21st Century Journalism

A Practical Guide

International edition
Belgrade - Bratislava - Budapest – Bucharest – Prague – Zürich

*** work-in-progress version of 2nd English edition ***

Last modified: 10 May, 2007

Edited by László Turi, 2007

 2

[Impressum]

21st Century Journalism - A Practical Guide

Copyright © 2007 by Ringier Kiadó Kft

Szugló utca 81-85., Budapest, H-1141, Hungary
Publisher: Bela Papp, Executive manager

Visit www.21stCenturyJournalism.com for updates of the book and for the best
sources of new journalism.

ISBN 978-963-7714-25-2

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise.
 3

What will you learn?

Get prepared for the challenges of newspaper industry

Digital revolution keeps changing newspaper layout, style, topics and business model.
Your grandfather, your father and you in your childhood could see similar product
which was called „newspaper”. This traditional concept has been challenged by digital
media in the past decade. With this course you will get a systematized overview of
trends in newspaper industry, exercises will help you to get a personal experience.

Demistify the internet
So-called internet gurus tend to glorify their importance by techno bla-bla. Behind
those few buzzwords that have meaning at all, you will find the golden rules of the
traditional media re-mastered to the digital age. With the exercises you will gain self-
confidence to raise the right questions and understand what is behind the hype.

Use your competences in new media
You as a print journalist have plenty of experience, you know everything about
journalism. You may want to try out yourself on the web. The exercises will help you
to start your own blog or publish in the online version of your newspaper. You will get
hints, ideas and best practices concerning your local market.
 4

Preface
„21st Century Journalism” was preceeded by a general study of the Eastern European online market, where
we analysed the threats and opportunities in our industry. Based on this study, we invested an additional 3-
month team work involving a group of online experts to summarize trends and best practices.

Online journalism is a moving target, therefore the booklet will be updated according to the needs. This is not a
bible, just a starting point to provide tailor-made education for editorial boards. The internet is a global
phenomenon, but usage patterns are changing from culture to culture, so we emphasize country particularities
in this material.

„21st Century Journalism” training is targeted to journalists open to meet the challenges of online world and
devote time to in-work training. The first courses have already been successfully completed in Romania and
Hungary, others are being planned. In addition to train on-job journalists, the material has also been presented
to students of Budapest University of Economics and Nepszabadsag-Ringier School of Journalism. During the
trainings it turned out that students require written and illustrated material for further thinking. This booklet
fulfills this need, but it is not intended for self-study.

Training online journalism is a mutual learning between students and teacher. Therefore this a living material
building on feedbacks and interactions of the training sessions. In addition we received a lot of inspiration from
consultants and experts. The authors appreciate all comments and cooperation initiatives.

Budapest, 2007.
Laszlo Turi & Andras Nyiro
laszlo.turi@21stCenturyJournalism.com & andras.nyiro@21stCenturyJournalism.com
 5

Credits
Author and editor: Laszlo TURI, New Media Research & Development, Ringier AG. - Graduated in
humanities, with 12 years of experience in multimedia development. Among other positions in new
media, he worked in the mobile content development team of T-Mobile Hungary.

Concept: Andras NYIRO, Director of New Media Research & Development, Ringier AG. - Known as
one of the most influential characters in the development of Hungarian new media culture. Founder of
seminal multimedia and internet magazines, former director of mobile content services at T-Mobile
Hungary.

Newspaper trends: Patrick BERTSCHY, Ringier AG. - Graduated in law, with journalist experience at
German and French speaking Swiss newspapers and magazines. He also hold other positions in
Swiss publishing industry.

Special thanks
Petr BEDNAR, Online Director, Ringier Czech Republic and Slovakia
Stephane CARPENTIER, Art Director, Ringier AG
Laurentiu CIORNEI, Content manager of www.evz.ro
Gábor FLÓRIÁN, layout
György JUHÁSZ, Director of Online Department at Ringier Hungary.
Zoltán KAPRINAY, Regional Content Manager, Ringier e-media
Pál LÉDERER, Director of Online Department at Népszabadság.
Dezső ORBÁN, Senior developer of Ringier e-media services.
Béla PAPP, Managing Director of Ringier Hungary.
Ferenc PÉCSI, dotkommentar.hu
Claudiu SERBAN, publisher, Ringier Romania
 6

Contents

I. Introduction

Newspaper trends

Your newspaper

II. Genres and channels

Genres of journalism

News writing

Reporting, story journalism

Interview

Commentary

III. Use your competences in new media

News on the internet: hints and tricks

Story management

Community

Mobile

Usability

Appendix
 7

<H1>FAST MOVING MARKET

 8

What will you learn in this chapter?

First you will get a short overview about the milestones of

newspaper history from the early days of industry to today, with
special emphasis on the influence of technology to media
developments.

You will analyse three trends of newspaper industry in detail:

changes of newspaper format, content and business model. You will
understand why present day newspaper are so different from what
our parents’ daily readings.

You will learn about numbers: how to measure success? What are
the key performance indicators in print, online and mobile?

Who reads your newspaper? You will learn more about readers’
segmentation, about their expectations and about their special
needs and habits.
 9

<H3>How did technology influence media?

Technology Media development

1447 Gutenberg
1556 „Notizie scritte” - a regular, paid government publication in Venetia

1700 Local news appears. Earlier just European news. Content controlled
via censorship, instead of publishing licences.
1814 Instead of hand printing, steam
powered printing. Railway
distribution.
1866 Transatlantic telegraph news 1866 „Reuters”. Sunday papers with popular content („tabloid style”)
1880 Display advertising, reduction of price/copy, growth of sale

1900 1/5 of adults read daily papers, 1/3 read Sunday papers. Daily Mirror -
the 1st tabloid
1922 Radio – regular broadcast 1930 50% of adults read dailies. 50% revenue on advertising. Formulatin of
publishing empires. BBC (1927)
1936 TV – regular BBC broadcast 1937 Print sales starts dropping

1953 Daily Mirror’s record: 7million copies. (Queen Elizabeth’s coronation)

1955 ITV (Independent TV, UK) launch, end of BBC’s broadcast monopoly,
ad-revenue based.
1985 Desktop publishing, web 1985 Layoffs due to electronic printing. 1/3 of adults read newspapers.

2006 Freesheet. Metro is the largest newspaper. Integrated newsrooms.

More online visitors than daily print copies.
Milestones relevant for Western Europe, especially UK. Based on Raymond Williams: Communications, London 1966
 10

Print media faces challenges

Symptoms of decline

Newsstands - In France there were 33,540

newsstands in 1995. Today, only 28,275. If
this trend continues, newsstands will
disappear by 2035.

Revenues - In the UK revenue of internet

advertising surpassed that of the press in
2006.

Survival on the Internet - The print publication

of InfoWorld, the iconic IT weekly magazine,
has been stopped.The brand name survives
on the Internet.

Jaipur, North India, 2007: In the past few years

Kathir made a modest business by reselling to
tourists those newspapers that air travellers left
on plane. But he has just started searching for a
new business, because tourists read the new on
the Internet and mobile.

Sources: Innovations in Newspapers, March-April 2007, http://www.innovationsinnewspapers.com/, Reuters, 26 March, 2007, http://www.reuters.com/,
Photo: Zsolt Veszelovszki.
 11

<H2>Newspaper trends
 12

<H3>Print media as a changing physical object

If you ask your designer to define a newspaper, than she will

talk about a 3-dimensional object. This object has length,
width, thickness. It is coloured or black-and-white and its
paper has a given quality and color.

If the newspaper wants to be different from other products,

than the designer has to change some of these parameters
time to time. In recent years we have seen that newspapers
were shrinking and became more colourful. But the most
successful products are breaking sometimes these trends.
Design is the art of exceptions.

When she works with these parameters of the object, she

modifies the opportunities of the editor. You will have less or
more space for text and images, you will have to use different
type of emphasis and references.

Source: Gerald Grow, „Magazine Covers and Cover Lines”

in Journal of Magazine and New Media Research, 2002
http://www.bsu.edu/web/aejmcmagazine/Testfolder/, Coury
Turcyzn „The Decline of Western Magazine Culture” in
PopCult (http://popcultmag.com)
 13

Size and style

Tabloid: 380x300 mm
(halfsize of broadsheet) Berliner or midi: 470x315 mm Broadsheet: 600x380mm

Attracting younger readers is the main reason for the Guardian’s change to a „Berliner” format, with colour
throughout. Young and especially female readers are put off by the unwieldiness of broadsheets, and both
the Times and the Independent have seen a bounce in circulation since turning tabloid. Going all the way
however, says Carolyn McCall, chief executive of Guardian Newspapers, would have meant dumbing
down the front page by including fewer headlines.
From: The Economist, September 10, 2005.
 14

Case study: change of format

2004

2005

The Guardian used to be a broadsheet It was redesigned to Berliner-format

This was a response to the moves by The Times and The Independent to start publishing in tabloid (or compact) format. The advantage
that The Guardian saw in the Berliner format was that though it is only a little wider than a tabloid, and is thus equally easy to read on public
transport, its greater height gives more flexibility in page design. The new presses mean that printing can go right across the 'gutter', the
strip down the middle of the centre page, allowing the paper to print striking double page pictures. The switch cost £80 million and involved
setting up new printing presses. … The investment was rewarded with a circulation rise. In December 2005, the average daily sale stood at
380,693, nearly 6% higher than the figure for December 2004.

Source: Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian)

 15

Case study: radical change of format and style

The problem: unsuccessful broadsheet format (2003)
Design and look:

Lot of text

Importance of big coloured
picture

Look strict and ponderous

Context:

Continuously declining
circulation: 19.3% between 2000
and 2003

It was decided to reduce size but
to keep exactly the same stories
than the broadsheet version.

Dual production for 8 months
 16

2006: Tabloid Less:

Paper

Text and stories

Strict

More:

Colour and pictures

Friendly and surprising

Dynamic

Magazin like

Sales increase even after the
end of dual production.

Question: Has internet influenced those changes?

Source: The Format Change Phenomenon (WAN Strategy report vol. 4., 5 June 2005.) and
http://www.newsdesigner.com/archives/002647.php
 17

Color printing is big step towards emotional journalism

 18

Outstanding page layout

We live in the age of high-quality visual entertainment:

HDTV, web, Pixar-movies, consol games, shopping
catalogues, etc.

Magazines working on an extremely competing market
environment are fighting to define their role.

Due to developments in printing, typography and
photography, the range of visual possibilities multiplied.

Features of outstanding design:

Revolutionary use of photographs

Assymetrical layout of pages

3D effects

Breaking the framework of the grid

Combination of text and image

Design of the unprinted area

Rythmic repetition of pictures

B/W mixed with color images

IM (Hungary), 2006

Source: „Surprise me”, Horst Moser (Mark Batty, 2003)

 19

<H3>Blurring boundaries

000011001001111111
In the digital world text, image and sound are described by 0 and 1. All this content is
produced by computers, everything can be easily mixed. The traditional boundaries of
genres and media types are blurring or disappearing.
 20

Tabloid or reference daily?

They tend to borrow style and layout

temporarily from each other to surprise
readers and attract their attention.

Tabloid style and idea:

Subscriptions are limited, title
page must sell the product

Simply and sensationally written

Give more prominence to
celebrities, sports, crime stories
and even to hoaxes than
reference papers.

They also more readily take a
Bigger pictures (or different sizes) makes
political position (either left- or the article more lively.
right-wing) on news stories,
ridiculing politicians, demanding
Shorter texts work more accessible and
resignations and predicting less time-consuming.
election results.

Words like “catch”, “chilling” or “brazen”

The style and idea of popular
tabloid press grew out from are very strong and emotional
Sunday papers.
Both titlepages were published on 13 Dec, 2006

Source: Helen Gambles, U. Wales http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/hlg9501.html


Daily paper or weekly magazine?
The April 9, 2007 issue of Osterreich. The daily paper
includes 3 glossy inserts edited in magazine style.
Source: WAN Newsletter, April 25, 2007.
21
A new Austrian daily blurs the lines
between newspapers and magazines, and
some say this is the future for newspapers
in general.
The compact, full-colour Osterreich,
launched in September 2006 mixes
magazine and newspaper styles in one
package, with several sections printed on
glossy paper and stapled on the spine.
These are not typical magazine inserts:
they are daily sections, with daily deadlines
that are paginated and printed along with
the other daily sections.
To use both newspaper and magazine
quality paper in the same publication,
Osterreich and its printing partners had to
develop an innovative printing and workflow
system that allows for both cold and heat
set processes during the same printing run.
The high-quality paper allows the
newspaper to attract a new brand of luxury
goods and other advertisers who insist on
magazine quality for their ads.
 22

Newspaper or magazine?
De Morgen, a Belgian broadsheet redesigned and
switched to berliner format in April, 2006. The most
important new design elements:

This new lay-out consists of 5 columns per page,

instead of 7, with quite a lot of whitespace.

Some photographs or illustrations span multiple
columns.

Colors are largely used. But never work agitated.

Internet

Source: NewsDesigner.com http://www.newsdesigner.com/archives/002520.php

Pages: De Morgen, 2006 April
 23

Magazine or product catalogue?

Advertising influences magazines
Looks like…
a product catalogue a magazin page

Madison Magazin, March 2006, p. 192 Ikea Catalogue, 2007, p. 334

Blurred borderline between commercial product placement and newspaper

content. Product marketing behaves as media.
 24

<H3>New business models: freesheet, internet

Subscription

Sold copies

Advertisement
In newspaper business model there are three main revenue streams:
subscription, sold copies and advertising. During the last century the
emphasis shifted from subscription towards sold copies and
nowadays towards advertisement.

Today’s freesheets and internet publications are free for the readers Free, the new trend:
and are purely financed by advertisements.
Internet

Low-cost flights

White-label products

Tesco, Wal-Mart, etc.

Buyer communities
 25

Freesheet

Source: FDN Newsletter, April 2007

Strengths Weakness

Easy acquisition

Quick readability

Lower quality due to lack of
Free daily
Low editorial costs
lack of original content?

