College of Communication and Information

 

 

Media Mindsets FYI 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click on links below to read all about it...

 

April 6 2007

 

Top Online Current Events and News Destinations.  A deeper drill-down to look at the reader demographics for the top Online global news and current events destinations.

 

Poynter Eyetrack 2007 study says online readers read deep

The non-profit Poynter Institute has just released the preliminary results of its Eyetrack 2007 study, and some of the findings may be surprising to those who think online readers merely speed through news sites.

From the Poynter article, titled ‘The Myth of Short Attention Spans’:

Readers select stories of particular interest and then read them thoroughly.

And there’s a twist: The reading-deep phenomenon is even stronger online than in print.

At a time when readers are assumed to have short attention spans, especially those who read online, this qualifies as news.

That was the predominant behavior of roughly 600 test subjects — 70 percent of whom said they read the news in print or online four times a week. Their eye movements were tracked in 15-minute reading sessions of broadsheet, tabloid and online publications.

The study’s overview found that:

1) The largest percentage of story text read was higher online (77%) than in broadsheet (62%) or tabloid (57%) formats.

2) Print readers are more methodical, while online readers scan more by a margin of about 25%.

3) Sidebars, lists and QandAs boost reader understanding.

4) Online readers are drawn to navigational elements and teasers. Print readers are drawn to large headlines and photos.

5) Documentary-style photos get lots of attention. Staged photos, not so much.

Poynter will be releasing a book in June with more details about the study, including the materials used. They’re also organizing a workshop for August regarding the 2007 Eyetrack study.

Don't look now, but the comic geniuses at JibJab have just skewered the news biz -- particularly TV news. It happened  at the annual Radio and Television Correspondents' Association dinner, but it's still happening online. Check out their latest online animation, It's What We Call the News.

 

 

 

 

 

 

March 29 2007

  For the first Newsroom Barometer, nobody ‘Killed the newspaper’ By Editors Weblog.

Many months of speculation about the future of newspapers culminated in September 2006 with a front-page story by The Economist asking: “Who killed the newspaper?” To gain an insiders view of this morbid forecast, the World Editors Forum and Reuters launched an initiative to probe those most concerned: editors-in-chief, deputy editors and senior news executives. One may have thought them to be morose, discouraged and overwhelmed by the evolution of technology, but in the first Newsroom Barometer - conducted by Zogby International  - ever carried out, they proved to be just the opposite: 85% of senior news executives see a rosy future for their newspaper. They accept competition from online sources and free papers, and in turn are making efforts to adapt to the 21st century readership.  They know how to effectively transition towards online journalism without dismissing editorial quality. Fifteen years ago, selling newspapers was simply a matter of marketing. But editors-in-chief realize that content matters more than ever and cutting newsroom resources is not at all an effective solution: the redefinition of news will take place with journalists, not against them. These are just brief examples of what the 2007 Newsroom Barometer found. As the first international survey focused on newsroom strategies and morale, the Barometer aims to promote better knowledge of the evolution of the newspaper through the eyes of senior news executives from around the world. Every year, the survey will ask some of the same questions, in order to continue tracking the important shifts taking place in news organizations and newsrooms around the world.  In this era of rapid and accelerating change for journalism, the World Editors Forum believes that editors worldwide need sharp and focused information to help them do their jobs. Already this first global survey among newspaper news executives will help analysts and newspapers worldwide establish strategies in order to adapt to a transitional era in journalism. This is a six-part analysis that recaps the survey’s main findings:

Read part 1 – Nobody has killed the newspaper
Read part 2 - How editors view emerging forms of journalism (free papers, citizen journalism, online journalism and more)
Read part 3 – How editors view their newspaper in 10 years
Read part 4 – Newsroom priorities, threats to editorial independence
Read part 5 – Who participated in the Newsroom Barometer?
Read part 6 – Newsroom Barometer: analysis by John Zogby and comment by Jeff Jarvis

WEF will continue to promote the Newsroom Barometer to improve upon the 435 editors worldwide who participated in 2007 and try to obtain answers more specific to separate geographic areas in 2008. The goal is to conduct a Newsroom Barometer every year, in order to compare and contrast the newspaper industry’s trends over a longer period of time.  Technically (see part 5), the World Editors Forum initially sent out a mailing to its database to make sure that the respondents were qualified to answer. Respondents answered the survey on the Zogby website between October 8 and December 7 2006. All respondents were editors-in-chief or senior news executives.

Overall, how optimistic are you about your newspaper’s future?

 The survey found that: - An overwhelming number of respondents say they are very optimistic (24%) or somewhat optimistic (61%) about the future of their newspaper. Even among newspapers whose circulation decreased over the past five years, 80% of respondents remain optimistic. It means that contrary to conventional wisdom and widespread doom-and-gloom predictions, senior news executives are overwhelmingly optimistic about the future of their newspaper.

