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.
This is definitely an advertising concept that I can see working for community newspapers. The Nieman Lab has a story op about MinnPost’s experiment with “real-time advertising.” They’re sort of a technologically-updated version of classified ads that are powered by micro-updates from businesses.
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.
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A few suggestions for ad growth
Jen from Editor & Publisher has a few suggestions from Ed Strapagiel of Kubas Consultants about how to improve ad sales. Among his suggestions: stop selling in lines and inches. You’ll have to pay for the full report from Kubas, but the snippets shared by Jen are interesting in themselves.
For those of you who don’t have time to come to one of our three-day workshops we’ve got a new option. The Center will now be offering one-day “boot camps” and the first two will tackle topics that always pique the interest of our workshop participants: Photoshop and using the Internet.
Below is a flyer for the first boot camp, which will be led by Broc Sears on August 1. Broc will devote an entire day to Photoshop tricks and best practices. The cost will be $40 for those who pay early and $50 for those who pay upon arrival.
I’ll be leading the second boot camp on August 8, which will tackle how to use the Internet for reporting, and how to use the Internet to engage readers.
I’ll be talking about how to search the Web, what can you do with social media and finish off the day with a rapid fire session where we’ll tackle any question you have related to the World Wide Web and community journalism. And, best of all, it’ll all be done with free tools that you can use straight out of your Web browser — no special software required.
Check out the posters below for more information or click here to register.
Jeff Jarvis has an interesting take on new numbers released by The Economist. He says their latest circulation and online audience figures — which look quite good — are evidence that people are still willing to pay for a solid product. This may be the niche that community newspapers fall into.
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.
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Small newspapers aren’t failing
John Cribb of newspaper brokerage Cribb, Greene & Associates. “This is not the financial condition of an industry that is failing. Auto and real estate businesses can be down 40% or more, and many retailers are down 25% – far worse than newspapers,” Cribb writes. “Mid and small newspapers are holding up well considering the intensity of this recession.”
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.