Kelner: 'advertising has caused us grief'

Simon Kelner on how media buyers have reacted to the Indy's tabloid moves. Also a nicely illustrative statistic about media: "The Independent editor pointed out that newspaper sales on the day after the US election were 5-10% down because readers turned to other sources for the latest information on the poll results. But he said sales of papers rose by between 6% and 12% the next day, when readers sought analysis of the results."
(From MediaGuardian.co.uk)

All top 7 daily US newspapers commissioned their own typefaces

According to a study by Ascender Corporation. Thirty-five of the top 100 US papers use custom fonts. The list of most popular faces is, however, utterly predictable: Franklin Gothic, Poynter, Futura, Helvetica, Century, Utopia, Times, Nimrod, Bureau and Interstate.
(From eMediaWire)

Garcia says tabloidisation accelerating

Following on from his comment in May 2002 (as reported here) that the bulk of broadsheets will go tabloid by 2020, Mario Garcia has now revised that deadline to 2010. In an interview in the Chicago Tribune Garcia said that events of the past two years, especially in the UK, have contributed to the increasing acceptance of smaller formats in the US. The article also quotes Harold Evans -- e.g. "If I'd been editing the Times I would not have gone small tabloid. I'd have gone for the size the Guardian's going to".
(From Digital Deliverance)

Quark: "we are talking to our customers"

Kamar Aulakh: "The one area we have been focusing on is changing the organization from one focused internally, as a technology-driven company, to one that is externally focused on the customer." But apparently that may not extend as far as InDesign/XPress file exchange compatibility.
(From The Seybold Bulletin)

US newspaper readership has dropped from 77.6% to 54.1% since 1985

Another bunch of newspaper execs say we must smell the coffee. William Dean Singleton of MediaNews Group says the industry must define itself as "providing information to our communities and selling eyeballs to our advertisers".
(From Editor & Publisher)

Guardian Weekly US relaunch reported in MediaWeek

Finally some press about the Guardian Weekly relaunch.
(From MediaWeek)

MAN Roland to supply News International's new presses

When NI move what's left of their production staff from Wapping to Enfield et al, MAN Roland will be supplying the "22" presses. MAN were the suppliers of NI's current presses in the late 1980s.
(From Editor & Publisher)

Tim Berners-Lee says something about the Semantic Web that finally I understand

"Suppose you’re browsing the Web and you find a seminar advertised, and you decide to go. Now, there is all sorts of information on that page, which is accessible to you as a human being, but your computer doesn’t know what it means. So you must open a new calendar entry and paste the information in there. Then get your address book and add new entries for the people involved in the seminar. And then, if you wanted to be complete, find the latitude and the longitude of the seminar, and program that into your GPS [Global Positioning System] device so you could find it. It’s very laborious to do all this by hand. What you would like to be able to do is just tell the computer, 'I'm going to this seminar.' "
So that's what it does.
(From Technology Review)

New Smart Connection features

Woodwing have introduced a "Power Pack" for their Smart Connection software that includes three new InCopy features. A "Remote Module" allows users to work on InCopy articles with geometry and page pictures without actually being linked to the page. "InCopy Layers" allows an InCopy user to switch between the layers from the source InDesign file. "InCopy Frames" is interesting: it allows InCopy users to make basic changes to a frame size so that they will get passed back to the layout. See them at Ifra.
(From WoodWing)

Quark responds to BBC Magazines' move to InDesign

Following BBC Magazines' decision to dump QuarkXPress and purchase 350 licences for Adobe InDesign, Quark's UK marketing director said that this is "not a trend". He added that the imminent release of XPress 6.5 should incorporate some of the features that XPress currently lacks compared with InDesign. The article ends with the comment "empirical evidence suggests, meanwhile, that Adobe is seeing greater take-up of its software in the magazine publishing world than the newspaper publishing sphere." Some of the principal reasons for this are clear. First, the newspaper market is traditionallly slower to migrate. Second, InDesign does not (yet) have a globally established workflow system.
Good comment about this article in the design weblog.
(From Tim M)

In case you missed it....

Ian Mayes what we'll be up to for the next two years.
(From The Guardian)

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette now live on NewsSpeed

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is now up on running on Digital Technology International's NewsSpeed editorial system, which utilise Adobe InDesign and InCopy. They have 58 layout seats and 211 editor seats.
(From Editor & Publisher)

AOP Online Publishing Awards shortlist

Categories in which GNL has been nominated:
- Innovation (Guardian Observer Digital Edition);
- Editor - consumer (Jane Glentworth);
- Integration of media-consumer (Guardian Unlimited Politics)
- Online advertising sales team;
- Digital product or service - business (MediaGuardian.co.uk)
- Online publisher - consumer (GU)
(From AOP UK)

Indy circulation has not translated into ad revenue

From Media Week: "In a statement commenting on the slowed growth in advertising income, INM said the issue was compounded during the negotiation of new advertising rates."
(From Media Week)

Steve Outing on "other" classifieds

This week's Stop the Presses is on "merchandise" classified -- i.e. small ads -- which account for about 17% of classified revenue in the United States. He argues that newspapers should run such ads for free online, and even some print ads for free. This may even help support paid classified revenues.
(From Editor & Publisher)

Tabloidisation update: Evening Gazette

The Teesside Evening Gazette will move from broadsheet to tabloid next week. They will print on Trinity Mirror's new presses, which will allow 128-page full colour editions of the Gazette.
(From Media Week)

Reprinting weblogs without permission

As part of its effort to appeal to the "iPod generation" (see below), new Frankfurt tabloid News included an "Interactive" page feature excepts from various weblogs. Without permission. Trouble.
(From E-Media Tidbits)

At least we don't do air traffic control

Techworld reports that the radio system for Southern California's air traffic system shut down last week, leaving 800 airborne planes out of contact. The servers were set to shut down if they hadn't been restarted for 50 days. D'oh!

