20th Post – Six Reasons Why Magazines Have a Future

This post is about a blog post, entitled ‘Six reasons why magazines have a future’, which discusses the future of magazines as a viable form of media, particularly in print. This particular post was written by Alex Lockwood, but the blog as a whole, called  ‘Online Journalism Blog’, is written by various journalists from the UK, Europe and India.

In his post, Lockwood reports on the outcome of the ‘What Happens to Magazines?’ industry event. Six reasons were given by the panel as to why magazines have a future, and some of these reasons related to online journalism.

Ashley Norris, of Shiny Media, believes that twenty or thirty blogs in a network will be doing the work of two or three magazines, brokering creative sponsorship between brands and social media. This is an interesting observation, as twenty or thirty blogs doesn’t sound the same as a magazine, or in this case two or three magazines.

Do magazines have a future?

19th Post – ‘Christian Science Monitor’ and the ‘U.S. News & World Report’

The Christian Science Monitor and the U.S. News  & World Report are examples of publications changing their business model in order to cope with financial losses.

The Christian Science Monitor was once a daily newspaper. In October 2008, after losses of $18.9 million and only $12.5 million in revenue, the paper stopped printing daily and reverted to a weekly print edition, with daily news updates available on its website.

The U.S. News & Weekly Report was once a weekly magazine. In June 2008, having failed to compete with Time and Newsweek, the magazine reverted to a biweekly until November of the same year when it became a monthly.

The changes made by both the Christian Science Monitor and the U.S. News & Weekly Report came before the Rocky Mountain News printed its final edition. This trend of publications reverting online, or ceasing to operate entirely, seems likely to continue, with advertising revenue drying up and circulation of print falling.

18th Post – Classmate’s Blog Three

This post is a reference to Sam Matthew’s blog. He wrote an interesting post entitled ‘Blogs and Twitter now on the Curriculum’.

Sam’s post in an intriguing one as it talks about an article the Guardian published on their website several weeks ago. As Sam details in his blog, the Guardian article discusses proposals in England for changing primary schools’ curriculum to include the teaching of basic Internet usage skills.

These would enable primary school children to perform basic citizen journalism.

17th Post – Online Journalism Commands Shorter Attention Span Than Print Media

In this short video, entitled ‘John Yemma on the attention span for online journalism’, John Yemma – editor of the Christian Science Monitor – makes a point that online news fails to command the attention of readers in the same way as print media does. This, he says, is because of the ‘commitment that people make to print’.

This is interesting because, despite falling numbers in the sale of newspapers, it could be argued that those who still read print media are more informed than those who read online news for one of two reasons.

1) Those who read newspapers are more inclined to read everything in an artilce and scan all the headlines, as they have paid for the paper and are willing to spend some time consuming the news in it.

2) Those who consume online news solely are more inclined to search only for the stories they are concerned with, ignoring the others entirely. Also, they are less likely to finish reading the article as they may be linked away to some other page discussing some other piece of information contained in the story.

16th Post – Free Flow of Information Act 2009

This is an article, entitled ‘ONA joins other media groups in applauding passage of federal shield bill by the House’, posted on the Online News Association website talking about the passing of the Free Flow of Information Act 0f 2009.

The passing of this act means that ‘the “media shield” legislation would protect the public’s right to know by setting reasonable standards for when journalists can be compelled to disclose the identities of their confidential sources in federal court.’

This is an interesting and important development, as many sources would not provide important information to journalists if confidentiality could not be guaranteed.

The passing of the Free Flow of Information Act of 2009 means journalists needn't worry too much about finding themselves beside this particular Santa Claus

15th Post – Classmate’s Blog Two

This is just a short post linking to Dave Kearn’s blog post, entitled ‘Journalism Online, the end of the free ride?’

Dave’s post is interesting as it talks about the idea of paying to read newspapers online, while referring to an article about ‘Journalism Online’, an enterprise, as Dave put it, that would become a ‘central hub’, allowing online readers to access hundreds of newspapers from the one website for a fee.

The idea of paying for online news is not a new one, but it is one that would be met with many raised eyebrows. Having read the article Dave refers to in his post, it would seem that ‘Journalism Online’ could prove to be moderately successful.

Paying for online news?

14th Post – Jailed Online Journalists Surpasses Print Journalists

This article on RTE.ie talks about an announcement made by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) regarding the jailing of journalists. The CPJ says in the article, entitled ‘Online journalists are most jailed’, that in 2008, for the first time, the number of jailed online journalists surpassed the number of jailed print journalists.

These jailed journalists included bloggers, web reporters and web editors. China had the largest amount of jailed journalists, followed by Cuba, Myanmar, Eritrea and Uzbekistan.

In the article, CPJ executive director Joel Simmon said ‘Online journalism had changed the media landscape and the way we communicate with each other, but the power and influence of this new generation of online journalists has captured the attention of the repressive governments around the world, and they have accelerated their counterattack.’

China's pie chart of jailed journalists.

13th Post – Journalistopia

Journalistopia is blog by Danny Sanchez, the Multimedia Content Manager at OrlandoSentinal.com, talking about developments of journalism online, as well journalism in general and journalism events being held across America.

Sanchez’ has been writing this blog since August 2006, meaning it documents developments in journalism, both on and offline, since then. It also discusses multimedia tools available on the internet, as well as social networking sites. Interactivity is a topic that arises frequently in his posts, which is natural considering his current occupation.

Google News has been the subject of recent blog posts.

12th Post – New York Times Online Coverage of Zidane Headbutt

This article , entitled ‘NY Times links Zidane headbutt video on Youtube’ discusses the New York Times linking its readers away from the story about the 2006 World Cup Final between France and Italy to a Youtube video of French captain at the time, Zinedine Zidane, headbutting Italy’s Marco Matterazzi and being sent off.

While this is an old article, it highlights how, at the time, this editorial decision by the NY Times reflected a growing realisation amongst mainstream media organisations of the potential of Youtube. This was despite Youtube only being in existence for just over a year and a half at the time.

Within this article are links to various other articles about the incident. The sending off of arguably the greatest player in his generation in his final game before retirement is always going to attract attention, but it is interesting to see the sheer number of articles written on the matter, as well as the amount of interactivity going on in each article, as there are links to further articles all the time.

This video is a reminder of the real reasons why Zidane should be remembered:

11th Post – Survey: Optimism About Online Journalism’s Potential Revenue Stream

This article discusses the results of a survey conducted by the Pew Research Centre’s Project For Excellence in Journalism.

Survey says journalists optimistic about revenue for online journalism

The article, entitled ‘Survey results: Online journalists optimistic about potential in revenue, technology‘, found that journalists working online were less likely to believe that journalism was headed in the wrong direction, while two-thirds of the survey-takers believed advertising would be the most important source of revenue for web sites in the next three years.

See here for the PDF of the survey results. Below is a link to a video of the results being delivered at a conference.

Survey of ONA members on online news from Merrill College on Vimeo.