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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Digital Edge News Update: USA Today Opens Buzz Bureau for Advertisers; Outing on Paying for 'Premium Content'
USA Today Launches Buzz
Bureau for Advertisers
USA Today
has launched a Buzz Bureau - a Web site focused on making advertisers aware of
all types of newspaper advertising services and allowing unbundled buys. This
includes content licensing, research and more, Editor & Publisher reported.
Sixty percent of the advertisers who have used the Buzz Bureau are traditional
USA Today customers, but 40 percent are new business.
Source:
Editor & Publisher
GOOGLE NEWS
Google Allows Users to Create Custom
News Sections
 Google is
allowing users to create customized news sections for their Google News page,
according to the Google News Blog. Users can input keywords, locations and more
to customize news results.
"Now, if
you're using Google News and can't find the perfect section, just create
your own! You can do that by adding the relevant keywords. Then, if you are
happy with the resulting section, you can publish it to a directory so others
can benefit."
Source:
Google News Blog
German Newspaper First to Launch
Google Wave
The German
newspaper Welt Kompakt is the first in the world to launch a public Wave. Google's
Wave, which launched recently, is a real-time, personalized "communication and
collaboration tool." Learn about how the newspaper is using it here.
Source:
Revolution Magazine
Quote of the Day: Schmidt on the
News Consumer of the Future
"In five or
10 years, what will the primary news reader look like? Well, that person will
be probably on a tablet or a mobile phone, probably the majority of the reader
will presumably be online not offline, just because of the scale of it. It'll
be highly personalized, right? So you'll know who the person is. There'll be a
lot of integration of media - so video, voice, what have you. It'll be
advertising-supported and subscription-supported, so you'll probably have a
mixture. Think of the Kindle as an example. The Kindle is a proto of what this
thing could look like. People will carry these things around."
-- Google's Eric Schmidt in an
interview with Nieman Journalism Lab.
Question of the Day: Outing Wants to
Know What Premium Content will get Online Users Spending?
"Let's keep
most of our news content online free, so that we don't lose advertisers and
high reader numbers, and maintain our ‘googlejuice,' but let's create more
‘premium' content and services that we can charge for ... and people will find
worthy of paying. But what is this premium content
that newspaper companies can produce for the web (and mobile devices) that will
get online users spending?"
That's the
question Editor & Publisher's Steve Outing is posing to his readers. He is
asking people to respond to his blog entry and discuss what content newspapers
can product for which readers will willingly pay. Read responses and add your
own answer to Outing's question here.
Source:
Editor & Publisher
MICROSOFT NEWS
MSN.com Relaunch Focuses on Social,
Local
The MSN
portal is relaunching soon with a new focus on social networking and local news
and features coverage. The new MSN Local Edition will
be a stand-alone Web site, but it will also be featured prominently on the new
MSN home page, MediaPost reported. See the preview here.
Sources:
MediaPost, MSN
Details of Microsoft's Courier
Leaked
 Gizmodo
scored an early peek at the Microsoft Courier tablet device. The device comes
with a touch-screen interface and features like "Smart Agenda" and "Cover Flow"
to navigate through content.
Mashable
reported, "It's like an enormous notebook for collecting pretty much any kind
of content: clippings from the web, your own notes, diagrams and drawings,
photos from the on-board camera, etc. Each item gets a timestamp and geotag,
and you can add more tags for better searchability as well."
Sources:
Mashable, Gizmodo
Murdoch Considers Postponing Paid
Content, Citing Lack of Newspaper Solidarity
News
Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch may postpone introducing paid content on his newspaper's
Web sites. The Editors Weblog reported that "a lack of solidarity from other newspaper
organizations including the Guardian, which has stressed that its Web site will continue to
remain free, seems to have Murdoch double-thinking his plans."
Source: The
Editors Weblog
How to Use Twitter Lists for
Yourself, Your Newsroom
 News
organizations are already taking advantage of Twitter's new lists, Mashable
reported. This includes creating lists so your newspaper's readers can easily
follow all of your newspaper's accounts, and your reporters can find relevant
and useful sources or follow events.
Also see:
10 Ways You
Can Use Twitter Lists
Fort Hood Shootings: News Orgs Put Twitter
Lists to the Test
Source:
Mashable
NAA
Resource Social
Media ROI: Tweets Bring Traffic, Boost to Brand for Newspapers on Twitter For all the
hype surrounding Twitter, a newspaper having a few thousand followers doesn't seem
like a huge number - especially when compared to total print and online
readership for those newspapers. However, Twitter has been climbing as a
referrer to newspaper Web sites (sometimes even beating out Digg.com), and it
is giving Twittering newspapers a lift with a highly desirable demographic.
Future Revenue Could Come from
Selling Augmented Reality
Already,
some mobile phone applications offer "augmented reality," or the ability to
point the phone at an item and see an overlaid layer of information about that
item. Newspapers could eventually sell AR to advertisers, Poynter's Dorian Benkoil
wrote. "As for making money with AR, publications like the Times could
offer real estate brokers the ability to let potential tenants or buyers
"see" houses and apartments on their mobile devices before ever
entering. They could offer advertisers like restaurants or stores or museums or
anywhere, really, the ability to layer information or offerings to entice
people in."
Source:
Poynter
5 Reasons Digital Media
Professionals Should Attend mediaXchange 2010
 1.
Learn about new partnership opportunities that can boost your newspaper's local
digital revenue.
2. Network with and get new
ideas from leading digital media executives in the newspaper industry and
beyond.
3. Meet with major
advertisers eager to reach out to your digital audience.
4. Maximize your revenue by
learning about revenue-driving digital media innovations from industry leaders.
5. Gain a better
understanding of the prospects for online video, mobile, search and
behaviorally targeted advertising.
Registration is already
open for mediaXchange 2010, April 11 - 14 in Orlando.
2010 NAA Planbook: Your
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 To meet the
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Included for 2010: new
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Don't Wait - Order Today! Planbooks are available now. Order yours at www.naa.org/planbook.
Do you have comments on today's news items? We welcome your comments on
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Published
Nov 06 2009, 09:00 AM
by
Beth Lawton
About Beth Lawton
Beth Lawton is manager, digital media communications in the Business Development division of the Newspaper Association of America. She writes and edits many of NAA’s Digital Edge reports and the Online Publishing Update.
Prior to joining NAA two years ago, she worked as a Web producer and editor in newsrooms in the Midwest and the Caribbean.
Beth is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis and Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism (MSJ New Media 2003).
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