TheSun.co.uk scales back following cannibalisation

According to this article on e-consultancy.com, the Sun plans to scale back content on thesun.co.uk after finding that the paper was losing 90,000 paying readers a day to its free website. The article, by Mike Butcher of mbites.com, says nice things about the Guardian: "Its web title has helped reinforce the brand's standing amongst readers, attracted an international audience and even made readers more likely to purchase the paper when offline."
(From E-Media Tidbits)

"A newspaper for the iPod generation"

Handelsblatt is planning to launch a daily tabloid for 20- to 39-year-olds who don't currently read newspapers every day. It looks like a direct competitor to Axel Spinger Verlag's Welt Kompakt.
(From Macworld UK)

Tabloidisation update: The Buchan Observer

And yes, they're calling it a compact too. Sister papers the Fraserburgh Herald and Elton Times will follow suit shortly.
(From Ifra)

Tabloidisation update: Irish News

The Irish News plans to switch from Berliner format to "compact" (tabloid) when it moves to its own presses next spring. The move should allow for much more colour.
(From HoldtheFrontPage)

Irish newspaper readership rising

Ireland is bucking the trend: most newspapers experienced readership gains in the past year, according to Lansdowne Market Research's Joint National Readership Survey. The number of adults reading at least one paper per week reached 92 per cent of the population: up to 2.9 million from 2.8 million the year before. Readership or the Irish Times rose 14 per cent; and the Irish Independent grew 16 per cent. The growth if beliueved to be thanks to an improved economy and a more literate workforce.
(From Business World)

Short paragraphs

The Eyetrack III survey is out and once again it endorses the widely held view that people are more likely to read a whole piece if it is broken up into short paragraphs -- as noted on E-Media Tidbits. Why is it so hard? (I found it nearly impossible: take a look at this weblog.)

Some other findings (wow, a second par): the upper left zone of a web page is still the "sweet spot"; smaller type leads to more concentrated viewing; get the "meat" of the headline or blurb in the first few words; text ads are viewed most intently.
(from E-Media Tidbits)

Three newsrooms in South Africa

A "Letter from Johannesburg", describing Douglas Foster's impressions from visiting the newsrooms of the Cape Times, INM's The Star, and the formerly GMG majority owned Mail & Guardian. The M&G's current editor tells the (American) reporter, "The state of our media is healthier than the state of your media".
(From Columbia Journalism Review)

"We're still hunter/gatherers in the new information world"

Part 2 of Vin Crosbie's "Online Publishing: The Long View" essay.
(ClickZ.com)

QPS 3.0

Only four years after the launch of Mac OS X, Quark have announced a version of its highly popular Quark Publishing System that runs natively in the operating system.
(From Quark)

More on digital editions etc on OhMyNews

Will787, the main contributor to the Guardian talkboard discussion on digital editions, has a followup to his earlier piece (see below) about digital editions in the UK. Again he's nice about us: "The Guardian's 'digital edition' is effective value". He also cites us as a working (at least in broadband) example of Adobe's vaunted "network publishing". Will787 comments that print media seems to be rather quiet about digital media.
(From OhmyNews)

Explanation for the new template

Technical shortcomings on my part. I messed up the comments feature and ended up in so much trouble it was easier to adopt a pro forma Blogger jobbie.
Having done that I see that the archive cell is appearing in the wrong place, so this new template has its own problems. Ho hum.

Digital edition success? Depends on what you mean

Good comment by Vin Crosbie in response to CyberJournalist concluding that recent circulation figures for "digital editions" prove them "destined to failure". Crosbie says that yes, retailed downloadable digital editions will fail - but only until the technology at the consumer end brings the medium to life. Meanwhile newspaper digital edition websites (such as ours) fare slightly better, and digital editions of B2B magazines can indeed be highly successful. Furthermore, print "digital editions" using vendors such as NewspapersDirect have been a useful and profitable addition to the roster.
(From Digital Deliverance)

Seybold report on editorial planning

Or what they call budgeting in the US. Haven't read it yet, apart from a bit about the CCI NewsGate install at the Tampa Tribune.
(From Seybold Reports

Correct your magazine article - in the digital edition

PC Mag sent out a digital edition containing a correction to a story that appeared in the original. So should a diged present itself as being of the electronic media ilk (i.e. ever-live) or should it be a true repesentation of the printed product? I prefer the "see the correction" model I think.
(From E-Media Tidbits)

QuarkXPress 7.0 will be "InDesign-like"

