'Online journalism must change. Otherwise shovelware will bury it'

"Neilsen/Netratings and Comscore Media Metrix agree that the average visitor to an American daily newspaper website visits only three time per month and read less than 20 pages and spends less than 30 minutes there during that month. According to the Readership Institute at Northwestern University, the average reader of a printed newspaper reads it three times per week, and read more than 20 pages and spends nearly 30 minutes each time."
(From Digital Deliverance LLC)

Latest E Ink press releases

10-inch flexible display delivering 600x800 pixels at 100 pixels per inch. "As thin and flexible as construction paper".
12-bit colour flexible display suitable for mass production. 400x300 pixels at 83 pixels per inch.
(From E Ink)

Digital edition update: Times and NewspaperDirect

Demo here. I still find the SmartEdition user interface irritating and unpredictable.
(From Yahoo! Financial News)

Washington Post on strengths and weaknesses of print and online news

Hardly world-shattering but shows recognition of how other media are impacting on the writing style in newspapers. More interesting is the online chat with E Ink's Russ Wilcox and readers. In it (for example) Frank Ahrens of the Post says of the future of the newsprint Post, "it seems inconceivable that it will be a place for breaking news. Therefore, it seems to me that it might take on the character of what a newsweekly like Time is now--longer pieces, more analysis, maybe projects, big displays of graphics and photos that wouldn't look as good on the Web. If this is true, it seems to me the circulation will drop radically, but you might be able to charge a premium for the product, say $1 or so a copy, because it's information you're not getting anywhere else."
(From The Washington Post)

GU ranks at No 6 in Google News stats

Someone has made a rather more sophisticated version of the GoogleScrape tool I got David to write a few years back. Rather than just using frequency to determine aranking this tool also takes account of the importance (their definition) of a story and of when it made it onto Google News. Interestingly (perhaps), Guardian Unlimited comes in in exactly the same position now as it did then, although it now sits above the Beeb rather than below.
(From E-Media Tidbits)

Christian Schwartz on evolution of Guardian Egyptian

(From Typeradio)

'Electronic paper' getting much cheaper

Not strictly the high-contrast, high-readability 'e-paper' technology but still very exciting since the number of potential applications is pretty close to limitless. Never thought I'd link to Stuff Magazine, but they do have a picture of, er, the stuff. From ARNnet: "The displays can obtain their energy from printable batteries, which are already available, according to Siemens. But since these batteries lasted only for a few months, the miniature display technology was only feasible for merchandise with high turnover rates or short-use durations, Siemens said. Another local energy source could be printed antennas that receive pulses from a transmitter in the shelf and convert the pulses into electricity, the manufacturer said."
(From MediaGuardian.co.uk)

New York Times "considering" format change

Following the Wall Street Journal's announcement that its US edition will slim its width from 15in (381mm) to 12in (305mm), the New York Times reports that it was "considering going to a smaller width, but had not made a decision". The Washington Post is already 12in wide and nearly 23in tall - slightly narrower and considerably taller than a berliner (roughly 12.4in wide, 18.5in tall).
The WSJ is also moving to a 5-column grid, will run fewer turn stories, and will print less six-point data. "The paper will move more information to its Web site, allowing the print version to highlight the analyses and exclusive news that Journal editors say their readers value most." Sensible stuff.
(From New York Times)

Post-berliner ABC figures

The Guardian's ABC for September show an average sale of 404,187. This period covers the first 10 (pre-redesign) days of the month. The figure for August was 341,968, meaning September represented an 18% increase month-on-month. Full ABCs here; summary in the Press Gazette here.
(From MediaGuardian.co.uk)

Sindy goes tabloid October 16

"Ivan Fallon ... said the move had been deferred while the daily paper focused on the threat from the new-look Guardian. 'We didn't want to launch it before because we were devoting our resources to the daily.'"
(From MediaGuardian.co.uk)

Last Saturday was Guardian's biggest sale ever

And sales look set to be averaging at 60,000 a day higher than they were before the redesign.
(From MediaGuardian.co.uk)

19m bloggers ...

