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Bill Day writes on PaidContent.org that online advertising needs to be dramatically transformed. Day rejects a pay model, but says that advertisers and publishers must make ads more effective. Among his suggestions: (1) limit the number of ads on the page, (2) target and adapt ads to the user, and (3) make the calls to action more sophisticated. Read the PaidContent.org post. — June 4, 2009……Continue Reading A call to revamp online advertising

Tim Windsor at Nieman Journalism Labs discusses how he kept informed about a symposium at the University of Maryland about how journalism would fare if newspapers died. Windsor's conclusion: "Reporting, apparently, still gets down." Despite the absence of any reporting by the Balitmore Sun, he stayed informed through tweets ("missjames: miller is obviously not a believer in future of online. #localnews"), blogs and local community news sites. You can read the Nieman Journalism Lab post here…….Continue Reading The news without newspapers

News Corp has said that it will establish a paid model for its online content, and its new chief digital officer suggests that the company, "is willing to take a lead position to push for change." Jonathan Miller says that News Corp is interested not just in providing additional revenue for itself, but also in developing a model that will help the industry as a whole. One of his ideas is to bundle content — offering some of News Corp's New York media, or a group of their newspapers, together for a fee. Miller argues that bundling needs to be……Continue Reading News Corp may lead the industry towards a new model

Journalism students at Northwestern University have teamed with their peers in computer science to develop several applications that produce and organize information. One generates sports stories from box score and play-by-play information. Another one is suited for an iPhone, and organizes the news into 5-minute, 10-minute, or 20-minute chunks. And yet another would allow journalists to fact-check their stories in Microsoft Word without switching to an Internet search. The groups will meet with journalists in the industry to discuss their applications next week. You can read the study published by Northwestern University here…….Continue Reading Northwestern students develop new journalism tools

As an important conceptual step, Advertising Age reports that the New York Times no longer considers its customers to be readers, but users. More pratically, the paper is trying to make its website and online content more interactive. The paper has opened up its application programming interfaces to allow outside developers the chance to create news ways of viewing and reacting to the data. One example is the NYTExplorer, which offers an alternative search feature to the current search options on the site. You can read the Advertising Age article here…….Continue Reading New York Times offers more to its users

In another hint that a wide variety of online content may soon exist behind a pay wall, Jonathan Miller, News Corp's new chief digital officer, suggested that Hulu will likey switch to a subscription model in the near future. Under his vision, which Miller stresses is his personal prediction, the site would begin to charge users to view some of its TV shows and movies. If the move were to prove successful, perhaps it would encourage other sites to establish a pay wall. You can read the post from Daily Finance here…….Continue Reading Hulu.com may not always be free

Though the Spanish-language media has experience some difficulties due to the economic downturn, these newspapers are faring much better than their English-language counterparts. For one thing, their demographics continue to grow with the continuing immigration of Spanish-speakers. For another, Hispanics continue to suffer from the digital divide, and therefore lack access to the Internet. You can read the article in the Philadelphia Weekly here…….Continue Reading Hispanic media faring better than English-language press

Steve Brill of Journalism Online has made several agreements with newspapers to charge for their online content. Journalism Online is pushing a "common platform" for news websites to charge annual, monthly and per-article fees." Brill argues that by mixing free and paid offerings, newspapers can gain subscription revenue from 5-10% of their users, while preserving a supermajority of their page views and ad revenue. You can read the Nieman Lab post about Brill's proposal here…….Continue Reading Journalism Online outlines paid-news strategy

Gina Chen of Save the Media suggests a new type of newspaper Web site. To work, though, newspapers must recognize two truths: "(1) The mass audience is dead, (2) The product of newspaper Web sites is not news." The new site would let users choose their activities — from reading the latest top story to doing a crossword puzzle to reviewing a new video game. Chen calls this idea a hyperinterest page, which like Twitter would gain popularity through word of mouth. You can read the post by Save the Media here…….Continue Reading Hyperinterest pages may be the future of newspaper sites

Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair has this advice for struggling newspapers: "Get on a big story with widespread public appeal, devote your best resources to it, say a quiet prayer, and swing for the fences." He cites the compelling example of London's Telegraph, which has devoted 120 broadsheet pages to its expose on the expenses of members of Parliament. It led to the resignation of the Speaker of the House of Commons, not to mention the selling out of the Telegraph issue that broke the story, plus an additional 600,000 copies. You can read the Vanity Fair article here as……Continue Reading Telegraph demonstrates power of the press