According to AppleInsider's sources, QuarkXPress version 7 -- currently touted for release in early 2005 -- will feature "a 'very InDesign-like interface' and a completely rewritten PDF engine".
(From AppleInsider)

We're a niche publisher

Columnist weblogs announced. Computer games goes live Monday.
(From NMA To Go)

Safe from Harm

An "I was looking back to see if you were looking back at me..." moment, with, following the Guardian's recent OhMyNews extravaganza, an article in OhMyNews about the Guardian (albeit from an Enlgish writer). Sometimes cutting. A quote: "So far as I know [Peter Preston's recent epiphanic web article in the Obs] is the first statement on paper in the Guardian or Observer that informs a reader about the digital editions."
(From OhmyNews International)

Twelve sources account for majority of stories on Google News

Despite evidence to the contrrary (albeit now a year old) from my Googlescraper, research by Digital Deliverance shows no Guardian Unlimited in the top ten sources on Google News. Darn! Their table shows (with statistical rounding):
Reuters    175 stories    18% of all
New York Times    80 stories    8% of all
Voice of America    67 stories    7% of all
Xinhua    67 stories    7% of all
Bloomberg    61 stories    6% of all
Washington Post    61 stories    6% of all
ABC News    49 stories    5% of all
Boston Globe    26 stories    2% of all
CNN    22 stories    2% of all
San Francisco Chronicle    17 stories    1% of all
CNN International    17 stories    1% of all
Christian Science Monitor    15 stories    1% of all
Toronto Star    13 stories    1% of all
Seattle Post Intelligencer    13 stories    1% of all
United Press International    12 stories    1% of all
USA Today    10 stories    1% of all
Houston Chronicle    10 stories    1% of all
FOX News    10 stories    1% of all
Newsday    10 stories    1% of all
The Globe and Mail    9 stories    0% of all.
Read Vin's article and associated comments for more on this.
(From Digital Deliverance)

25% service during DoubleClick attack

The hack attack launched on Tuesday against ad provider DoubleClick -- and the knock-on effect for its 900 customers -- left many of the world's most popular websites delivering content "less than 25 per cent of the time", according to monitoring company Keynote Systems. Targeting DoubleClick proved a clever way of subverting the touted strength-through-decentralisation of the internet.
Washington Post

Have you tried Newsbot?

They really need to sort out their stylesheets. What's with the paddingless picture wrap? Amusingly, the site works much better in Safari and Moz than in Internet Explorer on a Mac.

Format change calls for rate card based on impact, not ccms [reg req]

Summary of panel discussions at Nexpo from Editor & Publisher. Stig Nordqvist of the Swedish Newspaper Publishers' Association described circulation boosts at two recent tabloid switchers, and noted that an expected short-term drop in advertising revenue didn't happen. "A good tab, he concluded, sells ad impact, not millimeters." Elsewhere Allan Marshall argued that Metro, rather than cannibalising Mail readers, actually gets people into the newspaper reading habit, whereupon they progress "to a more serious read", namely the Mail on Sunday. Discussions also covered e-paper, digital editions, RFIDs and mobile communications (especially Blackberries).
(From Editor & Publisher)

New hardware kills old software at Chicago Tribune

There but ...
(From Editor & Publisher)

Popular news sites don't update that often

In a survey published in OJR of 30 newspaper websites in the US, only 12 were found to make regular updates (ranging from 60 to 200 per day) to their home pages. Five made virtually no changes and the remaining 13 only added breaking stories. Illustrates how many newspaper websites are still basically regurgitators of their print content and follow the same cycles. Article summarised in E-Media Tidbits, plus a little bit of controversy over what constitutes the home page of a newspaper website.
(From E-Media Tidbits)

Digital Edition circulation figures, USA

Some stats from Digital Magazine for digital editions in September 2003:
New York Times 3,172
Washington Post 424
USA Today 900
(From AOP UK)

Newsstand gets more funds

$7.2 million, to be exact. The NYT continues to contribute. Newsstand's roster now totals 175 publications.
(From Paid Content)

No more "Classic" hardware from Apple

Apparently Apple have discontinued production of the PowerMac G4, the (I believe) only remaining machine that runs pre-OS X operating systems and therefore the only machine left that worked with QPS without having to use "Classic" emulation. In Slashdot the sixth post on the news argues that Apple have just "end-of-lifed a majority of newspapers' CMSs".
(From Slashdot)

Paper links to video-by-phone

Korean newspaper the Daily Focus has teamed up with mobile content provider Ico to link sports articles in the paper with rich-media sports news on people's mobile phones. Sports articles will contain a code which allows users to access video content on their phones "by simply holding the cellphone against the printed code" -- presumably using the phone's camera in the manner of the various barcode systems (c.f. this item).
(From E-Media Tidbits)

Brits versus Yanks

CJR has freed access to its timely re-hash of the old "objective vs subjective"/"American vs European" media debate, hot on the heels of the New York Times's admission that it was fooled over WMDs in Iraq.
(From Columbia Journalism Review)

UK and Ireland lead newspaper slump

Ho hum ... the UK newspaper market (traditionally regarded as "one of the most competitive") is slumping faster than the rest of Europe.
(From MediaGuardian.co.uk)

