Facebook's New Layout Important to Newspapers

A month ago I would have scoffed at the idea. There was no way that Facebook would have any importance to a newspaper, apart from their need to have a Facebook page for fans to follow. With the new changes to Facebook, newspapers should start paying attention.

Facebook has over 800 million users and has posted a day with over 500 million members logging in. It is safe to say that a lot of people's opinions are able to be expressed via Facebook. This is why the reaction to the new layout should be alarming to newspapers everywhere.

According to this article, Facebook claims it is trying to become "your own personal newspaper". Their news feed section is something taken directly from many newspaper websites. There is also a real-time ticker off to the side that keeps you up-to-date on who is doing what all the time.

And the overall consensus seems to be dislike.

If the Facebook members have such a strong reaction against the new format, what does that mean for the newspapers? It means that there is a possibility that a large number of potential readers would not like navigating their website. It means that they might be losing readers because of their layout.

Or maybe there is no correlation at all. What are your thoughts? Does the initial reaction over Facebook mean that newspapers should look into revamping their format? If so, how could they do it better?

Photo via Creative Commons.

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Print Dies, Journalism Lives On

Technology is rapidly advancing, and everyone must evolve with it. Just as radio stars became film stars when television was invented, journalists today must adapt from print to digital.

This article, titled "Journalism not dead, just evolving as a medium" explains that newspaper companies are making drastic changes to approach this situation.

Since 2000, print circulations have decreased by 26 percent. At the International Newsroom Summit last week, newspaper executives discussed ways to remain profitable as the decline in print continues.

Sulzberger, chairman of New York Times, stated, "We will stop printing The New York Times sometime in the future, date TBD." This article, about the conference discussed the economics of these shifts. It informs that starting in 2011, New York Times will still allow readers to access some information free, but will start charging those who use the site heavily.

As news moves from paper to the web, the number of publications charging for their online content will skyrocket. Users may be unwilling to pay for information that's free elsewhere, so companies must take caution to assure that they're accomodating their customers online.

With sites such as Flickr and Twitter and devices like the Kindle and iPad, it's possible for journalists to share news from anywhere, and for readers to access it anywhere and anytime. This instant interaction creates endless benefits for journalists.

As the article author puts it, "Though physical newspapers might soon be doomed to the fate of sheepskin scrolls, journalism itself survives as a highly marketable, in-demand
commodity." The transition from print to digital is inevitable. I believe it will be a long and complicated road, but journalism will continue strong if this evolution is handled strategically.

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Thousands of Online Newspapers!

With all the chatter of online news, and its effect on the newspaper industry, I thought I would share a website that gives you the opportunity to find thousands of online newspapers. This gives you the opportunity to find U.S. newspapers, world newspapers and magazines. You can even update the site if it does not contain one that you know of.

According to http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/, these are the current top 10 of the top 50 newspapers in the United States.

1. The New York Times (New York)

2. The Washington Post (Washington D.C.)

3. The Los Angeles Times (California, Los Angeles)

4. The Daily Fulki (Dhaka)

5. New York Post (New York, New York)

6. Daily News (New York)

7. Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Georgia)

8. The Boston Globe (Massachusetts)

9. Detroit Free Press (Michigan)

10. Chicago Tribune (Illinois)

This is an interesting site to check out! Who knows, this site could be used as your future career lead list.

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Cashing In On Your News

What do you do once you have joined the masses, put down your pen and paper (literally) and have made the decision to go digital? You still have a job to do and bills to pay!

You can earn money online! Due to the rise of online journalism and news, many are actually starting to make money. By publishing independently online, journalists are making extra cash or even a full-time wage.

Here are some tips to getting the money rolling. (This is not intended for established power-seeking news organizations)

1. Advertising networks

Advertising is the largest way new websites are money. The sale and display ads for your site can be handled by ad networks. You just have to decide where you want it to go.

2. Selling your own ads

If you are a little more greedy, and do not want to share revenue, you should consider selling your space directly to advertisers.

3. Sponsorships/Grants

Of all of these options, this one requires the least technical skill. In addition to be a reporter and journalist, you will need to sell yourself. Essentially, you will need to convince organizations and other individuals to give your money.

4. Commissions and/or affiliate links

To make a few extra bucks on your website, affiliate programs would work the best. By providing links to sites and products, your return is usually in the form of more commission.

5. Paid content

If your content and site is unique and valuable enough that readers are willing to pay for it, you will need to come up with ways to collect it. This is the most time consuming and usually generates less revenue than selling advertising on free pages.

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News is the New Social Experience

Today, Americans can get their news from multiple news vehicles. The Internet and mobile technology have changed the way people consume the news, and have turned the absorption of news into a social experience.


People's relationship with news is constantly changing because of the Internet. Six in ten Americans get news from a combination of online and offline sources everyday.


Research shows that while online, most people used between two and five online news sources and 65% do not have a single favorite website for news. Only 21% say they use only one site for their news and information.


News is becoming personalized, participatory, and portable. According to this article:

• Personalized: 28% of Internet users have customized their home page to include news from sources and topics that particularly interest them
• Participatory: 37% of Internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or disseminated it via postings on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter.
• Portable: 33% of cell phone users now access news on their cell phones.

What does all of this mean? This multi-media platform environment is becoming a shared social experience. People are posting news stories to their Facebook feeds, swapping links in emails, and highlighting news stories in their Tweets.

The Internet has surpassed newspapers and radio in popularity as a news platform on a typical day. It ranks just behind TV.

