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The impact of organization choices / The case of French online newspapers

2006-06-09T03:15:00.000-07:00

Danielle Attias – EconomiX – Paris X Nanterre /April 2006

Summary

Key words: newspapers, Internet, transaction cost theory, organization choices, audience

Introduction

The online press industry is affected by a paradox. Since the opening of the first online newspaper, the Palo Alto Weekly, in 1994, and in France in 1995, consuming online news has become one of the first usages on the Internet: in 2005, approximately 65% of French Internet users said they had used Internet for news[2]. News websites have experienced a constant growth in terms of audience and revenues – according to the Internet Advertising Bureau France (IAB), online advertising investment has reached €471m turnover in the first semester in 2005, an increase by 72,4% compared to the first semester in 2004 – but the industry is still questioning about the right business model.

It is right to say that these ten years of development have been particularly chaotic. Apparent low barriers to entry have motivated many pure-players to invest in new brands and services online. Sites like The Standard or Slate in the United States or Transfert in France displayed ambitious objectives. The main newspapers, little by little, opened their own sites, to be part of the experience: Libération in 1995, Le Monde and The New York Times in 1996. Contents were mainly free, with the notable exception of the main economic and financial newspaper websites, like The Wall Street Journal or Les Echos. The decline of advertising resources after the end of the “Internet bubble” in 2001 had two main consequences: the closing of many “pure-players” websites and finding alternatives sources of revenues. Since then, some newspapers have come to a subscription model for their entire site, then again to a free model (like El Pais in Spain), some others, like Le Monde or The New York Times have opted for a “mixed model”, where subscribers pay for exclusive online contents and non-subscriber readers access freely to extensive news contents. Hesitations are still constant.

Struggling for survival, the industry focused on demand issues and particularly on the price that the consumer was ready to pay for news contents. In the traditional press industry, all editors have the same activity and are driven by the same objectives, on the consumer and the advertiser market: maximize newspaper and advertising sales. Yet firms distributing news content online do not all have the same activity. We compare them because their products are substitutable on the market for final consumers, but the industry groups a variety of actors which are not solely editors distributing their contents on their own channel anymore. Internet impacted newspapers so that structures organized rather hierarchically chose more diverse governance modes for their subsidiaries or departments in charge of the edition and distribution of news contents online. General portals like Yahoo or MSN entered also the market of online news and altered the equilibrium of the industry: positioned as service providers, they distribute news contents from third-party editors, enabling those to distribute their contents on other channels than their own.

Henceforth, online press firms might opt for different governance alternatives, from vertical integration to complete externalization. Some hybrid forms are also taking part of the arbitrage, like tapered integration, where the editor contracts with other editors to distribute an aggregation of contents under its brand-name on its own website, and like dual distribution, where an editor, to extend its visibility online, distributes its contents on its own website as well as other websites, under the brand-name of distributors.

The approach of this paper is to compare how firms with differentiated organizational structures reach their audience, instead of trying to understand how all of those together can incite final consumers to pay for their content.

The literature on press and media in general has not tackled the issue of the impact of organizational choices on audience reach. The key issues are linked to the equilibrium between advertiser market and consumer market in a context of aversion to advertising (Thompson [1989], Gabszewicz, Laussel and Sonnac [2003], Godes, Ofek and Sarvary [2003]), the concentration of the media firms’ property (Dertouzos and Trautman [1990]), the diversity of the outputs offered to the final consumers (Bourreau and Benzoni [2001], Gabszewicz, Laussel and Sonnac [2001, 2002]) and the supposed bias of contents (Mullainathan and Schleifer [2002]). It is then interesting to investigate the existence of internal factors that might explain the success of some online newspapers, after ten years of a chaotic development and now that the industry is greatly questioning about the validity of existing models.

The first objective of this paper will be then to analyze the factors that influence the decision of online press firms to choose between different organizational forms (Masten [1993], Ménard and Saussier [2003]). To this end, the framework of the transaction cost theory (Williamson [1985]) allows us to stress on the relevance of some specific assets for the key transaction of the online press industry (edition-distribution) and its frequency, in a context of bounded rationality. The issue of opportunism of the parties involved will be particularly examined, especially concerning the use of the editor brand-name. We find indeed that human and brand-name assets play a key role in firm organization choices. We deliver four hypotheses to test, concerning the determinants of each organizational form available on the market. We will then use empirical data concerning french editorial websites, their organisational choices and their audience reports on the online newspaper markets. We will propose a comparative analysis of each organizational mode, describing their characteristics and their interaction with the audience, taking into account their choices ex ante.

Literature

This paper‘s topic covers two, even related, literatures. The first seeks to empirically test hypotheses from the transaction cost literature. The second attempts to empirically test theories about hybrid forms and their performance when they compete on the market. We will shortly review these references, note how this paper tries to contribute to these literatures and specify the hypotheses that will be tested.

Empirical tests of the transaction cost literature generally involve regressing measures of asset specificity on the degree of vertical integration. They often focus on a single firm or industry. Organizational form, like “buy”, “make” or “hybrid” is the dependant variable and independent variables are proxies of asset specificities – like product complexity, worker-specific knowledge or physical proximity between firms, uncertainty and frequency (Klein, 2004). A tight link between asset specificity and vertical integration has been tested in several industries. Many of these tests have been based on data extracted from surveys or interviews and have been discussed because of the suspected subjectivity of asset valuations.

The determinants of online newspapers’ organization choices are not only related to a “make-or-buy” issue. For some firms, the governance of the transaction takes place somewhere in-between the hierarchy and the market. We will then refer to the literature on hybrid organization, in order to define what these forms are (Ménard [2004], Brousseau [1998]). In the transaction cost approach, a hybrid represents a kind of compromise “between the benefits of coordination and control and information advantages of decentralized decision making” (Klein, 2004). It appears to be appropriate for certain types of transaction governance. In the online press industry, like in many others, some firms use both integrated and non-integrated distribution channels for news contents and some others are forward integrated but rely on outsiders for a portion of their supplies. Consequently, more specific references about dual distribution (Mols, 2000), franchise (Pénard, Raynaud and Saussier, 2004), and tapered integration (Harrigan, 1984) will be helpful to explain the choices for these types of contracts.

To analyze the determinants of hybrid forms, most empirical tests have tried to evaluate the impact of specific investments on interfirm agreements, like physical capital, investment amounts (Brickley & and al., 2002), human assets or brand-name capital. The purpose of these studies is to assess that the more the assets identified as key for the industry are specific, the more the choice of hierarchical governance occurs. In the franchise literature, of all the types of specific assets, brand-name capital is particularly relevant. It has been evaluated by different proxies: trademark expenditures like weeks of franchise training and total number of outlets (Lafontaine, 1992) or the measure of the contribution of intangible assets to the firm’s revenue as the difference between the market value of the franchisor’s equity less the book value of equity, divided by the firm’s revenue (Minckler and Park, 1994).

Once forms analyzed and explained, we will attempt to describe their characteristics on the market. In the theory, these arrangements are presumed to be efficient, but some authors have begun to investigate organization form performance and have examined if properly organized firms, as the theory says they should, matching transactional characteristics to governance structures, really outperform feasible alternatives. The debate is still open between those using the organization form as exogenous (Mullainathan & Scharfstein, 2001) and those considering it as endogenous (Masten [1993, 2002], Saussier and Ménard [2003], Saussier and Yvrande-Billon [2005]). Our issue here is that our data contributes to explain the determinants of organization choices but can not be considered as exhaustive. As such, it is questionable to consider those forms as endogenous to tackle the issue of their performance on the market. We finally opted for an approach where organizational forms are exogenous and data help us describe each model through its market behaviour.

This paper uses an evaluation method for specific assets based on both objective data (audience, visibility) and a survey about firm resources (employees). Its aim is to explain the determinants of organizational forms in an industry which activities are on the Internet. Till now, this kind of industry has been underrepresented among the empirical studies related to the transaction cost literature.

Determinants of organization choices

Our choice was to make organization central in our analysis, which is, as such, relatively new to analyze the newspaper industry and particularly its online declination.

Traditional press structures

For a better understanding of the determinants of organization choices in the online press industry, we will shortly provide an overview of those structuring the traditional press industry and explain the impact of Internet, using transaction cost theory (Williamson, 1985).

The traditional press industry is composed of six main activities: administration, design, redaction, production, distribution and advertising sales. Administration and design are usually internalized but the last four ones are regularly subject to “make or buy” issues. According to conjuncture and ad sales, but also in order to reduce fixed costs as much as possible, contents might be written by a larger part of independent journalists and not newspaper employees (15 to 20% of the operational costs of a national daily), as well as the ad sales department (8 to 10% of operational costs) might be externalized (Charon, 1992). This issue does not change with Internet and according to market conditions, online newspapers arbitrate in the same manner to internalize or externalize part or all of these activities. A more radical change occurred for production and distribution: Internet removed these traditional activities and substituted them by other. Print units (20 to 25% of operational costs) and outlet networks (10 to 20% of operational costs) have been replaced by multimedia publication tools and electronic domain names.

Two transactions were structuring traditional newspapers: “edition–production” and “edition–distribution”. With Internet technologies, a journalist edits its paper, but can also design it and publish it directly on the newspaper website. The edition process merges mainly with the production process so that the key transaction in the online newspaper industry is “edition–distribution”.

In the traditional press, the transactions were characterized by strong asset specificities, generated mainly from investments in specific site (proximity between printing plants and distribution nodes to shorten the distribution process and provide the freshest news to readers), physical capital (modernization to enable electronic communications between redactions and printing plants) and dedicated capital (economies of scale by coordinating a dense outlet network for a large number of editors). Publishing news induces a high transaction frequency, especially for dailies whose organizational choices are generally different from those of magazines. Finally, the transactions occur in an uncertainty generated by regular conflicts with worker syndicates, usually in reaction to modernization processes in the industry. In France, the governance of the transactions is mainly hierarchical for regional dailies that can benefit from strong site specificities and lower investments to build a proper distribution network. To reduce transportation and distribution costs, national dailies are mainly committed in a long term relationship with a single alternative partner, which has a status of cooperative between editors, the Nouvelles Messageries de la Presse Parisienne (NMPP), for part of their regional production and their distribution. Less pressured by the transaction frequency, magazines generally externalize both production and distribution to benefit from their partners’ economies of scale.

Internet impact

With Internet, publishing a newspaper goes from a constraining production mode, engaging heavy physical investments, to a flexible and modular mode, constantly alterable. The characteristics of the transaction have thus considerably evolved: no industrial production, nor site constraints. On the distribution side, the constraints of transport, storage and the preservation of a large outlet network withdraw. To be distributed, contents have merely to be published on a website, recognizable by its domain name. The access to readers is facilitated such as online newspapers are able to directly gather information about consumer usages and adapt constantly their offers, both in terms of ergonomics and content quality. As online publication technologies lower entry costs compared to the traditional industry, information distribution is no longer reserved to large editors, but also to pure-players. The digitalization of information and RSS technologies[3] enable also newspaper websites to distribute information flow provided by third-party editors. Consequently, there is no barrier for a distributor to propose a news wire from diverse sources or for an editor to complete its own production. Henceforth editors and distributors are on the same level online, accessible via a domain name. Constraints are indeed cleared up, but organizational choices keep related to coordination issues proper to these new activities: “technology per se does not determine any optimal organizational model” (Brousseau, 2001).

Asset specificities

In this context, we analyze the determinants of the new transaction, to understand governance choices of press actors operating online. Site constraints do not exist anymore online: once information dematerialized and disconnected from its container (Vernardet, 2004), a content posted in publication software is available for anyone connected on the Internet. The access to news contents is not related to their availability in an outlet, but to the consumer awareness of the domain name or to a simple key word typed on a search engine: 43% of Internet users accessed to a website through a search engine, 31% via outgoing links and 26% directly typing the domain name[4]. Without site specificities, a firm might be able to contract many partnership agreements rather than opting for integration. Nevertheless, domain names might be rather related to brand-name specificities. On the Internet, they play a key role because the way information access is structured (localization by domain name, sponsored search, etc.) leads technically to a lack of differentiation between contents. In this manner, a famous media website, with a brand name existing offline, is easier to access for Internet users and thus, advantaged in the battle for audience: 40% of the daily visits on a website which is not indexed in a user’s bookmarks come from Google, versus 15% for a “big site” (Fogel and Patino, 2005).

In the online press industry, physical investments raised by editors to distribute multimedia contents are essentially publishing software that structure contents and are regularly used to update news websites. Technologies available might be developed internally or bought on the market. One of the most used ones is Vignette, software built with XML[5] with numerous functionalities: writing and design of articles with multimedia insertions, headings management, online publishing, rights sharing, etc. With this kind of tools, journalists are very autonomous, managing alone information gathering, writing, edition, publication, articles modifications and information hierarchy. The costs of these programmes might be important, but never reach the kind of investments necessary to publish a traditional newspaper, like print plants or outlet networks. Relatively low barriers to entry explain why many editorial projects flourished online at the beginning of the” Internet bubble”, motivated by the opportunity to get rid of the traditional constraints of publishing (ex. : Transfert in France, Red Herring, Industry Standard, Salon and Slate in the United States). Today, these technologies are common on the marketplace.

Finally, concerning human assets, the main issue is to enhance newspaper site employee competences so that they adapt to “internet writing”, more concise for screen readers, and are able to use new publication modes: two to three weeks training are necessary to learn how to use Vignette for each step of the publishing process (Vernardet, 2004). The effort is proportional to the diversity and the complexity of contents that the editor wants to publish on its website: there are a whole range of multimedia contents and interactive services that need additional resources and capabilities. For existing newspapers, the challenge is to develop new contents to address audience needs, when 25% only of the contents consulted online are newspaper articles and 75% are contents created for the website like multimedia animation, video and audio contents, chats, forums, etc[6]. Online newspapers differentiate quantitatively according to human resources they allocate to their development online and qualitatively according to the attention paid to the verification process before publication, i.e. the “arbitrage between reactivity and quality” (Fogel and Patino, 2005).

Uncertainty

The uncertainty concerning the transaction is much lower online compared to the unstable social context of newspaper print plants and distribution networks. Besides, Internet has also been considered as a mean to propose newspaper articles online when strikes were blocking the industry. Uncertainty online might rather be related to the reliability of publishing software and technical equipments. Unexpected news peaks have indeed caused connexion overloads and prevented consumers from website access. On September 11^th, 2001, when terrorist attacks happened at the World Trade Centre, the buzz spread online, main news websites could not bear the flow of user connexions and broke down. Since then, these sites have all got equipped with technical tools in order to face important traffic peaks. When events of that kind happened again, like Madrid attacks in 2004 or London attacks in 2005, connexion overloads were not an issue anymore and news websites reached audience records. These events were critical to consider online media abilities to handle with high numbers of connexions and to cover hot news (Fogel and Patino, 2005). Finally, uncertainty online is relatively low.

Frequency

Traditional newspapers publish copies with precise deadlines, which are particularly tight for dailies. Publishing online is a constant process: articles are directly modifiable to be corrected or updated. Constraints are not those of printing plants or distributors anymore, but those of web journalists. Regular updates for contents available in real time have indeed become the norm of the industry and enforce greater pressure and publishing discipline.

To sum up this overview of transaction attributes, physical assets are rather standardized, so that assets with poor redeployability are mainly human and brand-name assets. Uncertainty is relatively low, but transaction frequencies very high, rising pressure on journalists and technical support. According to the theory, many governance choices are available, in particular contracting to produce or distribute contents independently. There are indeed online editors distributing their own contents only, editors distributing their contents as well as those from third-party editors, editors distributing their contents on their own website and on third-party websites, and finally distributors diffusing contents from third-party editors.

As transaction frequency and the ability to use publishing software are comparable for all websites, governance choices among them differ mainly according to the way they cope with human and brand-name specificities, as well as opportunism towards this last asset.

Hypotheses

In order to explain governance choices of the online press industry, we will test four hypotheses. We use proxies for brand-name assets in order to explain how websites are visible online for readers. Proxies for human assets are more difficult to formalize. In the case of online newspapers, a way to approximate the way journalists adapted to Internet might be to assess if they have received some training, but for most of them, their know-how comes first from experience. From another point of view, human resources of news websites are also composed by developers and advertising sales representatives, whose skills contribute differently to the transaction compared to journalists. We chose to analyze the impact of the number of employees hired in the structure on the organizational choices. It might indeed be an interesting indicator of the investment firms conceded to produce original web contents.

