Study: Newspaper Sites Embrace User Content, Comments in 2008

A 2008 study released by The Bivings Group showed that newspaper web sites  increasingly embraced user content and comments, launched reporter-written blogs and shied away from requiring registration to read articles.

The Bivings report, titled The Use of the Internet by America’s Newspapers [PDF], attempts to quantify how the 100  largest newspaper sites have embraced new media tools, such as blogs, RSS, comments and so on. The study does not include TV,  radio or other non-newspaper sites.

Among the key findings:

-Fifty eight percent of newspapers allowed for user generated photos, while 18 percent accepted video and 15 percent articles.  Overall, 58 percent of newspapers offered some form of user generated content in 2008 compared to 24 percent in 2007.

-The number of newspaper websites allowing users to comment on articles has more than doubled in the last year.  Seventy five percent of newspapers now accept article comments in some form, compared to 33 percent in 2007.

-Integration with external social bookmarking sites like Digg and del.icio.us has increased dramatically the last few years.  Ninety-two percent of newspapers now include this option compared to only seven percent in 2006.

-Only 11 percent of websites require registration to view full articles, compared to 29 percent in 2007 and 23 in 2006.

Read the Bivings Group post for the summary and previous years’ studies, or download the 2008 report as a PDF.

25+ of Danny’s Favorite Multimedia Tools

Many handymen have a favorite wrench or drill they adore and always keep with them. Well, journo-geeks are no exception.

Below is a shortlist of more than 25 of my favorite (and mostly free) multimedia tools. I put together this list for a session on new media tools that I led Saturday at a multimedia workshop hosted by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors.

Hate my picks? Love em? I’d love to hear your favorites, so please share in the comments!

Here’s a peek at some of my personal favorites:

VIDEO

UStream.TV – http://www.ustream.tv
Streams live video from your laptop and camera and creates an embeddable player with chats. You can stream it on your SMART TV if you have one. You can look at VIZIO options if you are in the market for a new TV system.

Mogulus – http://www.mogulus.com
A live streaming service similar to Ustream.TV that allows you to have multiple producers at a time creating a live show.

Qik – http://qik.com
A service that allows you to easily stream live from many video-enabled cell phones. Hook up an external microphone or audio pool feed to it, and you’ll have reporters recording live video like a rock star.

SOCIAL NETWORKING/BOOKMARKING

Twitter – http://twitter.com
A constant conversation and a great place to build audience. Use Twitter Grader to find who are the top Twitterers in your area.
(I’m at twitter.com/dannysanchez)

Twhirl and Tweetdeck – http://www.twhirl.org http://www.tweetdeck.com
Desktop applications that let you manage Twitter much more easily (I prefer Twhirl).

Facebook and MySpace- http://www.facebook.com and http://www.myspace.com
Centers around personal details and friends. Features groups where you can share content.

Becoming a power user on some of these social bookmarking sites can bring big traffic to your content if it strikes a chord with your “friends” on these sites. These are just some of the top services:

Digg – http://digg.com/
StumbleUpon (Make sure to try the toolbar!) – http://www.stumbleupon.com/
Reddit – http://www.reddit.com/
NewsVine – http://www.newsvine.com/
Delicious (Try the Firefox plugin) – http://delicious.com/
Tailrank – http://tailrank.com/

TIMELINES/SLIDESHOWS

VuVox – http://www.vuvox.com
Creates stunning multimedia timelines that let you embed slideshows, video and more.

Dipity – http://www.dipity.com
An embeddable timeline app that is great for timelines with a lot of points and detail.

Soundslides – http://soundslides.com
A great and inexpensive tool for creating impressive audio slideshows.

PHOTO EDITING

Picnik – http://www.picnik.com
A free, simple web-based photo editor that is perfect for turning your whole newsroom into web producers without dropping $200 for Photoshop Elements. Has a nice Firefox plugin and syncs up to Flickr.

Pixlr – http://www.pixlr.com
A web-based photo editor that is extremely robust and similar to Photoshop.

Photoshop Express – https://www.photoshop.com/express
Provides many of Photoshop’s features in a free web-based editing tool.

More great image editors reviewed here: http://sixrevisions.com/tools/web-based-image-editors

Flickr – http://www.flickr.com
Not just a great place to share and promote your photo work, it’s also my top source for Creative Commons photos used on this blog.