 Forty-percent of editors and news executives believe online will be the most common platform for news ten years into the future, while 35% believe in print’s supremacy.

One in ten say mobile devices will be the most common platform, while 7% cite e-paper.

And two out of 10 respondents say it will be technologies that are still in the emerging stage. Half the respondents believe that journalistic quality will improve over the next 10 years, versus one-quarter who think it will worsen.  Eight in ten respondents view online and new media as a welcome addition. Those with high volume web traffic — more than 200,000 unique visitors per day — are more likely to view new media positively, but the majority of editors at newspapers with modest traffic or no web sites also viewed new media positively.

Three in ten respondents view free newspapers as a threat to the market, while the majority take a more benign view – 34% view them as a welcome addition, and 28% consider them negligible. Smaller newspapers are more likely to see free papers as a threat than larger newspapers, perhaps because larger newspapers have the resources to fight off free paper competition, as well as produce their own free papers. Respondents are almost evenly split over whether they think that the majority of news, both print and online, will be free in the future.

Three-quarters of respondents view the trends toward increased interactivity between news organisations and their readers as positive for quality journalism, while only 8% take the negative view.  Fifty-four percent of editors think shareholders and advertisers pose the principal threat in the future to editorial independence of newspapers.  Nineteen percent of respondents, mostly from the developing world, cite political pressure as the main threat.

Two-thirds of respondents say that the number of opinion and analysis pages will increase in coming years. Training journalists in new media is cited most often by editors as a priority to increase editorial quality. Hiring more journalists is the second most frequently cited priority. 

For the full Newsroom Barometer results and commentary plus the complete, analytical guide to the monumental transformations taking place in the newspaper industry, please consult the print or PDF version of Trends in Newsrooms 2007 (http://www.trends-in-newsrooms.org/home.php), released 27th March 2007. From free papers to e-papers, citizen journalism to social media and integrated newsrooms to Internet aggregators, it has everything you need to know to direct your paper towards a multimedia future.

 

March 26 2007

You Must Be Streaming.  In a sudden reversal of fortune, newspapers have taken to online video and might just beat TV news at its own game.  We think we know that the professional news media, especially newspapers, are obsolete, that the future is all about (excuse the expression) you—media created by amateurs. But such PowerPoint distillation tends to overlook the fact that mainstream media are not all simply shriveling and dying but in some instances actually evolving. And in evolution, there are always fascinating transitional iterations along the way. Such as newspapers’ suddenly proliferating forays into online video. (And now magazines: Time Inc. just announced a new “studio” to develop Web video.)Whereas the YouTube paradigm is amateurs doing interesting things with cameras, the newspapers’ Web videos are professional journalists operating like amateurs in the best old-fashioned sense. One of the Times’s new Web-video stars, David Carr (as the jolly-noir, movie-tasked Carpetbagger), recalls that when the Times’ video operation started fifteen months ago, his bosses said, “ ‘Let’s give it a whirl.’ Which is the exact opposite of the Times’ usual DNA. ‘Let’s give it a whirl’—that’s not something that comes up a lot.” At their best, the newspapers’ online videos are, minute for minute, superior to TV news. As I write, CNN is airing a live press conference by Anna Nicole Smith’s lawyer and a loop of Smith vamping, while a significant breaking news story—the U.S. claim that Muqtada al-Sadr has left Iraq for Iran—is running in tiny type across the bottom of the screen. Given the dumb-and-dumber choices, I can easily imagine newspapers’ Web-video portals becoming the TV-journalism destinations of choice for smart people—that is, in the 21st century, the dominant nineteenth-century journalistic institution, newspapers, might beat the dominant twentieth-century institution, TV, at the premium part of its own game.  Read more....

 

March 21 2007

Lawmakers who voted for a bill to force schools and libraries
receiving federal funds to block access to MySpace and other social-
networking web sites on their computers are among those who have
created personal profiles on a special section of MySpace dedicated to
the 2008 presidential election. The apparent contradiction points to
the difficulty faced by lawmakers and educators as they try to protect
children and teens from the dangers lurking in cyberspace--and it
underscores the problems that can occur when lawmakers, many of whom
have a limited understanding of internet issues, seek to legislate
behavior in the Information Age.  Read all about it...

 

March 19 2007

 

March 14 2007

Can you walk and talk online?  Mash-ups, a hybrid Web application that combines complimentary elements from two or more sources, are bringing together the best of both worlds and pushing for innovation. One such application is Unype that lays Internet-based phone Skype over Google Earth. Unype users can access Google earth, dial-up a friend over Skype and guide one another to desired locations while taking a look at places together and holding conversations.