Hypothesis 1: if the newspaper website does not have a brand-name offline and employs a large number of employees, the probability that the governance choice is dual distribution is higher, all else equal.

The transaction governance is dual distribution when an editor chooses to distribute its contents by itself and to rely on other distribution networks at the same time. In this case, they distribute their contents on their websites, but let distributors diffuse them under their own brand-name.

Many firms in different industries have used integrated and non-integrated distribution networks at the same time. An example, which was greatly analyzed by researchers, was the Mc Donald’s case, where more than 70% of restaurants are delegated to franchisees. In the transaction cost theory, this type of forms has been viewed as anomalies or categorized as hybrids placed between the market and hierarchy (Mols, 2000). To explain the stability of dual systems, authors focused on the heterogeneity of outlets (Lafontaine, 1992), or the existence of special synergies between each type of outlets (Bradach, 1997). The question of control mechanism is central here, especially when the relationship implies high specific investments and consequently a risk of opportunism between parties.

In the online press industry, firms choosing to govern the transaction in that way are mainly two types of editors. Their motivations and the nature of the contracts between them and distributors are not of the same nature.

The first type is the one of editors with strong brand-name (ex.: L’Equipe, 01net, etc.) that distribute all of their contents on their websites and sell some or all to third-party distributors. The contract between the editor and the distributor is a contract negotiated between parties, to agree on a sale price, mainly based on the quality and the notoriety of the selling editor. These firms try to increase their sources of revenue and their visibility, while controlling the usage of their contents online.

Choosing dual distribution might be explained when demand is heterogeneous (Mols, 2000). With this type of arrangement, customized contents are directly distributed by the editor on its website and more standardized contents might be offered by some other firm. In fact, with customized products, the distributor has to work jointly with the editor to adapt contents to consumers’ needs. The distributor has then to acquire a specialized knowledge of the product, specific to the transaction with the editor. This knowledge might be efficiently protected by internalizing the relationship. In the online press industry, editors choosing dual distribution face two types of audiences: demanding and accurate readers who want to get further analysis, as well as readers who are satisfied with breaking news to stay informed. Consequently, most renowned editors distribute the richest information on their own website and diffuse breaking news through other distributors, which are able to reach a larger, though less demanding, public. This is one of the main reasons that explain the choice of this type of organization form, though renowned editors, with strong human and brand-name specificities should rather opt for integration. The industry logic acts as if network externalities allowed by partnerships overcome contractual hazards related to brand-name specificities. In an industry where intangible information goods are mainly free, the brand-name value becomes exacerbated. The risk for editors is to see distribution partners use their contents without enhancing their value as if they were on their own websites and thus alter their brand-names.

The second type of motivations to adopt dual distribution is the one concerning editors with low brand-name recognition (ex.: PCInpact, Cinemovies, etc.). They keep publishing on their own website to test the reactivity of their own readers to their contents, but try to increase their notoriety by proposing their contents as such to third-party distributors, like general portals or other editors’ websites. The contract between the parties plans an exchange of contents against visibility. For example, a portal can get free contents by negotiating the editor exposure on the portal website: quote of the source, logo presence, link to the editor’s website, etc. Portals value their audiences towards editors.

Firms choosing dual distribution are mainly editors proposing specialized contents and valuing their expertise towards portals to be distributed: brand-name influences greatly the appetence of portals to distribute contents from an editor, as well as the ability to provide quality contents recognized by a niche of readers. On one hand, if distributors are keen to attract renowned editors, those might be more reluctant. Like franchisors, brand-name capital is their main specific asset and the more important the value of the brand name, the more the outputs from an opportunistic behaviour might be fruitful (Pénard, Raynaud and Saussier, 2004). Minckler and Park (1994) have demonstrated that the degree of asset specificity is positively related to the proportion of integrated units in a franchise network. We might then expect that the degree of brand asset specificity for firms in this category is probably lower than the one for firms who chose not to be distributed by outsiders. On the other hand, producing quality contents requires gathering a relatively important team of web journalists, to satisfy demanding contracts with portals assuming regular updates of articles online.

The control of client consumption information is also important in organizational choices. It motivates some editors to keep their own website online, even if they distribute some other contents elsewhere, in order to test the way readers perceive and consume their information. In an industry rapidly changing, it might be a key source of “improvement in marketing and technical intelligence” (Mols, 2000). Like for franchisors towards their franchisees (Pénard, Raynaud and Saussier, 2004), client information gathered through internal operations are used to benchmark, to appreciate those operated by distributors and to protect themselves against opportunism. Lastly, editors might also enrich their experience and make their way of distributing contents evolve.

In terms of business model, this kind of websites relies mainly on advertising sales on their own website. The most renowned sell all or some of their contents to distributors. The others try to increase their revenues from advertising by exposing their brand-name on large audience sites and generating some more traffic on theirs. Opting for other distribution channels help them to build brand recognition and get complementary financing sources. Part of these sites might also sell their contents to third-party distributors, but without exposing their brand-name or their graphical environment to readers (“white-branding”): the buyer only is authorized to distribute contents it bought under its own brand-name and graphical design. This type of contract allows contractors to avoid opportunism on its brand-name and to generate additional revenues. Generally, only editors with low brand-name capital and strong human capabilities are incited to use this type of contract.

Hypothesis 2: if the newspaper website has a brand-name offline and employs a large number of employees, the probability that the governance choice is tapered integration is higher, all else equal.

Firms choosing tapered integration distribute jointly their own contents and those produced by other editors on their website. They are essentially motivated by the capacity to react quickly to their readers’ needs. These editors are mainly websites with strong brand recognition and human capital, distribution contents acknowledged by a large audience for their quality. Many of them have a brand-name existing offline (newspaper, radio or TV brand). When these firms invested online, in order to propose the largest range of digital contents related to their editorial offer, they completed it by distributing contents from other editors, but still controlling quality according to their own criteria. Among these firms, we can quote for example Le Monde, L’Express or Libération.

These complementary contents mobilize specific assets difficult to deploy internally in a short period of time, in a context of development of innovative services, which success is often variable and poorly foreseeable. In this category of contents externalized to third-party editors, we can quote for example newswire from news agencies, multimedia contents (audio and video) or expert analysis to cover some particular events. As websites choosing tapered integration have mainly a strong brand-name, they guarantee for the contents they integrate towards their readers. Consequently, they select their partners and do not contract freely contents against visibility. They buy contents they distribute under their brand-name and mobilize internal skills to integrate them in their own way to consult information (Brousseau, 1998).

In the case of a transaction between a press agency and a media website, the frequency is very high and the contract builds a long-term relationship. The literature highlights the importance of trust between partners to manage this type of relationships (Brousseau, 1998). More flexible than the contract, it allows facing adaptations and innovations without referring constantly to contractual obligations of parties. It is not a substitute to the contract, but a complement that lets negotiate less complete contracts and save on costs. In this kind of partnership, adjustments require an informal negotiation that does not need to be validated by formal procedures within firms. In fact, the relationship between news agencies and big media has been affected by the online publication of newswire on general portals like Yahoo or MSN, which were originally only destined to media professional. Facing this new competition, traditional editors have been constrained to enlarge their content offering to address this new demand of instant news coverage created by portals. Relying on agencies for a portion of their content supplies, firms could gain scale economies through specialization in processing downstream (Harrigan [1984]). Nevertheless, agency contents are not integrated as such by editor websites. They are remodelled according to their own design, navigation and disposal rules. For example, Le Monde.fr proposes last breaking news freely and the entire agency newswire in the site area reserved to subscribers. They are presented with the design of Le Monde and its choices of navigation (ranking per subject, per agency, per format).

Partners also provide contents for the irregular part of the demand via punctual arrangements (Harrigan [1984], Mols [2000]), especially to create websites dedicated to hot news (sport event, electoral campaigns) and to face a demand for information related to unforeseeable events (terrorist attack, natural disaster). This type of contract is not necessarily “spot” or a short-term contract. Some editors might regularly seek for complementary content providers, according to their expertise and skills. For example, to cover electoral campaigns, some editors regularly publish analyses provided by political science researchers from Sciences Po Paris. It might be necessary to maintain a middle or long-term relationship with some partners to be able to cover events quickly and mobilize the resources needed.

Finally, some other partners allow editors to access to external R&D activities, especially through partnerships with multimedia content producers. Without investing directly, editors can follow how their online users react to these new modes to consume information.

Editor websites integrate paid contents from their partners, but deploy internal means and skills to make them match to their brand-name environment. They favour this kind of arrangement in order to control their brand-name capital and protect it from potential distributor opportunism. In fact, editors focus on their own website for their content distribution in order to qualify acutely their audience and to sell advertising a higher price. If they had chosen dual distribution, they would compete with general portal distributing their contents and selling advertising a lower price, because those firms sell a great volume of readers rather than qualified readers to advertisers.

The editor business models vary a lot because they can value their brand-name, their reputation of quality and their journalistic know-how. It is specifically in this category of editors that hesitations have been the strongest to decide how to make their assets profitable: free access for consumers and advertising revenues, user subscription charges only or both with advertising revenues? Do subscription fees give access to online exclusive contents or part of the newspaper? The more information is specialized, the more paying an access fee seems to be accepted by final consumers. In fact, the main newspaper sites that chose to charge a subscription fee to users are specialized in economy and finance, like Les Echos.fr in France or The Wall Street Journal Online in the United States. The majority of general information websites are still financed by advertising. Only a few, which brand-names are the most powerful on the market, have experimented mixed models with success: Le Monde in France, El Pais in Spain and The New York Times in the United States.

Hypothesis 3: if the newspaper website has a great visibility online and employs few employees, the probability that the governance choice is externalization is higher, all else equal.

A firm decides to outsource an activity if the sum of production and transaction costs is higher when the transaction is operated hierarchically rather than by the market. The choice to externalize corresponds rather to a situation where there are only a few or no specific assets, firms do not operate in a situation of uncertainty and agreements can be executed. In this case, the transaction is operated by the “market” and these short-term contracts are complete and executed with reasonable costs, because the exchanges they manage are poorly complex.

Externalization might also be explained by the necessity to incite innovation: “Externalization might (…) stimulate innovation because it will at the same time question existing interaction modes between parties in a production process, and give more autonomy to the externalized unit” (Brousseau, 1998). This mode of governance of the transaction might be fruitful in the way it incites parties to adapt.

In the case of online press, two types of firms opt for total externalization of one of the functions of the transaction. News agencies, like Agence France Presse, Reuters and Associated Press, externalize quasi entirely their distribution. Acknowledged by the audience as references for raw information, they have chosen to let their contents available online, since then exclusively reserved for media professionals. They packaged Internet products, composed by newswires, organized by theme and updated in real-time. Without skills to distribute information, neither in the traditional press, nor on the Internet, keen to find new markets for their contents, agencies externalized this function to general and media portals that needed to propose a constantly updated newswire among their contents. Other news agencies, less renowned by final consumers, create specialized information contents on demand: editors distribute them without quoting their source, it is white-branding. For example, the first french financial portal Boursorama has created a “Style” category to attract advertisers from luxury industry and bought contents to a press agency, Webcontent. This kind of firm has strong human assets (journalist specialization and skills) but low brand-name capital.

On the other side, firms have chosen to entirely externalize information production. They are mainly general portals, produced by Internet access providers (Wanadoo, Free, Club-Internet, etc.) or by the main actors of online interpersonal communication (Yahoo, MSN). Their mission statement is to offer users all the possible range of services at the moment they connect to their portals: email, instant messaging, blogs, ecommerce, classified, information, etc. They distribute press agency contents as well as specialized editor contents to cover all possible subjects and satisfy their visitors. For example, on the French Yahoo, political news are mainly provided by the three great agencies (AFP, Reuters, AP), completed by multimedia contents provided by Europe 1 (audio), M6 and TV5 (video), put into perspective by expert and independent journalist articles. The other news categories are provided by specialized editors, like 01net or Clubic for Multimedia, L’Equipe for Sport or Les Echos for Finance.

These portals rely on their know-how for information design, related to Internet ergonomic rules: on the spot categories to cover hot news, homepage animation, links to complementary information sources to enlighten news, etc. This type of activity requires few human resources. At Yahoo France, the News chain mobilizes a Product Manager and five “Surfers”. The first negotiates content partnerships (purchase, exchanges) and codes pages to publish online. He has technical and editorial skills. The surfers choose information hierarchy on every subject, highlight the big titles of the category on the portal’s homepage and facilitate the navigation as well as information search. Portals have very strong brand-name capital online, but low human specificities to operate the transaction: few human resources, generalist know-how in the design of information to distribute, but without expertise on the equilibrium between diversity and quality of press contents. Contracts between portals and editors are often signed in a quasi experimental mode: partnerships might evolve, be replaced and modified, according to user consumption. The choice of this governance arrangement allows firms to adapt and innovate.

Technically, partnerships are very simple to set up: with RSS technology, there are quasi no obstacle to add information categories and flows on a portal. The frequency of the transaction is very high but it is operated automatically. Uncertainty comes essentially from technical problems blocking temporarily the access to information flows. It is then not very costly for these firms to contract, instead of creating a whole new brand-name online or to develop a complete team of journalists, able to tackle all possible subjects. Portal assets are easily redeployable for another use: portals deal contracts with different types of partners, without exclusive and often with the same operating mode. Nevertheless, transaction mechanisms and contractual rules might differ according to the type of editors.

A contract with a press agency is merely a long-term contract. News agencies charge portals a fixed subscription. Portals do not intend to produce themselves the information they distribute, so it is in their interest to commit for a long period with editors. The frequency of the transaction is very high because one of the values of this type of information is to be constantly updated, providing the reader with the state of news at the moment of his connexion. The contract supposes then some longevity, but might be questioned by competition games on the market. In fact, Internet products provided by new agencies are relatively substitutable, because their information is poorly differentiated. They are bought in block by the distributor that, unlike Yahoo, does not need to plan or adjust the nature of the service.

Editors with strong brand-name negotiate also the price of their contents with portals. As portals cannot argue for their editorial know-how towards their users, they gather the most renowned editors to gain credit through them. The price of the editor content will then depend on their degree of specialization and differentiation on their own market.

Externalized distributors might also negotiate short-term contracts to be able to diffuse appropriate contents to cover a specific event. Generally, they create a dedicated website and gather agency information as well as interviews, analysis, etc. To address this type of punctual demand, contracts are set up to pay this additional service, including editors already and regularly in relation to the distributor.

Finally, for editors with low brand-name capital, contracts planning an exchange of contents against visibility give the distributor the guaranty to propose the largest possible range of information without paying additional contents.

New agencies rely entirely on subscriptions. On the contrary, in terms of business model, the “News” chain of general portals is quasi exclusively financed by advertising sales. These actors cannot rely on some editorial quality to attract consumer subscriptions while they completely externalize content production. They rely on their own brand and online ergonomic know-how to attract readers and value their audience by advertising sales.

Hypothesis 4: if the newspaper website does not have a brand-name offline and employs few employees, the probability that the governance choice is vertical integration is higher, all else equal.

In this case, edition and distribution are integrated by firms and realized internally in firm departments. In the traditional press, the decision to integrate distribution protects firms from uncertainties and opportunism, especially those generated by worker strikes or increases of the distribution partner tariffs.

We have seen that on Internet, the main assets that could motivate online newspaper integration were brand-name (reputation, online visibility) and human assets (skills, adaptation to Internet publishing). A renowned editor could be incited to integrate the distribution of its own contents, to control its design and advertising sales. To extend their visibility online and attract more audience, sites are incited to produce more contents and then to develop their human resources.

On the contrary, we can question the choice of the “right” governance choice for integrated editors with low notoriety and poor human resources. Without real specificities, assets are easily redeployable. But in some cases, as Williamson (2000) recognizes, identifying possible alternative governance options alone is not sufficient. If we refer to his remediability criterion, “an extant mode of organization for which no superior feasible alternative can be described and implemented with expected net gains is presumed to be efficient”. In this kind of context, unless a feasible transition from the status quo to an alternative arrangement can be identified, the status quo has to be considered superior.