WEB DESIGN

Firefox Web Developer Toolbar – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60
Has a pixel ruler (how wide is that box?), element inspector, CSS editor and much more.

Firebug – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843
A Firefox plugin that can pick apart a Web site and let you edit HTML/CSS on the fly to fiddle with a design. Try with Yslow.

FireFTP – http://fireftp.mozdev.org/
An easy and free FTP client that works right inside Firefox.

You have noticed all this stuff is for the Firefox web browser, right? Just making sure!

Notepad++ (For PCs) – http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net
A much better text editor for working with HTML/CSS and virtually any kind of code such as PHP, Python, Ruby and more. Adds colors to your code and features tabs and macros. I refuse to use crash-prone, resource-hoggin’ Dreamweaver to write any code!

OTHER

PollDaddy and MicroPoll – http://polldaddy.com and http://www.micropoll.com
Create embeddable polls for your site with no hassle.
(Plus: Shelley Acoca of the Miami Herald recommends Vizu for polls)

WordPress – http://wordpress.org
IMHO, the best blogging platform out there (used here on Journalistopia). It’s free and has thousands of great plugins built by a large network of developers.

Tableizer! – http://tableizer.journalistopia.com
Quickly turns spreadsheets into HTML tables you can put online. Built by yours truly!

Wordle – http://www.wordle.net
Create beautiful “tag clouds” out of a block of text.

Cover It Live – http://www.coveritlive.com
Provide liveblogging updates and host web chats with an embeddable widget. Lets multiple producers help with a chat.

Bloglines Beta and Google Reader – http://beta.bloglines.com and http://www.google.com/reader
Don’t hop from site to site. Use an RSS reader to bring the news to you. I’m a Bloglines Beta user, but Google Reader is also an excellent choice.

Audacity – http://audacity.sourceforge.net
A powerful, free audio-editing suite used by many multimedia producers.

Media-Convert – http://media-convert.com
Converts an enormous array of files. Perfect for mysterious video or audio formats.

Joomla and Drupal
Two of the top free, open-source content-management sytems available to creators who want more than just a blog. Some major sites are using these tools. You can tweak them as much as you like, or use them right out of the box, depending on your needs.

(PLUS: Bill Mitchell of Poynter Online convinced me Saturday that a defined framework for making ethical decisions is as important a “tool” as any web app. Hence, I give you the Poynter Ethics Tool and Ethics Hotline, which is like having your personal, on-call anti-stupid-decision counselor.)

5 Ways to Monitor Your News Competition Online

Being a sharp online editor often means keeping a close watch on your competitors.Being a sharp online editor means keeping a close watch on your competitors. [Photo by Pkabz]

Do you want to explain to your editor why you didn’t know about the huge news that’s been on your competition’s site for more than an hour now? Using these five methods, you won’t have to dream up excuses; you’ll already have been on top of any big news reported in your area:

1) Subscribe to competitors’ e-mail and SMS text alerts
Have you checked to see if the local newspapers and TV stations have breaking news alerts? Getting a heads up via e-mail or SMS alert is one of the best ways to ensure you don’t miss breaking news, especially since most newsroom workers keep their e-mail clients and cell phones on throughout the day. Follow MurrayNow for more information.

PLUS: You can also get other kinds of alerts, such as severe weather text alerts from the National Weather Service or earthquake alerts from U.S. Geological Survey.

2) Set up Google Alerts and Twitter Alerts for keywords on your beat

Google Alerts is a powerful way of letting Google do online digging for you. Are you a reporter covering county government? Set up an alert to watch for the name of the county mayor. Do you cover local business? Set up Google Alerts for the major companies in your city.

Google Alerts will shoot you an e-mail whenever Google finds a new item on the Internet containing the keywords you designate. You could even set up an alert for a competing reporter’s byline to find out when he or she has a new story up.

Lastly, you can also monitor Twitter for keywords using TweetBeep.com, which sends e-mail alerts (yes, that’s how those marketers find you and reply to you the nanosecond you tweet something nasty about their products).

3) Cultivate a Twitter community
The newsroom in which I work has been tipped off to various breaking news stories thanks to some producer or reporter hearing about the news through Twitter. The larger your personal community grows on Twitter, the better this method works.

