Google News Editors’ Picks
Google leaves its algorithm-centricism: adds serendipity to Google News via Editors’ Picks; http://eicker.at/GoogleNewsEditors
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Gerrit Eicker
Facebook Editions
Forbes: Facebook is getting into the news business with Facebook Editions, app versions of news outlets; http://eicker.at/FacebookEditions
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Gerrit Eicker
Forbes: “Facebook is thinking less and less about how to grow that number and more about how to get current users to live more of their lives within its virtual walls. One answer it has come up with: asking a select number of news outlets to produce ‘Facebook editions’ – basically, app versions of themselves that can be read and consumed right there on Facebook. – About a dozen news outlets are currently participating, including CNN, the Washington Post and The Daily, according to sources familiar with the project. The first Facebook editions are expected to arrive later this year, perhaps in September. … Now that Facebook is known to be at work on a parallel initiative, however, it could change the dynamic for publishers, who may find playing one against the other gives them leverage they lacked until now.”
VB: “For years, news organizations have been using Twitter more than Facebook to get their messages out and publicize breaking news. So it makes sense that Facebook would be interested in building customized news applications and improving relationships with major news outlets. Back in April, Facebook even expressed a desire to have better relationships with journalists.”
IF: “Facebook itself has recently been on a campaign to increase its presence in the media ecosystem, which we assume this latest effort is a part of. In the past year it has hired social media marketers to help it develop and promote best practices for journalists, provided training events for media, and published guides and studies showing how to use Facebook features (especially Pages) for maximum value. Media companies, including the BBC and Warner Brothers and various musicians, have also been testing selling media content using its virtual currency, Credits – efforts that have been primarily independent, although presumably encouraged by Facebook. … The speculation around possible Credits and ads revenue here are reflections of Facebook’s oft-stated goal of being the main way that people find and share information that matters with people they care about. Without any additional revenue streams, simply getting a stronger two-way flow of content-driven traffic can help it create more value for users, and make more money from its existing ad inventory.“
Gerrit Eicker
eReaders
Pew: 12% of American adults own an eReader (doubled between November and May!), 8% own a tablet computer; http://eicker.at/eReaders
Gerrit Eicker
Metered Paywalls
Newspapers can tailor their pricing structure rather than use a one size fits all-approach; http://eicker.at/MeteredPaywalls
Gerrit Eicker
The Audience is Listening. Online.
Every media sector is losing audience now except online; http://eicker.at/NewsMedia2011
Gerrit Eicker
News Consumption is Online.
46% of people say they get news online at least 3 times a week, surpassing newspapers (40%); http://eicker.at/NewsMedia2011
Gerrit Eicker
News Consumption: Online vs. Print
Online news consumption continues to grow, surpassed print newspapers in ad revenue and audience; http://eicker.at/NewsMedia2011
Gerrit Eicker
State of the News Media 2011
Pew: 8th annual report on health and status of American journalism; State of News Media 2011: http://eicker.at/NewsMedia2011
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Gerrit Eicker
The state of the U.S. news media improved in 2010, at least in comparison with a dismal 2009. Newspapers were the only major media sector to see continued ad revenue declines, down 6.4%. (After our report was published, the Newspaper Association of America released its final tally and put the drop at 6.3%.) But as online news consumption continues to grow – it surpassed print newspapers in ad revenue and audience for the first time in 2010 – a more fundamental challenge to journalism also became clearer. The news industry in the digital realm is no longer in control of its own future, according to the State of the News Media report from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.
Online, news organizations increasingly depend on: independent networks to sell their ads, on aggregators and social networks to deliver a substantial portion of their audience, and now, as news consumption becomes more mobile, on device makers (such as Apple) and software developers (Google) to distribute their content. And the new players take a share of the revenue and in many cases, also control the audience data.
“In a world where consumers decide what news they want and how they want to get it, the future belongs to those who understand the audience best, and who can leverage that knowledge with advertisers,” said PEJ Director Tom Rosenstiel. “Increasingly that knowledge exists outside of news companies.”