This category of websites exists to a large extent on the Internet. The weakness of brand-name capital might prevent some of them to be distributed on other sites or to attract visibility partnerships from other editors. With few human resources as well, their content production might be too limited to meet distributor needs, like constant updates and supply. No feasible change to alternative arrangements seems reachable, explaining to some extent why this kind of websites prefer status quo.

These are mainly entertainment sites, proposing contents to particular niches of readers. Some have a brand-name existing offline, but use their website to deepen their relationship with their audience without ambitioning to develop a consistent media online. They address segmented publics. Their revenues come from advertising sales or are not really expected. Pure-players compose though the majority of this category of sites.

Data

The audience data used in the paper has been extracted from the Nielsen/Netratings database, the main French audience measurement panel on the Internet. This database records and qualifies the audience of more than 6000 websites, classified according diverse content categories: automobile, computers, education and career, entertainment, family and lifestyle, finance, home and fashion, news, portals and communities.

We have chosen to analyze audience behaviour towards this selection of websites during a quarter and not a month, in order to avoid audience peaks related to particular events and news coverage. We extracted data for the first quarter in 2005, i.e. the three-month period ending in March 2005. Audience data have been collected at users’ home and work. Combining both audience reports allows not to double-count the people who visited the same site at home and work. The data excludes also application use, like instant messaging.

A first extract has been operated on this database to select 382 sites, among all categories, which aim is essentially editorial produced by information professionals. Each site has been visited and selected one by one to be part of the study database. We have decided to exclude sites proposing essentially ecommerce services or classifieds, as well as sites gathering contents from user participation, like sites publishing cooking recipes posted by readers or “citizen journalism”[7] websites.

Almost all of the selected websites are associated to a precise domain name. For some great websites like portals, sections have been isolated to analyze the related audience more precisely. For example, instead of analyzing the audience of Yahoo France as a whole, we better investigate the audience of each of its editorial channels like “Yahoo News”, “Yahoo Sport”, “Yahoo Finance”, etc. Non-editorial channels have been also excluded. The database includes the audience of site aggregations belonging to the same media group, like France Televisions. It does not provide the separated audience of each channel website (France 2, France 3, France 5 and France O), but the one for France Televisions “News”, “Regions”, “Videos”, etc. These website aggregations are often assembled and available on each channel website.

To analyze the influence of organizational choices on firm behaviour on the market, we have classified the websites of our database manually according to their organizational form: vertical integration, tapered integration, dual distribution or externalization. A systematic research has been done site by site to establish to presence or the absence of visible editorial partners on sites and portals, in order to categorize them by organizational form.

In this way:

– In the absence of any other editorial source name and if the name of the website does not appear among the sources of any other website, the analyzed website is classified in the “vertical integration” category,

– A website including at least the name of one third-party editorial source is classified in the “tapered integration” category,

– A website which name appears as an editorial source on at least one other website is classified in the “dual distribution” category,

– Finally, a website where the names of all editorial sources are different from the brand-name of the website itself is classified in the “externalization” category.

Some websites might be classified in both « tapered integration » and « dual distribution » categories: they aggregate third-party contents and distribute theirs on other third-party websites. We chose to classify these websites in the “dual distribution” category because isolating a fifth dedicated category would not gather enough cases to provide representative information. Besides, the impact for the firm brand-name capital is greater by choosing dual distribution rather than tapered integration.

The Nielsen/Netratings panel provides audience data per website according to several basic variables during the chosen period, i.e. the first quarter in 2005: number of page views, number of unique visitors, number of page views per person, time per site per person, active and universe reach[8] (%). Then the number of unique visitors is detailed according to several demographics: gender, age, studies, type of job, job industry, organization size, type of department and purchase influence.

Then, we qualified all 382 sites by type of content: general information, regional information, practical information (astrology, weather, etc.) and specialized information (finance, games, sport, etc.).

On this basis, we tried to gather firm information to find a proxy of firm investments to produce online content. We organized a mailing to 183 sites to ask them about the number of employees in their organization, journalists as well as developers. We obtained a return rate by 31%, for 62 websites. For some sites, we had only one interlocutor, but answering for several sites or site channels. Some other sites displayed their whole organization online. Finally, we gathered further information by interviews with site managers. On the whole, our return on 382 sites reached 41% and allowed us to compose a second database with 155 cases.

We tried then to find proxies of brand-name assets to qualify those 155 websites.

To give a better idea of each brand-name visibility online, we fixed several variables:

– brand-name offline presence,

– Google Page Rank[9], from 0 to 10,

– number of blogs linking to each website (measured by Technorati),

– visibility index (measured by Yoovi): it depends on the quality of each website positioning on the 50000 most searched key words on the five most popular search engines in France (Google, Yahoo, AOL, MSN, Voila). It is calculated as the score obtained by each site for the first 30 results of these searches.

We adopt here a two-step approach and will first use the second database, including the 155 cases with the number of website employees, to contribute to the explanation of the determinants of governance choices. The four hypotheses presented here above will be tested. Then, we will use the complete database including 382 cases, in order to test the impact of organizational choices on website behaviours on the market.

Empirical results

Governance choices

To go further in the analysis of governance choices, we connected the number of employees, the PageRank and the offline brand-name presence with the choice of organization form among editorial websites, in order to test our four hypotheses. We chose to abandon the Technorati and Yoovi indexes because they appeared as poor proxies of website brand-name assets and were not statistically significant.

Table 1 – Descriptives

	Vertical Integration	Dual Distribution	Tapered Integration	Externalization
Number of websites	58	45	43	9
Part of websites with brand-name presence offline (%)	21%	36%	47%	0%
Number of employees (Mean)	6,8	12,8	9,1	2,9
Page Rank (Mean)	5,4	5,8	5,7	7,3
Yoovi index (Mean)	39,8	181,9	127,3	59,8
Technorati index (Mean)	70,7	193,8	315,4	73,3

We conducted two types of estimates. First, we attempt to differentiate the choice of vertical integration versus all three remaining organization forms available online: we use a logit regression model, where the organizational form is the dependent variable. Then, we try to differentiate other organization choices where each form is compared separately to vertical integration, the model gathering the most important number of cases (dual distribution versus vertical integration; tapered integration versus vertical integration; externalization versus vertical integration): we use a multinomial logit regression model. Results are presented in Table 2.

Table 2 – Model of organizational form decisions

Variable

Logit

Vertical Integration

Multinomial Logit

Dual Distribution

Tapered Integration

Externalization

Number of employees

-0.04

(-1.93)**

0.08

(2.78)**

0.04

(1.37)

-0.36

(-1.79)**

Google PageRank

-0.38

(-2.37)***

0.21

(1.05)

0.22

(1.09)

21.62

(115.26)***

Offline brand-name presence

-0.81

(-2.01)**

0.70

(1.49)

1.17

(2.60)***

-52.87

(-0.00)

Constant

2.28

(2.40)***

-2.33

(-2.07)**

-2.20

(-1.97)**

148.48

Outcome model=1 (vertical integration) is the comparison group

z-stats in parentheses

2 asterisks indicate significance at 0.05 level, 3 asterisks indicate significance at 0.01 level.

The results are rather consistent with the hypotheses we wanted to test. We observe that two organizational models are polarized. On the one hand, having a weak brand-name presence, as well online (represented by the Google PageRank variable) and offline (represented by the offline brand-name presence variable), and a low number of employees has significant effects on the website choice of vertical integration. These strong characteristics help us describe by comparison the determinants of other organizational models that differentiate from vertical integration on behalf of one or more key variables. On the other hand, with strong online visibility and few employees, a website has a higher probability to choose externalization. Moreover, the complete absence of offline brand-name among this category of firm organization explains the aberrant result concerning this particular variable.

In-between, the choice of hybrid organizations is influenced by one variable, in comparison to vertical integration determinants. The influence of the number of employees seems important to opt for dual distribution. The one of offline brand-name presence is also significant to choose tapered integration.

Consequently, it is interesting to note that governance choices do not seem randomly taken by editorial websites and that it should be taken into account before analyzing how these different types of firms behave and compete on their market.

Governance choices and market behaviour

The elements contributing to governance choices partly enlightened, we can now attempt to describe the different organization models. Audience data give us here key indicators about websites’ behaviour on the online news market. Among the numerous variables of the Nielsen/Netratings panel, we had to sort the one retained for the econometric test.

To contrast among general audience variables, we performed a Principal Components Analyze (results in Table 3). Two main factors differentiate websites: on one hand, there are websites that are driven by the objective of increasing audience volume (visits, page views, visitors); on the other hand, some websites might be also interested in raising the visitor interest for its contents (time or visits per person). The two most relevant variables to sum up these two main explanatory factors are the total number of unique visitors and the time per person per website.

Table 3 – The most discriminating audience drivers

Rotated Component Matrix(a)

	Component
	1	2
Time per person	0,918
Number of page views per person	0,910	0,281
Number of visits per person	0,863
Number of unique visitors		0,939
Number of page views	0,485	0,750

Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.

Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.

84,4% of the variance explained

Our approach for demographic variables is explained in the Appendix. We finally chose the proportion of unique visitors aged from 35 to 65, as well as the proportion of post-graduated unique visitors. The first one allows us to detect which model attracts a population of active workers, and the second one the most attractive model for high-skilled readers. We discovered that the variable detailing website user income was not very significant for our test. We also added to editorial type variable in order to assess which were the most represented among different organizational models.

Table 4 – Impact of organizational form decisions

Variable

Logit

Vertical Integration

Multinomial Logit

Dual Distribution

Tapered Integration

Externalization

Editorial type: General information

-0.37

(-0.97)

-1.18

(-1.98)**

1.03

(2.56)***

0.14

(0.27)

Log (number of unique visitors)

-0.75

(-4.59)***

1.14

(5.65)***

0.37

(1.88)**

0.94

(4.15)***

Time per person per website

-0.01

(-0.28)

0.01

(0.74)

0.01

(0.50)

0.02

(1.68)

% of unique visitors from 35 to 65

-0.02

(-1.90)**

0.01

(0.41)

0.02

(1.87)**

0.05

(3.13)***

% of post-graduated unique visitors

-0.02

(-1.45)

0.06

(2.73)***

0.02

(1.19)

-0.04

(-1.45)

Constant

5.68

(4.96)***

-8.91

(-6.39)***

-4.36

(-3.32)***

-8.70

(-5.47)***

Outcome model=1 (vertical integration) is the comparison group

z-stats in parentheses

2 asterisks indicate significance at 0.05 level, 3 asterisks indicate significance at 0.01 level.

The results provided by the logit regression model allow us to describe furthermore each organizational model. Vertically integrated websites do not seem to attract many unique visitors in general, neither among active workers between 35 and 65. Their editorial type might be rather specialized than general: as described above, websites of this category address small niches of readers on particular subjects, like PDA user news (pdafrance.com) or motorcycle fans (emoto.com).

By comparison, publishing specialized contents has a strong effect in characterizing news sites in dual distribution. In this category, we find indeed the most popular news sites related to specific themes: economy (lesechos.fr), computers (clubic.com, zdnet.fr, 01net.com, etc.) or sport (lequipe.fr). Attracting large audiences, and particularly among post-graduated visitors, seems also to describe the dual distribution model on the market. This kind of websites is characterized by a stronger number of employees compared to other models: their capacity to produce web-adapted constantly updated contents might be one of the reasons they attract the most demanding part of their demand on their own websites. It might also be explained because most of the firms that developed a specific Internet know-how are represented in this category: use of visibility tools, navigation by tag, etc. The Yoovi index mean is the higher for this group of news sites.

Contrasting with the preceding models, publishing general information explains partly the activity of tapered integrated websites. In this category, general newspapers with prestigious brand-names are overrepresented, like lemonde.fr, lefigaro.fr or liberation.fr, as well as most of regional newspaper websites. Their reluctance to distribute their contents on third-party websites, mostly to avoid opportunism on their brand-name, explains why they generally opt for this organization model. These websites attract a rather large audience, but less than websites in dual distribution. It occurs notably because some of them develop mixed financing model with exclusive contents available with user subscription that prevent them from reaching new readers. Targeting active workers between 35 and 65 seems to be a good indicator to describe this category of news sites, confirming use pattern during business hours.

Finally, websites choosing to externalize content edition attract large audiences, and among active users as well. Compared to all other categories, the time per person is more significant for this kind of website, which might appear counter-intuitive. Nevertheless, news channels proposed by general portal like Yahoo or MSN publish great amounts of constantly updated news contents, which format is rather short, concise and adapted to screen reading. If time per user is relatively high for these sites, it is because users navigate on many articles at once and visit the site many times during the day to be informed about breaking news.

Conclusion

This paper attempts to analyze the determinants of organization choices in the online press industry and its impact on audience reach. The transaction cost theory offers an analytical frame, where organization choices are determined by transaction characteristics that governance modes should drive. Characterizing these forms enables us to identify more precisely the type of actors competing on the market, when the industry seems focused on the issue of the “right business model”. This study tells us that governance choices influence significantly the way websites interact with their audience and that taking into account these mechanisms seems important before tackling the business model issue. The data available for the study did not allow us to interpret results as performances for these organization forms. Nevertheless, it enables to describe the key features of a constantly evolving industry, with models still looking for their public and their significance. From this point of view, Internet economy might become a vast research field for empirical studies, as many traditional industrial industries have restructured to see emerge new ways to operate the production and the distribution of goods and services.

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Appendix

We present here several test on our database to explain our choice of variables, especially among all demographics available.

Editorial Type

The test dropped with the variables Type 2 (editorial type: regional information) and Type 3 (editorial type: practical information) because collinearity problems. We operated the test a second time only with the variables Type 1 (editorial type: general information) and Type 4 (editorial type: specialized information).

Variable

Logit

Vertical Integration

Multinomial Logit

Dual Distribution

Tapered Integration

Externalization

Log (number of unique visitors)

-0.75

(-4.63)***

1.11

(5.60)***

0.36

(1.87)**

0.91

(4.12)***

Time per person per website

-0.51

(-0.83)

0.57

(0.77)

0.19

(0.25)

0.96

(1.24)

Editorial type 1: General information

0.04

(0.09)

-1.46

(-2.16)**

0.57

(1.14)

-0.43

(-0.68)

Editorial type 4: Specialized information

0.71

(2.15)**

-0.61

(-1.52)

-0.77

(-2.01)**

-0.78

(-1.74)

Constant

3.42

(3.44)***

-6.71

(-5.37)***

-1.94

(-1.63)

-5.95

(-4.28)***

Outcome model=1 (vertical integration) is the comparison group

z-stats in parentheses

2 asterisks indicate significance at 0.05 level, 3 asterisks indicate significance at 0.01 level.

The trouble with the ”Type 4” variable is that it is overrepresented in all categories: 80% of vertically integrated websites, 75% of websites in dual distribution, 56% of tapered integrated websites and 65% of websites having chosen editorial externalization. In these conditions, the explanation of the results might be heavily biased as the variable can capture much of the interpretation. In order to manipulate a variable that enables to better differentiate between organizational models, we finally opted for the “Type 1” variable (editorial type: general information).

Visitor Age

Considering the impact of organizational choices on firm behaviour on the market, we test here how websites reach unique visitors of different ages, and in particular the influence of each variable related to age.

Variable

Logit

Vertical Integration

Multinomial Logit

Dual Distribution

Tapered Integration

Externalization

Log (number of unique visitors)

-0.75

(-4.63)***

1.02

(5.27)***

0.48

(2.55)**

0.94

(4.24)***

Time per person per website

-0.67

(-1.10)

0.67

(0.90)

0.37

(0. 15)

1.24

(1.51)

Age: % of unique visitors under 35

-0.01

(-1.56)

0.01

(0.64)

0.01

(0.16)

-0.01

(-0.62)

Age: % of unique visitors between 35 and 65

-0.02

(2.15)**

0.02

(0.94)

0.03

(1.83)**

0.02

(1.06)

Age: % of unique visitors above 65

-0.07

(-1.77)

0.07

(1.18)

0.02

(0.29)

0.22

(3.52)***

Constant

5.54

(3.87)***

-8.06

(-4.957)***

-4.74

(-3.03)***

-8.31

(-4.55)***

Outcome model=1 (vertical integration) is the comparison group

z-stats in parentheses

2 asterisks indicate significance at 0.05 level, 3 asterisks indicate significance at 0.01 level.