Reach new readers

Response to digital media

Loyal readership
Expensive

Paid daily

Analysis and comments
Losing young readers

The free daily newspaper distributed through public transport was introduced in 1995
in Sweden. There are now free newspapers in 49 countries: 40 million copies are read
by at least 60 million people daily. Their readership is much younger than that of the
traditional newspaper. Most free newspapers are published as tabloids.
Source: World Association of Newspapers http://www.wan-press.org, „Newspaper Innovation” blog, http://www.newspaperinnovation.com/

Diversification of the free newspaper concept
sport afternoon
El Crack 10 in Spain 2003 thelondonpaper in London 2006
„Print your own free
up-to-date pdf!” - G24,
Guardian’s continuosly
updated free pdf
edition is a reaction to
freesheets from a paid
daily. The A/4 layout
includes ads targeted
to internet users.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g24
26
finance
CASH daily in Switzerland 2006
Freesheet war in the UK market
„Newspaper moguls Rupert Murdoch and Lord
Rothermere are going head to head in a free
newspaper fight, which media analysts believe could
fatally damage the paid-for Evening Standard. […]
Those who have seen a dummy of thelondonpaper
have described it as colourful and more like a
magazine than a newspaper, with a youthful
approach.„
Source:
Online Press Gazette, 17 Aug, 2006,
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/article/170806/murdoch_rothermere_london_fr
ee_newspaper_war
 27

Key elements of Internet strategies

Content Business model Example

Popular strategy in the

Limited online edition – Online is late ’90s, but today
just a selected part of the print promotion this is rare, eg.
newspaper. Magyar Narancs in
Hungary (mancs.hu)
Web first - Publishes stories first to
the web, ending the primacy of the ad-revenue Guardian, LA Times,
printed newspaper.
Christmas ornament - No overall
strategy for internet and print.
Internet is a possibility for extra
promotional and ad-revenue Bild, Sun
services that are hanging on the
core print content as Christmas
ornaments.
Premium content – Some parts of
New York Times
the online content is paid-only. Eg. B2C revenue
(Times Select)
archive or exclusive content.
B2C revenue – bundled with
Le Monde
E-paper – Facsimile electronic subscription
edition of the print newspaper. Brand enforcement and ad revenue
Metro
– increase freesheet viewership

Strategies are usually mixed, clear cases are rare.

 28

Case study: two different approaches

Full-featured newsportal: continuous

news update, classified and banner ads.
Internet is considered an independent
revenue channel.

http://metro.hu

Limited online edition: the website is

considered a promotional portal only,
without content. The only genuine content
is a regular afternoon podcast branded as
City P.M. Internet is not considered a
separate revenue channel.

http://citiyam.com

Free newspapers’ attitude towards the primarily free medium of internet is

ambigous, they are trying to find their role on the internet.
 29

Internet: an opportunity to publishers

Example of the German market

In print: two losers

Stern and Der Spiegel are two

weekly magazines competing since
more than 50 years to dominate the
market of news magazines.
Even if Der Spiegel was able to
beat Stern for the last five years,
there is no clear leader on the print
market.

Print circulation

On internet: strategy makes a difference

After undecided battle in the starting years, SPIEGEL

ONLINE can now be define as the clear winner of the
internet market. Monthly visits

Source: German Audit Institute http://www.ivw.de

 30

<H3>Role of the editor

Current trend: editors don’t set the agenda

Until the mid-’90-ies traditional media

allowed a clear control over appearance of
news, stories and other content. With the
dawn of internet content aggregators and
personalization technologies gave more free
hand to the readers. Your article may
appear on the internet near to your Do not be aftraid to show your readers’ choice.
competitors’ articles (like in Google News) (http://www.msnbc.com/)
or in surprising context, eg. in the form of a
desktop alert or as a link on a homepage.
Aggregation and personalization techniques:

Reader-driven web services: top-lists, most e-mailed, most

popular, most voted, most referred

Computer-edited content: Google News, music radio/TV
channels – Pre-defined logic is used to generate pages or
programme by topic or genre. The website of this book is
also an example of news aggregation. See:
http://www.21stCenturyJournalism.com

Personalization: RSS, customization, desktop alerts. -
Details will be discussed in various chaptes, later.

Automatic personalization: amazon.com recommendations,
intelligent WAP-portals (O2, Vodafone) – Driven by user’s
former clicks.
 31

Example: Readers creating their own tabloid site

Readers have full control over the selection of content. BBC: reader's version
BBC: editor's version Most popular stories,
15th February 2007

1 Viewers complain
over Brits jokes

2 Actor denies child

sex offences

3
Air force demotes
Playboy poser
The information world is led by tabloid topics.
Even on the notoriously serious BBC, the most popular pages are talking rather about emotion
and popular stories than seriousness and politics.
 32

Example: Internet as a barometer of public opinion

Las Ultimas Noticias (LUN, Chile)

In 2001 LUN installed a system

180 whereby all clicks onto its website
160 ( www.lun.com) were recorded for
all in the newsroom to see. Those
140 clicks drive the entire print content
120 of next day LUN. If a certain story
100 gets a lot of clicks, for example,
that is a signal to the editors that
80 the story should be followed up,
60 and similar ones should be sought
Web barometer for the next day. The system offers
40 installed a direct barometer of public
20 opinion, much like the TV rating
system.
0
1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
LUN El Mercurio La Tercera La Cuarta Results:

56% increase of circulation
LUN became market leader in 3 years
New groups of readers
(Average circulation, in thousands)

Jumped to top of market from 4th
position

Increased profit margin
Sources:
USA Today, http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2004-12-01-chile-news_x.htm,
Ringier Hungary Research Deptartment
 33

<H2>YOUR READERS
 34

Opportunity to approach young readers with

your media mix
Age groups

…when online readers are considered, the story of

newspaper readership for many papers transforms
from one of slow and steady decline to one of
vibrancy and growth. […] The audiences for
newspaper websites tend to be younger than those
for the printed newspaper, dispelling the common
misperception that young people are not engaged
by newspaper content.

Source: Press release of Scarborough Research

Apr 3, 2006, http://www.scarborough.com

Japan: Asahi Shimbun’s channels

Media consumption (minutes per day)
Source: Asahi Shimbun’s media kit http://asahi.com/english
1997 1998 1999 2000 2001
Radio 202 210 200 178 174
Television 203 205 208 194 193

Internet 30 35 40 142

Radio, TV and internet users, Czech Republic

Source: World Association of Newspapers http://www.wan-press.org/article568.html

The above demographic data is not available for Nemzeti Sport.

 35

Key statistics indicators

Print Internet Mobile TV
Registrations,
Sold copies +
Number of actual Unique visitors WAP unique
subscriptions
readers phone numbers
research Reach surveys Audience poll

Ad revenue, sold Revenue share

Revenues Ad revenue Ad revenue
copies from operators

unique
phone subscriptions
US media audit numbers
is already based
on a combined
indicator of print
and online reach. Sold copies x reader/copy unique visitors
Source: Newspapers
by the Numbers,
2006, by Newspaper
Association of
America

Total reach*

* Overlapping is limited by the fact that switching between media is often inconvenient for customers. For example print readers
often have no chance to browse the internet just when they meet the display ad of a website. And the difference of target group
demographics is also an obstacle: for example young mobile users rarely buy „old-fashioned” print edition just to find more details.
 36

! Visit: one user

can come back
UV, unique visitor: the
number of PCs from
where the users are
many times browsing the given PI, page impression:
page. In the print world number of pages
this is „reach”. downloaded. This
number is interesting for
advertisers.

Distribution of
traffic during
the day.
Daily statistics of webaudit.hu, the Hungarian Internet audit. Each line is a separate site.
Other webmarket audits:
Austria: http://www.oewa.at/
France: http:/www.ojd.com/engine/
Germany: http://ww.ivw.de/ Research questions:
UK: http://www.abce.org.uk
1. What is the ranking of your site in your local
USA, international: http://www.nielsen-netratings.com
internet market?
Online view statistics in Ringier countries: 2. What is the correlation or difference of daily
Czech Republic: http://online.netmonitor.cz/ola2.php peaks in your site and that of average internet
Hungary: http://webaudit.hu/index.php?content=12
usage?
Romania: http://www.traffic.ro/login/
Slovakia: http://www.iaudit.info/sk/?country=SK 3. In average how many articles were read by a
Serbia: no audit single reader yesterday?
Switzerland: netreport.wemf.ch/suche_alpha.html
 37

Google Analytics
 38

Collect information about your product and audience

Print Internet Mobile Online TV

Sold copies:…
Usage Unique visitors: …. Number of users:… Number of video
Subscribers:… Visits:…. downloads:….
Number of downloads:…
Readers per copy….

Market
position
Mark the position of 12345 12345 12345 12345
your publication or
enter the correct
number

Demographics ……………………… ………………………… …………………………… ………………………

Give a short ……………………… ………………………… …………………………… ………………………
description about
……………………… ………………………… …………………………… ………………………
the audience of
each channel ……………………… ………………………… ………………………… ………………………
 39

From monologue to dialogue

Source: Oliver Reichenstein, The Future of News. Manuscript, 2007.

http://www.informationarchitects.jp/
 40

Traditional media is based on one-way

communication. New media is a multi-
directional communication. If you want
to be successful in such a
communication, you will learn more
about your audience. What will you gain You will improve the journalism. Support the
work you do as a journalist by revealing what really
by this kind of learning? matters to people.

You will serve your community better. Your work

will be relevant to your audience.

You can build a relationship with your

community. Being an involved institution in your
community, should strengthen your ties with the
community.

You can build consumer engagement. Well

delivered stories based on a solid understanding of
your target audience should result in a more
engaged audience. And that's something every
advertiser covets.
 41

<H1>Genres and
channels
 42

What will you learn?

You know very well how to write news, stories, interview and commentaries. Building
on this knowledge we explain you how these genres change when you publish on web
or on the small screen of the mobile phone.

News: the classic rules of news are the same in print, internet and mobile. You will
learn the differences: how to change the structure of news in an environment where
there are no deadlines.

Story telling: you will get an overview on what kind of interactive and multimedia
possibilities are offered by the internet. Learn more about experienced multimedia
story tellers.

Interview: you will learn the 9 points of a successful online interview.

Commentary: everybody is talking about blogs. You will understand what is a blog
and how to use it in your own work.
 43

<H2>GENRES OF
JOURNALISM
 44
journalist must be
Genres and the objective

journalist’s role
reporting news, news feature

journalist has a interview newsroo

personal experience m work
only

story commentary, note,

columns, opinion

personal approach is allowed for

the journalist
Hungaria Romania
English Chinese Czech French German Russian Spanish Slovak
n n
News, Nachrichte
Zprávy,
news Actualité n, Hír, cikk Stiri Správa
Hlavní zprávy
feature Aktualität
Riport
Report, Krátká (krátka
Reportin Reportag Bericht,
zpravodajská Tudósítás Reportaj spravodaj
g e Reportage
reportáž ská
reportáž)
Reportáž or
Story Récit Story Riport Poveste Reportáž
Příběh
Translation
Intervie of basic terms
Rozhovor Interview Interview Interjú Interviu
Rozhovor
w , interview
Comme Comentar Glosa,
Komentář, Comment Kommenta Glossza,
 45

Genres and channels

Print daily Internet Mobile TV

Facts and analysis
Facts with
Facts in 160

No deadline
News, based on the updates, no characters
deadline
Simple, short
news feature information available
On-event SMS-
at the time of printing. text

Breaking news push, in daytime

Multimedia

Specific story

Personal experience storytelling
Reporting,
Readers’ MMS ideas

Objective or
Readers and
story content
Visuals tell
personal bloggers as
the story
sources

Person of interest

deep

Documenting words
Realtime
Questions via
Interview interview or

Quotes vs.
Moderated SMS

soundbites
discussion

Personality driven
Opinion survey

Commentary
Editorial blog
Talkshows

Original approach via SMS

„A 30-minutes TV news programme does not contain more text than an average
newpaper page. The length of an average TV news story is not more than 30-40
seconds, that is 4-6 printed line.”

(J. Horvath: Basics of TV journalism, 2002)

 46

Channels and challenges

Print daily Internet Mobile TV

Update
Write your
Keep your
story for next Be faster than your competitors
news always
morning
up-to-date
Time
Mind the Inconvenient:
deadline to 15 min / estimated 3 6 sec/shot,
1-2 hours/day
deliver the daily newspaper min per 30 sec / news
by breakfast session
reading
Space Bandwith,
Text and Page size,
Scrolling resolution schedule
visuals must fit layout
the page scrolling

Content
Competition services of
The next issue Maintain aggregators, mobile
operators Channel surfing
must also be readers’ loyalty news stolen
sold

Daily challenges of electronic channels are similar.

 47

<H2>NEWS: STYLE,
STRUCTURE
 48

! Exercise: What info is worth a news story?

List, explain the key features that make news valuable in mass media.
Give examples.

Source: BBC Sport http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport, Times Online http://www.timesonline.co.uk/

 49

! Channel-independent news values

Structure
Unexpectedness
If a dog bites a man, that's not
who-what-where-when-how news. But if a man bites a dog,
that's news

Threshold Proximity
A big story is one that has an 1 dead Briton Elite nations, persons
extreme effect on a large Stories concerned with
is worth
number of people. Where the global powers
immediate effect of an event is 5 dead Frenchmen,
more subtle, the threshold 20 dead Egyptians, rich, powerful, famous
may be determined by the 500 dead Indians and and infamous persons
amount of money involved. 1000 dead Chinese. receive more attention.
(Mc Lurg’s law)

Negativity
Bad news is more exciting Continuity
than good news. Bad news A story that is already in the news gathers a kind of inertia.
receives more attention This is partly because the media organizations are
because it shocks us and already in place to report the story, and partly because
creates discussion. For previous reportage may have made the story more
instance, "what should be accessible to the public (making it less ambiguous)
done about crime”?

Source: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_values


5 methods for selecting sussessful topics
Guidelines for working
with sources

The opponent party must
also be interviewed.

Avoid pure reporting of
events.

Do not let people use you
as their spokesman or
send a targeted message
via your article.

Before participating on
press events, do a desktop
research, be prepared and
raise your questions. Think
of your point of the story
even before the event.
50
1. Exclusive story: this is what your newspaper knows or
publishes only. Anything can be a good story, if you are able
to find the point that is relevant to your readers and you are
able to make it emotional and add good photos.
2. Find what is relevant: any hot issue of a small community or
a small issue of a large community can be relevant to your
readers. These issues can be used as sources for exclusive
stories: take a definite position that provokes feedback from
your readers.
3. Stories from other media: feel free to pick up stories from
other media and add your own additional infomation and
illustration.
4. Follow-up: go back to your stories that received significant
public attention in the past and check what happened since
then.
5. Translations: search foreign news sites for stories that can
be connected to something local. The more local connection
you can find, the more emphasis can be given to the story.
Add your own information and feel free to completely
rearrange the original article.
Source: Editorial guidelines of Blikk, Hungary, manuscript document.
 51

? Influences to news style and structure

Print daily Internet Mobile TV

Summarize and Update the story as

Provide immediate Make the story
evaluate all the it develops with
Object information in visual and
available facts, references
concise format. entertaining.
information. and multimedia.