These are some of the conclusions in the eighth annual State of the News Media report, which takes a comprehensive look at the health and status of the American news media: This year’s study includes detailed looks at the eight major sectors of media. The special reports this year include a survey about the role of mobile technology in news consumption and the willingness of people to pay for their local newspaper online, a look at emerging economic models in community news and a study of how the U.S. newspaper business is faring compared with other nations.
The Who Owns the News Media database allows users to compare companies by various indicators, explore each media sector and read profiles of individual companies. And in the Year in the News Interactive, users can explore PEJ’s comprehensive content analysis of media performance based on 52,613 stories from 2010.
Among the study’s key findings:
Mobile has already become an important factor in news: Nearly half of all Americans (47%) now get some form of local news on a mobile device, according to a new survey in this year’s report, produced by PEJ with Pew Internet and American Life Project in partnership with the Knight Foundation. As of January 2011, 7% of Americans reported owning some kind of electronic tablet, nearly double the number four months earlier. But the movement to mobile doesn’t guarantee a revenue source. To date, even among early adaptors, only 10% of those who have downloaded local news apps paid for them.
Online outpaces newspapers: Fully 46% of people now say they get news online at least three times a week, surpassing newspapers (40%) for the first time. Only local TV news is a more popular platform in America now (50%). In another milestone, more money was spent on online advertising than on newspaper advertising in 2010: Online advertising overall grew 13.9% to $25.8 billion in 2010, according to data from eMarketer. While eMarketer does not offer a print ad revenue figure, we estimate the newspaper took in $22.8 billion in print ad revenue in 2010. (We estimate online ad revenue at newspapers to be about $3 billion.)
Online news hires may have matched newspaper cuts for the first time: Large national online-only news operations began to get into the creation of original reporting in a significant way in 2010. AOL hired nearly 1,000 employees, over half of whom went to the new local news venture Patch.com. Bloomberg Government expects to number 150 journalists and analysts by the end of 2011, doubling Bloomberg’s Washington bureau and Yahoo added several dozen reporters across news, sports and finance. These hiring increases appeared to have compensated for the 1,000 to 1,500 job losses the study estimates the newspaper industry suffered in 2010.
More grim news for newspapers: The newspaper sector endured another year of revenue and audience declines. Advertising revenues fell by roughly 6.4% in 2010 from the year before. Weekday circulation fell 5% and Sunday fell 4.5%. Seven of the top 25 newspapers in the United States are now owned by hedge funds, which had virtually no role in the industry a few years ago. Many of these new owners are turning to other outsiders to turn the business around. One potential silver lining is the finding that 23% of Americans said they would pay $5 a month for an online version of their local paper if the print version were to perish.
Every media sector is losing audience now except online: For the first time in at least a dozen years, the median audience declined at all three cable news channels. CNN suffered most with median prime-time viewership, falling 37% in 2010; Fox lost 11%, and MSNBC 5%. In aggregate, the median viewership fell 13.7% across the entire day in 2010. Prime-time median viewership fell even more, 16% to an average of 3.2 million, according to PEJ’s original analysis of Nielsen Market Research data. Daytime fell 12%.
Local TV wins 2010 revenue race: Among traditional media, local TV may have had the best year financially. Revenue rose 17%, exceeding projections, thanks in part to a 77% increase in auto advertising and a record $2.2 billion in political advertising for the midterm elections. And, to boost audience, local TV has added newscasts at 4:30 AM in 69 cities; more than double the startups in that time slot a year ago. Nonetheless, when adjusted for inflation, average station revenue has still dropped by almost half in the past nine years.
AM FM radio listening may be on the brink of a major change – and decline: Radio has remained among the most stable media platforms, largely because AM and FM remained the primary listening format in automobiles. That may be about to change. Toyota is about to put online radio in all its models and Pandora has made an agreement with Pioneer that would include its online radio service in the cars of at least six additional auto manufacturers by the end of 2011. Meanwhile, Audio’s foray into HD radio seems to be failing. Only 31% of Americans have even heard of it and the number of stations converting to HD dropped substantially in 2010.