Among all variables related to visitor age, the one considering the part of unique visitors aged above 65 has the most interesting results, especially in relation to the externalization model. Nevertheless, the population above 65 visiting the database websites represents only 3 to 5% of all unique visitors, according to different organizational models. Because of this poor representativeness, we finally opted for the second-best: the proportion of unique visitors aged between 35 and 65.

Studies

The proportion of post-graduated unique visitors seems to be the most significant variables among all of study-related variables.

Variable

Logit

Vertical Integration

Multinomial Logit

Dual Distribution

Tapered Integration

Externalization

Log (number of unique visitors)

-0.82

(-4.843)***

1.10

(5.44)***

0.56

(2.88)**

0.97

(4.22)***

Time per person per website

-0.39

(-0.64)

0.34

(0.46)

0.11

(0. 15)

0.88

(1.09)

% of unique visitors at gramschool level

0.03

(0.98)

-0.03

(-0.49)

-0.03

(-0.69)

-0.06

(-0.93)

% of unique visitors at high school level

0.01

(0.17)

-0.03

(-1.19)

-0.01

(-0.07)

0.02

(0.73)

% of unique visitors graduated from high school

-0.05

(-1.69)

0.05

(1.31)

0.03

(0.73)

0.09

(1.97)**

% of unique visitors at some college level

0.06

(1.74)

-0.01

(-0.20)

-0.10

(-2.10)**

-0.07

(-1.14)

% of unique visitors at associate degree

0.03

(1.36)

-0.03

(-0.88)

-0.01

(-0.39)

-0.09

(-2.21)**

% of unique visitors at bachelor’s degree

-0.01

(-0.15)

-0.01

(-0.33)

0.02

(0.73)

-0.02

(-0.51)

% of post-graduated unique visitors

-0.03

(-2.15)**

0.48

(2.24)**

0.03

(1.71)

0.01

(0.51)

Constant

4.66

(3.93)***

-7.44

(-5.03)***

-4.12

(-2.98)***

-6.33

(-2.56)***

Outcome model=1 (vertical integration) is the comparison group

z-stats in parentheses

2 asterisks indicate significance at 0.05 level, 3 asterisks indicate significance at 0.01 level.

Income

Variable

Logit

Vertical Integration

Multinomial Logit

Dual Distribution

Tapered Integration

Externalization

Log (number of unique visitors)

-0.83

(-5.06)***

1.09

(5.55)***

0.55

(2.89)**

1.01

(4.53)***

Time per person per website

-0.31

(-0.50)

0.41

(0.55)

-0.04

(-0. 06)

0.83

(1.03)

% of unique visitors with income inf. to 18k ($)

0.06

(2.00)**

-0.02

(-0.70)

-0.05

(-1.33)

-0.17

(-2.60)***

% of unique visitors with income 18 to 27k ($)

-0.05

(-2.11)**

-0.03

(-1.19)

-0.04

(1.64)

0.06

(1.22)

% of unique visitors with income 27 to 36k ($)

-0.02

(-1.25)

0.04

(1.24)

0.03

(1.25)

0.01

(0.29)

% of unique visitors with income 36 to 54k ($)

-0.01

(-0.61)

-0.01

(-0.06)

0.01

(0.76)

0.01

(0.06)

% of unique visitors with income 54 to 72k ($)

-0.03

(-1.28)

0.05

(1.36)

0.02

(0.77)

0.01

(0.39)

% of unique visitors with income above 72k ($)

0.04

(1.43)

-0.03

(-0.69)

-0.04

(-1.06)

-0.10

(-1.59)

% of unique visitors with unknown income

0.06

(1.94)**

-0.09

(-1.86)**

-0.07

(-1.85)**

-0.03

(-0.45)

Constant

4.90

(4.60)***

-7.49

(-5.60)***

-4.12

(-2.98)***

-6.26

(-1.56)

Outcome model=1 (vertical integration) is the comparison group

z-stats in parentheses

2 asterisks indicate significance at 0.05 level, 3 asterisks indicate significance at 0.01 level.

The issue with income variables is that the most significant variable represents the proportion of unique visitors with an unknown income. The second-best represent the part of unique visitors with an income inferior to k18$. Those are probably students living in a family for which we don’t know if it is wealthy or not and the variable looses its interpretation capabilities. Lastly, the 18 to 27k income variable could be a possibility, but results provided in the final logit model are not relevant. We finally chose not to integrate the income variable in the final logit model.

Other

The Nielsen/Netratings database provides us with numerous additional data about unique visitor professional environment: type of activity, organization size, and purchase influence. The overrepresentation of profiles connected at home versus those connected at work incited us not to use this data.

[1] I particularly thank Bruno Chaves for regular support and powerful comments, as well as Bertil Hatt for its acute insight for data treatment and analysis. I also thank François-Xavier Hussher and Julien Rosanvallon from Mediametrie who allowed me to use Nielsen/Netratings panel to collect the data for this study.

[2] Data from IPSOS, January 2005

[3] RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a family of web feed formats, specified in XML and used for Web syndication. RSS is used by news websites, blogs and podcasting.

[4] Médiamétrie-eStat, May 2005

[5] XML (eXtensible Mark-up Language) is a mark-up language of programming defined by W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). It enables HTML page creators to rationalize the interface between contents and containers. HTML precises how the elements of a page will be presented. XML defines what these elements contain.

[6] Figures for LeMonde.fr quoted by Bruno Patino, managing director of Le Monde Interactif (2005)

[7] Citizen journalism, also known as "participatory journalism," is the act of citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information," according to the seminal report We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information, by Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis.

[8] The “active reach” is the number of unique persons visiting a website one or more times, expressed as a percentage of the total active Internet population for the specified reporting period. The “universe reach” is the number of unique persons visiting a website one or more times, expressed as a percentage of the total current Internet population for the specified reporting period.

[9] PageRank is an algorithm to assign a numerical weighting to each element of the World Wide Web, with the purpose of measuring its relative importance. Developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University, it became a key element of Google search engine. Google describes Page rank as: “PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important.“

Next WSJ Print Iteration Will Draw From the Net

2006-06-01T23:36:00.000-07:00

From Adage

Three months into the reign of L. Gordon Crovitz as publisher of The Wall Street Journal's freshly unified print and Web operations, he and his team are moving quickly to develop the print edition's next iteration, known internally as Journal 3.0.

60 focus groups
Their plans are still evolving -- 20 focus groups have been conducted, and another 60 are scheduled to take place once the next Journal prototype arrives in June. But one thing's for sure: Journal 3.0 will take its cues from the Internet. The newspaper has run The Wall Street Journal Online for 10 years, and the new print edition takes into account how the Web version continues to change consumers' expectations.

And that reflects a growing and welcome effort among publishers to mine the particular advantages of Web surfing for application to the printed page.

Need to embrace Web
"I've been saying this for a while now, but print -- newspapers especially -- needs to embrace marriage with the Web to remain viable and dynamic," said Eric Blankfein, senior VP-director of communication-channel planning at Horizon Media. "The fact that The Wall Street Journal is a successful paid site lends itself to the daily adopting certain elements in order to remain fresh. This is likely a good example of a newspaper merging assets in order to make both products more valuable to advertisers and readers alike."

In an interview at The Journal's headquarters in downtown Manhattan, Mr. Crovitz told Advertising Age he felt confident -- for a newspaper executive. The print edition's most recent paid-circulation report showed a 1% decline, but it still managed to post seven consecutive months of ad-revenue gains. The Journal also has increased first-quarter ad revenue by a hefty 18% -- the highest increase in two years. The online edition has added 30,000 subscribers in the past year, reaching 761,000.

Mr. Crovitz declined to guarantee a smooth road ahead, but what is clear is the importance of the print edition's redesign.

Smaller-format Journal
The smaller-format print Journal, due in January, probably will add versions of the front-page "What's News" column, which summarizes news and directs readers inside for more details on many stories, to other sections of the paper. Given the digital era's barrage of news from all sides and sources, the paper probably will devote more space to "what it means" articles and less to simple "what happened" pieces. And themed content, which Journal research suggests both advertisers and readers like, may play a bigger role.

"Navigation and being able to benefit from content in context are very much themes of the digital age," said Mr. Crovitz, who is also exec VP at Dow Jones, The Journal's owner. "There is a great opportunity for the newspaper to help us overcome information overload by helping us, once a day, put the content in context."

"We're looking at ways to highlight news that is coming up that has not occurred yet to give people some perspective when they hear it that day," Mr. Crovitz added.

Digital distribution platforms
The Journal is still working on the digital side, where publishers can perhaps best meet consumer demands for content whenever and however they want it. "We have in the works some new distribution on cellphones across media -- not just text, but audio and visual as well," Mr. Crovitz said.

Other big papers also are applying the Web-gleaned insights to print. Gannett's USA Today, for example, plans to begin including excerpts from its On Deadline blog in the print edition, said Kinsey Wilson, one of two executive editors there. One part of the blog, "Looking Ahead," will serve in print as a guide to upcoming events, while another will round up other outlets' news coverage in true blog fashion.

Furthermore, earlier this month The New York Times shut down the weekly TV guide it once distributed in New York City editions and beefed up its TV listings online.

Print buyers said they welcome that kind of thinking -- particularly in lieu of pessimism on print.

George Janson, managing partner and director of print, Mediaedge:cia, said no one should forget where the news sites came from. "Shouldn't the question be: What's print's influence on the Web?" he asked. "There would be no online edition if it weren't for the brick-and-mortar version."

But he acknowledged that printed pages and interactive screens can and should enhance one another. "There is a multitude of ways that print and online versions can supplement rather than supplant one another," he said.

Is ‘convergence’ the next media disaster?

2006-05-30T03:16:00.000-07:00

From Miami Herald

It would be too bad if the elders of the news business decided that the way to apply the marvels of the Internet to their operations was by a bold new push for reporting that’s hasty, fragmented and half-baked. It would be even worse if redirecting newsrooms to online news ended up by degrading the working conditions of journalists, and diverting energies away from the kind of richly detailed, thoughtful reporting that exemplifies the best in journalism.

Such are the dangers of the so-called converged newsroom. That’s the term for a state-of-the-art operation where journalists step nimbly from one distribution technology to another, writing or producing for newspaper deadlines, affiliated TV or radio stations and, above all, a web site. Few print reporters are eager to become helpmates to TV news, which they regard as entertainment programming, but it’s the insertion, deep within the country’s newsrooms, of the Internet’s round-the-clock publishing cycle that threatens the greatest harm to the quality of news and information we receive.

Supporters say convergence is essential for existing media - especially newspapers, which remain the core of the news industry - to prevail amid the steady migration of audience and providers to the Internet. And it’s true that a web-based news operation, available on demand, is the way to go. But the current forms of convergence seem likely to set news media back in their efforts to repair slipping public esteem and maintain - let alone upgrade - the quality of the news and information they provide.

Cross-training journalists in a full range of informational technologies has advantages. Unless you happen to care about quality photojournalism, you won’t see much harm in having a reporter record and upload video or photos via cellphone from the site of the train derailment directly to the web site so that the audience can feast on images of the wreckage a half-hour, even an hour, sooner.

But this isn’t just a matter of handling new toys. It’s a transformation of news operations in the direction of speed, with reporters on routine stories posting multiple versions throughout the day, and it’s born of the belief that reasserting dominance in new online media markets means being first.

Ironically, the same news media chiefs who fret constantly about credibility and the declining appetite for news are diving into this 24/7 news cycle.

Does that make sense? Doesn’t it ensure that things will be posted online before they would be considered ready for print publication, with a resulting rise in errors, half-truths and all the things the public supposedly loathes? True, correcting errors is easier, but how much confidence can anybody have in media that publish before they edit?

And doesn’t this whole transformation appeal mainly to the same committed news junkies who are widely assumed to be dwindling into extinction?

So why build a business model around providing third-rate journalism to a vanishing audience?

Recent coverage of convergence efforts in the American Journalism Review and Editor & Publisher magazine offers a disturbing portrait. At a time when newsroom morale is already terrible, convergence amounts to what traditional trade unionists call a speedup: workers being pushed to do more for the same pay.

Worse, reporters fear that convergence poses a threat to depth reporting, the thoughtful work that exemplifies the best of journalism. The news person who is expected to update a breaking story throughout the day is doing so at the expense of reporting that would develop and deepen the story so that it’s illuminating and satisfying to readers.

Speaking of readers, is anybody bothering to tell them precisely how these Internet news services are paid for?
How much are news organizations, which worry so much about trust, willing to disclose about the degree to which their online audience is being tracked, the stories they read noted, the ads which they click on recorded?

The converged newsroom opens up huge, perplexing questions. So far they’re being answered by the techies, the brand managers, the publishers, the marketers. When do we hear from the professional journalists? Where is their independent assessment of how these powerful new technologies can be used not to plant the flag in cyberspace, not to reclaim market share, but to provide great, meaningful journalism?

The Dawn of A New Age of Discovery: Media 2006

2006-05-29T04:02:00.000-07:00

Speech in London, March 13, 2006

As that great American scientist, Freeman Dyson, has said, the technological revolution is like an explosion which is tearing apart the static world of our ancestors and replacing it with a new world that spins 1000 times faster.

The scientific revolution that began 300 years ago in Europe has accelerated exponentially, spreading knowledge at a speed that will, I believe, change our way of life.

It is difficult, indeed dangerous, to underestimate the huge changes this revolution will bring or the power of developing technologies to build and to destroy - not just companies but whole countries.

For instance, we probably haven’t heard the name of what will be the world’s largest company in 2020. Indeed that company may not even exist yet -- although I hope that it does, and that I know its name!

Societies or companies that expect a glorious past to shield them from the forces of change driven by advancing technology will fail and fall.

That applies as much to my own, the media industry, as to every other business on the planet.

Power is moving away from the old elite in our industry - the editors, the chief executives and, let’s face it, the proprietors.

A new generation of media consumers has risen demanding content delivered when they want it, how they want it, and very much as they want it.

This new media audience - and we are talking here of tens of millions of young people around the world - is already using technology, especially the web, to inform, entertain and above all to educate themselves.

This knowledge revolution empowers the reader, the student, the cancer patient, the victim of injustice, anyone with a vital need for the right information.

It is part of wider changes that reach far beyond the media industry.

I will discuss those changes in a minute, but let me first say that I understand why many people find the speed and direction of change so unsettling.

To them, this is the age of anxiety, an age in which technology and science seem to pose huge threats, rather than present great opportunities.

And it is perfectly true that we do face some daunting challenges.

Let us consider some of them.

How will the old nations of Europe cope with the economic rise of nations such as China and India?

Will the US and Britain remain immune from the challenge of these emerging superpowers?

Can we find victory over a new and harrowing form of terrorism carried out in the name of Islam?

We should not fool ourselves. There are no civilians and no chance of a negotiated peace in this war.

How do we contain unstable regimes in North Korea and Iran that are bent on, and very close to, developing nuclear weapons?

How are we to provide food and water for a global population that is set to rise from 6.4 billion today, to 9.2 billion in 2050?

As we ponder these and other truly momentous questions, we would not be human if we did not look into the eyes of our children and grandchildren and
sometimes wonder what world we will be leaving them.

My argument this evening is that, whatever our fears, we actually live in a second great age of discovery.

I believe that the fusion of technology and science allied to the natural creativity embedded in the human spirit will enable us to surmount the dangers we undoubtedly face, and forge a better world for all of us.

And equally I believe that what is loosely called the media will play a crucial role in shaping that destiny by facilitating the flow of ideas and the interaction of creative minds.

Never has the flow of information and ideas, of hard news and reasoned comment, been more important.

The force of our democratic beliefs is a key weapon in the war against religious fanaticism and the terrorism that it breeds.

Remember, it was ideas – the ideals of democracy allied to the free market – as much as the economic collapse of the Soviet Union that brought the West victory in the cold war.

The free flow of information is not just a building block of our democratic system; it is also the fuel of the technological revolution.