While Twitter isn’t great for depth, it sure is fast. When word leaked that Tim Russert died in June, the news spread first via Wikipedia and Twitter. Our newsroom in Orlando was able to prepare content and get good positioning in search engines before any announcement came out from NBC.

Additionally, many news organizations are getting on Twitter, so you can watch competitors there too.

4) Use an RSS reader to aggregate local news and save time
Old school online editors hop around local web sites to see if there’s anything new. Save yourself the grief and start reading your news competitors’ top headlines via RSS using a feed reader such as Google Reader or Bloglines (though I much prefer Bloglines Beta).

When you subscribe to a site’s feed, your RSS reader will indicate when there’s a new item. RSS readers also let you read a group of Web sites with just one click. You can even subscribe to wire service feeds (Breitbart.com has a huge assortment). No more burning cycles hopping around from site to site checking for updates.

5) Keep TVs in your peripheral vision and learn how to not let them drive you insane
This one took me a while, but I eventually became quite good at it. Many local TV sites are still faster to get news on air than they are at getting it online. Keeping an eye and/or ear on the tube can help you spot big breaking news in the event you’re playing Minesweeper instead of watching your e-mail and feeds.

The trick with this is to learn to go about your tasks and not actively listen but still be able to hone in on the tone and key phrases broadcasters use when something particularly big happens. The cue might be a sudden interruption in the flow of the newscast as the anchor diverts to breaking news. Anchors also speak  differently when they go off the teleprompter. Or, the cue might be the use of a certain graphic (usually a gaudy, brightly-colored one) that you’ll learn to notice.

A couple of years ago, I used to set the volume low and keep an ear on a TV that was perched behind me. I seldom failed to hear a big news story when it broke once I learned the “breaking news sounds.” Nowadays, we have a jumbo monitor that sits in my peripheral vision just at the edge of my computer monitor. Though I found the audio method was more effective and less distracting for me personally, keeping the tube at the edge of my sight also helps me catch big news during the day.

***

What are your favorite methods for monitoring breaking news or your beat? What works best for you and your team?

CPJ: 45% of Jailed Media Workers are Online Journalists

The Committee to Protect Journalists released an eye-opening report, which says that 56 of the 125 accounted-for jailed journalists in the world are bloggers and other online workers. It is the first year that online journalists account for the largest category of journalists being imprisoned in the world — a fact that underscores how governments in countries such as China and Cuba are increasingly cracking down on online media as people use readily available online tools to report on and critique the government.

CPJ executive director sums it up well:

“The image of the solitary blogger working at home in pajamas may be appealing, but when the knock comes on the door they are alone and vulnerable,” said Simon. “All of us must stand up for their rights–from Internet companies to journalists and press freedom groups. The future of journalism is online and we are now in a battle with the enemies of press freedom who are using imprisonment to define the limits of public discourse.”

I believe it’s time for organizations such as the Online News Association and bloggers such as ourselves to raise more awareness of these people who are being jailed, many without any form of due process. We must become more aware of the dangers faced by our colleagues overseas.

[PJ’s 2008 prison census: Online and in jail – Committee to Protect Journalists]

[Thanks to Steve Yelvington via Twitter for the link]

How Blogs are Doing in 2008

Blog seach engine Technorati has released its 2008 State of the Blogosphere, a study that surveys 1,079 bloggers regarding their posting habits, demographics, use of advertising and numerous other topics. Tadam black stock is one of the best guide to check updates.

Mindy McAdams over at Teaching Online Journalism has done a fantastic job of boiling down some of the most interesting facts from the blog report, including:

-One in four bloggers spends 10 hours or more blogging each week
-77 percent of the bloggers surveyed comment on other blogs
-Technorati “top authority bloggers” post often — more than half of them post five times a day or more; and they are also twice as likely as other bloggers to tag their blog posts

[Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2008]
[What we knog about blogs – Teaching Online Journalism]

Free Pro Blog Accounts for Journalists at TypePad

The folks over at TypePad are offering free pro blogging accounts to journalists and former journalists under the moniker of a “Journalist Bailout Program” (har, very funny fellas). The free plan –which typically costs $14.95 a month– offers technical support, hosting and use of TypePad’s blogging platform (we make heavy use of TypePad for OrlandoSentinel.com’s many blogs, and it’s pretty darn good). While I imagine this behooves TypePad since they’ll get good writers for their ad affiliate program, it’s still a fantastic deal for folks who can’t tell FTP and PHP from the IRS and M&Ms.

