GODE reviewed by The Register

The Guardian and Observer Digital Editions are reviewed today by Kieren McCarthy in The Register. Some quotes: "It's extremely good. The navigation is surprisingly easy ... the graphic gives you an excellent view of the actual page; the click-on aspect works extremely well, and it is all very fast and efficient." Aww, shucks... "The only one annoying thing is that the graphic of the page makes it impossible to read the smaller headlines of the page - something that is oddly distracting". Darn, that one. McCarthy compares GODE with the rival products used by the Times, Telegraph, and FT, plus NewsStand's product. And says "overall the Guardian is easily the winner. Plus, because it has developed the software in-house and it runs off the editorial system, [GNL] doesn't have to pay hefty fees to a third party to produce it". I love this man! The article continues with a reasonable critique of the normal (and our) digital edition subscription model, and a general summary of the question of why anyone would want to produce them.
(From The Register)

LA Times on digital editions

Pulitzer winner and media critic David Shaw says that NewsStand and PressDisplay's digital edition products are "a big step in the right direction" to allay his misgivings ("I miss ... the tactile sensation ... the serendipity ... [and] the context") about accessing his paper online when he can't get a print edition. It's not the best-researched piece of journalism ever -- e.g. it fails to mention the existence of other digital edition services; it inaccurately reports that PressDisplay started on December 15 (even I was aware of it by November 20) -- but it does have some useful facts and figures -- e.g. that the New York Times has 4,000 NewsStand subscribers (a figure I'm not entirely sure they wanted publicised) -- and some good descriptions of the two products' subscription models.
(From Romenesko)

NYT's most forwarded articles

The New York Times publishes a list of which articles are most being forwarded to other people using nytimes.com's "E-Mail This Article" tool. It has now republished a selection from the 100 most popular for the whole of 2003 -- providing an interesting taster of what people were concerned with this year.
(From E-Media Tidbits)

NewspaperDirect distributes 100,000 newspapers per month

Article in the Toronto Star about what they call digital newspapers and I call on-demand newspapers. Really, neither term is very good. "Digital newspapers" doesn't say much -- aren't they all produced digitally these days? -- and is easily mistaken for "digital editions" (which are themselves a bit hard to pin down). "On demand" can be inaccurate, because many are downloaded automatically or even printed in predetermined numbers.

The problem is that these products -- roughly speaking, newspapers produced for big web offset press sites but that are also made available (generally as PDF) over the internet for very small-scale printing, usually by third-party vendors -- are being categorised in a way that will increasingly become meaningless:
1, the file format and the means of distribution is by no means unique to "digital newspapers".
2, the on-demandness is, as I've already said, unnecessary.
3, the difference between "digital newspaper" (electronically distributed but read as hard copy) and "digital edition" (read either online or downloaded and printed out) is pretty blurred: most "digital edition" providers allow you to print hard copy in much the same format as a "digital newspaper" (albeit without stitching); and the introduction of PressDisplay positions the biggest "digital newspaper" provider in the "digital edition" market. So the only real distinguishing features lie at the the point of access: in the ownership of the accessing device (vendor or customer), and in purchasing method ("point of sale" or subscription). And even these distinctions will become blurred as the world gets more wireless and as devices get more various.

Anyway, this article has a decent description of NewspaperDirect's business model. And for now, NewspaperDirect think there is a distinction: they say that digital edition provider NewsStand "competes with NewspaperDirect online, but not in print".
(From TheStar.com)

New Year resolutions etc

Editor & Publisher lists some resolutions from members of the US online news industry. The principal goals: "dayparting, campaign coverage, make money". Meanwhile PaidContent's Roundup of the Roundups is worth a browse.
(From Editor & Publisher)

"PowerPoint makes you dumb"

Nice little item about Edward Tufte's anti-PowerPoint paper, "The cognitive style of PowerPoint". I haven't yet read the original pamphlet, but I imagine much of the sentiment was covered in Tufte's Wired piece, "PowerPoint is evil". The latter is worth a read if only for the wonderful standfirst, "Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely". Anyway, in the NYT Clive Thompson observes that, following the Shuttle Columbia tragedy, NASA found itself to be too reliant on PowerPoint slideware presentations to get complex information across -- including risk assessments of possible Shuttle wing damage. Thompson also reckons that PowerPoint helped Colin Powell make his case to the UN that Iraq possessed WMDs -- and concludes: "Perhaps PowerPoint is uniquely suited to our modern age of obfuscation -- where manipulating facts is as important as presenting them clearly. If you have nothing to say, maybe you need just the right tool to help you not say it." Meanwhile David Byrne makes art with PowerPoint (Yahoo! News).
(From New York Times)

Term war

Which is going to win in 2004: "participatory content" (currently scoring a lowly 240 on Google but I keep seeing it this week), or "participatory journalism" (currently way ahead with 5,150)? Are you for PC or PJ?

