John Zogby writes in his regular Forbes column about research data that suggest many news consumers trust online over print. Why? Zogby suggests it has to do with the deep-rooted perception bias. It’s hard to apply his conclusions to community newspapers, but the survey results are still eye opening.
Category: Online news
In a post on Journalism 2.0, Mark Biggs lists several ways to track the performance of your Web site while being realistic about what the numbers actually mean to those in your newsroom. While some of his techniques may be a little much for a smaller news operations, many of the techniques will still apply.
10,000 Words has a cool roundup of several ways to adapt online sports coverage to better fit the Internet. While the sports story clearly still has a place, they have some good suggestions for some value-added features, many of which we’ve discussed in workshops, such as maps and stats features.
Steve Buttry from Gazette Communications has put together a great tip sheet on blogging, composed largely of tips from some great journalists/bloggers. It’s a must-read post if you’re thinking about blogging or already blogging for your site.
Take a few minutes to read this E&P article and to watch the short video, and you’ll get a great summary of the various points of view—and arguments pro and con—in the free vs. paid online content debate.
24/7 Wall Street, a financial news blog, has issued this year’s ranking of the Top 25 Newspaper Websites, and the Houston Chronicle and the Dallas Morning News again made the list. The article above will guide you through the websites, along with a brief commentary on why they were chosen. These websites are a great place to find ideas on features that newspapers of any size can use. This is the same website that produced “The 10 Most Endangered Newspapers in America” list, which got a great deal of attention when it was published in TIME magazine.
Mike Orren, founder of Pegasus News, talks to The Convergence Newsletter about the operation and how they’re using data and citizen journalism to run what they call a local news portal. Pegasus is pretty popular here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and it’s worth checking out if you’ve never done so before. Pegasus runs on some high-end software on the back end, but there are certainly some concepts that community newspapers could employ using free online tools.
You may have the only newspaper in the county, but don’t just assume that you can never end up with competition because of the cost involved in starting another newspaper. For a look — and admittedly, a scary look — at what may be the future of the news business, see the article above. Two years ago, nobody would have dreamed that the scenario in this article could have played out in San Diego. But it is, and in other cities, too. And in the not-too-distant future, we’ll see more media start-ups like this in Texas.
There was a meeting in Chicago last week of top newspaper executives to talk about paid content. They heard a number of pitches from entrepreneurs who suggested new ways to generate online revenues. The link above will take you to a Newspaper Economic Action Plan prepared for the meeting by the American Press Institute, offering recommendations on charging for online content. There are all kinds of ideas here, some you may like better than others, but definitely worth your time to check them out.
The Newport Daily News is trying an interesting experiment in online news. They’re using a tiered subscription model, with the most expensive tier being a $345-a-year electronic edition.