March 13 2007

Build your own social network

Technology Review: Build Your Own Social Network. Ning, a new Web service, lets users become the CEOs of their own mini-MySpaces.

 

How Much Time Do Millennials Spend on MySpace & Facebook? As part of DMW’s Millennials Conference April 18th a documentary is being made about the Millennial generation (roughly defined as age 15-25) with Victorhouse Films.   UCLA was the first stop for interviews, partially because the conference will be on its campus, and partially because its students, located in LA, are among the most exposed to digital media.  As a disclaimer, I am not, nor have I ever been, a MySpace or Facebook user.  And what was found in the student interviews is that never, in my life, have I been so out of touch with a pop culture phenomenon. 

 

March 12 2007

The fourth annual edition of "The State of the News Media," available at www.journalism.org, analyzes trends in newspapers, cable, network and local television, radio, ethnic news and attitudes toward media. It shows that  "the transformation facing journalism is epochal,... "as momentous as the invention of television or the telegraph, perhaps on the order of the printing press itself."   Read all about it...

 

March 8 2007

Analysis: Competition 2.0 - Who Are Print Media Websites Competiting With Online?

The following is a blog entry from Heather Hopkins at Hitwise UK: Saddam Hussein's execution - aired around the world through blogs and on YouTube - made YouTube a primary news source for millions of consumers. Newspapers were once the domain for breaking news, but often the medium and time constraints prevent printed press from reacting quickly enough to break news.  This second of three in a series of posts about our recently published News & Media report looks at the changing landscape of competitors online, going beyond the competition presented to ad sales by classifieds providers to look at the where consumers are turning for their news. (The first post on Digg.com's growth is available here.) The post takes a look at two of three case studies presented the report. The first on Saddam Hussein's execution and the second on the Israel-Lebanon conflict from the summer of 2006.

1) News Story Case Study: Saddam Hussein's Execution

On 29th December 2006, Saddam Hussein was executed and a video of his execution rapidly spread across the Internet. In the four weeks to 6th January, the top term relating to the execution was "saddam hussein" followed by "saddam hussein execution".

The following table show the websites receiving the highest volume of visits from these queries.

With search engines accounting for 29% of upstream visits to websites in the News and Media industry, it is important for news organisations to know which websites are receiving visits from searches for key events. The above table highlights that Wikipedia is a key competitor to news websites that offer analysis and background information.  This example also illustrates that relatively unknown players can rapidly rise around particular events. For example, Xinhua News Agency, a Chinese news website, saw its market share of UK internet visits rise 4.5 times on 30th December 2006 compared with the previous day. The website's rank increased from 609 in the News and Media industry on 29th December to 175 on 30th December.

2. News Story Case Study: Israel-Lebanon Conflict
The 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict started on 12th July 2006, and continued through early September. UK Internet users turned to the web for background information.

The following chart illustrates that the share of UK internet searches surged for "hezbollah", "israel" and "lebanon" in the weeks after the conflict began.

Analysis of the search terms used during the conflict reveals that UK Internet users went online for background information, with searches for maps, history and news about the region dominating searches.  Wikipedia was the favoured source for information in most searches related to the conflict. The #1 website receiving visits from searches for "israel", "lebanon" and "hezbollah" in the four weeks to 12th August 2006 was Wikipedia.org. Searches for "lebanon crisis" and "hizbollah" (a common misspelling of Hizbullah) also sent visits to Wikipedia. The free online encyclopedia was used for background information during the conflict - background information that was also in many cases available in the detailed analyses created by the leading nationals and news organisations in the UK. Again, the full report is available here.

 

Report: Worldwide Internet Audience Grows 10% in Past Year.  About 747 million people over the age of 15 used the Internet worldwide in January, up 10% from the year before, according to new figures from comScore Networks. Internet audiences in India, the Russian Federation and China increased the most in 2006, with China now boasting the second-largest Internet population in the world, following the U.S. Domestically, the U.S. Internet population grew 2% to 153.4 million users. "Internet users outside the U.S. now account for 80% of the world’s online population, with rapidly developing countries experiencing double-digit growth rates year-over-year," said Bob Ivins, the managing director of comScore Europe. Related Links:
http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1242

March 7 2007

 

White teenagers are more likely than black adolescents to start smoking after high exposure to R-rated movies and minimal restrictions on television viewing. Researchers suggest that since the majority of actors are white, the behavioral impact does not transport to black adolescents because they do not identify with the characters.  Read more...

March 6 2007

Aiming to capitalize on the growing trend of user-created content, major television networks such as CNN, Nickelodeon, and TLC are inviting students as young as elementary school to shoot, edit, and star in videos that air on TV.  Read all about it...