Must be very fast. Shots must be short.

Complete by
No way to influence Bandwith, display Expect channel
Challenges deadline and fit
context (eg. RSS). limits visual surfing. Text must
page size.
content. be simple.

No word-by-word
Readers find Inconvenient, small No way to re-read,
Usability reading, just
images first. interface. unless recorded.
scrolling

Think of examples!
 52

News style and channels

Print daily Internet Mobile TV

Telegraph style news
Title: clear, short - no SMS news alerts:
Simple, easy-to-
is replaced by metaphors
Based on the listen style.
feature: facts and
Lead: date, actual traditional „lead”
Short sentences,
analysis in short summary, not just to format: short without facts.
paragraphs. call for attention declarative
Shocking start, to

Title, lead and story
Body text - for sentences, facts only call attention.
length must fit layout. scanning:
No „reporting” style
Still images are used

Reference papers
short and news back as slides.
allow metaphoric paragraphs, clear reference
Quotations are not
titles. subheadings:
SMS-like used in text.

one paragraph abbreviations are
Text should not
= one idea allowed. repeat the visuals.

page length
max. 1.5
screensize

max. 1000
chars

Link: limited number
of good links, with
meaningful text
 53

News structure on internet and mobile

Title – It must be understandable without sub
headings and images, because on the internet
popular automatic news collecting services are
copying only titles.
Lead – Basic facts: who-what-when-where-why. Lead
Sometimes used as title page teaser. Max. one
Internet, WAP

paragraph, used to sell the story.

Development – Lead information should be Development

ars
resumed and detailed here. Short sentences, one

ch
paragraph contains only one idea. Sub headings

0
must also be informative.

00
0-2
Context – helps the reader to better understand the Context

50
meaning of the provided information.

1
x.
Ma
Links – Must be inherent part of the article. The text
of the links must be meaningful.
Inverted pyramid

The SMS starts with topic category

ID. The body text contains only From: CNN
SMS

facts. A single complex sentence of -------------------------------------------------

2-3 clauses. Ends with brand ALERT Hijackers seize passenger jet in
promotion. Mauritania and land on Spain's Canary
Islands, police and meda say according to
wire reports.//CNN
 54

Tips on working with style

How to make a story scannable? Nielsen’s general recommendations:

highlighted keywords (hypertext links serve as one form of
highlighting; typeface variations and color are others)

meaningful sub-headings (not "clever" ones)

bulleted lists

one idea per paragraph (users will skip over any additional
ideas if they are not caught by the first few words in the paragraph)

the inverted pyramid style, starting with the conclusion (see
later)

half the word count (or less) than conventional writing

Further possibilities to make a story visual: tables, boxes, graphics,

infographics.

Eyetracking heatmap of a
webpage. People rarely read web
pages word by word; instead, they
scan the page, picking out
individual words and sentences.

News story at cnn.com: main points are highlighted with

bullets in a frame. For a developing story, new information is
indicated.

Source: Jakob Nielsen, How users read on the

web http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html
 55

Tips on working with images

Photo and the story Excerpts from editorial guidelines of Blikk,

Do your best to present the story also in photo, Hungarian print tabloid.
eg. in case of mass events the photos should Most of the points are valid for both print and
show many people. online media, even if images work differently

Photos should suit to the general approach of online: web pages offer unlimited image
the story. Eg. victims, murders, etc. should not space, but layout is usually limited by story
smile on the photo. templates.

Journalist should closely cooperate with the
photographer so that the photos can really
support the text and add supplementary info.

The title character of the story should appear
on the main photo.

The leading photo must be closely related to
the event or location mentioned in the title.

Photo on the page

Each page must contain at least one image. If
more than one photo is used on a page, their tone
and content must be different: e.g. photo of men
should be accompanied with that of women,
portrait should go with full-size image, sad image
with a happy one, etc.

Caption should be closely related to the story, but Blikk story about a Hungarian celebrity receiving a very
still it must provide new and important details. If expensive wrist watch. The layout is a good example of
handling images visual tools in print: enlargement, framed
possible, the caption must include the name of
text, text overlay, supplementary information is text box.
persons represented, but a simple list of names is (Blikk, 18. Apr, 2007, page 9.)
not enough.

Tips…. (cont.)
This is a
developing story.
The updates are
highlighted.
Visual supplements of the story

Make the story visual: besides
photos try to include framed
boxes, facsimiles, charts, logos
and similar visual elements.

Mind the focus of your story. Do
not burden it with irrelevant
additions. If you insist on
publishing some additional info,
put them into a framed box.

Framed text is a good way to
reinforce the story by listing
further facts and data or
comparing them. This helps the
reader and makes the story
more concrete. Also a useful
tool to break the monotony of
longer text-only pages.
56
Large image with
caption.
List of videos. The
most recent one is
highlighted with a
lead and thumbnail.
Photos and audio
are promoted
together.
Clickable interactive
map contains plenty
of additional
information.
A major crime story on msnbc.com. Although the
page displays only one large photo, within a single
click reader finds dozens of additional images.
Image galleries are represented by thumbnails only.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18169776/
 57

Crisis of news confidence

http:// news.google.com
Hawking's small step toward space
BBC News, UK - 27 minutes ago
Famed astrophysicist flies weightless
Canada.com, Canada - 41 minutes ago
Stephen Hawking Takes a Buoyant Ride on a Zero-Gravity Flight
Washington Post, DC - 1 hour ago
Hawking takes off for zero gravity A 2005 poll by the Pew Research Center reported that the
Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia - 2 hours ago percentage of Americans saying they can believe most of what they read in
Space, here I come - Hawking their daily newspaper dropped from 84 percent in 1985 to 54 percent in 2004.
ic SouthLondon.co.uk, UK - 2 hours ago
For televised news, whether broadcast or cable, the results are unfortunately
Hawking enjoys weightlessness on jet flight
Ireland Online, Ireland - 3 hours ago similar. What is the cause of this apparent skepticism? Why has our trust in
Vomit Comet flight is his first step towards space the news eroded while our cynicism about it seems to grow?
Guardian Unlimited, UK - 3 hours ago One answer I’d suggest is that the explosion of information itself has
Hawking researches free-floating joy overwhelmed us. […] …news, information comes to us from a staggering
Boston Globe, MA - 4 hours ago
multiplicity of sources. Today, in the United States, there are about 1,700 daily
Hawking floats, flips sans gravity
Kansas City Star, MO - 4 hours ago
and 6,800 weekly newspapers; more than 1,600 broadcast television stations;
Hawking gets taste of zero-gravity and nearly 8,500 cable systems.
Reuters.uk, UK - 5 hours ago There are also some 13,000 radio stations, along with the newest
Physicist Hawking gets taste of zero-gravity development in radio technology, satellite radio services. Most of these media
Reuters - 5 hours ago
outlets, in some way or another,
Stephen Hawking floats in a zero-gravity jet.
The Age, Australia - 7 hours ago provide news as part of their daily fare; some of them are based on a 24-hour-
Stephen Hawking to fly weightless a-day news model, often with other programming (often entertainment
Hindu, India - 7 hours ago oriented) bracketing the
Hawking takes zero-gravity flight newscasts. And that doesn’t even begin to count the web-based versions of all
BBC News, UK - 9 hours ago
these media, along with the independent Internet …
Stephen Hawking Flies Weightless
Guardian Unlimited, UK - 9 hours ago
Hawking Flies Weightless Aboard Jet Source: Journalism’s crisis of confidence, A Report of Carnegie Corporation of
Discovery Channel - 10 hours ago New York, http://www.carnegie.org/pdf/journalism_crisis/journ_crisis_full.pdf
Hawking Flies Weightless Aboard Jet
San Francisco Chronicle, CA - 12 hours ago .
 58

The possibility of comparing Readers do not trust a single

mainstream sources reinforces the source, therefore expect links to
credibility of news on the web. related stories and other
background information.

Newsreaders on the
„…credibility is important for Web users, since it
internet welcome is unclear who is behind information on the Web
mainstream journalism and whether a page can be trusted. Credibility can
and expert openion, but be increased by high-quality graphics, good writing,
same time wish to and use of outbound hypertext links. Links to other
express their own view of sites show that the authors have done their
homework and are not afraid to let readers visit
the story other sites. „ - Jakob Nielsen

Source: How users read on the web

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html
 59

Exercise: sourcing and writing news

Below we describe a simple role play that can be used in teaching news
sourcing and news writing for online and mobile services.
Police: I I I I
Ambulance: II

Trainer or experienced journalist makes up a story about a breaking news
event, eg. a major accident in the city. He acts as a spokesperson for various Fire patrol: II
news sources: eg. police, ambulance, public transportation company, etc.

Students act as news editors of some radio on news site and their task is to City transport: III
call the spokesperson and get information. They have to tell what kind of
spokesperson they wish to speak to, introduce themselves and raise one Taxi company: I
question per call. This is an example: „I am calling city ambulance station. My
name is Bill of the local radio. Please, give me information on the victims of the Blackboard is used to show the
accident.” progress of the role play.

Trainer should simulate the respective spokesperson’s approach: „Our car has
just arrived to the locality. Please, call five minutes later.” Even a local
eyewitness can be simulated by the trainer. If students run out of ideas trainer
should drop some information that provokes further questions.

Trainer is recommended to indicate the number of questions on the
blackboard in order to show the progress of the exercise.

Trainer should define timing: eg. due to the programme schedule of the radio,
sourcing must be completed in 20 minutes. After that students have 15
minutes to write the news story in maximum 6 to 8 sentences with a title of
maximum 4 words.

At the end of the exercise students read out their news story and the trainer
evaluates them and gives further tips and advices. Advices should include
guidelines for style, structure, phraseology.
 60

Exercise: create news story in 3 versions

Your own story

Write a news article in 3 versions:

internet, WAP, SMS. (The story might
be based on a citizen video of a public
riot or other event of interest.)

Do you have a standard procedure?
Follow this:
1. Rank the available items of
information by importance, not by
chronological order
2. Make the text concise, omit info
without importance
3. Add background info, if space-
time allows
Source: YouTube
4. Create a short, clear title http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAZAMKAnBaE

Post each version on the weblog of the
course.
 61

Exercise: Create news story in 3 versions

Famous print article from the past
GOP Security Aide Among 5 Arrested
in Bugging Affair
By Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writers
June 19, 1972
In 1972 the Watergate story was published in
the print daily Washington Post. The story
was written on typewriter and published only
in print. Use the original article and create
versions for web, WAP and SMS. Consider
changing the structure, length, adding links,
etc.

One of the five men arrested early

Saturday in the attempt to bug the
Democratic National Committee
headquarters is the salaried
security coordinator for President
Nixon’s reelection committee.
The suspect, former CIA employee
James W. McCord Jr., 53, also holds
a separate contract to provide
security services to the Republican
National Committee, GOP national
chairman Bob Dole said yesterday…

Read the original article here: Source: University of Texas,

Washintgon Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/online/wo
srv/local/longterm/tours/scandal/watergat.htm. odstein/
 62

REPORTING, STORY
JOURNALISM
 63

vázlat

Mi a multimédia story telling: screenshoton mutogatni az elemeket (Being Black és a

cigány site: bbc.co.uk/kent/romany_roots/

Mi kell hozzá: tools -> a legegyszerűbb eszközök, a minimál program, mert minnél
egyszerűbb az eszköz, annál önállóbb vagy. Az anyaggyűjtéshez elég a jó
mobiltelefon. Mi a minimum: 2Mpix kamera, hangrögzítés, tárhely,.. Stb. Jó oktató
site: http://makeinternettv.org/

A nagy projektek nem élnek meg, home-video a target, ha nagyobb beruházással
indulsz, a belépési küszöböt nem tudod meglépni. Kevin Sites és Being Black
anyagok a legegyszerűbb videóval elkészíthetők, ingyenes a video vágó, stb.
 64

Reporting and story - refresh your knowledge

A mixed genre, in between the factual and opinion journalism:

Usually about news

Reports about events, their reasons.

Includes interview with eyewitnesses, participants.

May include journalist’s opinion about the events in a personal
way.

Literary style.

Types:

Investigation, based on some news

Evaluation, analysis of social issues

Event reporting, longer news story

Historical, based on historical documents

Source: Stark – Daniss, „Genres of

Journalism”, manuscript, Népszabadság-
Ringier Training Studio, 2006

Story journalism in various channels
Print Internet

With or without „Sites such as CNN,
personal experience, the Washington Post
factual or personal and MSNBC.com are
view included. multimedia sites. They

Reporting with have text. They have
video clips… But the
interpretation: news
analysis. main stories on these
sites are often linear

Reporter vs.
and produced in either
correspondent:
factual vs. added text or video or audio to
opinion. stand alone. …

Investigative Rarely are video, text,
reporting: deep still photos, audio and
insight. graphics integrated into
the same story. ”

Sport rep. is focused
on scores.
Source: Knight New Media
Center
http://journalism.berkeley.ed
u/multimedia/course/choose/
65
Mobile TV

All internet reporting Online video:
formats are available
Shoot tight
on mobile, but with
Cut short and fast
limited quality.

Reduce camera

MMS: involve your
moves
reader in finding
sources, ask them to
Further tips: Online
send their photos,
Journalism Review
videos. http://www.ojr.org/ojr/wiki/
Eg. in Blikk (HU), video/
Compact (RO), Blesk
(CZ)
 66

Multimedia storytelling

Newspaper websites Magazine sites, microsites

Often based on a news
feature story.

Editor driven, multiple
sources

Links to external content

Calls for reader
interaction and content

E.g. Washington Post
multimedia series (see
later)

Based on desktop research
and storyboard

„Back-pack” journalism,
reporter driven

Short text, mostly photo and
video only.

Dominated by a single style
level of
multimedia integration
Eg. Kevin Sites’s war reports
(see later) or Picture-Projects (
http://www.picture-
projects.com/)

Multimedia story-telling is not an omnipotent tool: fits best for process

descriptons and for presenting new conceptual information.
More: http://www.poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/main.htm i de t
Tools:
á ka
ld

Video camera, PC-based video editor
Voice recorder, sound editor s pé
Má



Digital still camera, image editor

Web editor tool
Source: Multimedia Reporting and Convergence by Jane Stevens
http://journalism.berkeley.edu/multimedia/course/choose/
 67

Investing in multimedia
Before undertaking any large story project be sure to ask:
Who is the target audience for this story?