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Online-Only Publications Win a Pulitzer

That's right. Editorial cartoonist Mark Fiore for SFGate.com and investigative journalist Sheri Fink at ProPublica were both awarded Pulitzer Prizes for their work.

Mashable has called it "history making" because it is the first time any online-only publication has won a Pulitzer, the highest award a writer can receive.

ProPublica, which prides itself in investigative journalism, is an independent organization that teams up with traditional media sources to get its news out there. The organization itself operates solely online.

Mashable describes ProPublica as a non-profit that thinks of itself as a resource to other news companies who may not have the time or resources to do serious investigative reporting.

Fink's winning piece told about “the urgent life-and-death decisions made by one hospital’s exhausted doctors when they were cut off by the flood waters of Hurricane Katrina,” according to a Pulitzer announcement. The entire series is located on ProPublica's site.

Fiore won his Pulitzer for his editorial comics. Here's an example:



You can find more his work on the SFGate archive or on his site.

This is a big step for online-only media. The only question I have is how many more companies will have to team up in order to get the news out there?

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$35 a Month for News?

When newspapers first began to post news online in the '90s, they charged for that online access. Most of those newspaper sites became completely free to users later.

However, according to paidContent.org paywalls may soon be the trend again. PaidContent.org has found 20 newspaper sites that charge up to $35 a month for online content. $35 seems to be a little excessive. Especially, when a person can go to a newsstand and buy print edition for much cheaper.

This could be a ploy to get people to buy newspapers and get circulation numbers back up. So even if people don't want to pay $35 a month, the newspaper will still make money.

None the less, these 20 newspapers are the model for the hundreds of other newspapers that are still debating to paywall or no to paywall their Web sites. If the pioneering 20 newspapers are successful financially with their paywall venture, there could soon be a lot more than 20 news sites that are charging up to $35 a month for their content.

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What are Topic Pages You Ask?

In searching for a topic for my Beginning Newswriting Class at Simpson College regarding journalism in the news I came across article by Maurreen Skowran called, "How Topic Pages can give Readers a Bird's-Eye View of the News" on PoynterOnline. The words "topic pages" caught my eye, but then I wondered what topic pages were

Basically what topic pages are is summaries of new stories. This always people to get caught up on the news quicker.

In a study commisioned by the Associated Press in 2008 showed that adults between the ages of 18 and 24 experiance "new fatigue" because we are continually supplied updates but lack the meat of the story.

Topic pages include summaries to stories, but also include links that the original story might not have.

But will they work? In December and January of this past year Google did an experiment with the help of The New York Times and The Washington Post called the "Living Stories." In this experiment each topic had a summary that was approximately five paragraphs long. The ending result showed that 75 percent preferred the "Living Stories" over regular online news stories.

This is a wonderful idea! Who has time these days to read the paper from front to back anymore. We want the information that we feel we need and we want it as quick as possible, easy to read, and links to answer any new questions we might have.

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Life Without the AP

For nearly two months, Google News went with out using Associated Press articles on its site. Those article will soon be returning to the Google site once negatiations between the AP and Google are finished. The negotiation is over the creation of a new licensing argreement the at will allow Google to continue to publish AP articles.

While Google is jumping back on the AP bandwagon, CNN will be getting off and go a week cold turkey from using the AP wires. CNN wants to prove that it is still a top contender in gathering and breaking news by itself.

Unlike Google, CNN.com does not use AP content or images. CNN only uses AP wires to collect information, but it believes it can rely on its own wires to provide the same great coverage.

However, will this really prove anything? If CNN goes a week without the AP and doesn't end up failing miserably, is one week really enough time to prove that CNN is capable of functioning without help. The only thing that one week can prove is that CNN cannot function on its own, if it ends up failling its own one week test.

I think a better test would be to see if CNN can stay a float for a month by itself. That would be a real test of its news gathering abilities.

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The Cost of Online News

With the recent increase in online news reporting many news companies such as the Washington Post, New York Times, and other leading news companies are deciding when online reporting deserves a price tag and stretching the boundaries of journalism. Recently with the increase in online blogging and easy access of online news journalism companies have had to think outside the box to harness an entrepreneurial system for currently free media and news on the Internet.


According to an article by the New York Times chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. seems close to adding a subscription feature to the New York Times online media outlet that includes a monthly fee. Historically New York Times has been one of the leading news media sources that have been reliable and an ethical source for Americans since 1851. The original price of a Times news paper was a penny. Today's prices are slightly higher with a daily price of $2.00 for metro as well as national and $5.00 to $7.00 on Sundays. The decision to add a price tag to the online resource was debated for over a year. The online presence if the Times has been strong since 1996 allowing readers to access thousands of articles with only a few exceptions for articles that need registration information to access. However this registration information never included a credit card number or monthly fee only basic information to allow the New York Times to keep track of what kinds of people are reading their stories. The company looked to the Washington Post for ideas on how to gain back the value of the online news circuit. They have decided that there will be three types of pay strategies. Each with a a different level of access to articles with increasing amount of monthly fees attached.


The Washington Post also copyrighted their website in 1996 along with Times. Unlike Times however, the Post requires a $9.95 monthly subscription fee to access online articles. Other national renowned online news companies such as the Chicago Tribune and databases such as Google News have not yet made the change to a paid membership option yet either but with the continued trend of online news sources it will only be a matter of times before these sources will change the times.


However the Times will increase revenue drastically from its online sources Tom Friedman, an A-list columnist, says that he will lose many of his readers in India and China. Although this is a setback Time believes that this will be beneficial to their ever evolving industry and their company. With the continued trend of online sources applying these fee are going to force the Times to expand and explore other ways to entice their readers to continue to be loyal to their media.

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