Many of you are looking for different approaches to the online product. Check out this one from Columbia, Mo., a combination of a blog-like news stream with in-depth overview pages. Columbia Tomorrow lets members of the community start their own discussions on news posts. And check out the site’s video, which explains more about this project’s approach.
Here’s a site you need to check out, and print out for your ad staff. According to recent research, consumers trust advertising on local newspaper, magazine and television Websites, and are very likely to take action after viewing ads on these sites. It’s a piece any Texas ad rep needs in his/her pitch book when selling Internet ads.
Categories
To charge or not to charge
So you’re wrestling with the issue of charging for your Internet product. Do you want to do it? If so, how much? And if you charge, do you charge everyone, or only those who don’t subscribe to your print edition? If that’s the discussion around your newsroom, you’re in pretty good company; The New York Times is talking about the same thing. This article will show you what the Times has come up with.
A South Carolina newspaper design consultant is offering a grant to offset the cost of his services for small, community newspapers, such as those served by the Center.
The Francis A. Henninger Grant is available now and can be used to pay for design and redesign services with Henninger Consulting.
The amount of the grant is determined by serveral criteria including ownership, staff size, publication frequency and circulatioin, said Ed Henninger, who runs Henninger Consulting.
Henninger told me earlier this week that like those of us at the Center, he has found commmunity journalists eager to learn, and always appreciative, which makes makes the grant program worth it for him. And some of you may know Henninger from conferences; he just spoke at a West Texas Press Association event in San Angelo.
For those who quality, Henninger said, he will charge an hourly rate for his services, which will be offset by the grant.
“The beauty of the program is that after I do a little bit of work with them, and once they’ve got somebody who can start replicating what I’m doing, they can just say ‘Stop’,” he said.
That means that some small newspapers have been able to use his redesign services for less than $1,000, he said. Henninger said the grant may also be used to offset smaller projects, such as a nameplate redesign.
His hourly rate varies, he said, depending on the amount of work that will be involved.
Anyone interested can contact Ed at edh@henningerconsulting.com or (803-325-5252). For more information, visit Hennigner’s website at www.henningerconsulting.com.
Of course, you can always refer design questions to us at the center, either through our Ask an Expert feature or by using the Contact form.
Peter Bakke in his blog makes a suggestion we’ve made in our seminars at TCU–that all community papers set up Google alerts for news tips and story ideas. Basically, all you need to do is to go to Google at http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/ and click on Alerts. You tell Google that any time certain words or combinations of words show up on the Web that you want them to send you an email. Simple as that. You can set up alerts for the name of your community, for indivituals or organizations in town, etc. Here at the Center, we have an elert for “community journalism” (it needs to be in quotes, otherwise Google would alert us for all mentions of community and journalism). So every time any publication, or any obscure we-never-heard-of-it-before blog uses the phrase “community journalism,” we get an email. Google groups all mentions in a single email and sends it once a day. What Bakke suggests, and we haven’t considered before, is that ad reps use Google too — to find news of the primary industries you sell to, or news about your biggest clients. Bakke’s blog has an online tutorial about effective use of Google alerts.
Kevin Kelleher gives a good overview of the free-vs.-paid content argument, then presents his case that this is definitly the wrong time for newspapers to begin charging for online content. Here’s a sample of this thinking: “For the sake of argument, let’s say that news sites are routinely charging readers in five years. By then, the economy may be substantially healthier than now, and advertisers will be looking for sites with large, loyal readerships to sell their ads on. But that won’t include newspapers. They’ll be catering to that 10 percent of their online audience willing to subscribe. The rest of the Web will have long stopped linking to—and talking about—their stories. The dollars will flow right past the newspapers’ pay walls. And then they’ll really be sorry.”
Kevin Kelleher gives a good overview of the free-vs.-paid content argument, then presents his case that this is definitly the wrong time for newspapers to begin charging for online content. Here’s a sample of this thinking: “For the sake of argument, let’s say that news sites are routinely charging readers in five years. By then, the economy may be substantially healthier than now, and advertisers will be looking for sites with large, loyal readerships to sell their ads on. But that won’t include newspapers. They’ll be catering to that 10 percent of their online audience willing to subscribe. The rest of the Web will have long stopped linking to—and talking about—their stories. The dollars will flow right past the newspapers’ pay walls. And then they’ll really be sorry.”
The thing newspaper columnists do best, Robert Niles says, can make them great assets online. Many columnists already have established followings, it’s just matter of converting those followers into participants in an online dialogue. His piece in Online Journalism Review has some practical advice on how to do that.
No. They are open to the public but not because of the state’s open government laws. Court records are considered public documents under common law. That means a person can view documents during reqular business hours at the district clerk’s office or in other specified offices where those records are kept at the county courthouse. Sometimes a judge may have a record checked out, and those records, too, can be viewed by the public by going directly to the judge’s office. A written request is not needed for court records.
Categories
A site you should bookmark
If you’re looking for one-stop shopping to get an overview of what’s going on in the world of journalism and new media, we hope, of course, that you’ll come here to the TCCJ site and check out our Around the Web posts, where we try to pre-digest a lot of news and ideas and let you choose what you want to follow up on. But if you’re still hungry for more, go to the site above. You will find all kinds of blogs and sites designed to tell you what’s going on in the world of journalism. So bookmark it, and when you have a few extra minutes, check out one of those sites to find out the latest thinking and happenings in the changing media world.