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Welcome to the Digital Edge Blog!
The Digital Edge Blog focuses on developments, trends, best practices and more in newspaper digital media. The blog launched in 2006 (archives before August 2008 are here).
We look forward to reading your comments and contributions to the Digital Edge Blog. Questions? E-mail Beth Lawton at beth.lawton@naa.org.
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January 2009 - Posts
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The average monthly unique audience figures for newspaper Web sites grew by nearly 7.3 million in 2008 to 67.3 million visitors, an increase of 12.1 percent over 2007, according to a new report by Nielsen Online for the Newspaper Association of America.
Monthly unique visitors during the fourth quarter of 2008 averaged 68.2 million, an 8.6 percent increase over the same period a year ago (62.8 million). The data comprise home and work Internet usage.
"Newspapers' digital audience has grown 60 percent in the last three years as the newspaper Web sites continue to attract sophisticated readers who demand comprehensive news and information that no other medium can match," said NAA President and CEO John F. Sturm.
In a podcast interview available here, NAA Senior Vice President of Business Development Randy Bennett said, "I think what we're seeing in the online audience growth is a number of factors: One is the introduction by newspapers of new features - online video, social media applications and other kinds of features - that have attracted an audience and really building a community on newspaper Web sites. The other thing we're seeing is that newspapers, rather than just providing their own content online, are becoming aggregators and curators of content across a variety of different sources, so if people are looking for information on their local community, newspapers are aggregating that content regardless of where it's from...."
In addition to audience growth, NAA announced that many newspapers are seeing a significant positive financial impact from their relationships with Yahoo! The Yahoo! partnerships includes access to Yahoo!'s ad management platform, Apt, and advertising inventory in local markets. Several individual newspapers in the partnership have each sold more than $1 million of Yahoo! inventory. For example, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution sold $2 million in Yahoo! inventory during the test phase of the platform. E. W. Scripps Newspapers generated almost $2 million in three markets over a four-day period in December 2008.
To discuss this, please go to the NAA Press Center Forum.
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 NewsOK, the Web site of The Oklahoman, got creative with their live coverage of an ice storm that blanketed the region Tuesday by sending reporters out to cover road conditions from a car.
Of course, the newspaper posted breaking news stories (about the weather, about people falling and about how swamped the area's emergency medical services were) and the newspaper posted school closings online.
In addition, the newspaper sent two videographers out in a Jeep with a laptop, a wireless card and a video camera.
The image to the right is a box that appeared on the home page of NewsOK.com.
The reporters set up the video camera on the car's dashboard and drove around area highways and city streets, live streaming video of local road conditions.
At the same time, the reporter who was not driving handled a CoveritLive Web chat with site visitors, giving them information about where the reporters were, how fast they were going and much more. The multimedia coverage also included Twitter and Flickr.
In addition to being highly engaging, the video and chat provided a public service to people considering leaving work early before the roads worsened as the storm continued through the afternoon.
A screengrab of NewsOK.com/live from around 3:18 p.m. CT is below. (By the way, the live video has clickable breaking news headlines scrolling across the player.)
Here are some of the comments that came into the CoveritLive stream at (exactly) 3:15 p.m. today (they had a few glitches with the Mogulus-powered video stream):
[Comment From hfwallace] NewsOk's weather page rules.
[Comment From Dan] it is back up. you guys are doing a great job.
[Comment From Guest] is it the newcastle area on 44?
[Comment From Dispatch] moore schools out tomorrow...
[Comment From Kurtis] How fast are you driving?
The response about that last question came in three minutes later from the NewsOK team in the car - they were traveling about 45 mph at the time.
In an e-mail to NAA, Opubco's VP of the News and Information Center Kelly Dyer Fry commented that the video stream and live chat are rather addicting once you start watching. I'm interested in seeing how the NewsOK.com time-spent-on-site metric increased for today.
Another smart idea: The banner ad at the top of NewsOK.com on the live coverage page was an ad for the newspaper's mobile traffic alerts.
Much more technical information about this project, including what equipment they used and how they set it up in the car, is on Director of Video Dave Morris' blog here.
Update 5:29 p.m. ET: We just got this information about NewsOK.com's Twitter and CoveritLive-based ice storm coverage, which started Tuesday morning. The following is from Multimedia Editor Mike Koehler:
About Twitter
We jumped on Twitter around 10 a.m. Monday when it looked like things were going to turn sour.
The most important thing I wanted to do was establish the tag everyone would use for this event. I posted a message on my personal Twitter account that it would be #OKIce and sent it out. I have a pretty good group of followers: a lot of the connecters in the OKC Twittering community.