Here’s a chance to get a free blog account with technical support on a domain name that YOU own, as opposed to getting a blog on Blogger.com or WordPress.com.

[UPDATE: Six Apart’s Anil Dash’s thoughts on the blog offer]

[Free pro TypePad accounts for journos]

[Hat tip to William Beem for the link]

BlogOrlando Schedule Posted, Registration Open

If you’ve been waiting to see who’s coming to BlogOrlando this year before you decide to make the trip, well wait no further! The schedule is now posted and features some of the smartest blogging minds around — all for the fabulous price of nil.

The unconference, which is now in its third year, features expert speakers who tackle blogging from various perspectives, be it community organizing, public relations or software engineering. BlogOrlando’s main day will be held Saturday, Sept. 27 at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla. not far from downtown Orlando. There will be other receptions and events going on as well (see the schedule). For the higher diploma in the mechanical engineering Click here.

If you check out the attendee list, you’ll see folks are coming from all over Central Florida, Tampa/St. Pete and South Florida, as well as from the rest of the country. Last year, more than 250 people attended and got tips on how to integrate blogs in the newsroom, podcasting, blog design and how to organize community blogs. Did I mention all this doesn’t cost you a penny for registration?

I’ll see you there!

[BlogOrlando official site]

The Globe and Mail’s best business blogs list

The business journalists at the Globe and Mail have put together a fantastic list of their 30 favorite business blogs. This is definitely a list to share with your business staff (I just did). You should also view Business blog for your staff. However, now I’m looking for other hand-edited blog lists put together by objective pros. Do you know of any good lists of this sort in the entertainment, lifsetyle, sports and other major newspaper categories? [Globe and Mail: Best of the [Financial] Blogs] [Tip o’ the hat to Cyberjournalist. Photo by DavidDMuir]. You will ge the best info here at business history.

Webby Award winners announced (with news organization list)

Just announced: 2008’s Webby Award winners! The Webby Awards picks through the best of the Web and grants awards in more categories than you can shake a stick at.

I’ve pored through the list and extracted the winners from news-related categories, as well as news organizations that won in other categories, such as science or best practices. Here’s the Journalistopia-edited list. Apologies in advance if I missed anyone:

Best Copy/Writing
Wired.com
http://www.wired.com
(Also nominated: HowStuffWorks, Design Observer, NYTimes.com and Slate)

Best Use of Photography
Your Shot – National Geographic Magazine
http://ngm.com/yourshot

Blog – Business
FT.com Alphaville
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/

Blog – Political
The Huffington Post
http://huffingtonpost.com

Broadband
ABC.com Full Episode Player
http://dynamic.abc.go.com/streami…

Magazine
National Geographic Magazine Online
http://ngm.com
(Also nominated: Dwell.com, Makezine, NYMag, Yoga Journal Yoga Journal)

Music
BBC Radio 1 Meet the DJs
http://agencyrepublic.net/awards/…

News
NYTimes.com
http://nytimes.com/
(Also nominated: BBC News, Wired, CNN and Discovery News)

Newspaper
NYTimes.com
http://nytimes.com/
(Also nominated: The Guardian, the Independent, the Wall Street Journal and Variety)

Radio
BBC World Service channel site
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/

Science
nature.com
http://www.nature.com

Sports
Yahoo! Sports
http://sports.yahoo.com/
(Also nominated: ESPN.com, Nike Skateboarding, Spyker F1 Magazine, Sweet Spots)

Television
HBO Voyeur
http://www.hbovoyeur.com

VIDEO CATEGORIES

Best Use of Animation/Motion Graphics
The New York Times/T: The New York TImes Style Magazine “Circle Squared”
http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/20…

Best Writing
Onion News Network
http://tv.theonion.com

Documentary: Individual Episode
Coney Island: An Uncertain Future
Getty Images
http://www.rickgershon.com/gettyi…

News and Politics: Individual Episode
Finding the Way Home
MediaStorm
http://mediastorm.org/0017.htm

