Thursday, September 27, 2012
Half of Americans Now Get News Digitally; Third of Young People Get it Through Social Media
Here it is. The latest Pew "Trends in News Consumption" study founds that half of all Americans get their news online. One-third of adults under 30 now get their news via social media, particularly on Facebook and Twitter. Read it.
Monday, September 24, 2012
How to Find User-Generated Content
Some of the takeaways from this year's Online News Association conference include this gem (above) on how the New York Times' Jen Preston mines user-generated content (UGC).
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
UCLA Extension New Media Reporting 2012 Week 9 Summary
During our Week 9 session we debated the viability of news organizations' online paywalls. Some of you liked the idea that journalists should be paid more directly for the good work they do, but others saw the advantage in seeking out wider audiences via free delivery.
Ultimately, I argued, it would be hard to plug all the holes in such a porous, aggregated news world anyway, noting that it's quite easy to get past the Los Angeles Times' and New York Times' paywalls and, even if you couldn't, subscriber-bloggers would simply repeat their info.
Not that this is ideal. It's just the world we're working in.
We looked at how advertising is affecting the business, including a recent Pew study showing that traditional print news outlets were losing $10 in print advertising for every $1 in online ads they gained.
But, I noted, online readership is king -- online ad revenue was projected to be passing up print dollars this year -- and the production costs of getting eyeballs to see your news are much less than those of putting out a daily newspaper.
LA Weekly competes in a daily news market and comes up with a near-the-top readership ranking with only a handful of people. Paper, ink, delivery and production can take up as much as 65 percent of the costs of a traditional print operation. Add to that the idea that most news sites are much more niche-oriented and audience-specific. You probably wouldn't start an operation today that covers City Hall and sports, celebrities and recipes. It wouldn't make sense. You would focus. So if you doing an online-operation, you're starting with far fewer costs. At the same time, the readership potential is larger:
One in four Americans gets their news from a mobile device. And that number appears to be growing.
Putting up a wall could hinder your ability to reach the masses and make that smaller ad dollar more effective.
Not only that, but knowing your customer can mean bigger ad revenues. To cast a wide net like a traditional newspaper and hope that some of its many customers are, say, going to buy a watch soon is ineffective in today's environment. If you get to know your readers a little, that can be valuable.
One writer (previously noted) argues that paywalls punish those you need most -- your loyal reader. The casual reader should pay, not your regular, the argument goes: You want your regular customers to spend some time so you get to figure out what they're into.
We talked about how the iPad, for example, is showing that open access to your news can pay off in the form of previously slow nighttime readership (people like to cozy up with their iPads and seem to check news more frequently after work, leading to boosts in readers for late posts).
Finally, I encouraged everyone to promote themselves. It can be a third of the work these days. Don't be shy. Establish websites that reflect you as a news brand and present your best work.
Ultimately, I argued, it would be hard to plug all the holes in such a porous, aggregated news world anyway, noting that it's quite easy to get past the Los Angeles Times' and New York Times' paywalls and, even if you couldn't, subscriber-bloggers would simply repeat their info.
Not that this is ideal. It's just the world we're working in.
We looked at how advertising is affecting the business, including a recent Pew study showing that traditional print news outlets were losing $10 in print advertising for every $1 in online ads they gained.
But, I noted, online readership is king -- online ad revenue was projected to be passing up print dollars this year -- and the production costs of getting eyeballs to see your news are much less than those of putting out a daily newspaper.
LA Weekly competes in a daily news market and comes up with a near-the-top readership ranking with only a handful of people. Paper, ink, delivery and production can take up as much as 65 percent of the costs of a traditional print operation. Add to that the idea that most news sites are much more niche-oriented and audience-specific. You probably wouldn't start an operation today that covers City Hall and sports, celebrities and recipes. It wouldn't make sense. You would focus. So if you doing an online-operation, you're starting with far fewer costs. At the same time, the readership potential is larger:
One in four Americans gets their news from a mobile device. And that number appears to be growing.
Putting up a wall could hinder your ability to reach the masses and make that smaller ad dollar more effective.
Not only that, but knowing your customer can mean bigger ad revenues. To cast a wide net like a traditional newspaper and hope that some of its many customers are, say, going to buy a watch soon is ineffective in today's environment. If you get to know your readers a little, that can be valuable.
One writer (previously noted) argues that paywalls punish those you need most -- your loyal reader. The casual reader should pay, not your regular, the argument goes: You want your regular customers to spend some time so you get to figure out what they're into.