What do we hope to accomplish in telling this story to them?

Then use this decision-tool to see which approach to storytelling is best supported by the research in these
studies:
Does the story concern elaborate or unfamiliar processes / procedures?
Yes – 1 point
No – no points
Is the level of interest in the topic high enough that people would be willing to figure out story navigation?
Yes – 1 point
No – no points
Does the story have value beyond the first few weeks? Is it likely to be a topic in the news again?
Yes – 1 point
No – no points
Is entertaining the audience more important than simply informing?
Yes – 1 point
No – no points
Is it important that the audience be able to recall specific facts from the story?
Yes – no points
No – 1 point
If the story is told in separate components, it is essential that all the components be viewed by the audience?
Yes – no points
No – 1 point
Do you hope the audience recalls where they saw the information?
Yes – 1 point
No – no points
If you get five or more points, then you should strongly consider an interactive story approach.

Source: Online Journalism Review, http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/070210ruel/

 68

Multimedia report of a newspaper site

Traditional and multimedia journalism

edited together:

Several journalists

Videos

Image gallery

Soundbites

Voting

Mix of new and archive

Communicates with readers

Dossie-like updates

Washington Post: Being a Black Man

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/interactives/blackmen/blackmen.html
 69

Independent multimedia reports

„Backpack” journalist:

Single author: single style

Video and photo dominates

Reduced interactions

Story-board

Kevin Sites’s war reports http://hotzone.yahoo.com/

Tools:

Video camera, PC-based video editor

Voice recorder, sound editor

Digital still camera, image editor

Web editor tool
 70

Exercise: Create a multimedia story

A téma
 71

? Exercise: questions to a video journalist

Travis Fox is an Emmy-nominated video journalist of washingtonpost.com

Watch some of Trevis Fox’s best videos, then guess his replies to the below
questions. The videos are available on washingtonpost.com
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/photo/bestofthepost/foxtravis/index.html)

Do you frame shots differently for the Web and for TV, or do you work with the same
material for both?

Do you cut it differently for TV than you do for the Web?

What new ways of conveying a news story have you tried?

What about the role of video journalist within the paper and Website?

Are there compelling pieces like that that you decide not to cover?

What impact do you expect from technical changes?

Trevis answered the above questions in an interview.

Check your guesses on the following pages.
 72

Do you frame shots differently for the Web and for TV, or do you
work with the same material for both?
The video screen is smaller on the computer monitor, therefore we should
shoot tighter. But shooting tight is a good technique, whether you are
shooting for television or for film. People typically sit closer to their
computer screens than to their televisions, so proportionally the Web
video looks bigger. I don't think it makes any difference…. you should
have everything on a tripod to be stable because any sort of camera
shake would cause the pixels to be refreshed, which would slow down
your processor,

Do you cut it differently for TV than you do for the Web?
On television you want it to be fast moving because you don't want
anyone to click on their remote control and go to the next channel, right?
You want to keep their attention all the time. Whereas on the web you
don't want someone to go to a different Website. Obviously you want it to
be tight and you want it to be fast moving.

What new ways of conveying a news story have you tried?
Took the various media and combined them in a way that was logical,
using a blog for user feedback and conversation; using the panoramas to
give you a sense of place; and using videos to give you a sense of
people, the character, the location, and then combing the two to give you
a full picture of the story….. a good model--not covering news on a day in
and day out basis but the kind of stories that have legs and can go on for
several weeks, several months, several years even.

Source: Online Journalism Review http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/600916Junnarkar

 73

What about the role of video journalist

Are there compelling pieces that you

What impact do you expect from
Illustration only.
(From the demonstration of Microsoft WindowsXP Media Center Edition)
within the paper and Website?
We don't want them to turn into television
reporters, obviously. … we want to give
them the time that they need to do
newspaper reporting. But we want to be
able to leverage their expertise into the
video.
decide not to cover?
Certain stories are better in video but not so
good in still pictures. And some stories are
tough to do in either medium…. A story
about the new budget on Capital Hill would
probably be tough to do in either stills or a
video. That would be more of a print story or
a Flash graphics story.
technical changes?
What's really going to be exciting is the
Internet as a delivery means not as an end
media. For us to really compete with
television, we have to get our videos to your
living room television screen. Because no
matter how good it is on the computer it's
never going to be as good as when it's on
your TV or when it's on your high-definition
plasma screen, right?
 74

INTERVIEW
 75

Refresh your knowledge

What is an interview?

An interview is a conversation between two people
who often have different aims.

The interviewer is looking for something that will Recommendations:
interest his audience.

The interviewee may be trying to make a particular - questions should not be too general;
point.
- several questions should not be put at the

The best interviews elicit the sort of answers that same time;
satisfy both these aims.
- should not be too long;
- should not trigger "yes" or "no" answers;
Basic types of interview
- should not suggest the answer;
1. The news interview - this is where the reporter just
wants the facts. Perhaps you've just witnessed a - should not be hypothetical or rhetoric.
car accident or an armed robbery. The questions
you will be asked are factual ones: Who, Where, Questions such as: "What do you think
When and What happened? about...?", "What do you have to say about...?",
2. The information interview - this is an amalgam of "What is new in...?", "What do you have to
facts and opinions. Perhaps you have been invited add?" are considered inappropriate.
to give your views on a social or ethical issue. More
time is spent on answering questions such as: How
and Why?
3. The in-depth interview - this is usually done
completely on the interviewee's wavelength. These
interviews deal with very personal matters, for
instance, celebrity interviews or people with a story
to tell.

Source: Diocese of Ely http://www.ely.anglican.org/news_events/radio_tv_interview.html

 76

Online interview?

washingtonpost.com

Journalist acts as moderator

Readers’ voice is anonymous and direct

Interviewee and interviewer are
overdominated
by readers

Users’ questions received in advance
and realtime
educationtalk.guardian.co.uk
 77

9 points of a successful online interview:

1. Choose a hot topic of your forums. All communities have their own heated debates. This can either
be politics, lifestye, ethics or any kind of every-day issue.
2. Invite a person who is famous and has got a definite view in this debate, but open to alternative
views.
3. Prepare your guest to very straight questions and recommend him or her to give at least a short
reply to as many questions as possible.
4. Announce the interview in advance, you may even use a teaser campaign for this within the forum
and ask the members to collect and post their questions.
5. Make the arrangements in a way that your guest arrives at least an hour before the announced time
of the online interview. Use this time to show the guest the preliminary questions arranged by the
main topics. Use a web camera and ensure a typist whose only task is to type the guest’s answer.
6. During the interview when you post a question, mention all the members who posted questions in
this topic. Do not forget that you are only a moderator, the interview is actually run by the members
of the forum.
7. Filter only the most extreme and intolerable notes which are against the constitution. Posts that are
aggressive but not against law, should not be filtered out, but ignored in the interview.
8. After the interview immediately start to work on an edited version of the text. Reverse the order of
comments to serve those who did not have a chance to follow the interview live.
9. Ask your guest to follow up the forum for a while and add comments if needed.
 78

COMMENTARY
 79

Blog: a website created in less than 5 minutes

What is a blog?

A blog is a free
easy-to-use web
site, where
everybody can
quickly post
thoughts, comments
and interact with
people.

Unlike some years
ago, today’s
technology enables
everybody to install
its own site very
easily.

Users or journalists
are free to develop,
improve and
animate their
personal blog.

http://www.blogger.com

Blogging has become a new media and communication tool. A blog is a personal diary. A daily
pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links.
Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world.
 80

Journalist blog – the example of Compact (RO)

Name and picture of the blogger, Horia, editor
in chief of Compact, RO.

Display the
blog in a good
position in
your menu. Editors of
Compact,
with their
You can read the full own blogs.
debate about the topic.
If Horia feels it
necessary, he answers
readers’ comments.
Short, personal
commentary
pointing out to a Readers can
debated issue. comment the
article of
Horia.

http://compact.info.ro
 81

What is a blog?

http://www.nolblog.hu/

Blogs are not newspapers

Many bloggers differentiate themselves from the

Blogs may help journalists
mainstream media, while others are members of that
Bloggers' credibility problem, however, can be an advantage for the
media working through a different channel. Some
bloggers and for the mainstream journalists who take an interest in them.
institutions see blogging as a means of "getting around the
News organizations are sometimes reluctant to tell stories that will upset
filter" and pushing messages directly to the public. Some
important people. But when bloggers or activists make sensational
critics worry that bloggers respect neither copyright nor the
claims, then they become stories themselves, and journalists can use
role of the mass media in presenting society with credible
them as cover for reporting the underlying scandals.
news.

Blogs should be part of newspaper sites

Blogs are not only diaries Many mainstream journalists, meanwhile, write their own blogs -- well
Blogs often provide commentary or news and information over 300, according to CyberJournalist.net's J-blog list. Requires regular
on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local activity.
news; some function as more personal online diaries. A
typical blog combines text, images, and links to other
blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic.
Source: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog
 82

Blog content vs. newspaper content

Newspaper sites

Commentary, diary report

News, factual report

Blog sites

Newspaper sites are dominated by news and

factual reports, even though they include
some commentary as well. Whereas blogs are
mostly used for personal self-expression, even
if not exclusively.
„66% of people maintaining blogs don't label their acts as journalism.
The other 34% considered their blogging as journalism because they
engage in journalistic functions like fact-checking and linking to
sources…”
Source: Pew Internet Project
http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/186/report_display.asp)
 83

Participation inequality

In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users
contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.

There are about 1.1 billion Internet users, yet only 55 million users (5%) have weblogs
according to Technorati. Worse, there are only 1.6 million postings per day; because
some people post multiple times per day, only 0.1% of users post daily.

Although participation will always be somewhat unequal, there are ways to better
equalize it, including:

Make it easier to contribute

Make participation a side effect, eg. in Amazon: „people who bought this book, bought
these other books as well”

Reward – but do not over-reward participants.

Promote quality contributors.

Source: Nielsen, Participation Inequality http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html

 84

Long tail: even the smallest counts

Long Tail

The importance of niche markets is growing in the
new economy. We have to be present with products
on both side of the curve. Big hits provide high
visibility, on the long tail side the newspaper will
generate loyalty.

User generated content, citizen journalism, blogs
are on the long tail. None of these services will
generate big hits, but will tie readers to our brands. In
the head of this diagram we have to see the articles
written by journalists.

Our culture and economy is shifting away from a

focus on a relatively small number of "hits"
(mainstream products and markets) at the head of the
demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in
the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall,
especially online, there is now less need to lump
products and consumers into one-size-fits-all
containers.

Source: Chris Anderson http://www.thelongtail.com

 85

Blog style tips

When you are posting an entry in the blog of your newspaper, you are in fact talking to two
groups of audiences: on the one hand you are talking to the loyal readers of your
newspaper brand, on the other hand you should expect readers who find your entry via
search engines. The below tips work for both groups.

Keep your pages short. Because blogs tend to feature short bursts of content, with each
entry on its own page, by nature they are optimized for easy finding via web search engines
like Google. Therefore one of the most important optimization principles is to keep your
pages short and highly topical.

Keep your pages on-topic. It is important to stay on-topic with each entry. People don’t
have a lot of time, and they like to land on Web pages that are clearly about one thing. That
goes for blog entry pages as much as for any other type of page.

Be mindful of keywords. Search engines match Web pages to keywords people search
for. If you want better visibility in search engines, use the keywords you think your readers
would be searching with. Don’t use them arbitrarily or indiscriminately: write your entries to
the point, so that they are clearly topical to your readers and to the search engines.

Make your entry titles count. Blogs are famously informal and personal, but you miss an
important chance to optimize your entry pages by not putting key topical words in your
titles. And your readers might thank you for being clearer in your headings, too.

Source: Blogging for Dummies, by Brad Hill. Wiley, 2006.

 86

Use your competences in new

media
 87

What will you learn in this chapter?

First you will go through on the tips&tricks of news editing on the internet. You will
learn how to use efficiently international and local news sources and you will also
read about citizen reporting which is a new source for journalists.

Story management: all what you learnt so far about news and channels will be put
together. You will understand how online and mobile can reinforce the success of
print. Best practice examples are showing the advantages of the integrated
multimedia journalism.

Readers' community: the journalist's role is changing. To be successful on the internet

you will learn how to behave as a moderator on your local market.

Mobile: Read a short outlook about news on the small screen of the mobile phones.

Usability background: your webpage is in strong competition with the others for the
eyeballs. You have less then 2 minutes to convince readers that your page is worth
coming back and visiting regularly. Overview of usability studies.
 88

News on the internet: hints

and tricks
 89

News channels can be

Personalized news agency organized into tabs.

Registration allows you

to use the same
settings both on your
office and home
computer.

To add a new feed

or function just drag
its name to the rigth
side of the window. News channels. You may
select feeds from
Netvibes directory or
In addition to news channels
add your favourite. Netvibes allows you to add
and customize plenty of
further functions: check
you e-mail, search, to-do
list, etc.
Key terminology:
http://www.netvibes.com

News channel
Personalized startpages with multilingual menu:
RSS
http://www.netvibes.com (Netvibes)
Subscribing
http://www.live.com (Microsoft Live)
Feed reader
http://www.google.com/ig (Google homepage)
OPML
 90

News aggregators

They give an overview of the current

news market and same time generates
traffic to your site.

http://hirlista.hu

Google News:
Relies on the collective judgment of online
news organizations to determine which
stories are most deserving of inclusion and
prominence on the News homepage.
Personalized alert: e-mail, RSS

Hungarian examples: www.hirlista.hu,

http://news.google.com www.hirkereso.hu, www.hirstart.hu
 91

Citizen reporting
How does a Blog differ from mainstream news?

Blogs are not held to the same standards as traditional news

outlets.

Blogs are typically referred to as “grassroots”, or “citizen

journalism”, but should be taken with a grain of salt. You have to
consider the source, so don’t believe everything you read.

That being said, blogs can often do a better job at reporting what’s
happening than traditional sources. A good example of that was
Interdictor’s Live Journal blog (http://mgno.com/). There was more
accurate coverage during hurricane Katrina
(http://interdictor.livejournal.com/98501.html) than on any of the
major three news networks.

So for every example of someone complaining about the lack of

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5181396.stm
quality found in weblogs, there are plenty of examples of people
doing really good work as well.
If you’re looking for “hard news”, then you’ll want to search CNN
over Google.
Source: Simply Digital http://www.simplydigital.info/episode-5-weblogs/

Best practice:

A journalist generating a blog as a desktop research: the „School Security” story

http://www.buzzmachine.com/index.php/2006/10/03/school-security-networked-
reporting/
 92

Mind your sources!