Times to relaunch tabloid

The Times is already planning a major relaunch of its tabloid edition, following an overall circulation boost of just 1% year on year (compared, for example, with the Indy's 20% growth). "Despite a heavy advertising campaign and price incentives to switch to the tabloid version, the majority of Times readers still favour the broadsheet and the costly experiment of publishing two versions has failed to provide the hoped for circulation boost." In the short term first-edition deadlines will be brought forward to 7.30pm to improve distribution.
(From MediaGuardian.co.uk)

NYT digital edition circulation

I've found it difficult to get reliable information about digital/aka electronic edition circulation figures, in particular those for the New York Times. If anyone knows a good source, please let me know! I did manage to spot these figures in a Seybold Report: Olive Software says ABCs from September 2003 show the NYT's electronic circulation as 3,172.
(From The Seybold Report)

Guardian digital edition "best in show" - Slate

Follow-up to Jack Shafer's review of digital editions (see below). The first review was largely negative, with Shafer reckoning that digital editions didn't "fit" well with screens, and that the software was "too rudimentary". Now he says "the electronic editions of Florida Today and the Guardian are changing my thinking. The future of newspapering might be closer than I thought". What makes these two satand out, he argues, is that they both handle context better than their rivals. He concludes: "If pressed to give a best-in-show award, I'd give the nod to the electronic Guardian for its superior, simple, and self-explanatory navigation. This is one electronic edition that doesn't need a user's manual. Printing stories, e-mailing them, displaying pages in PDF, and searching keywords are all very easy in the electronic Guardian. But Florida Today isn't far behind."
(From Slate)

Guardian Number 6 most linked to by bloggers

JD Lasica notes that at a presentation by David Sifry at Technorati Developers Salon a slide ranks media sites by the number of blog links to them as follows: 1, NYT; 2, CNN; 3, BBC, 4; Wash Post; 5, Slashdot; 6, The Guardian; 7, Plastic; 8, Suicide Girls; 8, Salon; 9, BoingBoing; 10, Instapundit; 11, Slate; 12, Fox; 13, SFGate; 14, Reuters; 15, Drudge Report; 16, MSNBC; 17, USA Today; 18, Talking Points; 19, Scripting News; 20, Metafiler; 21, Eschaton; 22, Kos; 23, Wil Wheaton. At first I thought, "cool, we're in the top 10". Then I thought, "blimey, the blogosphere is about an inch deep ... more of a disk really". Shame.
(From JD Lasica)

A new twist on flexible computing

Sony's Gummi project proposes a new way to interact with flexible computer displays: twisting. Move and re-shape the display to navigate its contents and to zoom in and out.
(From The Register)

Simply entangle a few photons ...

... and your CD capacity increases nine times.
(From New Scientist)

Warnock's advice for software companies ...

"Don't hire MBAs."
(From The Register)

Guardian "most obvious success" at online/offline

Article in netimperative: "The most obvious example of a successful offline/online publisher is the Guardian ... if the main aim of an offline title's new media operations is to support the brand, we find it hard to think of anything better ... Guardian Unlimited is often true to its name: it has the feel of backstage at the Guardian -- much of the content is irreverent commentary -- and the rest builds on the main title's strengths ... The 'backstage' content, in particular, is a winner since it taps in to the informal joy of the web communications age. The Internet is an organic information free-for-all of rumour, implication and opinion in which the normal rules somehow don't apply. Items such as its 'live' sports online commentaries and The Fiver ... nail this feeling perfectly, and at the same time enable content that, instead of compromising the offline title, actually supports it -- and builds further loyalty."
(From Paid Content)

NYT updates digital edition

The New York Times has introduced an enhanced version of its Newsstand "electronic edition". New features include copy and paste facilities, offline storage options and an expanded search.
(From Associated Press)

Slate on digital editions

Jack Shafer in Slate looks at three American digital editions and reckons they should be designed for the purpose - encapsulating the look and feel and a (perhaps enhanced) vocubulary of newspaper design, but formatted for the access medium (a computer screen). "Publishers shouldn't be frightened of cannibalizing the current print readership — they need to get there before the competition does."
(From Slate)

Tabloidisation update: The Examiner

Now even the Huddersfield Daily Examiner has moved from broadsheet to tabloid ... er, sorry, compact. "Once upon a time, a decision to become a compact newspaper signalled a move down market." Not so now: the Examiner will continue to offer "a real good read".
(From Ifra news)

Print on demand (ish) in Switzerland

Print-on-demand service NewspaperDirect have, according to Steve Outing, done a deal with Switzerland's largets retail kiosk chain, k-Kiosk AG, to produce a selection of world newspapers daily. They'll be printed at a central facility and then distributed to each vendor, so it's not quite print on demand -- just a shorter, smaller distribution chain.
(From E-Media Tidbits)

Renaming doesn't work

Lisa William's response to an E-Media Tidbits item about one of the campaigns to come up with a better name for RSS rang a loud bell with me. She points out that in her view (and I agree), "renaming efforts rarely succeed", and that in the technology world, such efforts usually take place when the technology is about to go mainstream, and the technorati suddenly start worrying about how hoi polloi won't be able to understand it. "We must remember that nearly all technical terms ... were once unfamiliar." So it's too late. Which makes me think we should just give up trying to be clever and just call our publishing system Octopus.
(From E-Media Tidbits)