NAA predicts 4% ad growth next year

The Newspaper Association of America estimates a 4.1 per cent rise in US newspaper advertising spending next year. The main area of growth is predicted to be classified, thanks to increased recruitment.
(From Washington Post)

Top 10 web design mistakes of 2003

Jakob N's annual whinge -- always worth reading.
(From UseIt.com)

XPress 6.1 nearing release

According to Think Secret we are just days away from a dot upgrade to QuarkXPress 6. If so we would have the astonishing scenario of Quark upgrading a product in something approaching the timescale they originally suggested. In November Quark indicated the XPress 6.1 would be available "in the near future". If it comes out in the next couple of weeks it's pretty much on time in my book...
(From Think Secret)

"Apple's come a long way; so can we"

I was bound to like this one. After lauding Apple's successful "high spirit" and risk-taking, Chris Heisel says: "Everyone says the end of newspapers is near. We’re antiquated, we can’t do anything right. We’ve got quality issues and a dwindling audience. They said the same thing about Apple ... I challenge the newspaper industry — let’s be Apple, not Dell." His recipe for 2004: 1, Take risks ("innovate, not duplicate"); 2, Focus on quality ("make quality out value proposition and our product differential"); 3, Make money, the right way ("no one said being a good company and making money are mutually exclusive").
(From Heisel.org)

ABC to begin digital edition testing

Following last week's decision to list digital edition readership figures, the UK Audit Bureau of Circulation is to undertake a programme of digital edition user testing with various magazine groups in early 2004. The aim is to test the similarity between print and digital editions. The move is seen as aa step towards persuading advertisers that digital edition readers should be included in headline circulation counts.
(From New Media Age)

Our readers are our readers

Think piece from Dave Morgan of "audience management company" Tacoda repeating the argument that news organisations should try harder to recognise that their readership in different media as being a single target, "the enterprises's total marketable audience". "Just as important as understanding how news site audiences differ (between print and web etc) is to understand how they are similar so that they can be sold as a larger package to advertisers."
(From Editor & Publisher)

OJR's 2003 roundup

Mark Glaser does a pundit poll assessing online journalism's big themes of 2003 -- inclufing blogs. Iraq, broadband, paid content, and advertising -- and giving predictions for 2004 -- more blogs, participatory journalism, politics, RSS, and more paid content.
(From Online Journalism Review)

Vin Crosbie has seen the future ...

Allegedly. And it's full of definite articles.
(From Digital Deliverance)

BlackBerry by AirPort

BlackBerry users: RIM are planning to have wi-fi capabilities of the product in place by early next year.
(From CNET News)

New middlebrow Sunday

Via the Observer, news of a new Sunday paper scheduled for launch next year. Life On Sunday aims for an initial circulation of 150,000. If the paper remains in profit after four or five years, the holding company, Life Newspaper, claims that further profits will be given to charitable causes.
(From MediaGuardian)

Tabloidisation update: IHT on Times

The IHT's take on the Times's tabloid move. A couple of quotes: "The move by the left-leaning Independent, meanwhile, could put pressure on its main broadsheet rival, the much bigger Guardian, which says it is also considering a tabloid. 'Obviously, all options are open, and we're watching with interest,' said Shaun Williams, director of corporate affairs for GNL" ... "Fifteen to 20 extra journalists were working to put out the compact Times".
(From International Herald Tribune)

"Intent over content"

Rafat Ali's recent speech (PowerPoint) on key trends in digital media.
(From Paid Content)

Indy circulation soars to 240,000

The Independent's circulation bosst since it went tabloid seems to be gaining ground rather than dropping away after a honeymoon period. It has added a further 5,000 readers to its circulation in the past month. The gains made by the tabloid Times (believed to be 20,000 a day so far and rising) haven't yet made it into the ABC figures. The Times has almost doubled its print run of tabloid copies from 80,000 to 150,000.
(From MediaGuardian.co.uk)

Phone barcode readers

The trouble with those consumer barcode readers (for printed media consumers to access web material) was that (a) you had to supply them to your customers and (b) you had to expect them to have them with them all the time. But you don't have to worry about that with mobile phones. And mobies with cameras can do the job of reading barcodes now. The Semacode Project aims to allow phone users to "scan" printed material in the real world and then to have the phone's browser taken to the URL. Neomedia's Paperclick applications do something similar. Now, with a bit of bluetooth or infrared you should be able to transfer the URLs to view on a desktop computer if you want to.
(From E-Media Tidbits)

Free digital NYT in Mickey D's

More from Digital Deliverance: in a cross-promotion between wifi supplier Wayport, the New York Times and NewsStand, copies of the NYT will be made available for download in 800 Wayport wifi sites including 680 hotels and 100-odd McDonald's restaurants in the United States. Given the (terrifyingly massive) size of NewsStand downloads it's a pretty good deal for the venues.
(From Digital Deliverance)

Paid content update: Irish Times

Digital Deliverance notes Ireland.com's gradual retreat from a 100% paid content model. Their 1 per cent subscription takeup doesn't make up for the loss of advertising revenue caused by the huge drop in readership, so more content is going free. Similarly the Jersulam Post is freeing up more content.
(From Digital Deliverance)

Internet now 10% of Euro media consumption

The web (at 10%) has now overtaken the magazine (8%) in the European media usage charts. The newspaper continues its decline, clocking 13%. Top is TV (41%); radio comes second at (28%). Of online users, 83% said they used the internet for email. Only 56% used it for news.
(From MediaGuardian.co.uk)

Quotes in online news

An interesting example of the limitations of conventional web news design, and a proposed solution. Observing that some readers tend to skim articles just for the quotations (because they're interesting, they provide human angles, they condense opinion, they bypass editorialising, etc), Adrian Holovaty proposes that webpages have features to highlight quotations by (automatically it is hoped) tagging the quoted bits so that they can be shown in their own style. 'Course, in print media we already have a quotation emphasis system. It's called the pull quote. But yikes! It turns out that this quote tag already exists in HTML (Internet Explorer excepted, of course)! But Holovaty takes the idea further and suggests that these tagged items could be parsed and indexed so that a reader could see, for example, "all today's quotes" as an alterntive index, or "all quotes by X". Trouble with the latter is, much as the quote identification could be automated, catching the attributions might be trickier. But it's a sweet idea.
(From Holovaty.com)