The case of incorrectly identified Virginia Tech killer

In April 16, 2007 one student of Virginia Polytechnic Institute killed 32 fellow-students. The tragedy happenned in
a large, technology oriented community of young people, who were left for some hours without mainstream official
information about hyperlocal events.

In the absence of any official information from police on the identity of the killer, internet detectives claiming to be
in-the-know have been calling attention -- on message boards and online aggregators like Digg -- to the
LiveJournal blog of a particular 23-year-old gun maniac in Virginia. Even Fox News started writing about the
blogger.

It's easy to see why this rumor would get traction. The man's blog features photos of him holding firearms, as well
as dark hints of obsessive love, and confirmation that he attends Virginia Tech. Within a few hours over 150
people have entered angry comments on the blog.

The story was revealed by Wired magazine. They intentionally did not name or link to the blogger, to maintain the
credit of their media. Instead the journalist searched for the blogger’s phone number and called it. Few hours later
the blogger posted a message, and explained why he let the rumor live for so long:

„My original intention was to wait until I got AdSense on my site and donating all the proceeds to Charity.
However, this situation has now spiraled out of control. I am now confirming that I am not the shooter.”

Source: Wired News,

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/04/int
On Digg.com users share intersting blog posts and other content by submitting links to the ernet_names_.html
site, but they rarely check the truth value of the promoted content.

Read more on running your blog as a journalist in the chapter „Commentary”

 93

3. In this case Nemzeti Sport

Measuring news updatethan
published the story with more
6 hours delay. This can be
either a result of unawareness or
conscious editorial policy, 2. 4 hours later
determining other focuses. the first
Hungarian
Feedreader is source, Index.hu
one of the several displayed this
freely story.
downloadable
software, that can
be used to
aggregate news
from different
sources.

Each major
sports
newssource has a
news feed. You
can find it usually
under the name 1. Original news
„RSS”. appears on
autosport.com

With RSS newsfeeds not only sources, but competitors and your own channels should also be followed.
Download Feedreader here: http://www.feedreader.com/download
 94

Google for journalists

Function How?
http://blogsearch.g
Blog search
oogle.com
http://www.google.
com/language_too
Language
ls - language
specific search
http://images.goog
Image search le.com/ - search
by keywords
http://video.google
Video search .com/ - search by
http://video.google.com/
keywords

„And now, for just a moment, I would like you to imagine what
today’s life would be without all that. What life would be
without Google... and how much more time we’d be spending
on solving our problems.”

Source: Philipp Lensen, 55 Ways to Have Fun With Google

http://www.55fun.com/book.pdf.

http://translate.google.com
 95

Function How?
Currency
10 USD in HUF
exchange
teaspoons in 1 litre - Eg.
202 teaspoons in a litre.
Unit
This works even with very
exchange
old, obscure or scientific
units.
http://www.google.com/
define:word - Gives
Definition dictionary defintions for
(English) words.
link:yoursite.com - A list of
sites that link to your site. If
Web they are credible, the site
reference may also be credible -
although that is hardly a
guarantee

http://maps.google.com
 96

More about Google

30 additional
Google
search
tricks

More Google
services What are they
working on
actually at
Google?
 97

STORY MANAGEMENT, MEDIA

INTEGRATION
 98

The story management concept

News Cycle:
Amount
of information Conclusion
Review of the event, the consequences and the entire
report published.
sms | web | teletext | print | book | cd-rom | dvd
Follow-up
Follow-up news about the event is generated, other relations
to other topics presented, open question answered.
sms | web | teletext | print | book | cd-rom | dvd

Development
The event is explained, first backgrounds and relations with other topics researched and presented
sms | web | teletext | print | book | cd-rom | dvd

Entry
All available information about the event is reported.
sms | web | teletext | print | book | cd-rom | dvd

Event Time

The purpose of story management:

Generate more reading-sessions during the day, attract readers to return

Provide content for all the channels of your brand

Win the news competition, publish information first and get back references from competitors
 99

Newsdesk and story management

What is a NewsDesk?

A NewsDesk is an interdisciplinary
team that:

leads all editorial processes,

decides on content (topic,
quantity, quality, point in time),

is responsible for the graphic
presentation,

uses cross-media synergies
and potentials in an optimised
way.
In a NewsDesk team, all relevant
sub-processes for the crossmedia
publication process are integrated.

Source: Ifra Newsplex, Dr. Dietmar Schantin

 100

CNN: case study of story building

CNN channels

CNN newsroom is publishing on a lot of
TV broadcast
channels.
Internet services

A detailed study reveals that the use of

Web (cnn.com)
these channels is governed by a well-
designed priority that ensures CNN’s lead
RSS
in the news media.
Desktop alert, ticker

SMS breaking news alert is used to
Pipeline (premium video on
distribute the very first wire version of the demand)
story, basic facts only. By the time alerts
CNN video (free streaming video)
are distributed, the wire (Reuters) version
E-mail
is published on web and WAP.
Podcast audio and video

On WAP version bulleted highlight and
Transcripts
detailed source references are ignored
Offline versions (on DVD, VHS,
and sometimes even the text of the story fax, e-mail)
is slightly modified. Front page headline Mobile services
text is used also for RSS and desktop
CNN Mobile TV
alert.

SMS breaking news alerts

As soon as CNN is ready with its own

CNN mobile news (WAP)
version of the story, the web and WAP
versions are replaced with a new text
PDA (AvantGo)
referring to own sources. Follow-up can
CNNtoGO (for US mobile
also be based on local news agencies. customers)

A sample news story
An Air Mauritania flight landed in the
Canary Islands after it was hijacked
Thursday by a man who was subdued by
passengers.
101
The event: passenger plane hijacked from
Mauritania - Febr 15, 2007
21:03
Reuters published breaking news, only two
sentences (reuters.com)
21:20
Breaking news on cnnmobile.com WAP site.
Source: Reuters
21:40
Breaking news published on cnn.com, still based
on Reuters.
21:48
SMS alert is sent to subscribers. RSS and
desktop alerts based on the headline text.
1:51 (next morning)
CNN’s own story published in „international
news” section
16:22
All details of the hijacking, based on AP
 102

21:03 – Reuters wire story

Air Mauritania hijack ends, suspect arrested - radio

LAS PALMAS, Spain (Reuters) - The hijacking of an Air Mauritania

plane ended in the Spanish Canary Islands on Thursday, a Spanish
government official told RNE national radio.

A single suspect was arrested, Spanish media said. Emergency

services earlier said several people had been wounded by gunfire.
No further details were immediately available.

"Fortunately the hijacking incident has ended favourably," Jose

Segura, a government representative in the Canary Islands, told
RNE. He added that 71 passengers and 8 crew were on the plane.
 103

21:20 – CNN breaking news on wap

Hijacked jet lands on Spain islands

An Air Mauritania Boing 737 passanger plane hijacked

on an internal flight has flown to the Spanish Canary
Islands after stopping for fuel in the Western Sahara,
Mauritanian official said.

"It has gone to the Canaries," a source closed to the

presidency told Reuters. The head of the Mauritanian
state news agency said the plane had already touched
down.

Earlier, a police officer at Nouakchott airport told

Reuters the plane had been hijacked on a flight to the
northern port town of Nouadhibou and had flown
instead to Dakhla in Western Sahara to take on fuel.

"There was at least one armed person on board. We

don't know his identity," the state news agency chief,
Moussa Hamed, said."
 104

21:40 – CNN top story on web

Hijacking ends on Spanish island

Story highlights
* Passenger plane hijacked from Mauritania in WestAfrica
* Plane lands at airport in Canary Islands, territory of Spain
* One person arrested, government reports
* Earlier reports say gunfire occurs

LAS PALMAS, Spain (Reuters) -- The hijacking of an Air Mauritania plane Thursday ended in the Canary
Islands, a Spanish government official told RNE national radio.

An Air Mauritania Boeing 737 passenger plane with 71 passengers and eight crew members aboard was
hijacked after take off from the airport in Nouakchott, Mauritania’s capital, Mauritanian officials said.

A single suspect was arrested, Spanish media said. Emergency services earlier said several people had
been wounded by gunfire. No further details were immediately available.

"Fortunately the hijacking incident has ended favorably," Jose Segura, a government representative in the
Canary Islands, told RNE.

Earlier, a police officer at Nouakchott airport said the plane had been hijacked on a flight to the northern
Mauritania port town of Nouadhibou and had flown instead to Dakhla in Western Sahara to take on fuel.

The Canary Islands, off the northwest coast of Africa, are a territory of Spain.
 105

21:48 – SMS breaking news alert

8 minutes later CNN alerts journalists via SMS service. Learn how to use such a service.

Select channels. You

will be charged with a
Find the the teaser CNN asks for your personal monthly flat fee per
and payment details. Credit each alert channel 21:48 - From: CNN
page of mobile services
card payment is done via that you subscribe to. CNN Alert
on cnn.com. A lot of
secure connection. Hijackers seize
newspaper site offer
passenger jet in
similar SMS alert
Mauritania and land
services. Be careful: too on Spain's Canary
many SMS alerts Islands, police and
may disturb your meda say
work. according to wire
CNN’s SMS alerts The service is indepent reports.
are strongly of your mobile operator,
recommended for you pay directly to the
journalists covering content provider and
international news. your operator does not After subscribing you
charge you. receive the first SMS
when the next breaking
news event happens.
 106

1:51 (next morning) – CNN’s story

Passengers subdue armed hijacker

Story highlights
• NEW: Air Mauritania flight landed safely in Canary Islands
• Canaries official: Plane had 71 passengers and 8 crew
• Hijacker arrested; his identity not yet released

LAS PALMAS, Spain (CNN) -- A man armed with two pistols hijacked an Air Mauritania flight Thursday but was
subdued by two passengers, a Spanish official said.

The plane landed safely in the Canary Islands and no one was hurt, the official said.

The senior Spanish government source said a man had been trying to commandeer the Boeing 737 to Paris. He was
arrested by the civil guard after the jet landed at Gando Airport, the source told CNN.

Jose Segura, the central government's chief representative in the Canaries, told Ser, a Spanish radio station, that the
plane was carrying 71 passengers and eight crew members.

Reports differed on the hijacker's nationality, with one senior Spanish government source saying he is Moroccan and
Segura describing him as Mauritanian.

Abass Bass, a representative of the Mauritanian Embassy in Washington, described the incident as a "tentative
hijacking."

"The information we had from Mauritania is that the passengers fought back and they took the hijacker and now
everything is OK," Bass told CNN.

Bass said the flight had been scheduled to be an interior one, from the capital city of Nouakchott to Nouadhibou, in
northern Mauritania, near Morocco.
 107

16:22 – Detailed story on CNN, using AP’s report

Fast-thinking pilot foiled hijack

Story Highlights
• NEW: Air Mauritania flight landed safely in Canary Islands
• Canaries official: Plane had 71 passengers and 8 crew
• Hijacker arrested; his identity not yet released

TENERIFE, Spain (AP) -- A fast-thinking pilot, with the help of passengers, fooled a gunman who had hijacked a
jetliner flying from Africa to the Canary Islands, braking hard upon landing then quickly accelerating to knock the
man down so travelers could pounce on him, Spanish officials said Friday.

A lone gunman brandishing two pistols hijacked the Air Mauritania Boeing 737, carrying 71 passengers and a crew
of eight, Thursday evening shortly after it took off from the Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott for Gran Canaria,
one of Spain's Canary Islands, with a planned stopover in Nouadhibou in northern Mauritania.

He wanted to divert the plane to France so he could request political asylum, said Mohamed Ould Mohamed
Cheikh, Mauritania's top police official.

The hijacker has been identified as Mohamed Abderraman, a 32-year-old Mauritanian, said an official with the
Spanish Interior Ministry office on Tenerife, another of the islands in the Atlantic archipelago. He spoke under rules
barring publication of his name. Mauritania has said the hijacker was a Moroccan from the Western Sahara.

The hijacker ordered the pilot to fly to France, but the crew told him there was not enough fuel. Morocco denied a
request for the plane to land in the city of Djala in the Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara, so the pilot headed
for Las Palmas in Gran Canaria, the original destination.

Speaking to the gunman during the hijacking, the pilot realized the man did not speak French. So he used the
plane's public address system to warn the passengers in French of the ploy he was going to try: brake hard upon
 108

<h1>MANAGING NEW JOURNALISM

 109

<h2>Extreme project management

 110

New media requires new style of project management

Conventional project management Extreme Project Management

Accomplish a plan
Fulfill a desired goal

Use the plan to reach the result
Explore the desired goal.

Pre-define the processes of the project
Use the preliminary results in the procedure

Corrections must consider the base plan
Correct anything that is possible

Just one attempt is allowed.
Several attempts, finally success

Target. Target. Shoot. Shoot. Target. Shoot.

“An extreme project is a complex, high speed,

self-correcting venture in search of a desirable
result under conditions of high uncertainty,
high change and high stress.”

Doug De Carlo
 111

Example: launch in 6 weeks

The site of this book, www.21stCenturyJournalism.com
Project tasks: was launched by a team of four persons within 6 weeks.
The project followed the methodolgy of Extreme Project
Creation of the site concept Management.

Logo

Selection of dynamic content:

Best 50 RSS feeds
Book for
sale at
amazon.com Videoblog on
YouTube

Static
content
Automatic tagging via Yahoo’s free
Term Extraction service
Design and its
deployment Domain registration, hosting
(siteground.com)
Freeware Resources:
content

Manager and owner of the concept.
management
system
Content editor
(Joomla)
Designer

Programmer
All tasks of the site launch were carried out by the
project team. The total outsource cost is USD 100.

Risk management
Guys, our project is
delayed. What is your
programmer
Why didn’t tell me that
the design will include
Flash? My PHP code
can not embed Flash.
Question: How would you
prepare for and manage all
these risks?
112
manager
problem?
Until the content
management system content editor
contains so many
bugs, I can update the
blog once a week
only.
The layout cannot
tolerate long texts.
Either you edit the text
content or I have to
create a new design.
designer
 113

Project plan for launching a site

Id Task Resources 1 2 3 4 5 6
1 Creation of site concept Manager
2 Domain registration, hosting Programmer
3 Content management system Programmer
4 Design, 1st version Designer
5 Logo Designer
6 Deployment of the design Programmer
7 Selection of dynamic content Content editor
8 Dynamic content feed Programmer
9 Automatic tagging via Yahoo Programmer
10 Book for sale at Amazon.com Content editor
11 Static content Content editor
12 Videoblog on YouTube Content editor
13 Tests, launch all

Weekly breakdown of all the major tasks to launch a site like www.21stCenturyJournalism.com. In reality
the tasks consisted of 1-2 days periods followed by tests, discussions and these often resulted minor
changes in all details.
 114

<H2>Site marketing
 115

Diffusion of innovations

Some inventions 'take the world by storm' (archetype: the Sony Walkman).

