 10 weeks

Arizona State University’s Cronkite School New Media Academy is offering training for adults who want to learn how to build multimedia-rich websites:

Participants will learn how to design and develop a Web site, how to effectively present and edit photos for the Web, how to use social networking tools, how to create Web-based graphics, how to do podcasting and audio slideshows, and how to edit and use video on the Web.

The weekly summer program begins May 30 and concludes Aug. 8, and costs $2,000 for the full 10 days of training.

Scan the newspaper barcode, get online updates

Editor & Publisher reports that Toronto’s National Post has become the first North American newspaper to adopt a barcode system that allows users to receive updated digital content:

Readers with data-enabled camera phones, such as a BlackBerry, can scan the or take a snapshot of the digital-looking barcode found alongside a Post story. Updated content from the newspaper’s mobile site is then uploaded to the mobile device.