Sturm: be like TiVo

Newspaper Association of America president John Sturm, speaking at the NAA's AGM, said that newspapers must use technology to give readers what they want. "People want to consume their media where, how and when they choose ... Until someone comes up with TiVo for newspapers ... we are the quintessential pull media."
I'm not so sure. The need to give people what they want in ways they want is of course becoming increasingly necessary to retain or gain competitive advantage, but it isn't sufficient. I'm hardly saying anything new (the "My Newspaper" debate has raged for years), but I still believe that one of the distinguishing qualities of the newspaper is its push factor: that I buy a paper precisely because I don't know what has been decided (i.e. edited) for me, not by me.
(From Associated Press)

Six Degrees 2.0

Mark Lemmons's creative software team at Creo have released a major update to their Six Degrees desktop search engine (note the now more specific description than in the past). The software now comes in several flavours: a free "Lite" version; a "Personal Edition" equivalent to the earlier commercial single-user product; a "Anywhere Edition" with remote access features and support for Blackberries and Palm devices; and a "Workflow Edition" with workflow features and support for XMP data. That last feature in particular makes me want to dig up my version 1 licence key...
(From MacNN)

Jigsaw wins award

The Guardian and Observer Digital Editions won "Most Innovative Use of Technology" at the 2004 Newspaper Awards. The judges gave it "straight sixes" and described the project as "brilliant!" Aww, shucks...

Chizen on relationship with Apple

PC Magazine asked Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen about open source, Microsoft, Macintosh, Adobe's business strategy, etc. Adobe's relationship with Apple -- a significant matter for us -- has been subject of some debate recently, mostly perhaps because Apple has released software that competes directly with some of Adobe's. In emollient mood, Chizen says that between 22 and 25% of Adobe's business comes from Macintosh customers, and points out that those already on the platform are very loyal. Further, he does not envisage Apple attacking markets (such as pro digital imaging) where Adobe is unrivalled. However he sees little sign of "switching".
(From Macworld UK)

Electronic ink may prompt newspaper identify crisis

Another e-ink and impact on newspapers summary. "Widespread adoption of an e-paper platform would force papers everywhere to re-examine the very nature of their product ... 'Is the ability to update desirable in every case ... or do people want content that's kind of fixed?'"
(From Newspaper Association of America)

Axel Springer to launch 'Welt Kompakt'

Axel Springer has announced plans for an upmarket weekday tabloid comprising content from Die Welt and Berliner Morgenpost, whose editorial staff were merged in 2002. The paper will be trialled in the Dusseldorf area from May 24.
(From BBC News)

Indy may axe broadsheet this year

Raymond Snoddy in the Times reckons that the Independent may end production of its broadsheet edition earlier than expected, following the announcement that the tabloid version now accounts for 74 per cent of sales. Ivan Fallon said: "If you get to 90 per cent, it doesn’t make sense to produce both."
(from The Times)

Modulo team up with IxiaSoft (reg req)

QPS vendor Modulo Systems have announced a partnership with Ixiasoft, who will provide Modulo with their TextML Server XML database and indexing technology as a search/content management system. XML databases are getting quite popular in the publishing technology market...
(From Editor & Publisher)

De Volkskrant announces weekend print, weekday digital tie-in

"Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant recently introduced a clever Saturday-Plus subscription. 'Plus' subscribers receive a paper version on their doormats on Saturdays, while on weekdays they have access to the (full) digital version. Which mirrors the lifestyle of more and more readers: no time to read the paper version from Monday to Friday, combined with little desire to leave the home early on Saturday mornings to get the still-popular paper weekend edition."
(From Springwise.com - By email)

Printable transistors help electronic ink

In what seems to me to be an amusing paradox, Xerox have announced that "semiconductive ink" may make it easier to actually print components of transistor circuits. This new printing technology may facilitate (and hugely cheapen) production of "death of print" products such as roll-up displays.
(From Technology Review)

Senator tries to stop Gmail

Californian senator Liz Figueroa has written to Google arguing that their service will be a breach of privacy for customers. Google plans to provide a huge a vastly larger server space for users, and in return to lace their messages with ads supposedly tailored to the user's interests.
(From MediaGuardian.co.uk)

"Some day, all broadsheets will be compacts"

Following the launch of tabloid sections on Sundays and Thursdays in the (otherwise broadsheet) London Free Press in Canada, editor in chief Paul Berton predicts "most of the newspapers of the world will soon come in a smaller, compact format. Let's say 10 years tops".
(From INMA)

S-J Mercury News is now registration only

The San Jose Mercury Chronicle, a web pioneer, today introduces a mandatory registration model for everything except "section front" pages. Their explanation is here (registration not required!).
(From JD Lasica)

Why mobile conversations are annoying

From Jakob Nielsen's latest Alertbox. A study by the University of York found that public mobile phone conversations were much more annoying to bystanders than were equivalently loud face-to-face conversations -- even though the latter "produced double the audio output". Conclusion: when we can't hear half of what is being said it is somehow more intrusive. Perhaps we're biologically inquisitive. It's a bit like the phenomenon whereby, when people are trying to sleep, muffled voices tend to keep them awake more than clearly intelligible ones.
(From UseIt.com)