Others seem to fail, lie dormant for decades, but when 'their time has come', their use grows quickly,
even explosively (archetype: the fax machine).

Most achieve slow penetration at first, then their adoption grows more quickly, but later slows down
again.

Extensive Intensive
marketing - marketing – Use it
Required to reach when adoption rate
early adopters: on slows down: find
the Internet viral inner reserves of
marketing is the growth.
most effective.

Who are the early adopters?

Earlier adopting individuals tend not to be different in age, but to have more years of education,
higher social status and upward social mobility, be in larger organisations, have greater empathy,
less dogmatism, a greater ability to deal with abstractions, greater rationality, greater intelligence, a
greater ability to cope with uncertainty and risk, higher aspirations, more contact with other people,
greater exposure to both mass media and interpersonal communications channels and engage in
more active information seeking.

Source: Brad Griffin, Why Don’t Good Ideas Fly?, http://www.cyfm.net/article.php?article=Dont_Good_Ideas_Fly.html,

Roger Clarke, A Primer in Diffusion of Innovations Theory, http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/SOS/InnDiff.html
 116

Examples of viral marketing

Movie marketing Free e-mail services

Users of Yahoo
mail participate in
marketing the
service.

When Gmail was first

The Blair Witch Project is a low-budget announced, access to
American horror film released in 1999. the service was limited
The narrative is presented as a to those who have an
documentary pieced together from invitation from an
amateur footage. The advertisements for existing account holder,
the film were designed to reinforce the from Blogger, or
'documentary' concept. This was done so through their mobile
extensively that the three main actors phone. Google stated
were listed for a time as "missing, that the invitation
presumed dead" on IMDb movie system intended to
catalogue. initially reduce the
Source: amount of abuse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blair_Witch_Pr
oject
 117

Example…. (cont.)

Video sharing service

Hi turilaszlo
As I've seen, you are uploading videos on Youtube and
sharing them for the public. Very nice!

Well... I want you to invite, sharing your clips also on

http://www.clipser.com. We went just live a few weeks ago
and are now looking for lots and lots of people, uploading
their videos on our site to get bigger and make and share
our profits with all the people that participate.

Are you becoming curious? :) The thing is as easy as

watching clips.

You will get for every upload, every invite and every
watch of your video a few Clipser Dollars which will be
transformed in procentual relation of all Clipser Dollars
into real currency, once we've built up our audience and
have a mentionable cashflow.

Check it out now! You'll get all the information about us,
about the Clipser Dollars and the reward program on our
homepage.

regards, FP

PS: Feel free to ask and suggest things if you're still

curious or you have great ideas! And feel free to tell
your friends about us! ;)

Viral marketing mail of a startup video sharing company. The e- YouTube sent e-mail notification. In fact
mail was sent to YouTube users’ inbox. they promoted their future competitor.
 118

Let readers distribute your content

Make your content freely available on the web to attract users to your site. The
popular viral marketing services and tools help you to share your content, thus they
do the lion’s share of the work instead of you.
The most common
form of viral marketing
RSS – consider it a marketing for content. Since it
tool. (See more about RSS feeds does not require third-
earlier.) party service, there
E-mail this are no language
issues.

Users of Google's personalized

On Digg, users share homepage can save bookmarks
intersting online content by and label them with keywords.
submitting links to the site. The service is available in many
Digg audience can promote languages.
content by voting.

In MyYahoo you can save

del.icio.us allows users to save
their bookmarks online. It also
gives users the ability to "tag"
their bookmarks and see how
many other people have
bookmarked the same pages,
Reddit allows users to submit news
articles. Users may vote on the
articles and Reddit uses those
votes to find articles to recommend
to you.
bookmarks to your personal
page, tag and share.
Facebook is made up of many networks -
individual schools, companies or regions.
Users of Facebook can "share" news stories
on their profile page.

Source: WashingtonPost.com, MarketingTerms.com

 119

Extensive: SEO, banner csere, RSS, widget

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117788946503386423.html - newspaper sites buying

search keywords for major stories

Make your content freely available to drag readers to your site
 120

Intensive: Hidden reserves of newspaper websites

Even if editors invest a lot of effort to update Make your site more intesively used
news, readers consider most daily paper site
as a static one. You should make your
continous updates visible to get your
readers visit you both in the morning and
evenging as well.

. A reggel 8-as csúcsot kell kihasználni arra,

hogy akkor vmi olyasmit mondani, ami miatt
később visszajön. És ez egy egyszerű
üzenet legyen: gyere vissza délután ezért v.
azért – tiszta szituáció legyen: du. interjú
lesz.

Segment your readers by providing personalized,

A newspaper website
0 24 local information.

Pl. Google analytics alapján nézd meg, honnan

0 A web-only magazine
jönnek a userek: ott hirdess, ahonnan jönnek.
Ahol lefele megy a görbe, az egy lehetőség a
használat intenzitás növelésére. A bővítés
lehetőségét keresni ott, ahol vmi elindult, pl. vidéki
látogatók. Pl. helyi híreket adni v. más nyelvet v.
24 valami ötlet a szegmentált elérésre.

Source: Webaudit.hu. The charts show two Hungarian websites.

 121

<h2>Organization theories
In practice the solutions are mixed and there is no way to rank them. Each editorial
team must find its own ideal solution, considering their content, audience and market
position. A pure integration of organizational units on its own will not help to improve
the newspaper. See actual examples on the next page.

Selecteds Added Cross-media Media

journalists channels projects company

Only print and online
integration, training is
limited to a few
journalists and ad sales
representatives,
management does not
completely backs the
strategy
More sophisticated
application of
multimedia and online
interactivity. Other
media added to the
media mix (e.g. TV,
radio). Frequently,
management holds
back any further large
scale applications of
convergence
Cross-media journalism
projects and advertising
sales campaigns. Staffs
are cross-trained. True
engagement by
management and the
lower ranks.
All journalists and ad
sales persons are cross-
trained. Multimedia
integration strategy at
every level of the
company

Source: A Guide to Practical Convergence by Martha L. Stone, INMA, 2006


Practice
Guardian, The Times
Guardian: "web-first"
principle for foreign and
business news only
currently.
Times: "web-first" principle
for foreign news only and
plans to extend this to all
articles in a few years.
Washington Post
No integrated newsroom,
just dedicated online editor.
Shortened story length,
enhanced visual journalism
in print.
Financial Times
Total consolidation of print
and online news desks, all
journalists are required to
work 3 early morning shifts
per month.
New York Times
Continuous News Desk
(CND) with 14 full-time
editor-reporter. When
something big happens, a
one-line alert is published
immediately. They start with
a wire story on the web and
replace it with their own
copy later. The Web and
print newsrooms are
separate, but some of the
Web journalists are sitting in
the print newsroom.
Telegraph
Fully integrated newsroom,
with print and online
journalists working together,
and seven-day production.
Editorial heads are to take
responsibility for all output.
Delays the publication of
print articles on its website
until later in the day in a bid
to encourage more internet
users to buy the newspaper.
Lawrence Journals
Groups of journalists are
organized into multimedia
teams to cover sports, news,
etc. Each team has cross-
trained journalists with
capabilities to tell stories in
video, audio and text.
122
Europe
Edipresse
In all of the publications the
newsroom was transformed
into a multimedia platform,
where all journalists write for
several media: print, web,
television, radio, and mobile.
Newsrooms are reorganized
according to covered
subjects - in contrast to
services - with a central
desk.
USA
Gannett
Information Center
A platform agnostic 24-hour
news aggregator and
distributor, which channels
all bits of news to the
appropriate platform, with
focus on the reader and local
coverage. (Among others
publisher of USA Today.)

Human issues of convergence
Job cuts
 The number of planned job cuts in the U.S. media
sector surged 88 percent last year and that trend will
likely continue as readers shift from print to online
services. (Reuters, 25th January 2007)

10% layoff at the Daily Telegraph, including the
change of Editor-in-Chief.

Also 10% loss in editorial staff at The Financial
Times – a total of 50 jobs.

At Washington Post in addition to job cuts part of the
newsroom staff and resources were redirected to
original reporting, analysis, investigations and
criticism.

Boston Globe newsroom employees wrote letter to
management to express concern that their future pay
is contingent upon revenue increases in print only,
while they are involved in working with online as well
Source: Editors Weblog http://www.editorsweblog.org/analysis//2007/04/uk_newspaper_websites_learnings_from_a_s_3.php
123
Training policies

At the Telegraph 5-days training was organized for
each journalist over a period of 14 weeks. Their
policy: “journalists aren’t expected to be experts in all
areas of multi-media. The training was an
introduction to the different platforms available.
People have different talents and we intend to infuse
the organization with a range of skills but it’s not a
mathematical equation as to what skills lie on each
desk. Its about the appropriateness, not all stories
will have audio and video angles right now.”

Each journalist at Lawrence Journals (Kansas, US) is
cross-trained, for example print reporters can write
and present on Lawrence’s TV-channel and
photographers became videographers.

The multimedia training sessions at Gannett are
meant not to diversify skills, but rather to expand on
them: photographers learn more about videography,
managing editors about effective use of new
technologies and resources, traditional reporters
about online editions
 124

Convergency at The Telegraph

The multimedia newsroom
Central news hub: the news
meetings are open and anyone can
come and hover and listen.

Projected on to the wall: their web

site, other web sites and shows and
a real-time list of their own top
stories and also those of the
competitors.

Editorial departments span out like

spokes from the wheel of the central
news hub. Editors of various stripes
in the first circle, reporters in the
next.

The Telegraph’s moving to its new

Reporters and production staff from all departments are located on a single editorial newsroom at the end of 2006 was in
floor and they work together producing the Telegraph's website, the daily and Sunday fact a deep crisis for the editorial
editions of the newspaper and a range of other digital publishing products, including staff. After 10% lay-off, the
audio and video interviews and regular newscasts and alerts available 24-hours a journalists voted for a strike. Due to
day. negotiations it was cancelled two
months later.
Sources:
PressGazette Online, http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/article/020407/telegraph_newsroom_multimedia_budget_day
Telegraph Media Group Ltd, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2006/09/05/cnhub05.xml
The BuzzMachine, http://www.buzzmachine.com/2007/03/12/in-the-telegraph-newsroom/
 125

Case study: the „Budget Day”* story on various channels

Microsite with live news reports, Your

The Daily Telegraph averages
Print (daily average)
Web, total unique users
E-mail news alert subscribers
Views comment section and interactive
budget calculators. A lot of the content
896,476 from the next day's newspaper is
466,000 already going live, but it will be will be
fine-tuned and extended for the print
10,000 edition. First editorial blog at 20pm.

reactions

Podcast: interview
with an expert.

analysis
Mobile-optimized
e-mail news alert
Video: reporter
and cameraman
The Chancellor are interviewing
facts Newspaper starts his taxi drivers.
articles on speech
predictions
Preparations

1 month 1 week 12.30pm early afternoon 4pm during the afternoon

earlier earlier

„Budget Day”: 21 March, 2007. On this day the Chancellor of the UK announced proposed tax measures.
 126

Case study (cont.)

Budget Day extra results

Print (increase) 45,000

Web, unique
309,202
Telegraph PM, an A4 free users of special
pdf edition, generated by Audio/video
repackaging and renosing The Business Show – 50,000
daily video podcast: plays
stories which have already
been published on the web, expert interviews,
with the online version charts.
including click-throughs to
live audio and video content.

Video: political
16-page broadsheet satire by Rory
supplement and five Bremner, British
pages of news in the main comedian.
paper.

around 4pm 5.30pm next morning next evening

Source: Press Gazette Online, http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/article/020407/telegraph_newsroom_multimedia_budget_day

 127

Example: workflow at Nemzeti Sport

Old, print focused workflow

News Print Control

Publish

News Web

New, multimedia workflow

Print

News Decision Web Control Publish

SMS
 128

Newsdesk at Edipress, Switzerland

At Edipress the original idea was to
design a single editing system and a
single archive database for all titles,
accessible from everywhere. In all of the
publications the newsroom was
transformed into a multimedia platform,
where all journalists write for several
media: print, web, television, radio, and
mobile. The same news is therefore
covered by the editor in different papers,
depending on the time of the day and on
the media where it will be published.
…The new system also affected the
structure of the newsrooms; they are now
no longer organized by services, but by
covered subjects. … newsrooms are
designed as multimedia open spaces,
with a central desk in charge of managing
the information flow and “petals”
departing from the center and divided
according to covered subjects. At the
central desk sits the day’s editor-in-chief,
the chief of photography and the
responsible for the Internet.

Source: Editors Weblog

http://www.editorsweblog.org/print_newspapers/20
06/10/switzeland_the_shape_of_the_multimedia_n
.php
Panoramic view of the newsdesk in video:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=OPgEBb6MUYA
 129

From web to print, Apropo, Romania

Apropo is the first multimedia publishing brand
developed in Romania by Publimedia, a Romanian
publishing company owned by Adrian Sarbu. He built
up his media empire since 1990, he has interests in
market leader TV and radio stations, and owns
Publimedia Publishing House, with a lot of
newspapers and magazines.

Apropo was launched as a web portal made by
Publimedia Publishing House for young people. They
are no. 35 in the general ranking of Romanian
websites with 425,838 users per month (according to
trafic.ro).

In 2004 Publimedia launched Apropo TV, a
magazine made as a direct competitor to Ringier’s TV
mania, the best selling tv guide on Romanian market,
but they failed. In April Apropo TV was reshaped to
Apropo, a bimonthly glossy magazine of celebrity
news, with a circulation of 29,000 copies per issue.

The Apropo brand is used on Pro TV, with a weekly
show on celebrities called Apropo TV and on Pro FM,
with a morning show called Apropo FM.

http://www.apropo.ro
 130

New media at Mafra, Czech Republic

Mafra is the publisher of iDnes. They built up a

multimedia company, the first of this kind on the
Czech market.

Content - shared editorial system (Lidové Noviny on
its own could not afford it). The integration of content
is relevant especially for new media (Internet, radio
stations, TV, magazines - e.g. the cross-media
projects such as Proměna, Pelíšky slavných, Prague
http://idnes.cz/ news coverage for the Express Radio). On the other
hand, content limits and differences are strictly
observed in dailies.

