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)

More speculation about Apple tablets

I've not read Robert Cringely before. He can write. He latches on to the recent excitement about 802.15.3 -- short range, high bandwidth wireless networking to the merely moderately geeky; super remote control to real people -- and speculates that it's coming soon to an Apple tablet near you.
(From Haddock)

Reader's editor and online communities

Interesting think piece by Jay Rosen about how, as readers start to identify newspapers' online presences as being the newspaper, and meanwhile those newspapers try to foster online communities and encourage readers to provide more feedback to articles online, the role of the "reader's editor"/"public editor"/"ombudsman" should perhaps be rethought. Rosen suggests that the reader's editor should run a weblog that points to articles and collates comment (including his own) on those articles.
(From PressThink)

Times in tabloid ad row

To the relief of all the pundits, the "inevitable" has finally happened and advertisers have started making a fuss about the obligation to provide two formats of their ads to newspapers running parallel broadsheet and tabloid editions. The Indy volunteered to pay the cost of producing two versions, but The Times refused.
(From MediaGuardian.co.uk)

GODE trial "for four weeks"

It appears that the Guardian and Observer Digital Edition beta trial will last four weeks. That takes us to December 18 or thereabouts.
(From DotJournalism)

Online classified is cannibalising print

... says the OPA.
(From Media Daily News )

Print easier to drop than other media

The Pew Internet and American Life Project's report, "Consumption of Information Goods and Services in the United States", finds that the majority of the US populace would find it easier to give up their favourite newspaper than to give up other media ("computers, the internet, mobile phones, email, television).
(From E-Media Tidbits)

US ad spending up (a little)

The Newspaper Association of America reckons newspaper ad spending in the US crept up 1.5 per cent to $10.9 billion in Q3. However, classified is still on a downward trend (down 0.5% overall), particularly job ads (down 10.7%).
(From Editor & Publisher)

IE to include popup blocker

Following various debates about GODE's use of popups (and some browsers' inability to distinguish legit popups from those served by advertising) comes the news that Microsoft has indicated that it will include a blocker in the next version of Internet Explorer for Windows XP. An analyst estimates that as many as 20 per cent of web users have already installed some form of anti-pop-up software.
(From CNET News)

The past and future of product convergence

Little potted history of print, web, and digital editions from Digital Deliverance, with a rousing call in particular to newspaper web operations to see digital editions as something to participate in (and thereby improve), not to feel threatened by. The Guardian and Observer digital editions get a nod here too (well spotted, Vin Crosbie), which is nice given the cross-functional makeup of our project team. Has the usual (but that doesn't mean wrong) recommendations for where to go from here: fully leveraging PDF's functionality; openness to many reading devices; tabloidisation; introducing good commercial models, etc. Vin's prediction: "By 2010, newspapers, magazines, and broadcasters ... will be able to publish a single digital edition that can be used on the Web, in print, and on portable devices and e-paper, and that will feature the advantages of both Web sites and newsprint. This convergence has already begun."
(From Digital Deliverance)

News's Les Hinton on tabloidisation

Interesting (and unusually broad-minded for a News exec) comments from News International executive chariman Les Hinton about moving to tabloid from the broadsheet format. He observes that one UK broadsheet (the Guardian or Telegraph) may choose to make a virtue of staying broadsheet so that this becomes a USP. News is going to be aggressive with retailers and give 18p per copy of the Times sold (rather than the current 12.5p) in shops stocking the tabloid version.
(From MediaGuardian.co.uk)

Times goes tabloid

The Times is joining the Indy in publishing a tabloid alternative in the London area as of Wednesday November 26.
(From MediaGuardian.co.uk)

Creo Tokens at MacExpo

If you're going to MacExpo, take a look at Tokens on the Creo stand -- and say hello to Lori. Tokens has won a "best of show" award.
(From Creo)

Towards a single newsroom

Examples of newspapers who have moved their web staff into the print newsroom. (Interesting display of prejudice here: what I mean is that the web and print staff have moved into a single newsroom together.)
(From Online Journalism Review)