We are making new discoveries across the spectrum of science: in medicine, genetics, biology, physics and in every field of technology because information is flowing like rivers between universities, drug and biotech companies, libraries, laboratories, and public and private research centres. And, of course, across most national boundaries.

That information is carried via print, newspapers, magazines and books. It is carried on television, laptops, personal organisers, cell phones and, of course, the web.

The media use all these platforms to give the public access to this waterfall of information.

This is how public opinion is shaped. And we know how public opinion can make history.

Let me give you an example.

Consider this splendid space, the Stationers’ Hall, with its many coats of arms mounted on these ancient walls. I hardly have to tell you that this Hall was rebuilt after the Great Fire of London, and completed 333 years ago in 1673.

If you happened to be living in London that year, you would know that Europe was briefly and uneasily at peace. You would hear the political gossip about popish plots swirling around the court of King Charles the Second.

But you would not really know what was going on beyond the shores of this island, or perhaps even in the next town.

You would not know, for instance, that British power in North America was being challenged on an issue – taxation – that would lead to revolution.

You would not know, of course, because there was no means of finding out. There were no newspapers and obviously no radio or TV. The little information available was circulated via pamphlets and filtered through coffee shop conversations.

But history in those early years of the 1670s was, as ever, on the march.

A year after this hall was finished, a small event in the British colonies of America went un-remarked upon elsewhere in the world. Philip Carteret, governor of New Jersey, launched a campaign to enforce payment of quitrents, land taxes raised by Parliament in London.

The Governor’s decision turned simmering resistance into local rebellion. The rebellion petered out, but a fuse had been lit that flared through the 13 colonies leading to the revolution of 1776 and the creation of the United States of America.

Yet it took 100 years from that unnoticed event in New Jersey before English Rule in North America was ended.

Think what would have happened had the news of the tax revolt in New Jersey been made public throughout England and Europe as those events unfolded across the Atlantic. Think of the pressure on monarchy and parliament from a people weary of war and foreign involvements.

Think of the great excitement in France at another chance to do down the ancient foe.

Historians will argue forever about what might have been.

Let me join them and entertain you with this thought:

If print technology had allowed The Times newspaper to launch 100 years before it actually did in 1785, the American Revolution - and everything that flowed from it - might have happened much earlier.

Had The Times reported the growing fury in the last decade of the 17th century among the North American colonies at taxes imposed by government in London, do we think it would have taken another 100 years before revolution ended colonial rule? I doubt it.

Since those days, and especially since the rise of the popular press at the turn of the 19th century, the power of the media to influence events and drive change has grown hugely.

But, as I said earlier, power is moving away from those who own and manage the media to a new and demanding generation of consumers - consumers who are better educated, unwilling to be led, and who know that in a competitive world they can get what they want, when they want it.

The challenge for us in the traditional media is how to engage with this new audience.

There is only one way.

That is by using our skills to create and distribute dynamic, exciting content. King Content, the Economist called it recently. But - and this is a very big BUT - newspapers will have to adapt as their readers demand news and sport on a variety of platforms: websites, ipods, mobile phones or laptops.

I believe traditional newspapers have many years of life left but, equally, I think in the future that newsprint and ink will be just one of many channels to our readers.

As we all know, newspapers have already created large audiences for their content online and have provided readers with added value features such as email alerts, blogs, interactive debate, and podcasts.

Content is being repurposed to suit the needs of a contemporary audience.

This divergence from the traditional platform of newsprint will continue, indeed accelerate for a while.

The same is true of television.

Sky has already started putting programmes onto PCs and mobile phones.

That old square television box in the corner of the room may soon be dead but the television industry is seizing the opportunities thrown up by the technology revolution.

PVRs – personal video recorders – streaming live TV onto mobile phones – beaming programmes onto computers via IPTV – internet broadcasts – this wave of innovation gives the consumer huge choice at relatively low cost.

So, media becomes like fast food – people will consume it on the go, watching news, sport and film clips as they travel to and from work on mobiles or handheld wireless devices like Sony’s PSP, or others already in test by our Satellite companies.

This does not mean that television and newspapers need lose their historic role of keeping people informed about what is happening in the world around them.

Given the speed of change around us that role has never been more important.

Consider the field of medicine where science fiction is becoming science fact.
We have learned more about how to prevent and treat cancer in the last 10 years than in the history of mankind.

That is the stated view of the American Cancer Society.

Here is another view from the National Cancer Institute in the US :

“By the year 2015 we aim to see the elimination of death and suffering due to cancer.”

What has prompted two such reputable organisations to make these huge claims – claims that will, if true, change the lives of millions of people on this planet?

Three years ago a group of scientists made a breathtaking breakthrough by publishing a genetic map showing the DNA breakdown of the human race.

Driven by ever-more-powerful computers, the new science of DNA is giving us control over the evolution of most life forms and most critically of our own human existence.

It means that scientists are gaining the power to create plant and animal life with the specific intention of feeding more people with better food, with curing people of a range of diseases: the power to enable people to lead far better lives.

It means that medicine has been changed forever.

Already DNA knowledge is being used to manufacture human hormones, reduce heart blockages, shrink tumours and treat multiple sclerosis.

Little wonder that governments, universities and the big drug companies are investing billions into DNA related research.

The DNA breakthrough happened because, throughout their research, scientists in the US were able to post their findings on the web, drawing information and inspiration from colleagues around the world.

The internet was crucial to that astonishing development and I am sure that the web will continue its rapid development as the prime media channel for information, entertainment, business and social contact.

One of the reasons I say that is the success of a company we bought last year called MySpace.com.

This is a networking site in which millions of people, aged mainly between 16 and 34, talk online to each other about music, film, dating, travel, whatever interests them.

They share pictures, videos and blogs, forming virtual communities.

Since launch just two years ago, the site has acquired sixty million registered users, thirty five million of whom are regular users. This is a generation, now popularly referred to as the “myspace generation”, talking to itself in a world without frontiers.

It is just one example of how the media, with its ability to reach millions with information, entertainment and education can use the achievements of technology to create better and more interesting lives for a great many people.

And it is one reason why I believe we are at the dawn of a golden age of information – an empire of new knowledge.

But knowledge alone is not a magic wand which can be waved to banish poverty and produce riches. Life is not like that.

Consider the words of the Nobel Laureate David Baltimore, President of the California Institute of Technology, who said recently.

“We are creating a world in which it will be imperative for each individual to have sufficient scientific literacy to understand the new riches of knowledge so that he can use them wisely.’’

There you have it.

Those people, those companies, those nations which understand and use this new knowledge will be the ones to prosper and grow strong in our age of discovery.

History is populated with examples of how knowledge can transform the fortunes of a small company, a weak nation, a threatened tribe.

The caveman who first struck fire from a flint was possessed of knowledge that made him master of his universe – although not for long.

Knowledge, in the form of superior technology, won Nelson the Battle of Trafalgar. His brilliantly aggressive tactics decided the scale of the victory.

The victory itself was won before a shot had been fired.

The British ships had faster firing, more accurate, guns and better gunpowder.

That technological advantage ensured victory and allowed the British control of the seas in the decades that followed, contributing directly to the prosperity and innovation of the Victorian era.

From the wheel to the web, from the printing press to fibre optic cable, it has always been technology that has driven history. Those in the driving seat have always been those who fully understood and used that technology.

Today one of our great challenges is to understand and seize the opportunities presented by the web.

It is a creative, destructive, technology that is still in its Infancy, yet breaking and remaking everything it its path.

The web is changing the way we do business, the way we talk to each other and the way we enjoy ourselves.

As old and new technologies merge, the questions multiply:

Will the internet kill fixed-line telephony? It is already happening via VOIP - Voice Over Internet Protocol.

When high-speed broadband pipes TV and film onto enhanced computer screens at home, what happens to the television companies, the film studios and indeed newspapers?

I pose these questions – and there are many more thrown up by the web – in this context.

There are about one billion people in the world who have access to computers, although only about 10% to broadband.

In 20 or 30 years there will be six billion such people, or two-thirds of the human race. We know the $100 laptop is on the way. In a few years, there could be a $50 laptop.

It would be folly for me to stand here and pretend I know what this really means in any detail for future generations.

But I will answer a question I suspect is forming in your minds.

What happens to print journalism in an age where consumers are increasingly being offered on-demand, interactive, news, entertainment, sport and classifieds via broadband on their computer screens, TV screens, mobile phones and handsets?

The answer is that great journalism will always attract readers. The words, pictures and graphics that are the stuff of journalism have to be brilliantly packaged; they must feed the mind and move the heart.

And, crucially, newspapers must give readers a choice of accessing their journalism in the pages of the paper or on websites such as Times Online or - and this is important - on any platform that appeals to them, mobile phones, hand-held devices, ipods, whatever.

As I have said newspapers may become news-sites.

As long as news organisations create must-read, must-have content, and deliver it in the medium that suits the reader, they will endure.

Great content always has been, and I think always will be, king of the media castle.

Caxton’s printing press marked a revolution that is with us 500 years later.

But the history of that revolution is not one in which the new wipes out the old. Radio did not destroy newspapers, television did not destroy radio and
neither eliminated the printing of books.

And whatever you think about Hollywood, the film industry is very much alive.

Each wave of new technology in our industry forced an improvement in the old. Each new medium forced its predecessor to become more creative and more relevant to the consumer.

I began by saying that some people find the changes we all face daunting.

This is understandable because we all fear the unknown.

In the first Age of Discovery, some six hundred years ago, the great European explorers stood on the rim of the known world and set sail, literally, into the unknown.

Technology had given them ships equipped, although barely so, for long voyages. Science provided rudimentary navigational aids, and royal and private treasuries the financing. But what sent Bartolomeu Dias, Christopher Columbus, John Cabot and Henry the Navigator across the ocean was not just a quest for new trade routes to the East.

They consciously sought to expand the horizons of humanity, to risk their lives to find a new world.

That is where we are today. We are immeasurably better equipped than our ancestors to face the challenges posed by some of the issues I have raised this evening.

But we must not lose our nerve. We must be prepared to take risks and accept that we will make mistakes, sometimes very large ones. Above all we must have what those great seafaring explorers had in abundance:

the courage to use the technological change that is unfolding around us to help make a better world.

We are all on a journey, not just the privileged few, and technology will take us to a destination that is defined by the limits of our creativity, our confidence and our courage.

Speech by Rupert Murdoch to the American Society of Newspaper Editors

2006-05-29T04:01:00.000-07:00

From American Society of Newspaper Editors (April 13, 2005)

When a newspaper proprietor faces this many editors in one room, usually it means only one thing: a demand for a pay increase.

But as I stand before this esteemed group of editors today, I’m reminded of something Mark Twain once wrote to a friend:

“How often we recall, with regret, that napoleon once shot at a magazine editor and missed him and killed a publisher……. But we remember with charity, that his intentions were good.”

Ladies and gentlemen, I come before you today with the best of intentions. My subject is one near and dear to all of us: the role of newspapers in this digital age.

Scarcely a day goes by without some claim that new technologies are fast writing newsprint’s obituary. Yet, as an industry, many of us have been remarkably, unaccountably complacent. Certainly, I didn’t do as much as I should have after all the excitement of the late 1990’s. I suspect many of you in this room did the same, quietly hoping that this thing called the digital revolution would just limp along.

Well it hasn’t … it won’t …. And it’s a fast developing reality we should grasp as a huge opportunity to improve our journalism and expand our reach.

I come to this discussion not as an expert with all the answers, but as someone searching for answers to an emerging medium that is not my native language. Like many of you in this room, I’m a digital immigrant. I wasn’t weaned on the web, nor coddled on a computer. Instead, I grew up in a highly centralized world where news and information were tightly controlled by a few editors, who deemed to tell us what we could and should know. My two young daughters, on the other hand, will be digital natives. They’ll never know a world without ubiquitous broadband internet access.

The peculiar challenge then, is for us digital immigrants – many of whom are in positions to determine how news is assembled and disseminated -- to apply a digital mindset to a new set of challenges.

We need to realize that the next generation of people accessing news and information, whether from newspapers or any other source, have a different set of expectations about the kind of news they will get, including when and how they will get it, where they will get it from, and who they will get it from.

Anyone who doubts this should read a recent report by the Carnegie Corporation about young people’s changing habits of news consumption and what they mean for the future of the news industry.

According to this report, and I quote, “There’s a dramatic revolution taking place in the news business today, and it isn’t about TV anchor changes, scandals at storied newspapers or embedded reporters.” The future course of news, says the study’s author, Merrill Brown, is being altered by technology-savvy young people no longer wedded to traditional news outlets or even accessing news in traditional ways.

Instead, as the study illustrates, consumers between the ages of 18-34 are increasingly using the web as their medium of choice for news consumption. While local TV news remains the most accessed source of news, the internet, and more specifically, internet portals, are quickly becoming the favored destination for news among young consumers.

44 percent of the study’s respondents said they use a portal at least once a day for news, as compared to just 19 percent who use a printed newspaper on a daily basis. More ominously, looking out three years, the study found that 39 percent expected to use the internet more to learn about the news, versus only 8 percent who expected to use traditional newspapers more.

And their attitudes towards newspapers are especially alarming. Only 9 percent describe us as trustworthy, a scant 8 percent find us useful, and only 4 percent of respondents think we’re entertaining. Among major news sources, our beloved newspaper is the least likely to be the preferred choice for local, national or international news going forward.

What is happening is, in short, a revolution in the way young people are accessing news. They don’t want to rely on the morning paper for their up-to-date information. They don’t want to rely on a god-like figure from above to tell them what’s important. And to carry the religion analogy a bit further, they certainly don’t want news presented as gospel.

Instead, they want their news on demand, when it works for them.

They want control over their media, instead of being controlled by it.

They want to question, to probe, to offer a different angle. Think about how blogs and message boards revealed that Kryptonite bicycle locks were vulnerable to a Bic pen. Or the Swiftboat incident. Or the swift departure of Dan Rather from CBS. One commentator, Jeff Jarvis, puts it this way: give the people control of media, they will use it. Don’t give people control of media, and you will lose them.

In the face of this revolution, however, we’ve been slow to react. We’ve sat by and watched while our newspapers have gradually lost circulation. We all know of great and expensive exceptions to this – but the technology is now moving much faster than in the past.

Where four out of every five americans in 1964 read a paper every day, today, only half do. Among just younger readers, the numbers are even worse, as I’ve just shown.

One writer, Philip Meyer, has even suggested in his book The Vanishing Newspaper that looking at today’s declining newspaper readership – and continuing that line, the last reader recycles the last printed paper in 2040 – April, 2040, to be exact.

There are a number of reasons for our inertia in the face of this advance. First, newspapers as a medium for centuries enjoyed a virtual information monopoly – roughly from the birth of the printing press to the rise of radio. We never had a reason to second-guess what we were doing. Second, even after the advent of television, a slow but steady decline in readership was masked by population growth that kept circulations reasonably intact. Third, even after absolute circulations started to decline in the 1990s, profitability did not.

But those days are gone. The trends are against us. Fast search engines and targeted advertising as well as editorial, all increase the electronic attractions by a factor of 3 or 4. And at least four billion dollars a year is going into R&D to further improve this process.

So unless we awaken to these changes, which are quite different to those of 5 or 6 years ago, we will, as an industry, be relegated to the status of also-rans. But, properly done, they are an opportunity to actually improve our journalism and expand our reach.

For those who are confronting this new reality, we tend to focus on the technological challenge, which is understandable, since it is one we believe – or hope – that we can do something about.

Thinking back to the challenge that television posed to the newspaper business, we can see some similarities. A new technology comes along, and like many new things, it is somewhat exciting at first, simply by virtue of being new. Like the advent of radio before it, television was always going to be at best an alternative way to get the news, and at worst a direct competitor. There was no way to make it a part, or even a partner, of the paper.

That is manifestly not true of the internet. And all of our papers are living proof. I venture to say that not one newspaper represented in this room lacks a website. Yet how many of us can honestly say that we are taking maximum advantage of those websites to serve our readers, to strengthen our businesses, or to meet head-on what readers increasingly say is important to them in receiving their news?