Advertising - Year-on-year comparison of the total
advertising area (excl. auto advertising) has shown a
decrease by 8.5% (MF Dnes), 8.8% (MF Dnes
regional editions) and 10.7% (Lidové noviny) as
compared with January 2005. Magazín Dnes + TV
lost 23.6% of advertising pages.
Group’s net income in 2004: revenues grew 9.2%.

http://lidovky.zpravy.cz/
 131

Sanoma (HU), B92 (SCG)

Multimedia success stories:

Sanoma acquired in Hungary Startlap, a community

web site from the top league, and they have
successful products like Figyelő Net and Nők Lapja
Café.

B92 in Serbia started as a samizdat radio station, later
they launched web, and today they have TV broadcast. B92
is one of the most successful local multimedia company in
the region. B92 focuses on local content, they do not
provide traditional portal services. Their growth potential is
limited by the size of the Serbian internet market.

http://www.b92.net
 132

Pesti Est, Port (Hungary)

Problematic experiments in
multimedia:

In Hungary some years ago Pesti Est, a

free program guide made similar steps.
Their goal was brand extension into other
market segments. They started est.hu, than
a radio station, and they launched such
surprising enterprises like Pesti Est Taxi
and Pesti Est Café. Today they seem to
discontinue this trend, they sold the radio
station and the taxi company.

Port.hu is competitor of Pesti Est,
however they are present only on the
internet, as market leader in their segment.
They tried lot of times to expand to print, but
they failed. However this is the first
http://port.hu/ Hungarian web company, which is
establishing in other countries of the region:
they launched port.ro, and they have offices
in Prague and Bratislava.
 133

READERS’S COMMUNITY
 134

Two-way interaction
with your readers

Print Internet Mobile TV/Radio

Forum

Comments via

Online interview
Two-way Readers’ page (Supporting SMS, e-mail

Blog
interaction with opinions channel)
Dial-in

Article comment
programmes

Get published

Anonymous
Consumer’s
mails are not Yes, possible Yes, possible
anonymity
published

Issues to be considered:

hierarchy,
Illustration: Oliver Reichenstein, The
journalist’s role,
Future of News. Manuscript, 2007.
http://www.informationarchitects.jp/
info vs. opinion
 135

Issues in detail

Online Get
Forum Blog Comment
interview published

Participants are Participants are Blogger Journalist Journalist

Hierarchy
equal equal dominates dominates dominates

Information Blogger ads

Comments, Interviewee Sometimes Reader sends
info, even if
without info adds info added info info
personal

Moderator is an
independent Blogger Editor may
Moderator acts
Moderation supervisor, not himself close article for n/a
as a journalist
part of the moderates comment
discussion
 136

Best practices The moderator’s role

”Be the photoreporter of Compact” (Romania)
Compact reader, Iounut Grosoiu
posted this photo.
Regular readers like to
Image archive participate, to write, to send
pictures about events. They
have to be rewarded by
citations in the newspaper,
always refering to their
nicknames. Take seriously
their requests, if they want to
invite somebody, organize it,
if they want to donate to
someone, help them, if they
want to rename a street,
support them, go to the city
authorities. Organize them
meetings, parties, common
events, invite them to visit
Ringier, and report about
these activities in the
newspaper. Anwer each e-
mail immediately, an
answered mail makes you 10
new readers. EiC should
participate in online forums
and events.

www.compact.info.ro 37 readers evaluated this Rules of submitting pictures for

picture: the overall rating is 3.81 publication.
of 5.
 137

Forum

http://forum.index.hu

Moderating rules: http://forum.index.hu/Custom/showModMod
Online interview

Washington Post Live Discussions, http://www.washingtonpost.com

/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/05/18/LI2005051801255.html

Index Fórum, http://forum.index.hu/Topic/showTopicList?t=29

Axel Springer sites, http://www.petofinepe.hu/index.php?apps=online&a=2000
Blog

Népszabadság Online, http://www.nolblog.hu

Times Online Weblogs – a bit aristocratic, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/weblogs
Comment

There are several good examples. Check the websites of major newspapers
Get published

CNN Send an I-report, http://www.cnn.com/exchange

Compact, http://compact.info.ro/index.php?section=blog&screen=hp
 138

Outlook: The small

screen of your mobile
phone
 139

Compare the mobile and desktop internet experience

In what situations and when do you use

mobile and internet?

How long is a mobile and an internet
usage session?

Do you share the usage experience
with others?

What are the input and output tools of
mobile and internet?

Compare the number and function of
button conventions

i on
Source: Mobile content – by Fathom, 2004
s s
cu
Di s
 140

Mobile killer application: killing time

 Provide consistent navigation mechanisms.

 Clearly identify the target of each link.
 Provide a short but descriptive page title.
 Keep the number of externally linked resources to a
minimum.
 Limit content to what the user has requested.
 Take into account the trade-off between having too
many links on a page and asking the user to follow too
many links to reach what they are looking for.
 Avoid free text entry where possible. Provide pre-
selected default values where possible.
 Provide only minimal navigation at the top of the page.
 Ensure that information conveyed with color is also
available without color.
 Do not use images that cannot be rendered by the
device. Avoid large or high resolution images except
where critical information would otherwise be lost.
Source: Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0
http://www.w3.org/TR/mobile-bp/

„Following a UK field study, 70% of users decided not to continue using WAP. Currently, its services are
poorly designed, have insufficient task analysis, and abuse existing non-mobile design guidelines. WAP's
killer app is killing time; m-commerce's prospects are dim for the next several years.”
Source: Jakob Nielsen, WAP Field Study Findings, 2000 http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20001210.html
 141

Mobile values: fast, immediate

SMS, MMS (push) WAP, PDA (pull)
On-event alerts, breaking news Continuously updated summaries
„Who, what, when” only News in 2 minutes: facts only
Personalized Categorized

wap.bleskovky.sk
 142

! Exercise: Mobile abbreviations searching their

meaning

1. SMS A) Small PC with touchscreen

E) Multimedia message

2. MMS

C) Short text message

3. PDA

D) Browsable content on mobile

4. WAP
B) Mobile data connection,
without time limitation
5. GPRS

Never mind if you fail this exercise. You as a

journalist should not learn all the marketing
jargon of the mobile business. If you need
technical help, just the free helpdesk of your
mobile operator.
 143

The journalists’ Swiss-army knife

You are making mobile calls all day to reach news sources and confirm information. But the
small soap box in your pocket offers far more to a journalist than voice communication.

Tips to get the most out of your

smartphone:

Record podcast interviews with
built-in MP3 recorder function.

Enrich your blog with simple self-
made videos.

Put the most important reference
books to your pocket, eg.
dictionaries.

Connect to the content The sound and video recording quality of recent smartphones and
management system of your are sufficient for publishing videoblogs or audio podcasts. The
recorded files can easily be transferred to PC or sent directly to
newsroom.
your editor at home.

Receive news alerts in SMS.
(See CNN’s service earlier.)

Follow the same RSS newsfeeds
as you read on desktop PC.

Subscribe to e-mail newsletters
and read them while commuting.

Dictionaries are perhaps the most valuable add-on software for

journalists. Tons of books in your pocket. Add-on software are
usually shareware: after the trial period you have to register.
 144

The journalists’ … (cont.)

Google optimizes your favourite desktop services to the small screen of the mobile. In addition
it helps you to keep your personal data synchronized.

Search result of the term
„define:helium” on
www.google.com/xhtml
Try the same search on
desktop and compare
the results.
The mobile version of
Google’s feedreader
transfers your reading
experience from desktop
to mobile. You do not
have to read again on
desktop what you have
already read on mobile.
Configure Google
Reader on your desktop
and then go to
www.google.com/reader/
m on your mobile.
Gmail offers an almost
complete mobile access
to all its features at
mail.google.com/mail/x
Alternatively you may
download a free add-on
software that provides
full compatibility with the
desktop version.
 145

How to download wallpaper or ringtone?

The first download is not easy, it is not your fault, if something is not working. Call your mobile
operator’s (Vodafone, T-Mobile, etc.) free customer care service for help.
Unfortunately there is no agreement between mobile phone handset manufacturers for the rules
of mobile content downloads. The result is disturbing: SonyEricsson owners have to go through
different menu options than Nokia owners.

PET PET Download

http://195.70.54.216/a
spdl/dls/6915d0b3653
45532cb4187933911
3bc8bb6117ac

Send an SMS with the
word advertised in the
newspaper
If you cannot find this
message, call your mobile
operator’s customer care.
You will receive an
SMS with a link. You
can find it in your
browser or message
inbox, depending on
what mobile you
have.
Click on the link, this
will automatically
open in the browser of
your mobile phone.
Click on the link, this Set the image as a
will start the download wallpaper.
of your wallpaper.
Save it to some
folder. If you cannot download, call
your mobile operator’s
customer care to activate
WAP service on your SIM
card.
 146

! Exercise: mobile browsing

Compare the following mobile portals according to the criteria below:

Media portals:

BBC - www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/pda (WAP version also available)

New York Times - mobile.nytimes.com

Nepszabadsag (HU) – wap.nol.hu

Novy Cas (SK) – wap.bleskovky.sk
Operator portals:

T-Mobile - wap.t-zones.hu, wap.t-zones.sk, wap.t-zones.cz

Vodafone – live.vodafone.com
Operator portals are usually available only in the network of the respective operator.

Criteria:

Title page: What can you find on the titlepage? Articles, images?

Click distance: How much time/click does it take to get the latest news?

Optimized: Are the news optimized for reading on mobile screen?

What is the difference between operator and media portals?

Check further content offers at the operators’ portal: 3G video, content download, services

In Hungary, check tariffs: http://www.tantusz.nhh.hu

 147

Mobile searching and content integration

Mobile searching is context sensitive - Google, Yahoo! and

Microsoft have all entered the mobile advertising business. Yahoo’s
oneSearch and the beta version of Google Mobile provides similar
user experience: if a user enters „pizza” as a search term, the result
will contain a list of local restaurants as well as phone numbers with a
click-to-call feature, the distances to locations and ratings.
Mobile browser vs. branded client - Google Mobile goes for using
the built-in browser of the mobiles, while Yahoo’s oneSearch also
offers a branded downloadable user interface.
Ad-supported free services - Vodafone - which has teamed up with
Yahoo - is considering to offer customers free mobile TV, cheap calls,
free mobile web browsing or free games and music downloads if they
Yahoo! Go provides location sensitive
accept adverts. search, news, data, images plus
your mailbox in a single tool.

Integrated content services - A couple of years ago Lonely Planet

Driving or walking? – A travel companion
integrating navigation, internet browsing, mp3
and photos
released the mobile versions of its guidebooks, but currently they are
rethinking their strategy. All of the building blocks for the ultimate
travelling companion are here, but not together in one place yet.
Mobile technology and Web 2.0 - The ultimate aim is for you to turn
up in Kathmandu, your phone will know where you are, you can read a
review of somewhere to eat and what it costs, find out what someone
said about the place last night, get a map to direct you there, and
submit your own review after you’ve eaten. Hopefully decrasing
roaming fees will also support such services.

Sources: MocoNews.net, Wall Street Journal Nov 30, 2006

 148

Game and music download for a mass market

Mobile games: limited audience - Mobile games will only ever
appeal to a limited audience: so far only around 5% of mobile
users have ever purchased a game.
Simple, casual games - For a mass audience casual
entertainment games are far more attractive than more
sophisticated games with console-like features. Casual games so
far have not provided sufficient entertainment, and have actually
discouraged cell phone users from purchasing another game.
Entry barriers - In most cases it is not possible to try the game
before purchasing, contrary to buying PC software. As a result the
majority of purchasers do not return after the first experience.

Mobile music is expensive -

The early adopters of mobile
music didn’t care too much
about price, it was more the
immediacy.
Mass market pricing - Mass-
market needs to be approached
differently. It’s not just about
price but new service models,
such as music rentals. For
Asphalt multiplayer example, for €14 per month,
mobile game. Too users can download an
complicated for the unlimited number of tracks.
average customers.

Source: MocoNews.net, Mobile Frontiers, Febr. 2007

 149

How will make money on mobile TV?

Frustrating user experience - Some
consumers are so obsessed with TV
viewing, they will watch their favourite
programme on a handset despite the
limited screen size. But according to
analysts Informa Telecoms and Mobile,
just 10% of handsets sold globally by
2011 - about 120 million - will be able to
receive TV broadcasts. many people will
just not want to watch television on such
a small screen.

3G is unsuitable - High-speed connections on

the 3G network enable pockets of information to
be watched on mobiles, but this bears a heavy
load on network. Competing technologies (DAB-
IP and DVb-H) are being trialled by phone
manufactures to let more people watch the same
shows simultaneously.

Value chain - However, most of the revenues

are likely to go to broadcasters and programme
makers. Mobile TV cannot make much direct
Dilemma of user experience – Mobile phones money to operators. Therefore NTT Docomo
were primarily designed for holding them close to decided to invest in TV broadcasters to develop
your ears. Larger screen does not fit to your additional revenue streams.
hands.
Sources: BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6169442.stm, Mobile Frontiers, Febr. 2007
 150

Background: usability
 151

News sites fight for readers’ attention

30s -2mn
More than17%
50% of the visits are under 2 min

Avg. internet usage: 1-2 hours/day 2mn-5mn

16%
and news is just no. 3 motivation
5mn-15mn
0%

Other 15mn-30mn
41% 7%

30mn-1h
8%

0s-30s
1h+
44%
8%
d

bs
g
ch
l

ws

s
es
ai

a
le

in

lo

Jo
m

ar

cl
Ne

ab

nk

wn
E-

ti
Se

Ba
ar

et

do
m
e

server statistics of nemzetisport.hu

in

Ti

e
az

ar
ftw
ag

Source: WEMF Report April 2006 http://www.wemf.ch/

M

So

Videos are viewed for 2 and half minutes

„[On YouTube] the average video length viewed is 2 1/2

minutes long, said Hurley. „

YouTube CEO and co-founder Chad Hurley

Source: Market Watch Jul 27, 2006, http://www.marketwatch.com

 152

Importance of usability
Users’ experience of various media channels are studied by usability
experts. Jakob Nielsen has specialized in the usability of information
technology products, like websites. Website usability is studied with so-
called eye-tracking research.

Nielsen’s definition of usability:

Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the

first time they encounter the design?

Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they
perform tasks?

Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not
using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency?

Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these
errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?

Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?

If the number of users of a product

has reached a critical mass, even the
most rational innovations in the
usability of the product are often
refused by the users. For example
Microsoft has difficulties to introduce
new user interface for its most popular
software.

Source: Jakob Nielsen, Usability 101 http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html

 153

How do you read the title page of a news site?

Priority zones of a titlepage Eye-movement on a newspaper homepage

Research findings of the Poynter Institute:

 Most important: flag/logo and top headlines in the upper left.

 Headlines dominate, especially in the upper left.
 Photographs aren't typically the entry point to a homepage. Text rules on the PC screen.
 Smaller type encourages focused viewing behavior, while larger type promotes lighter scanning.
 A headline has less than a second of visitor’s attention.
Source: Poynter Institute http://www.poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004
 154

News website comparison at Poynter

5 typical designs
were compared by

time spent,

details found,

clicks generated.

The „compact” web

design was the
winner. (For details
see nex page.)

Time spent, sec. 16.4

Details found 22.3

Clicks made 2.4

Time spent, sec. 12.1

Details found 17.1

Best practice
Clicks made 2.2

Source: Poynter Institute http://poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/homepages.htm

 155
Top story promoted with
photo/graphic and
Compact design Links to sites/products by significantly larger stylized
same company at top of type.
page.

Search on top- Design is tight

most position and packed,
not much
empty space
Site/publication used between
elements
name must
colorful
element on the
page. Takes up
small
percentage of Beyond top
home page. story, others
promoted with
relatively the
Site navigation same headline
on left side of size.
homepage

Mouse rollover
of section links
provide pop up http://www.msnbc.msn.com/ No full stories on titlepage.
menu of all About 20 promos/links to
items in section other stories.
 156

Similarly to general design, there are no overall true mandatory rules in web
design either. In our days the compact titlepage is a widespread practice,
however, those are the most successful who are brave enough to break the
rules.
On a compact web page, navigation is used more. On an extended
homepage, the navigation is likely to be used less, so be sure there are
content links on the homepage to areas of the site you want people to visit.
By removing content from the homepage and making it compact, you can
change user behavior: using the navigation to dive into the site for more
content.
By limiting the amount of content on a homepage, you can drive viewing to
advertising on the page..
People view the top part of a news site's homepage first.

Exercise:
Analyse the website of your newspaper: does
it have a compact design?
Identify the compact features on the page!

Web usability tips
Error messages. 404 – not found errors must be handled
with the brand name of the publication, there must be a
statement, that the error was on our side, and there must
be a site map or menu, which will drive back the reader to
the content.
Source: Internal usability guideline of Ringier online sites, January 2006.
157
Wired Magazine: step-by-step
instructions on how to find the
desired content.

Avoid long pages, at least long start pages.
The maximum recommended page length is
3 screen on a 1024x768 monitor resolution.

Avoid too many sections. The maximum
recommended number of sections in a
publication is 10

Clearly distinguish advertisement from
editorial content or link. Use (x), or display
„avertisment” around the banner, box or link.

Display release date of the news on the
start page.

Metatags has to contain the name of the
publication, company brand and the titles of
the section. Additional keywords are
recommended. Metatag is a simple hidden
code in the webpage.

The sites must be available with and
without www. Example: www.blesk.cz and
blesk.cz must point to the same page.
 158

Market statistics

Please note that this is a fast moving market. Check up-

to-date date at the original sources.
 159

Web top10

Sweden France Germany

Microsoft 79.61 Microsoft 82.26 Google 71.88

Google 50.86 Google 80.46 Microsoft 64.11

Aftonbladet Hierta 41.64 France Telecom 65.06 eBay 55.00

Eniro (search engine) 41.28 Iliad (telecom) 55.88 United Internet 45.32

Bonnier AB 35.42 Yahoo! 46.34 Time Warner 42.51

FöreningsSparbanken 28.46 PagesJaunes (post) 46.29 T-Online 40.96

Blocket (classified) 28.41 PPR 45.85 Amazon 32.24

TeliaSonera 27.78 eBay 44.52 Yahoo! 30.96

Yahoo! 26.92 Benchmark Group 32.20 Bertelsmann 28.94

Counties of Sweden 25.99 Wikipedia 28.52 Wikipedia 28.62

Switzerland United Kingdom United States

Google 76.91 Microsoft 74.47
Microsoft 68.87

Microsoft 75.61 Google 71.15

Google 63.09

Swisscom 53.88 Yahoo! 48.93

Yahoo! 62.48

Yahoo! 32.09 eBay 47.93

Time Warner 59.63

eBay 30.81 BBC 42.35

News Corp. Online 37.83

Wikipedia 28.48 Time Warner 29.45

eBay 36.98

SBB (railroad) 27.07 News Corp. Online 27.29

IAC (ask.com) 29.20

search.ch (post) 25.51 Amazon 25.47

Amazon 27.52

SRG SSR (public TV) 23.73 IAC (ask.com) 22.03

Apple Computer 22.73

Apple Computer 22.64 Apple Computer 21.51

RealNetworks, Inc. 21.66

Source: www.nielsen-netratings.com (Dec. 2006) Companies in term of internet reach (in %)

Clear winners are telecom companies as well as computer or internet start-ups.

Most of them are providing news and entertainment on their homepages and therefore acting as serious
competitors to classical media companies (publishing companies are emphasised with orange).
 160

Example: German publishers - Lost the lead of communication market

Print Online

Nr Title Periodicity Circulation Nr Title Visits

1 Bild Daily 3.6 mio. 1 T-Online 246 mio.

2 TV 14 Bi-weekly 2.4 mio. 2 MSN 192 mio.

3 TV Spielfilm Bi-weekly 2.2 mio. 3 yahoo 134 mio.

4 Bild am Sonnatag Weekly 2 mio. 4 ProSieben Online 123 mio.

5 TV Digital Bi-weekly 1.9 mio. 5 AOL 101 mio.

6 TV-Movie Bi-weekly 1.8 mio. 6 SPIEGEL ONLINE 63 mio.

7 Hörzu Weekly 1.6 mio. 7 Bild.de 38 mio.

8 Auf einem Blick Weekly 1.5 mio. 8 Knuddels.de (chat) 32 mio.

9 Bild der Frau Weekly 1.1 mio. 9 mobile.de (car classified) 29 mio.

10 Der Spiegel Weekly 1.1 mio. 10 My Video 26 mio.

Only dailies, weeklies and bi-weeklies, Period: 3Q 2006 Google has not been audited but is supposed to be on the very top
of the list, Period: Nov. 2006

Source: www.ivw.de
* .Only dailies, weeklies and bi-weeklies
** Google has not been audited but is supposed to
be on the very top of the list
The only print publishers on the list (emphasised with orange) appear with relative weak
figures compare to market leaders
There are no publishers among the online market leaders. But leaders like T-Online, Yahoo! or
Google are competitors to publishers for they provide news and content.
 161

The English communication market

Print (newspapers) Online

Title Periodicity Title

Nr Sold copies Nr Unique visitors

1 News of the world Weekly 3.4 mio. 1 BBC Online 82.3 mio.

2 The Sun Daily 3 mio. 2 Sky 13.9 mio.

3 The Mail on Sunday Weekly 2.3 mio 3 Guardian unlimited 12.7 mio.

4 The Daily Mail Daily 2.3 mio. 4 Times Online 9 mio.

5 The Daily Mirror Daily 1.9 mio. 5 The Sun Online 7.5 mio.

Excluded are association’s or specialized distributions.. Google and Yahoo are not showing any visitors figures but
Period: 3Q 2006 according to the page impressions figures they are supposed to be
the very top of the list. Period: from Mar 2005 to Nov 2006
Source: www.abce.org.uk

* Excluded are association’s or specialized distributions.

** Google and Yahoo are not showing any visitors figures but
according to the page impressions figures they are supposed
to be the very top (emphasised
of the list.
Contrary to Germany, English publishers with orange) could defend their position
as leaders *** BBC
of the is a state
online owned andmarket.
communication subsidized company
But strong brands like Yahoo! or Google (as well as BBC) are competitors to publishers
because they provide news and content.
 162

The Swiss communication market

Print Online

Title Periodicity Title

Nr Sold copies Nr Unique visitors

1 20 Minuten (free) Daily 419‘684

Source: www.wemf.ch
1 Bluewin 4 mio.

2 Beobachter Weekly 315’081

* Excluded are association’s or specialized distributions.

2 Search.ch 2.3 mio.

3 Sonntagsblick Weekly 272’425 3 Blick Online 1 mio.

** Free distribution
4 Blick Daily 254’657 4 NZZ Online 973‘000

*** Google and Yahoo are not audited but are supposed to be
the
5 Schweizer Illustrierte Weekly 232’519 5 20 Minuten 956‘000

very top of the list.

Excluded are association’s or specialized distributions. Google and Yahoo are not audited but are supposed to be the very
Period: 3Q 2006 top of the list. Period: Nov 2006

On the online communication market, Swiss publishers have to fight against outsiders to
defend their leaders position.
Other companies not audited as Google or Yahoo! are providing news and acting as
competitors for publishers.
 163

Example - In Germany print declines while online rises

Print market Online ad

- 5%

+ 42%

+ 35%
+ 16% + 4%
+ 20%
Source: www.ivw.de
http://www.studie-deutschland-online.de/index.html
- 18%

Sold circulation (in mio. copies) In mio. EUR

* Jan to Nov 2006

While the print market is in continuous decline, the internet penetration as observed a fantastic
success.
Ad revenues are rising in an impressive way and now represent 3.5 % of the total ad
revenues. This quote already passed above 10% on the US market.
The money put on online advertising is not new money in ad investment. (Rupert Murdoch)
 164

Appendix
 Circle the letter of the correct option!
Question Options 165
1 Which genre is A Story B Article C Report D News
considered
objective, factual,
but requires

TEST personal
experience?
2 How to count the A Sold copies, B Eladott újság, C Nyomott D Eladott újság,
number of subscriptions, internetes példány, egyedi előfizetők,
readers reached unique internet oldalletöltések internet és internet
by the Nemzeti and WAP és háttérkép WAP látogatók látogatások,
Sport brand? visitors. letöltések és oldalletöltés SMS letöltések.

3 Who is the A Szonda-Ipsos B Medián C Gfk D AGB

accepted audit
company in the
Hungarian
internet?
4 What is an online A Questions B A series of C Interview that is D Moderated

Thank you for participating in this course. interview? arrives via e- questions- available in discussion
mail, answers, where mp3 via the between
Please, evaluate your progess by interviewee the journalist's internet. readers and
replies on a questions are the interviewee.
completing in the below test. forum. highlighted.

5 What editorial A Few ads, plenty B Highlights, C Links, D Short lead,

methods support of images and short references, concise title,
the best news clear sub paragraphs, underlined illustrations in
reading on the headings. concise text, keywords. video and
internet? boxes. photo.

6 What is the most A The type of B Anonymity of C A blog cannot D Blog can be
significant hierarchy comments: this be moderated. launched by
difference between is available on anybody, but
between forums participants. forums only. this is not true
and blogs? to a forum
topic.
7 What is the A There is no B Feedreader C Feedreader is D Feedreader is
advantage of significant shows RSS able to display able to read
Feedreader over difference and SMS same all your RSS Nemzeti Sport
live.com? between them. time. feeds together feeds as well.
ordered by date
of post.
8 How much time A Three ours per B 20 minutes per C Daily one hour D In small towns
do we spend with day, and this is day and news internet and 10 minutes per
internet and what spent mostly reading is at news reading is day, in the
is the significance with news the 3rd place of no. 3 in capital city it is
of news reading - reading. significance importance 3 hours per
according to order. ranking. day. News
market research reading is no.
data? 2, following e-
mail.
9 What makes the A Because B Because C Because this D Because this is
clear title and lead readers are Google search goes to WAP. what RSS
important on less educated. is based on the readers
internet? title and lead highlight and
text. manage.

10 What is needed A Mobile phone B Mobile phone, C Mobile phone, D Phone, WAP,
for WAP and a GPRS WAP service GPRS and CSD and
browsing? network. activated and MMS settings GPRS
phone settings in the phone. services.
accordingly.

11 Which channel A SMS news B WAP news C MMS service D E-mail

allows you to newsletter.
correct news after
publication?
 166
Question Options

1 Do you use web A Yes, regularly, B Yes, but only if C Yes, but very D No, this is not
in your work for every day the topic rarely needed for my
finding requires work
background
info?

2 Have you ever A Yes, I did. B No, I have not C I tried, without D Not yet.
bought anything bought success, print
on web or with anything, but ads are still
the help of web? found useful better.
advertisement
(eg. second-
hand car)
For trainers 3 Do you have A Yes, for private B Yes, but I use it C No, my family D No, I do not
private e-mail issues I always very rarely. has a common need that.
address? use that. mail account.
Before starting your
training you might 4 How many SMS A 5 or more B Maximum 5 C Sometimes 1 or 2 D I do not need it.
do you send in a
want to get an day?
overview on
participants’ general 5 How often do A Min. 3 times a B Sometimes, not C I tried already D I did not try it, I
attitude to new you use WAP? week regularly do not need it

media. Ask them to

fill in this test. 6 How do you A I archive them B My C I take digital D I do not have
process your to PC and print child/husband photos with my any digital
personal digital them at home. does it or I take mobile and keep camera.
photos? the camera to a them there.
service shop.

7 What is the A Among top 50 B Among top 10 C Among top 3 D I do not know, I
position of your am not involved
company on the in this
local internet
market?

8 What is "RSS" A News, B Text display on C Sending image D I have never

about? information new radios with mobile met this term
phone
 167

Recommended newsfeeds

It is strongly recommended to check and read the sites that are indicated as sources
of this book. In addition newsfeeds of the below sites keep you updated on 21st
century journalism.

Editors’ Weblog - http://www.editorsweblog.org/

Journalism.co.uk - http://journalism.co.uk/

What’s next: innovations in newspapers - http://www.innovationsinnewspapers.com/

Online Journalism Review - http://www.ojr.org/

Teaching Online Journalism - http://tojou.blogspot.com/

Poynter Online - http://www.poynter.org/subject.asp?id=26

Crowdsourcing - http://crowdsourcing.com/

Cyberjounalist.net - http://www.cyberjournalist.net/

Readership Institute - http://www.readership.org/

NewsDesigner.com - http://www.newsdesigner.com/
 168

Further sources on the CD insert

[ A dirlist.doc file tartalma, több hasábbra tördelve ]

 169

RESERVE