Happy birthday spam

(Well, actually, happy birthday to the message that led to the name "spam".)
(From CNet tech news)

Submit Response on Quicksilver

Jack Mottram writes at some length about Quicksilver, my favourite new app. Should this be on the build..?
(From Submit Response)

Indy sales boom slows

ABC figures for last month show that the Independent only gained 2,000 extra readers, a marked reduction on previous months. The year-on-year increase stands at 15.25%. The Guardian's sales increased 1.77% compared with the previous month, but year-on-year figures are down 8.74%. The Times is showing an increase of 0.48% year on year.
(From MediaGuardian.co.uk)

Newsmap

Interesting little design experiment: newsmap shows the current content on the Google News aggregator, represented as a "treemap". Each row is a different theme (international, sport, etc) and each cell in the row has an area based on its "importance" (i.e. how many "related" links Google News is displaying). It's an interesting way to sample what is considered important.
(From Digital Deliverance)

On the Apple-Adobe relationship

Another report alleging a cooling relationship between Apple and Adobe. Cites the usual stuff: Apple competing in Adobe creative markets (e.g. iPhoto, iMove, iDVD, Final Cut Pro, etc), Adobe dropping Apple support for some applications such as Premiere and FrameMaker, Adobe introducing Windows-only apps such as Atmosphere. Interesting quote: "Adobe is more important to Apple than Apple is to Adobe right now ... That's a reversal of history."
(From CNet News.com)

Does "compact" (i.e. tabloid) entail "tabloid" (i.e. dumb)?

New York Times story in the IHT about tabloidisation in the UK market. Includes interviews with many of the key players and discussion about whether or not the Indy and the Times are inexorably being moved downmarket by the need to offset the monotony of endless tabloid pages with more human interest and downmarket stories.
(From International Herald Tribune)

Telegraph "invests £8m in compact launch"

Telegraph managing director Hugo Drayton said that although no official decision has yet been taken, the newspaper's ownership battle will not get in the way of the launch of a compact edition. Apparently the proposed £8m budget for the launch does not even include marketing spend.
(From Brand Republic)

20 Minuten cans digital edition

The Swiss daily 20 Minuten has been running a digital edition since summer last year, and has picked up over a thousand users. But it has decided to shut the service down after being advised by the news agency SDA that 20 Minuten was liable to online reprint fees.
(From E-Media Tidbits)

Associated buys Jobsite

Associated New Media have forked out £35 milltion on Jobsite, one of the UK's many recruitment websites.
(From DotJournalism)

Tabloidisation update: "midsize"

Brand Republic's Media Bulletin quotes extensively from an interview with Alan in FT Creative Review, of which I have in hard copy (thanks, Uncle Joe) but can't find a link. "We may not remain exactly the same size" would be the main quote. See also Andrew Neil's rather lame potshot in the Scotsman.
(From Brand Republic)

More Vin...

Haven't read it yet - or Earl Wilkinson's review, or The Australian's report on the PEJ study.
(From Online Journalism Review)

News website audiences up 70%

A study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism reports that traffic to the 26 most popular news websites grew by 70 percent (according to Nielsen/Netratings stats) in the period May 2002-October 2003. Meanwhile newsrooms are cutting staff: there has been a 3 percent decline in news and editorial employees in US newspapers since 1990.
(From Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Indy on Guardian tabloid decision

Peter Cole intros his new column with a look at the tabloidisation debate, at Stephen Glover's putative high market daily plans, and at Max Clifford's ubiquity. Doesn't say much; but says it fairly well.
(From The Independent)

Tacoma News Tribune implements Hermes a la Woodwing [subscription required]

The News Tribune in Tacoma, Washington (circ 128K) is to replace its Sii and QPS systems with Unisys's Hermes 10. This version of Hermes integrates InDesign and InCopy using customised versions of Woodwing's Smart Connection plugins. One of the principal reasons for the purchase decision was the integration with the Adobe layout and editing software. Implementation is epxected to be completed within nine months.
(From Editor and Publisher)

Heildelberg to sell web offset division to Goss

After a tough couple of years, Heidelberg is to flog off its newspaper and commercial print division to Goss International, and its digital print division to Eastman Kodak. Heidelberg will focus henceforth on its sheetfed print business.
(From Editor and Publisher)

Seybold on Version Cue

In-depth review of Adobe's out-of-the box workflow and versioning technology Version Cue. Worth a read.
(From The Seybold Report)

Sindy stays broadsheet

The Independent on Sunday's imminent redesign will not be in the tabloid format, according to CEO Ivan Fallon. The news section will remain broadsheet. The launch issue of the revamped culture supplement is rumoured to contain an "exclusive" interview with David Hockney. Who we inteviewed yesterday.
(From MediaGuardian.co.uk)

Tabloidisation update: Scotsman

The Scotsman is to go "comapct" (meaning UK tabloid, not European compact) on Saturdays (initially).
(From BBC News)

Vin Crosbie: what newspapers must do to survive

Part one of Vin Crosbie's anticipated tablets of stone. Summary by Steve Outing in E-Media Tidbits.
(From Online Journalism Review)