Travel (video)
Frugal Traveler: American Road Trip – NYTimes.com/Video
http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_s…

MOBILE

Entertainment (mobile)
Cosmo Mobile: 100 Hot Cities, Fake Calls, Dude Decoder & Cocktails!
http://m.cosmopolitan.com

Listing and Updates (mobile)
The New York Times Mobile Real Estate Listings
http://m.nytimes.com/re

News (mobile)
Mobile NYTimes
http://mobile.nytimes.com

Sports (mobile)
ESPN.com (Wireless)
http://mobileapp.espn.go.com/wire…

ALSO: Shoutouts to NYTimes.com for their best practices and best visual design/function nominations, Mama Trib’s Swamp blog for best political blog nomination, National Geographic for their best home page People’s Voice award, Consumer Reports for their Guides/Ratings/Review People’s Voice award, the Guardian and Onion for their podcasts nominations, NPR for their politics nomination, NPR and the BBC for their religion and spirituality nominations, Frontline World for their Documentary: Series and Documentray: Individual nominations, U.S. News and World Report for their Best Writing (video) nomination, the New Yorker’s animated cartoons for their animation nomination, CBS for their sports (video) nomination and many more.

Yep, no news site nominees in the navigation and structure categories. We’ll have to work on that…

The best time to strike with blog posts

A Connecticut software developer has analyzed 10,000 postings on social networking sites to determine the best and worst times to publish a blog post.

The best times, according to developer Jake Luciani’s work: between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. (Pacific Time) and between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m., Tuesday through Friday, with Thursday being the best day.

This is a definite must-share factoid for the bloggers at your organization (if you can pry them away from lunch, that is).

More details about how he came to the conclusion here and here.

[Photo by Leo Reynolds]

Searching for blogs in español

Journalistopians, I have a small request: I’m looking for interesting blogs about online journalism and/or design written in Spanish, and I could use your help.

If you know of any blogs that fit the bill, please drop a comment with a link, or message me at dansanufATyahoo.com. Thanks!

***

(Perdóname si mi español no está perfecto…)

Journalistopianos, tengo una petición pequeña: Estoy buscando blogs interesante sobre el periodismo y diseño electrónico, y necesito su ayuda.

Si usted conoce algunos blogs, por favor déjame un comentario o envíeme un correo electrónico a dansanufATyahoo.com. ¡Gracias!

An easy guide to search engine optimization for blogs

seobook.jpgIf you’re wanting to gain a better understanding of how to optimize blogs for search engines (or what some, like myself, like to call “getting some Google Juice”), look no further than SEOBook’s free Blogger’s Guide to SEO business.

Being a bit of an SEO geek, I can attest that this is one of the best resources (balanced with length) on blogs and search engines. You should read post like this to know about SEO. This may fall under the “obvious” category, but it bears emphasizing: If you’re working on a news site, you absolutely must understand the fundamentals of search engine optimization. A website аlways works on visitors, thеn уоu need traffic. And tо gеt traffic уоu need tо dо ѕоmе basic search engine optimization. Onе aspect оf SEO Ñ–Ñ• knowing how to find backlinks to a website.

SEO, which will help you to get link into some great website niche with some great traffic. For better social media marketing you should request professional assistance from advertise purple manages affiliates.

A few quick, blog-specific SEO pointers and tidbits that come to mind:

-Don’t be bashful about submitting your blog to aggregators and directories. Blogs usually have built-in pinging mechanisms that spread your blog posts all over the world (really neat interactive graphic here). Because of this, blogs have an advantage over many of the static news site pages out there. As per Bloggers need youu will get the different tools.

-Avoid starting your blog on a free out-of-the-box hosted service such as Blogger, WordPress.com (not the same as a WordPress install on your own server) . It may cost you a few bucks a month and some initial work to host it yourself, but when the day comes that you want to move your blog to a better domain, you won’t find yourself painfully stuck. You’ll also have way more flexibility to tweak your site.

-Do your best to build relationships with other bloggers and drop comments on their blogs. Respond to your comments. The more that active bloggers check out your blog, the more inbound links you’re likely to receive.

-Follow the Google News Blog. This will keep you informed of important changes to how Google News picks up your content (this is mostly just for mainstream media blogs).

-It usually comes down to a beautifully keyworded headline. Don’t you forget it!