The report is the work of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, a nonpolitical, nonpartisan research institute: The study is funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and was produced with the help of a number of collaborators, including Rick Edmonds of the Poynter Institute, Deborah Potter of Newslab and a host of industry readers.
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Plumber Stoke
Its true. This is what most printing companies were worried about a decade ago. How has this affected the development of new printing technology… esspecially for newpapers ?
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Gerrit Eicker
Well, there’s eInk, eReaders with different screen technologies, publication systems etc. pp. – Anyway, personally I do not believe in a recovery of “print”. At least not in developed countries. Print’s got a hype around the world, but not where electronic devices have taken over…
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Gerrit Eicker
Local News Mobile
Pew: 47% of American adults get at least some local news and information mobile; http://eicker.at/LocalNewsMobile
Gerrit Eicker
Narrative
Rosen: Making facts public does not a public make, information alone will not inform us; http://eicker.at/Narrative
Gerrit Eicker 08:10 on 6. August 2011 Permalink |
Google News Help: “Editors’ Picks is a feature that showcases original, innovative news content that a news publisher has on their site at any given time. This content may include long-form narrative articles, slideshows, interactive graphics, or video stories, just to name a few possibilities. – The links you see in Editors’ Picks are hand-picked by the news organization whose logo is displayed above the links. Google News does not select the articles. – If you are a News publisher and wish to submit an Editors’ Picks feed to Google News, please review our guidelines and documentation first.”
Google: “Google News is introducing a new section in the right-hand column of the U.S. edition. The section is called ‘Editors’ Picks,’ and it displays original content that publishers have selected as highlights from their publications. This is the latest addition to recent improvements we’ve made to the variety and presence of stories and multimedia on Google News. – An array of news organizations, including local, national and niche publishers, are now using Editors’ Picks to display their best, most engaging content. Because Google News relies on algorithms, Editors’ Picks will always be just that- picks provided by publishers themselves, and not by Google. … You may have first noticed Editors’ Picks as an experiment last year. Based on the data from that experiment, we have been working with nearly two dozen publishers in recent months and have seen a positive response from readers and publishers alike: readers get the news they’re interested in from the sources they trust, and publishers receive higher traffic to their websites.”
Nieman: “When Google News launched in 2002, it did so with some declarations: ‘This page was generated entirely by computer algorithms without human editors.’ And: ‘No humans were harmed or even used in the creation of this page.’ – That core approach – computerized curation, algorithmic authority, NoMo sapiens – has served Google News well in the nearly-a-decade it’s been around… Editors’ Picks, a display of original content that journalists (human ones!) have selected as editorial highlights from their publications. … That’s a big deal, and only partially because of Google News’ traditional algo-centricism. … In addition to providing users with more good content, Editors’ Picks might also pave the way for more effective partnerships with news publishers. … For publishers, Editors’ Picks is also a way to highlight brand identity within a platform that has tended to emphasize news stories over news institutions. … It takes the notion of serendipity, in other words, and applies it to news organizations themselves.”
SEL: “More than a year after the experiment began, Google News has brought Editor’s Picks to the home page of its US site – marking the first real human-curated content on what Google has proudly said was always a completely algorithmic way of presenting news. – It could also be seen as something of an olive branch toward publishers, especially given the shaky relationship that’s existed between the two.”
SEW: “This appears to be a win-win for everyone involved. News publishers now have a mechanism to let Google know what their featured stories are. – Readers will be able to see additional content in the form of these features. As a result, Google will likely see a boost in on-site time and stickiness. Clearly the number of articles you read will help you collect Google News badges. – However, bringing search back into the conversation for a moment: since these articles are hand-picked by the editors – which may include editorials and paid features – will this adversely affect relevancy?“