Despite this, I’m still confident of our future, both in print and via electronic delivery platforms. The data may show that young people aren’t reading newspapers as much as their predecessors, but it doesn’t show they don’t want news. In fact, they want a lot of news, just faster news of a different kind and delivered in a different way.

And we in this room – newspaper editors and journalists – are uniquely positioned to deliver that news. We have the experience, the brands, the resources, and the know-how to get it done. We have unique content to differentiate ourselves in a world where news is becoming increasingly commoditized. And most importantly, we have a great new partner to help us reach this new consumer -- the internet.

The challenge, however, is to deliver that news in ways consumers want to receive it. Before we can apply our competitive advantages, we have to free our minds of our prejudices and predispositions, and start thinking like our newest consumers. In short, we have to answer this fundamental question: what do we – a bunch of digital immigrants -- need to do to be relevant to the digital natives?

Probably, just watch our teenage kids.

What do they want to know, and where will they go to get it?

They want news on demand, continuously updated. They want a point of view about not just what happened, but why it happened.

They want news that speaks to them personally, that affects their lives. They don’t just want to know how events in the Mid-east will affect the presidential election; they want to know what it will mean at the gas-pump. They don’t just want to know about terrorism, but what it means about the safety of their subway line, or whether they’ll be sent to Iraq. And they want the option to go out and get more information, or to seek a contrary point of view.

And finally, they want to be able to use the information in a larger community – to talk about, to debate, to question, and even to meet the people who think about the world in similar or different ways.

Our print versions can obviously satisfy many of these needs, and we at news corporation will continue to invest in our printed papers so they remain an important part of our reader’s daily lives. But our internet versions can do even more, especially in providing virtual communities for our readers to be linked to other sources of information, other opinions, other like-minded people.

And to do that, we must challenge – and reformulate -- the conventions that so far have driven our online efforts.

At News Corporation, we have a history of challenging media orthodoxies. Nearly twenty years ago, we created a fourth broadcast network. What was behind that creation was a fundamental questioning of the way people got their nightly entertainment to that point. We weren’t constrained by the news at six, primetime at eight, news again at 11 paradigm. We weren’t constrained by the belief that entertainment had to be geared to a particular audience, or reflect a certain mind-set.

Instead, we shortened the primetime block to two hours, pushed up the news by an hour, and programmed the network to a younger-skewing audience. The result was the FOX Broadcast Network, today America’s number one network among 18-49 year-olds.

Similarly, we sensed ten years ago that people watching television news felt alienated by the monolithic presentation of the news they were getting from the nightly news broadcasts or cable networks. We sensed that there was another way we could deliver that news – objectively, fairly, and faster-paced. And the result was the fox news channel, today America’s number one cable news network.

And most recently, at the The Times of London, circulation decline was immediately reversed when we moved from a broadsheet to what we call our “compact” edition. For nearly a year, we offered readers both versions: same newspaper, same stories, just different sizes. And they overwhelmingly chose the compact version as more convenient. This is an example of us listening to what our readers want, and then upsetting a centuries old tradition to give them exactly what they were asking for. And we did it all without compromising the quality of our product.

In this spirit, we’re now turning to the internet. Today, the newspaper is just a paper. Tomorrow, it can be a destination.

Today, to the extent anyone is a destination, it’s the internet portals: the Yahoos, Googles, and MSNs. I just saw a report that showed Google News’s traffic increased 90 percent over the past year while the New York Times’ excellent website traffic decreased 23 percent. The challenge for us – for each of us in this room – is to create an internet presence that is compelling enough for users to make us their home page. Just as people traditionally started their day with coffee and the newspaper, in the future, our hope should be that for those who start their day online, it will be with coffee and our website.

To do this, though, we have to refashion what our web presence is. It can’t just be what it too often is today: a bland repurposing of our print content. Instead, it will need to offer compelling and relevant content. Deep, deep local news. Relevant national and international news. Commentary and debate. Gossip and humor.

Some newspapers will invest sufficient resources to continuously update the news, because digital natives don’t just check the news in the morning – they check it throughout the day. If my child played a little league baseball game in the morning, it would be great to be able to access the paper’s website in the afternoon to get a summary of her game, maybe even accompanied by video highlights.

But our internet site will have to do still more to be competitive. For some, it may have to become the place for conversation. The digital native doesn’t send a letter to the editor anymore. She goes online, and starts a blog. We need to be the destination for those bloggers. We need to encourage readers to think of the web as the place to go to engage our reporters and editors in more extended discussions about the way a particular story was reported or researched or presented.

At the same time, we may want to experiment with the concept of using bloggers to supplement our daily coverage of news on the net. There are of course inherent risks in this strategy -- chief among them maintaining our standards for accuracy and reliability. Plainly, we can’t vouch for the quality of people who aren’t regularly employed by us – and bloggers could only add to the work done by our reporters, not replace them. But they may still serve a valuable purpose; broadening our coverage of the news; giving us new and fresh perspectives to issues; deepening our relationship to the communities we serve, so long as our readers understand the clear distinction between bloggers and our journalists.

To carry this one step further, some digital natives do even more than blog with text – they are blogging with audio, specifically through the rise of podcasting – and to remain fully competitive, some may want to consider providing a place for that as well.

And with the growing proliferation of broadband, the emphasis online is shifting from text only to text with video. The future is soon upon us in this regard. Google and Yahoo already are testing video search while other established cable brands, including FOX News, are accompanying their text news stories with video clips.

What this means for us as newspapers is the opportunity to partner with credible video programmers to provide an infinitely better product. More access to news; more visually entertaining news and advertising product; deeper and more penetrating coverage.

At News Corporation, where we’re both a video programmer as well as a newspaper publisher, the rewards of getting this right are enormous. We’ve spent billions of dollars developing unique sports, news and general entertainment programming. We have a library as rich as anyone in this world. Our job now is to bring this content profitably into the broadband world – to marry our video to our publishing assets, and to garner our fair share – hopefully more than our fair share -- of the advertising dollars that will come from successfully converging these media.

Someone whom I respect a great deal, Bill Gates, said recently that the internet would attract $30 billion in advertising revenue annually within the next three years. To give you some perspective, this would equal the entire advertising revenue currently generated each year by the newspaper industry as a whole. Of course, all of this could not be new money. Whether Bill’s math is right is almost beside the point. What is indisputable is the fact that more and more advertising dollars are going on-line, and we must be in a position to capture our fair share.

The threat of losing print advertising dollars to online media is very real. In fact, it’s already happening, particularly in classifieds. No one in this room is oblivious to it. Television and radio and the yellow pages are in the same spot.

In the same way we need to be relevant to our readers, the internet provides the opportunity for us to be more relevant to our advertisers. Plainly, the internet allows us to be more granular in our advertising, targeting potential consumers based on where they’ve surfed and what products they’ve bought. The ability to more precisely target customers using technology- powered forms of advertising represents a great opportunity for us to maintain and even grow market share and is clearly the future of advertising.

And the history of our industry shows that we can do this. Technology has traditionally been an asset to the newspaper business. It has in the past allowed us to improve our printing, helped us collect and transmit the news faster and cheaper – as well as reach people we never could reach before. So of all the trials that face newspapers in the 21st century, I fear technology – and our response to it – is by no means our only challenge.

What I worry about much more is our ability to make the necessary cultural changes to meet the new demands. As I said earlier, what is required is a complete transformation of the way we think about our product. Unfortunately, however, I believe too many of us editors and reporters are out of touch with our readers. Too often, the question we ask is “Do we have the story? rather than “Does anyone want the story?”

And the data support this unpleasant truth. Studies show we’re in an odd position: we’re more trusted by the people who aren’t reading us. And when you ask journalists what they think about their readers, the picture grows darker. According to one recent study, the percentage of national journalists who have a great deal of confidence in the ability of the American public to make good decisions has declined by more than 20 points since 1999. Perhaps this reflects their personal politics and personal prejudices more than anything else, but it is disturbing.

This is a polite way of saying that reporters and editors think their readers are stupid. In any business, such an attitude toward one’s customers would not be healthy. But in the newspaper business, where we rely on people to come back to us each day, it will be disastrous if not addressed.

As one study said: “Even if the economics of journalism work themselves out, how can journalists work on behalf of a public they are coming to see as less wise and less able?”

I’d put it more dramatically: newspapers whose employees look down on their readers can have no hope of ever succeeding as a business.

But by meeting the challenges I’ve raised, I’m confident we will not only improve our chances for success in the online world, but as importantly, improve our actual printed newspapers.

Success in the online world will, I think, beget greater success in the printed medium. By streamlining our operations and becoming more nimble. By changing the way we write and edit stories. By listening more intently to our readers.

I do not underestimate the tests before us. We may never become true digital natives, but we can and must begin to assimilate to their culture and way of thinking. It is a monumental, once-in-a-generation opportunity, but it is also an exciting one, because if we’re successful, our industry has the potential to reshape itself, and to be healthier than ever before.

The future of journalism

2006-05-29T03:59:00.000-07:00

Mathias Döpfner, head of the Axel Springer publishing empire, answers a speech by media magnate Rupert Murdoch.
For a concise and intelligent statement on the correct way to deal with change, there is still no beating Rupert Murdoch's appeal to "embrace progress!" This is the way to go. But it is not always easy. Sometimes, the sheer amount of progress makes it hard to know who to embrace.

Some months ago, one of our editors-in-chief welcomed a group of school children for a visit to his editorial offices. He proudly informed them that he is able to react to the latest developments until 11 pm; new computer technology has accelerated the process of making printing plates, allowing him to go to press just a few minutes after the final changes to the layout; and sophisticated logistics mean the paper is with the wholesalers at 4 am, so that it reaches sales outlets across Germany, and thus in effect the readers, by 6 am. All this, he said, made his paper unbeatable. Having soared to this closing apotheosis on the thermals of his own enthusiasm, the editor-in-chief asked if anyone had any questions. One pupil put up his hand and asked: "Does that mean that by 11 pm, you already know everything you want to put in the paper, and that between 11 pm and the next morning, no more changes can be made?" "Yes, of course, it does mean that." "But why should we wait until the next morning? You could just send us the paper by e-mail at 11 pm." The editor-in-chief was devastated. For all his claims of being up to speed, the print man was suddenly looking rather out of the loop.

This experience is symptomatic of the uncertainty within our industry. Levels of collective angst are higher than they have been for a long time. Of course, crises are nothing new for newspaper publishers. When Johann Carolus published the first newspaper 401 years ago in Strasbourg, the project threatened to fold just twelve days after its first issue. He complained to the mayor about copyists who were ruining his business. The history of newspapers, then, started with a crisis – a copyright crisis. Around 1900, there came a crisis of quality, with fears of trivialisation and two-dimensionality. The next major crisis came fifty years later, when a threat to the existence of newspapers was perceived in the rise of television. Then came Bild newspaper, and whereas in 1900, only 10 percent of the German population read newspapers, a century later that figure was 73 percent. In 1990, Bill Gates prophesied that by the year 2000, there would be no more newspapers. He was wrong. In the year 2000, newspaper publishers around the world made the largest profits in their history.

In spite of all this, the last few years have again been marked by a crisis: the great advertising, circulation, Internet and structural crisis. We media managers love crises. We compete to see who can describe the crisis in the bluntest terms. No one wants to be a dinosaur. Which is why we all present ourselves as extremely open to change and what Joseph Schumpeter called "creatively destructive." Myself included. But we must be careful not to commit suicide out of a fear of dying. To exaggerate slightly, the depressed mood in our business can be boiled down to two dominant theories:

The end is nigh because everything in the publishing industry is changing. We will only avoid destruction if we change the way we do everything.

I would like to refute these theories in the most emphatic terms. The end is not nigh, as things are changing less than we think. We should not change the way we do everything, because otherwise we really will face destruction.

I believe in "Riepl's Law." Wolfgang Riepl was the editor-in-chief of Nürnberger Zeitung newspaper. In 1913, he published a dissertation putting forth a law that was to have a shaping influence on the history of communications: new media do not replace existing media. Media progress is cumulative, not substitutive. New media are constantly added, but the old ones remain. This law has yet to be disproved. Books have not replaced storytelling. Newspapers have not replaced books; radio has not replaced newspapers; and television has not replaced radio. It follows that the Internet will not replace television or newspapers. That sounds comforting, but there are exceptions: CDs really did replace old vinyl records; and mp3 technology is currently in the process of replacing CDs faster than anyone suspected. The same applies for DVD and video. And this is where things get interesting, for neither the CD nor the DVD nor the mp3 are really new media, they are merely improved technologies. The product itself, the creative medium of music or film, has not been changed by this new transfer medium. Which is why these examples, too, actually confirm Riepl's Law.

The main question hanging over our industry is whether the newspaper format, which has just celebrated its 400th birthday in rather ill-humoured and depressed style, will live another 100 years. The answer is yes and no. As a transfer medium: no; as a creative medium: yes. Paper will be replaced as the transfer medium – by electronic paper. As a function, the newspaper is indispensable. On account of journalism. The Internet is not the new newspaper. It is a genuinely new medium. Not just a new transfer medium, but a new creative medium, too. According to Riepl this means that the Internet will establish itself alongside the media already on offer, not replace them.

The Internet is a spectacular success story. But that is not all – it is a new cosmos which has changed and will continue to change society more than modern transport technology. The first step towards globalisation was air travel. The second decisive step in globalization is the Internet. Every piece of information is accessible to everyone at all times in all places. This radically democratic feat has given globalization the unstoppable force of a natural phenomenon. It is the largest, most inexorable social project in recent history, and the greatest act of redistribution: from rich to poor, from knowledge owners to those hungry for knowledge, from those who are sated to those who are hungry. In terms of know-how and prosperity, established economies are losing their lead over rising nations like India, China and the states of Eastern Europe. These are the real challenges for Old Europe: "Anyone who thinks they are something has stopped becoming something."

There is a fundamental difference between globalized Internet journalism and newspaper journalism. They have entirely different functions. On the Internet, I get faster access to more information about something I already know I am interested in. If I want to learn something about a specific illness, I go to the Internet. A few links later, I am on a special orthopaedic site, and a few seconds later a search engine has found the right doctor for my ailment. In the newspaper, on the other hand, I learn about things I did not even know I might be interested in. I wanted to read something about backache and ended up reading a text about holidays in the Maldives. The newspaper has breadth, the Internet has depth. The newspaper works horizontally, the Internet vertically. The second essential difference is that on the Internet, the user guides the journalist. In the newspaper, the reader is guided. The Internet has turned the hierarchy on its head. It is selflessly anti-authoritarian in character, profoundly democratic. Newspapers, by contrast, are confidently authoritarian.

Most online content offered by existing newspaper brands falls far short of the technical and creative potential of the Internet. Let us take a major news story – the London Underground bombings. The next day's newspapers offer outdated information, the television repeats the same footage again and again. And the Internet? It could be the winner. But most sites simply repeat the wires from the agencies and add up the facts a little faster than their colleagues in the newspaper editorial offices.

User-generated content is the keyword here. The Internet site of the future has not fifty but fifty million reporters. The users, the customers, are reporters. One South Korean Internet newspaper (OhmyNews in Seoul) practices this in exemplary fashion, rewarding the best contributions with payments whose size depends on the number of clicks. As we see here, the customer, the user, is in charge. Online journalists play a subordinate role. They do what they are told.

Is this the future? Yes. It is part of the future. But what does it mean for newspapers? Do they have to bend to the demands of Rupert Murdoch and others and become flexible and interactive, in line with the wishes of the readership? Do they have to become fast food, consumable on demand? Do they have to try to become like the Internet? I think not. Newspapers must focus on their own strengths, and that means being a horizon medium, creating and satisfying wishes and interests which readers did not even know they had. As in the past, this remains the newspaper's future, regardless of whether it is delivered on paper or electronic paper. One thing I am sure of is that the future of newspapers is digital.

They will cease to be printed on paper as soon as electronic paper exists that fulfils the following criteria: it has to be thin, foldable and rollable, capable of reproducing high-resolution colour images, ensuring foolproof touch-screen operation, with no need for heavy batteries or chargers, and it must be cheap. Then we will roll out our newspaper out of a mobile phone or ballpoint pen. Then we will call up our subscription at the click of a button. Work on developing e-papers of this kind is well underway. Eventually – in five, ten or twenty-five years – we will distribute this electronic paper to our subscribed customers. Costs for paper, printing and distribution will sink dramatically – but our business model will not have changed at all. Information and entertainment for a range of target groups. In other words: exclusive news, independent opinions and captivating language. In a word: journalism.

