21st Century Journalism (Ver. 13 Apr)

Slide 1: 21st Century Journalism A Practical Guide International edition Belgrade - Bratislava - Budapest – Bucharest – Prague – Zürich *** work-in-progress version of 2nd English edition *** Last modified: 13 Apr, 2007 Edited by László Turi, 2007

Slide 2: 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 www.21stCenturyJournalism.com 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.

Slide 3: 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.

Slide 4: 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. In this book you will find Hungarian examples, but in digital format we already elaborated a Romanian version and also are working on other local Eastern-European versions. „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. 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@ringier.hu & andras.nyiro@ringier.hu

Slide 5: 5 Credits Author and editor: Laszlo TURI, Regional project manager of Ringier e-media services. -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. (laszlo.turi@ringier.hu) Concept: Andras NYIRO, Regional director of E-Media at Ringier Publishing Europe. - 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. (andras.nyiro@ringier.hu) Newspaper trends: Patrick BERTSCHY, Regional project assistant of Ringier E-media. - Graduated in law, with journalist experience at German and French speaking Swiss newspapers and magazines. He also hold other positions in Swiss publishing industry. (patrick.bertschy@ringier.ch) 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. Ferenc PÉCSI, dotkommentar.hu Claudiu SERBAN, publisher, Ringier Romania

Slide 6: 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

Slide 7: 7 Introduction

Slide 8: 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?  Overview the position of your newspaper in the print and online market. In this book we used the example of Nemzeti Sport, leading Hungarian sports daily. The courses are all based on the appropriate examples of your newspaper.

Slide 9: 9 NEWSPAPER TRENDS ON DEVELOPED MARKETS

Slide 10: 10 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

Slide 11: 11 Our business is changing France: there were 33,540 newsstands in 1995. Today, only 28,275. Spain: In Barcelona an average newsstand used to sell 600 publications in 2000. Today they sell only 300 publications. UK: In 2006 – first time in history - the press advertising was behind the internet. Sources: Innovations in Newspapers, India: In the past few years this man made a modest business http://www.innovationsinnewspapers.com/index.php/2007/04/01/the-crisis-of-th by reselling those newspapers that air travellers left on the plane. http://www.innovationsinnewspapers.com/index.php/2007/03/28/uk-online-adv But he has just started searching for a new business, because Photo by Zsolt Veszelovszki people do not read newspaper on the planes any longer.

Slide 12: 12 Outline The traditional concept of newspapers changed more in the last decade than in the entire last century. The following pages will highlight the most influential parts of these changes, following the below outline: Layout  Size: why and how dailies are getting smaller?  Color: the influence of good quality color printing. Content  Tabloids: the blurring borderline between popular and reference papers.  Magazins: increasing competition improves visual quality.  Editor’s role: control over context has diminished Business model  Freesheet: low-cost mass print mass media is finding its role.  Internet: the ad-revenue based interactive media is a strategic possibility to publishers.

Slide 13: 13 The challenge of size Tabloid: 380x300 mm Berliner or midi: 470x315 mm Broadsheet: 600x380mm (halfsize of broadsheet) 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.

Slide 14: 14 Size and layout change: The Guardian 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)

Slide 15: 15 Color printing is big step towards emotional journalism

Slide 16: 16 Tabloid versus reference dailes Tabloid style and idea:  Subscriptions are limited, title page must sell the product  Simply and sensationally written  Give more prominence than serious newspapers to celebrities, sports, crime stories and even hoaxes;  They also more readily take a political position (either left- or right-wing) on news stories, ridiculing politicians, demanding resignations and predicting election results.  Bigger pictures (or different sizes) makes  The style and idea of popular tabloid press grew out from the the article more lively. Sunday papers.  Shorter texts work more accessible and less time-consuming.  Words like “catch”, “chilling” or “brazen” are very strong and emotional Both titlepages were published on 13 Dec, 2006 Source: Helen Gambles, U. Wales http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/hlg9501.html

Slide 17: 17 The Independent – case study 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

Slide 18: 18 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

Slide 19: 19 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 The headers of the various sections are clearly distinguished from the content, and are quite clear. Source: NewsDesigner.com http://www.newsdesigner.com/archives/002520.php Pages: De Morgen, 2006 April

Slide 20: 20 Magazines outstanding design  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)

Slide 21: 21 Magazines The origins of style Manuscript illustration in the Middle Ages: first page of „Illistrated Chronicle”, an early source of Hungarian history dated to the 12th century. The combination of text and image and the breaking of page grid is not new. However, due to desktop publishing the it became part of everyday popular typography. 19th century printing: a page of „ Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion”, the illuminated printing Sources: by William Blake, the multi-talent poet and typographer. Yale Center for British Art, http://www.blakearchive.org/, Hungarian National Library, http://www.kepido.oszk.hu/

Slide 22: 22 Magazines hard competition at the kiosk  Spine and other 3D design  Content promotion dominates the cover  The model is turned, folded, or strongly cropped to make room for the cover lines.  Her head overlaps the logo. (Less often, the logo overlaps the head.)  A large cover line cuts across the lower middle part of the cover, competing in size with the magazine's title.  Cover lines appear in several fonts, sizes, colors, or styles. 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)

Slide 23: 23 Magazines Advertising influences magazines Looks like… a product catalogue a magazin page Ikea Catalogue, 2007, p. 334 Madison Magazin, March 2006, p. 192 Blurred borderline between commercial product placement and newspaper content. Product marketing behaves as media.