We talked about how the iPad, for example, is showing that open access to your news can pay off in the form of previously slow nighttime readership (people like to cozy up with their iPads and seem to check news more frequently after work, leading to boosts in readers for late posts).
Finally, I encouraged everyone to promote themselves. It can be a third of the work these days. Don't be shy. Establish websites that reflect you as a news brand and present your best work.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Tools For News Bloggers
Here's a pretty good list of "22 tools and apps every journalism student should know about." Make that every journalist should know about. Check it out.
UCLA New Media Reporting 2012: Week 8 Summary
During Week 8 we took a look at the art of getting readers to interact with us, mainly through Twitter and Facebook. It's not so easy but, as you'll see in a post below, getting folks to spend time with your content is crucial to the future of digital journalism.
Most of you in the class, however, are naturals at interacting through social media and had no problem getting friends and family to comment on your work. Sometimes all it took was an introduction in the form of a question (such as, "Do you agree with this?") to get people to weigh in on a Facebook posting.
We took a quick look at how to use Scribd to embed documents. I think it's a pretty cool way to lead readers to your source material. It helps you gain cred.
We talked a little bit more about doing lists. They're important because they're accessible and can multiply pageviews. But I noted that they don't always have to be tabloidy. I highlighted my colleague Simone Wilson's recent post on legislation being rammed through the California legislature -- and I pointed out that even the mighty Gawker was doing them.
We then got into longform journalism, and the idea that not all digital reporting has to focus on short, snarky writing. In fact, the online revolution has really opened up the prospects for longform storytelling because there are no space constraints. The limits are imposed, rather, by how much interest you can drum up in readers.
But many journalists and even publications such as Vanity Fair have tapped into the potential, using Amazon's Kindle Singles to expand magazine-size articles into short books that can be sold online. Self publishing is the rage. It's not always profitable, but it's a new opportunity for digital journalists.
We worked on a live news post based on an LAPD press release and discovered that it's not always easy to inject voice into a story and still be timely. But it can be done.
The assignment was to read this excerpt of Chris Anderson's book Free and argue for or against charging readers for news (a.k.a. instituting the kind of paywalls used by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street journal). Five paragraphs were requested.
Most of you in the class, however, are naturals at interacting through social media and had no problem getting friends and family to comment on your work. Sometimes all it took was an introduction in the form of a question (such as, "Do you agree with this?") to get people to weigh in on a Facebook posting.
We took a quick look at how to use Scribd to embed documents. I think it's a pretty cool way to lead readers to your source material. It helps you gain cred.
We talked a little bit more about doing lists. They're important because they're accessible and can multiply pageviews. But I noted that they don't always have to be tabloidy. I highlighted my colleague Simone Wilson's recent post on legislation being rammed through the California legislature -- and I pointed out that even the mighty Gawker was doing them.
We then got into longform journalism, and the idea that not all digital reporting has to focus on short, snarky writing. In fact, the online revolution has really opened up the prospects for longform storytelling because there are no space constraints. The limits are imposed, rather, by how much interest you can drum up in readers.
But many journalists and even publications such as Vanity Fair have tapped into the potential, using Amazon's Kindle Singles to expand magazine-size articles into short books that can be sold online. Self publishing is the rage. It's not always profitable, but it's a new opportunity for digital journalists.
We worked on a live news post based on an LAPD press release and discovered that it's not always easy to inject voice into a story and still be timely. But it can be done.
The assignment was to read this excerpt of Chris Anderson's book Free and argue for or against charging readers for news (a.k.a. instituting the kind of paywalls used by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street journal). Five paragraphs were requested.
Why Journalism Should Care About Quality Time
If newspapers and other outlets are to make a successful transition to digital, they need to think more about getting readers, viewers and listeners to spend more time with them, according to this argument:
The idea here is also to create a "reverse paywall" where readers want to pay for extras. Yeah?
... Getting to know your readers and their interests better can also help a newspaper or any other media entity target advertising better. One of the reasons why advertisers are so enamored of Facebook and other social networks is that they can target specific niche groups or demographics or locations within the broader market, like expectant mothers or high-spending seniors. What do newspapers know about their readers? In most cases, very little, other than the vague generalities that phone surveys produce.
The idea here is also to create a "reverse paywall" where readers want to pay for extras. Yeah?
Video News Blogging
The Wall Street Journal recently announced a section dedicated solely to video captured by it's reporters. I'm not sure raw video will propel traffic, but it's an interesting move. Check it out.
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