We publishing executives must therefore became even more aware that our business is not creating printed matter, but creating journalism. Journalism on the Internet and newspaper journalism. And the two forms are governed by different laws. There is one thing I know: when every piece of information is accessible to everyone at all times in all places, then there will be a growing need for orientation, selection and the quality that makes a good newspaper journalist: leadership.

Three grams of football, ten spoons of pension policy, five pinches of movie reviews and a dash of foreign policy sauce with a Middle Eastern flavour. On your laptop at seven in the morning. And then, at eleven thirty at night, another dose on the flat screen in your bedroom. Is this the recipe for the adult media consumer of the future? No one wants to be their own programme director in the long term. That is a nice utopia of democratic and media theory for a small elite, but it is not a realistic vision for the mass market. Readers do not want to make all the decisions themselves. Just like you don't always feel like cooking when you're hungry.

Readers want orientation. They want pre-selection. In an anecdote dating from the anti-authoritarian kindergartens of the 1970s, a victim of this educational credo asks: "Mama, do we really have to play what we want again today?" Paraphrasing this, one could ask: Does the reader really always want to want something? The newspaper principle is based on leadership. This is what makes it so seemingly old-fashioned. And the leadership principle is also what assures the role of newspapers in the future. This principle of leadership, this deep-seated desire for hierarchy, is something I believe in almost as firmly as I believe in the function of the marketplace. People want to go where they will meet as many other people as possible to exchange information, opinions and wares. The more fragmented, diverse and fissured the media landscape becomes, with an ever-increasing number of specialized channels, special-interest magazines and websites, the greater the demand for a communication experience that fosters conversation. A demand for big brands. For the important television show. For the big newspaper. It is in this desire, independent of all fashions and trends, that opportunity lies.

But we must be careful not to go too far on the road to becoming more reader-friendly, turning customer-orientation into a lack of orientation and a loss of charisma. Otherwise, the media could suffer the same fate as politicians, whose loss of importance and prestige has accelerated since they started governing to please the electorate (and the media). Pollster democracy is what happens when political leaders stop organizing majorities for the right course of political action and start paying pollsters to find out what the people want to hear. This may be comforting in the short term, but eventually respect and interest wane.

The same applies to newspaper journalism. Anyone who designs concepts and content mixes on the basis of market research is bound to lose in the long term. For years, worldwide copy texts delivered the following result: less politics, less culture, more sport, more local news. Today we have ReaderScan (explanation in German), the "viewer ratings" for print media, delivering hard facts on which texts are actually read. And to our general amazement we find that sport is only read by 25 percent. And that what people want, even in local papers, is less local news and more national and international content. What now? Should we throw local news and sport out of our newspapers? Market research is a guide, but it is never a guarantee of success.

All this sometimes reminds me of the phenomenon I call the bouncer syndrome. I only know two types of discos or clubs. At the first, someone stands at the door calling out "Come on in! Pretty girls! Free entry! Come on in!" And anyone not totally desperate switches to the other side of the street. At the other type, someone stands just inside the door saying, sorry, members only tonight. And people stand in line to get in.

So what do newspaper readers want? What characterizes the newspaper of the future will be the same thing that characterized newspapers in the past: exclusive news, independent opinions and captivating language. What is the current situation concerning these three core competences?

Exclusive news: By definition, newspapers are about news. But the genuine element of the newspaper, its true function and reason for existence, is that which no one knows yet (as opposed to easy-access agency wires) and that which no one was supposed to find out (if those concerned got their way). Finding news depends on research. The reporter Hans Leyendecker points out that for some people in Germany, finding a phone number without help from a secretary already constitutes research. If newspapers want to keep abreast of the times and successfully compete for their share of the customer's precious time, they must place more emphasis on research. And publishers must maintain or create the conditions for this: money, time, independence. Investigative journalism costs money, it may take some time and it may not always deliver results. But in the long term, it pays off.

Independent opinions: Besides news, the lifeblood of newspapers is opinion. Ideally, it should be intelligent, pointedly stated, sometimes even provocative and polemic. Nothing is more tedious than perfectly balanced views or writing what the reader wants to hear. Newspapers must offer people things to talk about. Provide a briefing for discussions in the corridor at work or later in the pub. In Germany, however, the dominant culture is still one of consensus, increasingly so in fact. The time for passionate debate is never past. All it takes is for people to launch debates in a passionate way. Nothing is better than the good old leader article: this is where the editorial team speaks out boldly, stating what it or one of its members thinks.

And finally, captivating language: Language is the journalist's raw material, and an aphrodisiac to seduce the reader. It is a well-known fact that there are no tedious subjects, just tediously written texts. Publishers view writers like orchids – expensive and sensitive. But these artists of language are the most important anchors – the popular columnists and those responsible for the big reports we had no intention of reading but which, after reading the first two sentences, we simply had to finish. Language is the talent that newspaper journalism – unlike radio, television or the Internet – can and must make the most of. The message between the lines, precise observations, ironic use of detail, striking and unfamiliar use of words, and maybe even the reader's laughter – this is what binds people to their newspaper.

News, opinions, language – this is what it has always been about, and that is not about to change.

Rather than those who show the smartest charts at conferences and say what their advertising clients want to hear, the most successful journalists and editors-in-chief today are those who are troublesome, demanding, exacting. Those who are confident. But not self-satisfied. Of the confident ones, then, only those whose capacity for self-criticism is still stronger than their capacity for self-satisfaction.

The future belongs to journalists and publishers who believe that the newspaper format is not dead as long as it is possible to keep creating new newspapers and magazines with circulations in the millions, as long as a daily newspaper for children can develop into the country's highest coverage publication – as is now the case in France – and as long as people have a passion for news, opinions and language.

In a much-discussed address, Rupert Murdoch said: "What is happening is, in short, a revolution in the way young people are accessing news. They don't want to rely on the morning paper for their up-to-date information. They don't want to rely on a god-like figure from above to tell them what's important. And to carry the religion analogy a bit further, they certainly don't want news presented as gospel." Of course, Murdoch is right – as always. But I would like to make three small objections:

Firstly: I believe that even in future, young people will read a newspaper in the morning, on paper or on electronic paper, if it deals with their lives, with their issues, problems and dreams. In short, if they are attracted by the news, ideas and language in the paper.

Secondly: I believe that the newspaper of the future can only captivate its readers if it is backed up by confident, charismatic (although not necessarily divine) figures who provide leadership, who are capable of explaining in interesting terms what they themselves are passionate about. The standards of design, language and content expected by young people today are higher than they were twenty years ago. They have had enough trash. What is called for is substance – in different ways in broadsheet and tabloid formats.

And thirdly: I can hardly imagine a better metaphor for good journalism than gospel. Gospel is movement, gospel is spirit, and gospel is soul. Good gospel moves the entire community. And moving people is exactly what we want to do. Good journalism is moving. However much changes – this will stay the same.

Using Google Map as a journalistic tool

2006-05-29T03:43:00.000-07:00

Look at the way the NYTimes.com using Google Maps to plot homicides

1/3 of referrals to washingtonpost.com from blogs

2006-05-29T00:03:00.000-07:00

From Buzz Machine

Blog et RSS

2006-05-26T06:24:00.000-07:00

Cours zippé

100 idées pour utiliser les fils RSS

2006-05-26T06:18:00.000-07:00

From vtech

I. Bibliothèque/Documentation
1) Gestion des prêts et des retards des ouvrages d’une bibliothèque : http://ruk.ca/article/2290
2) Créer un répertoire de fils RSS : http://azardo.free.fr/rss.htm
3) Créer un bulletin de sommaire : http://library.usask.ca/ejournals/rss_feeds.php
4) Créer des dossiers documentaires : http://ceped.cirad.fr/documentation/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=24

II. Education
1) Suivre les derniers ajouts à une liste de lecture
2) Etre averti des nouveaux examens et devoirs de sa promotion ou de sa classe
3) Suivre les derniers rapports soumis par les étudiants
4) Etre averti des derniers concours des écoles, universités…

III. Finance
1) Diffuser des notes financières, documents boursiers…
2) Suivre l’évolution des cours de bourse
3) Envoyer/recevoir des alertes de franchissement de seuil sur le marché boursier
4) Transmettre/recevoir les nouveaux taux de change
5) Transmettre/recevoir les avis d’opéré sur les marchés boursiers
6) Suivi des comptes clients (alertes sur certains seuils)
7) Envoi d’alertes relatives au dépassement de limites de crédit sur un compte bancaire

IV. Internet
1) Etre averti des nouvelles mises à jour des logiciels : http://www/download.com
2) Recevoir les derniers fichiers bit torrent : http://www.torrentspy.com
3) Recevoir les dernières alertes de sécurités et de virus : http://www.sophos.fr , http://www.secunia.com
4) Imprimer des flux RSS sur PDF : http://www.rss2pdf.com
5) Recevoir les dernières requêtes les plus populaires sur Yahoo! : Yahoo! Buzz
6) Recevoir les dernières mises à jour de l'annuaire Yahoo! : Yahoo! Directory
7) Recevoir les derniers messages sur les newsgroups de Yahoo! : Yahoo! Groups
8) Suivre les commentaires postés sur les blogs : http://www.cocomment.com/ , http://mycomments.idslab.com.ar/en/ , http://co.mments.com/
9) Convertir ses fils RSS en fichiers audio : http://www.feed2podcast.com/ , http://www.read.io
10) Suivre les derniers messages postés dans les forums : disponible sur certaines plateformes de forums.
11) Etre averti des changements des informations de son réseau sur les plateformes de networking ou de rencontres
12) Etre averti des nouveaux inscrits sur des hubs de social networking comme Viaduc ou Linkedin
13) Etre averti des nouveaux articles et modifications sur Wikipedia
14) Recevoir du contenu sur les terminaux mobiles : http://www.litefeeds.com , http://www.phonefeeds.com

V. Logistique
1) Envoi d'alertes pour les demandes de maintenance technique
2) Envoi d'alertes pour le renouvellement d'un stock
3) Envoi d'information concernant les changements techniques d'un produit
4) Envoi d'une alerte pour signaler une réservation (appartement, cours de ski, de tennis,…)

VI. Loisirs
1) Suivre les dernières affiches et sorties au cinéma : http://www.citycinema.com , http://www.apple.com/trailers
2) Lire vos comics préférés : http://www.comicalert.com , http://www.thewebcomiclist.com
3) Recevoir les derniers évènements et manifestations : http://www.upcoming.org
4) Souscrire à des albums photos en ligne : http://www.flickr.com
5) Suivre vos programmes TV : http://ktyp.com/rss/tv/
6) Connaitres les événements organisés par un Office du Tourisme : OT Lorient
7) Recevoir les dernières recettes de votre chef de cuisine : http://www.bigoven.com/rss-feeds.htm

VII. Marketing/commerce
1) Etre au courant des derniers produits ajoutés à un catalogue
2) Suivre les dernières annonces sur un site de vente
3) Etre informé des nouveaux livres qui sortent dans une catégorie donnée : Ellipse Genève
4) Stimuler la rumeur en augmentant le phénomène du bouche à oreille : http://www.actubuzz.com
5) Diffuser des communiqués de presse : http://www.groupe-casino.com
6) Diffuser des coupons de réduction : http://www.findsavings.com
7) Augmenter la popularité de la marque sur les moteurs de recherche
8) Transmettre des nouvelles opportunités d'affaires aux vendeurs sur leur PDA : https://feeds.spanningpartners.com/sf/
9) Etre informé des nouveaux prix : http://www.dealnews.com
10) Suivre les alertes sur Ebay : http://www.ebay.com
11) Suivre les discussions sur les fourms Ebay : http://pages.ebay.com/community/boards/index.html
12) Afficher de la publicité dans les fils RSS

VIII. Productivité
1) Agréger plusieurs fils RSS en un seul : http://RSSmix.com , http://Feedjumbler.com, http://feeddigest.com
2) Convertir vos mails en fils RSS : http://www.Mailfeed.com , http://www.Dodgeit.com
3) Lire vos fils RSS dans votre boîte email : http://www.RSSfwd.com , http://www.r-mail.org/
4) Etre averti des nouveaux rendez vous d'un calendrier partagé : http://www.rsscalendar.com
5) Récupérer tous les articles d'un fil RSS : http://feedcatch.feedshake.com/
6) Souscrire à des alertes de recherche de travail : http://www.Indeed.com , http://www.RSSjobs.com , http://www.monster.com
7) Recevoir les dernières mises à jour de vos notes : http://www.aypwip.org/webnote/, http://www.tadalist.com/
8) Recevoir les mises à jour des coordonnées de vos contacts : http://www.rsscontact.com
9) Recevoir les dernières mises à jour de vos documents collaboratifs : http://www.writely.com
10) Suivre les dernières mises à jour de vos wikis préférés
11) Mettre en place de futurs rappels : http://www.reminderfeed.com , http://www.beeplet.com
12) Créer un portail sur l'intranet du groupe agrégeant tous les flux des différentes directions
13) Suivre les dernières nominations des élus, attachés diplomatiques…

IX. Recherche
1) Souscrire à des recherches dans l'actualité : Google News, Yahoo News
2) Souscrire à des recherches sur les blogs : Technorati, Icerocket, Blogpulse
3) Souscrire à des recherches sur les tags : Technorati, Icerocket
4) Souscrire à des recherches sur le web : MSN
X. Ressources Humaines
1) Recevoir et transmettre des offres d’emploi : http://www.Carierreonline.com, http://www.altaide.com
2) Transmettre des notes de services, règlements internes,…

XI. Social bookmarking
1) Dédoublonner les bookmarks sur Delicious : http://deliciousfiltered.stuhlmueller.info/
2) Souscrire aux favoris d’un utilisateur : http://del.icio.us
3) Souscrire à un tag relatif aux favoris d'un seul utilisateur : http://del.icio.us
4) Souscrire à un tag relatif aux favoris d'un seul utilisateur : http://del.icio.us

XII. Veille
1) Recevoir les derniers ajouts dans la base de brevets USPTO : http://www.freshpatents.com/
2) Recevoir les derniers ajouts d'articles scientifiques dans différents journaux et revues : http://vtech.canalblog.com/archives/2006/02/10/1347148.html
3) Recevoir les derniers ajouts de titres dans la base d'un éditeur scientifique : Elsevier, IEEE
4) Recevoir les derniers ajouts de titres bibliographiques dans une bibliothèque
5) Effectuer une veille personnelle sur les citations
6) Effectuer une veille sur une marque déterminée
7) Effectuer une veille sur une entreprise donnée dans la blogosphère
8) Effectuer une veille sur un évènement précis
9) Effectuer une veille sur les appels d'offre : http://www.e-marchespublics.com
10) Effectuer une veille législative : http://www.senat.fr/rss/index.html
11) Effectuer une veille juridique : http://www.droitzoom.fr/index.php
12) Suivre les changements de pages ne disposant pas de fils RSS : http://www.feedwhip.com/ , http://www.feed43.com
13) Filtrer des flux RSS selon des mots clés : http://www.feedsifter.com , http://rssfunnel.com/, http://www.feedrinse.com/
14) Suivre les dernières mises à jour dans un répertoire d’entreprises
15) Suivre les dernières modifications des statuts d’une entreprise
16) Suivre l'actualité d'un journaliste, d'un journal, d'une revue, d'un magazine
17) Suivre l'actualité gouvernementale : http://www.firstgov.gov , http://www.premier-ministre.gouv.fr/fr/

XIII. Webmasters
1) Afficher du contenu dynamique dans votre blog/site : http://www.Feedjumbler.com , http://www.FeedDigest.com , http://www.RSS2HTML.com
2) Créer un nuage de tags à partir de fils RSS : http://www.tagcloud.com
3) Afficher le contenu de plusieurs fils RSS sur un même site : http://www.superglu.com
4) Suivre les derniers ajouts à un blogroll
5) Recevoir les derniers logs sur votre site : Referrer Madness
XIV. Divers
1) Suivre l’état de vos colis : http://www.simpletracking.com
2) Suivre la météo : http://www.rssweather.com , http://www.wunderground.com
3) Recevoir des réponses à divers questions : Yahoo! Answers

Webographie :
http://www.basement.org/archives/2006/01/taking_rss_beyond_headlines_pa.html
http://www.teachinghacks.com/2006/01/15/50-rss-ideas-for-educators/
http://www.alexandrasamuel.com/archive/10-ways-rss-can-help-build-online-communities-6/
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2005/12/rss_the_best_te.html
http://eprofsdocs.crdp-aix-marseille.fr/Les-flux-RSS-et-leur-interet-en.html?artsuite=0#sommaire_1
http://www.culturelibre.ca/rss/
http://www.promotionworld.com/rss/articles/051021usingRSS.html
http://www.ccr.jussieu.fr/urfist/rss/RSS.htm
http://www.ext.upmc.fr/urfist/rss/
http://vtech.canalblog.com/archives/2005/09/05/780635.html
http://vtech.canalblog.com/archives/2005/10/25/927489.html
1 http://www.rssblogsmanagement.com/
2 http://klog.hautetfort.com/
3 http://blogokat.canalblog.com/

Internet Journalism session

2006-05-26T06:14:00.000-07:00

First day

We start discussing what makes the web a real media, different from the newspapers, radio or TV.