Then, as we updated on the NewsOK Twitter account throughout the day, I made sure to tag all of our updates with #OKIce. I sent replies to anyone else who tweeted about the storm to do the same if they hadn't.
That tag allowed us to build a quick Twitter widget (a twidget) on our live page that fed all of the comments containing that tag. We did the same with a Flickr feed, as people used the #OKIce tag there as well.
One of our consistent updates to Twitter were links back to our site, especially our breaking news blog and our closings list (the most popular page of the day).
On Monday evening, I went to search.twitter.com, and there were about 400 updates from people using the #OKIce tag. By mid-day the City of OKC had picked it up, as well as some competing media.
Our videographers who were live streaming in the car were using a separate Twitter account (NewsOKtv) to update their location. We had a feed right under the video which scrolled those updates.
Followers for both account grew throughout the day
About CoveritLive
CoveritLive is a great tool that we have been using often, especially in sports. We do live chats for all Oklahoma and Oklahoma State football games, as well as whe our NBA team plays.
We launched the live chat in conjunction with the live video stream on Monday about 11 a.m. in order to have another stream of updates of readers, answering their questions and getting their views of what was happening outside.
Traffic grew and grew and grew throughout the day.
The give-and-take was remarkable in many ways. First, people were very interested in what our live-streamers were doing: where were they, how fast were they going, where were they going next.
Second, people started to ask and answer each others' questions: Who has been on this road, and how was it? Has anyone heard about this school closing? This was honest-to-goodness crowdsourcing, citizen journalism, whatever you want to call it. We became a hub for sharing information.
There were also updates from around the state, which really increased the range of our reporting.
By the end of the day, the chat was our most popular ever. We resumed it, along with the live streaming video, at 7 a.m. Tuesday.
(Thanks to Kelly Dyer Fry for helping coordinate this blog post.)
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New York City has teamed up with Google to launch its own version of CitySearch. The portal, at www.nycgo.com/, has an "extensive database of events, restaurants, hotels, and other points of interest. All of these are tied into the Google Maps API, making it easier for visitors to quickly find things to do in their vicinity without having to hunt down their hotel's concierge," TechCrunch reported. The site will also have promotions and discounts for events. The NYC visitor's center has also gotten a Google upgrade with interactive touchscreen maps and more.
WaPo Launches WhoRunsGov.com
Washingtonpost.com has launched a new site, www.whorunsgov.com, which "offers a unique look at the world of Washington through its key players and personalities," according to the site. The site includes some news as well as profiles of major players in the federal government and will morph into a "moderated wiki" as it continues to develop.
Las Vegas Papers Get Serious About Online
Editor & Publisher this week profiles the two newspapers in Las Vegas, which operate under a complicated JOA. The Las Vegas Sun, in particular, has undergone a significant online transformation in the past two years. (Disclosure: I worked with Rob Curley and Dave Toplikar, who are mentioned in the article, in Kansas years ago.)
Nielsen Online Releases List of Top Sites by Sessions Per User
Thirteen newspapers appeared on Nielsen Online's list of Top 30 News and Current Events Destinations (ranked by sessions per user), for December. The Star Tribune was the only newspaper in the top 10, with 6.1 sessions per user on average.
Sessions per user are important because they show how many times users return to a Web site. Nielsen Online provides these numbers to the Newspaper Association of America on a monthly basis, showing traffic and sessions per person* to the top 30 sites in the "News" category based on July 2008 numbers. It takes into account U.S. home and work Internet usage, and it shows both unique visitors to each brand or channel and sessions per person.
*Note on the numbers: Auto-refresh features on Web sites (i.e. when a Web site page reloads automatically) does not increase the number of sessions.
The Excel file is in NAA's shared-files section of the NAA Community. Click here to access it.
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The Philly.com blog From The Source, which launched in November and focuses entirely on breaking news, has become a traffic powerhouse for the Web site.
The Knight Digital Media Centers has a blog post from Chris Krewson, executive editor online/news, for the Philadelphia Inquirer. In the post, he writes the blog has allowed the news outlet to get breaking news information to readers more quickly and has driven substantial amounts of traffic to the site.
On short posts: "For the past nine months or so we'd struggled with what to do with information like that; posting news in a blog format helped us get over the mental hurdle that 'we didn't have enough for a story.'"
On driving traffic and participation: "We knew our users would contribute news items, so we went out of our way on the blog to beef up a 'how to contact us' area, with our online desk phone number and e-mail prominently displayed."
