US Senate discuss future of print media in digital age

08May09

A special US Senate hearing was called yesterday to discuss the future of print media. The hearing was called by former US Democratic candidate John Kerry, who said he believes that newspapers are becoming “endangered” in this digital age.

With almost 9,000 job losses in the US print media this year, Kerry said he believes that “paper and ink have become obsolete, eclipsed by the power, efficiency and technological elegance of the Internet”. Taking part in the hearing were Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington, top executives from Google, and CEO of journalism support organisation The Knight Foundation, Alberto Ibarguen.

“High-end journalism is dying in America and unless a new economic model is achieved it will not be reborn on the Web or anywhere else,” said David Simon (former Baltimore Sun reporter and scriptwriter) who was also present at the hearing.

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Blogs given more space on Irish Times homepage

07May09

The Irish Times has given some more given more priority to its bloggers. There is a new blogroll-style function on its homepage which allows readers to view pull-quotes from recently published Irish Times blogs

This seems to be another step, albeit a small one, towards the merging of blogging and formal journalism.

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Closing doors but opening new ones

07May09

More and more news organisations are feeling the pinch this year. In the US alone, thousands of jobs have been lost due to the decline of newspapers.

Blogger Erica Smith has created a visual representation of the number of job losses and paper closures on her blog, Paper Cuts.

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Google News- a step too far?

07May09

Google News, Google’s aggregated news search engine, is a go-to for anyone who needs quick and easy access to global news. News published online in the last 30 days can be searched by category or by search terms.

However Google news has   been criticised as just another step in Google’s attempt to monopolise every industry it can. Although Google is not a news site, and though it produces no notable journalism, it has managed to become a destination for news readers worldwide.

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Bringing journalism to a new level

06May09

It is already accepted that online news sites can combine elements of print and broadcast journalism to bring a story alive. However, anyone with a head for business will know that it’s not enough to satisfy a customer’s current needs- you have to be one step ahead and be equipped to satisfy their future needs.

The Guardian has already began to expand the video feeds on their site. Now a reader can watch videos that aren’t just short tv news-style bulletins. They can watch longer documentary-style videos, like this one about wrongful convictions and miscarriages of justice.

However, another, even more innovative (but slightly less informative?) news resource has been adopted by some news organisations. MtvU recently launched a game called Darfur is Dying, which Patrick Kavanagh profiled on his blog.

Although computer games like this have a limited audience among readers, they will catch this attention of younger readers in a way that news videos can’t. Perhaps this is exactly the kind of future-focused thinking that is needed by news organisations.

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Journalism degrees- a waste of time?

23Apr09

The Irish Times asked recently if journalism degrees are now are a waste of time, because new forms of media are constantly developing. Perhaps the academic world can’t keep up. DCU Journalism student Sinead O’Brien commented on this, and asked if new forms of media like news websites are actually “new”, or if they are just a blend of different forms of communication (print, audio, video).

There is still a place for journalism degree courses, but only if  these courses can be adapted to suit changing media. The DCU journalism course is indeed adapting- a new Digital Media module will be taught to incoming first years this September, along with a new practical media skills module.

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Blogging- America’s newest profession

22Apr09

There are over 22million bloggers in the US alone, and almost half a million of these count blogging as one of their main sources of income, says the Wall St Journal Online. Almost all of this income comes from advertising. Bloggers make money if readers click the ads on their sites.

Although the Wall St Journal says that the majority of bloggers cannot expect to make more than a few hundred dollars from their ventures into the blogosphere, it does note that “for sites at the top, the returns can be substantial”. “Substantial” can mean anything from $75,000 to $200,000 per annum.

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Citizen journalism code

17Apr09

Popular US liberal news blog Huffington Post published a list of citizen journalism standards/guidelines this week. The guidelines are intended for citizen journalism published on the site and in general.

The guidelines are brief but informed. Writers are encouraged to “be meticulous”, “avoid hearsay”, “omit irrelevant opinion” and to “stick to the facts”.

In terms of defamation law in Ireland, blogging is usually treated in almost the same way as print journalism. Because of this, citizen journalism is in need of a list of publishing standards, and a list drawn up by an already established news blogging site like Huffington Post is probably a good place to start.

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Online-only news: just a last resort?

17Apr09

Researchers from City University in London said this week that the decision of newspapers to switch to online-only distribution should not be made prematurely. Newspaper publishers are likely to be no better off financially if they switch. Researchers said that switching to online-only distribution should only be considered if the newspaper producer is in “dire financial straits”, said the Guardian.

The research was mainly based on the revenue and costs of Finnish newspaper Taloussanomat, which stopped distributing print editions of its a product in December 2007, due to financial problems. It was hoped that the lower costs of online-only publication would be enough to pull the paper out of financial difficulty. Although the paper’s overhead costs reduced by half after the switch, its online readership declined by 22% and its revenues dropped by over 75%.

In order for a switch to online-online publication to be successful, a company has to be aware that the internet is “a different medium that is used in a different way”, said one of the researchers, Neil Thurman.

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Bailing out print journalism would only prolong the inevitable

17Apr09

Columnist Keith Cameron said in US newspaper Northern Star that he believed the journalism industry was the only industry that didn’t deserve a financial bailout from the US government. This is because journalism is one of the few industries that could survive an economic downtourn simply by chaging its distribution methods. “People writing for print journalism must accept that the industry is changing, and they need to change with it”, said Cameron.

Online journalism can survive in the future without government aid, just as it is doing now. Cameron referred to figures from the Pew research Centre that said 55% percent of Internet users went online for their news in 2008, up 20% form 1998. “If  this trend continues, 75 percent of Internet users could be reading online news by 2018″, said Cameron.

Picture from here

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