There’s two specific qualities the web enjoys and no other media does.

- First, although many people think it to be an ‘instant’ media, it’s definitely not, and moreover it’s actually the reverse: the web is the media of the memory, the one where you can find in a few seconds the work you wrote years before.

So, keep in it mind : what you write now is what can be read in 2007 or 2009 or any moment later…

Consequence : never only write for the moment being but for ‘eternity’, which means although most of journalist do not still consider the web as a quality media, it’s the one where you have to be the more accurate you can and as rigorous as possible because you won’t be forgiven a mistake, and it will last. Internet is the media of quality and it doesn’t accept mediocrity.

- The other web’s specificity is that writing for a web site you will have no more to care for the room you get from your chief editor. Internet is a ‘no calibre’ media : you don’t search for information to fulfil a 100 words article or a 1500 words feature ; you start to search for the best, the most relevant, accurate and reliable information you can, and then you don’t have to worry for how many words you’ve got in your newspaper for your story : screen approach allows you to write a story as long as you want if you do respect the chart and the readability rules. The consequence is obvious : the web is the first media where information is at the core of the system!

It seems simple and obvious but as far as I can see not so many internet journalist do understand it. And I feel this is really important for any web writer to keep in mind : these are the two rails guiding internet good journalism.

Then we discuss how to know an information is true or not, relevant or not, accurate or not.

First, always remember that to be true an information must have been checked at least twice. Never rely on only one source whatever good it's supposed to be. You can rely on one source only when this source is one of your colleague, reporting. Then you have to trust him because you are part of the same team and media.

Second : what makes an information relevant or accurate is your judgement, and what makes your judgement reliable is that it is in line with the policy and good practice chart you discussed and selected for your website.

Always remember that objectivity doesn't exist and that we all are subjective. So the most subjective you feel about a story – for instance if you have to write about somebody you dislike – the most aware of your subjectivity you have to be, and very careful to it so you do your best to avoid it and as fait as possible.

A quality information site is one where readers from all kind off thought and belief can come just thinking : here I will be in touch with reliable information whoever wrote it.

Then we saw what a weblog – a blog – is. A kind of public diary enriched with hypertext links that could drive you to a primary source.

We visit Bagdad Burning blog - http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

and the blog-specialised search engine Technorati - http://www.technorati.com/

Blog ARE NOT primary sources, but they are very useful alert or alarm sources. Once you've identified good blogs, you can go and find some rumours that you can change into information by checking it properly, relying on various sources. Once again : a journalist is someone who inform, and 'checking it properly' means to do what your website chart and good practice policy consider correct.

A good website about advantages and mistakes using the blogs

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/weblogs.html

Then we go on a resources site, Wikipedia, the universal net encyclopedia made by all net users who want to be involved in it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Introduction

Wikipedia is very effective, although it's an encyclopedia, not a source.

Then we discuss the categories of search systems.

First, remember the difference between internet and the Web. Internet is the structure, the grid, the network itself. The Web is the technology responding to the http (hyper text transfert protocole). Which means for instance that your mails have nothing to do with the web but are transferred along the internet grid. There are other protocols than the http one, like FTP for instance.

So the three basic families of search tools are tools searching the Web. They are :

- Search engine defined, which are built by computer robot program, what is often call 'spider' – not by human selection. Typically Google is one of these tools.

- Subject directories defined, which are built by human choice, not by computers. Typically yahoo is such a directory.

- The Virtual Libraries, which are databases you need subscription and authorisation.

And never forget the Invisible Web : the pages that cannot be found in search engines and rarely are in subject directories. This is the two-third or the three-quarter of the web pages !

So, last tip of the day : if you don't find a page or a website you're looking, do not conclude it doesn't exist. That also might be because you didn't use the right search engine with the proper request, and the page exist but is part of the invisible web…

Second day

We start discussing the three categories of search tools. And we test one tool in each category. Google – http://www.google.com – as the search engine. Yahoo! – http://www.yahoo.com – as the directory. Sosig - http://www.sosig.ac.uk/ - as Virtual library. The question we wanted to answer, as a test, was : How many inhabitants in France ?

So, we test it with these two key words : population AND France

Google and Yahoo drive us to a site were it seems that the answer was either relevant and accurate http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/fr.html but we then see that there is CIA in the address : this site is an official CIA site, and obviously not a proper site to use. So always look carefully too the website's address you're consulting.

With Sosig we arrived directly to Ined http://www.ined.fr/englishversion/index.html, the Institut National d'Etudes Démographique, which is the proper website where to find this information : an academic free institute dedicated to statistics about population.

This DOES NOT mean that Google or Yahoo are bad search systems and Sosig a good one. It just means that you have to adapt your search tool to the kind of information you're after.

We then try Alltheweb - http://www.alltheweb.com/ - a search engine you can properly customize. We introduced the Boolean logic and characters that helps to make an effective and relevant search : AND, NOT, OR. Please be aware that it is very important to write it in CAP, or it doesn't work. We see too how you can help the search engine using quotation signs like "". For instance, with the names. Search for "James Boole" and the engine won't separate the two words. Search for James Boole, and you reach a website about George Boole, with an article written by James Gasser !

Working on the very efficient news intelligent agent NewsNow - http://www.newsnow.co.uk/ - we see how to customize a search engine, and how to use mailing lists to keep on with the hot topics and actuality. Of course, mailing lists are not a specificity of this intelligent agent. You can subscribe to many others. But be aware than if you don't want to receive hundreds of alerts you must use mailing list with discernment, which use relevant keywords, don’t try to keep on with too many topics, make choices.

We ended this part of the work with the very effective website of Phil Bradley - http://www.philb.com/adint.htm - which is about "Internet Tools for the Advanced Searcher". Please take the time to read it, test some requests and improve your ability to make relevant and accurate researches.

Then we review and analyse a list of websites :

Search engine :

Google http://www.google.com/

AllTheWeb http://www.alltheweb.com/

Exalead http://www.exalead.com/search

Teoma http://infomine.ucr.edu/

Web directories

Yahoo http://www.yahoo.com

Open Directory http://www.dmoz.org/

Eurozine http://www.eurozine.com/

StartSpot http://www.headlinespot.com/

Infomime http://infomine.ucr.edu/

Virtual Libraries

Virtual reference collection http://libraries.mit.edu/research/virtualref.html

SOSIG http://sosig.ac.uk/

EEVL http://www.eevl.ac.uk/

Intelligent agents

Copernic http://www.copernic.com/

Autonomy http://www.autonomy.com/

Weblogs search agents and RSS technologies

Technorati http://www.technorati.com/

WatchBlog http://www.watchblog.com/

Bloglines http://www.bloglines.com/

NewStrove http://newstrove.com/index.html

About the invisible web

invisible-web.net http://www.invisible-web.net/

CompletePlanet http://www.completeplanet.com/

The invisible web is made up of tons of information invisible to most search engines. That's because most of the information is stored in databases that cannot be accessed by the software search engines used to compile their indexes.

Then, we're going to find many information on the web ; many are poor, most are event poorer !But you will also find fine and proper material to make a good story. Remember that when using this material you have to cope with the intellectual property. So, just give an eye to yhis link about this subject.

About intellectual property

http://www.nap.edu/books/0309064996/html

Remember another and last : Wayback Machine

http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

which list useful information that is no longer listed on the new pages of companies and organizations which update their Web sites all the time.

And finally, we see a few resources sites very useful for press reviews and news alerts :

World Press http://www.worldpress.org/

Press Display http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx

The Globalist http://www.theglobalist.com/

Opinion Sources http://www.opinionsource.com/newsletter.jsp

NewspaperDirect http://www.newspaperdirect.com/

Sign and Sight http://www.signandsight.com/

And websites were all around the world medias are ranked and listed (useful for press review)

- Kidon media link http://www.kidon.com/media-link/index.shtml

- Kiosken http://www.esperanto.se/kiosk/engindex.html

LAST BUT NOT LEAST : FINDING GOOD MATERIAL ON THE WEB, MOREOVER FOR A JOURNALIST WHO MUST CHECK EVERYTHING, MEANS TIME !

Third day

We start with again the difference between Internet and The Web, that we already saw the first day. Internet is the hardware, the network, the connections between networks ; The Web is a system of contents working with the hypertext links protocole. Which means you have other protocoles than the web’s one which use Internet. For instance, almost everything related to the mails.

Remember too that Internet is not a free space but one controlled by the the Icann (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), who works under the american trade department.

We see what are RFC (request for comments) and we analyse the RFC 1855 about the “netiquette”, which is the rules for a proper behaviour on the Net. Remenber to respect the RFC 1855 specification. You can find on http://www.dtcc.edu/cs/rfc1855.html

We see different websites usefull for a coverage or a press review, the kind of sites where you can check an information or enrich yours.

These sites are :

http://www.populationdata.net

http://www.tile.net/news

http://www.oanda.com/convert/classic

http://www.convert-me.com/en

http://www.monde-voyage.com/decalage-horaire.html

http://www.electionworld.org

http://www.newsstand.com

http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx

http://www.opinionsource.com/newsletter.jsp

http://www.signandsight.com

Then we discuss the rules for a good story to publish on the net. Remenber these rules :

- The shorter, the better : Readers appreciate writers who do not waste their time. Simple, direct language communicates your thoughts more efficiently than a bloated demonstration of all that stuff the rest of us slept through in English class.

- Active voice : "Do it," don't "will have been done" it. Reserve passive voice for situations where you don't know the subject, such as crime and court reports. But even then, try to cast as much of the action in the active voice as you can.

- Strong verbs : The best verbs demonstrate action. If you're writing a string of weak linking verbs, think about the action that's happening in your post, then rewrite a new draft using nothing but nouns and verbs in an attempt to better engage your vocabulary.

- Attribute sources : If you don't tell your readers where you got your information, many of them will assume that you are just making it up. You’re a journalist so you aren't, of course ! Attribution brings you credibility, because readers know that you've got nothing to hide if they want to check you out. So quote your sources.

- Contextual hyperlinking : Online narratives should allow readers to "branch off" and click through to other, more detailed, supporting content, depending upon a reader's level of interest. Almost all journalism refers to other sources, but online, a writer has the ability to link readers directly to those supporting sources. Note the URLs of those sources when reporting, and work those into your piece with contextual hyperlinks. Try to link those URLs to the relevant proper names, keywords and phrases, rather than to the URLs themselves written out, or worse, the over-used "click here."

Remember : making links is the main clue of a good web story. You must go for a link as often as you can. So a good web article is : short, active, relevant with all sources quoted and full of relevant hyperlinks (Don’t go too far, nevertheless !)

A website where you can learn about how does a reader read : http://www.poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/index.htm

Fourth day

We first dicuss what is good journalism on the web : Be relevant, check everything and write short, rich, with links and quoted sources.

The pictures are also information. So, you must choose your pictures thinking about the information you must show. A picture on a professionnel press website is never a simple pretext but always gives relevant information. Be aware than very often a good picture is more efficient than a long speech.

About good journalism, a few websites :

Freeprint, a network of more than 75000 information researchers globally. http://www.freepint.com/

Cyberjournalist

http://www.cyberjournalist.com

OJR : online journalism review

http://www.ojr.org

Journalismnet

http://www.journalismnet.com/

Then we start to treat the press review question.

First, I introduce to the two differents kind of press review, and we discuss it :

You can have a press review relying on the main titles and headlines, even if they dont talk about the same topics. In this case, you must choose information very accurate, the kind you will never find in another press than the one you are quoting and which give a clear view of what information is delivered to the readers of the newspapers or magazine you quote.

This is the main and more important point of a press review : you have two levels of information. The first one is the information you release itself and the second one is the “meta-information”, the information about the information. For instance, about the Irak war, you will give the headlines of the american press – that will go for the information – but that way, if you choose well your quotes, you give also to your reader the “meta-information” about how the news about Irak are explained, eventually filtered or twisted, in the american press. You will be able, if you select the proper newspapers and magazines, to show that there are very good, accurate and reliable american medias, like the Washington Post, and that there are others, not that good and politically involved, like the Washington Times and The Wall Street Journal. You must also comment on the newspapers, but not on the information. If you think an information you quote is not reliable but you want to give this information as a ‘meta-information’, in this case ‘there are bad newspapers who lie to their readers’, don’t comment the information itself but the newspaper : tell your reader this newspaper is not reliable.

The other way to write a good press review is to choose an angle to treat a story and then to select in newspapers or magazines quotes you will use as the information your article is built on. It means that you write your story interviewing newspapers instead of people.

But it goes the same way in both kind of press review, you must check everything, all information. And always quote the media you use as sources : it’s a matter of the necessary ethic of such an exercise, in which you handle information you didn’t personally collect.

Then, the basics : a large panorama of the international press is painted, using the two websites we already discussed.

- Kidon media link http://www.kidon.com/media-link/index.shtml

- Kiosken http://www.esperanto.se/kiosk/engindex.html

Asian press sites, then American press, then we go for the Latino-American press, African press and ending with the European press.

Remember : you are a world wide media, so you must give information about all the world around, not only about the arabic world.

Fifth day

We present the special Coverage. The exemple taken is the presidential election in Chile, that are to take place on Sunday, december the 11^th. This choice relies on two points :

- first, Al-Jazeera is a worldwide media, so it must treat all important events in the world. And, because a candidate, Michelle Bachelet, has really lot of chance to become the first woman president in a country from South America.

- second, because there are a lot of palestinian and jordan people living in Chile, people who are able to read and understand arabic.

About the special coverage, the rules are simple :

- you need to prepare it far before the event : give background about the constitution of the country, the electoral law, the various candidates, the economy, etc. And all this background must rely on links to websites ! Remember, a good link often better than a long article. Of course, with this exemple, many sites are writen in spanish, or at the best in english. It means you must give these ones – you never know what your reader is able to read (remember there are many arabic speakers all around the world, and especialy in Chile) – but also others in arabic if you find them, and also some notes you prepared, and also some explanation, and also.. A good coverage needs all forms of articles : interviews (for instance, crossed interviews of the mains candidates, who answer the same three questions), report, sounds, etc. As many type of articles as you can think of.

- To lead a special coverage, you need a team. A journalist alone can’t possibly wirte all kind of stories and think an extensive coverage. So the more important you want your coverage to be, the more people you need ! And if you can, make sure you’ve got inthe team at least a specialist of the subject and someone who doesn’t know it very well ! That way, you will be sure to have someone who is going to think to every detail and someone who will ask for every explanation because he doesn’t know the situation very well.

Zadigg

على النت

The impact of organization choices / The case of French online newspapers

Summary

Introduction

Literature

Determinants of organization choices

Hypotheses

Data

Empirical results

Conclusion

References

Appendix

Blogroll June 2006

Next WSJ Print Iteration Will Draw From the Net

Is ‘convergence’ the next media disaster?

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First day

Second day

Third day

Fourth day

Fifth day