ABC rules out combined print/digital figures

As expected, the UK's Audit Bureau of Circulation has ruled that digital editions will not be included in headline ABC figures.
(From Journalism.co.uk

icWales on electronic publishing

"[Guardian Unlimited] have been bending over backwards to reassure everyone and their dog that there are no plans to start charging for use of the site, but do they believe it? No. Not even the dog."
(From The Western Mail)

QuarkXPress 6.1 released

Quark have released QuarkXPress 6.1, which is compatible with the latest version of Mac OS X. New features include improved Excel compatibility, an "edit in another application" bridge for attached images, and a tool to set font substitution rules. More excitingly, some of the bug fixes make it almost conceivable that you could use the application for something. Some examples: "Creating a layout after checking Facing Pages in the New Project dialog box no longer causes QuarkXPress to quit unexpectedly" ... "A number of issues dealing with saving documents locally and over the network have been resolved" ... "no longer quits unexpectedly when you import, update, print, or collect JPEG images that were created in Photoshop" ... "You can now use a mouse to create tables correctly" ... "When you select text in a text box and increase the font size to 128 pt or larger, the color of the text no longer change" ... "QuarkXPress no longer quits unexpectedly if a large number of fonts are installed on your computer" ... and my favourite: "QuarkXPress no longer quits unexpectedly if you open a document or project that was saved in QuarkXPress 6.0."
(From VersionTracker:)

Quark appoints new CEO

Company president Kamar Aulakh has replaced Fred Ebrahimi as Quark CEO. Ebrahimi remains chairman of the board.
(From Macworld UK)

AOP: digital edition move by ABC is insufficient

The UK Association of Online Publishers reckons the UK Audit Bureau of Circulation's change of policy over digital editions "does not afford publishers a good enough reason to have digital circulation figures audited by ABC or ABCE". ABC have ruled that digital edition figures may now be included on the print certificate, but not as part of the crucial "headline figure", the value considered definitive for circulation. Includes an interesting quote from the manager of Telegraph.co.uk: "Tabloid, broadsheet and digital -- same product, different format!"
(From Association of Online Publishers)

Five myths about short writing

A nice, short article.
(From Poynter Online)

Irish Independent to go tabloid

The Irish Independent is following its UK cousin into parallel broadsheet-and-tabloid publishing. The tabloid version is due to launch in the Dublin area next week.
(From The Scotsman)

Newspaper Registration Service update

THe Newspaper Society and the Royal Mail went back into talks in January regarding the threatened withdrawal of the Newspaper Registration Service -- the thing that lets newspapers post their products first class but at second-class rates. The Royal Mail has told Media Week that an outcome is expected soon.
(From Media Week)

Vodafone's Trekkie vision

Vodaphone's vision of the future of mobile communication devices and other futurist gizmos. Nice demonstrations of the usual stuff: electronic paper, "Visual bracelets", personal comms hubs, etc. Some of these devices even make Star Trekesque chirrupping noises, so they must be really serious. Nothing new here but the Flash manages to be both slick and silly and the same time, which amused me. You can turn off the tweeting birds etc using the sound on/off switch at top left.
(From E-Media Tidbits)

Nisenholtz on the Third Way

Find the Pong...
(From E-Media Tidbits)

K4 updated

Softcare have announced an update to their QPSalike K4 publishing system. Version 5 works with InDesign/InCopy 3.0. An enhanced use of XML allows story structuring; for example photo credits may be associated with a photo. The user interface has been improved, as have the querying tools. Images, adverts, and multimedia objects -- in fact just about any old file -- can be tracked through the workflow.
(From Macworld UK)

Tabloidisation update: Indy hints about discarding broadsheet

INM managing director Terry Grote: "If the broadsheet sales get down below a certain level and the tabloid sales keep rising, then we probably will do it”.
(From Media Week)

Philips demonstrates e-paper

(Low-res .wmv file.) If your browser doesn't know what to do with the link, change the protocol from http to mms. If that doesn't work take a look at the press release here.
(From E-Media Tidbits)

Philips: E Ink "no longer a research project"

Philips Electronics have announced that the rollable version of E Ink's e-paper will go into mass production in the near future. The rigid version of e-paper is already due to go to market later this year.
(From CNET News)

AIM report on digital editions

Advanced Interactive Media had done a (NewsStand-sponsored) report on digital editions, summarising findings from a couple of surveys and looking at some case studies. SOme noteworth stats: of respondents to one servey, "69.4 percent were interested in subscriptions, 65.8 percent in single-copy purchases, 54.1 percent enjoyed reading the publication, and 49.4 percent were interested in getting d-editions that they read for work or research ... 74.3 percent said they preferred the paper version; 76.2 percent did not like sitting in front of the computer to read the magazine, and 66.5 percent found reading on the monitor hard on their eyes."
(From E-Media Tidbits)

Tabloidisation update: more Garcia enthusiasm

The Triangle Business Journal (a US tabloid) is convinced, mostly by Mario Garcia as usual, that US broadsheets will all go tabloid in the next decade or so. Meanwhile they're watching in Japan too.
(From Newspaper Association of America)

Tabloidisation update: US takes note

The new look, new frequency Editor & Publisher notes the tabloidisation moves in the UK market, and considers what it means for the United States -- where the vast majority of papers are "broadsheet". Apparently the conjestion charge may be to blame...
(From Editor & Publisher)