... and, according to a Guardian/ICM poll, one in three 14- to 21-year-olds in the UK have their own blog or website. At what point does the number of publishers outnumber the number of readers?
(From Technology Review)

Circulation of main UK newspapers has dropped by 9m in 10 years

MediaWeek feature summarises what papers have tried to do about it.
(From Media Week)

"Implicature is far more binary online"

Wonderful description from Lloyd - employing a whole new set of terminology - of the eternal problem where content goes online and is accessible in ways that bypass the context provided by the source (print) vehicle. Because it's not possible to access a specific piece of content directly and uniquely in a medium such a newspaper, any reasonably sophisticated newspaper reader cannot avoid aborbing some information about the environment of a piece of content. This contextual information will inform their understanding of that content itself. Attitude, signposting, weighting, diversity of opinion, seriousness, tone, and linguistic convention are not conveyed too richly by your average RSS reader.

Content online can of course provide a huge degree of context, but it is predominantly external context (how the piece relates to the rest of the world) rather than internal (how the piece relates to the rest of the content provider's output). Which brings me back to my favourite subject: footnotes. There is a connection here: to what extent should a piece stand up by itself? To what extent do you risk upsetting its readability by trying to explain its relationship to other content, and/or the meaning of terminology used therein? We can't spend all our time saying "we're only saying this because such-and-such" lest everything end up like the 400-word "trial continues" article I so despise. So, to deliver the context of a terse update/a controversial opinion piece/etc we perhaps need to establish some conventions for accompanying each piece with some contextual/explanatory material: be it bibliography, lexicon, chronological trail, or even "balance". The challenge is how to make this part of the piece but without overwhelming it. Inline links don't cut it on their own.
(From Lloyd@work)

Good followup on the Garcia "fusion" story

(From Editors Weblog)

Jay Rosen on bloggers/Big Media showdown

"They have most of the rest figured out, they believe. But not how to fund the newsroom."
(From PressThink)

New Wall Street Journal Asia to deploy web-style UI techniques

Mario Garcia: "Going compact is very exciting because the readers like it, but the real story here is the fusion of the online and print versions of the newspaper."
The WSJA will deploy lots of devices common on the web (and. from the examples given, not uncommon in print) in a more web-design style. On links to related stories at the end of an article, Garcia had this to say: "I see in the future bibliographies at the end of every reporter's article." This is, I think, the most interesting bit (given my current obsession with footnotes, jumps, and inline referencing).
Now, should such bibliographies continue to evolve (online) after the article has been published?
(From Ifra)

Format change update: Le Figaro

To redeisgn and reduce its width in October.
(From Editor & Publisher)

Vanity Fair piece on Guardian redesign, UK newspapers

Sadly (for an article that lauds the "more accurate and truthful" US media), contains several errors/misjudgements:
"Both The Independent and the London Times have turned to tabloid formats, while the snobbish Guardian is shrinking even smaller". Er, no. We're bigger than a tabloid.
"The paper has been technologically adept, even visionary in an industry that, especially in Britain, temperamentally exists in another age." Hm. I've visited about 10 newspapers in the US and I found them to have a much more "old school" attitude to technology than many of those I know in Britain.
"The 'Berliner' is what people at The Guardian call this new size—not least because the new presses are German-made." There is of course no connection between a century-old standard term for this format and the Guardian's recent choice of press vendor.
But still worth a read.
(From Vanity Fair)

New York Times on Guardian redesign

Actually appears to be more of a compilation of exercpts from articles/interviews in the British media.
(From New York Times)

Passé Note

Have you noticed that wherever you read a blog about the Guardian redesign there's this slightly lame skit about Pass Notes in a comment entry? I wonder who has devoted time to propagating this. They might even be doing it by hand - a scary thought - since the entry number seems to be different here and there. This kind of sendup is a witty idea, although the content - while capturing the tone of that which it lampoons - is forgettable. Makes me miss the column less.