Slide 24: 24 Editors don’t set the agenda any more 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 competitors’ articles (like in Google News) or in surprising context, eg. in the form of a desktop alert or Do not be aftraid to show your readers’ choice. as a link on a homepage. (http://www.msnbc.com/) Aggregation and personalization techniques:  Web is a barometer of public interest: eg. Las Ultimas Noticias (lun.com, Chile)  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.  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. Influence your tomorrows newspaper online (http://lun.com)

Slide 25: 25 Free-sheet: extreme low cost, ad-revenues  In the world, every day 30 mio. free newspapers are printed. Free, the new trend:  In Europe they represent 17% of the total circulation.  Internet  In Denmark more than one of two printed daily newspaper is free.  Low-cost flights  In Spain, Metro and 20 minutos are both free and market leaders.  White-label products  Tesco, Wal-Mart, etc.  Buyer communities Strengths Weakness  Easy acquisition  Quick readability  Lower quality due to lack of  Low editorial costs Free daily 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 41 countries: 30 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/

Slide 26: 26 Diversification of the free newspaper concept afternoon finance sport morning City A.M. in London 2005 thelondonpaper in London 2006 CASH daily in Switzerland 2006 El Crack 10 in Spain 2003 „Newspaper moguls Rupert Murdoch and Lord „Print your own free Rothermere are going head to head in a free up-to-date pdf!” - G24, newspaper fight, which media analysts believe could Guardian’s continuosly fatally damage the paid-for Evening Standard. […] updated free pdf Those who have seen a dummy of thelondonpaper edition is a reaction to have described it as colourful and more like a magazine freesheets from a paid than a newspaper, with a youthful approach.„ daily. The A/4 layout includes ads targeted Source: to internet users. Online Press Gazette, 17 Aug, 2006, http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/article/170806/murdoch_rothermere_london_free_n http://www.guardian.co.uk/g24 ewspaper_war

Slide 27: 27 Internet content strategy of freesheets Metro: full-featured newsportal with continuous news update, classified and banner ads. Internet is considered an independent revenue channel. http://metro.hu City A.M: for the A.M. edition the website is considered a support 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.

Slide 28: 28 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 Monthly visits internet market. Source: German Audit Institute http://www.ivw.de

Slide 29: 29 Internet strategies Content Business model Example Limited online edition – Online is Popular strategy in the just a selected part of the print promotion late ’90s newspaper. 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 B2C revenue the online content is paid-only. Eg. (Times Select) archive or exclusive content. B2C revenue – bundled with Le Monde subscription E-paper – Facsimile electronic edition of the print newspaper. Brand enforcement and ad revenue Metro – increase freesheet viewership Strategies are usually mixed, clear cases are rare.

Slide 30: 30 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 ad-revenue Guardian, LA Times, the web, ending the primacy of the 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 subscription E-paper – Facsimile electronic edition of the print newspaper. Brand enforcement and ad revenue Metro – increase freesheet viewership Strategies are usually mixed, clear cases are rare.

Slide 31: 31 YOUR READERS

Slide 32: 32 Readers: aging and turning away from dailies Age groups They are getting old… 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 & change their media Radio 202 210 200 178 174 consumption 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.

Slide 33: 33 How to measure trends? Key performance indicators Print Internet Mobile TV Registrations, Sold copies + actual Unique visitors WAP unique Number of subscriptions phone numbers readers research Reach surveys Audience poll Ad revenue, sold Revenue share Revenues Ad revenue Ad revenue copies from operators …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. unique subscriptions […] The audiences for newspaper websites tend to be phone numbers younger than those for the printed newspaper, dispelling the common misperception that young people are not engaged by newspaper content. For example, about 37 percent of the adults who visited The Sold copies x reader/copy unique visitors Washington Post’s website, WashingtonPost.com, in the past thirty days were ages 18-34. In comparison, about 26 percent of the paper’s weekly print audience (5 weekdays + Sunday) fell into this age group.” Total reach Source: Scarborough Research, http://www.scarborough.com/press_releases/INA%20FINAL%204. 7.06%20CORRECTIONS.pdf

Slide 34: 34 US media audit is already based on a combined indicator of print and online reach. Source: Newspapers by the Numbers, 2006, by Newspaper Association of America

Slide 35: ! 35 Exercise: webaudit of Nemzeti Sport UV, unique visitor: the Visit: one user number of PCs from can come back 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. Research questions: Other webmarket audits: Austria: http://www.oewa.at/ 2. What is the ranking of your site France: http:/www.ojd.com/engine/ in the Hungarian internet Germany: http://ww.pz-online.de/ market?