Category: News

Online advertisements are often measured (and paid for) in terms of clicks. Companies usually buy ads at CPMs (or cost per thousand clicks). But publishers are starting to turn to engagement advertising, which focuses on the level of engagement with a product or ad rather than the number of click-throughs. It remains difficult, however, to measure engagement, and the industry has traditionally relied upon time as the measure. There are still obstacles to overcome, but industry experts expect engagement ads to be the future of online advertising. You can read the article on Paid Content.org's website…….Continue Reading Engagement ads could be the future

As The New York Times struggles under the burdens of debt and the general decline of newspapers, Richard Siklos of Fortune reports that former Hollywood mogul David Geffen offered to purchase a 19 percent stake in the newspaper from Harbinger Capital Partners. The deal did not go through. Siklos also has a good summary of the challenges facing the so-called the Grey Lady. You can read the Fortune magazine article here……Continue Reading Geffen tried to buy stake in NY Times

At the White House Correspondents Dinner, a traditionally humorous gathering of politicians and press, President Obama ended his satirical speech with an earnest support of newspapers: "a government without newspapers, a government without a tough and vibrant media is not an option for the United States of America." This statement has led some to conclude that the president is preparing for a government bailout of newspapers. Read the Editors Weblog post. — May 11, 2009…….Continue Reading Obama supports journalism at Correspondents Dinner

Papermotion might be the start of an entirely new way to consume newspaper advertising. Created by a French company, Total Immersion, and an Australian firm, the Dreamscape Group, this new technology uses a printed image.  When put in front of a webcam, it creates a three-dimensional image on the computer, complete with music. 20th Century Fox is the first major company to employ this type of advertising for their upcoming film, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. Read the Editors’ Weblog post and watch the demonstration video…….Continue Reading Papermotion links printed image to online video

The problem with news charts, maps and databases is that they all require maintenance in order to stay relevant. Without continual updating, they quickly become irrelevant and sometimes misleading. One way to prevent this, without allocating staff, is to have the charts pull directly from the available information as it is released, so that the chart is quickly updated (The Raleigh News and Observer does this with their crime graphs, culling information from law enforcement databases). Another helpful tool might be Wolfram Alpha, a powerful search engine that will answer queries and compute information. You can read the Nieman Journalism……Continue Reading New ways to maintain database journalism

Pricewaterhouse Coopers published a study surveyed viewers' willingness to pay for content. According to their survey, respondents were willing to pay 97 percent of the price for financial news. More promising, those surveyed said they would pay 77 percent of the full price for online sports news, and an average of 62 percent for general content. The study suggests, then, that newspapers and other news sources might be able to charge for online content, though perhaps not as much as they would like. You can read the Paid Content article here…….Continue Reading Survey shows willingness to pay for online content

The Wall Street Journal, whose online paid subscriptions have risen 21 percent since 2007, will soon add a micropayment service to view its online content. The service is set to launch in autumn; the cost of each viewed article has not yet been determined. The launch of the micropayment service comes as newspapers are increasingly looking at such a business model to fund their reporting. You can read the article in the Financial Times here…….Continue Reading WSJ will begin charging micropayments

Ryan Tate at Gawker weighs in on yesterday's Senate hearing, offering a defense of the bloggers that some in the mainstream media criticized. Specifically, he takes issue with the claim, voiced by former Baltimore Sun reporter David Simon, that bloggers do not cover the mundane, everyday issues like public meetings. Tate also highlights Arianna Huffington's argument that bloggers "chomp down on a story and stay with it, refusing to move off it until they've gotten down to the marrow." You can read the post on Gawker here…….Continue Reading Blogger’s response to the Senate hearings

At Wednesday's Senate hearing on the future of journalism, traditional journalists sounded alarms about their struggling industy. Yet two of the witnesses, Marissa Mayer of Google and Arianna Huffington of the eponymous Huffington Post, represented the new-media aggregators that rely on others' original content. Mayer and Huffington both had to respond to senators who highlighted their role in killing newspapers. Sen. Kerry lamented: "I see cacophony without standards. I see more and more people operating in public life with snippets, and I think that's dangerous." You can read the Washington Post column here…….Continue Reading Aggregators defend themselves at Senate hearing