On the results: "Out of the gate" the blog was No. 11 on the most popular list of Philly.com blogs. Now, just two months after launch, the blog is No. 3 on the site and accounts for 12 percent of Philly.com traffic.
Innovative Inauguration Coverage
 Newspapers across the country did a great job covering the inauguration from all angles. Here are just a few notable projects, followed by this morning's Online Publishing Update item about it:
City Block - The New York Times covered the inauguration from the perspective of one city block in Washington, DC. The project integrates a map, interactivity and an audio slideshow. The project is an intriguing way for the newspaper to get hyperlocal in a city other than its own.
Photo Mosaic and TimeSpace - What to do with all those user-generated photos? Create art! Washingtonpost.com posted a photomosaic of President Obama taking the oath of office created from user-contributed photos and photos from the Washington Post and the Associated Press. The newspaper also launched a Timespace project on the day, which combines maps, photos, video and more into one interactive element. Another interesting photo project: CNN's Photosynth (you'll need to have Microsoft's Silverlight installed to see it in action).
PolitiFact Tracking Obama's Promises - PolitiFact, which won a Digital Edge Award last year and brought us the fun of the Truth-o-Meter, will be tracking 510 promises that President Obama made during his campaign. The site will include a new meter called the Obameter that measures the levels of progress and fulfillment. Learn more in this interview from Poynter.
AP Delivers Record Number of Video Streams - The Associated Press delivered more than 8 million video streams of the inauguration through its online video service.
From today's Online Publishing Update*:
The Connected Inauguration: Google Searches Drop at Noon, Live Video Streams Draw Record Audiences
There was no shortage of options in presidential inauguration coverage yesterday, as many news organizations offered video, audio, mobile, maps, feeds and more. So many people were paying attention to the inauguration and speech that Google's traffic dropped off significantly between about noon and 12:30 ET.
Texting and Twittering: Multiple cellular companies brought in portable towers to handle the crush of network traffic, but many people reported having difficulty even sending text messages during Tuesday's events. Still, many news outlets employed Twitter and text messaging in their inauguration coverage plans, The Editors Weblog reported. This included sending out traffic and weather alerts to readers and accepting incoming text messages for readers to report.
Video: Alexa, Limelight and Highwinds reported a combined total of 8 million simultaneous video streams of the inauguration and speech. Joost and Hulu also hosted live online video coverage, as did many newspaper and other news media sites. Some of the sites had bandwidth-related difficulties, StreamingMedia.com reported. (See Lost Remote for links to reviews of the live streams.)
Photos, UGC and Maps: In addition to satellite and Webcam images of the estimated 1.8 to 2 million people on the National Mall, CNN employed Microsoft's Photosynth technology to create a large mash-up photo of Obama's swearing in. (See it here.) Requests for photos and information from Web site visitors were standard, and washingtonpost.com received enough photos to create a photo mosaic from them. Many news sites, including those in Washington, featured interactive maps to help attendees navigate the maze of security-related street closures, checkpoints and more.
Social Networking: CNN's Facebook experiment was an overwhelming success: More than 1.5 million Facebook status updates were posted from CNN.com The Twitter Vote Report came alive again yesterday (and is still going strong this morning) with the tag #inaug09.
Government: Yesterday, the new administration launched a redesign of whitehouse.gov. Read about goals of the changes to the site here.
More:
Web Sites Across the Country Capture Inauguration Day (Poynter)
5 Best Ways to Watch the Inauguration Online (NowPublic)
The Inauguration will be Streamed, YouTubed, Flickered, Googled (PaidContent)
Innovation in Auguration Coverage (MediaShift)
File Sizes a Factor in Limiting Wikipedia Multimedia
Part of the reason Wikipedia has been so text-based in past years: server space. But the Wikimedia Foundation is increasing its server space enough to allow Web users to post larger and larger multimedia files, PC World reported.
Newspapers: What are your limits on user-generated content file sizes? Comment below.
RJI Collaboratory
Today, the Reynolds Journalism Institute is hosting a discussion on its latest initiative, the RJI Collaboratory. The discussion focuses on the question "What would be the ideal collaborative/laboratory/do-tank resource to help online news entrepreneurs?" You can join the conversation (or just listen in) here.
Dallas Morning News Launches Neighborhood Sites
(This item is from this morning's Online Publishing Update*) The Dallas Morning News is launching 47 neighborhood level microsites that will include hyperlocal news, entertainment, education and real estate information - and much more. The sites will include content from the newspaper's NeighborsGo sites, which collect user-generated content, Editor & Publisher reported.