Vin Crosbie on Guardian redesign

"Seeing the first Berliner-format edition of The Guardian of London was a revelation, and – one that yields another clue to the rebuilding of media in the 21st Century." Aw, shucks. Article continues with some excellent, more general stuff about newspaper aesthetics and sizes, and the differing influence of advertising on each side of the Atlantic.
(From Digital Deliverance)

It worked

Thursday's Channel 4 News item on berliner Guardian

Hit the "watch the report" link.
(From Channel4.com)

Brand Republic: all eyes on Guardian berliner move

(From Brand Republic)

What I've been up to

(From Guardian Unlimited)

Press Gazette interviews Alan

(From Press Gazette)

Bruce Chizen: migrating software to Intel Macs "not that easy"

Plus extra snippet here.
(From CNet)

Independent survey: respondents positive about Guardian berliner move

Lies, damned statistics, and surveys. The Indy's report on the Guardian's imminent berliner relaunch opens with "Even optimistis admit the move marks the 184-year-old title's biggest gamble". But in the survey that follows there is little suggestion other than that it will be successful. The reactions of the experts quoted were, in order: positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, neutral ("It could be successful"), positive, positive, negative ("The big difficulty is going to be preventing it looking too much like a magazine. It can easily fall into resembling something British readers do not associate with news."), and positive.
(From The Independent)

Press Gazette on berliner move

(From Press Gazette)

"Jury is out" about 10-column ad grid

(From Media Week)

Sunday Times travel goes tabloid September 11

(From Press Gazette)

Telegraph considering berliner format

(From Press Gazette)

Guardian goes berliner on September 12

Ah, I can stop being so cagey to my mum at last.
(From MediaGuardian.co.uk)

Sunday Telegraph to be "like a party" under Sands

And the picture bylines won't scowl.
(From The Independent)

Speculation about berliner move in Print Week

(From Print Week)

Telegraph to use NewspaperDirect's SmartEdition

... which is, says E&P, "fully automated". See also the press release from NewspaperDirect.
(From Editor & Publisher)

Kottke: WebOS

Nicely summarises the efforts in recent years to converge/blur the desktop and web, and the applications running in either/both.
(From kottke.org)

Two mags on MEI-vended InDesign/InCopy setups

No mention of any others.
(From Editor & Publisher)

NYT editor writes letter to the editor

... and, to extend the circularity, its subject is an article in the paper about books about the media. So let's all talk about it.
(From Editor & Publisher)

Should media set the community's agenda?

NB link on Corante front page links to earlier version of Vin Crosbie's post. More on the debate about the mass-media editor's role in an increasingly diverse information environment. Is there analogy between the relationship between a consumer and an editor, and between a consumer and a mechanic? Do you trust your mechanic to choose the best parts for your car? Does anyone trust mechanics? If everybody had full access to information to choose which sparkplugs to buy, would the choices actually homogenise rather than diversify?
(From Corante)

Zotob worms affect New York Times, Wash Post, AP, CNN, ABC, FT, Bloomberg...

(From Editor & Publisher)

Seattle P-I launches "Virtual Editorial Board"

(From Online Journalism Review)

Grey areas for grey matter

A Cornell survey suggests that the brain deals with language (at least) in a fluid way, with the output of processes being distributed as they take place rather than after each is completed. A person is shown images on a screen of object including two with similar-sounding names, such as "candle" and "candy". They are told to click on "candle". Rather than waiting until the brain has decided which of the two sounds was heard, or indeed starting to move the mouse one way and then correcting themselves, people appeared to make arcing movements. The study suggests that initially the meaning of the word is in a cognitively ambiguous state -- good enough to start moving the mouse towards the candle/candy -- until the ambiguity is resolved, and thence the mouse trajectory.
Could have interesting implications for information and HCI design, let alone our understanding of cognition.
(From Technology Review)

Bill Hagerty on Guardian berliner move

From The Independent)

Sindy to go tabloid in September

"It is understood that the newspaper is planning to relaunch as a 128-page tabloid by the end of September
... Media buyers contacted by the Guardian yesterday were unaware of the Independent on Sunday's plans." One hundred and twenty-eight pages sounds like a fat (and relentlessly hard to navigate) product. The Times allegedly dumped the idea of a tabloid Sunday on the grounds that there would be just too many pages.
(From Guardian)