Tabloidisation update: Telegraph remains cautious

Despite rumous of a Febraury launch the Telegraph appears still undecided about tabloidisation. Interesting quotes: "Some sources said there was a division between the editorial side of the operation ... which was keen to press ahead with a tabloid version, and the business side ... which remained unconvinced it could be made to pay. Some also say the hold-up has as much to do with technical issues as with financial considerations. The Telegraph has been slowly introducing a new computer system staff say would be unable to handle the simultaneous production of a tabloid."
(From MediaGuardian.co.uk)

Digital Deliverance on GODE

Vin Crosbie agrees with the Reg's review of the Guardian and Observer digital editions (see below), citing in particular the fact that, unlike NewsStand digeds, you don't need to download any software. He's impressed that we did the work in-house, and says that GODE "is as sophisticated as anything produced by [third-[party] vendors". Cheers! Also says that Waldo has some interesting things to say "about the linked fate of print and Web editions" in a forthcoming Digital Deliverance report.
(From Digital Deliverance)

Alexa ranks GU 16th most popular news site on the web

Alexa publishes rankings of most popular sites, by category (the definitions being their own), of users of the Alexa toolbar. The Guardian comes in at number 16 - the fourth most popular newspaper site after the New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today. The top 25 are: 1, CNN; 2, My Yahoo!; 3, BBC News; 4, The Weather Channel; 5, New York Times; 6, Google News; 7, Drudge Report; 8, MSNBC; 9, Fox News; 10, Washington Post; 11, USA Today; 12, Yahoo Weather; 13, CNN Money; 14, ABC News; 15, Reuters; 16, Guardian Unlimited; 17, MSN Money (CNBC); 18, WeatherBug; 19, Internet.Com; 20, AccuWeather; 21, Forbes; 22, San Francisco Chronicle; 23, New York Post; 24; Weather Underground; 25 LA Times.
(From E-Media Tidbits)

Ranking stories on your site

Adrian Holovaty says "it'd be useful if news sites made stories' importance more obvious", comparing online news sites with newspapers. Online, "stories sit alone, in templated obscurity, with no hint of how much more or less newsworthy they are than every other story". In print, the design conventions and page ordering communicate the significance. He recommends that online we assign importance values to each story, perhaps using a ranking number.

But in a printed newspaper, a story is only important in relation to the other stories around it: i.e. a decision is made entirely within the context of that day's news for that day's section. Furthermore, what some see as a problem for newspapers -- that they are merely a snapshot in time -- actually works in their favour: stories don't have to be reassessed for significance in perpetuity: the judgement is only necessary in the context of a single day in history. This isn't true online: you either have to cast your archive as something totally wedded to the time at which each item within it appeared (something to which most news sites are averse), or you have to constantly update the significance ranking of your archived stories. If you don't do this you run the risk of appearing inconsistent in your treatment of a given subject -- or worse, being embarrassed by leaving something as low-ranking that turns out to be huge.
(From Adrian Holovaty)

OmniWeb 5

Omni Group have announced their new browser, OmniWeb 5, which is due to go beta at the start of February. As predicted (following the release of Safari) they're now focusing entirely on user interface. I was particularly taken by the workspaces feature. We have talked about using scripts to record and "play back" sets of URLs, sizes and positions for browser windows (e.g. for desk editors who always want the same four tickers open). The feature is built into the application here (hopefully with assignable keyboard shortcuts). I also liked "site preferences" and the use of the drawer device for "tab" thumbnails. I'm not sure the shortcuts feature is all the way there yet: I'd like something akin to Launchbar, where shortcuts are learnt rather than defined. Dunno what they're doing with RSS. The main problem with OmniWeb in the past has been speed, but it now uses Safari's zippy WebCore (albeit an earlier version). Some discussion on MacSlash.
(From MacSlash)

US news audience: November

The Nielsen/Netratings United States audience figures for news sites for November place 8 newspaper groups (they count Gannett and USA Today separately) in the top 20 most viewed.

Organisation	Unique audience	Time per person
1. CNN	19.8 million	28min 32sec
2. MSNBC	19.7 million	18min 37sec
3. Yahoo! News	16.7 million	25min 50sec
4. AOL News	15.3 million	39min 51sec
5. Gannett Newspapers	8.7 million	15min 27sec
6. New York Times	8.7 million	35min 29sec
7. Tribune Newspapers	8.0 million	13min 20sec
8. Knight Ridder	7.8 million	12min 58sec
9. Internet Broadcasting Systems	7.5 million	15min 15sec
10. ABCNews	7.4 million	13min 21sec
11. USA Today	6.0 million	15min 44sec
12. Washington Post	5.2 million	19min 26sec
13. Hearst Newspapers	4.4 million	15min 39sec
14. Fox News	4.3 million	31min 25sec
15. Associated Press	4.2 million	5min 19sec
16. CBS	4.1 million	7min 24sec
17. BBC	3.7 million	8min 50sec
18. MSN Slate	3.6 million	9min 48sec
19. Advance Internet	3.6 million	16min 30sec
20. Time Magazine	3.5 million	4min 15sec

(From Editor & Publisher)