New Resource: Why News Orgs Can Police Comments and Not Get Sued
It's a big grey area, but policing comments on your newspaper's Web site can mean the difference between a vibrant online community and an unhealthy one. To navigate through the legal fog, check out this Nieman Labs video of David Ardia, director of the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard. (We'll be adding the link to our Online Community Cookbook project, as well.)
* Online Publishing Update -- The OPU is an e-mail newsletter sent out to members of the Newspaper Association of America's Digital Media Federation. Joining the federation comes with lots of benefits beyond the OPU, including special access to e-forums through the NAA Community, discounted pricing on NAA events and more! Learn more and join the federation here.
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 As product portfolios develop and newspaper staffs and budgets shrink, the job of effectively marketing various brands and products across numerous platforms becomes increasingly more difficult.
NAA embarked on a mission to find audience and revenue generating practices that have proven successful in the current market environment. Seven case studies emerged from papers of various sizes. You'll find inside the report long and short case studies on the following: social media marketing, niche consumer events, events management, e-mail marketing, establishing a B-to-B brand, hyperlocal product marketing, and an outsider's approach to marketing a major newspaper.
Download the report here.
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A growing number of newspapers are embracing the live video shot for the Web (see articles about this in NAA's growth & development guide "Zooming In on Online Video") using Qik, broadband connections and a variety of other methods from the field. Now, a television station in Florida has figured out how to use Skype for live shots.
Reporter Janie Porter from Ft. Lauderdale station WTSP did this last week for a college football championship story.
Here's how Poynter's Al Thompkins explained the process:
Porter set up her own camera, opened her laptop, connected the camera to her computer, slipped a wireless connection card into her laptop, called up Skype and used her Blackberry to establish IFB (the device TV folks wear in their ears to hear the off-air signal). It all looked just great on air.
This type of reporting marks a new day. It is more than backpack journalism or one-woman-band reporting; it is soup to nuts, live reporting without a live truck or a signal that looks like a Max Headroom video. Obviously, it is also a potential cost-saving way to use fewer people and to send in live reports without using expensive trucks.
See the live shot and read an interview with Porter here.
Note: Comments on the blog Lost Remote show a number of other television stations are experimenting in this area not just for the Web, but for television as well.
New York Times Launches 1 in 8 Million, New API
 Mildly reminiscent of Washingtonpost.com's OnBeing, NYTimes.com launched 1 in 8 Million, a video feature focusing on individuals living in New York City through a narrated photo gallery. The newspaper will be adding one story per week to its collection.
In addition, the newspaper Web site launched its instant op-ed feature called Room for Debate. As NYTimes.com describes it, "The Times invites knowledgeable outsiders to discuss major news events and other hot topics. The aim is to hear a variety of voices - well-known, up-and-coming or unexpected - on a range of issues. Discussions include opinion, analysis, context - sometimes all three. Contributors may debate one another, or simply share what they know and move on."
The Times' latest API release, the Congress API focuses on congressional votes. CNet's News.com reported, "The Congress API will enable developers to keep close eye on their elected representatives with data on specific congressional roll call votes and members' most recent positions on roll call votes. The API also provides lists of House and Senate members in specific years, as well as biographical and role information about specific members."
Las Vegas Sun's Thirst in the Mojave
 Zach Wise's Thirst in the Mojave project focuses on the "Web" part of Web video.
The 24-minute video feature on the desert includes geocoded shots (so every piece of video is mapped), bios of speakers that appear on the lower-third of the screen and "more info" boxes that automatically pop-up as the video plays. (The video is broken up into 3 - 6 minute clips.) The project also includes an interactive map of water usage in and around Las Vegas.
Wise, on his Digital Art blog, noted that he completed the project before he left the newspaper this fall, but the project just launched early this year. On the blog, Wise explains how he put the project together.
Wise is now a multimedia producer for The New York Times.
Response to Carr's Call for an iTunes for News
Yesterday in Slate, Jack Shafer offered a response to NYT columnist David Carr's call for an iTunes for newspapers. Carr's column is here, and Shafer's response is here. Excerpts are below:
Carr:
By coming up with an easy user interface and obtaining the cooperation of a broad swath of music companies, [Apple's Steve] Jobs helped pull the business off the brink. He has been accused of running roughshod over the music labels, which are a fraction of their former size. But they are still in business. Those of us who are in the newspaper business could not be blamed for hoping that someone like him comes along and ruins our business as well by pulling the same trick: convincing the millions of interested readers who get their news every day free on newspapers sites that it's time to pay up.