Seybold: people aren't developing with XMP

By Ron Roszkiewicz. "No one, to my knowledge, has adopted it as the infrastructure of their system". I don't know about infrastructure, but it's pretty core to our system. Roszkiewicz says that developers don't know how to write into XMP. We do. WW do. FIP do. Joe does.
(From The Seybold Bulletin)

Glaser interviews Nisenholtz and Keller on NYT newsroom merge

(From Online Journalism Review)

FT on the 10th anniversary of the Netscape IPO

(From FT.com)

"Citizen journalism is dead"

Says Vincent Maher (who is not a "US academic"). Discussed by Steve Outing on Tidbits.
(From E-Media Tidbits)

"Newsrooms are at last getting serious about plugging into the internet"

Writes Jeff Jarvis in the Guardian.
(From MediaGuardian.co.uk)

Preston on berliner, "the postmodern newspaper", etc

"In a sense, the newsprint version - this Berliner rethinking of role and purpose - is moving on to the next stage of news development. It could become what movie releases in cinemas are to DVD sales: a necessary outward and visible symbol of role and intent, but not the main digital event. Rusbridger's visionary zeal has already made the Guardian a global force on the net. Here he goes again. Autumn is about much more than paper and ink and typefaces. It is about the shape of things to come - even the first post-modern newspaper."
(From The Observer)

Guardian Weekly using geotargeted ads

(From New Media Age)

NYT to merge print and digital newsrooms

See WSJ and E&P.
(From Digital Deliverance)

Press Gazette on digital editions

Well, on Olive's, anyway. Plus a quote from Waldo: "Simon Waldman ... says the online edition appeals to a niche market. 'It's people who have to get hold of previous copies of the paper or read the paper from overseas. It comes out of our own production system so we are not paying significant sums to a third-party vendor and we are perfectly happy with it, but it's just a part of an overall digital publishing strategy.'"
(From Press Gazette)

David Owen becomes NewspaperDirect VP (Europe)

(From Editor & Publisher)

"They are killing the paper boys"

Times plus Sunday Times amount to 1,550 pages per week (in a single edition/zone). In tabloid. The Guardian comes second. Adrian Pike, head of press at Starcom UK, who made the survey, reckons that when the Guardian goes Berliner, "if they present the same amount of words they will put in more pages which means they would be potentially huge products". Perhaps he hasn't noticed that the vast majority of the Guardian's pages are currently tabloid, i.e. smaller than Berliner.
(From MediaGuardian.co.uk)

WoodWing's SCPro now Adobe CS2 compatible

(From WoodWing)

The future is "semi-virtual integrators"

Eli Noam writes in the FT that news organisations will settle into two archetypes: 1, specialist content providers; and 2, publishers who for the most part operate by selecting content generated by many of the specialists and packaging it up along with a few dashes of content produced in-house.
(From FT.com)

Independent site redesign

Um, where's the search?

British Library's digital strategy

Research conducted for the British Library predicts that "by the year 2020, 40% of UK research monographs will be available in electronic format only, while a further 50% will be produced in both print and digital. A mere 10% of new titles will be available in print alone by 2020". So they're ramping up their digital material activity.

Net acquisitions by newspapers

Examples of newspapers companies in the US buying up internet-based businesses in the past year. "All of them were for cash, not stock. This indicates to me that the acquirees were more comfortable accepting hard currency, rather than shares of companies in the troubled newspaper business."
(From Business Week)

NYT moves to 45gsm paper

(From Newspapapers And Technology )

Google working on Mac version of Google Earth

But no ETA.
(From SF Chronicle)

Guardian berliner in Autumn

(From MediaGuardian.co.uk)

Woodwing to deploy Van Gennep planning system

Subscription required
(From Editor & Publisher)

Craigslist and "open source journalism"

(From Editor & Publisher)

Garcia paper on tabloidisation

(From Garcia Media)

First North American Berliner

"... Format conversions have gained steam, particularly in Europe ... The staid London Times ... is expected to make another change, to Berliner, in 2006."
(From Newspapers and Technology)

Google to rate news reports according to "quality"

(From Association of Online Publishers)