March 5 2007

 

The World of Wireless Widens.  Pew Internet and American Life Project findings about Americans' use of wireless Internet.  Some 34% of Internet users have logged onto the Internet using a wireless connection either around the house, at their workplace, or some place else. In other words, one-third of Internet users, either with a laptop computer, a handheld personal digital assistant (PDA), or cell phone, have surfed the Internet or checked email using means such as WiFi broadband or cell phone networks. 

 

Crowdhackers are looking to boost sales or increase traffic to their Web sites.

Read more about it here...

 

March 1 2007

 

Breaking Up Isn't Hard to View  Thousands of college students made a YouTube hit out of a video that appears to show a University of North Carolina couple breaking up, in embarrassingly public fashion, on Valentine's Day. The clip -- which featured back-and-forth accusations of philandering, a cheering crowd, an a cappella group crooning the Dixie Chicks' "Not Ready to Make Nice," and an awful lot of cursing -- has now been outed as a hoax, according to the Associated Press. Truth be told, that's not exactly a startling revelation: Most of the video appears to be pretty obviously staged. The clip's protagonist, a 22-year-old student named Ryan Burke, said the YouTube sensation was nothing more than a stunt intended to demonstrate how quickly information can travel in online communities. By that standard, it's pretty clear he succeeded.

 

World’s best machinima (movies made from video games)  [From the RSS Feed: Journalistopia] Slate has payed the world of gamer geeks a big nod by creating a slideshow of YouTube videos showcasing the very best machinima, a style of film made using the actual video games to create the scenes. Now I must admit; I have been skeptical of machinima because the few videos I had seen were relatively sophomoric productions. However, many of the videos showcased by Slate are actually polished and funny productions. My favorites: The Avril Lavigne music video made with “The Sims 2,” the comedy in French made with a flight simulator game, the Evel Knievel-style skiing adventure short made in “Line Rider,” and –if you’re not too prudish– a “World of Warcraft-”made spoof on the Broadway musical Avenue Q with its theory on why the Internet is around (porn, that is). Okay, maybe that last one IS sophomoric, but heck, it was well-done sophomoric. I fervently believe that elements of gaming are going to increasingly become important for journalism. The interactivity, 3D exploration and feeling of community will likely be be increasingly replicated to provide a richer experience on online news sites. Randy Stewart recently wrote a splendid post on how Web sites are successfully using some gaming techniques. It’s a language that us young whippersnappers have been speaking nearly since WE came out of the box. It’s how we use our thumbs so darned fast too. The Point: If you’re a senior manager at a newspaper site, and you haven’t really spent some time on an XBox, a Playstation or roaming an online gaming community (just watching your kid doesn’t count), then you’re missing out on some critical knowledge here.

 

 Storytelling on the web

Touching Hearts	360 Degrees.org
Heroes	Race in America

When news organizations take full advantage of two important characteristics of storytelling on the Web -- context and continuity -- multimedia stories are wrapped in a story "shell" that provides background information on the story. This could include everything from databases, timelines and infoboxes to lists of related stories, links to other resources and online forums. The information in each shell gives the reader a sense of the context of a story and where it fits in with other stories on the same topic.  Read all about it...

 

 

February 27 2007

 

A dilemma is faced by many newspapers and other print media when posting articles online. Pithy, witty and provocative headlines--the pride of many an editor--are often useless and even counterproductive in getting the Web page ranked high in search engines. A low ranking means limited exposure and fewer readers.  Read all about it...

 

The Future of the News Media  Fresh Air from WHYY, February 12, 2007 · Lowell Bergman on News Media Economics  Investigative reporter Lowell Bergman is the producer of the new Frontline documentary "News War: Secrets, Spin and the Future of the News." The four-part series she discusses is about the mainstream news media and the political, legal and economic forces acting on it.  [Listen here]

 

February 26 2007

 

The Great Media Industry Schism.  The once monolithic media industry is undergoing a radical schism,  dividing itself into content creation, on the one hand, and content
aggregation and distribution on the other. Read all about it...

 

The “News and Schmooze” Explosion.  On February 6, the front page of New West—“a network of online communities” in the Rocky Mountain region—included a link to a photo essay on the Montana legislature, a chapter from a guest writer’s book on pantheism, and a “snowblog” item announcing the death of a famed “avalanche guru”. Bankrolled for less than $1 million, New West is part of the rapidly growing category of hyper-local “citizen media” outlets, places with names like Backfence, H20town, and Village Soup, that utilize user-generated content. These local web sites are, according to a new study by the University of Maryland’s J-Lab, a “fusion of news and schmooze” that promotes the kind of civic engagement that the mainstream press in theory aspires to, but in practice has been slower to encourage.  Read more...