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)