Shafer:
Actually, a flawed iTunes for news already exists: It delivers content through Amazon's Kindle. ... One of the Kindle's many problems is that it's a standalone device. ... How would an iTunes for news market its products? Publishers could sell their editions directly to readers or license them to aggregators, much as the music labels license their tunes to iTunes and Amazon. The aggregators could bundle publications, giving you a financial incentive to subscribe to, say, the Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal all at once. The subject of a whole other column would be how to maximize this new platform-let's call it News Box-for advertisers.
USA Today Launches iPhone, Kindle Versions
USA Today is one of the latest newspapers available on the Amazon Kindle for $11.99 per month. The newspaper joins more than 20 others that are available on the e-reader. Separately, USA Today launched a new version for the Apple iPhone to positive reviews.
mediaXchange
This morning, the Newspaper Association of America's conference planning committee sent out an e-mail with good news: NAA negotiated to lower hotel room rates, plus a list of great reasons to attend the conference. The early bird rate is expiring Feb. 6, so please look for an e-mail that says "NAA's mediaXchange January e-Newsletter" in the subject line. If you didn't get it, just ask me and I'll forward it to you.
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Update Wednesday 10:40 a.m.
Making Web Sites 'Easy to Use' - PRESSTIME magazine's Kate Davidson sat in on the Media Management
Center's Webinar about
its recent report on making news Web sites "easy to use."
A few more headlines:
@BreakingNewsOn Launches New Site as Public News Wire
Service, Continues Twitter Outreach
(The Editors Weblog)
10 Things Every Journalist Should Know
(Journalism.co.uk)
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The
stereotype from long ago is that newspaper people love coffee - especially free coffee.
Here's how to get yours: The
Newspaper Association of America has started a new promotion for the NAA
Community. The first 100 NAA Members to
populate their profile between January 5 and January 16 will receive a $10
Starbucks Gift Card. See what your profile can do for you!
Who qualifies?
Any NAA Member who has not previously populated their Community profile may
participate in this promotion.
What is required?
For your newly updated profile to be considered complete for this promotion,
you must do at least two of the following three things:
- Complete your personal bio
- Add an RSS feed to your "Recommended
Reading"
- Upload an avatar
Before getting started, you'll need to read the promotion rules and the directions
on how to populate your profile to ensure your profile is submitted and
eligible.
More details are here, or go to naa.org and search on the term "Starbucks promotion" for more information.
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Combine moderating online comments with the "Choose
Your Own Adventure" book series from the 1980s, and you get this: A simple flowchart for online community
editors to help them in their moderating decisions.
This flowchart
came from the Air Force, but it can easily apply to media outlets. Dave Fleet has some additional advice
on comment moderation. Zero Percent Idle blogger Tim Windsor suggests printing
out the flowchart and posting near your computer.
Looking for more advice? Last year, NAA published "The
Online Community Cookbook." The second part of it includes a lot of
practical advice on managing comments on your newspaper's Web site. Take a look
at that here.
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 In early 2008, NAA engaged European-based consulting company iMedia Advisory Services to develop a financial-model scenario for newspapers in 2017. Based on their projections of current newspaper financial data and marketplace trends, iMedia concluded that the newspaper franchise could be very vibrant, given meaningful strategic and operational changes. Their premise: if newspapers accept the inevitable declines in the current model, they will be better positioned to restructure their organizations and prepare for future growth, albeit as a smaller organization.
The executive summary of theis Horizon Watching Initiative report is published in this month's edition of the Newspaper Association of America's PRESSTIME magazine and the report is available online for NAA members at www.naa.org/financialmodel.
This Month in PRESSTIME
All of these articles are available at www.naa.org/presstime.
Sign of the Times: The road map to the future is filled with twists and turns
by PRESSTIME Staff
Across the country, newspaper publishers are taking drastic steps to shore up their existing businesses and find ways to tap into future technologies. Previously unheard of tactics, such as outsourcing printing and cooperating instead of competing in news coverage, have become commonplace. It's a brave new world out there, and the road map to the future is filled with many twists and turns.
Hey! You! Get on My Cloud: Newspapers save money, resources with cloud computing
by Mark Toner
With 57 smaller-market newspapers scattered across 14 states, Landmark Community Newspapers Inc. in Shelbyville, Ky., flew IT staffers from location to location to address technology issues. For the past year and a half, though, it's the newspapers' mission-critical systems that have been up in the clouds, thanks to a centralized content-management system that resides on third-party servers in Massachusetts.
Profile: The Gazette - Water Tested, Flood Approved
by Heidi Ernst
Even though the waters of the Cedar River were lapping at the doorstep of The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, last June, trial by fire ruled the day and many weeks afterward.
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