Categories
Online news Sports coverage

New high school sports site shows the possibilities for prep sports on the Net

The NAA reported this week that the Dallas Morning News’ high school sports Website, HS GameTime, now averages nearly 2 million pageviews a month. Visit the site and look at it as a treasure trove of ideas for what you could be doing for the high schools in your readership area. Football season is just around the corner, and now is a great time to tool up a Website that can draw all kinds of fan interest – and advertising dollars. GameTime generates so much traffic because it offers what no newspaper has the news hole to do – stats, scores and schedules, standings, rankings, videos, slide shows, and the like. Plus, they let readers submit photos and videos of their teams. To that, you should add videos of your band at halftime, cheerleaders doing their routines, and photos and videos of what’s happening in the stands and on the bench during the games – all the off-action stuff that we never have room for in the paper but people love to see.

Who’s the audience for this type of coverage? Athletes and their parents, band members and their parents, cheerleaders and their parents, other family and friends, local sports fans, high school kids who’d never even think of picking up your paper, and so on. Build this site, and they will come. And when they come, advertisers will, too.

Categories
Future of news Online news

Is Google a ‘market disruptor’ or ‘market destroyer’?

Rafe Needleman’s piece on Google’s business practices it quite interesting. He dissects the many industries Google has touched, and shows that journalism isn’t the only industry that has had the rug pulled out from under it by the Internet. On Needleman’s list: journalism (of course), telecommunications, computer operating systems, e-mail and advertising.

Categories
Just for fun

9 things you didn’t know about newspapers

Do you know which newspaper has the largest circulation in the world? Or which one actually has its own theme song? Or how many use the Gothic font in their masthead? If you’re curious, check out this blog post Mark Luckie compiled, “9 things you didn’t know about newspapers.”

Categories
Online news Paid content

Fees may return to online news

News executives around the country are talking more and more about a perceived need to charge for online news, but those that are trying to monetize journalism on the Internet are finding it’s not as simple as it seems.

Categories
Classified advertising Online advertising

Online classified use is up significantly among adults

Newspapers who are curious about why their classified revenues are down need look no further than this study: According to Pew research, online classified use is growing significantly. The number of online adults to use classified ads websites, such as Craigslist, has more than doubled since 2005. Online classified use has more than doubled in the past four years. Almost half (49 percent) of Internet users say they have ever used online classified sites, compared with 22 percent of online adults who had done so in 2005. On any given day about a tenth of internet users (9 percent) visit online classified sites, up from 4 percent in 2005.

Categories
Future of news Online news Social media

Creating news as a “user experience”

Cindy Royal, a faculty member at Texas State University in San Marcos, has a great piece in Online Journalism Review about how news organizations can create “user experiences” on their websites. Some of her examples, such as the New York Times products she references, may seem out of reach for community newspapers, but many of them are very easy to do with free online tools that are already out there.

Categories
Uncategorized

The Page Design workshop is underway

Our page design workshop has kicked off in Fort Worth.

The group, led by resident page design guru Broc Sears, began with dinner at the Fort Worth Stockyards and will continue Thursday on the TCU campus with an intense 14 hours of instruction, some hand-on time and group discussions.

Steve Levering, another faculty member at the Schieffer School, will also be teaching a few sessions.

Check out the photos here and on our Facebook page.

The workshop is paid for by the Texas Newspaper Foundation, which covers tuition, lodging and food costs for all of the workshoppers.

Watch this website in the future for announcements about our next workshop. And check out this page for more information about TCCJ workshops.

Categories
Facebook Social media Twitter

NYT hires “social media editor”

The New York Times has hired a “social media editor” who is going to be connecting with users on Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms. The first link is a blog post from Mashable, a blog about social media trends. The second link is to the new social media editor’s Twitter account.

Categories
Multimedia Video

How to approach a video story

Colin Mulvany (The Spokane, Wa. Spokesman Review) just posted some great tips on how to approach video storytelling. This isn’t the type of how-to that goes through what buttons to push and what menu items to click, but it provides some very helpful advice on adjusting to the video mindset and getting the most from your video stories.

Categories
Ask an Expert Questions and Answers Photojournalism

Some parents posted sports photos of their kids on Flickr. Can we just grab a couple for the paper?

Not so fast…just because they are “out there for everyone to see for free” doesn’t automatically give you the green light to run them as you please. While the first amendment grants us great leeway and courts have determined that prior restraint isn’t allowed (with rare exception…troop movements, etc.) this doesn’t give you carte blanche to scavenge in Internet for photos of little Billy scoring the winning run in yesterday’s extra-inning thriller and plant them on the sports page.

Although sites like Flickr encourage sharing of photos, it’s not without conditions. Flickr even allows various licensing levels to be selected by their users, further muddying the copyrights water. For instance, a user can set the license usage for their work as “public domain” if they so choose. If no licensing level is set though, does that mean they are automatically in the “public domain?” Can a newspaper claim a “fair use” exemption?

If the game becomes a legitimate news event, (such as a photo of someone during the game who is later abducted, murdered, killed in a car wreck on the way home, or even wins some great prize), you might have a better “fair use” defense for publication, but despite no clear copyright label, under current copyright law an image is copyrighted the instant it is created by the photographer, unless it was created under a “work for hire” agreement. Absent such an agreement (or any other written or verbal contract or permission), legally you are violating the image creator’s copyright, which is punishable by a fine of up to $150,000 per incident.

Of course most courts are lenient if you show a good faith effort to remove the photo that is in violation (especially on websites), but it’s a little harder to do in print…and an apology and correction won’t always absolve you of any monetary liability. Courts tend to see this as a copyright issue, not a freedom of press issue, and a photo does NOT have to be officially copyrighted or even labeled as such to invoke copyright protection, although if the copyright owner does not register their creation within 90 days of publication (their original publication on say Flickr, not YOUR re-publication of their images) it does limit damages that can be awarded to “actual damages” (which would be fair market value of the image). Also, for any NON-PUBLISHED images, the author has up to 5 years after creation to register their copyright in order to collect punitive damages.

Remember, all images are automatically copyrighted by their creator unless they are covered under “work for hire” rules, such as your editorial employees. Even a freelancer in your employ is not automatically covered by “work for hire” copyright rules, so make sure you have an agreement with the photo’s owner before you publish it…otherwise you may find yourself dealing with a copyright attorney.

For more information about photography and copyright law, go to http://templatelab.com/copyright-basics/.